The Bedford Boys: One American Town's Ultimate D-day Sacrifice (5 page)

On August 17, 1942, Company A marched with full kit onto an old train. No one knew where they were headed. Soon, the stale air in their compartments got sticky. After an endless day shuttling between drab depots, the men realized they were headed to Florida. When the train finally stopped, they formed up and marched into the vast military base at Camp Blanding near Jacksonville, until recently home to the 1st Division, which had just departed for England.

The 1st Division would, by November, be part of Operation Torch, an Allied invasion of North Africa. Torch was partly aimed at relieving pressure on the Soviet Union, which had fought a ferocious battle against the Wehrmacht since June 1941 when Hitler hurled more than a hundred divisions of his best soldiers at Stalin’s Red Army. But Operation Barbarossa, as the German invasion was codenamed, had failed. When the bitter winter set in, Hitler’s finest armies became bogged down in desperate sieges.

In the Pacific, the Americans had just begun to turn the tide against Japanese forces, which had since Pearl Harbor swept across a vast expanse of ocean, conquering Burma, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies in rapid succession. In June 1942, U.S. aircraft had surprised a Japanese fleet cruising towards Midway (a few hundred miles northwest of the Hawaiian Islands) and inflicted so much damage that the Japanese lost naval air superiority in the Pacific. After Midway, the Japanese would fight a largely defensive war against the “third-rate power” they had so viciously attacked at Pearl Harbor.

On the homefront, America was gearing up to produce the vast quantities of material and other arms needed to defeat the enemies of democracy in Europe and the Pacific. Factories throughout the nation were quickly being converted to wartime production.

In Bedford, a plant called Rubatex began to produce rubber gas masks. Hampton Looms was also converted to military production, turning out woolen uniforms. Like many workers across America, Elva New-comb and her fellow loom-operators had to work harder but started to earn more. Hampton Looms increased wages by six cents an hour after management made a deal with the local Textile Workers Union. Earnings would continue to rise throughout the war: For most Americans, world war had brought an end to the Depression.

Other developments were not quite so welcome. Rationing began in May 1942, with most citizens limited to a pound of sugar every two weeks and twenty-five gallons of gas each month. In Bedford, the restrictions on sugar use caused widespread complaint because so many homes relied on it to produce fruit preserves to sell at markets and for their own sustenance. The limit on consumption of gas was even less popular because Bedford had no public transportation to speak of and cars and trucks were essential to movement around the far-flung community.

While America girded to become the free world’s arsenal, and as total war raged around the globe, the Bedford boys got accustomed to their new barracks in Florida. They were further from Bedford than ever— now at least a long day’s drive. For the married men, the distance was frustrating. But for the unattached, Camp Blanding’s proximity to bustling Jacksonville, forty miles away, was a distinct improvement on every other camp or base they’d stayed in. Jacksonville’s nightlife was famous throughout the U.S. Army. The city had dozens of nightclubs, brothels, back-room gaming tables, and cinemas. If a GI had a particular craving, somewhere or some woman in Jacksonville would cater to it.

Despite its vast drabness, with its hastily erected buildings and maze of roads and block-houses that all looked the same, Camp Blanding had another thing going for it. The Bedford boys would not be sleeping under canvas. To their delight, they had bunks beneath roofs that neither sagged dangerously nor leaked. Pristine white sands and palm trees were a short walk away. Finally, the living looked like it was going to be easy; many of the boys quickly developed deep suntans.

At least one of the Bedford boys wasn’t the slightest bit interested in what Jacksonville had to offer. All Sergeant John Schenk wanted was to get back to Bedford so he could marry his fiancée, a bewitching and smart elementary school teacher, Ivylyn Jordan.

John and Ivylyn, both twenty-five, had met on a blind date the day Company A was inducted into the federal army. The date was arranged by a mutual friend who had heard Schenk say how pretty Ivylyn was as he strolled past her and a friend one afternoon in downtown Bedford. The two had dined at a small restaurant just outside town and were instantly infatuated. That first night they sat up and talked in Schenk’s car in the pitch darkness of Route 122 just outside town. “I talked and talked and talked until three in the morning,” recalled Ivylyn. “We fell lock, stock and barrel.”
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They were rarely apart in the following days. At night, they jitterbugged. By day, they planted rows of vegetables and tended John’s garden. “He was a very good gardener. We gardened every day we could. He loved being outdoors,” Ivylyn remembered.
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They were married on August 24, 1942. Then it was off for a two-week honeymoon in a small cottage in Natural Bridge, not far from Bedford. A creek babbled nearby as husband and wife talked of starting a family after the war. John had been a clerk in a Bedford hardware store; the manager had promised to make John a partner when he got out of the army. They would be able to give their children a decent start in life. “We wanted a boy and a girl, at least,” Ivylyn said.
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The honeymoon ended all too soon. They returned to Ivylyn’s apartment in Moneta, a few miles from Bedford, and spent a last night together, wrapped in each other’s arms, vowing they would find some time to be alone and think about each other every day. “We had an appointed time—his would be 10 P.M. each night, and mine was to be 5 P.M.,” she said.
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On her stoop the following morning, Schenk took his slim wife in his arms, kissed her and made her swear not to move an inch until he returned. “He asked me to stand on that porch and wait for him,” she said. “I did. . . . I waited a long time.”
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When Schenk arrived back at Camp Blanding in early September he found Company A again preparing to move out. This time, the 29th Division was headed overseas. But thousands of men were still on furlough, some as far away as Baltimore. Telegrams were dispatched across the States. In nearby towns and Jacksonville, trucks fixed with loudspeakers drove through the streets crowded with soldiers, blaring orders for the division’s return to camp. Those watching that summer’s hit movies,
Yankee Doodle Dandy
and
Casablanca
, were amazed when the order—“RETURN TO BASE”—flashed on screens, replacing James Cagney and the luminous Ingrid Bergman.

Two rail lines left Camp Blanding. One went north, the other west. Which would they take? No one wanted west. That meant the Pacific, the death islands of Guadalcanal and an enemy who would show no mercy. If it was to be north, they would follow the 1st Division and possibly end up in North Africa. To a man, the Bedford boys preferred sand to jungle.

There was little time to do more than make a quick telephone call or send a hastily prepared telegram. New weapons had to be issued, treated with Cosmoline grease, and stored in massive crates for transport. All other equipment had to be waterproofed, and all insignia had to be removed from uniforms—a precaution against German spies detecting the identity and destination of the 29th Division.

Back in Bedford, Bettie Wilkes heard that Company A was about to move out. She called other wives and fiancées. Did they want to join her and take the train to Florida? It would be their last chance to see the boys. Elaine Coffey worked in the same mill as Bettie. She was up for it. Their manager said they could both take a day off. Viola Parker eagerly joined the group.

The girls pulled out their best summer frocks, crammed a change of clothes and make-up into valises, and headed south. Viola was especially anxious to see Earl: She had just discovered she was pregnant.

The train was packed with soldiers and with other families from Bedford hoping to see the boys one last time. Among them was sixteen-year-old Verona Lipford, sister of Company A’s Frank Draper Jr. Verona had never missed a day of school or been tardy. “My mother took me out of school for a whole week so we could go down to Florida together,” Verona recalled. “It was so full of soldiers that Viola, bless her heart, had to sit on her suitcase in the aisle. That train was just shaking us all to death. But we made it.”
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Bettie Wilkes got her girlfriends together and slipped with them into Camp Blanding: “We had a great time. I asked one of the men to take a picture with my Kodak Brownie. It was the last of the boys together before they left American soil.” To this day, Bettie cherishes the photograph, shown on the cover of this book.
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The afternoon of September 22, 1942, Elaine Coffey was able to be alone with her fiancé, Bedford Hoback. He handed her a ring and tried to comfort her. “Now don’t you cry,”
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he told her as tears streamed down her face and they hugged one last time.

It was a sultry and still evening. Company A milled about. Other wives, relatives, and girlfriends mingled with the men, handing over keepsakes, fighting back tears. The light started to fade.

“I’m coming back, you can believe that,” John Wilkes told Bettie.

There was time for one last kiss. Then Master Sergeant Wilkes stepped away.

“Well, looks like time we got to shove off,” he said.

Wilkes turned towards Company A.

“All right, men!” he shouted. “Fall in!”

The men snapped into perfect formation. Not a head turned towards the women.

“Forward, march!” Wilkes ordered. “Hut, two, three, four! Hut . . .

” Bettie and the other Bedford girls waved goodbye. “Oh my, they looked very fine,” recalled Bettie. “They made us feel proud.”
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Company A marched up an incline towards the train station. The girls jogged alongside until they could follow no more, choking back sobs, watching until the silhouette of Company A disappeared into the darkness over the brow of a hill. Then they traipsed to Bedford Hoback’s station wagon and set off in silence for the day-long drive home.

Meanwhile, the Bedford boys sat in their train, chain-smoking, gambling, and joking. “For all we knew, we could be fighting in a few weeks,” recalled Earl Newcomb who sat in a nonsmoking compartment with three other men and played poker. “But no one seemed too bothered. We were in a pretty good mood. We’d got used to sitting in trains all day, being moved around all the time.”
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They were going north, thank God. The Japanese would have to wait until they’d licked Uncle Adolf. Armed guards were posted at the train’s doors whenever it stopped. The men were not to say a word to any civilian: The polite stranger asking about life in the army might be an undercover German. When they passed through their old base, Fort Meade, someone said they must be going to Camp Kilmer in New Jersey, the main staging area for troops headed to Britain.

Almost twenty-four hours after leaving Florida, the Bedford boys wearily filed off their train in a downpour at a station in New Jersey. They formed up on the platform before Master Sergeant Wilkes and awaited orders, sodden uniforms soon clinging to their skin.

Overseeing the transfer of the 116th Infantry to Camp Kilmer was a tall and lean officer, Colonel Charles “Stoneface”
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Canham, forty-six, one of the most gifted soldiers of his generation. In 1921, as a lowly sergeant, he had been accepted into the elite military academy, West Point. A notorious “ball-buster” with a Hitler-like moustache and iron-rod posture, he had been brought into the 29th Division to toughen up the National Guardsmen and turn them into effective killers. Before the year was out, the Bedford boys would fear and detest him.

Around 1 A.M., a major with an artillery battalion noticed Canham.

“Well, we got them off the trains pretty fast, didn’t we Colonel?”

“It could’ve been a lot faster if you’d poked them in the ass,” snapped Canham.
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In Camp Kilmer, the Bedford boys were surprised to discover that some men’s wives were waiting in motels and campgrounds in nearby New Brunswick, thirty miles from Manhattan. Most were from Maryland and Baltimore, home to approximately half the 29th Division.

When the Bedford boys arrived in their new barracks, built to process doughboys headed for Flanders in the last war, they were greeted by a barrage of orders and new regulations. The boys were headed overseas and the army, it seemed, was determined they would take everything they could possibly need with them.

“New coal-scuttle helmets replaced the flat First World War dishpan version and blue denim fatigues were exchanged for new-issue green herringbones,” recalled Bob Slaughter of Company D, then seventeen years old. “Photographs were taken and identification cards given that would be carried until our separation from the army. Immunization shots for every disease known to man were given in both arms and where the sun doesn’t shine.”
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Slaughter had grown up in Roanoke, the nearest city to Bedford, and at age fifteen, with his parents’ consent, had joined the National Guard to be with his buddies. “I was tall for my age—six foot two,” he recalled. “We got a dollar every drill and went to Virginia Beach in the summer.”
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Slaughter would grow another three inches by D-Day.

Meanwhile, Bettie and her girlfriends had arrived back in Bedford late on Sunday, September 23. When she got home, Bettie discovered John’s new whereabouts and immediately decided to follow him. Viola Parker again eagerly agreed to accompany her. “We thought they might be in New Jersey for a while,” explained Bettie. “So, tired and worn out, we boarded a train to New York, where we were due to arrive on Monday night.”
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