World War II Memories of
Wayne Bayles, U.S. Army, Ret.
CO of Co. "L" 359th
Part 5 of 5
I was there at Christmas time in 1959. I wanted a Christmas tree in my place so I started looking around and asked the depot commander “where can I cut me a little Christmas tree?” He said “no, you don’t do that in Turkey. You have to see the Forest Meister.” So I went to see the Forest Meister and told him I wanted to get a tree, a little cedar tree. And what they ended up doing, they wanted to accommodate me but they still couldn’t spare a tree and I understand that now, but they did transplant one in a barrel, a 55 gallon steel drum. They brought that into my apartment, the idea was that I could use it during Christmas but after it was finished it would have to be replanted which makes sense. They thought I was crazy, putting a tree in my house, they just didn’t do that sort of thing. But I remember too making a wreath to hang on the door of my apartment. It was made out of cedar limbs and I would put these little Christmas tree ornaments, little balls about an inch and a half in diameter, silver, red, blue, green, and so forth, I tied them on that and hung it on my door. About two days later, after it had been out, I could hear these little foot steps out in the hallway. I would listen and there would be five or six of them and all of a sudden they would run. I would go out and look and there would be one of those balls missing. An hour or two later they would come back and same thing, there would be another ball missing. They were taking the balls off my ornament one at a time. (laughs) I don’t know why they liked them so much but I kept replacing them until I ran out of them. Then I said doggone, I’ll give them something worth stealing. So I put double bubble chewing gum in their place and they never took one of them. They had no desire for that chewing gum at all. All they wanted was those little ornaments off there.
On January 2, 1940 I enlisted in the Tennessee National Guard. I was only seventeen, I lied about my age, I told them I was eighteen. There were others in there the same way but I got in. I was still a senior in high school, I didn’t graduate from high school until April. I wouldn’t be eighteen until September 4. But toward the latter part of July and the first part of August, we were on a three week maneuver down in Mississippi and Louisiana with the Guard. I would crawl around all those stumps and everything down there in Louisiana with all those snakes and I said “man this Army ain’t no place for me.” So when we got back home, on my birthday September 4, I went down to the Post Office, which is now the United States Court House on Highland Street (Jackson), and was sitting on the steps waiting for the Navy recruiter to come. He came walking by and said “are you waiting for me?” And I said yeah. He said “what do you want?” I said “I want to join the Navy.” He said “you have to be eighteen.” I said “I am.” He said “when were you eighteen?” I said today. He said “come on in!” So I went in and filled out the forms and got to the very last question which read “Have you ever had any prior service in the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, or National Guard?” While we were gone on that three week maneuver they told us that on September 16 the Tennessee National Guard was going to be federalized for one year. I said “not this boy, I don’t want to be crawling around with those snakes anymore, I want to join the Navy.” But I read that question and said “Chief, I’m in the Guards now.” He took my application and tore it up. Prior to that time, if you wanted to join a regular service and you were in the Guard the State would mail you a discharge, no problem. But apparently they had told them not to accept anymore of our people because when we want to go on active duty we want to take as many people that already know how to do right face and left face as we’ve got. And that’s about all we knew, anyway, they wouldn’t let me in the Navy. So on September 16 an order came down to be federalized. We all came down to the Armory, they issued us our uniforms (laughs) that was really something. Part of us had the old army britches laced up the leg like the cavalry wore, with leggings. Prior to that we had had wrap leggings, wool leggings that you wrap around that you saw in WWI. Then they issued us canvas leggings that were used all through WWII, but the ones we got were cavalry leggings and the inside was lined with leather. They were the funniest looking things that you’ve ever seen. Anyway, on the 16th we were federalized and the people that lived in town could go home at night but the ones out of town slept in pup tents around the Armory. The old Armory building used to be where right now the fire training station is. We had been doing that a couple of days, we had been doing close order drill and stuff, and having a few lectures by the company commander, and they needed somebody that knew how to type. I was one of only two guys in the company that knew how to type so they put me in the office filling out forms and all this kind of stuff, which I didn’t want to do but it got me a promotion to PFC before we ever left. We were in home station about a week then we were ordered to Fort Jackson, South Carolina. You should have seen that trip, that unit marching to the railroad station on South Royal to get on the train. (laughs) That was one more sightly mess. We wore the old state trooper type campaign hats, some of us had on wool shirts and khaki pants and it was one big mess. Everybody was carrying their own baggage, a duffel bag full of stuff that we had to carry with us, and we were trying to march because the civilians turned out real good to see their boys leave. The streets were crowded with spectators but it was not a first class parade I can tell you that. We finally got on the train and rode to Fort Jackson, South Carolina. Back in those days though it was called Camp Jackson. The train rolled right on in to the camp area. We unloaded and marched up fairly close, a quarter of a mile I guess, to an area that had been designated for us. There we took bayonets and hand axes, cleaned out the briars and brush and so forth, and pitched pup tents. We were in those pup tents for about a week to ten days I guess and then we were issued what we call pramble tents or squad tents, they were good for about six people. That was a big improvement for us over those pup tents. Those tents were lined up in what we called a company street, about eight tents on each side facing each other. I know I was given a task of putting a drop light, one light bulb, in each tent. I wasn’t an electrician but I knew a little bit about wiring so I ran the main lines down on top of the tents and then dropped a cord into each tent with one sixty-watt bulb on it. We thought we were really living when we had lights and didn’t have to use candles or flashlights. Each company had their own latrine, which was a shower and toilet facility. Across a short way we had a mess hail, a kitchen and dining hail, but we didn’t have any tables in the dining hall when we first got there. I can remember they were made out of green pine just covered with one layer of roofing paper, but we thought that was really living. We would sit on the floor and eat. Eventually they did get tables in there to sit down on and benches. I remember very well Thanksgiving of 1940. The mess sergeant, he was a good one, we called him Frog Parish, he could really fix up a good meal. He had been a mess manager for a circus at one time so he knew how to feed alot of people and did it real well. Since we didn’t have very many facilities, when we went through the line he gave each one of us a paper bag. In that paper bag there was two apples, two oranges, two cigars, and two packs of cigarettes. Well, that doesn’t mean too much to anyone now but back in those days we were making twenty one dollars a month, privates were, I was making a little bit more because I was promoted to PFC. I made thirty nine dollars a month, I was really living. But packs of cigarettes free for those who smoked was a big help. Well right away, people who knew that I didn’t smoke so they started hitting me up for my tobacco and I gave the two cigars away and I gave one pack of the cigarettes away but I kept one and I said “no, I’m going to smoke these myself.” That was one of the biggest mistakes that I ever made because I began to smoke. That was in 1940 and I smoked until January 1962. I know for a fact, that if any of my kids would hear this, that smoking is bad for you. Stop it while you can.
About four months later they built, I don’t know what you would call them but these pramble tents that held six people, they built a wooden frame with a wooden floor and about three feet of screen all the way around so that you could roll the sides of the tents up and have the air circulating. They were really nice, you could stand up in them a little better because they were a little taller than a regular tent. In the center of that they qave us a Sibley stove, I think that is the right word for it, it looked like a big funri-H turned upside down. It had a little door on it, a grate, and a pipe that went out through the top of the tent. It got cold in South Carolina, especially at night, and the fuel that we used was fresh cut pine. (lauqhs) These little pine logs we would cut, bring in, and until everybody went to bed we kept the fire going. But invariably, you know pine sparks alot when it is burning, somebody would have to get out of bed and go up and put the tent out . Because of these sparks flying all over the company area, somebody’s tent almost every night would catch on fire. It was a mess.
In December of 1943 I went. into pilot training in the Army Air Corps as a student officer, a 2nd Lieutenant. We had ground school at Montgomery, Alabama. You learn the basic things: aircraft identification, some weather training, I believe we started our international Morse code training there, and just the administrative things, no flying at all. In the middle of January they wouldn’t let me go home when my son was born in Jackson, Tennessee on January 11. They wouldn't let me go home because they were expecting orders on me, and they did. They came out that day and I was transferred to Lakeland, Florida to the Lodwig School of Aeronautics for primary pilot training. My wife and son came down to see me when he was six weeks old, so he was that old before I got to see him. We lived with a very nice family there in Lakeland and I would get to go in about two nights a week. The rest of the time I was confined to the post. We were flying PT 17’s which was a Steerman. Everybody knows that good old airplane, they made a lot of crop dusters out of them and stunt flying after the war was over. I learned how to fly them there but the thing that I remember the most was we would take off from the main field, fly out to some auxiliary fields. Then the instructors would let us fly solo out trom that field for a while until we got a little proficient. On my second solo I was coming in for a landing and there was a little crosswind. Of course I had to crab into the wind but what you’re supposed to do is, just before your wheels touch the ground, you straighten the plane up so the plane is going straight instead of crabbing. I didn’t and I did what we called a ground loop. The plane went round and round, one wing fell down and dragged on the ground as we went around. The instructor came over and we checked it over. He felt it was still safe enough for us to fly back so he flew back to the main field. I had to meet the accident board and they asked me if I knew what had happened and if I thought I could correct it the next time. I told them I thought I could so it never happened again. I became fairly proficient with the PT 17. Then in March I was transferred to Courtland, Alabama where we had a basic flying school. There we learned to fly BT 13’s, which was a pretty good low wing plane. What I really liked about that one was the distance between the wheels was so far that you couldn’t ground loop them. It would be impossible to ground loop a BT 13. One little incident while I was flying those that stands out was we were night flying, just a pattern. First my instructor had gone up with me and we flew around for awhile and then came down and landed. I was flying but he was with me just for safety I guess. After he got out I was supposed to make three more landings. Just stay in the pattern, go around again, and shoot another landing. The first one was o.k. and the second one we came in and I don’t know why but I must have landed about thirty feet up in the air. Of course I dropped down and when I did, I hit pretty hard. I talked to the tower on the radio and they said “pull it around to the line and check to see if you drug a wing.” So I pulled her over, undid my parachute harness and seat belt, had one leg out on the wing getting ready to get out and the Sergeant came running out and said “I’ll check it Lieutenant.” He had a flashlight with him; he had heard the radio conversation. He shined the light under there and said “nah, you didn’t touch anything.” So I sat back down and called the tower on the radio and said “do you want me to go back and do those other landings?” They said “go ahead and do two more.” I pulled out, did my two landings, they were fairly good, I pulled in and started to get out of the plane and guessed what? (laughs) I had never refastened my seat belt. I’m sure glad those landings were o.k. otherwise I might have gone out through the roof of that airplane.
I didn’t quite finish that training there that I was supposed to. I was transferred to Fort Rucker, Alabama to the 66th Infantry Division. I had been there just long enough to get my heels dug in when the invasion happened. They pulled me out and sent me over as a replacement. I went to Fort Meade, Maryland, there we processed, got all our extra shoe strings and all that kind of stuff. Then we took a train to, I thought we were going to New York, but we ended up in Boston. The train just pulled right up beside the ship at the dock in Boston. We marched off of the train and onto the ship. We sat there three days after we got on the ship but when we finally pulled out we did not go in a convoy. We went alone, this ship was a fairly fast one so they let us go across by ourselves. I believe it was four days it took us until we landed at, I believe it was Liverpool. We got on a train there and went to a little place called Aderly Hall. We were there about a week. Most of the time I was there I censored mail, I did go to the range. We took a packet of people and we took them out to the range, and made sure they could shoot before we got back on the train. We went to Southampton and there we got on a little private, what before the war, had been a tourist boat crossing the English Channel taking people from England to France and so forth. But it served it’s purpose real well, it was part of the invasion fleet. It carried us over to Omaha Beech, where we unloaded onto Navy landing crafts. We got on in to the beach, of course, the fighting was about three miles in by then so there was nobody shooting at us. There was a lot of planes flying over but nobody shooting at us. But it was a hard walk up that hill even, carrying all that junk we had to take with us. We went on in and settled down.
It’s strange how, for no apparent reason, sometimes little incidents will just pop into your mind. It’s been fifty years and still, things pop into my mind. I was thinking just a second ago about one day toward the end of the Battle of the Bulge, not right at the end but it was after the weather had cleared up, I was the executive officer of K company and we had been in a position overnight. We had to go into the position during darkness so the next morning the company commander told me to go out and make a tour to see if everybody was all right, kind of check the positions and find out where everybody was. I remember going by this one foxhole that had two Sergeants together. We usually tried to keep two men in the same hole if we could. These two guys were together, one of them was an old timer and the other was a staff sergeant that had just been transferred in from the field artillery. He had been a mess sergeant in the field artillery but because of the fact that the infantry had had so many casualties they rounded up everybody they could find and he was one of the ones that had become an infantryman over night. He didn’t complain, he wasn’t a complainer at all. When I went up to the foxhole to talk to him, I noticed the scarf that he had worn around his neck, just an ODGI scarf, he had a knot tied in it around his neck and both of the ends of it had been cut off. It looked like somebody had taken a pair of scissors and cut it off. I said “Sarge, what happened to your scarf?” He said “Lieutenant, I’m the luckiest man in the world. Do you remember awhile ago a shell came in?” I said “yeah I remember when they were shelling.” He said “a piece of shrapnel clipped that, that’s how close it had come to my throat. It just cut the scarf right off my neck.” I agreed with him, I said “man, you are the luckiest man I have ever met in this whole war.” I stood there with them for minute or so and I walked on away, I hadn’t gone thirty yards, until another a shell came in. It landed in that hole where those two guys were and just blew them all to pieces. It really tore them up, there was hardly anything left of them. He had just made the remark about how lucky he was.
Just a few minutes later I went down the hill toward another position that was there. These two men had occupied a hole that had been dug by the Germans. It was a pretty good size foxhole, big enough for them to lay down in at night and sleep. When I got down there, there was a German soldier dressed in a white snowsuit laying on the ground beside the foxhole. He was dead and he had parts of a parachute with him, apparently during the night he had parachuted down into that area. I talked to the soldiers that were in the foxhole and I asked them what happened and one said “Lieutenant, late last night we were laying there in the hole, my buddy was asleep and I almost was. I always lay on my back and keep my rifle on top of me. I was just looking up at the sky when this figure appeared as if he was looking into our foxhole. I just instinctively raised my rifle and fired. I was lucky and had a good shot and that Kraut fell in the hole on top of us, he was dead.”
Wayne Warren Bayles, Sr.
Ser. # 0-129549020458281
Ed. note: Our sincere thanks to Mr. Bayles for this very interesting recollection of his time in the service. This is an outstanding example of the sort of material that adds so much to this site.
Thank you, Mr. Bayles