I've shared information before about my uncle Warren's experiences in World War II, including articles from the Spencer, Indiana newspaper and information about a book that a member of his unit wrote about their experiences.
Uncle Warren has now put on paper a much more detailed memoir of his experiences. It is hard for me to imagine everything he went through by an age that I was just leaving Indiana University and starting a career. Although he was thankfully not seriously wounded, he had many close calls and was put into some amazing situations... sometimes alone or with one or two others on islands that were thousands of miles from home.
I'll eventually try to map out the places where he served, both in training and overseas.
I'd like to thank Uncle Warren for his service and the gift he has given to the family by sharing his wartime experiences.
Here's the memoir:
Memoirs of WWII
"My Story"
By Richard Warren Thacker, Veteran, US Army
October 2009
I was living in Anderson, Ind., with a family from Illinois on Dec. 7, 1941, and was walking up town when a newspaper boy started shouting that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. I was working at Delco Remy, a G.M. plant that made auto parts. The plant quickly switched to making aircraft parts for the Army.
During the summer of 1941, my younger brother Wayne had been in Anderson working. That fall, he went back home and finished high school then came back to Anderson the next summer and worked in Gibson's ice house. He and I were living on Walnut St. across from Wilma (Dixon) and Wanda (Butler), who as you know eventually became our wives.
It wasn't long until I received my draft notice. As Wayne and I had always been close, he didn't want to be at home if I was in the Army, so he enlisted in the Navy and was quickly sent to Great Lakes Naval Base near Chicago.
Our cousin, (George) Delmar Franklin and I went up to see Wayne and came home with a very heavy heart for I could see Wayne was homesick, but we had to go on.
I worked until about a month before I had to report in, and we worked seven days a week. I sent my money home and told Mom to use it if needed as Dad (step-father Martin Gwaltney) had lost his eyesight. That was also the main reason I had quit high school and went to work. I had two years of high school education. Mom put the money in the bank and never used it.
I had a 1940 Plymouth that I drove home and parked in the barn for storage while I was away in the Army. I later sold the car to a schoolmate, which turned out to be a mistake for they quit making cars because of the war, and good used cars became very expensive. I got a thousand dollars out of it but when I came home three years later, the same car was selling for $3,000.
Entering the service, I left Carmi, Ill., on Jan. 30, 1943 on a train for Camp Grant in Chicago. We were given tests of all kinds, and I never knew how I came out on any of them, but from Camp Grant we were shipped to Ft. Devens in Mass., where we took gas mask training along with all the rifle and other things. I had never fired a stoker coal furnace before but they put me in charge of all three barracks. It was about 20 degrees below zero with a foot of snow on the ground, I let one furnace run out of coal and had a house full of men very unhappy but one older man helped me get it going again, and I kept them warm the rest of the night.
We were there for a while but I don't recall just how long it was. We were then moved out to an island called Camp Edwards. I was promoted to Corporal and put in charge of the guards. The island probably wasn't over 200 acres, so
we took turns on guard duty. At this time, I and a few other boys started training for scout duty. We learned how to make hand grenades out of explosives, how to blow bridges and use the different kinds of explosives we had at that time.
Three men were killed in fact, and there wasn't even a thread of cloth left where they had been sitting on a case of dynamite when it exploded. It almost blew our tent over, and we were close to a mile away.
The ocean was pretty there, and a lot of girls from Boston came looking for a husband. The sand was white as snow. While we were there, Joe Louis, the world boxing champion, came and put on a demonstration for us. He had never been beaten at that time. Later a boxer named Billy Conn out pointed him but could never knock him out.
We had some amusing things happen now and then. While I was corporal of the guard, I had to take people around and post them along the beaches. Our truck driver got very tired and we had trouble waking him when it came time for the next shift of guards so I told someone to get me some water, and I sprinkled a little in his face. He came up ready to whip me but two of the boys grabbed him and told him it was the only way we could wake him.
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We had a few fights (among the troops) as all the boys were homesick and not in a very good mood. But, for the circumstances we really got along pretty well and soon became like a family, which still holds true after 66 years. I feel close to some of the guys yet.
We left Camp Edwards on a train headed for Camp Gordon Johnson in Florida but they never told us where we were going, so we assumed we were being sent overseas. That must have been in the fall of '43. I spent most of my time with Lt. Conn training in the scouts. We had a hard physical workout every day. One day, we were down on the ground on our back with a big log at arms length. Behind us a guy would sit on our feet and we had to reach back and lift that log up to our chest four or five times. It made some hard stomach muscles.
We also crawled under machine gun fire, and all the other training with hand grenades, rifle fire and bayonet practice. I hate the thought of having to run a bayonet into someone's stomach and thank God I never had to do that. It seems to me now the Lord watched over us all the way for as many times as we could have been killed but had just moved out when the bombs fell.
At Gordon Johnson, we scouts were on the water quite a lot. I and two others were let over the side about a mile out from an island (Dog Island) after night and we swam in then directed the landing craft in to the beach the next morning. I talked about the wild hogs there in the book recently put together by the Spencer Evening World.
Florida was a good training ground for us as it was somewhat like the South Pacific with the mosquitoes, snakes and all. I had one boy in my barracks who was deathly afraid of snakes. I had to catch one in front of the door and take it out to the woods as he was afraid to come out with it there.
While I was a rifle range instructor, one of the older men was so afraid of a rifle be actually began crying. I tried to tell him he must learn to shoot for whatever he did in the service he might have to defend himself. He kept saying he was going to be a cook and he never came close to hitting the target.
We left Camp Gordon Johnson April 11, 1944 and arrived at Camp Stoneman in California April 16. We left there April 22 on the SS Fairland, a converted transport ship. I learned the hard way that salt water will not remove soap
from your body when you take a shower. All the way to New Guinea, I felt like I was wrapped in some kind of gum.
We passed the equator April 30 and crossed the International Date Line May 8, then on May 9 landed at Milne Bay, New Guinea. We left Milne Bay June 24 landed at Oro Bay June 25. We were in LCMs (landing craft, mechanized) from Milne Bay to Oro Bay. They are small boats for a rough ocean, and I wondered if we would make it as the ramp kept slipping down every time we hit a large wave.
In New Guinea, there were a few natives that still practiced head hunting when we were there.
We left Oro Bay Aug. 18 for a trip up in the Owen Stanley Mountains. I was the only scout from our company to go with about 15 Australians. It was quite a journey of about 120 miles. We got our water from the mountain streams and had pills to put in it to make it safe to drink. Some of the rivers we had to cross were so swift that we had to hold hands to keep our balance. One boy dropped his rifle and it washed right on down the river. I'm sure he was nervous without it the rest of the trip.
They dropped our food from an airplane and one time were a day late. I'm always hungry, so I was really getting worried. Anyway, I got back with my company Sept. 9 and got on a small ship with a few marines. We invaded the Japanese on Morotai Island, Sept. 15. We captured a Japanese naval officer for information and learned that we had a lot of Japanese on the main island of Halma Hera just eight miles across the bay. These islands were part of the Molucca Islands. The Japanese had hardly any ships to move the soldiers out, so we just left them sitting there. They did bomb us every few nights and we were very fortunate to be in a different place than where they thought we were.
I'm not sure where John Kennedy was in the PT boat and almost got hit but I think is was in that area. On Christmas eve, the Japs came in on a bombing run and were shot down mostly by our night fighters. They were called the black widows.
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We quickly built an airstrip and soon had crippled planes landing. They came in with all kinds of troubles such as on fire, landing gear shot out and all. My crew was strafed with machine gun fire from Jap planes a couple of times but we were lucky and never got hit. I peeled one leg getting into the bunker and the guys kidded me saying I should put in for a purple heart.
On Morotai, we lived for a while on wormy cereal. It was cooked so we just shut our eyes and ate it. I think I wrote somewhere else how we took quarter-pound blocks of TNT and killed ocean fish. We had a big mess (bunch) of fish and the first sergeant called all out to help clean them. Some of the guys from New York didn't like that but they sure liked the fried fish later.
This island was made up of volcanic ash and coral, so it was hard to dig a fox hole. I spent my 22nd birthday here on Morotai. We left Morotai and most of the Japs we had driven up into to the mountains.
On Dec. 30, we headed for Luzon, Philippians. We had some close calls from big guns the Japs had up on higher ground. We were here for about a month then we made another landing at Alacan, another town on the island of Luzon. I got malaria and almost didn't make it.
Mom had a feeling I was in trouble. She said she was afraid I had been killed in the landing, but I made it and her I am almost 87 years old and still going. God had to be watching over me. I'm sure I've done nothing good, but He has surely watched over me.
On a clear night, you could see the bombs after the enemy planes first turned them loose for just a short time before they got up to speed. The bombs always looked like they were headed right for where we were. They made a loud squall coming down and the bigger shells made a whoosh whoosh noise as they went past. If they hadn't gone past, I wouldn’t be here writing about this.
Some shells exploded near us and sprinkled metal all around us but we were lucky few were hit. Chuck Eckstine from Wisconsin got hit the worst when a piece of metal went through his hand and on into his stomach. That was the end of his service and they sent him home.
I received four bronze stars and a bronze arrowhead for doing what I was told to do (working in ammo and fuel dump).
A few hours after we landed on Luzon, we had a large pile of ammo and gasoline in 55 gallon drums stored on the beach. This was part of our job along with the boat battalion, which was expected to get the troops to the shore when making a landing. You have seen in the news I'm sure the boats come in and lower the ramps for the men to hurry off. That was like our boat battalion.
The Japs slipped in and set our ammo and gasoline dump on fire. You will never see a 4th of July display as great as that with the shells exploding and gasoline drums blowing up. I was a short distance from it and hardly closed my eyes all night.
I saw a soldier run into the middle of that, jump in his "duck" which was loaded with 55 gallon drums of gasoline and drive it through all those flames. He saved a lot of fuel and should have been awarded for bravery but those kinds of things were common in combat.
Shortly after this, I came down with a fever. I just remember walking along and all of a sudden, my legs just gave out. I don't know who took me back to the medic or how long it was. When I came to, they had me under a shower and I remember him saying if I had one more degree of temperature, I would have died.
I was in a tent with two Indian boys from the 158 combat team who were some of the code talkers. None of the three of us felt like digging a foxhole but every night the Japs would shell us, and we kept saying tomorrow we would dig, but never did. After about a week, we just walked out of there and went back to our own companies.
About two or three weeks later, we loaded up and made another landing further up the coast. The Freedom Fighters that fought underground all the time the Japs were there helped guide us in with a crank two-way radio. I have pictures of the victory parade later taken at this town. I was sitting on the right front fender of a jeep.
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Another soldier, Jim Cook from Boston, Kentucky, and I got all the way up to Baguio where they had gold mines and the dwellers lived. They were small people and built their homes in big trees. I tried to talk to them but they were not friendly. We found some of the best bananas up there. The bananas had black skin when they were ripe and they tasted good.
Jim and I met the mother and sisters of one of the Freedom Fighters and have pictures of them. We wrote to them for a while after I got home. The people had a hard time under Japanese rule as they took all of the food and would kill for no reason. One little boy came to camp crying, and the Japs had killed his whole family.
I found three women, one with a baby in her arms, who had been lined up and shot. One man was hung in his stairway. The people were very happy to see us come in.
The China Sea had been very rough as we came in. I slept on deck of the LST (landing ship tank). An Oxygen tank broke loose and was rolling back and forth. I caught it with my feet and hung onto the rail with my arms for the waves were coming up over the ship. During the night, a couple of sailors came running up looking for the tank of oxygen and said the ship was trying to break apart and needed welding. Again, I wondered if we would drown.
The waves were at least 50 feet so no one could go very long in that kind of sea. It turned several of our trucks over on deck. The LSTs were big enough to haul trucks and tanks.
I was in charge of a few men with bulldozers to make a prisoner compound at San Juan. We got the sand leveled and I don't know if the units were ever finished or not. It was right close to the family we had met and I hated that, for I'm sure they didn't want a Jap prison camp that close. Soon after this, they dropped the (atomic) bomb and then the second one, and the Japanese gave up.
We were all worried as we didn't know what all the bombs might kill. Some thought it might kill all the fish in the sea. Actually, when we got to Japan, I thought the fire bombs had been just as bad. It would burn through metal even. The town of Fukuoka where we landed after sitting in the harbor for about 30 days while the mines were cleared, was about half burned down from the jelly bombs. It was a Mitsubishi aircraft factory town.
We stayed in the housing that the Japanese workers had lived in. A few were not ready to give up, but as far as I know, no one was ever hurt.
I have a bunch of coins from all over I picked up in a warehouse in Japan.
We then moved on down on a train and stopped where they dropped the second bomb. We got off the train and looked around--all was gone except a concrete building, and maybe a post office or such. We set up in a TB camp but I was soon given my orders to go home so I wasn't there very long.
I came home on a ship with my favorite sergeant and we sat out on deck and talked about what we hoped for when we got home. I called him or tried to 10 or 15 years later and reached his sister-in-law, but she said he had died. He stayed in the Army and retired. He almost got killed on a patrol in the Philippines. He couldn't hear well and didn't hear the bullets hitting the ground. The others finally made him hear them and told him to get off the road.
I left Japan in December of 1945 and got home in January of '46. It was close to a year before I could really eat and enjoy it. I had gotten so used to eating just to stay alive that it took time to get back to normal.
I finally got settled somewhat. Wilma and I got married in May 1946. I worked back at Delco but had too much time to think as the job was very easy, so I quit and went to work at a filling station then got my own service station.
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Note to readers: The next section was added a few days after the first part was completed.
It's hard to explain just what it was like in the jungle of New Guinea. The big trees made it almost like a cave. You never saw the sun unless you came to a spot bare of trees, and that was very few places. We had to swim one river and it had crocodiles in it but we made it okay. Two young native boys took our rifles across for us. They laid on their backs, held our rifles in the air and paddled across with their feet.
These two boys came up behind us playing with a Jap hand grenade. I explained with hand motions what it could do to them, and they gave it to me. I threw it out into the jungle. They stayed with us a while and helped us get across the river. It is slow swimming with jungle boots and clothes on. Thank God we could wade most of the way but had to swim maybe 50 yards or so.
We also had guys who were scouting for Japs who might have been hiding out along the beaches where they thought they might be rescued.
We found a U.S. bomber plane that the pilot had somehow set down in a small opening without tearing it up. I would like to have gone in it but the Japs were good at booby traps, and we were afraid to chance it.
Just recently I talked to a man who is taking those planes out and to Australia then putting them back together. He said the big problem is finding out who really owns them. He said the different tribes all say they own that plane, and he has a hard time getting them torn down and lifted out. This man happens to be the grandson of the man who was our mailman in Illinois when I was a boy.
The natives were very good at tracking in the jungle. I'm glad they were on our side. We were told to be very careful where we sat down due to poisonous snakes. I came close to getting bitten. I started to sit down between two big roots of a tree that would hide me from the sides when I leaned back against the tree. There was a small piece of bark on the ground, and as they told us use your bayonet to move everything. When I did, this little snake shot straight up at me but not high enough to bite me. It was a good thing he kept going for I struck at him but stuck my bayonet into a root.
Later, when I left New Guinea, one of these small snakes got in my pack, and I carried him to Morotai. When I got a chance to wash some clothes, probably about a week after we landed, I found him in my pack almost dead from the dirty socks. It's a wonder I didn’t get bitten. They were small and liked to get into clothes where it was warmer.
There on Morotai, I looked up from my foxhole and thought there was an alligator, but it was just a large lizard. It was close to three feet long. Later, we saw bats as large as our crows. There was also a volcano on the main island just eight miles across the sea from us, and some days the black smoke would be rolling way up in the air then it would turn quiet for a while. It never blew while we were there.
Morotai was a beautiful place. The ocean was real blue and usually quiet. I remember thinking this would be a perfect place if we weren't fighting a war and Wilma was here with me. Down where we were staying, the palm trees were spread out so it wasn't like a jungle. But up where we drove the Japs was much like New Guinea.
Of the guys wading ashore there, three of us came in on the other side of the island where I had the arrow. The main force came in between the small island. I and another scout were with First Lieutenant. He had a bad case of jungle rot and had to be sent home after a few weeks. He had a company in the state of Maryland where he lived.
I got a package in the mail from him after we arrived in the Philippines but most of it was destroyed. I think a few crackers was all I could eat. I found out later he died young.
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I never explained how we boarded a large ship from the smaller LCM. They would throw a big net over the side and the LCM would pull under it then we would grab the net and climb up. With the waves lowering and raising both ships, it was rather dangerous, especially if you didn’t wait until the LCM got as far as the waves were taking it.
I thought sure one of our boys was going to get crushed between the ships. He jumped on the net while it was on the low side, and the side of the ramp smacked the other ship right by his head. The LST had to have pretty deep water to get close to shore, but the LCM could get up close in shallow water. The boat CO in our outfit had that job. We also had some PT boats they were real fast, smaller boats.
I have to brag a little. Wayne and I had been killing game with a 22 rifle since we were very young, so when we got on the rifle range, they soon put me on as an instructor. The secret to hitting the target is getting sighted in then holding your breath as you squeeze the trigger.
Wayne worked on the guns on the navy planes during WWII then had to parachute out over Japan while he was in the Koran War. His plane was about to catch fire. He was a tail gunner and had to see that the rest of the crew was out before he could jump. One boy was afraid to jump, and Wayne had to hurry him but they made it okay. The pilot made it down without the plane exploding. A gas line had been shot or something, and the plane was full of gas fumes.
I was still in Japan when Wayne got home from WWII. He signed up in the reserves, which was why he got called up for the Korean War after Danny was born. I'm sure it was awfully hard for him to go again. They had people at Camp Atterbury trying to talk us into signing back up, but I don’t think many did.
I remember sleeping out under the stars there in New Guinea, looking up and thinking that it is the same moon that is shining back home so many miles away. We slept in the open a good part of the time. We made lean-tos for cover out of poles and big leaves that would keep the rain off and were hard to spot from the air. They blended right in with the other trees. We also had to watch for those little snakes because they liked to get where it was warm and if you happened to roll over on one, it would bite.
I really missed fresh milk, for we didn't have any kind of fresh food except what the natives brought is like bananas and papaya. When we got back to California, they met us with jugs of milk so I guess a lot of the guys were like me. The K rations were drier than the C rations. Charles Musfeldt and I would split a can and add water to make it more like soup, and it also made our food go farther.
We got awfully thirsty sometimes up in the mountains as it was several miles between some of the water and the temperature was over 100 degrees most of the time. We had pills to put in the water to make it safe to drink, and we were supposed to wait 10 minutes or so for it to work. One time I was so thirsty that I drank right out of the river.
I was sure glad I went to the Pacific instead of Europe for I could handle the heat better than frozen feet like a lot of those poor boys did in Europe.
I remember in grade school reading about places wild and thinking I'd love to go see those places. New Guinea still had some head hunters when we were there so I got my wish.
A wild boar chased me once when I was digging a foxhole. He missed my leg and didn’t come back. I had my rifle against a tree so I grabbed it but he didn’t return. I found out that is how they do their damage. They get up speed, come by and catch you with a tusk and rip your leg open. I saw a native man that had been hurt that way, and the other men were carrying him in.
We had boots that went almost to our knees so that may have fooled the one that started after me. The natives were all bare except for a little grass skirt. The men would just have a loincloth made from grass, I think.
I would say I was the most nervous when they sent me in alone to look for roads the Japs might have on Morotai Island. Before, there was always at least two of us to watch out for each other. I halfway expected a machine gun to open up on me, but I made it okay.
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Two of us covered a lot of ground in new Guinea where I told you of finding that American bomber down in the jungle. I went in on Morotai with Lt. Fraiser
and another boy but they went one way and I went another. Twice, Jap planes came in strafing with machine gun fire but we took cover behind logs and trees.
Since the China Sea going into Luzon was so rough, I was glad to get on land, even with the machine gun fire and big shells coming at us. Three different times I thought we might drown.
End
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