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Posted on 01/14/2004 12:00:21 AM PST by SAMWolf
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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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| Our Mission: The FReeper Foxhole is dedicated to Veterans of our Nation's military forces and to others who are affected in their relationships with Veterans.
Where the Freeper Foxhole introduces a different veteran each Wednesday. The "ordinary" Soldier, Sailor, Airman or Marine who participated in the events in our Country's history. We hope to present events as seen through their eyes. To give you a glimpse into the life of those who sacrificed for all of us - Our Veterans.
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ROAMING FROM ROME TO ROME for sharing this interview of her Dad with the Foxhole In 1941, Americans joined in the Second World War after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. In late 1942, American and British forces invaded Africa in Operation Torch, and were fighting both the Italians and the Germans in North Africa and Italy. The British had been fighting the Germans for some time already, and the partisans had been fighting the Germans and fascists in Italy. The fighting continued in Italy until the spring of 1945.  James Glover McGhee Jr. was a combat engineer in North Africa and Italy in World War II. Many men went from America to fight in this violent war, and James Glover McGhee, Jr. was one of these men. He enlisted in the Army and went to Massachusetts, Texas, overseas on a troop ship to North Africa, and then to Italy and Greece. It was a long time before he got back to his family. He has many pleasant and unpleasant memories, which he has shared with us in this interview. The photographs are by McGhee and his friends, and the cartoons are by Bill Mauldin, who was in Italy at the same time and drew pictures of some of the same things.  JoAnne: When and where were you born? McGhee: I was born in Rome, Georgia, on October 30, 1924. JoAnne: When did you first hear about the war? McGhee: Well, I was in the Citadel, over in Charleston, South Carolina, and I was taking Spanish and we had a shortwave radio. It could pick up the broadcasts from Mexico and South America. And it was a Sunday afternoon on December the 7, 1941. And I was over in the language lab listening to the shortwave radio, about two or three o’clock in the afternoon. And I heard the bombing of Pearl Harbor had happened, and that was in Spanish. And I was not entirely sure that I understood it correctly. But the instructor who was next door came over and he listened and he assured me that I had understood it correctly. JoAnne: How did you join the Army?  A squad of my platoon, 109th Engineer Combat Bn.. 34th Infantry Div. south of Bologna, about March, 1945 McGhee: Well, in 1942, I had finished three semesters, which was a year and a half, at the Citadel. And the head of the draft board in Rome, Georgia was a friend of my mother’s. So he called me in and said, “Bubba, we’re going to draft you, probably in April or May.” And I said, “Well, I don’t think I’ll waste the tuition going back to the Citadel and then get drafted in the middle and not get any credit for the time I spent, and it’s not all that much fun at the Citadel anyway. So I think I’ll just stay home.” Well, time passed, and I got more and more bored with not doing much of anything, so I went down and enlisted in February of 1943. And then I went to Camp Edwards, Massachusetts, to an anti-aircraft artillery battalion. And we had half tracks with gun turrets with four 50 caliber machine guns on the gun turrets. And that was where I took my basic training. Then I went from there to — with a little bit of a long story, I saved my first sergeant’s skin. JoAnne: How?  Our bulldozer removing a destroyed German tank from the road near Parma, April 1945. McGhee: Well, he was a veteran of Panama, and of course there was no war down there. But they were Regular Army soldiers and had been down there in the tropics for three years. They came back home and the Army in its infinite wisdom didn’t give them so much as a three day pass, but instead sent them directly to Camp Edwards, Massachusetts in the dead of winter, maybe January. And as a result, all of the cadre began getting drunk and going AWOL, which is absent without leave, and generally getting in trouble. Sergeant Steadman was our first sergeant, which is the highest ranking enlisted man. And Sergeant Steadman, one Sunday, was in his private room — a first sergeant got a private room — and he was passed out. And the telephone rang, and it was the CQ, charge of quarters, down at the office and he said, “Just wanted you to know, the general is on his way up to inspect.” So I said, “Well, thank you.” So I grabbed about six men, we got Sergeant Steadman, who was raving and ranting, took him out to the furnace room at the back of the barracks, bound and gagged him, and I left six men sitting on him, and in the meantime I had four other men cleaning up Steadman’s room. So the general showed up, and I saluted, and I said, “Sir, Private McGhee, I’m in charge in Sergeant Steadman’s absence.” And I told a big fat lie. I said, “He is across the base at AAATC (Anti Aircraft Artillery Brigade Headquarters) and I’m in charge in his absence.” So the general returned the salute and was gone in just a very few seconds. He didn’t want to be there any more than we wanted him to be there.  Members of LXXV Army Group, prisoners of 34th Div., near Legnano, 4 May 1945. So things came back to normal. Steadman never said a word to me about it, he never thanked me, he never apologized for being drunk, he never said a word. Well about three weeks later he called me in. He said, “McGhee,” and I said, “Yes, sir.” “Do you want to go to OCS?” (which is officer candidate school) and I said, “Yes, sir, I’d like to.” And he said, “By the way, is Engineer OCS all right with you?” And I said, “Engineers is fine.” He said, “All right. There’ll be one person going from Camp Edwards to OCS at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and it’s going to be you.” And he said, “There will be an OCS examining board that will interview all sorts of candidates, and there will be master sergeants, there’ll be warrant officers, staff sergeants, there’ll be all sorts of people that want to go to OCS. But don’t worry about it, you’re gonna go.” And I said, “Well, fine, thank you.” And it turns out that his drinking buddy, who had been with him the Saturday night before we saved his skin, was the sergeant in charge of the OCS examining board. And one person went to OCS that month, and it was me. And that’s it. JoAnne: What was your first impression of the Army?  Here's yer money back for them souvenirs. Ya been scarin' hell outta our replacements. McGhee: It was a h*lluva lot easier than the Citadel, I’ll tell you. It was really sort of like a vacation. JoAnne: Where did you go from there? McGhee: Well, of course I went to Fort Belvoir, and was commissioned in December of 1943. And I went from there to Fort Clark, Texas. And Fort Clark, Texas is right on the Mexican border. And it was a horse cavalry division. And of course I was in the engineers, but they had horse cavalry. So I reported in, and the colonel said, “Lieutenant, have you ever ridden?” And I said, “No, sir, I’ve never been on a horse.” He said, “Well, we’ll cure that.” So he got me a stable sergeant, and I rode eight hours a day, jumped, did saber drill, did the whole shooting match. And I rode so much that my legs bled down the inside. But I learned how to ride, and that suited the colonel, made him feel O.K.  Me in front of my “mansion” south of Bologna, 1945 We went overseas from Fort Clark in early 1944 and we left the horses in Texas of course, and we rode the railroad up to Virginia to the port of embarkation. And we got on the transport ship, and went to Casablanca in North Africa. The trip across took us about five days. We were not in a convoy, we had no protecting battleships. But it was a fast ship, and we made about 22 or 23 knots which was pretty fast for a large troop ship. JoAnne: When did you arrive in North Africa? McGhee: Early 1944, probably early February. JoAnne: What happened after you landed? McGhee: We went across the Atlas Mountains. There was nothing going on in Casablanca. Humphrey Bogart wasn’t even there. And we just went on the railroad to Oran, Algeria and from there over to Naples. JoAnne: What was your work like?  Wot's funny about horizontal foxholes? McGhee: The Second Cavalry Division was a Negro unit, a black unit. So after we got to North Africa, we were reorganized into an engineer heavy construction battalion, and a bunch of port battalions, labor battalions that could load ships and unload ships . So I was in the engineers of course, and went with them from Oran, Algeria across to Naples Italy, and north from Naples. The war was already north of Naples by then. We worked on roads, put rock on roads, drained them to get the mud off, the rain off, we lifted mines. We lifted mines at Anzio. But the beachhead was already broken out and the Germans were gone. But the mines, of course, were still in the ground. JoAnne: Did you have any accidents with mines? McGhee: Yeah, we did. Several of the enlisted men would get overly confident. After a week or two had passed, and they had lifted mines, and nobody got hurt, we had a couple go off and several people got hurt. Nobody got killed. And then from Anzio as the combat lines went further north, and of course as I said I wasn’t in a combat unit, we were behind the lines. But we went up to Marina de Pisa, which is where the Arno River comes into the Adriatic. And Pisa is where they have the Leaning Tower. So then we went inland, the German line was at Viareggio, which is just north of Lucca, which is north of Pisa. And then when it moved a little bit further north, we went inland to Florence, or as they say Firenze. We stayed in Florence for awhile, the Germans were not there. Then we moved north. We were south of Bologna, in the Appennine Mountains for the winter of 1944-1945.  Partisani near Piacenza/ Reggio, 1945 Nobody got hurt. Things were very quiet, there wasn’t a whole lot going on. Some of the infantry patrols got hurt, but nobody in my unit. Then we went into Bologna and went northwest on route 9, and we went into Piacenza which is right on the Po River and the Germans had their last bridge across the Po River there at Piacenza. The Air Force had bombed all of the other bridges, so that there was no other way for the Germans to get across the Po River and get away, other than there at Piacenza. And consequently it was very heavily defended. And I remember we were stopped and we were behind the tank troops that had the Sherman tanks, and I was standing by the road with Captain Hanna, who was the captain of my company. And a German tank came up out of its hole back up the road maybe a half mile away, and fired its 88mm cannon right straight down the road. The road was just as straight as an arrow, and he shot it right down the middle of the road. And the air blast as the shell went by knocked both Captain Hanna and me off into the ditch. But we were neither one hurt, and the shell did not explode until about 4 or 5 miles down the road. So nobody got hurt there. Then we pulled back along route 9, and we went over east of there. Then the Germans had withdrawn further, and we went up to Padua and we were stationed there for awhile, and it was from there that I joined the 34th Infantry Division, and left the engineer heavy construction battalion. And the war was still going on, but the Germans were being very cautious and careful. And we weren’t seeking anything other than just to contain them. So very few people got hurt. Skiing in Switzerland, Davos-Platz, 1945. But then with the 34th we went on further north , and we went up almost to the Yugoslav border. And Tito was the Yugoslavian guerilla leader, who later became the dictator of Yugoslavia. And he was over just east of Trieste. And we took the surrender of the German occupiers of Trieste, and then we stayed there for a short time further. And then we went over to Milano and just east of Milano is a town called Crema. And before we got there we went to Lodi, and to Biela, just east of Milano. We took the surrender of the German 75th Army Group there . And there was where I got all the pistols. Because when we took the surrender, of course they had to turn in their arms. And we filled a couple of dump trucks with the P38 and Luger pistols that the officers and the noncommissioned officers in the German Army had. And of course what we would do is distribute them among the soldiers and officers in our group. And the next time we went on leave back down south, we would sell them to the Navy and the merchant marine people that we would see and we would get $25 apiece for them. Which was pretty good considering our cost was zero. JoAnne: Where did you go from there? McGhee: After we took the surrender of the German 75th Army Group, the Germans were still occupying eastern France. So we went down to San Remo, Italy, in order to see if there was anything we could do to take care of the few Germans that were holding out, and some Italians too. And we did not take their surrender, but at Fossano, one of the other divisions took their surrender. Then after that the war was essentially over. So I enjoyed the late spring and early summer with the other people at Monaco and the French Riviera.
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JoAnne: Did you ever get hurt?
McGhee: Not really, no. I had a tee-ninesy little bit of shrapnel in my wrist, but not enough to matter.
JoAnne: Were living conditions tough in the field?
JoAnne: Did the civilians ever get in your way?
McGhee: Not really, no. The partisani were the civilians who had fought the Germans and the Fascist Italians for years. They were underground and they would do sabotage, they would attack them when they thought they could get away with it, that sort of thing. The civilians other than the partisani were very passive and they wouldn’t get in your way at all. And the partisans were very helpful.
JoAnne: Do you remember anything funny that happened?
McGhee: In the northern Appennines, south of Firenze or Bologna, the war was still going on then very much. And that was where I had a problem with the M-1 (rifle). I met this German soldier in the street, and I tried to take off the safety and dropped my clip in the street. I just hit the wrong thing. And he ran and I ran. At least I didn’t shoot a German, and I didn’t shoot myself in the foot. After that I got rid of the M-1 which I had carried — it was too d****d heavy anyway — and then I got a carbine and carried that the rest of the war, and then I got rid of that and just used a pistol.
JoAnne: Do you remember anything scary that happened?
McGhee: Well the day I joined the 34th Division, 109th engineer battalion, we were bombed and strafed by P47s, those are American airplanes, flown by the Tuskegee Air Group, the black fighter pilots from Tuskegee, Alabama. And they bombed and strafed us and nobody got hurt, except one boy got a nosebleed, the fellow in the hole next to me got a nosebleed from the concussion. Nobody else got hurt. Of course that scared the pea turkey out of us. You know, every now and then the Germans would shell us and we would get in our holes and that was scary.
JoAnne: Did you hate the Germans?
McGhee. Didn’t hate em, but I didn’t have any use for ‘em then, and I don’t have any use for ‘em now.
JoAnne: What about the Italians?
JoAnne: Why a filling station?
McGhee: They just had the rafters up there, and they hung them from the steel rafters by ropes attached to their feet. And somewhere I’ve got pictures of Benito and Clara Petacci hanging by their heels in the filling station in Milano. But I haven’t been able to find them.
JoAnne: When did you go home?
McGhee: It must have been in September of 1945. And in 1945, the war was over. So got a trip to Switzerland for “R&R” rest and rehabilitation. That was when I skiied the Cresta Run. I learned how to ski in the morning, and went down the Olympic run in the afternoon. I fell so many times you wouldn’t believe it, and I lost my glasses two or three times, had to hunt for them, finally found them, scraped the snow off them and went again. I remember that very clearly. That was enough skiing for me in this life and the next.
And then I got assigned to the Allied Mission to observe the Greek elections. And we went to Greece. And we took jeeps and interpreters, my jeep driver and I went over on ships. It must have been in October or November of ’45. And we went over to Greece, and we went to a lot of different places. We went into Athens, into Piraeus, the port for Athens, and then we went to a number of different places to observe the elections. We went to Crete, Mitileni, Chios, Samos, Rhodes, which they call Rodhos, through the Corinth Canal but the Germans had blown it and no shipping went through, so we went parallel to it, went to Salonika, that’s about it.
JoAnne: What did you do when you got home?
After the war, McGhee entered Emory University Law School and became an attorney. He married and raised his family in Atlanta. JoAnne is his granddaughter.
McGhee, Glover, personal interview with JoAnne, March 11, 1999
Mauldin,Bill, Up Front (New York: Henry Holt and Company 1945)
National Geographic Atlas Of The World
(Washington,D.C.: National Geographic Society, 4th ed. 1975)
Sulzberger, C.L., The American Heritage Picture History of World War II
(New York: American HeritagePublishing Company 1966)
www.milhist.net
www.dma.state.mn.us
www.34infdiv.org
sdguard.ngb.army.mil
| The 34th Infantry Division was activated during World War (WW) II on February 10, 1941. The Division made a good showing at the Louisiana Maneuvers. As the first U.S. Division to be shipped overseas, Pvt. Henke of Hutchinson, Minnesota was credited as being the 1st American soldier to step off the boat in support of the war effort. The Division participated in six major Army campaigns in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy. The Division is credited with amassing 517 days of continuous front line combat, more than any other division in the European theater. Portions of the 34th Division are credited with over 600 days of front line combat. The Division suffered 21,362 casualties, of which 3,737 were killed. Members of the Division were awarded 10 Medals of Honor, 98 Distinguished Service Crosses, 1,052 Silver Stars, 116 Legions of Merits, 1,713 Bronze Stars, and 15,000 Purple Hearts.  The RED BULL insignia of the 34th Infantry Division was based on a design by Marvin Cone of Cedar Rapids, IA who drew it for a contest while training with the Division at Camp Cody in 1917. A steer skull imposed on the shape of a Mexican water jar (called an "olla") recalled the Division's desert home not far from the Mexican border. During WW II, German soldiers in Italy referred to the American soldiers who wore the familiar patch as "Red Devils" or "Red Bulls". The latter name stuck, and the Division soon adopted it officially, replacing its WWI name of the "Sandstorm Division". Campaign streamers earned by and awarded to the 34th Infantry Division In World War II.       |
Today's classic warship, USS North Carolina (BB-55)
North Carolina class battleship
Displacement. 35,000 t.
Lenght. 728'9"
Beam. 108'4"
Draft. 26'8"
Speed. 27 k
Complement. 1,880
Armament. 9 16", 20 5", 16 1.1", 12 .50 cal. mg.
The USS North Carolina (BB-55) was laid down 27 October 1937 by New York Naval Shipyard; launched 13 June 1940 sponsored by Miss Isabel Hoey, daughter of Governor of North Carolina; and commissioned at New York 9 April 1941, Captain Olaf M. Hustvedt in command.
First new battleship to join the fleet in nearly two decades, North Carolina received so much attention during her fitting out and trials that she won the enduring nickname "Showboat". North Carolina completed her shakedown in the Caribbean prior to the Pearl Harbor attack, and after intensive war exercises, entered the Pacific 10 June 1942.
North Carolina and the Navy began the long island-hopping campaign for victory over the Japanese by landing marines on Guadalcanal and Tulagi 7 August 1942. After screening Enterprise (CV-6) in the Air Support Force for the invasion, North Carolina guarded the carrier during operations protecting supply and communication lines southeast of the Solomons. Enemy carriers were located 24 August, and the Battle of the Eastern Solomons erupted. The Americans struck first, sinking carrier Ryujo; Japanese retaliation came as bombers and torpedo planes, covered by fighters, roared in on Enterprise and North Carolina. In an 8-minute action, North Carolina shot down between 7 and 14 enemy aircraft, her gunners standing to their guns despite the jarring detonation of 7 near-misses. One man was killed by a strafer, but the ship was undamaged. The protection North Carolina could offer Enterprise was limited as the speedy carrier drew ahead of her. Enterprise took three direct hits while her aircraft severely damaged sea-plane carrier CHITOSE and hit other Japanese ships. Since the Japanese lost about 100 aircraft in this action, the United States won control of the air and averted a threatened Japanese reinforcement of Guadalcanal.
North Carolina now gave her mighty strength to protect Saratoga (CV-3). Twice during the following weeks of support to marines ashore on Guadalcanal, North Carolina was attacked by Japanese submarines. On 6 September, she maneuvered successfully, dodging a torpedo which passed 300 yards off the port beam. Nine days later, sailing with Hornet (CV-8), North Carolina took a torpedo portside, 20 feet below her waterline, and 6 of her men were killed. But skillful damage control by her crew and the excellence of her construction prevented disaster; a 5.6 degree list was righted in as many minutes, and she maintained her station in a formation at 26 knots.
After repairs at Pearl Harbor, North Carolina screened Enterprise and Saratoga and covered supply and troop movements in the Solomons for much of the next year. She was at Pearl Harbor in March and April 1943 to receive advanced fire control and radar gear, and again in September, to prepare for the Gilbert Islands operation.
With Enterprise, in the Northern Covering Group, North Carolina sortied from Pearl Harbor 10 November for the assault on Makin, Tarawa, and Abemama. Air strikes began 19 November, and for 10 days mighty air blows were struck to aid marines ashore engaged in some of the bloodiest fighting of the Pacific War. Supporting the Gilberts campaign and preparing the assault on the Marshalls, North Carolina's highly accurate big guns bombarded Nauru 8 December, destroying air facilities, beach defense revetments, and radio installations. Later that month, she protected Bunker Hill (CV-17) in strikes against shipping and airfields at Kavieng, New Ireland and in January 1944 joined Fast Carrier Striking Force 68, Rear Admiral Marc Mitscher in command, at Funafuti, Ellice Islands.
During the assault and capture of the Marshall Islands, North Carolina illustrated the classic battleship functions of World War II. She screened carriers from air attack in preinvasion strikes as well as during close air support of troops ashore, beginning with the initial strikes on Kwajalein 29 January. She fired on targets at Namur and Roi, where she sank a cargo ship in the lagoon. The battlewagon then protected carriers in the massive air strike on Truk, the Japanese fleet base in the Carolines, where 39 large ships were left sunk, burning, or uselessly beached, and 211 planes were destroyed, another 104 severely damaged. Next she fought off an air attack against the flattops near the Marianas 21 February splashing an enemy plane, and the next day again guarded the carriers in air strikes on Saipan Tinian, and Guam. During much of this period she was flagship for Rear Admiral (later Vice Admiral) Willis A. Lee, Jr., Commander Battleships Pacific.
With Majuro as her base, North Carolina joined in the attacks on Palau and Woleai 31 March-1 April, shooting down another enemy plane during the approach phase. On Woleai, 150 enemy aircraft were destroyed along with ground installations. Support for the capture of the Hollandia area of New Guinea followed (13-24 April); then another major raid on Truk (29-30 April), during which North Carolina splashed yet another enemy aircraft. At Truk, North Carolina's planes were catapulted to rescue an American aviator downed off the reef. After one plane had turned over on landing and the other, having rescued all the airmen, had been unable to take off with so much weight, USS Tang (SS-306) saved all involved. The next day North Carolina destroyed coast defense guns, antiaircraft batteries, and airfields at Ponape. The battleship then sailed to repair her rudder at Pearl Harbor.
Returning to Majuro, North Carolina sortied with the Enterprise group 6 June for the Marianas. During the assault on Saipan, North Carolina not only gave her usual protection to the carriers, but starred in bombardments on the west coast of Saipan covering minesweeping operations, and blasted the harbor at Tanapag, sinking several small craft and destroying enemy ammunition, fuel, and supply dumps. At dusk on invasion day, 15 June, the battleship downed one of the only two Japanese aircraft able to penetrate the combat air patrol.
On 18 June, North Carolina cleared the islands with the carriers to confront the Japanese 1st Mobile Fleet, tracked by submarines and aircraft for the previous four days. Next day began the Battle of the Philippine Sea, and she took station in the battle line that fanned out from the carriers. American aircraft succeeded in downing most of the Japanese raiders before they reached the American ships, and North Carolina shot down two of the few which got trough.
On that day and the next American air and submarine attacks, with the fierce antiaircraft fire of such ships as North Carolina, virtually ended any future threat from Japanese naval aviation: three carriers were sunk, two tankers damaged so badly they were scuttled, and all but 36 of the 430 planes with which the Japanese had begun the battle were destroyed. The loss of trained aviators was irreparable, as was the loss of skilled aviation maintenance men in the carriers. Not one American ship was lost, and only a handful of American planes failed to return to their carriers.
After supporting air operations in the Marianas for another two weeks, North Carolina sailed for overhaul at Puget Sound Navy Yard. She rejoined the carriers off Ulithi 7 November as a furious typhoon struck the group. The ships fought through the storm and carried out air strikes against western Leyte, Luzon, and the Visayas to support the struggle for Leyte. During similar strikes later in the month, North Carolina fought off her first kamikaze attack.
As the pace of operations in the Philippines intensified, North Carolina guarded carriers while their planes kept the Japanese aircraft on Luzon airfields from interfering with the invasion convoys which assaulted Mindoro 15 December. Three days later the task force again sailed through a violent typhoon, which capsized several destroyers. With Ulithi now her base, North Carolina screened wide-ranging carrier strikes on Formosa, the coast of Indo-China and China, and the Ryukyus in January, and similarly supported strikes on Honshu the next month. Hundreds of enemy aircraft were destroyed which might otherwise have resisted the assault on Iwo Jima, where North Carolina bombarded and provided call fire for the assaulting Marines throug h 22 February.
Strikes on targets in the Japanese home islands laid the ground-work for the Okinawa assault, in which North Carolina played her dual role, of bombardment and carrier screening. Here, on 6 April, she downed three kamikazes, but took a 5-inch hit from a friendly ship during the melee of antiaircraft fire. Three men were killed and 44 wounded. Next day came the last desperate sortie of the Japanese Fleet, as Yamato, the largest battleship in the world, came south with her attendants. Yamato, a cruiser, and a destroyer were sunk, three other destroyers damaged so badly that they were scuttled, and the remaining four destroyers returned to the fleet base at Sasebo badly damaged. On the same day North Carolina splashed an enemy plane, and she shot down two more 17 April.
After overhaul at Pearl Harbor, North Carolina rejoined the carriers for a month of air strikes and naval bombardment on the Japanese home islands. Along with guarding the carriers, North Carolina fired on major industrial plants near Tokyo, and her scout plane pilots performed a daring rescue of a downed carrier pilot under heavy fire in Tokyo Bay.
North Carolina sent both sailors and members of her Marine Detachment ashore for preliminary occupation duty in Japan immediately at the close of the war, and patrolled off the coast until anchoring in Tokyo Bay 5 September to reembark her men. Carrying passengers from Okinawa, North Carolina sailed for home reaching the Panama Canal 8 October. She anchored at Boston 17 October, and after overhaul at New York exercised in New England waters and carried Naval Academy midshipmen for a summer training cruise in the Caribbean.
After inactivation, she decommissioned at New York 27 June 1947. Struck from the Navy List 1 June 1960, North Carolina was transferred to the people of North Carolina 6 September 1961. On 29 April 1962 she was dedicated at Wilmington, N.C., as a memorial to North Carolinans of all services killed in World War II. Here splendidly maintained and most appropriately displayed-including a spectacular "sound and light" presentation-"Showboat" still serves mightily to strengthen and inspire the nation.
North Carolina received 12 battle stars for World War II service.
Big Guns in Action!
So I grabbed about six men, we got Sergeant Steadman, who was raving and ranting, took him out to the furnace room at the back of the barracks, bound and gagged him, and I left six men sitting on him, and in the meantime I had four other men cleaning up Steadman’s room. So the general showed up, and I saluted, and I said, “Sir, Private McGhee, I’m in charge in Sergeant Steadman’s absence.”
Now this is funny and shows quick thinking on your dad's part.
Your dad has a great sense of humor, went to Casablanca and Humphrey Bogart wasn't even there. LOL!
He talks like that German tank shooting at him was no big deal. I'd have been shaking in my boots!
Selling the pistols they got from the surrendering Germans to the Navy and Merchant Marines. LOL.
Nothing like American entrepreneurship.
As far as eating the eyeballs in Greece tell him I said, "Ewwwww, yuck!" LOL.
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