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Show K. Earl Ericksen Earl served in the Special Service with the rank of staff sergeant from 1943 to 1945. He was hospitalized and had extensive surgeries for wounds that he received during combat. Dr. Erickson organized and was the leader of a 23-piece USO Entertainment Band providing shows for the soldiers who had returned from combat. The band gave shows for servicemen in various training camps throughout the United States. As leader of the band, he had the opportunity to recruit many outstanding musicians who had made their living as professional musicians. Some of these musicians had experience playing with well-known big bands such as Benny Goodman and Woody Herman, and he secured a professional who arranged music for NBC in Hollywood, California, for various shows. His show business career continued when he organized and led the 'Junction City Big Band'. Three members of the 'Junction City Big Band' had also played in musical groups during WWII. Dr. Ericksen retired as Professor of Music at Weber State University. Glenn L. Evans Glenn served in the Army from 1944 to 1946 and attained the rank of staff sergeant. He was part of a two ship convoy to Australia. The sister ship stopped at Perth and Glenn's ship went on to India. The sister ship was eventually sunk. He was put into an MP battalion and after MP school on military law, weapons and protocol, he spent the remainder of his CBI time (China-Burma-India Theater) in that area which he says provided a few 'hairy' experiences! Jim Favero We left the Unites States in April and landed in Oran, Africa, on May 11, 1943. The Germans kept bombing the Oran docks every day. So when we landed about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, they got us off the ships as fast as they could. They had trucks there that took us seven miles north of Oran. We worked our way up to Algiers, then up towards Tunis. The war was winding down in Africa with some 250,000 Germans and Italians surrendering in Tunisia in May 1943. The focus then shifted northward to Sicily and Italy. Sicily was invaded in July 1943 and Italy jn September 1943. After we got past Algiers, the war ended over there and they took us back to St. Cloud. That's when the 5th Army was activated, with Lieutenant General Mark Clark as commander. All of this is still in Africa. I spent four months in Africa and 28 months in Italy. Twenty six months of that time was actual combat with the 169th Combat Engineers We left Africa the first week in September 1943 on an English troop ship. A few days later, we were among several hundred ships of all kinds in the bay of Salerno beachhead, waiting for our turn to go in. I can't describe the feeling I had when I went over the side of the ship and down the rope ladder onto the big landing craft which was pushing bodies aside all the way to shore. When the first hit the shore, the big end gate went down and we rushed into water up to our armpits with combat packs on our backs and our rifles above our heads. We landed in Italy at Salerno and at the same time, there was a landing at Paestum. Those were the first allied landings in Europe. We worked our way all the way up the country of Italy. Italy surrendered in May 1943, but the Germans quickly assumed defense of the country and we were fighting Germans. Italy looked like smooth sailing for an invasion, but a topographical map showed alternating ridges and rivers the length of the country. This made it difficult for invaders to displace defenders (Germans) who were heavily entrenched on the ridges. As soon as we'd settle down in one place, the Italian women would gather up our clothes and wash them and return them to us. It was our job to pick up mines, both personnel and anti-tank, build bridges and roads, put cribbing around mountains that had been bombed. We had to build roads big enough for tanks. We built bailey bridges over every river we came to while moving up the coast. We bridged the Garigliano River on the old Appian Way. We moved at night and set up our base camp in an olive orchard about a mile from the bridge site. All night German artillery was coming in, clipping olive tree branches down on us. We were at the site three weeks and it rained almost every day. Our people worked around the clock and it was my job to feed all 88 these guys. The Germans would bomb and strafe every night. The bridge was blown up three times before it was finally finished. One day about two o'clock in the afternoon, they hit the kitchen. We had the stoves lined up and I was standing at the center stove. One line of strafing went through the stove to the side of me like a big sewing machine. A few hours after we moved out of the area, the Germans bombed the whole area, hitting the very spot where the kitchen had been. Both sides were bogged down for two or three months in the winter of 1943-1944. The Italian children would come and gather up our fruit cans and stand in line when we had chow. They had their spoons and the guys would dish out of their mess kits to feed the kids. We were in Bologna. Cassino was a major battle. They bombed it for almost a month before we went in. Monte Cassino was a ridgetop monastery they bombed to the ground. It was a very old historic structure. In the spring of 1945, just before the final push, the German lines were just three miles over the mountain. One afternoon after the snow had melted, two of us made our way up the mountain so we could watch our planes at work. There, where the snow had melted, we counted 13 dead Germans, all naked, stripped of dog tags. In any combat zone, as soon as a soldier was killed, the people would get to them and strip them. I stood there and thought gosh, these guys look just like us, blond, brunette, redhead. I thought these guys are someone's son, brother, husband, and father. It was awakening to me to see, because their loved ones would never know where they were or what happened to them. When the ceasefire was made, they regrouped us and re-outfitted us. We were then loaded on the USS General Stuart and we were on our way to the Pacific in a convoy of over 100 ships. We were waiting our turn to go through the Panama Canal when they dropped the first atomic bomb. Two days later, they dropped the second bomb. A few days after that, they shipped us back to New York for a recuperation period. From New York, they sent me home for 30 days, and then gave me the option (which I took) of leaving the service at Fort Douglas in Salt Lake City rather than returning to North Carolina to end my military career. Carl Victor Fernelius Carl served in the Army from 1943 to 1946 earning the rank of sergeant. He was inducted at Fort Douglas in June 1943. When he was shipped out of Fort Douglas, he got on the train and read his orders. He was ordered to serve in Ogden, Utah, and was assigned as a military police stationed at the Ogden Prisoner of War Camp guarding Italian prisoners of war. It took Carl 28 years to graduate from Weber, and in 1969 he graduated along with his daughter. James Roy Fernelius James Fernelius, an army specialist four during WWII, received a Bronze Star. He was in the 115th Medical Division from 1941-1942 and in the 87th Mountain Infantry Regiment, which was involved in Aleutian Islands, North Apennines and the Po Valley campaigns from 1942-1945. He served five months in the Aleutian Islands and seven months in Italy at the end of the war. Wayne L. Flandro Wayne was drafted into the Army Ordnance Division in July, 1942. He was sent to Aberdeen, Maryland, for basic training. While there, he was transferred to the Medical Corps. He was then transferred to the Infantry 38th Division and was sent to the Philippines spending time in Manila, Luzon, and New Guinea. He was sent to the Peninsula of Bataan where he was in charge of the military morgue, where every dead body had to be identified either by fingerprints, dental charts, or whatever way they could. At times, he had to go out in the fields or foxholes and bring the bodies into the morgue to identify them. He remained in this job until the war was over. He returned home in November 1945. 89 |