Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 24, 1994 TAG: 9408240021
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The Virginia National Guard's 116th Infantry Regiment, which led the D-Day assault on Omaha Beach, wasn't the only Guard unit from Western Virginia called up for service in World War II - and it wasn't the first.
The men of the 116th were barraged with media attention during June's 50th anniversary commemoration of the invasion of Hitler's Europe. But the service of the men of the 246th Coast Artillery, who defended Virginia's harbors and then went their separate ways to foreign battlefronts, has received little notice.
The 246th was organized in 1921 but traces its history to the Civil War - for Danville's Battery B - and World War I for other units of the regiment.
In September 1940, when the regiment was called into federal service as a precaution against the growing menace of Germany and Japan, it was based in Lynchburg. And the men of its gun batteries were based in towns from Richmond to Blacksburg. Salem had a battery; so did Vinton, Covington, and Clifton Forge. Roanoke and Danville had two and Richmond three.
During the Depression, men joined the guard because it gave them a little extra cash in their pockets and something to do. Many went in at the urging of friends who had already joined up.
"The National Guard in those days was like a country club today," recalled Ray Collins, 76, of Roanoke, president of the 246th Coast Artillery Association, an organization of the regiment's alumni.
The men of the regiment spent part of their summers from 1922 to 1936 training at Fort Monroe on Cape Henry and from 1937 to 1939 at Fort Story at Old Point Comfort in Hampton. During those outings they'd practice on targets with their 12-inch rail-mounted mortars, 8-inch railway guns and 155mm artillery pieces.
Some of the regiment saw strike duty in 1931 at Dan River Mills in Schoolfield.
In 1940, the War Department ordered the regiment to remain in training at Fort Story for three weeks, instead of the regular two-week period. On Sept. 16, 1940, the 246th was among the first National Guard units called into federal service, a move that effectively doubled the size of the U.S. Army.
The regiment's 955 men were ordered to Fort Monroe, Fort Story and Fort John Custis on Fisherman's Island in Hampton Roads for what they thought would be a year. Then President Roosevelt won approval from Congress to keep National Guardsmen in federal service until the wars in Europe and Asia no longer posed a threat to the United States, according to John Listman Jr., historian for the Virginia National Guard.
Although disappointed by that turn of events, the men were looking forward to at least returning home on leave for Christmas 1941. But the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor ended the possibility of leaves for months to come, Listman said.
The surprise with which the Japanese hit Pearl Harbor is something Collins said he has never been able to understand. The coastal defense along the entire East Coast went on alert on April 17, 1941, nearly eight months before Pearl Harbor, and remained on alert until the units were disbanded later in the war, Collins said.
"I'll go to my grave never understanding [Pearl Harbor]," he said. "If the Japs had come into Lynnhaven Harbor [at Virginia Beach] we'd have been sitting there waiting on them."
Although there was great concern about an enemy invasion of the mainland United States at the start of the war, that fear diminished with time. The soldiers who stayed close to their coastal guns were eventually given leave to return home a few at a time.
"At the time, we knew the only thing the Germans had that could reach us were [submarines] that carried little observation planes," Collins said. Two ships were sunk in the waters right off Fort Story by mines that had been laid by German submarines, he recalled.
By early 1944, U.S. military leaders concluded that Germany and her allies posed little if any invasion threat to the United States. They decided to dismantle many of the coastal artillery units and reassign their men to artillery units headed for overseas combat.
Before he left Fort Story, James McGlothlin, 74, of Roanoke County, said he was transferred to special duty at a top-secret radar installation operated by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Bell Labs located right in front of the Cavalier Hotel. Later McGlothlin was transfered to Fort Chaffee, Ark., where his unit became part of the 744th field artillery.
Both Collins and McGlothlin wound up in artillery units with Patton's Third Army in Europe. Patton's motto, remembered Collins, was "Those poor b-------have got us surrounded again."
The 246th Coast Artillery Association will hold a reunion at the Holiday Inn in Salem on Sept. 16-17. Collins said about 125 former soliders and their wives are expected to attend.
Memo: ***CORRECTION***