In
Intelligence School we used to call this Photo Interpretation. The photo of Dad’s driver and guard is
possibly my most valuable clue as to what unit he was with early in WWII. It took me a long time to realize what bumper
markings were – much less what they meant.
As you look at the front of the truck from left to right is the unit
hierarchy sometimes down to the truck number in the platoon on the far
right. MBS, the Mediterranean Base
Section of Services of Supply appears to be the parent command. “2 SV?” I believe stands for 2nd Bn Services
Command. (There’s probably a “C” after
V.) The Black driver is a good
clue. Necessity drove integration long
before it became policy. On the back of
the photo is its identification: “My driver and gard (sic) in Oran”. By that time Dad had been promoted from “T”
to SSgt and truck platoon sergeant. Whether or not he was training an all-black
Transportation Corps truck platoon (16 trucks) is questionable. The online The Employment of Negro Troops was no help.
The
second photo shows Dad in his summer Khakis and tie as a Technical Sergeant
posing in one of Oran’s many truck loading sheds. The “T” usually meant the GI was a technical
specialist such as a mechanic, someone not yet in command of others. In the background is an Army forklift – one
of just ten at the port if I remember correctly and an unusually low number for
the requirements of Operation Torch. Note the triangular span of wooden gables
under the shed’s ridge. Judging from the
shadows, the sheds are on an east-west axis.
When Services of Supply (Signal Corps, Engineers, Quartermaster,
Ordnance, Medical, Chemical, Transportation Corps) landed at Mers El Kibir six
miles away on November 11, 1942, Oran was beginning to get wet and cold. I speculate his wearing of his summer service
uniform might have been unavoidably late.
Just eight weeks before he’d been on the RMS Queen Mary with a large contingent of B-17 ground crews coming
to England. I’m still working on the
“units aboard” puzzle.
Operations
in Africa are overlooked. All you see on
TV is Pearl Harbor, the Battle of the
Bulge, and D-Day. There was dive
bombing in Oran and ships blown up at sea off the coast like the Arthur Middleton which I believe Dad saw
blown up on January 1, 1943 and night convoys to the east to capture Bizerte
and evacuate Tunis where 250,000 Africa Corps Germans surrendered. I think he was involved in that too. Germans marched all night beside his resting
drivers and trucks. There were bodies floating in Oran harbor when SOS
arrived. Ordnance men removed them. Isn’t there anything out there besides Lee
Marvin and the Big Red One? The stories of the average GI are more interesting to me, especially when there’s a puzzle
involved and it’s personal and some of those pieces are rare.
