XVI. GOING HOME:
After a few days, we shipped out for England on a Polish ship - Sobeski.
The government had a point system to discharge. So many points for total service time and so many points for overseas time. People with 85 points were to get out first. The most of us at Lucky Strike had much less points.
The government decided it would be better to send us home on furlough for 30 days because we were in the way of the high pointers to get discharged. The only break I got in the service! I only had 57 points.
We unloaded in South Hampton, England and was transported to a camp not too far away. Here we got a 3 day pass and took in the sights in London. We saw Big Ben, West Minister Abbey, Whitehall Theater, Buckingham Palace and other points of interest. When we got back to the outfit, they were getting ready to start home. We went down to South Hampton and got on the Queen Mary. The Queen Elizabeth was docked right beside her. I got to see both Queens.
The trip on the Mary was nice and smooth with no sea sickness and good food.
The night before we were to land the next day, here came Douris and Beaney. Again Douris told Beaney to tell me what he did last night. Beaney said Douris lost all of the$l.700. He hit the States broke, but that didn't worry him.
That night before we were to hit the States, I stayed on lthe rail of the ship all night. Just a little after daylight, we could see New York in a distance. The Statue of Liberty sure was a welcoming sight. Tug boats came to meet us shooting water into the air, blowing the whistle with pretty girls waving at us.
There were l5,000 servicemen on the Mary so it took us all day to unload. Tommy Dorsey and his band played continually all day as we unloaded. I clearly remember Gene Kruppa on the drums. He was really beating it out!
They loaded us on the ferry and boated us across the Hudson River to Camp Kilmer.
We were tired after being up all night before and taking all day to unload.
A local Sgt. had us standing giving all kinds of instructions. I guess I was a little testy by that time, so I yelled out, "Sgt, tell us where to sleep and where to eat and forget all that other crap." I asked him what he was bucking for? He understood and didn't reply to what I said and dismissed us.
As we were dismissed, I heard a commotion in the back rank. When I looked around, Beaney had a guy by the collar and invited him out behind the barracks. And he said that was my buddy you were talking about. I guess when I popped off to the Sgt., the guy said something about me and Beaney was going to whip him, but the guy begged off.
In a few days, they put us on a train headed for Camp Atterbury, just south of Indianapolis. They gave me leave and I got on a bus and headed for home, Shoals.
After being home for 30 days, they dropped the discharge points to 75. So they extended my furlough l5 more days. After l5 additional days, they had dropped the points to 65. I still didn't have enough points to get a discharge so they sent me back to Atterbury. On Halloween night, they put me on a train headed for Camp Breckinridge, Kentucky. It was a sad and dreary trip. I was at Breckinridge one week and they gave me a weekend pass to go home. During the next week, they dropped the points to 55 which was 2 under what I had. So on Saturday of that week, they processed by discharge and I was a free man. They asked me if I wanted to put in for compensation for my wound. I told them no. I wanted to go home.
XVII. TIDBITS:
- One day, while I was in France, I heard a band was playing in a field nearby, so I moseyed down to hear them. It was Shep Fields and the Ripling Rhythm.
- When I was hit in Germany, I wrote to mom and dad as soon as possible to let them know that I wasn't seriously hurt. I wanted to beat the letter from the Army so they wouldn't worry. It turned out that the censors had cut out all the pertinent information.
- On a train going to Czechoslavkia, we pulled into a station one day and a train loaded with displaced persons from the German prison camps pulled in beside us. What a pitiful sight. They were loaded into cattle cars. It looked like their skin was stretched over their bones.
At the same time on this train, when we would stop, the French would want to buy from us anything we had. I sold one guy a carton of cigarettes for $20 and a pair of pants for $l5. That was a lot of money in those days.
- When I was at Camp Polk, La., I asked the cook one day why we didn't have pie. He said the men didn't appreciate them. I said I did very much. The next time I went through the chow line, I noticed they had pie. The cook put a piece on my mess tray. I put a piece of bread on top of the pie and I told him to give me another piece of pie. He looked up and grinned and put another piece of pie on top of the bread that was on the first piece of pie.
The first time I went through the chow line, after I got back to my outfit in Germay from the hospital, the same cook was passing out pie. When he put the pie on my tray, he had his head down. So I put a piece of bread on top of the pie, his head came up immediately and he said, "Hells fire, they told me you had been killed" and then put a piece of pie on top of the bread.
- Don Beaney and I stayed together from the time we met when we were in Cadets at Keesler Field at Biloxi, Mississippi, until we went home on our last furlough. We have stayed in contact ever since. In the spring of l947, he sent round-trip tickets to go to Rochester, New York, on a train to be best man at his wedding. He was a basketball coach at the time in a small town in upstate New York.
Carroll Abel
P.O. Box 4
Shoals, In 47581
812-247-2144
Note: Carroll Abel passed away 26 Feb 05.
He served in Co. 'C', 58th AIB, 4th platoon, 4th squad.
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