4. Louisiana - The swamps

  Louisiana Maneuvers
March 1944 - October 1944

We learned on the way to Louisiana that the 8^th Armored was a training division whose job was to train replacements for other armored divisions. It had been activated at Ft. Knox in 1942 and shipped to Camp Polk, LA, in March 1943 to conduct training activities.

When the train arrived in Louisiana, we were met by trucks and taken to the division training area. We went from a nice warm dorm in Detroit to sleeping in a pup tent in the swamps and using slit trenches for bathrooms two days later. Louisiana in the winter is cold too. Shortly before we arrived there had been a big ice storm in the area that disrupted power lines, traffic and in general made a big mess. Some of the men who lived in the area said it was the worst storm they had ever seen there.

8^th Armored Division
Louisiana Maneuvers
March 1944 - May 1944

The division was on maneuvers in the Louisiana swamps and had been there for two or three months before the ASTP men joined up. Assignments were made randomly to all the various units so I had friends in units all over the division. There were about 1,200 ASTP men assigned to the Eighth but only about 400 of them were from the Univ. of Detroit. I was assigned to Company C, 58th Armored Infantry Battalion.

When we arrived at our units we were, of course, subjected to considerable ridicule about being college boys. There were many comments about showing us what the real army was all about. We had been in college classrooms the entire winter and were white as ghosts while the regular 8th Armored men were all tanned from being out on maneuvers for some time. We looked very pale by comparison and it was easy to pick us out in a crowd just by our color.

Armored personnel wore their overseas caps on the left and many of us had trouble adjusting to to this. Mine fell off quite a few times until I got the hang of it. Since I was in the infantry, the piping around the top of our overseas caps was a nice light blue color. Each type of unit - tank, artillery, ordinance, etc. - had their own colored piping so you could tell what kind of unit a person was in from the piping on his overseas cap. We also wore fatigue uniforms for all daily training activities where we had worn dress OD's at the University of Detroit.

The platoon leader of the platoon I was assigned to was a 23 year old Lieutenant by the name of Ralph Elias. He was from Harlan county Kentucky and didn't take any crap from anyone. Harlan County is in the eastern Kentucky coalfields close to the Hatfield-McCoy feud area and is one of the roughest areas in the east. Ten years after the war I worked in this area some for the Columbia Gas System and I later shared an office with a guy from eastern Kentucky who still carried a gun to work.

Lt. Elias had coal black hair, was only about five foot seven or so and he had been a boxer. Of course his nickname was 'Blackie'. Shortly after we arrived, he lined up the platoon and told us he was running things and if anyone doubted it, he would see them later behind the barracks and he said he would not be wearing his bars. There were no takers and there were some pretty good-sized men in my platoon.

While it was definately a shock to go from classrooms in college to swamps in Louisiana but I do not know who was shocked the most - the ASTP men or the other members of the platoon - after a few days. Lt. Elias believed in being in shape and he announced this to us on our first reveille after we arrived and told us to get ready for it.

The next morning he told his platoon that it was about time to get us poor students in shape for the real Army so he started us off before breakfast with a little run to see what we could do. After about two or three miles, the ASTP men were all still with him so he told his men that we would go on running for a while. After a couple of more miles almost all of his old timers had dropped out and the ASTP men were still with him.

After doing this for a couple of more days, he finally apologized to us and admitted that we were in pretty good shape after all. From then on he treated us like everyone else in the platoon (We were as pale as ghosts of course but I think he was shocked to find out we were in much better shape than his men were). He didn't realize until later that we were all in such good shape because of the physical training we had to take to stay in the ASTP program. We had to take one hour a day of supervised physical fitness training, one hour a day of supervised sports, and pass periodic fitness exams just to stay in ASTP. This was much tougher physical training than his men were required to take.

Around the middle of April, most of the original privates and privates first class were shipped overseas as replacements. The non-commissioned officers were not transferred though since they were cadre training the new ASTP men and other replacements. We continued to receive replacements for the men who were shipped out for the next few weeks. It wasn't long until we began to feel like the old timers in the platoon.

We wore green fatigue uniforms most of the time while on maneuvers and training exercises. The 8th Armored Division patch was sewed on our fatigue shirt just above the left pocket instead of on the sleeve as in most other outfits. Fatigue pants were much more comfortable than the other uniforms. They had large pockets and you could carry all kinds of stuff in them. Some of the green fatigue caps, which we wore, looked like baseball caps and were much easier to keep on during training. Even the green ones with a bill all around were comfortable.

Sometime after we arrived we were issued combat boots which had leather high tops attached to the boots. It was a lot easier dressing with the boots than it was when you had to use leggings like we did in basic training. The leggings took forever to lace up so we liked the boots much better. The boots were also made out of rough leather and didn't need polishing which was the best reason for liking them. It was also easier to keep the trouser cuffs in the top of the boots than it was in leggings and easier to fix when they came out which they did very often during infantry training.

There were several different types of half-tracks in an armored division. The one that I was assigned to was a command half-track. It had a high ring mount for a .50 caliber machine on the right side, a roller on the front for rolling over small trees, and was manned by a crew of 10 men consisting of a sergeant, corporal, driver, radio operator, and six riflemen. There was a small rack down each side, supposedly to carry land mines but I don't think anyone ever had the nerve enough to put any there.

The half-track had a door in the back for exit and entry. About the only time we used the door was when we were cleaning and performing maintenance on the half-track. During training, we always got in and went out over the top. It was armored with quarter inch steel and had heavier panels with a slit in them in front which the driver and squad leader could drop down behind as necessary. Some of them had a ring mount going all the way around that had supports for .30 caliber machine guns. My half-track had a ring mount around the front passenger side where we mounted a .50 caliber machine gun

We sat in seats with usually four men to a side and leaned back against the forty-gallon gas tanks behind us on each side. We sat on canvas cushions that had zippers on them. Each of us had one and we could put anything in them to make them softer. It was a good place to store extra underware, socks, etc. and much easier to find them there later. I think there was some storage room under the floor plates also but I can't remember just what we stowed there.

Our training while on maneuvers consisted mostly of unit training - which were squad through company exercises. Occasionally we had a battalion or division exercise but it was mostly small unit training. We had one or two exercises with other divisions but I do not remember which ones they were. We usually didn't have much idea what was going on even though we did receive briefings before each exercise where they told us what we were going to be doing. Most of the exercises lasted two or three days with a day or two off between them for critiques and maintenance functions. We also used the days off to travel to the location of the next field exercise.

We traveled over most of Louisiana from Alexandria to Shreveport and even crossed the Sabine River into East Texas several times. Much of the area that we were in is now underwater as I think they built a dam on the lower Sabine River and flooded much of the maneuver area.

Living in and around a half-track was a new experience for me. We rode around most of the day on training exercises and bivouacked at night. We carried our rifle, clean clothes, mess kits and the like with us. Occasionally we had to dig foxholes for the night, which were a pain in the ass to dig. We usually didn't sleep in them at least until we got overseas where we didn't need any encouragement either to dig them or to sleep in them.

We adjusted to our new conditions rapidly. Sleeping on the ground, in the rain or whatever weather we had didn't seem to bother us too much. I do know how fast we learned to avoid sandy areas for sleeping because they made the worst sites possible because the sand wasn't nearly as soft as you might think. It is interesting how quick you can adapt to living, eating, working and sleeping outside. We were all over southwestern Louisiana and eastern Texas before the maneuvers ended. We usually slept in two man tents, which were fine, unless you happened to set up in a low spot and it rained during the night. Each man carried half of the pup tent and used it to roll his blankets, sleeping bag, and other supplies in while traveling.

We ate a lot of field rations while we were on maneuvers. They were the old style C rations for a while but then we started receiving some of the new K rations. They were great after the C rations. I think the C rations were left over from World War I - they tasted like it. Sometime during this period, the army introduced the new C rations. These were as good if not better than the K rations. Sometimes we would get the new C rations and sometimes the new K ration. There didn't seem to be any reason for changing the type except maybe supply.

The main advantage to the new C rations was that they had a much better variety of meals than the K rations. K rations had the advantage that you got a full meal including cigarettes, toilet paper, candy and other goodies in each box but the varieties of boxes were limited. C rations were packed in cans with the ration in one can and the goodies in a separate can. This gave you more variety but you had to carry more cans. Neither of them were as good as the ten in one rations that had large cans with enough food to feed a 10 man squad. Unfortunatly we didn't get too many of those, at least in the States.

Several things did require a little extra effort to adjust to however. The supply tents for the company mess required special attention each time we moved. Louisiana has a lot of wild pigs around so we had to dig a four or five-foot moat around the spot where the mess supplies were stored. It was really a trench but looked like a moat if it rained much during the night. Then each morning it had to be checked to see if we had captured any pigs during the night. Removing them required a maximum effort as they attacked when mad.

Using slit trenches or straddle trenches for bathrooms required some adjustments also. They were dug all over the place for each unit to use. One of the problems was that at night you had to be careful if you were in another unit's area, or even your own, and didn't know where the slit trench was. One of our men came back one night full of beer and fell in one of them. That was bad enough but the next morning after he had cleaned up he couldn't find his wallet and had to go off and search the latrine for it.

Armadillos were also a small problem. On maneuvers, we slept in two man pup tents and an armadillo roamed into the tent of a friend of mine one night. He came running out tearing out tent, pegs and bedroll while screaming like a banshee and waking everyone in the area. Snakes and ticks were also a problem if you weren't careful. You could avoid the snakes but the ticks would track you down and required considerable effort to remove once they got hold of you.

We had outside washbasins for shaving in the mornings. That was usually no problem for me since I didn't have to shave except once every two or three days. I was still rather young then. I remember the drinking water was purified and stored in large canvas dispensers but I can't remember if that is the water we used for washing and shaving in the mornings.

Maneuvers ended around the first week of April. However we could not return to Camp Polk yet as another division - the 9^th Armored - was still there in the area we were to occupy so we went into bivouac. The last week in April we were finally cleared to return to South Camp Polk and we were glad to have a bed to sleep in again and a roof over our heads. The 9^th Armored Division shipped out in April so we moved into the barracks they had left. It was sure an improvement over the swamps.