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Veteran Spotlight

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by Priscilla Rall

Donald Kuhn

From the Mountains of Appalachia to the Mountains of India and Burma

The late Donald Eugene Kuhn traveled with the Army Air Corps to places most of us merely dream of. Born in 1921 to Ernest Rexfore “Rex” and Goldie Wolf Kuhn, he was one of 10 children, growing up on a small farm on Brandenburg Hollow road near Wolfsville. Rex bought out his two sisters, buying the farm for $2,700 after his father died. When it was appraised, the banker told them to figure out how much it was worth before the Great Depression, and then halve that amount! The family had a sleigh and a buggy, but they were not used after Donald was born. Instead, his father drove a 1923 Chevy.

The Kuhn’s raised eight to ten hogs a year and had four to five milk cows. On the 38 tillable acres, the family grew corn, potatoes, wheat, and green beans. They had no tractors but used draft horses, “Kit” and “Bird.” The kids picked the beans for 15 cents a bushel. Donald remarked that he “looked to a quarter as a big piece of money.” After a hard day picking beans, the kids would race down to their favorite watering hole to cool off swimming. His mother was busy from morn to night, milking the cows, churning butter, and cooking for her large brood. When Donald was about 10, he was old enough to be given the chore of getting water from the nearby creek for the steam engine that ran the threshing machine needed for the wheat, which had been put up in shocks in the barn. The farm had no electricity until 1942.

It was not all work and no play. One of Donald’s fondest memories was after a big snow, the kids would go sledding. There were still a few chestnut trees not yet killed by the blight, and Donald remembered picking them to eat. He also helped split the chestnut logs to be used for split-rail fences. They still had to walk to the Forest School, a mile or so away, but his father would harness up one of the horses and hitch a log to her and drag a path for his children to the school.

The Depression hit the small farmers hard. Often, the Kuhns would take eggs and chickens to Goldie’s grandfather’s store in Wolfsville and barter for sugar and kerosene. All of the neighbors enjoyed sitting around listening to the radio, especially the Grand Ol’ Opry. At that time, there were “hucksters” like Ross Eyler, Raymond MacLean, and my husband’s great uncle, Victor Pryor, who would buy the produce and take it to the city to sell. When the children needed shoes, Rex would take a cured ham to Harry Myer’s grocery to sell for enough money to buy shoes for at least a few of the children. The Kuhns were fortunate not to lose their farm as some neighbors did.

The Roosevelt Administration began many programs to help the struggling Americans. A Civil Conservation Camp (CCC) was built where Camp David is now. The government bought much of the land, and those living there had no choice but to sell. Isaac Smith was one of those who lost his farm to eminent domain.

After seven years at the two-room Forest School in Garfield, Donald went on to Middletown High School. Goldie was insistent that all her children attend high school. Donald recalled that “It always grieved her” not to be able to go beyond seventh grade, as she had to stay home and care for her sick mother.

After graduating from high school, Donald attended Columbia Business School in Hagerstown. He then worked six-and-a-half days a week for a coal company, also in Hagerstown. He made $12.50 a week. Then, he received his draft notice, but decided to enlist in the Army Air Corps. After three days at Fort Meade, he traveled to St. Petersburg, Florida, spending a week taking tests. After qualifying for clerical school, he was sent to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, for 11 weeks. His next stop was to the Waycross Air Base and the 385th Bombardment Squadron, 311th Bombardment Group, where he served until July 1943.

Then, it was goodbye USA and hello Asia. Leaving San Francisco on the USAP Brazil, a troop carrier, he sailed first to Tanzania, then around the south of Australia. At Perth, they picked up another ship and a destroyer, arriving on September 10 in the Indian Ocean. Finally on land, the men took three different trains and two different riverboats across India to reach its northeastern tip. They did stop at the British Camp at Gaya, where the Americans could hear the jackals howling at night. Quite an unnerving experience for a farm boy from Appalachia! The conditions were very primitive in India, particularly since they were experiencing a terrible famine at this time. At each train station, hordes of children would swarm around the train, begging for food. Finally, the men arrived at their destination, and Donald’s real work began.

Veteran Spotlight

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by Priscilla Rall

Military Intelligence Service at Camp Ritchie

When WWII began, it was apparent that the United States did not have plans to train intelligence gatherers, which would be vital for our armed forces. One intelligence organization that was soon formed was the Military Intelligence Service (MIS), and it took over Camp Ritchie from the Maryland National Guard in early 1942. The men recruited for this organization were immigrants to the United States from Europe, mostly Jewish, whose native language was German, Hungarian, or French. They became known as the “Ritchie Boys.”

Henry Marcus was a Ritchie Boy who was born in Vienna in 1915. His father fought in the Austrian Army in WWI and was injured several times. His mother was born in Czechoslovakia.

Henry watched as the Nazis invaded Austria and saw Hitler several times at rallies. After six months in the Austrian Army, he got a passport and a one-way ticket to Baltimore, where his aunt and uncle lived. Fortunately, he met Mr. Rosenstock, a lawyer in Frederick, who helped him travel to Frederick and introduced him to the vibrant Jewish community there. He eventually met Rebecca Sclar and her family, and he and Rebecca were married in 1942. Together, they had one son, Ralph.

Henry joined the Maryland National Guard in 1941 and worked as a cook for Col. Markey. Instead of going with the 29th Division on the Carolina Maneuvers, Col. Markey asked him to go with him to Camp Pickett in Virginia. He was there six months when MIS recruited him and sent him to Camp Ritchie. He recalled the intense instructions on photo interpretation, deciphering, interrogation techniques, the German Order of Battle, and even classes on close combat and silent killing.

Just before D-Day in Normandy, the first group of Ritchie Boys was sent to England. Many of them went to France on D-Day, and one even made a drop with an airborne unit, although he had never jumped before. Si Lewen used a megaphone to broadcast propaganda and convince Germans to surrender. Guy Stern improved the army’s propaganda leaflets that encouraged the enemy soldiers to surrender.

Henry travelled to France in September 1944, where he worked with the Army Air Corps interpreting aerial photos and identifying the locations of German gun emplacements. Later, he was assigned to the 8th Armored Division with the Third Army. He gathered intelligence for the Battle of the Roer River, and later his team directed the entire division across the Rhine River. According to his discharge papers, he worked with the Counter Intelligence Corps in Germany and Czechoslovakia.

Some of the men spent three months in Aachen, and then they were sent to the Hurtegen Forest area. According to the Ritchie Boys, they had clear evidence of a large build-up of enemy troops and went to corp headquarters to report the danger. No one believed them, but that night the Nazis attacked in what is now called the Battle of the Bulge.

Most of the Ritchie Boys escaped, but Germans captured Philip Glaessner. He spent three months in Stalag 9A. The enemy soon located the headquarters of the MIS unit called the IPW (Interrogation of Prisoners of War). In a rage, the Nazis murdered them all. Because many of the Germans were passing themselves off as GIs, the Ritchie Boys were often stopped, and because of their foreign accents, had trouble explaining themselves. One was killed although he gave the correct password. It was assumed he was German because of his accent.

SSgt. Marcus’s most dangerous mission was when he was sent to gather intelligence from the Germans for an upcoming Allied offense. He had to don a German uniform and listen to the Germans in their nearby camp. This is something that the government told him never to disclose, as it is against the Geneva Convention, but after 60 years, he felt it was time to tell his story, which he had never shared before his interview for the Veterans History Project. When asked what he said when in the middle of the enemy encampment, he replied, “Not a damn thing!” The most-difficult part of his mission was returning to the American lines. He was stuck in a large shell hole for two days before he could safely return with his hard-won intelligence.

The OSS (Office of Strategic Services) is better known, eventually becoming the CIA, but few Americans know anything about the MIS and its training center in the Catoctin Mountains. Barney Kandel, Henry’s brother-in-law, told me I should interview Henry, and I am very glad I did. Henry Marcus died in 2006, three months after his interview. The Jewish immigrant Ritchie Boys willingly returned to Europe at the risk of their lives, gathering intelligence vital to the Allied victory. They deserve to be recognized as the heroes they all were.

If you are a Veteran or you know a Veteran who is willing to tell his or her story, you can contact the Frederick County Veterans History Project at priscillarall@gmail.com.

Henry Marcus and his wife, Rebecca.

Our Neighborhood Veterans

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by Jim Houck, Jr.

1ST LIEUTENANT GEORGE WARREN BAKER, U.S. ARMY AIR CORPS

George and mother and wife - VETERANS COLUMNBorn on April 5, 1921, just north of Thurmont at Franklinville, to Roy and Blanche Baker, was a boy they named George. George had three brothers and two sisters: Raymond, Donald, and Leroy, and Ruth and Helen (nicknamed Tootie). In 1940, at the age of nineteen, George decided he wanted to join the military. His brother, Raymond (nicknamed Hun), had already been in the military several months, and was somewhere around Washington, D.C.

George enlisted in the Army Air Corps at Baltimore, Maryland, in November of 1940, and asked to be sent to Hawaii. He was sent to Fort Slocum, New York, for basic training, where it was bitter cold, which made his training very difficult. He volunteered for a “honey dipping” job because he heard he could keep warm. He found out the job was dipping solids out of the sewage; he said it did keep him warm, but he didn’t smell very good at the end of the day.

When it was time to go home on leave for Christmas, George caught the flu; if you had a temperature over 100 degrees, you couldn’t leave. George knew his was high, so he keep ice in his mouth until his temperature was taken; he passed and was allowed to go home. Christmas of 1940 was the last time he was home until January 1943. He stayed at Fort Slocum until the end of January 1941, when he was loaded on a ship; the U.S.A.T. Republic headed for Hawaii.

George arrived in Honolulu in early March and was put in a truck and taken to a small train that took him to Wheeler Field in central Oahu. Some of his friends, “Pipe” Fuss, Jim Adelsberger, and Jack Stoner, were already in Hawaii and wanted to see him, but because they were sick, they were quarantined and did not get to see him until later. When they finally saw each other, they had quite a chat about Emmitsburg and Hawaii. George was allowed to have a pass to go anywhere on the island; while at Waikiki Beach, he got a bad sunburn. He didn’t want to report to the hospital, because it was a court-martial offense to get sunburned. He was digging a ditch from Wheeler to Schofield Barracks, and it would have been bad for his sunburn. Luckily his sergeant allowed him to take it easy until his sunburn healed.

They were forming new fighter groups, and they had P-36s and the newer P-40s arriving frequently. George was assigned to the 72nd fighter squadron, and in September 1941, he was sent to Hickam Field to attend Aircraft and Engine School. It was a three-month course and was going along nicely. At the end of November, he was taken out of school and put on ground defense. George was issued a rifle and pistol and was on guard at different places around the base and then, they were moved from the new barracks to a tent area across from the Post Exchange. On the night of December 6, 1941, George was on guard duty at the water tower of Hickam from midnight until 6:00 a.m., the morning of December 7. While he was walking in from the tower he saw a float plane fly across very high. George just thought it was one of our navy planes and forgot about it, but it could have been a Japanese observation plane.

George decided to go to the barracks and eat breakfast and take a shower. He was getting dressed when there were several explosions. He thought it was the Navy dive-bombing off Pearl Harbor. He raised a window blind and saw a plane drop a bomb into the Hawaiian Air Force Depot Hanger and knew it wasn’t the Navy doing the bombing.

George finished dressing and was going to try to get back to the tent area. When going down the steps a sergeant yelled, “everybody out on the parade ground.” George looked at the parade ground which had quite a lot of soldiers on it.  As a Japanese plane came across strafing, he decided that was not the place to be, so he stayed close to the buildings and worked his way to the Post Exchange. By that time, the Jap planes were bombing Pearl Harbor and then flying across Hickam Field strafing. Soon after, they bombed Hickam Field, and from what George understood, several different places in Hawaii.

At the Post Exchange they stood behind concrete pillars and watched the planes fly over. George could see the big red ball painted on their planes, but no one knew what nation they came from. They started to strafe the area that George was in so he ran over to the tent area and got his guns.

There was a rumor going around that the Japanese were landing on the beach across from Hickam, so they loaded George on a truck with some machine guns and took him over to the beach-side of Hickam. They set up machine guns where they could cover the beach and left George there with very little ammunition. From his vantage point, George could see the bombing and burning of Pearl Harbor and Hickam Field. Some planes tried to take off (B-18s and B-12s) and were shot down by our own people. Everything was very confusing and some B-17s coming in from the states tried to land and some made it and some didn’t.

The Japanese hit very hard for a couple of hours. Around noon, the officers asked George and the other soldiers to go over to where the buildings and planes were and see if they could help. They were to see if they could find anyone injured and take them to the hospital. The hospital was already filled and some were waiting outside. George helped several to the hospital and he found a leg and part of an arm and saw some things he couldn’t identify.

George said his hatred for Japanese started at that time and kept up to the very day he wrote about it. He said he would never forgive them and had they declared war first he may have looked at it differently.

George said that that evening they returned to the beach where they had set up. During the night, they were awakened several times and asked their name, rank and serial number. They got very little sleep that night.

They spent a couple of days on the beach “digging in” and reinforcing their positions. On the 10th of December, they were told to go to a place to be paid. When George’s turn came, he was told they couldn’t pay him, as he was listed as dead. A couple of soldiers he knew told them he was George Baker, so they paid him.

George’s parents were notified on the 10th of December that he had been killed. They were not notified until December 24th that he was alive, even though George was told to write a letter home soon after the attack. Due to priorities, mail was very slow leaving Hawaii. All the plaques and monuments listing George’s name as being dead weren’t cleared until 1996.

Several days after the bombing at Pearl Harbor, George was transferred back to Wheeler Field. He was in the 72nd fighter squadron where he went to Hickam to school. The planes were in short supply because of the bombings. They had little use for crew chiefs, so he was assigned as crew chief on the Group Commander Colonel Steele’s P-36. Colonel Steele was a West Point officer and very strict.

George didn’t like Headquarters Group and wanted to get back to the 72nd Squadron, but Colonel Steele wouldn’t transfer him. They hadn’t received many planes. One time, Colonel Steele came down to fly his plane and it wouldn’t start, so George asked him to get out. George tried and it started right up. It was right after a rain and Wheeler Field was a grass strip at that time. When the Colonel landed, George could tell he was mad. He told George he rolled the plane over several times and a piece of dirt hit him in the face, and if that was combat, he could have been killed. George said, “Colonel look at your boots, they have mud on them from the rain.” The colonel said, “Baker how long have you been in the Army? You never have an excuse.”

George decided then he wanted to return to the 72nd Squadron. The next morning George was in his office asking for a transfer. He was told no, so George did that for about a week and the answer was always no.

Finally, he told George that the only way he would transfer him was to be busted. George was Staff Sergeant and hated to lose it but, he said, “bust me!” Colonel Steele did. The next day George was transferred as a private. George was glad to get back to the 72nd and was made crew chief on a P-40. He was allowed one promotion a month, so in several months he was back to Staff Sergeant.

From Wheeler Field, George was moved to Barbers Point on the coast for several months. While he was there, he tried to burn some gas-soaked rags and got badly burned. He was in the hospital a couple of weeks.

From Barbers Point he was transferred to the golf course at Schofield Barracks. While there, George happened to run into Colonel Steele. Colonel Steele told George that since the war started, the requirements for aviation cadets had been lowered from two years at college to a high school diploma. George told him he had lied, and only had two years of high school. Colonel Steele told George if he lied once, he may as well do it again and put in for it. He got George some math books to brush up on. George had no trouble passing the exam.

George returned to the states as a cadet in January 1943 and was stationed at Santa Anna, California, where he was allowed to go home for a few days before pre-flight began. The academics and physical training were tough, but George managed to make it. They wanted to make him a bomber pilot or a navigator or a bombardier, but George said he wanted to be a fighter pilot or be sent back to his old squadron.

They finally gave in. After pre-flight, he was sent to Santa Maria for primary flight training.  George said he soloed in a PT-17 and it was one of the greatest thrills he had ever had, being up there by himself. The courses were exciting, as they did a lot of acrobatics, and he was finally flying solo, something George never expected to do. It took 7.46 minutes for him to solo, which was about normal for all cadets. May, June and July he spent in primary flight school; August and September he was in basic training in a BT-13 at Lancaster, California; October and November, he  was in Advance Flying School at Chandler, Arizona, where he was flying an AT-9, a twin engine training plane; he also flew an AT-6 and checked out a P-38.  He said it was a thrill because the P-38 had 2300 horsepower. George graduated in the class of 43K, December 5, 1943.

…continued in next month’s issue.

 

Note: A special thanks to George’s daughter, Connie Baker Fisher, for providing all the information and photos about George and granting me permission to write his story.