Patton's Fighting Bridge Builders: Company B, 1303rd Engineer General Service Regiment

Preface

xv Preface Company B and the 1303rd Engineer General Service Regiment (EGSR) were unique World War II units. EGSRs were supposed to function well behind the area of combat, yet the 1303rd (called the “Thirteen Third” by its soldiers) was in the combat zone from 28 July 1944 until the end of the war in Europe. Twice it guarded the right flank of Lt. Gen. George S. Patton’s Third Army, first as it moved across France, then as it moved into Luxembourg and Belgium. Their service, and that of their sister EGSRs, the 1301st and the 1306th, in the Third Army, was so valuable and impressive in Europe that they were sent directly to the Pacific for the planned invasion of Japan. For most of the war, the companies of the 1303rd operated independently, coming together in their battalions as needed. As a result each company has a separate and unusual story to tell. Company B was one of six “line,” or operating, companies in the regiment; its unit diary forms the basis for this book. This story is not the regiment’s story, but it gives the reader a good sense of engineer service in combat. Capt. Earl E. Hall, Corps of Engineers, U.S. Army, owns the copy of the diary reproduced here. Hall led 1st Platoon, Company B, from the activation of the 1303rd at Camp Ellis on 15 July 1943 until he took command of the company in Luxembourg; in Japan he became commander of the first battalion of the regiment. He received this copy, a carbon copy (and not the first carbon either), before leaving Japan on 15 November 1945 to return to the United States for discharge. Hall thinks that the unknown author compiled the diary from the company’s morning reports. Internal evidence suggests that the core compilation was done by clerks and then 1st Lt. Casey Deveikis (the company administrative officer) revised the Camp Ellis portion into a narrative. Since Deveikis left for the United States before the rest of the officers, this might explain the end of the narrative and the return to the daily report style. What makes this company diary unique is that there are few engineer histories from World War II in print, and only one deals with general service regiments; none are company diaries. There were some published works on the 1303rd. Lieutenant Deveikis published four articles on the regiment in various issues of Military Engi- xvi PREFACE neer, then wrote a history of the Thirteen Third. While he did a very nice job, his narrative attempts to tell seven separate (company) stories as one. Unfortunately, there are no source notes or attributions in the book, which is out of print. Worse, it was printed on poor-quality paper, and the available copies are not standing up to the ravages of time. There are other works available on military engineers in World War II. The best source on the 1306th EGSR (a sister to the 1303rd) is Max Schwartz, Bridges to Victory: Story of the 1306 Engineers in WWII (Los Angeles: Schwartz Consulting Engineers, 2003). Dwight Gowdey wrote an article on the 1303rd entitled “Moving a Bridge 100 Miles” (Military Engineer, July 1944). Deveikis’s articles include “The Eager Beaver” (Military Engineer, November 1947, 478–82) and “Grand Finale at Nihen-Seinen-Kan-Akasaka-Ku” (Military Engineer, January/February 1950, 48–51). The Reference Branch of the U.S. Army Military History Institute has compiled “Lorraine Campaign, Autumn 1944: A Working Bibliography,” available online at http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/academic/history/marshall/military/ mil_hist_inst/w/ww2et05e.asc (the only item on an engineer unit referenced is Deveikis’s history of the 1303rd). In addition to the unit diary, there is a typescript, “History of Company B,” written by Tech 5 Robert S. H. McGlashan. Captain Hall owns an undated carbon copy (though it is from 1945). This document includes many fanciful events and alarums, invented dialogue, and other improbabilities. It probably is accurate enough on small details and on some of the “who did whats,” but Hall recommended placing little faith in it. Comparison to the diary and to other sources does encourage a great deal of caution. the story begins with the activation of the 1303rd EGSR at Camp Ellis, Illinois, on 15 July 1943 and ends at Tokyo, Japan, in November 1945 with the nearly complete replacement of Company B’s World War II veterans by recent recruits. The compiler...