Tommy-gun in the Latrine

On June 20, 1943, Ralph writes on Camp Swift stationary to his Mom and Dad, happy to be back in camp, but finding he won't be there long.

"Well, we're back in Camp Swift, but not for long. Right now we're orphans. We got here about midnight Friday night. The 527th loaded us into a truck and then dumped us out in front of what was our barracks when we left. But, when we went in the barracks we found it full of strangers. We went into what used to be our latrine and a guard with a tommy-gun ran us out of there. You see, the 147th went to Louisiana for maneuvers about two weeks ago, and a Tank Destroyer outfit had moved into our barracks. Every last man of Company A is gone, except 4 or 5 who were transferred out of it before they left. One of them, a fellow who was in my barracks before I left, finally found us yesterday, and we all but kissed him, we were so glad to see him.

We finally had to go back to the 527th and stay the rest of Friday night. Yesterday morning we were "adopted" by the 553rd Engineers. They put us and the 207th boys who were in the same fix, in an empty barracks, gave us clean sheets and pillow-cases and we eat in their mess hall. They also went to a lot of trouble to locate the belongings we left here. After about umpteen miles of red tape we finally caught up with the barracks bags we left here, but there was hardly anything in them except our winter clothes. Evidently, they have taken everything we might use or anything valuable along to Louisiana. We were expecting to find the rest of our clothes and the laundry that we had to go off and leave, but I guess they took that stuff all along with them. As a result we didn't have a clean piece of clothes to our names, so we had to wash them. It took me from 8:30 to 12 o'clock this forenoon to wash the pile of filthy stuff I had, and it still isn't clean. We just took it in the shower room, undressed, got a G.I. brush and soap and went after them."

"....We still haven't found our mail. The mail clerk from the 553rd is trying to locate it. If it's here in camp He'll get it for us, but I imagine they took it with them to Louisiana. Gosh, how I would like to get hold of it. I suppose you have been writing right along so there should be a nice big pile when I finally catch up with it."

Last Post from Arkansas

Ralph writes on June 10, 1943 from Hazen, Arkansas, expressing some of his frustration.

"I expect you think these letters are few and far between, but I don't have a whole lot of time to write. There are times when I would have time to write if I just knew it beforehand, but you never know when to start anything.

We're still here but no one knows why. The rivers are going down fast, and we haven 't done anything on them for a week, except for a couple of motor boats. They've got us building roads now. We are grading and widening a road by pick and shovel method, just exactly the way the W.P.A. did it, and working just about as hard. If they wanted a road very bad they could take a little machinery and build it in a couple of days, but I think the main idea is to keep us busy 'til they get ready to send us back to Camp Swift. The Company commander announced at formation the other day that he had heard a pretty reliable rumor that we were going to leave here for Camp Swift next Tuesday. I certainly hope it isn't a false alarm this time. I've had more than enough of this business. If it wasn't for the fact that we get to go to town almost every evening, I think we'd all go plumb crazy. We can't have too good a time when we do go to town because most of the boys are broke the rest are badly bent. We're supposed to get paid sometime today, but I'll believe it when I see it, just like I do everything else around here.

These small towns around here are about like Thornville - dead as the dickens except on Saturday night. The people do all they can to entertain us but that isn't a whole lot."

Still in Arkansas

June 2, 1943 finds Ralph still in Arkansas, though now writing from Hazen. With the flood waters receding, he is anxious to return to the relative comfort of Camp Swift. However, he takes a moment to reflect on the way his view of this area has changed.

"Everyone is getting fed up with the whole thing. As far as I am concerned, if we had our barracks and showers, etc. up here I wouldn't mind staying. Oh yes, and mail, too. The most of the other outfits have sent their boys' mail up here, but I guess the 147th has forgotten us."

"When I came through here in February on the way to Camp Swift I thought this was the most desolate Godforsaken place I had ever seen. Now, in the summer time it looks entirely different. Everything is green with cotton, corn, oats, and rice growing everywhere. They are cutting oats around here now. Most of the rice fields are flooded, but they flood them on purpose. They make ditches and ridges in all kinds of curlyque patterns all over the field, then pump water into them 'til the ground is all covered with water."

"This vicinity is great for hunting and fishing. Hundreds of thousands of tons of fish are trapped and sold here along the White River every year."

"The main reason I wouldn't mind staying here is the people. They have the Texas people beat forty ways from Sunday when it comes to friendliness, hospitality, and trying to show you a good time, and for the ones who are interested, there are scads of the prettiest girls you ever saw and the friendliest. Most of the boys are taking advantage of the situation at every opportunity, but I'm saving all my loving for the sweetest girl in the world who's waiting back there in Columbus. I get so lonesome for her I can hardly stand it sometimes, and not being able to hear from her and the rest of you makes it worse yet."

"I'm sorry I haven't written more regular, but I just didn't have time. I'm usually busy through the day and we can't write after dark for we don't have any lights."

"Our bunch has been doing nothing but run motor boats and haul rocks for the last week or more. It takes about all of us, though, for there has to be a gang at the rock quarry at Little Rock to load the trucks and another one at this end to unload them, and it takes a bood many to run the motor boats and dive the trucks."

"Last week we were hauling rocks for a few days on the Arkansas River levee below Pine Bluff. They hauled day and night. I went down Sat. morning, loaded rock 'til about 3 o'clock, then another fellow and I got a truck and drove it the rest of the afternoon and all night. We got back into camp at 6:45 Sun. morning. I hadn't been in bed an hour when they announced that we could have the day off and go to town and stay 'til 10:30 that night. So I piled out of bed and got ready and went to town. Villars and another boy and I went to Little Rock. They took us out to Hazen in trucks and we could go anywhere we wanted to from there. I guess I forgot to mention that we moved to a new location last week. It's about 15 miles from the main highway and about half of it is mud road, and we've been having a lot of rain lately. So about the only way we can get to town is for them to take us out in trucks."

"The first thing we did when we got to Little Rock was to rent a bathroom in a hotel for a dollar and we all three shaved and took our first bath since we left Camp Swift."

"Villars has a great aunt who lives in Little Rock. He hadn't seen her for 10 or 12 years and didn't know for sure whether she was still living. We finally found her address in the city directory and went out to see her. We stayed there for supper. We got to sit on a real davenport in a living room, too, and it sure felt good."

"It's been plenty hot here the last couple of days. There's a pretty good breeze today, but I'm afraid it's going to blow up another rain and that means more mud. It's just getting dried off from the last one. The mosquitoes and chiggers are fierce here, especially at night. They almost carry us off. We have big tents to sleep in now instead of sleeping in the trucks. When it rains the tents get full of water, and there's water and mud all over the place. I sure hope we get out of here pretty soon and they have a nice furlough waiting for me when I get back to Swift."

"Well, that's about all I can think of now. Say "Hello" to all the folks for me."

"Love"
"Ralph"

Day and Night

Ralph's letter of May 24 is post marked Brinkley, Arkansas and explains that he is here on loan to the 527th Engineers Combat Battalion. He finds himself without pay, running out of money, and missing the letters from home that are going to his home unit, the 147th, still in Texas.

On top of that, the work has become very demanding. "We're working night and day, seven days a week. Last Thurs. evening at 5 o'clock a bunch of us went out on the other side of Little Rock to a rock quarry to load rocks on trucks. We were there all night, and got back to camp at 10:30 the next day. They never brought us a bite to eat in that time. Some of the boys have been working 24 to 36 hours, and sometimes longer, with little or no sleep. There is no reason for most of it. It's just poor organization and too many looies running things who don't know what they are doing."

"What few clothes I brought along are filthy dirty, and no chance to get them washed. I haven't had a bath since I left Camp Swift, either."

"....Yesterday, I was on another rock loading detail. We left here about 6 in the morning, and got back at 9:30 last night, but they did bring our dinner out this time, so it wasn't quite so bad. I had a terrible time getting it into my head it was Sunday. I took our truck to haul the men out there yesterday and the Lieut. had 10, 55 gal. drums of gasoline loaded on it. It's still on the truck, and I have to stay with it til they make up their minds what to do with it. That's why I have time to write letters. I won't mind if I sit here all day."

Biscoe, Arkansas

"Well, I'm still in Arkansas." So begins Ralph's letter dated May 20, 1943. He is in Biscoe, 14 miles southwest of Brinkley and 60 miles northeast of Little Rock. The Cache River is to the east, while the White River is just to the west. Ralph goes on to describe the challenges at hand.

"We didn't find any flood here when we arrived, but there is one now. The first thing we saw was a dust storm. I thought we had a lot of dust in Texas, but it's mild to what they have here. We got here ahead of the flood, and our job was to hold it back. They have a levee here about 15 or 20 miles long and we're trying to make it hold. There's a lot of land under water now, but nothing to what it would be if the levee let go....it's the White River, and right now it's a raging son-of-a-gun."

"We are camped in a pasture field just outside of Biscoe, a little hick town of about 4 or 5 hundred, of which about two thirds are negroes. We are about five miles from the river, and right now, that's close enough. We didn't do anything much Sat. and Sun. but we've been busy since then. I've been pretty lucky, so far, in getting an easy job. Mon. and Tues. I rode up and down the river in one of these big 21 foot ponton (sic) boats, with an outboard motor on it. We were hauling sandbags from a big river steamer and scattering them up and down the levee. We also hauled men, tools, chow, and everything else. It was a lot of fun. But yesterday was my lucky day. Seven of us took four outboard motors and a boat down to the Cache River, a small tributary of the White, to repair and test them. Well, there wasn't very much the matter with them, and we had them fixed in a couple of hours, so we spent the rest of the day riding up and down the river. At dinner time some of the natives told us there was a club house about four miles down the river, so we went down. They weren't operating a public place, but they said they'd fix u up something to eat. It was man and his wife and he's a fisherman. He asked us if we'd like some fish. We said "sure", so we all got in his old river boat and went out to some of his nets. We got four fish that averaged about fifteen inches long and six wide. His wife fried them in corn meal, and made corn bread sticks. We had, besides all the fish we could hold, green beans, some ham and eggs, lettuce, ice tea, and a few other things. We sat down around the table to eat, just like home."

Ralph goes on to describe life along the river. "They have a raft tied in front of their house with a building on it. They had moved everything they needed out there and the rest upstairs. If the water gets three feet higher their house will be flooded. He said in 1927 the water was knee deep in their upstairs. We carried their ice box out on the raft for them, and that's all the pay they would take. I'd have given them five dollars for that meal, willingly, if they'd asked for it, but they wouldn't take a cent. I'm going to drop them a card or letter some of these days, and tell them again how much we appreciated that meal. His name is Ray Allsup, Brasfield, Ark."

The living conditions are not the best for the troops, but providing a taste to prepare for worse conditions to come. "I don't know how long we'll be here yet, but I hope we go back to Camp Swift before long. If I don't get a bath pretty soon and some clean clothes, I'll start to rot. All we have to wash out of is our canteen cups, and it's darn inconvenient. I've only shaved twice since I left camp, Sat. night and last night. "

One night, Ralph gets a taste of life in the South and the place of negroes in that system. "We had a little excitement here in town the other night. A negro pulled a knife on the constable, and after he had told the negro three times to drop it, the constable shot and killed him. No one seemed to think much about it. A 'nigger's' life doesn't amount to much here. They shoot one every once in a while to keep the others quiet. They outnumber the white people about two to one, and they get kind of cocky sometimes."

Ralph also provides some insights into the economics of the times. "The business people in this and surrounding towns are sure making money. They've raised the prices on some things such as beer and cigarettes. They usually run out of everything like that early in the evening. The grocery keepers are asking all their customers for their extra ration points, so us boys can buy what we want. They've been getting plenty of them, too. I think it's pretty nice of them. The first night we were here, Villars and I decided we wanted some cheese, so we walked in the store and ordered a quarters worth. The man asked us if we had any points, and before I thought, I said, 'What kind of points?' I had forgot there was such a thing. He let us have the cheese, though on his own points."

Arkansas Floods

When Ralph traveled from Ft. Thomas, Kentucky to Camp Swift, Texas he mentioned traveling through Memphis, Tn and Brinkley, Arkansas, where the train made a short stop. He never expected to return to this spot, but his letter of May 15, 1943 is post marked from Brinkley. Things can change quickly when you're in the Army.

"Dear Mom & Dad -"

"You didn't expect me to bob up in Arkansas, did you? Well, I didn't either 'til they woke us up at 4:30 Thursday morning. They're having a terrible flood at a place about 12 miles north of here called Cotton Plant. They called out the Engineers to bring boats and a pontoon bridge up here. There are 60 trucks in our convoy and another convoy came up earlier. They told us to pack a barracks bag with blankets and enough clothes and toilet articles, etc. to last a week. Some say we'll be here two or three weeks, so it's pretty hard to tell how long it will be. There are 8 trucks and 16 drivers from the 147th in the convoy. The rest are from half a dozen or more other outfits including the 207th, 206th, 146th, 291st, 527th, 82nd, etc.

We got loaded and left Camp Swift about 11:30 Thursday morning. We've stopped for meals for 10 or 15 minutes every two hours and from 12 to 3 Friday morning. Outside of that we've been rolling all the time, night and day. Right now we've come 619 miles. All the sleep we've got has been those three hours Friday morning, and what we could get while the other fellow was driving. I feel like I could sleep for a week. We got here about 7 o'clock this morning, ate breakfast and gassed up the trucks, and now we are just waiting, I suppose for further orders. Our job is ust supposed to deliver the stuff up here, but we may have to build the darn bridge yet, it's hard to tell. I hope not.

From the reports we've been getting, I guess the flood must be pretty bad, and it hasn't reached the crest yet. We may see quite a bit of excitement before we get away from here.

Just keep on writing to Camp Swift. I'll get the letter when I get back. I'll write more about this when I get a chance."

Bivouac on the Colorado River Leads to New Record

Remember that Ralph was in the 147th Engineer Combat Battalion. One has a good opportunity to see what that meant through Ralph’s letter of May 2, 1943 as he describes the bivouac on the Colorado River not far from Austin. Remember that Ralph is 31 years old at this time.

“Thursday, Friday, and Saturday we were all on the Colorado River building floating bridges. We pitched tents and slept on the ground. I didn’t get much sleep. The ground is too hard for my aging frame, I guess. Ten years ago I wouldn’t have minded it. I used to sleep on the floor anytime, but I can’t do it anymore. We built a big floating bridge across the river and tore it apart twice. We also built several different kinds of rafts and a foot bridge. The materials are all cut and fitted, so all we have to do is fit them together. We were timed on everything to see how fast we could do it. Our platoon built a raft that would carry a loaded 2 ½ ton truck in eight minutes and 50 seconds. When we came to the foot bridge our platoon set a record. The best time that was made before us was 14 minutes. The Captain was there to time us, and he said it should be built in 8 minutes, but the way he said it you could tell he didn’t think we could do it. Our sergeant said we could do it in 10 minutes. Well we put it across in 6 minutes flat. I think the captain was a little bit flabbergasted. No one else came close to our time. The river is something like 200 ft. across at that point.”

“We spent half a day paddling around in rubber life boats something like the one’s Luella helped to make in Akron. That part of it was a lot of fun.”

But this work also held its dangers. “We didn’t have any casualties, but a couple fellows almost drowned before they got them out. I thought sure one of them was a goner. He was under at least two or three minutes. One boy did drown down there the first of the week, but if he’d obeyed orders he wouldn’t have.”

Ralph also mentions in this letter that his driving partner is Charles Villars from Wilmington, Ohio.