Rogers Man Served In Southwest Pacific

Rogers--Quartermaster Supply Unit Active in New Guinea, Philippines, Japan

On Feb. 7, 1942, I voluntarily joined and was sworn into the U.S. Army for the duration of World War II. I was Army trained in quarter master supply at Camp Lee, Va., and have stood at parade in review there with some of the best known big bands in the nation -- the Dorsey Brothers, Roger Miller, Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians and others.

Around May 1, I was assigned to the Army Air Corps from Camp Lee. I was assigned to McDill Field at Tampa, Fla. I trained there for two or three months and was assigned to the 1055th Quarter Master Supply Co. I went to Greenville, S.C., from there and helped set up a new air base.

I completed that by September and went back to Venice Army Air Base at Venice, Fla. We furnished supplies to other air bases in the area and helped to train troops until May 1943.

I was later shipped to a staging area at Lakeland, Fla., and prepared to be shipped overseas. I was shipped by troop train from Lakeland to Camp Stoneman at Pittsburgh, Calif. We spent about a week there. On June 12, we loaded on a big troop transport, the USS Luraline, with 7,000 men. On June 13, we sailed out of San Francisco Bay under the Golden Gate Bridge.

This trip took 130 days to Brisbane, Australia. We crossed the international dateline and saw the Great Barrier Reef before entering the harbor at Brisbane.

We stayed two or three weeks in Brisbane. Then we were loaded on a liberty ship and shipped to Port Moresby, New Guinea. We spent about 18 months between Port Moresby and Finshaven, also in New Guinea, an island of jungles.

We had two groups of heavy bombers. These groups consisted of one headquarters squadron, four squadrons of enlisted men and pilots. Most enlisted men were mechanics and electricians. The planes were four engine B-24s and B-17s. We also had two engine B-25 and B-26 medium bombers with us, as well as P-47 and P-38 fighter planes. P-47s were single and P-38s were twin engine.

We also had an ordnance group with us. These men loaded bombs on the planes and ammunition in the machine guns.

Heavy bombers had a crew that consisted of pilot, co-pilot, crew chief, radio man navigator, bombardier and about five machine gunners. If the pilot were shot or killed, these planes were brought in by the co-pilot or crew chief.

The 1055th Quarter Master Company went overseas with 76 enlisted men and five officers, and in almost 30 months of combat, lost only one captain. We also had a black American trucking company of 220 men from El Dorado with us. I do not know their losses, if any.

We were a supply company that furnished food, clothing and equipment for troops at a base and to other forward areas when needed.

Our equipment was two engine C-47 planes flying supplies to forward areas -- islands that had just been captured or were in the process of being captured. The longest we ever went without sleep at one time was 72 hours. When one of the larger islands was invaded, we continually loaded planes and dropped food on the island until it was captured. The food was parachuted down to the men on the ground. When an island was captured, if there was no airstrip, we had combat engineers with bulldozers blaze out a strip and lay metal over this for the planes to land on.

Sometime in late 1944, we left Finshaven, New Guinea, for Biak Island and from there to Subic Bay on Luzon Island in the Philippines. We sat in ships in the bay until a beachhead was established and our American prisoners of war were freed from the island of Bataan.

We went from Subic Bay to San Marcelland in the Philippines, where we set up food, clothing and equipment warehouses. We stayed there awhile, and when the permanent base at Clark Field near Manila was recaptured and secured, we moved there for three or four months. We left from there in a 300 ship convoy for Okinawa.

We were in this convoy in the China Sea when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima at about 6 a.m. Aug 6. All the men in that bombing raid were volunteers for the special mission.

I never saw so many miles of ships in my life. They were being staged here for the invasion of Japan.

We moved from Okinawa to the Island of Ieshima, an island two miles wide and eight miles long. War correspondent Ernie Pyle was killed here. I was exhausted and sick. They flew me back to Okinawa, and I spent a few days there during one of the worst typhoons ever recorded on the island. From there, I was flown back to a hospital in Manila.

In about 30 days, I was flown in a four-engine C-54 plane from Manila to Guam, to Johnson Island, to Hickam Field, Hawaii, to Hamilton Field in California and on to Brooke General Hospital in San Antonio, Texas. This was in October 1945. I got to come home to these great and wonderful United States around Thanksgiving.

I went back and stayed December and January in the hospital at San Antonio.

While in the southwest Pacific, our company was assigned to 5th Air Force Headquarters. Ennis C. Whitehead was our Air Force commanding general. Chester W. Nimitz was our Navy commanding general, and Gen. Douglas MacArthur was the Army commanding general.

Our company helped capture part of New Guinea and helped with support for Midway Island, Battle of the Coral Sea, Subic Bay, Clark Field in the Philippines, Okinawa and Ieshima.

One afternoon on Ieshima, I got to witness three plane loads of a delegation fly in from Japan to discuss surrendering their country to the United States. Sometime in September 1945, Japan unconditionally surrendered to the United States and papers were signed on the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, Japan.

Many American lives were saved because of the atomic bomb that fell on Hiroshima. Thank God we didn't have to invade Japan. The United States Air Force was formed and made a separate branch of service about 1947.

I was one of the youngest men in our company. I also held the highest enlisted rank of any man in our company. I am proud to have served my country along with the greatest generation of servicemen in the world.

My World War II medals were presented to me from Congressman John Boozman's office in August 2004.

I was discharged Jan. 26, 1946. Faye and I were married Feb. 3 of that year. We celebrated our 61st wedding anniversary this month.