|
Posted on 02/20/2004 4:27:43 AM PST by snippy_about_it
|
|
 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
|
| 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. In the FReeper Foxhole, Veterans or their family members should feel free to address their specific circumstances or whatever issues concern them in an atmosphere of peace, understanding, brotherhood and support. The FReeper Foxhole hopes to share with it's readers an open forum where we can learn about and discuss military history, military news and other topics of concern or interest to our readers be they Veteran's, Current Duty or anyone interested in what we have to offer. If the Foxhole makes someone appreciate, even a little, what others have sacrificed for us, then it has accomplished one of it's missions. We hope the Foxhole in some small way helps us to remember and honor those who came before us.
|
 Amphibian Engineer Units 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th and 6th Amphibian Engineer Units from “Surf and Sand” by Robert Amory Jr. The fortress island of Corregidor quivered under the relentless pounding of the Jap bombers and the heavy batteries massed on recently subdued Bataan. The weary defenders, safe only in the depths of its tunnels, knew they could not hope to repulse the final assault that would strike them any day. The last effective barrier to complete Japanese conquest of the Philippines was doomed. A tiny Aussie garrison in the mountains above Port Moresby, the last impertinent Allied foothold on the second largest island in the world, wondered when the Japs on the north coast of New Guinea would decide to rub them out. The bitter rear-guard action in Burma was drawing to an ignominious close as the remnants of the British, Indian, and Chinese forces stumbled over the trackless mountains into India, and the victorious Japs seized the Burma Road and pressed on into isolated China. Between New Caledonia and the Solomons roamed the scouting planes of a small American naval task force seeking to locate the Japanese fleet that was about to sally forth for an attack on the Australian mainland.  On the other side of the world, Germany and her satellites bestrode Europe unchallenged from Gibraltar to the North Cape, from the Channel Islands to the African desert. The Russian winter counteroffensive, having hurled the Germans from the suburbs of Moscow, had bogged down in the ooze of spring. The Germans were attacking at Kharkov and in the Crimea, and their Afrika Korps was coiling for a deadly lunge at Egypt. German submarines stalked ships in the delta of the Mississippi and within sight of the New Jersey coast. So began the month of May, 1942. In these darkest moments of World War II, the Allied Combined Chiefs of Staff were nevertheless grimly preparing offensives to regain the ground lost and bring the Axis ultimately to abject surrender. One fact stood out: there was no land route of approach, and so the British and American forces could come to grips with the Germans and Japanese only by amphibious attack. Not only would strong armies have to be raised, trained and equipped, but those armies would also have to be provided with ships and boats and trained beach parties in order to assault the fortress of Europe and the vast island empire of Japan. Both the British and American navies were doing all they could to procure ships and small landing craft and to train crews for them, but the U.S. Navy in particular was necessarily preoccupied with meeting the menace of German submarines in the Atlantic and the threat of the now superior Japanese naval forces in the central Pacific. In order better to distribute the burden of preparing the amphibious forces, the Joint Chiefs of Staff assigned to the Army the task of creating a major amphibious training center and of recruiting and training specialized units capable of operating landing craft and handling the engineering work on beachheads. This decision was reduced to orders on May 9, 1942 directing General Somervell, commander of the Army Service Forces, to establish an amphibian training center at Camp Edwards, and to procure equipment and personnel for the specialized amphibian units.  As had been its lot throughout its long history, the U.S. Corps of Engineers received this new and unique assignment. After a brief period of study, the Engineer Amphibian Command was activated on June 5, 1942, with the mission of organizing, equipping and training eight engineer amphibian brigades, each capable of transporting and supporting a reinforced infantry division in a shore-to-shore amphibious attack. Colonel Daniel Noce, an engineer who had had much to do with the organization of the original air-borne units took command, and opened his headquarters at Camp Edwards, on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Ten days later the 1st Engineer Amphibian Brigade was activated, using two engineer combat regiments as its nucleus. Five days later the 2d Brigade came into being.  To procure personnel with appropriate civilian background as officers and noncommissioned officers for this work, an intensive recruiting program was inaugurated with headquarters in Washington. Employing extensive publicity and cooperating with the U.S. Power Squadrons, yacht clubs, and other organizations concerned with maritime activities, this drive resulted in many hundreds of civilians being enlisted or commissioned during the summer of 1942. Procurement of boats was handled through the Navy Bureau of Ships in order not to duplicate effort. In accordance with the decision of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the engineer amphibian units were restricted to craft less than 100 feet long, on the general theory that these would be adequate for the short distance across the English Channel, where the brigades were initially expected to be employed.  Description: On a blue rectangular background 3 inches wide with rounded top 3 1/8 inches in height, a modern anchor palewise behind a sub-machine gun fesswise on which is perched an eagle with wings displayed and inverted all in golden yellow. Symbolism: The design was based on the design of the British Combined Operations patch which was worn by commandos, landing craft personnel, and others. Background: The insignia was originally approved on June 17, 1942 for personnel assigned to Engineer Amphibian Units. It was redesignated on June 10, 1944 as the shoulder sleeve insignia for all Army personnel assigned to the following amphibian units: Amphibian Tank Battalions; Amphibian Tractor Battalions; Engineer Amphibian Units; Joint Assault Signal Companies; Headquarters Ships Detachments (Type A); Headquarters Ships Detachment (Type B); Headquarters Section (Army); and Amphibian Training Command - Pacific Fleet. (Note: A shoulder sleeve insignia was authorized for the Amphibian Command on October 23, 1942. The insignia was a white oval within a blue orle superimposed by a red sea horse naint). It was redesignated as the insignia for the 2d Engineer Special Brigade on June 12, 1946. That authorization was changed to include the 409th Engineer Special Brigade on March 20, 1951 and changed to all Engineer Special Brigades on October 26, 1951). Each day brought a fresh influx of personnel and equipment to Cape Cod. Veteran Coast Guard and Marine officers, battle tested Britishers with experience in commando raids, experts in civil engineering, navigation, boat repair, and communications formed the nucleus of the training command at Edwards. Camps were opened at Waquoit and Cotuit, and docks were built to provide appropriate training bases for the boat units. During June and early July 1942 the Allied situation throughout the world grew more perilous. The Afrika Korps routed the British Eighth Army and reached within striking distance of the Nile; von Bock's great group of armies started its 1000-mile plunge from Orel to Stalingrad; and the Japanese, despite the naval battles of the Coral Sea and Midway, still threatened Australia. To the Combined Chiefs of Staff, meeting in London early in July, the most serious danger appeared to be that the German summer offensive would succeed in knocking Russia out of the War. In order to do what little they could to relieve the pressure on the hard pressed Red armies, they agreed to launch, if necessary, a crosschannel invasion of France, even though the forces at their disposal were pitifully small. To do this they would need more landing craft and crews than were available in the British Isles; so the 1st Brigade on July 23 was ordered to England as fast as it could be moved. The Brigade was in a sad state of confusion, with almost no equipment and all ranks barely oriented as to their technical missions and training objectives. Nevertheless, equipment was rushed from all parts of the country to the Brigade, and it was brought to full strength and sailed from New York on August 5th. Hardly had it debarked in England when it became apparent that the German drive was slowing down in the Caucasus and was being fought to a standstill at Stalingrad, and that it would not be necessary to launch the major attack across the channel during that year. Given this breathing spell, the navies of both Great Britain and the United States set about reversing the decision made in May to have the Army run the small landing craft, and in England they actually took away the 1st Brigade's boats.  Back in the United States a bitter wrangle ensued, and the understandably inexpert performance of some of the engineer boatmen in their first maneuvers lent weight to the Navy's argument that only 'boys in blue' could satisfactorily handle boats. Colonel Arthur Trudeau, the Chief of Staff of the Engineer Amphibian Command, made a flying trip to visit General MacArthur in Australia during the early part of October to see if he was interested in continuing the development of the amphibian brigades.  Just at this time MacArthur was engaged in his "Battle of the Marne" in the passes of the Owen Stanley Mountains and in the steaming jungles and plantations of Milne Bay. Though he had been successful in driving the Japanese back toward their bases on the northeast coast of New Guinea, lack of water-borne transportation had caused him to rely almost exclusively on his pitifully few airplanes, and he was, necessarily, in a most receptive mood. He promptly informed the War Department that he would like one engineer amphibian brigade immediately, to be followed in 1943 by a second one. The War Department, therefore, reduced the number of brigades to be created by the Engineer Amphibian Command to three.  Thus, the Navy's campaign to keep the Army out of the boat business succeeded to the extent that the amphibians in the European theater were henceforth to be nothing more than shore party engineers, while in the portion of the Pacific under Admiral Nimitz's control there would be no specialized amphibian engineers at all. Only in the Southwest Pacific were the amphibian engineers to be given a chance to operate in the manner originally contemplated in the dark days of May, 1942.      |
I have. It is really a blast. It's really a nice change for a guy who drives folks around, sits and waits, and brings 'em home again.
Actually, it was a bit louder than I expected. I could still talk in conversational levels to the guy in back, however. It was just 'plane' FUN! Try it sometime, you won't regret it.
Wonder if they'll let you take a chute?
The great fleet of over 5,000 ships and anding crafts and the sailors who manned them began the greatest naval assault ever carried out on the shores of Normandy, France. A significant presence in this invasion was the Naval Beach Battalions - attached to the Army's Engineer Special Brigades - they were used to establish communication and field hospitals and to guide and repair incoming landing craft. Three of the Navy's twelve Beach Battalions were in the Invasion - the 2nd at Utah Beach, the 6th & 7th at Omaha Beach.
An idea for a future thread?
SAN DIEGO (NNS) -- Sailors of Beachmaster Unit (BMU) 1 recently spent time in the company of heroes - men who faced death to save the world from fascism nearly 60 years ago.
A handful of World War II veterans and members of the 6th and 7th Naval Beach Battalions (NBB) who took part in D-Day June 6, 1944, were honored at a ceremony at BMU-1’s headquarters at Naval Base Coronado July 10 and 11.
The veterans, who came from throughout the country, came to see their modern day counterparts operate amphibious landing craft and vehicles during the first day of a two-day visit to the command.
During the ceremony, a plaque displaying the 6th Naval Beach Battalion’s (NBB) Presidential Unit Citation was presented to the unit and mounted on BMU-1’s quarterdeck. The ceremony also commemorated BMU-1's 54th birthday.
Retired Lt. Cmdr. Joe Vaghi, Beachmaster of 6th NBB’s C-8 platoon, came from Maryland to share his experiences and be recognized by BMU-1.
“It’s amazing to be here today to tell our stories. After the war was over, I never spoke about what happened on Omaha Beach for almost 50 years,” Vaghi said. “Our unit suffered lots of casualties, and our boys showed a lot of bravery in order to get the job done.”
Moving men and equipment across the beach during the D-Day invasion was the mission of the 2nd, 6th and 7th Naval Beach Battalions at Normandy, France. They were in the first wave of Americans to land on Omaha Beach. Supporting the assault from the sea, these naval forces were components of the Army’s Engineer Special Brigades, responsible for organizing the American landings in France. The NBBs were tasked with providing battlefield medicine, establishing communications between ship to shore, marking sea lanes, boat repairs, removing underwater obstructions and directing the evacuation of casualties. In June of 2001, the 6th NBB mounted a memorial plaque on the 5th Engineer Special Brigade Monument, overlooking the beach.
“I was very impressed with the eagerness the veterans had in talking about their experiences,” said Hospital Corpsman 2nd Class Jamie Shaddock, of BMU-1. “It is very inspiring.”
These Sailors were depicted in the first scenes of Steven Spielberg’s movie “Saving Private Ryan.” The NBBs were represented by the distinctive red-rainbow markings on their helmets during the graphic opening scenes of American troops under fire.
“It was an honor for us as a command to pay tribute, and to have these veterans visit us and tell us their stories,” said Lt. Cmdr. Carlos Guzman, who is BMU-1’s executive officer. “I believe it builds pride and gives us a greater appreciation for our technology and our history. They showed remarkable drive to get a job done that they knew no one else could do.”
BMU-1 Commanding Officer Cmdr. Edward J. Harrington attempted to reunite history with the present, as he remarked about the accomplishments of the NBBs and the continuing missions of today’s Naval Beach Units. “Our Delta Team left San Diego in January for Kuwait and Iraq, and some came under fire from enemy forces,” said Harrington. “They were the first Beachmasters to arrive and the last to leave.”
Although the equipment has changed greatly over the years, the job of the Beachmaster has changed little. “Even today, with all this technology, you still have to get the same job done,” said Norman Hartline, a 6th NBB signalman. “If we would have had the vehicles and equipment that these guys are now operating with, we would have really done an outstanding job on that beach.”
During closing remarks of the 54th BMU-1 birthday celebration, Robert Watson of 6th NBB and resident of Oceanside, Calif., professed his appreciation for the invitation from the command.
“This has been a wonderful, grand event. It is gratifying to be honored and recognized here after 56 years,” said Watson, referring to the presidential citation they received in 2000. “You have made some old Sailors mighty, mighty proud and happy.”
Journalist 3rd Class Jason Trevett, Amphibious Group 3 Public Affairs
Sounds good!
The conservatives say he is jumping. :-)
How 'bout this. Just firing into the wind. No harm, no foul.
LOL! Well, I do think the Wehrmacht had a point that an air force has no business running armor divisions.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
