'Round the Girdled Earth
Additions to Dartmouth War Collection of Letters From Dartmouth Men in Uniform
BAKER LIBRARY IS COLLECTING letters from alumni whose military dutyis taking them to varied assignments in this global war. Herbert F.West '22, associate editor of the Alumni Magazine, and professor ofComparative Literature, has selected abstracts from, recent letterswhich are published below. Dartmouth men in the service are urgedto write Mr. West to help compile a chronicle of the war as seen anddescribed by alumni.—ED.
FORMER TECHNICAL DIRECTOR of the Dartmouth Players, now Lieutenant Henry B.Williams, "R" Area Cantonment, E.0.R.P.,the Engineer Board, Ft. Belvoir, Virginia,writes in praise of the South:
"You, no doubt, were informed that I spent the summer in Louisiana. The name of that state will always, hereafter, haunt my dreams. Though the mention of the fact may bring pain to our Southern brothers I must declare solemnly that I, personally, found no moonlight and honeysuckle, no romantic old Southern mansions with pillars gloriously surrounding the structure.... no poor but heroic family struggling against the onslaughts of the industrial North I only found red clay .... scads of it.... swamps (and nothing idyllic about them either).... and Cayjuns so totally unlike anything I might have imagined from Evangeline that I can only assume that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was taking the 'long' view of them .... primarily from Cambridge, Massachusetts And before I leave this little homily on the South .... lest I be accused of a biased Northern point of view (which I am quite willing to admit) I may say that when that glorious day arrived when I boarded a train for Virginia and said a tearless goodbye to Mr. Jefferson's purchase I awoke the next morning to look out the train windows and see a sight that had been long absent from my view: the lush green fields of Tennessee. You can have no conception of the effect it had on me. I just turned and stared out of the windows, transfixed. The only thing to which I can compare it is the return of that verdant green to the dead grass that New Hampshire gets in the late spring. So much for Louisiana.
"Virginia was different. It too held its terrors but in a totally different manner. For here was the Officer Candidate School. Fort Belvoir lies near Mount Vernon and in the 18th century was an easy horseback for the Washington Family to visit the Fairfaxes Which, I believe, due to the charm of Miss Fairfax, was a popular and often repeated trek. Some miles below it lies the Pohick Church which then as now displayed its unsteepled charm and dispensed the Episcopal faith to the colonials I went there rich in the knowledge of these historical facts and thrilled with the idea that I was going to be stationed right in their midst. Little, did I know!!! For some fourteen weeks I 'endured' a rigorous program such as I am sure war never equalled Toughening up was the name that they gave to it but so far as I could see the winnowing process adhered to by the authorities was calculated to break you down. Approximately 3/4ths of the applicants seem to have got through .... both with the diploma and their health intact—so I am constrained to believe that the discipline really isn't so bad as it seems at close range
"Williams kept on going.... thinking of Hanover .... Winnepesaukee or The Old Man of the Mountains (after eleven years you can't break away from those things suddenly) and forming a little column composed of Williams The first thing I knew I was being invited by a dulcet Southern voice something like this: 'Mistah Weeums, Won' yu jine us?' At such an invitation, what choice had I ?
"Life has taken on a new meaning for me and in the last two weeks I have grown to like Fort Belvoir very much I have seen Paul Allen and Donnie Stillman, and had dinner with Professor Anderson, who is in excellent spirits We have all decided that 'absence makes the heart grow fonder' of Hanover."
A FLASH FROM THE MIDDLE EAST: Thefollowing was written by Raymond A.Schroth '43, who left College to join theAmerican Field Service:
"A week ago I started the most amazing trip I have ever taken. For one solid week I rode with nine other men on a three-ton lorry. Most of the time I rode on top of the canvas which covers the back of the truck. We passed through Syria, Palestine, crossed the barren Sinai Desert, then the Suez Canal, and on to Cairo. A night therethis time not at Shepheard's—then to Alexandria. After great difficulties, we finally found a room, where we spent the night. From Alexandria on was all desert; not like the Sinai, The Western Desert is dusty and scrub-ridden. When we got past the famous El Alamein line, we saw the results of modern warfare. For hundreds (over 500) of miles we didn't see one 100-yard space which was void of some shattered vehicle. You all probably read exciting accounts of the havoc wrought against the Afrika Corps, but you can never know exactly what it's like unless you see it. Easily 90% of the vehicles mentioned were German and Italian. Tanks, guns, thousands of trucks of every description, planes, equipment—all in total ruin. Destruction beyond belief! It could easily be seen that the 'invincible' Lufftwaffe was by far out-Blitzed by the R.A.F. and the U.S.A.A.F.
"Literally, there was hardly a minute that there wasn't at least one, usually many more, allied airplane on its way to batter the retreating enemy. At night, when I thought I would have expected a lull, there was even more activity above us; coming and going, always the steady drone of planes, never stopping You have read of Mersa Matruh, Daba, Solium, the Halfaya Pass, etc. I have seen them all. Each one of what used to be a small Egyptian town is now levelled completely. Only a wall here and there stands as evidence of the one-time existence of a town. All along the way we found German and Italian equipment, hastily abandoned. Helmets, rifles, shells (millions of them), food, clothing, etc. I picked up an Italian winter overcoat. It tore like paper, was made of flimsy cardboard-like stuff. I found a letter written to a German soldier born in 1923. It was a letter of recommendation and ended with the usual 'Heil Hitler.' We passed hundreds of sorry-looking prisoners, mostly Italians. all but sang out in their enjoyment of their Rommel's Afrika Corps has been terribly defeated so far—there can be no question about that.
"The morale of the British Tommy was never higher. Evidence of that are the many road signs along the conquered roads. For instance, some of them read as follows: 'lt hinders our blitz, to arrive in bits'; 'Do you know where you are?'; 'Security! Who is your hitch-hiker? Identify him!'; 'Are you prepared to be ambushed on this road?', etc. The nights here are extremely cold, but during the day it is like summer. The rains, however, are becoming more frequent, and mud promises to be a problem."
THOUGHTS FROM GUADALCANAL; brief extracts received from Captain John I. Fitzgerald Jr. '40:
"It is hard to realize how much a small island like this means in a large war. You teachers are going to have a tremendous problem in getting your classes to think in terms of the entire world. We must get over our narrow geographical thinking. Men in your position will have to pave the way. We get little news here from the outside. I hope some groups are doing some constructive planning for the Post War World. I often wonder what the College is doing along these lines. If you have time, I wish you would drop a few lines about their present policy.
"From all reports the Navy seems to have full sway up there in Hanover. It might be a good thing for the College if it were taken over for the duration. I feel that everyone should get a taste of military and naval affairs sometime during their life. It will aid materially in solving some of our future problems. It must be getting quite chilly in Hanover now. I am here in this jungle, sweating like hell. I think I could eat a ton of good old New Hampshire ice and snow without blinking. I feel that I have had my share of the tropics. A few years back I would have given a lot to live the life of a beachcomber for awhile. I will tell you, it is only the life for a good drunk.
"Fortunately we have had good fortune in our actions. I hope our luck holds up. It has been a hard struggle to combat many incidentals besides actual fighting."
FROM THE SOUTHWEST AREA: An interesting letter from Major Charles T. Clark Jr.'33:
Headquarters, United States Army Services of Supply, Southwest Pacific Area. "I was called to active duty on April 1, 1941, and placed in command of Headquarters Company, Second Infantry, Fifth Division, stationed at Fort Custer, Michigan. In that capacity I went through the famous Tennessee and Louisiana maneuvers of that year and was all settled down for a quiet Michigan winter when I received my orders to proceed to the Philippines as a replacement. It was a rude shock and disrupted a happily settled family, but orders are orders, and I guess mine is not the only disturbed family in the U. S. today. I sailed from San Francisco on November 22 and stopped for three days at Hawaii. We sailed from there, presumably for the Philippines on November 30. Our convoy headed west for 50 miles and then turned straight south and continued in a southerly direction. War caught us near the equator in the Phoenix Islands. All this doesn't add up to equal the complete surprise at Pearl Harbor on December 7, but from here on your guess is as good as mine.
"We were the only convoy at sea when the war started and, as a result, we were the guinea pigs for everything. As a detached officer with no troops to take care of, I was one of a group of 25 officers available for anything that had to be done. Our odyssey totalled a little over six weeks at sea with a stop for water at an island in the Pacific and a short stop over Christmas at an Australian port. We then put out again for another port in Australia and from there I was grabbed by the Air Force and flown up to Java as a Finance Officer. All I had was a wad of money and a fountain pen, no regulations, no forms, no experience. However, it all worked out eventually, as all things in the army seem to do, and I'm proud to say that as a direct result I was promoted long before I could reasonably have expected it.
"Our stay in Java only lasted about six weeks and by that time the Jap bombers were making life miserable. We pulled out in an indescribable confusion of races and nationalities and put to sea in a crowded, dirty, ill equipped freighter with no lifeboats, very limited water and a steady diet of cold bully beef and cold beans twice a day. There were 1200 of us, English, Dutch, Australian, Malay, Indian and American in a 5000 ton Dutch diesel freighter called the Abbekerk. However, nobody complained because we were glad to get out. We hated to leave our Dutch allies because they had tried so hard with so little and we were ashamed to tell them that we were pulling out. All we told them was that we were moving. It was just another case of too little, too late.
"After a tense voyage we landed in Australia again, very dirty and tired but greatly relieved to be on solid ground once more. We were attacked twice by Jap aircraft enroute, but were able to keep them off by using rifle fire and the fire of 50 calibre aircraft machine guns which we had salvaged from a Flying Fortress which had been destroyed in Java. We had ten of these guns on emergency mounts roped to the rails of the ship and they worked beautifully. Incidentally, I was not particularly frightened at being bombed in Java, even when the bombers came over so low I felt I could put my arm up into the empty bomb bays; but when that plane peeled off to make a straffing pass at our ship, I'm afraid I was really scared. I can never describe the rat-in-a-trap terror that comes over one when there is no ditch to dive into and no place to go to be protected from the impending attack.
"My part in this war hasn't been very big, but it has been grand adventure for me and has taken me to parts of the world that I'm sure I would never have seen under other circumstances. Right now I'd chuck everything for a clipper ride back home to my Gene, and a chance to get acquainted with this new daughter of mine, which everybody seems to think is the best product of Clark Corp yet produced. The poor little kid is going to have to be half orphan for the duration, I'm afraid, and I hate to contemplate just how long that duration is going to be "
The undersigned will welcome letters from Dartmouth men in all branches of the service, on near or distant duty. Abstracts may appear in the ALUMNI MAGAZINE and all letters will be added to the Baker Library collection which grows every day.
