THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, January 6, 1996 TAG: 9601050058
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Larry Maddry
LENGTH: Long : 106 lines
When someone mentions Hampton Roads during World War II most people think of Navy men and their ships.
But Hampton Roads also served as a port of embarkation, moving men and women from all branches of the military overseas on transport ships: merchant vessels and luxury liners. Millions of tons of equipment and materials also passed over local docks in an around-the-clock effort to provide the tools of victory for Allied forces.
More than 1.7 million servicemen and women from all parts of the nation made their way through the Hampton Roads Port of Embarkation.
And every type of war equipment made its way to the war zones from here - including 8 million pounds of explosives and enough airplane landing mats to create 85 airfields. An astonishing 12.5 million tons of supplies and equipment were moved over local docks. The port ranked third in total tonnage processed for the war effort, behind only New York and San Francisco.
The rather sleepy port cities of Norfolk and Newport News were transformed overnight into raucous places with crowded sidewalks clogged with servicemen, most of them wearing white sailor caps. The demand for housing and services taxed the ability of locals to keep up, leading to ``hot beds'' flophouses where, for a price, a serviceman could sleep for a few hours on sheets still warm from the previous occupant.
The spirit and flavor of that era is captured on the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, in an impressive exhibit entitled ``The Hampton Roads Port of Embarkation'' at The Mariners' Museum in Newport News. Photos dominate the exhibition but there are old uniforms from the period, propaganda posters, gasoline ration stamps, etc.
Brigadier General John R. Kilpatrick, former commanding officer of the port of embarkation, donated more than 15,000 negatives to the museum at war's end. All were taken by U.S. Army Signal Corps photographers. It's a stunning collection.
HRPE was composed of many elements. It included Pier X and HRPE Headquarters in Newport News, The Norfolk Naval Base and the Norfolk Army Base (near Sewells Point) as well as Fort Eustis, and Camp Patrick Henry (now the Newport News-Williamsburg Airport) and other installations.
The remarkable photographs in the exhibit capture the range of activities at HRPE: five-tiered bunks in the troop ships where young men wearing undershirts and dog tags smile at the camera; Red Cross ladies serving coffee to GIs holding cups out the windows of trains arriving at Pier 6 in Newport News; massive personnel carriers by the hundreds, in militarily precise rows, stretching to the horizon, it seems.
Prisoners of war were also processed into the port. More than 5,000 prisoners were confined for many months at Camp Patrick Henry during the war years. One photo shows German POWS captured during the Tunesian campaign in May of 1943 awaiting a train.
A facility was needed to house, feed, process and entertain all the men and women moving through HRPE. So Camp Patrick Henry was completed in 1942, cut out of 1,700 acres of thick woodland about 14 miles northwest of Newport News. The troops were housed in tarpaper barracks, and USO performers, stars of radio, stage, and screen, arrived to entertain them. Among those boosting the morale of the fighting men were Fred Astaire, shown in a photo of June 1943, and Private Richard ``Red'' Skelton, later a popular television comedian, shown jauntily perched atop a piano while rehearsing with the Camp Hill Quartet, on March 28, 1945.
Troops were trained, innoculated and briefed prior to departure. Tugs nudged and shoved a camouflaged transport ship into its Newport News berth in advance of the boarding party. A whistle sounded from the railroad yards and the first troop train appeared at about 0800.
As the first car approached, the Port Band played, oddly enough, World War I tunes - ``Over There,'' was very popular. Later the band would strike up ``Anchors Aweigh'' Or The Army Air Corps song beginning: ``Off we go into the wild blue yonder.''
A writer of the time said the troops leaving trains to board the ships reminded him of a football team and its supporters coming out on the field at the time of the big game.
HRPE also was a port of debarkation for thousands of servicemen during the war, all processed through Camp Patrick Henry. The camp housed a unique telephone exchange which did not accept incoming calls. It was used by servicemen who had returned from duty overseas, many of them nursing war wounds. During the war as many as 1,500 outgoing calls were made per day at the drab building housing the telephone exchange.
The chief operator would announce over a public address system: ``Corporal Smith calling Des Moines, Iowa, please go to Booth Three.''
Writer Gerould Frank, who wrote a piece for The Reader's Digest on the Camp Hill telephone exchange, said the just-returned servicemen always spoke to mother, wife, or girlfriend, with lips touching the mouthpiece ``in an intimacy embarrassing to watch.''
The operators enjoyed their work, they said. ``We're always bringing good news,'' one said.
One told of a particularly touching call. She said she asked the mother at the end of the line if she would accept charges for the call.
The weary, dull voice at the other end replied slowly: ``I wish I could, but I received word two months ago that he was killed in action.''
``But he wasn't,'' the operator said. ``Why he's standing here beside me now!''
Then there was a long silence. The operator said the woman simply fainted.
No one will faint because of the poignancy of ``The Hampton Roads Port of Embarkation'' exhibit. But, despite the intervening years, it's possible to look at those vivid , dramatic, and realistic photos and - for a moment at least - believe the subjects are standing beside you. ILLUSTRATION: Troops arrive by train at a pier in Newport News, then board a
ship headed for Europe during World War II.
by CNB