I was inducted into the Army at Ft. Devens, MA, on May 6, 1943. Then assigned to the Signal Corps at Ft. Monmouth NJ, for twelve-weeks of electronic radio school training. On completion, I was shipped to Camp Edison, Sea Girt, NJ, for basic training.

After completing basic training, I was assigned to the 3104th Signal Service Bn. I would remain with this group for the entire period of the war. Our assignment was classified "Secret". It was called Submarine Underwater Cable. As I remember it, there were two teams with 12 enlisted men and 1 officer assigned to each. We had 8 operators and 4 technicians to each team. My team was in charge of 2d Lt Ludwig Nobauer, and the other team was in charge of 1st Lt Meihoff, and he, because of rank, commanded the teams. We were classified as secret and therefore could not associate with others in the 3104th. We all were housed together in the same barracks. We ate together, we trained together. If we left the camp at one time, we had to go in groups. That ended later in our training. This is why my knowledge of others in the 3104th is limited.

The group consisted of two: (1) operators & (2) Technicians. The operators learned to send and receive a special type of Morse Code that could be transmitted over the long underwater cable. Due to its characteristics, the signal had to overcome a large resistance and capacity. Therefore, the signal was not like the usual Dot and Dash on a pair of headphones. Rather it appeared on special equipment as an ink line on a moving roll of paper. The job of the operators was to translate these wiggly lines that were code and to type them on their typewriters. A special sending key designed to transmit the code consisted of a side by side key. Tapping the left key sent out a negative pulse and tapping the right key sent out a positive pulse. So the left key represented DOTS and the right key represented DASHES (or was it the other way around??). In any event, the pulses were received on a device called a "Direct Writer". This device consisted of a very sensitive coil attached to the underwater cable via a powerful amplifier. The coil was attached to a very fine hollow glass tube, one end immersed in ink. Paper off a roll passed continually under the tube that just touched the paper. As a signal was received, it would imprint its dots and dashes, left or right, on the paper. The operator would then type up these messages.

The technicians’ job was to keep the units operational and to maintain all the electronic and mechanical parts. The Direct Writer tubes had to be hand made by us and installed. The amplifiers had to be maintained as well as the power supply for the large amplifiers which used mercury vapor tubes as rectifiers. They had a tendency to blow up when first turned on because the mercury inside the tube when cold was in a liquid state and had a tendency to arc until it became hot. I suggested we by-pass the on/off switch and leave the filaments on in order to keep the mercury in its vapor state. We did, and it worked.

As an added backup to the technical training, the technicians were sent to New York City for further study. We stayed in the Broadway Central Hotel on lower Broadway and attended class in the Western Union Building for about 7 weeks. I believe techs in the group were Mark Hare, Bob Conway, James Madigan, and myself as well as the two officers, Lt Meihoff and Lt Nobauer.

Also, while there we took a trip out to Far Rockaway, LI, to inspect the land terminus of the underwater cable coming in from England.

Upon returning from the Sub Cable School in New York I was assigned to the high-powered A.M. Transmitter located just west of the rifle range at Camp Edison. This transmitter sent its signal via a rhombic antenna to Camp Crowder, MO. It was used as a training station for code operators of Company C, 3104th Sig Serv Bn. Later Company C brought its high-powered equipment into the European Theater of Operations for reliable communication service for SHAEF, etc. My job at the transmitter was to keep it operational and when told to do so make changes in the transmitting frequencies when atmospheric conditions required. The transmitter was very old. It did not work with crystal-controlled oscillators. Rather, you changed frequencies by adjusting the RF variable oscillator, and then checked the results with your frequency meter. I think we operated in the 4 to 8 6 Meg range. I stayed with this until we all packed up and headed overseas.

Another of my offbeat jobs was working at the camp sound system building. I got to know the guys who ran it, and they were bored to death. So I sometimes sat in for them. I would do the announcements and produce a number of shows at the camp. On Sunday for example they presented the "Symphony Hour" piped to a number of the orderly rooms plus the Rec Room in the main building. We also produced some jazz and big band programs.

The main jobs of the public address system were camp announcements, wake up the camp in the morning, and put us to bed. This was done by playing bugle call records over the system. It was basically an automated system in which a time clock would start and stop individual calls on a turntable. They would play everything from Reveille and chow call to Taps. In the morning they would wake up the camp with Reveille and then play some sort of band music.

I discovered an album of Grenadier Guards, an English Military Band. One of the selections I fell in love with was called the "Colonel Bogey March". I asked the guys if they would play it instead of random selections. They agreed and so for the remaining time the 3104th was at Camp Edison, the camp was awakened each morning by the bugle call and then the "Colonel Bogey March".

I often wondered if the people responsible for the motion picture featuring the BOGEY were ever at Camp Edison. The movie, "The Bridge Over the River Kwai" featured Alex Guinness. We had a very talented group of guys in the 3104th… musicians, writers, artists, and poets.

On May 11, 1944 a group picture of Company B was taken, then everyone was given leave to go home. Little did we know we were about to go overseas. On returning, we were shipped to the embarkation point via Ft. Slocum, NY, just outside of New Rochelle.

The 3104th left the USA on board an Australian ship, the HMS Rangitata. The food was mostly English. It was so bad that most of us subsisted on a great white bread and coffee for the entire trip. Breakfast, for example, one morning consisted of the usual powdered eggs and a whole dead fish…head, scales, and tail. I can still see that thing looking up at me.

The ship took the Northern route up through iceberg country in a large convoy guarded by fast naval vessels weaving in and through the group. At night, everyone was ordered below under heavy penalty of being shot if anyone went topside. They never knew if some dumb-head might try to sneak a smoke. One morning on looking north you could see large floating icebergs…and it was cold. Most of us did stay below to try and keep warm. Speaking of below…everyone was assigned to a large wardroom. We ate there and slept there. In order to sleep, hammocks were slung from the ship’s overhead and you tried to roll into them. Many a night you would hear the thud of bodies hitting the floor, followed by language that will remain in our vocabulary for the rest of our lives.

The ship arrived at Liverpool England on May 31, 1944. It pulled in at a large dock that held the ship slightly away by large wooden barges. On disembarking, trucks took us to Toddington, England, just east of Cheltenham, the central communication center for the entire British Isles.

The battalion was housed in huts on the grounds of the Toddington Manor house. I was never clear whether we were in a town called Toddington or our location was identified by the Manor house. On looking at a detailed map of the area, I could never find the place. Anyway, the battalion was located on the front grounds. The rear of the Manor house contained the remains of a formal garden. You could walk through the garden, through a gate, and find yourself on the grounds of a small old stone chapel. A number of guys from the 3104th attended services there.

The courtyard located on the left side of the Manor was used as a supply room. Here you picked up soap, beds, blankets, or whatever. I particularly remember the blankets. I was appointed to work as Special Services non-com while there. We supplied reading material, scheduled sports events, distributed 3104th notices, etc. I remember that Lt Petersen was Special Services Officer. One of the events was a visit by a USO unit. We needed a "theater" for them to perform in, and a large hut that was used as a Rec Room was provided. It needed a stage. Planks were "obtained" to create a raised platform. We went to the supply room and talked them into giving us about 50 of those gray and blue wool blankets. By folding them and sewing them together, backdrop curtains and side stage wings were created.

In order to make the stage, wooden supports were needed. In my hut we had a large wooden box. It was used for everything from being a desk for writing to a card table to help exercise intellectual pursuits. The box was "needed". After some discussion, I grabbed it and it became the ‘nail that saved the day…or at least the stage. The performance was a smashing success.

BERNARD L FORD, one of our hut mates, a very talented guy, wrote a poem about the anger and loss of the box. I thought it was so funny, I asked him for a copy. Click here to read it and another poem by Bernie.

July 6, 1944 the Americans hit Omaha Beach. The 3104th soon found itself on the move, and we arrived just outside of Southampton, England. That evening we could hear the Berman buzz bombs going overhead. The next day the 3104th boarded the ship named "Neuralia" and landed on the French coast. I was told it was Omaha Beach. We unloaded by going down rope ladders, with full field packs, into LCT’s and brought to floating docks. Then we climbed up through a bombed out cut in the steep dunes area. We then camped out somewhere for the night. During that climb off the boat to the trek up the hill, I remember being followed and filmed by Signal Corps cameramen.

I am not sure, but I have viewed what I believe to be those shots taken that day. They have appeared in a number of network shows about D Day. The CBS D Day show featuring Dan Rather and General H Norman Schwarzkopf shows GI’s climbing down into rocking boats and another shot of a group on the beach, now quiet, climbing the hill, just like we did. The shots are very quick. I was taping the show that evening and in putting the scene in a slow mode I believe I recognize a bunch of the guys, including me. I have tried to identify photo credits on the show but could not connect any dates. When the writers put together these video shows, they do take scenes out of context in order to make their point. Therefore, even though the scene comes right after shots of the Omaha landing, it may not be so. I hope to get these scenes copied onto a tape.

Our landing in France was on July 22, 1944, D Day + 18. It was still light out as the ETO was on double daylight savings time which lasted for the duration of the war. After that hike up the hill, we bedded down for the night in some pasture, dug foxholes and listened all night long to ack-ack guns going off all around us. German planes were flying over about every hour or so. We learned to identify these German planes. They were twin engines and the motors/props were slightly out of sync. The sound of their engines was not constant but a slow, rhythmical pulsation.

From the beach/pasture trucks took us to our "Apple Orchard" and we dug in for a prolonged stay. On arrival, details were ordered to prepare large pits for the kitchen as well as others for the latrines. The battalion slept in pup tents. The command tent was a larger structure equipped with some communications that were powered by a small gasoline generator that had to be started each morning by the guards on duty. The "Orchard" was located just outside of Valognes, France, on a road that ran North and South. This brings back the memory of a bunch of us standing on the road, looking south, watching and listening to the bombardment of St. Lo. Incidentally, on that same road, about a few miles south, Mark Hare, in one of his walking trips discovered a monastery just to the East of this road. The nuns made it known to him that the organ was broken. Mark said he would fix it. As I was with him, he sent me back (a long walk) to pick up stuff to fix it. It needed its bellows repaired. I don’t know how he did it, but he fixed it. Great swells of music came from its bowels as the nun brought it alive after years of silence.

During the time at Valognes, the team visited Cherbourg. We accompanied the two officers, Lt Meihoff and Lt Nobauer when they went to look at what I later found out was the remains of the Submarine Cable coming from England. It had been cut so our Cub Cable training went up in smoke. While there, we went through the large German underground bunkers with their gun emplacements.

Since Sub Cable for the team was now just about dead, our teams were assigned other duties. Because of the operator’s high skill in typing, they would later be assigned to message centers all over the ETO, but for about a month the operators of our team became telephone switchboard operators. The technicians now were assigned to maintain the boards which was no problem because of our training, and we also walked the lines. We would go out each day, as required, walk the lines and fix the breaks. For this, we were sent to St. Mere Eglise. Our location was just east of the town in an old farmhouse complex. About a mile further up the road was a large airbase. It contained an American squadron of twin boom fighter planes (P-38’s). Evidence of the heavy fighting that took place in that area was everywhere. Burned out vehicles, tanks, grave sites, and scattered weapons were all over the land. Every day you could see the US Army was sending in large companies to clean up the area. You can imagine what it looked like just after the American paratroopers came down in St. Mere Eglise.

While at the farmhouse, Mark Hare and I (Mark mostly) found an old French Renault automobile hidden in a shed under a pile of hay. It had been there all during the war. The engine was frozen solid, but Mark said he would like to try and get it going. The farmer, who spoke some English, said ok, and we hauled it out into the yard and then went to the airbase and got gasoline and oil. We poured raw gas into the spark plug holes and rocked the car, in gear, until it unfroze. Putting oil in the engine and gas in the tank, the care came to life in a ball of smoke and backfire until it ran as smooth as a baby’s bottom. We ran that car all over the roads until an MP stopped us and threatened to put us in the stockade. That ended that adventure, but the farmer now had his car back and in running condition.

At night we could look south and view the bombardment of St Lo from the Apple Orchard in Valognes. Little did we know that on the completion of our duty in St Mere Eglise we would be put on trucks and begin our service to ADSEC (Advance Section, Communications Zone) under the command of Brigadier General Ewart G Plank.

To do this we traveled through the ruins of St Lo in the trucks and were dropped off in LeMans, France. Because the Sub Cable venture was ended, our operators became teletype operators at the LeMans Message Center. The technicians became telephone/teletype carrier maintenance personnel. We were located in a market just off the main square of LeMans. This repeater station serviced all of France and later up into Germany until it was turned over to the French.

It was during this period that I took my second trip to Paris, compliments of the 3104th now based in Paris. The first trip was from Valognes. I stayed at the Hotel D’Iena in a small bunk bedroom on the 3d floor. We ate in the dining room downstairs. I remember it for its stained glass roof. It was on this trip that the picture displayed on the web site was taken. Someone organized the trip to the Eiffel Tower and most of those in the Cable team posed for him on the grounds of the Palais d’Art Museum de Hommes. I believe it was in the late summer. I have identified those in the picture to the best of my memory.

The second trip, from LeMans, we were put up in a hotel just behind the famous Hotel de Paris. This was a SHAEF hotel at the time. Glenn Miller’s band was playing there in the ballroom for the GI’s. They also were doing their nightly broadcast over Radio Paris Armed Forces Network (AFN).

Our team from the 3104th was quartered in the Paxson Barracks, a former French Army Barracks, I was told. To keep warm we had wood burning stoves in each room.

The job the the operators from the 3104th was to maintain teletype communication with all ComZ Sections.

The job of we technicians was to insure that the equipment worked 24 hours a day. I worked the repeater station. Other techs worked the message center to keep the teletype machines working. At the repeater station our job was to service the telephone long distance carrier amplifiers and the teletype carriers. The teletype carriers had the bad habit of freezing up and burning the special relays needed to send signals over the lines. They had to be watched constantly. Each day the relays were pulled, cleaned, and serviced.

I worked the evening shift from about 6:00pm to 2:00am. Toward the end of the war the Germans were sending in units of English-speaking, American accent soldiers to sabotage anything they could and try to create chaos in the rear echelon. An important target was communications. At that time, LeMans was of great value to ComZ. One night as I was walking back to the Paxson Barracks after my shift, two jeeps loaded with MP’s pulled up beside me, pushed me against the wall and demanded, in German, my papers. A young blond 2d Lt who looked as though he had just graduated from High School was in charge. He continued the questions in German until I said to him in perfect English, as you can imagine, "Look, Lieutenant, I work for the repeater station, and it’s our job to be on the streets to get to and from work." When I showed him my pass he yelled at me, "That’s no good." When I asked him to look at the signature of the General who had signed the pass he started to sputter and gave me a lecture on saboteurs, told the MP’s to put me in the jeep and take me to the stockade. I said, "Fine. And when tomorrow the communications start to fail, I hope you have a good answer to give the General." Bluffing I hoped would work. He looked at me for a minute (at least it seemed that long) and said, "Go." Not knowing to keep my mouth shut, I asked him if he would mind giving me a ride back to the barracks. He brought himself up to his full stature, pointed up the street and said, "Get the hell out of here or I will take you to the stockade." I got out of there. Next day I reported the incident to the officer in charge at ComZ and he said he would see that it would not happen again.

Our group stayed at th LeMans station until the end of the war. FDR died during that time. I took a picture of the assembly at Paxon honoring the President.

With the ending of the war, the 3104th Sub Cable Team from LeMans was shipped Reims as a replacement for some outfit that had been stationed there. We were now attached to SHAEF and were required to attend an introductory lecture from a SHAEF officer. We were told how we must conduct ourselves since we were now required to wear a prescribed uniform and a SHAEF patch on our right shoulder.

The operators, again, were assigned to the headquarters building message center in downtown Reims right near the famous Cathedral. We techs were assigned various jobs. Mine was to work in a German blockhouse located just across the street from the Pommery Greno Champagne plant. The blockhouse was the former headquarters of a German High Command. It contained a large map room in its center. It was now an AM (amplitude modulation) radio transmitting station used by headquarters to send code messages. As I had previous AM transmitter experience I was put in charge even though I was only a T/4. Again, my position required me to operate the transmitter, keep it in working order, and since it was miles from the message center, to change frequencies as needed.

This blockhouse located on grounds opposite the Pommery plant was between two other large chateaus. To the south was the large USA club, a big old ornate building that had at least thirty rooms. To the north was the Pommery owners’ chateau. It was now the home of the Armed Forces Radio Reims (AFN). It was here that the caves of Pommery were discovered.

AFN was in the process of getting its Reims radio on the air. I got to know the chief engineer, a sergeant also. He needed help in installing some equipment, and I helped him. We put in control rooms, studios, and a powerful Broadcast Band AM Transmitter. I worked for him for about two weeks as my blockhouse job was winding down. We finally put it on the air, although at a lower power at first.

You knew the was was over because both the British (who had a large force stationed in Reims) and the Americans were now employing German prisoners (POW’s) to do work around the grounds as yard men and to do gardening. I got to talking to one kid; he couldn’t have been more than 15 or 16, who spoke English and was scared to death. He had been told that if captured he would have all sorts of bad things happen to him, that he would be tortured, and maybe killed. I laughed at him and told him that was why the Germans lost the war; that all they did was lie, and that he was lied to all his life. He now believed he was safe. He followed me around like a puppy. Since he could speak pretty good English, the Chief Engineer arranged for him to be transferred out and away from those that were feeding him the Nazi line. I think he was sent to a unit working with the British.

Leaving Reims, the team left our plush tent area that had been a sports center or park. It had a large swimming pool that remained empty and a running track. One side contained a bleacher. A great luxury was showers that were part of the swimming complex. We headed south not knowing where until we arrived at Arles, France. Arles, just east of Marseilles, was a flat desolate place. Flat grassland for as far as you could see with irrigation canals running through it. Some of the guys were now so dirty they jumped into them for baths, including me. This was the land of Van Gogh and a 2000-year-old Roman ruin, Glanum.

We were told that our destination was the Southwest Pacific and Japan. I packed all my extensive collection of technical manuals and in August, 1945, we were trucked to the docks in Marseilles and boarded the US Transport Henry Gibbins. A few days out, after passing through the Strait of Gibraltar we became aware that our heading had changed. From a southwesterly course we now were headed northwest. So we knew the Pacific was a memory. We landed in Boston, Massachusetts.

When the US Henry Gibbins pulled into the pier at Boston, hundreds of people lined the waterfront, shouting and waving. It was the practice of newspapers, the Boston Globe included, to announce the arrival of troopships and publish the names of those aboard. I had a great surprise when I recognized my cousin in the crowd. We saw each other and called greetings. My family knew I was back in the States well before we reached Camp Miles Standish, Mass., a disassembly point. From here, all were given leave to return to home for a two-week furlough.

At the end of the furlough I was shipped to Camp Crowder, MO, for separation. As I now look back on those years in the 3104th Signal Service Battalion, I realize how very fortunate we were. Being in the battalion practically guaranteed our safety. Although a number of guys were pulled out of the outfit during the Battle of the Bulge, for the most part, due to our training and knowledge, we were invaluable to the sectors we served and therefore unavailable for hazardous duty.

On December 8, 1945, four years and a day after Pearl Harbor I was separated from the US Army and left the 3104th at Camp Crowder, MO, having served from April 29, 1943.

With the joy of coming back home and leaving the Army I know we have lost contact with some of the most important people in our lives. I do wish that those of us that are left will have the opportunity to say "Hi" again, and a final goodbye.