CHINA - BURMA - INDIA
WALL OF HONOR

 Robert J. Edwards
Robert John Edwards








 Robert J. Edwards









 Robert J. Edwards









 Robert J. Edwards









Memories of World War II

By Robert J. Edwards


Transcribed on September 20, 2013 by Jeremy Edwards

   I was drafted on March 13, 1943 and had my physical exam at the Cadillac-Pontiac car dealer on West Main Street in Peoria. The car dealer couldn't get any cars to sell because all of the materials used to make cars were taken over by the war effort and were used to produce jeeps and tanks, so the showroom of the car dealership made a good place for the draft board to use for their purposes. I was to report for active duty one week later, March 20, 1943 at the "Inter-Urban Railroad" depot located at the corner of Adams and Walnut Streets. The building later became the headquarters of the Peoria Police Department. This was an electric railroad that connected Peoria to St. Louis, via Springfield, Illinois.

   I left Peoria early in the morning for the first train ride I had ever taken and arrived at Scott Field Air Force Base about 3 hours later. Since I maintained good grades in high school in all of my business and accounting subjects, was on the honor roll and a member of the National Honor Society, they assigned me to go to Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis, Indiana to take basic training and attend the Army Finance School there. On the train from Scott Field Air Force Base to Indianapolis, I met Wendell W. Augspurger from Bloomington, Illinois and we became good friends. We had a lot in common: For instance, we were assigned to the same barracks and the same company in basic training. We were both Methodists and both got promotions at the same time. After we were overseas a while, his girlfriend broke up with him and so did my girlfriend, Alice Jackson. Later in life, Wendell developed cancer and died on August 14, 1993.

   Basic training took 4 weeks and finance school took 3 months. During the 3 months of finance school, I got several weekend passes and came home on the "Big Four Railroad" from Indianapolis to Peoria. The train left Indianapolis at 15 minutes after midnight. The sergeant would not give out the passes until midnight on Friday because they were weekend passes (Saturday and Sunday). It took about 20 minutes to get from Fort Benjamin Harrison to the train station, so we had a cab waiting and gave him a good tip if he would get us there by 12:15 and he always made it before the train pulled out. Four or five men always pooled together, so the cost was cut down for each one of us. On May 22, 1943, I came home for a weekend trip and found that the Illinois River had flooded. When I came into Peoria, the railroad tracks were under water and it was scary to look out and see nothing for the train to travel on.

   Before going overseas, I received a 5-day furlough. This occurred in August of 1943, so the flooding had gone down by then. Mom, Dad and I went fishing in the Illinois River near Rome, Illinois. We rented a boat and I sat in the middle, so I could row. We started fishing a little way out from the shore and I started catching fish as fast as I could pull them in but both Mom and Dad were hardly getting a bite and they were fishing only about four or five feet from where I was. It was during this furlough time that Dad and I played chess in the evening. He would win a game and I would win a game but then he got on a winning streak and won seven games in a row. I was determined then that I would play chess with some of the men in the Army and get good enough to beat Dad seven times in a row to get even. It took a while after I got home, but I finally did win seven in a row.

   After that short furlough, I returned to Fort Benjamin Harrison and in a few days, eight of us were sent to Camp Shenango (later called Camp Reynolds) located in Transfer, Pymatuning Township of Mercer County, Pennsylvania. It was built in 1942 and closed in 1945, but during its short existence, over 1 million service men passed through the camp as it served as a staging area for troops before being shipped overseas. The eight of us sent to Camp Shenango were: John Weigel from Chicago, Illinois; Wendell Augspurger from Bloomington, Illinois; Grover Posey from Austin, Texas; Joe Blanton from South Carolina; Richard Hassey from Boston, Massachusetts; Herbert Hard from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and me. None of us knew it at the time, but the eight of us would compose the Army Finance Office in Kunming, China with Col. Payne as our commanding officer.

   We were at Camp Shenango for about ten days and were put on KP duty one day and sod detail the next day to keep us busy. About the second day on sod detail, I ran across some poison ivy and rubbed it all over my hands. I thought that it would break out in a day or two and I would get out of KP duty. Sure enough, blisters appeared on a day that I had KP duty, so I showed them to the Mess Sergeant and he told me to go on Sick Call and get something for it. The nurse gave me Calamine lotion and told me to keep the blisters covered with it. I went back to the mess hall and showed the Mess Sergeant my hands and to my delight he said I should probably not wash or dry any dishes but then he gave me a brush and a bucket of water and told me to tip all the tables up and scrub the underneath side of the table tops where food had slipped through the cracks and stuck there. I really outsmarted myself that time. Not only did I not get out of doing KP duty, but I almost was kept from going overseas with the men I knew because they didn't want to send me on the ship with poison ivy. But it turned out all right because the poison ivy was almost healed by the time I was go get aboard the ship.

   We left Camp Shenango by train and ended up in Camp Kilmer outside New York City. Like Camp Shenango, this camp was activated in 1942 as a staging area as part of the installation of the New York Port of Embarkation. It became the largest processing center for troops heading overseas and returning from the War, processing over 2.5 million soldiers. The camp remained active until the fall of 1949 when it was no longer needed. The food servers and KP men at this camp were all German prisoners. We only stayed there one night and the next day, one of the men there had barber tools and was cutting hair for some men that needed it for 50 cents each. During a lull in the customers, the barber left to get some food and while he was gone, a man came in from another barracks and asked if there was a barber in here. Before anyone could say anything, a man jumped up from his bunk and said "Right here!" The customer sat down and the non-barber started in on his hair. Everyone was standing around watching what would happen. When he was part-way through, the barber came back but instead of being mad, he just sat down and enjoyed the show. When the non-barber was through, he collected 1 dollar for the 50 cent hair cut and then handed him a mirror. Such a haircut you can't imagine; some placed he was scalped and the other places was hardly cut and none of it was smooth. The "customer" really got mad when he saw the botched-up job in the mirror but then he looked at all the guys standing around laughing at him and he stormed out cussing as he went. Later that day, September 8, 1943, after it was dark, we boarded a ferry boat that took us across a bay to the dock and then up the gang-plank to the BDeck Forward on the starboard side of the SS Mariposa, a top-of-the-line Luxury Liner. This was another first for me; the first time I was ever on a big ship and it would be my home for the next 34 days.

   We left the port of New York the next night, September 9, 1943, and headed south. Nobody told us where we were going and the next morning, it was frightening to see that we were the only ship in sight. No convoy or destroyer or other ships to protect us from Nazi submarines, but I was amazed at the beautiful deep blue color of the ocean, instead of the faded blue you see in the sky or the greenish hue seen closer to shore.

   The daily routine consisted of calisthenics early in the morning and two meals throughout the day; breakfast (brunch) at 10:00 AM and supper (dinner) at 5:00 PM. After breakfast, we would shave, shower, clean up our area and make up the bunk. The bunks were on tiers with the lower one about 6 inches off the deck and the others separated by 18 inches or so. They were made with a piece of canvas about 2" x 6" in size and stretched to a pipe frame all around, secured with a quarter-inch rope. During the rest of the day, there was nothing to do but read or play chess, checkers, etc. There were about eight or ten army cooks that were on the B-Desk close to my Finance Department outfit and one of them was a chess player who thought he was pretty good. He would get somebody to gamble on the outcome of his games. I didn't like that very much, so I told him I would play him but not for money. Just to let him know he wasn't as good as he thought. I won three games in a row and he quit but it didn't cure him of gambling with the other men.

   Just a short ways out to sea, they turned off the fresh water and everything was salt water except the drinking water. One of the Jewish men that I played chess with was in the shower, all soaped up, when they made the switch. He tried to rinse the soap off, but it became like glue. He had thick, curly, black hair that was stiff for a long time. I was glad that happened to him because I didn't know that soap and salt water don't agree with each other, so that could have easily happened to me. Later, we learned that there was a special salt water soap that we had to use when taking a shower.

   I discovered that after breakfast, when I washed my mess-kit, there was a tub of hot, soapy water and two tubs of hot rinse water. These were all fresh water, so I would fill up my cup with the hot water from the second tub and then go back to my bunk and use the nice, hot, fresh water to shave with. This worked fine for about two weeks until too many men discovered my secret and the second rinse tub always got low on water. The officers got wise to it and made us stop. However, I would still sneak a cup every once in a while if there was no KP guard watching that second rinse tub. I never got caught, so I was able to get away with it.

   I had my nineteenth birthday on the SS Mariposa. We sailed from New York, to Rio De Janeiro, Brazil where we refueled and the next day, departed, sailing around South Africa to Bombay, India. While in Rio, we met a guy named James Dole who was a member of the Merchant Marines. He knew where fresh-water bath tubs were in the crew quarters and showed us how to access them on the ship. We crossed the Equator twice and when I told my father, he asked me if I felt the bump as we crossed. I landed in India on Columbus Day, October 12, 1943. I have always said that I completed what Columbus set out to do. The SS Mariposa was an extremely fast luxury cruiser. It was faster than the German U-Boats. During the trip we had a U-Boat scare, but the ship kept zigzagging across the ocean to keep away from the U-Boats. The SS Mariposa could travel at 28 knots, while the U-Boats could only travel at 20 knots.

   From Bombay, we took a train to Chabua, India. It was part of the narrow-gage railway system because the roads were so bad. The train took us to the river and from there; we traveled up the river to Chabua. It took a month to cross India on the train and on a river boat up to Brahmaputra River to northeast Assam province. My first airplane ride was in an old C47 over the Himalaya Mountains to China. The cowling over one of the engines was wired on with baling wire and in the rough mountain currents, the wings flapped like a bird. A day after arriving at the camp in Chabua, I was shaving in my helmet when two airplanes collided with each other directly over my head. The pilots both ejected, but neither of them survived. This was the first I saw of death while I was in the war. From Chabua, we took a plane over "the hump" (Eastern end of the Himalaya Mountains) until finally landing in Kunming, China.

   In Kunming, China, the Chinese terminal of Burma Road, I was assigned to the Chinese Combat Command Finance Office where, for two years, I fought to the last drop of ink. The Burma Road stretched from the Indian Ocean to China. The Japanese controlled the road to China, so we had to build a new road from Kunming, China to Ledo, India. This road eventually became known as the Ledo Road and it stretched a total of 1079 miles. The Chinese wouldn't allow Black people to cross their border unless they were driving a truck and even then, they had to be flown out at night. The Chinese were more racist than Americans, and I found that unbelievable! I wrote to my mom and told her that we were training the Chinese to fight the Japanese with our own artillery.

   There was a Lt. Colonel named Carlton Russell who owned a tire company on CAT trail in Peoria, Illinois, who was in command of a group in French Indochina. I worked in the Finance Office and was in charge of the Officer's pay. Because they didn't have any ink where they were located, Lt. Col. Russell had his men make their own ink, which was red in color. We sent the paperwork into the headquarters in Chongqing, China, but they sent it back because of the red ink. They would only accept it in black ink, so I took a black pen and carefully wrote over the top of their signatures with black ink, then turned it back in and it was accepted.

   One night, while on guard duty, I was standing guard near the Officer's Club. It was extremely dark that night and as I got close to the bamboo fence, something jumped out of the darkness and grabbed my back, scaring me half to death. I thought it might have been a Japanese soldier, but it was only a monkey, which one of the officers had bought to keep as a pet. I picked up the monkey and wrapped my coat around him, to keep him warm and he relaxed immediately. Once the monkey had calmed down, I slowly took him out of my coat, placed him back on the fence and got out of there as quickly as I could.

   The next weekend, we heard the air raid go off and took cover as 18 bombers, bombed our airport. The airport was near a cemetery, so we used the burial mounds as protection, forming a V formation. Once they finished bombing our airport, the planes went back to where they had come from. That night, once it had gotten dark, we all gathered in the room above the mess hall to watch a movie. As soon as the movie started, we heard a deafening BOOM and thought the planes had returned to bomb us some more. However, it wasn't airplanes bombing us this time, but an earthquake that had caused an explosion within camp. The bombers did return, though, from time to time, and they could always be expected around times of celebration or holidays. They even bombed us over Christmas!

   One morning, I got up and went to the wash room across the road and heard bullets flying over my head and bombs bursting all around me. I ducked and covered to avoid being shot or blown up. What had happened was that the Chinese Leader, Chaing Kai-shek, had a brother who served over the Kunming Province and was taking out every truck going down the Burma Road. He had 200 men on top of the hill and they were shooting over the hill into the rice patties, which meant they were shooting over our heads. Over 200 Chinese soldiers were killed in that attack. At one point, they requested an American 2-man unit come to retrieve their fallen soldiers. We took the jeep down the Burma Road, with our American flags flying, into the midst of the Chinese shooting. When they saw our jeep, they stopped shooting at each other long enough for us to retrieve the dead and wounded and once we left, started shooting again.

   In August of 1944, one of the Officers claimed the world was going to come to an end on August 31, 1944. I asked him why we still had to do payroll, then, if he was so sure the world was going to end anyway. He apparently didn't have as much faith in the prophecy, because he made us run payroll anyway.

   I wrote to my mom and tried to give her hints as to where I was located. I wasn't allowed to tell her where I was and our mail could be checked at any time, so I sent her messages in code. Each time I wrote her, I would ask her about a girl using a name that started with one of the letters of the town I was staying in. I used names like Katherine, Ursula, Nancy, Mary, etc, and she caught on, but ruined everything when she asked me where Kunming was located. I told her it was where Fu Manchu lived.

   At one point, Lt. Col. Carlton Russell got to come home for a short furlough. I told him that I lived in Peoria and he visited my mom and dad on Machin Street. I sent souvenirs to them and he explained what they were. Wendell Augspurger and I were discharged on the same day. He chose to travel to Singapore and take a ship back to the States. I chose to take the cruise liner back home and he ended up getting home 30 days before I did. When we won the war, they flew me back over the hump to Calcutta and from there; I took a leisurely cruise through the Suez Canal and Mediterranean Sea. We had a chance to take a day pass and visit the Holy Land, but I was too homesick. As we left the Mediterranean, we passed through the Straits of Gibraltar. I told my dad, later, that I saw the rock and it had a Prudential sign on it. I was kidding him because he worked for Prudential Insurance.

   From there, we sailed across the Atlantic to New York. Unless you have experienced the thrill of sailing into New York harbor with the New York skyline, the tugboats sounding their horns, the fireboats shooting their sprays and the Statue of liberty bidding you welcome…unless you have experienced that thrill, you will never know how wonderful I felt that day after 28 months overseas. Seeing the Statue of Liberty again after so long, I couldn't hold back the tears. I called my mom and dad to tell them that I was home and they told me that they already knew because it was written up in the newspaper. I returned home on January 6, 1946. I remember the Red Cross giving us a carton of milk when we got off the boat and boy did that taste good!

   Back in Peoria, I attended Bradley University on the GI Bill and graduated with a BS Degree in 1949. I went to work for Wm. E. Krieger, CPA. As a junior accountant for a 2-week trial that ran into 2 years, ending in 1951. During this time, I joined the Army Reserves on June 5, 1950. Three weeks later, the shooting started in Korea. I was a member of the Transportation Unit and our unit was the only unit not called up to go to Korea. I had an office at the barracks building one day when they brought in a prisoner who had gone AWOL and was working off his sentence. He came to the door and asked if someone could move their car that was parked on the grass, so he could cut the grass. I heard a loud BANG and thought it was fireworks going off, but instead, the guard was startled and accidently shot the prisoner. The bullet went through his shoulder and into his head and straight into the ceiling. The prisoner had been a friend of the guards and he went to pieces knowing that he had accidently killed his friend.



 TOP OF PAGE         CLOSE THIS WINDOW