Military Training & Experience
Kentucky Military Institute, Lyndon, KY – 3 Years of Jr. ROTC

I took basic training at Ft. Benning, GA and entered the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP) to become an officer in the engineers. I was trained in infantry weapons, the Ml rifle, air cooled machinegun, bayonet, grenades, 60mm mortars, stringing barbed wire, sapper training, scouting and patrolling. The ASTP program was closed because the losses in the Pacific and in Italy dictated that the Army would reach for every man, jack and dog, including me.

I was sent to Camp Livingston, LA and was assigned to "A" Company of 343rd Infantry Regiment of the 86th Infantry Division where I became a member of the second squad of the first platoon. I served as rifleman, scout, was trained as sniper with the .30 Cal, 1903 Springfield, became a rifle grenadier and got knocked from the standing position to flat of my can on the first grenade I shot. I became an alternate in Headquarter Platoon as a jeep driver, a license that may have saved my life about 7 months later. While in the 86th there was much fieldwork, night exercise and long toughening and confidence building marches. I became an authority in Mud and Dust. I got on a pool of replacements list going to Europe in August 1944. During the time I was in the 86th I got the only furlough, 7 days, plus 4 days travel time that I got during 2-1/2 years in the Army.

A long tiresome train ride took me to Ft. Meade, Maryland for a few days then to Camp Shanks on the Hudson River just up from NYC. I left for Europe on the Cunard Liner Mauritania with 8000 officers and enlisted men. We landed in Liverpool in the blackest of night, thence across England to Tidworth Barracks. I declined the opportunity to jump by parachute into battle to help rescue the ill-fated Market-Garden operation.

About 700 officers and enlisted men boarded a stinking ship, the City of Canterbury, with a Hindu crew at Portsmouth, England for a stormy 5-day crossing of the English Channel. I landed at Omaha Beach at a time that the fighting was at Metz and in the vicinity of the Hurtgen Forest. I was processed through the 79th Replacement Regiment in a bivouac about 2 miles north of Bastogne (before the battle).

At the end of October 1944 I was assigned to the 52nd Armored Infantry Battalion, 9th Armored Division. I was then reassigned to Trains Headquarters Company to be a truck driver. It seems that the good brethren had stolen about 60 2-1/2-ton trucks in England. The division band and MP Platoon drove the trucks to Luxembourg, but now it was time to find regular drivers. My jeep drivers license and the notation on my service record that I had driven a farm truck qualified me as an army truck driver. It lasted about one day and I was then assigned to the Reconnaissance Platoon of 9th Armored Division Trains. It became a place where I had a ringside seat to a war. My work consisted of being a machine gunner in a jeep crew of three that took us where ever we were needed providing liaison with other units in the division, doing patrol work, to the front, to the sides and to the rear. We could see the tracers over head, but seldom down at our jeep level. Night patrols were routine.

When the war was over I was assigned to "A" Company, 26th Infantry Regiment of the 1st Infantry Division. I arrived there in about September 1 of 1945. For about two months I performed security duty at the Sud Kasserene in Nuremberg. There were perhaps 100,000 displace persons in this camp including Poles, Czechs, Ukrainians, Estonians, Lithuanians, all forced laborers of the 3rd Reich. They were fed two meals a day, inevitably soup. This was the only way to equitably disperse the limited amount of fresh vegetables such as cabbage ands carrots with limited amounts of beef among many potatoes. I am sure it got extremely tiresome but it beat starvation.

In the course of time I became as bombed out as the buildings and people about me. I was a shell of a man. Complete in appearance on the outside, but nothing inside, totally hollow - empty, hope had flown. I was a psychological nothing. I jumped at the opportunity to start playing football with the 26th Infantry Regiment. I played in the first game of the season in the gigantic stadium that Hitler had built for his Nuremberg rallies.

In approximately mid October, I was assigned, along with the rest of the 1st Platoon of "A" Company to vehicular traffic control around the courthouse where the war crime trials took place. The 2nd Platoon had duty in the cellblocks keeping watch on the Nazis to keep them from committing suicide. The 3rd and 4th Platoons continued at the Sud Kasserine displace persons camp.

In early January I got a pass to go skiing at Garmish Partenkirken and for a week it was an exhilarating experience. It was a beautiful resort hotel on the Eibsee with view of the Alps. The total experience brought me back to life.

In early February 1946 I was transferred to the 102nd Infantry Division to head for home. It was cold as Billy Blue Blazes. The trip to Camp Phillip Morris at Cherbourg took about four or five days. The accommodations consisted of a famous 40 or 8 boxcar (forty men or eight horses). Fortunately, the Quartermaster Corps outfitted the cars with crude bunks for about 20 men with a little stove in the middle on a box of sand. We had the comfort to a convenience bucket that got emptied out the door of the car directly onto the tracks as we went along.

Camp Phillip Morris, one of three transients camps, initially for in bound troops, served as the staging area on the English Channel for men headed for home. The wind off the Channel, although only about 30 to 35 degrees at maybe 15 mph really cut through a man. I got a sinus infection and was miserable. To survive, I adopted a policy "just live two more weeks" and I would be home. That whole process took about a month, but by promising my self "just live two more weeks" each new day finally, after ten days on the Atlantic, including a horrible storm, we arrive in Brooklyn. When I got to the pier in Brooklyn, I got down and kissed that dirty grimy warehouse floor. A few days later I arrived in Camp Atteberry, Indiana. Many inspections and forms had to be filled out which brought me to midnight of March 21, 1946 and I was a civilian again.

A two-hour Greyhound bus ride put me in the bus station at Louisville. It was now about 2:30 a.m. I knew my mother's telephone number, but it just was not the thing to do to call civilians at such an hour, so I got a hair cut and then walked around the terminal awhile. Then I got a shave, my first ever in a barbershop, and walked around the terminal some more. Then I got my boots shined and walked around the terminal some more. It is now about 5:00 am. There was nothing more to get done. I was stymied. I was afraid to go home.

I had been gone two and a half years. I was not the 19-year-old youth that had departed New Castle, Kentucky in October of 1943. I was a totally different person and I was seized by the fear that I would not be accepted when I got home. I was concerned that I would be rejected and if that were the case the whole experience would have been for naught and I truly would be devastated. Finally, I got up enough courage to take a nickel and placed it into the telephone coin slot and consecutively dialed the number that I knew so very well. The phone rang and in a panic I was tempted to hang up, but then some one answered in very sleepy voice. I almost inaudibly said into the mouthpiece "This is Tommie".

My sister cried, "Where are you?"

"I'm at the bus station."

"What are you doing there, get yourself home!"

I picked up my pack and duffel bag, walked outside and caught a cab. The driver took a direct route and as we drove along a drive that was completely familiar to me I noticed that the maple trees were just putting out the first signs of spring. A good sign - a sign of a new beginning.

In just a little bit we were in front of my mother's home and before I could get out of the cab my sister came flying out of the front door in her nightgown and robe with her arms extended and calling to me. My mother was standing in me doorway.

Suddenly, as changed as I was, I knew I was where I belonged. I was back home.

Thomas R. Chambers
Reconnaissance Platoon
Trains Headquarters Company
9th Armored Division

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