One Man’s World War II Journal
By Thomas J. Fahey
Our graduation ceremony at Milton High School in June, 1943 was held up for two hours, as about 50 of the grads were getting their draft board physicals in Boston.Two days later, they were in the service. At the induction center, three of the men were recruited into the Navy and were sent to Harvard for the V-12 program. Not a bad deal. They wound up as officers on destroyers and later would come back to Harvard to graduate. But some of the graduates didn’t come back; two of them were guys from our gang.
I would be turning 18 in October, so I had time to choose a service branch. I had a job for the summer at the Cunningham Park Pool in Milton as a lifeguard, while also teaching senior and junior lifesaving courses.
Our family had more Navy than anything else; my father and three of his brothers were chiefs in the Navy in World War I and my uncle was a master sergeant in the Marines. Three of them were lifers.
I wanted to be a flyer in the Navy Air Corps; the recruiting station was at 150 Causeway St. in Boston, next to the Boston Garden, and in I went. I was worried about some of the bad marks I had in high school, but I figured they’d give me a test. The ensign said to come back with a
transcript of my marks.
The next day I brought that in and he was very unimpressed. He said they must have pushed me out the door of Milton High. He told me I should go to the Army Air Corps recruiting station at 33 Kilby St. in Boston; they would taker anybody.
The recruiting sergeant there said to take a seat and when about 10 guys showed up, he would give a test. After we turned in the tests, the sergeant went into a back room to score them. A few minutes later, he came out and said everyone had passed; I think he dumped them into a waste basket.
We had our physicals and were sworn in a few days later. After turning 18 in October, I got word to report to Fort Devens in Ayer on Dec. 13, 1943. It was cold, about zero when we arrived. We were there about six days, getting shots, uniforms, and watching Mickey Mouse films.
A troop train came in and took us on a 5-day train ride to Miami Beach with XYZ priority; that meant whatever track we were on, we had the lowest priority. No wonder it took five days. As we got off the train, hundreds of guys were getting on, yelling “You’ll be sorry.” They were being sent to the infantry, as all the tech schools were filled up.
We lived in the Betsy Ross Hotel on South Beach and went to training at the local golf courses, which were turned into training centers. The same thing was done in Atlantic City, and Biloxi, Miss. The flight was half from Fort Devens, and half from Fort Jackson, South Carolina.
The first three days were precarious as the Civil War nearly erupted again. A quarry worker from Quincy saved the day when he picked up the biggest Rebel with one hand; that ended the war.
The cafeteria was turned into a clinic. We all lined up for shots, hundreds of soldiers. After getting our shots, we soldiers walked out into the parking lot three abreast, Ollie Johnson on one side and me on the other, and in the middle was Walter O’Connell of North Reading, about 6-5.
He would let out a piercing scream and faint, falling backwards. Ollie and I would catch him before he hit the ground.
About 50 soldiers in the long lines were fainting dead away; ambulances started arriving to tend to the faint of heart.
The flight sergeant, a New Yorker, came running down the street, screaming "You guys from Boston are going to get me court-martialed yet."
We went on night and day maneuvers up by Opa Laoka. The sergeant sent us out on patrol on all dirt roads at 11 at night, Naturally, we got lost, but somehow we found a roadhouse out in the boondocks, in an area that was all jungle at the time.
We were in the back yard when a bartender came out with the trash. He asked all four of us if we wanted a cold beer.
It was very hot and muggy, so we downed a few beers and finally found the sergeant. The first thing he said was “I smell beer. Where did you guys from Boston find a barroom in the middle of the jungle?”
The road house was in -- believe it or not -- Robert Ripley. It was completely covered with bottle caps on the walls and ceiling.
We enjoyed a swim every day after training as the ocean was across the street. We had many days of tests called the "stay nines"; they determined whether you would be a pilot, navigator or bombardier cadet. If you didn’t score high enough on those, there were tech schools -- engineer, radio or armorer gunner.
The interviewer told me the cadet groups were full but some guys with exceptional scores would be sent to college until there were openings. The tech schools were full up and not available. He thought we would be sent to aerial gunnery school, which is what happened, We were put on a troop train to Kingman, Ariz.
It was a very slow and beautiful trip -- the cars were troop sleepers, very comfortable. The trip took eight days. We stopped in Houston, Texas at 8 a.m. Some cars were detached as the guys were going to gunnery school in Laredo, Texas. We were supposed to be in Houston for six hours.
The sergeant said that under no circumstances were we to leave the train. When he was out of sight, the windows went up and about 600 guys were loose. It took about two weeks to round them up. I’ve never seen as many beautiful women as there were in Houston. All I remember is getting rousted out of a barroom about midnight.
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