WILLIAM JAMES "BUD" CUMMINS - FROM THE ARTIC TO REMAGEN BRIDGE
Written by George Pettengill. Based upon an interview with William J. (Bud) Cummins – August 1979
CHEROKEE DAILY TIMES, SEPTEMBER 1, 1941 -
“William James Cummins, 21, of 201 West Elm Street (Cherokee)
was the first man to register at the Cherokee Draft pool, as the second
national registration for young men of 21 began. Every young man who
has become 21 since October 16, 1940, must register for possible
military service.” |
Bud
registered for the draft in September of 1941. On December 7 of 1941,
the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and the United States was at war.
Young
Bud Cummins did not wait for the draft, he enlisted in the army on
April 2, 1942. He was sent for induction into the army to Fort Des
Moines at Des Moines, Iowa. There he took his military oath and was
outfitted with a uniform.
In a series of rooms, the men received
their shots and then the pieces of clothing and equipment. As they
moved along, they were told not to hold up the line with complaints;
that if the stuff didn’t fit, adjustments would be made at the last
stop. Finally, the room where adjustments were to be made, was reached.
Nothing seemed to fit. Men complained that their shoes were too big and
were told their feet would spread out from standing and marching. Men
complained that their pants legs were too long and were told that they
would shrink and fit just right. The majority of adjustments that were
made were to the men’s thinking. These early uniforms were of an older
design and included puttees.
From Fort Des Moines, Bud went to
Camp Roberts, California, for basic training and remained there three
months. He described Camp Roberts as though it wasn’t any place – the
closest town was Paso Robles. Here he received infantry training. After
basics, Bud was transferred to a camp in Washington state; where he
received additional training in amphaibious assaults, such as were
being planned in the Pacific. As he says, there was a lot of climbing
up and down rope nets hung over the sides of ships.
In
Washington state, the Outfit was put on board a troop train and shipped
out for an unknown destination. The rail cars were ancient, with square
backed seats, and not very comfortable. A field kitchen was attached to
the train. The cooks would concoct something, and it would be brought
to the cars in garbage cans for serving. The men ate out of their mess
kits, which were then washed out in a can of soapy water and rinsed in
clear water. They were then dried off on a shirt tail or something
handy.
The troop train did not have priority and sometimes sat
on a siding for hours at a time, as ammunition trains were given the
right-of-way.
There was much speculation among the men as to where
they were going. The train moved slowly down through New Mexico and
Arizona. It then went north through Colorado and Montana in a circular
route to their destination, which turned out to be Fort Snelling near
Minneapolis, Minnesota. Here they joined the 73rd Battalion, and the
Outfit was split up for replacements for the regular army units
stationed there. Bud remained at Fort Snelling for two or three weeks
and then again boarded a troop train. This time the destination was
Boston and embarkation for overseas.
The Outfit boarded the
Dorchester, an old cruise ship, which had been converted for war duty
as a troop ship and cargo hauler. About 500 men and supplies were
loaded aboard, and the Dorchester set sail for Greenland. The outbound
voyage took sixty-seven days. The Dorchester was part of a convoy as
far as Newfoundland. When the Dorchester hit the North Atlantic, it was
November and there were North Atlantic storms. The waves were sometimes
twice as high as the ship. Top speed of the ship was six knots. The men
estimated that, in the heavy seas, she may have made as much as two
knots. The Dorchester remained with the convoy from Boston to Fort
Johns, Newfoundland, laid over there until given the go ahead, and went
on alone to Bluey West One, a United States base in Southern Greenland.
After a brief layover there, she proceeded to Bluey West Eight, eighty
miles north of the Arctic Circle in Greenland.
A sister ship of
the Dorchester made the same run on the next trip in December or
January. It was torpedoed by a German U-Boat just out of Greenland, and
most of those aboard were lost. Those below decks were trapped when the
decks buckled; and those in cabin decks were trapped, because the doors
would not open because of damage to the deck. A few went over the side
into the icy waters of the North Atlantic. The very few who made it
through that, were the ones who had donned many extra clothes to
protect them from the low temperatures.
Bluey West Eight was a
United States base located on a fiord eighty miles north of the Arctic
Circle. An airfield was located there and served as a landing and
refueling site on the great circle route between the United States and
England. American planes were ferried along this route to England,
where they were turned over to combat units. Another function of the
base was to prevent the Germans from being there and using the fiords
as bases for their U-Boats, which preyed upon the North Atlantic
convoys.
Greenland is, of course, an island. The fringe of the
island is dented with fiords and is a rocky terrain. Inland, the area
is a cake of ice. The temperature falls very low. Many times, Bud
reported, the temperature fell to 72 degrees below zero. In summer, it
is light almost twenty-four hours a day, and in winter it is dark
almost twenty-four a day. In summer, hordes of mosquitos torment the
inhabitants, and in winter the cold and high winds are a constant
menace. Most supplies reached Bluey West Eight by ship and since the
fiord was frozen over six months of the year, supplies had to be
brought in, in the summer. The wind blew constantly. The barracks,
which had been built by civilian construction workers, were anchored
down with cables over the roof. The latrines were in a separate area.
The high winds would blow the doors off the latrines, which made a
swishing sound, as they blew away. Newcomers would hear this and ask
what it was, and an old hand would calmly remark, “Oh, that was the
door off a john.”
In winter, the motors on vehicles had to be
kept running twenty-four hours a day, or they would stiffen up until
they wouldn’t run. Normal items took on different characteristics in
the intense cold. Regular rubber hoses could not be used on the gas
pumps, from which vehicles were filled; for they would shatter when
bent in the cold.
The mess hall was also built separately from
the barracks and three times a day, no matter what the outside
temperature, the men had to hike a mile or more to the chow h all to
eat. At fifty degrees below zero, fuel oil had to be drained from the
diesel engines and replaced with kerosene, as it became too thick to
flow. At Bluey West Eight the men had one U.S.O. show, which came
during the last part of their tour there. Appearing in the show were
the first women most of the men had seen in two years.
After two
years and seven months at Bluey West Eight, Bud was shipped back to the
states. This time he was flown to Presque Isle, Maine, and then went on
a short furlough. After returning from the furlough, he reported to St.
Louis, then went to San Antonio and then to Paris, Texas – all for more
training. After anther brief furlough, he reported to Fort Meade,
Maryland, and was shipped out on the British troop ship, the
Mauratonia. The Atlantic crossing was more speedy this time, lasting
only four to five days. The Mauratonia safely reached the embarkation
depot at South Hampton. Wile waiting here for orders, the men had only
the old-fashioned C rations, to eat. The cooks, hoping to improve it
mixed it all together and heated it in garbage cans. As Bud says, “It
got worse then, because then it smelled.” Some of the men had slipped
off and gone into South Hampton to get something to eat.
Finally,
Bud could take it no more, and he and two others slipped out and went
to South Hampton for some food. They got something to eat and headed
back, arriving just as the whole company was being called out for roll
call. TO have missed roll call would have been a serious offense,
something akin to desertion.
From South Hampton, they sailed to
France, where they disembarked. The men were then loaded in French box
cars, remnants of World War I, known as Forty and Eights, forty men or
eight hours. There was a door on each side, which provided ventilation
and relief stations when in transit. Occasionally, the train stopped,
and the cooks got out their pots and cooked stew or something to eat.
Then the men were loaded back on the train and continued their journey.
The Outfit rode these box cars, for four days to some place in Belgium.
They then were herded onto trucks and headed into Germany.
The Outfit was used as replacements. Bud found himself assigned to the Transport Command, hauling replacements to the front.
The
German had heavily fortified their frontier with pill boxes, tank
traps, armor and many divisions of troops. The Rhine River was a
natural defense line. The retreating Nazis had blown up all the bridges
across the Rhine to slow up the allied advance. Remarkably, the allies
found one bridge intact across the Rhine at Reagan. This allowed the
allies to get across the Rhine and establish a beach head to defend
their crossing before the Germans destroyed the bridge.
Bud
relates that he was driving a 6 x 6 truck loaded with troops. He was a
part of a big convoy crossing the bridge to reinforce the allied
bridgehead on the east bank of the Rhine. The convoy was miles long,
and the Germans had attempted to blow the bridge and had also shelled
it and attacked it with planes. There were no side rails, and there
were no holes in the floor. The engineers were planking the bridge. The
Germans would blow holes in the bridge and the engineers would replace
the planks. He was talked across the bridge by the engineers, a foot at
a time. A voice in the darkness would say, “turn right,” and the truck
would move ahead about five feet. Then the voice would say, “turn
left.” Carefully, Bud crept across the bridge with his load of troops.
It was daylight when he got across the bridge. He then delivered his
troops. When he got back to the bridge, the Germans had succeeded in
blowing it up; and it had collapsed in the river. The engineers were
building a pontoon bridge across the river. He waited with others and
recrossed the Rhine on the pontoon bridge.
Bud describes his
worst experience as occurring in the Ruhr Pocket. In the Rhur region, a
large German force had been surrounded and bypassed. The allies sent
out constant patrols to maintain surveillance. The patrols were taken
to other assigned areas by jeep, which had to pass through German
lines. No lights were used; and the jeeps were stripped down, including
the removal of the windshields. Three jeeps had gone out. Bud was
driving the third one. His jeep was not working particularly well. The
men had had been delivered, and the jeeps were heading back for
American lines.
Bud kept on the road by following the jeeps
ahead of him. The roads were dusty; and dust got in his eyes, and he
couldn’t see anything. He stopped to clean his eyes; and when he could
see, he discovered he was alone. Somehow, in the dark and the dust, he
had lost the others. There was on one in sight. He decided he had made
a wrong turn and pulled onto a turn-off to turn around. The motor on
the jeep died, and he couldn’t get it started. At that moment, he heard
the distinctive tramp of hobnailed boots coming his way. A squad of
Germans was headed for him. At the last minute, the starter on the jeep
caught, and the motor started. Bud turned around fast and got out of
there, guessing at which way to go. He got back to the American lines,
but not to the night company area. When he finally returned to his own
company after two or three days, he discovered that everyone there
thought he was long gone and the Germans had gotten him.
After
Remagen, he was transferred to the 78th Division, 310 Infantry Regiment
and continued into Germany. Aachen had been bombed repeatedly; and when
Bud passed through it, there was absolutely nothing left but rubble. A
small, unarmed town sticks in his memory. It had been a railway center
and had been bombed. A lot of people had been caught in the bombing and
killed. The odor could be smelled five miles away.
The war had
been brought home to the Germans, and death and destruction abounded.
One memory he relates is seeing an old woman and a kid, who had the
body of a dead German soldier on a coaster wagon and were taking him
down to bury him.
On April 27, 1945, his Outfit arrived at
Ippinghauser, Germany. It was a typical old-fashioned German town. The
barns were connected to the houses, chickens were running in and out.
Farming methods were old-fashioned. Grain was cut with a scythe and
cradle, and everything was equally outmoded.
The war in Europe ended
on May 9th. Bud’s Outfit remained at Ippinghauser until the last week
in September. Then part of the division went to Berlin for occupation
duty, and part returned to the United States. Bud was one of the lucky
ones; he came home. He returned by Liberty ship, crossing the Atlantic
in fourteen days. He then was transported to Fort Sheridan, near
Chicago, IL, and then processed out of the ser vice.
Bud served three years and seven months, a figure he recalls clearly to this day.
(Source:
Cherokee County Historical Society, World War II Special Issue, Vol 14,
Number 7-8-9, July-August-September 1979, Section I)
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