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ANY OTHER INFORMATION:
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Ben entered the Army at Fort Dix, NJ in 1942. Having been assigned to the 608th
Tank Destroyer Battalion, he was sent to Fort Hood, TX where they learned about the equipment; half-tracks, 75 mm cannons, 30 and 50 caliber machine guns, 30 caliber rifles and bazookas.
That training stopped suddenly when he was
sent across the camp to the Engineering companies. After an interview with a Captain and Lieutenant, he was informed he was being transferred to the 474th Heavy Maintenance Company and they would be heading overseas in five days. Ben was an electrician by trade and that's what they wanted. "Happy Day!!" NOT!!
Two weeks later, after a "long" train ride, he arrived at Camp
Anza, Riverside. CA. Three weeks after intensive physical training and MANY needles in the arms, they, 8,800 of them, were loaded on the troop ship U.S.S. Hermitage.
They left Wilmington, CA on a trip that took 64 days. They
stopped at Wellington, New Zealand, Melbourne, Australia and Bombay, India. During the whole 64 day trip the ships were constantly zig-zagging to prevent attack by Japanese submarines.
Two thousand of them then boarded the English troop ship "City of Canterbury" and they traveled up the Persian Gulf
to Kharrmshira, Iran.
For the next three years they installed and maintained
power plants and transmission lines from the Persian Gulf north to Russia, east to Afghanistan, south through Saudi Arabia into Iraq. They also maintained the U.S. Airbases for the U.S. Army/Air Force from North Africa to the China, Burma, India Theater.
The reason they were there in that part of the world was
to take supplies for the Russian Army and Air Force as well as for home front manufacturing. The original supply line to Meurmansk, Russia had been shut down by the German submarines. Sent were U.S. Army tanks, trucks, airplanes (P-47's and P-38's) and ammunition, etc.
While in Iran, there were about 100 Polish women living in the barracks next to them. The soldiers were allowed to
talk to them on a very limited basis. Since their English was limited, it helped to be Polish, of which there were several in the company. The women had been taken from Poland to Siberia by the Russian Army. The Russians decided, for whatever reason, they were no longer wanted. The U.S. Army took them and they ended up there in Iran. At the war's end the women were sent to South America. Some of them eventually ended up in the U.S. We know of one in Florida and another in Arizona. The son of the woman in Arizona has contacted Ben several times looking for as much information as he can find about this group of women. He also wrote a book about the ship Ben was on - the U.S.S. Hermitage.
Ben returned home on the Navy troop ship "General McCrae." They traveled through the Persian Gulf to Karachi,
Pakistan. There they were paid - with American Silver Dollars!. They then went through the Suez Canal, the Mediterranean
Sea to the Rock of Gibraltar. Due to a really bad storm in the Atlantic Ocean, a trip that should have taken 5 days, took 30.
He
was discharged January 1946 from Fort Mammouth, New Jersey.
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