USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Wenham > Wenham in World War II : war service of Wenham men and women and civilian services of Wenham people > Part 23
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The camp had been previously occupied by British prisoners who had left a library of sorts which, when supplemented by the dribble of books we received, gave us assorted reading matter. Everyone learned to play contract bridge and cribbage, but these occupations could only be utilized by the more rugged individuals as the lighting and the cold made participation nearly unbearable over any period of time.
As some of the prisoners were professors or teachers, schools on various subjects were organized, but again the cold raised havoc with the daily attendance record. There were several actors in the
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group who organized and put on plays which supplemented the con- versation for a few days.
Naturally there was the problem of association with the German guards. Our own rules prohibited any association with them at all, but several of them who became known to us as the "ferret" and the "weasel," etc. were constantly trying to strike up conversations for their own information. A system was worked out among the pri- soners to discourage all their various attempts at "snooping."
It seemed strange to us that lumber, ice hockey, football, baseball and ping pong equipment got through on besieged rail lines while Red Cross food parcels, personal tobacco and clothing parcels were delayed endlessly. Without these welcome Red Cross parcels, our lot would have been far worse.
DACHAU
Dachau is a name that will live in infamy forever. It was here that Hitler built the first of his unspeakable concentration camps. It served as a model for Buchenwald, Belsen and all the rest and it had everything-crematory ovens, gas chambers built to look like shower baths, savage dogs whose purpose it was to disembowel a "spread eagled" prisoner who had the bad judgment to defy his Nazi oppressors.
Dachau was captured on April 29, 1945 and I entered the town and inspected the camp the next day. There are no adjectives in the English language to describe what I saw there.
On a siding by a main highway accessible to any one, were prob- ably fifty freight cars, many of the roofless gondola type, filled with corpses, hundreds of them. There were old men, young men and boys, even a few women. All were clothed in filthy rags and ema- ciated beyond the telling. Some had been cruelly beaten as well. One I saw had a fractured skull and a boy of fifteen was covered with blood from a deep gash in his neck. These pitiful creatures had been alive when they had entrained at Buchenwald three weeks before. Their suffering must have been excruciating before death finally released them, for it was cold and raw and we had flurries of snow on May first.
Inside the prison compound, there were 32,000 miserable, starving vermin-infested caricatures of human beings-Russians, Poles, Frenchmen, Dutchmen, men of every race, creed and color. And everywhere there was death. You literally stepped over bodies of
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men who had fallen dead of starvation and disease. No one had time to bother about them-the needs of the living were so desperate and there were so few hands as yet to meet them. In rooms on either side of the crematory, bodies were piled every which way-eight hun- dred of them-as one of my officers so aptly described it, "like fish in a barrel."
Within a second enclosure I visited what passed for a hospital. Three thousand dead and dying were jammed into buildings de- signed to accommodate seven hundred at most. The hideous cruelty of this place was beyond description. The living were in bed with the dead. There was every kind of disease typhus, typhoid fever, tuberculosis-God knows what. Every inmate had dysentery and nobody had strength enough to get out of bed to do anything about it. They all had the discharging sores that come from prolonged starvation and avitaminosis.
The smell in this place of putrefaction and decay was not the com- mon one of death and rotting bodies that we knew so well, it was a rancid stench that made you retch and want to vomit and it seemed to cling to you for hours afterward.
There were no attendants and there were no antiseptics and no surgical dressings. Many of the patients were victims of fiendish medical experiments. There were two hundred and fifty women who had been subjected to every imaginable bestiality. These poor aban- doned souls had been waiting to carry out the grisly SS slogan which at one time or another had been whispered into the ear of every pri- soner, "Here you come in by the gate and go out by the chimney." And for so many of them, help had come too late.
If there has been anything worse since the dawn of civilization than what went on in these places, I have never heard of it. Genghis Khan was an angel of compassion compared with the swine who did these ghastly things to their fellow men.
Dachau was only one of many such camps. They were all of a piece and the horrible sadistic cruelty of one was matched in every hideous detail in all the others. In the years to come, let us not forget.
PERSONAL RECORDS OF CIVILIANS IN WAR AREAS
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Personal Records of Civilians in War Areas
THE AIR TRANSPORT COMMAND
All domestic airlines were placed under the jurisdiction of the War Department in March, 1942, and became contract carriers under the Air Transport Command. The pilots and personnel re- tained their civilian status but were under the direction of the army and subject to army orders and regulations.
The experienced pilots of the ATC were the first to map out many army routes and the success of the army in using these air- routes was largely the result of the pioneer work of these pilots.
GEORGE P. BROWN became a member of the Air Transport Command and went overseas in April of 1942. He remained in this service until January of 1945.
While with the Air Transport Command, he served in the capacity of Superintendent of Ground Operations for Northeast Airlines, Inc., North Atlantic Division.
Brown also served as Station Manager at Meeks' Field in Ice- land for one year. He served at Bluie West in Greenland, and at Goose Bay, Labrador for two years, also spent some time in Scot- land. While stationed at these various bases, Brown also served as pilot for the Air Transport Command Air Sea Search and Rescue in the Arctic.
George Brown was the recipient of a letter of Commendation from General Harold George, Commanding General of ATC, commending pilots and ground crews of Contract Carrier Number 1, for flying five million miles over the Atlantic without a serious accident or passenger or crew fatality during the war.
FRANCIS BURRAGE CHALIFOUX flew for the contract divi- sion of the Air Transport Command from January 1943 through May 1946. During this period as Captain of ATC aircraft, he accumulated 3,500 hours of Transatlantic flying on routes from the United States to Labrador, Iceland, Scotland, England, Bermuda, the Azores, Casablanca and Algiers in Africa. After the end of hostilities he flew to Norway, Denmark, France and Germany.
"I participated in various rescue missions, to downed Army pilots in remote parts of the arctic. I flew many survey trips for the
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Army, over unmapped territory, and North Atlantic reconnaissance in lead of mass bomber movements. I was on the first run flown by the Army from Presque Isle, Maine to Newfoundland and Labrador in January 1942 and also made the first run from Northern Quebec to Baffin Land and remote outposts, and dropped mail at isolated out- posts north of the Arctic Circle on both coasts of Greenland."
In May of 1944 he was awarded the Air Medal for conducting a combination rescue-survey trip around the north magnetic pole, land- ing on the ice-cap and removing sick personnel, and leaving emerg- ency supplies in secret arctic observation posts. He made over 250 Transatlantic crossings in all carrying critical supplies to Europe and bringing home returning G-I's after hostilities were over.
Air Medal
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Personal Records of Civilians in War Areas
CIVILIAN AIR PATROL
Civilian Air Patrol, the volunteer auxiliary of the Army Air Forces, was formed originally December 1, 1941 under OCD (Office of Civilian Defense) "out of the desire of the civilian air- men and women of the country to be utilized with their equipment for the common defense." Later, in April 1943, it became a full- fledged auxiliary to the Army Air Forces.
Its Coastal Patrol covered thousands of square miles of coastal waters along the vital shipping routes, and eventually along the en- tire Atlantic and Gulf coasts from the Canadian border to Tampico, Mexico. At first only observers to summon Army and Navy air- craft by radio, it later used bombs and depth charges on submarines directly. Still later they developed air courier services to carry dis- patches or urgent shipments ; towed aerial gunnery targets ; inspected camouflage installations, etc.
GORDON CHICKERING PRINCE started flying in 1916 on a Burgess-Dunn hydro-aeroplane at Marblehead. He was among the first one hundred to volunteer in March 1917 in the Aviation Branch of the U. S. Army Signal Corps. He served as a test pilot and in- structor at 8th Aviation Instruction Center, Foggia, Italy and at 3rd Aviation Instruction Center, Issoudun, France. After World War I, he remained a member on active flying status in the Officers' Reserve Corps until 1927. He was one of the founders of the 101st Observation Squadron, Massachusetts National Guard, now perman- ently located at the Logan Airport, East Boston, Mass. He writes :
"As I was unable, due to arthritis, to pass my military physical examination at the beginning of World War II, I was appointed Massachusetts Wing Commander of the Civil Air Patrol for this state in December 1941. I served in that capacity until July when I was assigned to active anti-submarine patrol duty with the 2nd Coastal Patrol Base at Rehoboth, Del. I flew about thirty thousand miles of anti-submarine patrol before these bases were dis- continued in September 1943 when the Army and Navy had suffi- cient planes of their own and so took over this work. In July 1943, on my 'day off,' my own plane was lost. It fell into the sea, but being summer, its crew was saved."
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Gordon Prince holds Certificate No. 754 of the Aero Club of America.
World War II Victory Medal
CADET PROGRAM, CIVILIAN AIR PATROL
Commencing October 1, 1942 the non-active units of the CAP, at the request of General Arnold, commenced the training of High School students for placement in the armed forces.
The Cadets were trained in military courtesy, discipline and drill and had courses in navigation, meteorology, Morse code, first aid, radio and crash procedure. The boys from Wenham who took ad- vantage of this training were:
Robert Stanwood Jones, age 18, attached to the Salem Unit from September 1944 to December 1945.
William Hart LeRette, age 16, attached to the Lynn Unit from September 1944 to September 1946.
Gardiner Ames Morgan, age 16, attached to the Lynn Unit from November 12, 1944 to April 15, 1945.
U. S. COAST GUARD TEMPORARY RESERVE
The Temporary Reserve of the U. S. Coast Guard was formed to provide trained personnel to help perform the many duties relat- ing to port security and coast patrol which the Navy assigned to the Coast Guard. The men most familiar with the ports, harbors and the coast were the fishermen and yachtsmen of the country. They put in many hours of voluntary work manning small boats on in- shore and harbor patrols, standing guard duty at various Coast Guard, Navy and Army depots and patrolling the beaches of the long coast line of the U. S.
Members of the U. S. Coast Guard Temporary Reserve from Wen- ham were L. Sigfred Linderoth, Charles Reed, Harry Shackelford and John Sturges.
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a nation-wide drive was made for blankets, warm clothing, clean and in good repair.
The drive was undertaken in our community by Mrs. William H. Coolidge for Wenham and Mrs. John Nightingale for Hamilton. The donation of a vacant store in South Hamilton by James Conway for a week, made it possible for a committee to receive the goods, with no solicitations other than a postal card which resulted in two truck loads of warm clothing from Hamilton and Wenham.
UNITED NATIONS CLOTHING DRIVE
This drive, April 28, 1945 was carried on by Mrs. James Parker, assisted by Mrs. Philip H. Smith, Mrs. John Fairfield, Mrs. Nelson Bond, Mrs. Frank Gray, Ellen Duffy, Mrs. Samuel Conary, Mrs. Edgar Joiner, Mrs. Ernest Morson and Mrs. J. Russell Crosby. Town trucks of both Hamilton and Wenham transported the 22 tons of sorted and classified clothing to Beverly, from whence it was to be shipped to devastated areas in Europe. There were three drives -December 12-18, 1943, April-May 1945 and January 1946.
SCATTERED ACTIVITIES
BUNDLES FOR BLUE JACKETS
Many groups were interested in working for some particular in- terest, as different activities were presented. Through the interest of Mrs. Albert Goodhue of Marblehead, the Wenham Rug Class be- came interested in "Bundles for Blue Jackets," and on February 4, 1942 the first yarn was given out. From that time until October 1942 under the leadership of Mrs. Fred Vaughan, assisted by Mrs. Harry Pulsifer, 258 articles were completed, consisting of sweaters, scarfs, helmets and gloves. These were sent through a Salem group sponsoring "Bundles for Blue Jackets."
BUNDLES FOR AMERICA
This was another effort, but no group was formed in Wenham. Individuals, however, knitted and sewed for this particular effort,
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and their work was sent to groups outside of Wenham of which we have no records.
During the period of the war, several organizations in town, the Forty-Niners, the Historical Association and individuals, sent fruit, food and clothing, as well as knitted articles, to our namesake town- Wenham, England. These were all gratefully acknowledged by recipients in the suburbs of London, and we regret that our name- sake town did not know of our friendly effort.
RELIEF WORK
The first organized relief work in Wenham, was undertaken in 1938 by Mrs. Bessie Preston Cutler, at whose home a group of 25 women met weekly to sew and knit for British War Relief.
Mrs. Cutler writes, "From the early winter of 1939 up to 1941, over 1600 articles were sent to British War Relief and to indi- viduals. Our work from 1941 through 1944 was taken home, as every one felt more could be accomplished in odd moments, and each day seemed too full to permit the weekly sewings.
"After the Red Cross took over the knitting, a group of 16 con- tinued its work, sending all types of warm clothing to England and France for distribution.
"Two sock machines were purchased, and while the finished socks were not made by Wenham women, the tops of 206 pairs were made by the group.
"Another contribution from this group was 105 pairs of seaboots made by Mrs. John Matheson living in Ipswich, whose husband was employed in Wenham. Sea-boots reaching half way to the thigh, are made of unwashed wool, difficult to knit, but a real comfort to those exposed to water and cold.
"So perfect was this work, that the 105 pairs did not vary 1/8 of an inch. The British War Relief gave Mrs. Matheson the highest award for perfection of work, and from the Red Cross she received two gold stars.
"While three batteries of the 101st artillery were billeted in the Hamilton Town Hall, we sent them 140 articles, sweaters, mufflers, and helmets.
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"Forty-five British children were completely clothed; 143 arti- cles were sent to the Red Cross; 379 articles to the local Visiting Nurse. When the dangers from bombing seemed inevitable and sand bags were needed, we made 125.
"In the five years from 1939 to 1944, this rather small group com- pleted close to 3000 articles in addition to their war work else- where."
RATIONING
The expanding Army and Navy created increased demands for food, and every sort of equipment. The United States had no back- log of supplies, and it soon became evident, that it would be neces- sary to ration the civilian population.
The immediate occasion of the setting up of a Ration Board was by order of Hon. Joseph Ely, Massachusetts tire administrator, re- questing the selectmen of Wenham to appoint a Tire Ration Board.
Cutting off the natural supply of rubber from the East Indies, created a rubber famine. It would take a long time to find substi- tutes or build plants for the production of synthetic rubber, so the remaining supply of rubber must be carefully husbanded. Each city or town was allocated a certain number of tires determined by the number of cars in each community. Wenham's allotment was often- times only one tire for the month.
The Selectmen conforming to the request from the tire administra- tor, appointed as Tire Ration Board, Fred T. Vickers, Louis Dodge and Horace Pauling.
This Board commenced to function January 5, 1942, by request- ing all citizens to register with the Board the number of tires they owned with their serial numbers. Only one spare tire was allowed each car, the government buying any in excess of this allowance. It then became the duty of the Board, to decide where the available allotment was to go, whose need was greatest, and whose use of the tire would be most helpful in the war effort.
In May it became necessary to ration gasoline, on account of lack of transportation. This act fell heaviest on the seacoast towns, the submarine menace stopping distribution by boat.
The rationing of gasoline made a real change in the lives of our
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people, as well as in the appearance of the town highways. Gone was the procession of sleek limousines on the way to Boston. Bicy- cles ridden by young and old wobbled down the village street. The nights were punctuated by the two night-shifts returning from, and going to the industrial plants. "Share your car" was the slogan of the workers, as they journeyed to the defense plants. Speed limit was reduced to 30 miles an hour, and by December the Governor requested that Sunday driving be abandoned. Farm trucks with a more generous allowance of gasoline, seemed to replace many passen- ger cars, buses became crowded, the sidewalks populated by house- wives carrying big brown paper bags or baskets of groceries. The closing of the one grocery store made shopping for food doubly diffi- cult. During the summer of '42 in anticipation of fuel oil ration- ing, a survey was made of all homes using fuel oil for heating. Whenever possible, coal burning was substituted; every effort was made to conserve heat; storm windows were added, fire boards closed up open fire places, wood and coal burning stoves were set up.
Fuel oil rationing was a fact by October '42 and Wenham people unable to reconvert from oil, started the winter with a minimum allowance of oil.
The Tire Ration Board had now become the War Price and Ra- tioning Board-and this volunteer Board handled entirely the com- plicated mechanism of this act of the government, the only paid em- ployee being the clerk, Guy Cole, assisted during the most active period by Mrs. Robert Jones.
On January 8, 1945 Horace Pauling resigned. Ray Fowle was appointed to fill the vacancy.
This whole system of rationing involved three separate divisions. First there was the survey, and the accounting of what each house- holder had. Then there was the registration of each citizen, and lastly the making out of the orders, or ration books, by the Board.
Throughout the nation an army of public school teachers was re- cruited for the registration. In Wenham, for the first book it took the afternoons of a week to register the population.
Registration was simplified by calling families in alphabetical order, those whose names commenced with A-F coming on Monday, etc. The work of the teachers was supplemented by other volunteers.
In rapid succession followed the rationing of sugar, fats, meat, canned goods, shoes, and other commodities, while many articles of every day need became scarce.
Queues sometimes a quarter of a mile long, stood patiently in
FIRST RUBBER COLLECTION: JULY. 1942
OFFICIAL
SALY
SCRAP METAL COLLECTION
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line, for the possible half pound of butter that might be available. It seemed a full time job for a housewife to shop, and collect suffi- cient food for the family.
People with land, and the ability to do so, purchased steers which they fattened for home consumption. Baby pigs were in great de- mand, as it seemed to be possible for many country people to raise a pig.
In carrying out the provisions of rationing, the work of this un- paid Ration Board was a very real patriotic service; it was a task difficult to administer, and lacked the stimulus of war work carried on by large groups. There were hours of hearings and discussions to make the allotments most fairly.
However fair the decisions, the unpopularity of rationing, some- times precluded the gratitude this Board merited.
The real accomplishments of the Board and their assistants can never be summed up in columns of statistics, but the gratitude of their fellow townsmen will increase in the years to come when we can see the war in retrospect.
The Board's activities ceased in September 1945, when the work was transferred to Beverly, as rationing became less necessary.
Mr. Vickers and the members of his Board, received from the President and from the Governor of Massachusetts personal acknowl- edgment of the value of their services.
SALVAGE
The necessity for the salvage of household wastes to add to the diminishing supply of fats, aluminum, tin, iron and paper caused the Public Safety Committee to set up in each community a Salvage Committee. In Wenham, the Selectmen, Samuel Conary, Elmer Clarke and James Reynolds were given this responsibility. They in turn named Mr. Reynolds to be in charge of this work.
Before this committee was set up, Delano Kennard, assisted by the Boy Scouts, headed an aluminum drive, netting 440 lbs .- better than one pound each for the 394 houses in town.
Another drive preceding the setting up of a salvage committee, was in response to the government call for old rubber, when the success of the Japanese in the East Indies, definitely cut off the regular supply of rubber.
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E. L. Mitchell, during the week of July 10, 1942, undertook this collection, and almost single-handed secured the surprising amount of four tons of rubber.
The collection of fats was made an individual responsibility of the housewife who disposed of her fats through stores most con- venient to her. Girl Scouts helped in this effort, going from house to house and taking the fats to the stores, where they sold their collections, using the proceeds for their own activities.
It is obvious that no accurate figure could be obtained as to how much should be credited to the savings of Wenham housewives. In the state statistics of December 1944 we find the fat salvage collec- tion showed an increase of 136% for the two towns, and Hamilton and Wenham were credited with 894 pounds in October. During the war period, from two to four cents a pound was paid, plus one ration point. Later the price rose to twelve cents a pound.
The collection of keys gives us the amusing story of the woman who, in an abandon of generosity, poured forth every key in her household, only to find she had sent the key of a favorite trunk. Her generous soul was hurt when she received no reply from Wash- ington to her request "to please return her missing trunk key, labelled 'Small Innovation.' "
The collection of tin was another responsibility of the housewife. She became adept in flattening out her cleaned tin cans.
Collections of tin and paper were held at stated intervals by town trucks. These collections (Sept. 1942-Sept. 1945) amounted to 175,840 pounds for which $960.85 was paid. Under existing laws, towns could not sell scrap material, except in very small quantities, therefore the money could not be retained by the town, but was allocated by the selectmen to various town activities as follows from the records of the chairman, Mr. Reynolds :
Wenham Wandering's $331.15
War Finance Committee
6.55
Coast Guard Christmas Party, '43
25.00
Sports Committee, V.I.S. for improv- ing rink and playground 300.00
Historical Committee- building fund
100.00
First Church, Wenham 71.07
Annie L. Prince Missionary Society- Baptist Church 47.17
Printing 7.05
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Personal Records of Those in Civilian Services
American Legion Post No. 182
47.86
Boys' Club 25.00
$960.85
All sorts of devices were used to stimulate the salvage of needed metals and paper. Some moving picture houses charged, on occasion, a stated number of pounds of metal or paper as price of admission.
Tooth paste and shaving cream in lead tubes could not be pur- chased unless an empty tube accompanied the purchase price.
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