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Company Recon 819th Tank Destroyer Battalion |
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In Hood we did the basic training, as Reconnaissance Co, and Clay Crisp was our drill sergeant till he was busted. I think Sgt. Booker took over, I had a Sgt Spivey as platoon Sgt. and he was with me until Hawaii. I don't what happen to him or where he went, but George Fuersteinburg said he left us because of sickness in Hawaii.
Ibis we were the outpost for indirect firing, and reporting of enemy movements, I was a jeep driver for a Sgt. I think it was Sgr Spivey. Cpl. Bodine and he was the Machine gunner or it may have been Clay Crisp, I'm not sure. While on maneuvers we got separated from the Btn. for three days, and came into the town of Needles, I thind it was! Somehow we learned where the Btn. was and joined them.
Then we were shipped to Hawaii, when we landed we were sent to the outpost in Kealakakua, Kona, Hawaii. There for nine months except for a week when I went to Schofield Barracks, Oahu Island auto mechanic school. Then for one of the famous twenty five mile marchs and back on outpost duty again.
On the island of Peleliu, we were sent on guard duty at the air strip and the supply depot and unloaded the supplies as they came in from the ships. We heard all kinds of stories about what was going on around us, but I never saw anything exciting that I remember. And I don't remember any of those great meals I read about in the history of the 819th, also the letters written by Will Daly. I don't remember sleeping in anything but tents from the time we were given our supplies at Hood till I was discharged at Fort Mead, MD., December 1945.
I still would not chang the experience of those years for anything I might have learned, had I not been there.
Prepared 8-8-99 by Wilmer Stitt Former member Recon Co. 819th TDBN.
