Memories of a 100-Year Old Army Veteran
By Elmer Alexanderson
In March of 1 943, I was drafted into the U.S. Army and sent to Camp Roberts in Central California for basic training. I went as part of a small group gathered from the Norway, Michigan, area.
The trip to California was a long one. When the train made the first stop, we asked how long the stopover would be, and ran across the street for a quick beer if there were a bar nearby. By the time we reached Chicago, many of the riders were tipsy. The trip from Chicago took us through Texas, New Mexico, and on to Camp Roberts in California.
When groups of recruits were being assembled for various assignments in different areas, I was to be put into a small group of big-city guys that did not suit me as battle mates, so I made sure to act like I was not suitable for whatever the group was destined to do.
I had experience driving a truck, and noted that fact on some of my paperwork. That is probably why I was then selected for The 836th Engineering Aviation Battalion. Part of our job was to be construction work making airfields in the Pacific Ocean. My group departed from San Francisco, out under the Golden Gate Bridge in summer of 1943, on the ship USAT Fred C. Ainsworth.
Along our way across the Pacific Ocean, we stopped in Townsville, Australia, on the north-eastern coast of Queensland. We were allowed to get off the ship for some exercise on land. During the stop, volunteers were picked to move potatoes and other supplies to the ship. Because I had indicated my experience as a truck driver, I assumed my job would be driving a truck load of potatoes, but that would not be the case at all. We were assigned to push wheelbarrows of potatoes.
The group of us potato haulers stopped a couple of times for a break at a pub. After our last trip, seven of us stayed in the pub a bit too long drinking our beer. When we got to where we were to re-board, the ship was anchored two miles out. A shore-patrol brought us out to the Ainsworth in a row boat. To get on board, we had to climb a rope ladder up the side of the ship.
()ur tardiness was not to go unpunished: We were given the task of peeling some of the very potatoes we had been transporting. Some of the soldiers in our tardy group had never peeled a potato in their lives, and had to be trained.
My next stop was New Guinea, an island north of Australia. It is not far from Guadalcanal, where the famous battle had taken place. There was still some fighting going on there when we were there.
In New Guinea, we were assigned to build airfields. ()ur travels making airfields took us to many places.
Some of the places were in New Guinea, The Admiralty Islands. Netherlands East Indies, and the
Philippine Islands. One of the airfields we built was called the best airfield in the Pacific; it was in Nadzab, New Guinea. I spent from August 1943 to December 1944 in New Guinea and nearby before moving on to the Philippine Islands.
When building airfields, we were often under attack from Japanese bombers. As I had very good hearing, I could hear the planes coming in when they were still a long way off.
Our airbases had P 38 fighter planes. There was a tradition of notifying the ground crew about the success of the incoming fighter. On their approach, the P38s would do 360-degree roll overs . . . one for each enemy plane the fighter had defeated. The ground crew had jeeps. When the fighter was on the ground, the driver would drive the jeep out to the plane and lead it back to the appropriate hangar.
I was on the landing field in a truck when a Japanese Zero attacked. I was by a gravel pile, jumped out of the truck, and hid under the truck. The Zero pilot aimed at the truck, hit it twice, but the truck was not disabled. One shot hit a wheel, went through the steel rim, and into one of the other wheels. The other shot hit another wheel. The Zero turned and made another pass at the airfield but, it was shot down by our anti-aircraft guns.
There were mahogany trees in our area. The lumber from them made good floors in the tents. Rain was heavy in those jungle areas, and the mahogany floors were a relief from the mud that would otherwise be the floor of the tents. One of our soldiers in our group was a blacksmith from Ontonagon, Michigan. He built a sawmill to saw the logs into lumber right there on the base. The trees were more than two feet in diameter; we cut them down with a two-person power saw.
The blade for the sawmill had to be shipped in from Australia. I had experience working in a sawmill so I helped him run the saw mill. There were tracks around the airfield with carts to transport supplies around the field. We used one of the carts to make the sawmill carriage that would run the log over the sawmill blade. My job at the mill was to ride the carriage and reposition the log for the next cut.
Moving from one work site to the next was usually by LSTs (landing ship tank). For safety, we tried to sneak in under the cover of darkness. The LSTs carried our work group and equipment we needed to build air strips. There always seemed to be a group of fish swimming in front of our craft. In addition to our troops, the LSTs carried such equipment such as bulldozers, graders, blacktopping machines, and equipment for packing down the airstrips. We always had to be on guard for enemy attacks.
Our trips varied from 100 to 500 miles from island to island. We used enough LSTs to move the entire troop and equipment. Sometimes it took eight LSTs. We took our tents, of course, but we had to leave our wooden flooring behind.
We had no more sawmills. The new islands had mostly coconut trees. We did have to cut down a lot of coconut trees. On Los Negros, we built right where a coconut grove had been. The ground itself was solid coral in many places. Pilots liked airstrips build on coral, because the coral was solid and nice to land on.
Naturally, we ate a lot of coconuts and drank coconut milk. The milk was a strong laxative, and Mother Nature made us make frequent trips to the out houses.
()n one island, the Navy Seabees were building an airport on another part of the island. They liked our blacktop and wanted to use our trucks to spread rocks, but we sent crews with the trucks to help the Seabees. Several of my crew and I even got a commendation letter from the Seabees.
When one of our B24 bombers was taking off, the engines on the left wing exploded into flame. The bomber tipped at an angle and landed in a bivouac area. Within seconds, the bombs and ammunition on the aircraft exploded from the heat of the burning engines. We rushed in trucks to the bivouac tents to rescue the soldiers who were there when the plane came down.
Often we just made airstrips for fighters that escorted bombers. The fighters had to keep up with bombers. My group would "hop scotch" over islands to make strips so fighters could keep up with bombers.
In January of 1945, we hit the Philippines for the first time.
Our job in the Philippines was to repair damaged airfields, such tasks at re-filling bomb craters and pouring cement to repair the concrete runways. The air bases we worked at were Nichols Field and Clark Field.
The invasion of the Philippines was still underway when we arrived there by LST. We landed our LSTs about 100 miles from Manila on January 9, 1945, in Lingayen Gulf.
Moving from there to Manila involved crossing several rivers. We crossed the rivers on metal pontoon bridges. Later, our job was to replace some of the bombed-out bridges. The replacements were all-metal construction and came in sections. We would roll out each section one at a time on rollers.
There were some benefits to being there. We were able to trade sugar that we took from the mess with residents who would make us coconut candy. I also traded three 6-pound cans of Spam for a truck load of watermelons that a farmer had in his field. Again, the Spam had to be rather secretly taken from the mess.
Among the factors that were not benefits was snakes. The area had snakes up to 30 feet long. Waking up after my first night staying in a tent, I saw an 8-foot python at the bottom of my bed.
While I was at Clark Field, the Enola Gay carrying an atomic bomb came back to Clark because the weather in Japan had prevented the airplane from completing its bombing run.
Shortly after the dropping of the atomic bombs and after V -J Day, General MacArthur and other army leaders were to meet with some of the Japanese military leaders to discuss a surrender. Several airplanes landed at Nichols Field for the conference. While I was pouring cement for the runways, a two-star American general told me to move some equipment so his aircraft could be parked. I told him it was not possible to park his airplane where he wanted because the cement had just been recently poured and was still wet. He accused me of "Refusing to take orders." I told him that I could not obey his order because I was under orders from Colonel Smith, and the general would have to go through the colonel to get the order lifted.
The general left, very disappointed. He was going to have me court-martialed for "Refusing an order." I didn't receive any punishment or line. I was making only per month so they could hardly take any money from me.
One of our tasks was to haul soil to fill bomb craters on the air field. Once the soil was added, it had to be packed down tightly so it would not settle after the concrete was poured over it. We hired crews of 12 or 15 Philippine citizens to help with this chore. They used gas-operated vibrators to pack in the soil. They were paid for their work but had to bring their own lunches. Some of them had canteens fijr water.
The ones who did not have container to bring water, brought vegetables called sinkamas in the Philippine language. Sinkamas vegetables looked much like our kohl rabi. They were rich with water, and eating them provided the needed hydration the workers.
In Manila, our jobs became repairing bomb damage and cleaning up debris. Damage had been caused by Japanese bombs and by ours during our invasion. On Basalt Street, we worked in a hotel to get it in shape because General MacArthur was to stay there. An amazing sight was when we drove by a walled city; the walls were 8 to 1 0-feet thick. They had been built by the Philippine people for protection in other, previous wars.
After the war, our next assignment was in Japan. We were to be there as part of the occupying forces, to repair damage from our bombs, and to make air bases safe for out planes to use.
On our way to Japan, our ship got tangled up with a Pacific hurricane. We were hit with waves 30 to 40 feet high. As the ship bobbed up and down, the propeller would sometimes be out of water. When the propeller was out of water, the entire ship shuddered. It was a rough ride.
When we reached our destination Japanese island, we learned that our equipment was too large to fit in the railroad tunnels that we would need to take to get to our destination. We had to take the ship around to the other side of the island. There, we would unload our equipment at a small air base.
We had won the war, but were taking no chances, so we disabled any Japanese aircraft that was on the base. We took precautions such as removing one wheel, removing one propeller, draining all the fuel, or even just deflating the tires.
Most of my time in Japan was spent at an airbase. Our lodging near the airbase was an old hotel. There were no beds, but we were provided mattresses to lay on the floor. During my first night in the hotel, I began feeling itching and began scratching. Soon others in the room were doing the same thing. We soon learned that the mattresses were infested with lice. We hauled the mattresses outside and set them on fire to get rid of the lice. The Japanese man managing the hotel was not happy with us.
There were no showers or bathtubs in the hotels. Our cleaning opportunity was using a swimming pool. There were geisha girls available who would wash our backs for us.
While in Japan, I was carrying a wallet I had found on an empty battlefield when we had been on Wakde Island. It contained some Japanese currency and the former owner's identification paper. In Japan, I used the currency to get a haircut. I gave the wallet to the barber. He looked at the identification paper and told us that the address was not f'ar from the barber shop. I let him keep the wallet, hoping he would return it to the family of the soldier.
An interesting note to my time on Wakde Island was that the Japanese soldiers who had been there were all members of an elite group called The Japanese Imperial Marines. The word was that in order to be a member of that troop a soldier must be at least six fi2et tall.
While in Japan, we were able to do some touring. We were able to visit Hiroshima, where one of the atomic bombs had been dropped. The entire city had been flattened; it was awful. We didn't stay long because there was still a danger of radiation.
I wasn't in Japan tor very long, just a 	weeks.
I had entered the service as a "buck private." I never really progressed beyond that rank because I was too honest and too open in voicing my opinions. I was once promoted to Private First Class, but that didn't last . . . my open opinions got me busted back to buck private. ()ne time, I met a fulow I had known before joining the army. I was visiting with him, and a sergeant scolded me just to show his authority. Maybe that is part of what prompted me to voice my opinions so often.
My ocean voyage home from the Pacific brought me to Washington State. When we stepped off the ship, we were recruited to help with a celebration for General Wainwright. Wainwright had surrendered at Corregidor and had been in the Bataan Death March. He spent three years in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps. We were put in a parade for the celebration and were given all the doughnuts and milk as we wanted. After all that milk, we all had to go to the bathroom, but there were none in the area. So, we found a billboard and established our own rest room behind it.
From there was by train to Camp McCoy, Wisconsin, for discharge. It always seemed to be cold on the train. We would have to huddle in small groups around the train car heater.
From Camp McCoy, it was another train trip north back to Norway, Michigan.
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