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Show THE OGDEN VALLEY NEWS Page 18 Volume I1, Issue 15 June 2000 Memories of World War 11 Recollection by Leon Sorenson of Huntsville g The people of the Umted States S - P % e " .( A . i3 “}‘; = . 2 : = - YY J ," Z. X4 : ; 171 AN i A BRI > oy v i \ Wi - F3 O . - ey . A o Y G .1 .A W N able to do work of any kind started helping out. They worked in warehouses, shipyards, and as secretanes ‘. LA/ : 3 * - : 4 ir 4 Yo . Z Vg . - 9!’3; ¥ 3 =Y D.C. After work at nights, we’d walk by the capital of the United States and listen to Senators in session discussing what kind of an organization they would need army, [all] war. They They would to get all the men in the they needed to fight the. came up with the draft. draft as many men as they possibly could. They had to have a system of doing this. Finally they set up a program in every town where a draft board was organized. They had a group of four to six major citizens in each town who would decide who would be called into the service. Every male between the ages of eighteen and twenty-seven had to register at their closest draft boards. The draft board was setup so it had several classifications. If a man had a physical impairment he would be classified as 4F. The ones who were young and healthy went in the first category which was 1A. . '1 : nt ToFdfl; Leonard Wood, Missouri for basic training. This turned out well for me because 1 had been .in the National Guard for seven years during high school and collsge, and I knew quite a bit about soldwrmg and how to be a soldier. It was cold and nasty in the middle of winter in Fort Leonard Wood. They had chiggers there that would bite like wood ticks. Toward the end of my three months of training I was called in for an interview with a Colonel in the army. He was looking for soldiers to send to officer’s training camp. Since I was a college graduate and had been in the National Guard he decided I was fit to become an officer in the army. I was sent to a core of engineers officer’s training center This training lasted in Virginia. for ninety days. The slang phrase for officers coming out of there was “ninety day wonders.” In the army they had a lot of different ranks for the soldiers. Most of the soldiers were called “buck privates.” Next were private first class. The next promotion would be a corporal. The corporal would be in charge of ten or twelve men. After corporal was sergeant. They were in charge of thirty or thrown off to the side of the road. From Kritageor [Corregidor] they moved them to Japan and other areas and used them as work forces. four platoons would make a battalion. Two or three battalions would make a regiment. Then you would have a division which was made up several battalions. The division was made up most- it they were shot and On December 7, 1941 Pearl Harbor was bombed. A massive effort immediately took place to build army camps all over the United States. It wasn’t long before all these bases were training soldiers. Each new inductee went into basic training for three months. They were then sent to different units, such as the infantry, which was a fighting group. They got a lot of doctors and nurses and organized hospital companies. Each outfit had their own group of medics to help in battle. Hitler had an air force that was bombing many of the big cites in Europe. He was conquering one after another. He bombed France and then invaded it. That left England to fight Hitler over in Europe. The U.S. sent troops over to England and organized their soldiers there. They also set up a tremendous air force and started bombing Germany and Italy. The people in the U.S. were organized into a total unit of commitment to help with the war effort. Many went to work in the airplane factories. Others built tanks and guns. They had to have all kinds of supplies. The women of the U.S. had not worked outside the home very much until then, but they all went to work. Every woman who was pital. forty men. There were several ranks of sergeants. They went from regular sergeant to master sergeant. From master sergeant and that could go. When the army, squad. they went to warrant officer was as far as enlisted men you got into the make up of the first group was called a A squad twelve men it. would make would have ten or Three or four squads a platoon, and three or dred ships out in the bay waitin warehouses. After ninety days of training we got word that we were being shipped overseas. We boarded the train and the train headed west so we knew we were going to the Pacific. In San Francisco we boarded a troop ship. The ship we went on happened to be a German ship that had been in the New York Harbor when the U.S. declared war on Germany. The Navy took over the ship and sent it to San Francisco. They changed the color of 1t and made it into a U.S. troop ship. They added bunk beds and hammocks so it would hold four or five times as many soldiers as it would civilians when it had been a cruise ship. It took us about thirty days to cross the ocean. We were going to Australia to pick up our equipment. It turned out to be a very lovely cruise with nothing to do. Being an officer, I ate in the dining room. The enlisted men ate out of fifty-gallon drums. They put the food on their mess plates and sat on the deck to eat. Py else. =" °“'*mfmm “’ huge fish commgtoward‘us I got up | Lworked ‘ like a big construction con ny. We’d work twenty-four hou and looked over the rail as it got a litday, three shifts a day. The men w« tle closer. Just then the alarm bell went get one day off a week. off for general alert. I could see it was The Japanese had been in this a Japanese submarine and it was headbut had been pushed back so they ed right toward us. We started zigzaghad snipers. We had to have flc ging around and that submarine went lights when we worked at night, within thirty feet to the rear of our ship that’s when the snipers would com and passed us by. A couple of days later we got to Australia. In Japan they had a gal called Tokyo Rose. She would broadcast over the radio to all the American One day, while I was on the isl I got a message that said my bro was on a ship out in the ocean. wanted me to come out and see | He had seen our boat that said, “T] troops in the Pacific area. She would tell all kinds of propaganda that was taking place. She would tell how the U.S. was getting beat and how Japan had won this battle or this or that island. Tokyo Rose said on this one Thirty-ninth Engineer” on taken a ride on it to go see that had just come into the out in our little boat and visit my brother. rine had hit and destroyed our She even gave the name of our She said we sunk with all hands so we knew that wasn’t so. In Australia they gave us word walking up the road and there was brother coming by. He was in the | pital company. With eight or ten | announcement that a Japanese subma- we would go to New Guinea. ship. ship. gone that New Guinea was a total jungle. We went to a beautiful bay surrounded by huge mountains. Ships could sail into the bay and be totally out of sight and well protected. The only part that wasn’t jungle was where someone had started a rubber plantation. The rubber trees were planted like trees in an orchard. We set our camp up there. Our job was to make a huge army base. We started by making docks right next to the beach so ships could come In and unload. Next, we started building warehouses to store supplies. We then started building roads further up the island so we could land other it. We a troop : bay. 1 v was abl A few months later we were u another island. We saw some trc lion men in the service it is g unusual to run into your brother ty in a row. It wasn’t long until we went to Philippines. 1 had been there al three or four weeks when I ran into brother again. We went on to Ma and I ran into my brother again. We were sent to the Philippines when we landed there and were g ashore I looked ahead. Who shouls ahead of us but General MacArt He was wading in the water g toward shore. When he had left Philippines four years previously had said, “I shall return.” Here he returning to the Philippines with a MEMORIES cont. on pag OVER 50 YEARS OF COMBINED REAL | ESTATE EXPERIENCE IN THE OGDEN VALLEY ly of infantrymen who did the actual fighting. My job was to organize a new core of engineers regiment. Our job would be to go where they needed a lot of construction done like airstrips and We built an airstrip and a | Before long, there were a | cqmc in and unload, or get thelr or % After the men were classified they started choosing them. Of course 1A was chosen first. This was in 1941. During this time the Emperor of Japan was busy trying to conquer varidtis islands in the Pacific and the Philippines. We had a large base in the Philippines, at the time. It wasn’t long before Japan captured and disarmed all the men there. They were taken on what was called a “death march” to a part of the island called Kritageor [Corregidor]. The Japanese marched thousands of American soldiers toward Kritageor [Corregidor]. There was very little food for them and if any couldn’t make troops. N | to start | soldier: ~ th "une I was working in Vashir gtofi “to my draft board * I 3 The troop ships had gun turrets that would protect us against enemy airplanes When we were two days from GREAT Paul Judd Idaho/Utah Broker Sales Master Multi-Million $ Producer 745-5667 A M E R ICAN |. : : | -800-745-5667 It pays to use the best , - Richard Manley e Jan Retallick for your Upper Valley Real Estate needs _gggg'i%fi%t Reaitor 745-4224 Visit our Eden Office at 5402 East 2200 North Visit Paul's Website: pauljudd.net |
