|
WARTIME
EDITION
Overseas and on the Home Front
The
men and women of East Hampton served their country during World
War II, both in the Armed Forces and in private life. 1,039 East
Hamptoners served in the Armed Forces (over 12% of the then population),
and 40 lost their lives. Fishermen and farmers served the war effort
at home, and men and women worked in government and defense jobs
both in East Hampton and across the country.
HISTORY
PROJECT COLLECTION CONTINUES TO GROW
In October,
an additional 13 completed interviews and an updated index were
deposited with the Pennypacker Long Island Collection of the East
Hampton Library. This brings to 120 the number of transcribed and
indexed interviews in The Collection along with 914 accompanying
photographs and other printed material donated by our subjects.
We still have 60 interviews to transcribe. We would like to complete
the project by the end of 2002, funding permitting.
RECOLLECTIONS
 "School
was out, the bands were playin'. Limousines to take us up. Camp
Upton [hadn't changed], it was the same way it was in World War
I. Cold, wet, no heat, wrap-around leggings. World War I uniforms.
It was really miserable. Cold. Oh, God, I don't know how many months
it was. We ended up in Fort Dix anyway, eventually in the '44th
Infantry Division. Military Police." After the War, Charlie
Keyes joined East Hampton's police force. At his death last
year, Charlie was the last remaining member of East Hampton's original
three man force.
ON THE SEAS
After enlisting
in the Coast Guard, Milton Miller was transferred to the
Navy and spent 22 days on Iwo Jima.
C. E. "Kelly" King spent the war in the Coast Guard,
patrolling the New York area and, in port security at New York Harbor.
Robby Byrnes enlisted in the Coast Guard and spent the war
patrolling the Long Island coast as part of a fleet called the "Picket
Patrol." The 101 foot sailboat he served on was requisitioned
from a New York doctor who contacted him after the War to ask about
his experiences. Shep Frood served on two aircraft carriers
in the Atlantic. Aside from his military duties, he was in charge
of athletics aboard the ships.
Painting of the Ingham, ship on which E. M. Osborne spent World
War II, by Cappy Amundsen, well-known local artist.
Coast Guard Lt. Jr. Grade E. M. Osborne |
Ed
Osborne served aboard the
Coast Guard Cutter Ingham, protecting convoys in the North Atlantic.
[The story of the Ingham is told in the book "Bloody |
|
Winter," by John Waters.] "We usually had about thirty
freighters and oh, oil tankers and stuff. God I've seen a lot
of 'em blow up. I've seen a lot of 'em just burned up in the...you
know the tankers when they explode, the oil would run out and
it would catch fire." |
| "My
ship was in a typhoon off the coast of China and we ran out
of fuel. I put a signal out, radio-wise, that there we were
with 250 men aboard and we were in trouble and about ten or
twelve hours after the signal, up comes a Navy tanker and it
comes alongside and there, with much difficulty, passed a hose
aboard to fill us up with diesel fuel. The guy who passed the
hose saw me on the bridge, and he said, "Hey Mr. Duke."
And it was an Italian kid who'd been a [Boy's Harbor] camper.
I mean one out of ten, twelve million people in the service
and we run into each other like that. We were drifting at sea,
7,000 miles away, off the coast of China. And he yells at me
and says, "We'll see you...we got some ideas." Anthony
Drexel "Tony" Duke |
 "McClelland
Barclay [left, in a picture he dedicated to Leonard Lester] went
into the Navy and he painted portraits of important people in the
war. He was given a job of painting a portrait of MacArthur. I was
stationed in Brisbane at the time and he found out that I was there
and he called me on the phone and he said, 'This is Mac. I'm gonna
paint a portrait of MacArthur. I want you to give me a hand. I want
you to take some photographs of MacArthur that I can use to paint
from.' So we went over and took pictures of MacArthur. And then,
he decided that I was about the same height as MacArthur. And he
said, 'I'll borrow MacArthur's hat and jacket and you put it on
and I will paint the portrait from you and the pictures that you
take.' So this is what happened. I put the thing on and the hat
fit me perfectly. That hat, that famous hat! And the leather jacket
that he wore. Fit me perfect. I was exactly the same size as MacArthur.
Right after I had done all this work for him he got right on the
boat, went up and got killed."Leonard Lester
TONY'S
COLUMN
Next
to the flagpole in Amagansett is a boulder with a bronze plaque,
commemorating those who died in service to our country during WWII.
One of the names is MacClelland Barclay, a famous illustrator who
lived in Beach Hampton, near The Barbour Club. (My father, Ray,
inherited many of the local models that Barclay had used, including
Kathryn Hedges Rauscher, and Eleanor Rae Hall.) The Club was completely
destroyed during the Hurricane of '38, but Barclay's house, set
right up on the edge of the dunes next to the Club, was completely
unscathed. It remains there, in slightly remodeled form, to this
day.
"Mac," as he was called, was part of a social group of
New Yorkers who came to the East End in the '30's as owners, renters
or guests. The group included Grantland Rice, James Montgomery Flagg,
May Wilson Preston and her husband Jimmy, Warren and Enez Whipple,
Clarence Buddington Kelland (famous Saturday Evening Post writer),
Rube Goldberg, and Frank Crownenshield (editor of Vanity Fair).
My mother, Carolyn, had a great memory for these times, available
for reading in the two interviews of her that are in The History
Project collection. Most of these people belonged to one or more
of several New York clubs, The Society of Illustrators, The Dutch
Treat Club, or the Artists and Writers, a group unrelated to the
contemporary baseball group. Artists and Writers had a yearly convention
which was often held at the Montauk Manor. "Bucket" Daniels
remembers caddying at the golf course in Montauk during these affairs.
He remembers the members as "big tippers."
In this Newsletter, Leonard Lester mentions Mac's portraits, specifically
the one of General MacArthur. Possibly more important were the many
battle scenes that he painted of the War in the Pacific. I noticed
that four MacClelland Barclay illustrations were for sale in the
most recent catalog of Illustration House Inc., the premier illustration
gallery in New York.
Mac lost his life when his ship was sunk in the Pacific, right after
he completed his MacArthur portrait, but the older residents of
East Hampton have never forgotten what an important addition he
was to their community... Tony Prohaska
Ed Sherrill,
landed on Omaha Beach 90 days after D-Day, with Patton's Third Army.
"There were a couple of armored outfits and then we went on
into, across to the Saar River, the Siegfried Line. And about Christmas-
time they broke through the Battle of the Bulge. We stayed there
for a while, then we went up to Bastogne and from there on, Germany
and places like that."
Harrison
Schneider served with the Third Army, in Germany at the time
of the Battle of the Bulge.
ON THE HOMEFRONT…
The Maidstone
Club plowed under 9 holes of the golf course to plant potatoes as
a contribution to the war effort…Dudley Roberts
| Kitty
Rauscher spent all of World War II at the East Hampton Ration
office in charge of fuel oil rationing. Dorothy Jones
used to go down to Camp Hero with three other girls from East
Hampton. The girls sang for the troops and Dorothy accompanied
them on the piano. She told us how some of the boys ended up
marrying local girls. Ken Yardley had a wartime deferment
to work for Pan American Airways on the B-314 seaplane. He worked
on the Navy's PB2Ys, stationed at Lisbon, Portugal, and was
finally assigned to the Naval Reserve. |
|
|
"HARPER'S
MAGAZINE" USING HISTORY PROJECT AS RESEARCH SOURCE ON
THE 1942 GERMAN LANDING IN AMAGANSETT.
With current
interest both in the defense of American soil, and the proposed
military tribunal to try terrorists, writer Gary Cohen is
preparing an article for Harper's about the WWII German landing
in Amagansett, which fits into both categories. This was a
covert invasion of America, and after being apprehended, the
saboteurs were tried in special military tribunals set up
for that purpose.
|
Judy King's father Dave Talmage was a guard
at the Amagansett Coast Guard Station. |
The
night the German soldiers landed on the beach at Amagansett,
Carl Jennett was the officer in charge. Joe Lisanti
was |
a civilian guard for the Navy at the Bluff Road Station and
was also on duty the night the German's landed. Honoria Donnelly,
whose family lived on the oceanfront at Wiborg Beach, told us
about that night. "A policeman came to the door and said,
'Germans have landed in Amagansett. But we've caught them.'
But he suggested if there were more that we be very careful
and lock the door. And then he came back and said, 'No, they
had been definitely all caught.' But it was terrifying." |
IN MEMORIAM
We note, with sadness, the passing of Willie Mae Yardley, Hatter
Pontick and Walt Hackett. Their interviews join those of others
who have gone, but whose words live on in The History Project collection.
 Tony
Cangiolosi dropped out of High School and enlisted in the Navy
at 17. He received the Pacific Theatre Ribbon, China Service Medal
and Occupation Service Medal. He got two battle stars at Iwo Jima
and Okinawa. He was in Nagasaki two and one half weeks after the
bomb was dropped. He returned to East Hampton and finished high
school after he got out of the service.
| "When
I was in the Army, they said, 'What would you like to have?'
I says 'I'd like some diesel training.' That's how I got into
the amphibian engineers. I made D-Day. That was a day I'll never
forget. I was in the harborcraft outfit. But we took the Germans
by surprise that day. We were out there three days before we
landed. Pulling a barge. I remember the barge, with 1,000 troops
on it. 1,000 troops. Lost a lot of men that first day. A lot
of men! At the time, they told us they had about 25,000 uh dead
that first day. Fatalities. They had grave's identification
people, picked 'em up. And a couple of days later we were bringin'
wounded back to the hospital ships and back to England. We never
got hit." Tony Moltisanti |
IN THE AIR…
 "When
I was drafted, I said to my mother, 'Gee I want to go in the Air
Force, the Air Corps.' So my mother said, 'No, I don't want you
to,' she said, 'because it's too dangerous.' Lee Hayes became one
of the famous Tuskegee Airmen, first a bombardier, then a bomber
pilot.
| "I
think that having been around the water all my life here was
a big help in becoming accustomed to handling seaplanes on the
water. I don't remember ever being in any way concerned about
the switch from airplanes to seaplanes. We were carrying troops,
supplies, ammunition and wounded back out of various areas.
For example, when we went into Saipan, Landing Day + l, in the
seaplanes, landing on water, taking off 40, 50 wounded a trip
and that sort of thing. We were at all the major islands, Saipan,
the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, and all
of the intervening islands at one time or other."...Perry
Duryea |
Leon Rauscher
served in the Air Marine, instructing technicians on servicing aircraft.
ON THE LAND…
 From
an interview with Donald "Gunk" Gibbons.
DG: I was in school with Dave Baker and I met him right outside
of Bastogne. He was a dentist. He was Patton's personal dentist,
you know?
MK: He didn't tell us that.
DG: He didn't? Aw, Davy wouldn't.
| Walter
Hackett served as a volunteer in the American Field Service,
attached to the British Army in the North African campaign,
then into Egypt, on to the Syrian front and then Italy for almost
a year. "After two years we went into Italy. We stopped
off in Sicily just for a couple of days. And Sicily had been
secured by that time. I spent Christmas there. Then we drove
up to…Naples had been secured and we were just banging away
at Casino. Of course you know it was a disaster. I was with
a bunch of South African artillery guys, shelling Casino and
the Americans were bombing it and the British shelling it and
we were supposed to go in after to help with the wounded." |
 Bill
Jenkins enlisted
in the Army Air Corps. "On January 14th, '42, I went down to
Whitehall Street and enlisted. I was in the Air Force almost four
years. I went over to The European Theatre of Operations. I was
a high-speed teletype operator. I was two years in England and almost
a year in France."
Mary Louise
Daniels, then Mary Louise Rampe, at a USO dance held in Guild Hall.
While in high school, she was one of several girls who would attend
the dances.
Donald Halsey
tells us how his father and the employees at Halsey's Garage spent
the War machining brass, steel and cast iron castings for ELCO Boat
Building. Donald himself went into flying boats and became a flight
engineer on a PBM Mariner.
 Mary
Venegas worked for years at Rowe's Pharmacy and cooked for the
soldiers. "They were building Ft. Hero at Montauk. And of course
the only place you could go and spend any money was back to East
Hampton. So my soda fountain, if I was on the evening shift, was
really busy. Cause I used to make a really good…we had the best
malted milks. (laughs) I don't know where the profits were. (laughs)"
Ruth King
told us how her sister Rita followed her husband, Dr. Francis Cooper,
to California before he went overseas. Rita was pregnant and "Coop"
delivered his twin boys in California, just before he left for the
Pacific.
| Your
continued support is needed. We will need additional funds over
and above the Town Grant, to cover our expenses for 2002. We
have at least another year's of work ahead and we would appreciate
whatever support you can give us. |
|
