Servicemembers at Camp Gordon Johnston unload a jeep. (below left) Others practice their marksmanship skills. Off the coast of France (below), assault troops await the landing.
coastal operations, water demolition stuff, and divers.” After D-Day, Frum’s outfi t was busy clearing harbors. Medical support was essential. Jane Hawkins of
Bartlett, Tenn., was a second lieutenant in late 1942 when she and a friend arrived on a bus from Nashville. The next day, they were setting up facilities. Hawkins was the head surgical nurse. “The hospital was out in the woods not far from the water,” she recalls. “It was on a one-lane road, not even concrete. The patients were on cots.” The nurses also had a rigorous training schedule.
“We ran up and down the roads training, and [we learned] how to swim in the Gulf,” says Hawkins. In the occasional free moment, she remembers walking to Carrabelle to get a Coke. She went ashore on Omaha Beach fi ve or six days after D-Day.
fi eld packs of 50 or 60 pounds.” One night, a barge hit a sandbar rather than its destination of St. George Island. “Eighteen [servicemembers] went to the bottom,” he says in a somber voice. Back at camp, “you always had your gun and you bet-
ter have it clean,” Hefty says. “If you had one speck on your rifl e on Friday night, then you knew you had KP [kitchen patrol] all weekend.” Hefty made landings all the way up the coast of New
Guinea, the Dutch East Indies, and the Solomons before heading for Japan. “Then President Truman dropped the bomb,” he says. “I would kiss his rear end if I could.” The area also was used to train paratroopers from
Fort Benning, Ga. Andrew Smith of Giddings, Texas, re- calls jumps onto Dog Island.
Howard Carmody of Hortonville, Wisc., remembers some “horrifi c happenings” during his eight-month stay at CGJ, including getting his two front teeth knocked out in a training accident. “We had to watch out for rattlers and scorpions in camp,” he says. “And we had 25- or 30- mile hikes in sand. They were really tough.” Training in the swamps particularly was daunting,
says Raymond Hefty of Auburn, Ind., who remembers fi ve-mile hikes into the swamps and back out again while contending with alligators, sudden drop-offs, and mil- lions of mosquitoes. “We took atabrine so you wouldn’t get malaria,” he says. “You just turned yellow.” Hefty also trained on the beaches. “You’d go out day or night, the ramps would drop, and you went with full
PHOTOS: TOP, COURTESY CAMP GORDON JOHNSTON MUSEUM; RIGHT, SIGNAL CORPS/U.S. NATIONAL ARCHIVES O C TO B E R 2 0 1 0 MI L I T A R Y O F F I C E R 6 9
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