Col. Eaton became quite friendly after I assumed the duties of adjutant and he told me his life story. After graduating from med school, he opened up an office in Oklahoma in the early 1930’s, having borrowed quite a bit of money to do so. If you have read “The Grapes of Wrath” you can believe his story. The town where he started to practice was wiped out by the sandstorms. To avoid paying his many debts, he joined the Army. He was stationed in several different hospitals, and when the war broke out in 1940, he had been in the service for almost 10 years. As a result of the great demand for doctors, he was promoted rapidly.
Compare his story to that of Major James LaNasa, who eventually became the executive officer of our battalion. He joined the Army before the U.S. entered into the war. Doctors could join for one year and then return to private life. As soon as the U.S. got involved the rule was changed and LaNasa was kept in. The case of Joe Forejt was different. By the time he graduated from med school all doctors were subject to the draft and when he joined the battalion he was assigned to Company B at which time LaNasa, then a captain, was the C.O. They became best of friends, and as a result LaNasa and I became good friends, especially after we were both working in headquarters. He and his wife Emalie, and baby Jimmy also had a home in Lakehurst and Odie and Emalie became good friends.
We knew we were soon going overseas but we had no date. Martha Forejt, Joe’s wife, was a nurse working in Harrisburg, PA, so I never got to meet her before going overseas. Odie got to visit her after we left for Europe and they became very friendly- a friendship that lasted for many years- to the date of this writing, anyway. While I was overseas Odie made more than one trip to New Orleans to spend time with Emalie and young Jimmy, who at the time of this writing was a physician in Baton Rouge, to where his parents moved after the war.
While at Fort Dix, I pulled a big bone headed move. One afternoon I received a call from Col. Chaille, the division chief-of-staff who had a message for Col. Eaton that the next day at noon there was to be a meeting of all unit commanders in the office of our general, Gen. Keating. I made a note of the message and placed it on my desk. Shortly afterwards a runner came in from the division headquarters with a stack of papers about a foot high that were placed on top of my message for our Colonel. I started to go through the pile from the top and never got to the end that day and forgot all about the message!
The following morning on the way into camp, Col. Eaton mentioned that we was going to join the battalion on a short hike to an artillery range where our artillery units were going to fire shells so the men (not in the artillery) would be accustomed to the noise. I was going to remain in our headquarters to finish reading the material that had come in the previous day. About 12:15 the phone rang and as soon as I heard the voice I knew I was in trouble. I apologized to Col. Chaille and tried to explain, but he cut me short and demanded that Col. Eaton report immediately. When I told him that Eaton was on the artillery range and I had no way to contact him, he ordered me to have Eaton report to the General as soon as he returned. When Eaton came in I told him what had happened and he headed for division headquarters. When he returned he was pale, he said he had never been “reamed out” like that in his career!
A couple of days later we received a directive from division headquarters requesting an explanation for his absence and what action was to be taken. I showed it to the Col. And after reading it, he said “What are we going to do?” I suggested that I should be restricted to the base for a week for failure to give him notice of the meeting. The Colonel asked how that could happen as we needed my car to go back and forth each day. I replied that I had no intention of restricting myself, that I was newly married and wanted to see my wife as much as possible, if punishment would be to send me overseas, that we were going overseas anyway, and if they wanted to kick me out of the Army, I wouldn’t have to worry about going overseas!
The Colonel said he wouldn’t sign such a letter, so I took out a sheet of paper and said “I’ll sign it for you,” and wrote “F.C. Eaton on it and showed it to him. He started to curse me and said, “You’ve got my signature down pat!” Then I told him that on a few occasions I had signed his name to reports when he wasn’t available. He cursed me some more, the letter went in, signed by him. We rode back and forth for the week and he worried quite a bit, but nothing happened.
A few days later the Colonel called me into his office and asked if there were any officers or non-commissioned officers that we didn’t want to keep with us overseas. He had been in the Army for almost ten years and he said that the commanding officer of the hospital at Fort Dix was an old friend and he could work something out. We had one officer in our headquarters that wasn’t too well liked by the rest of us. We also had one of the doctors in the battalion who was always complaining about everything. We all wanted him to go overseas because he didn’t want to go, but no one wanted him to go overseas with us! Anyway, the Colonel arranged to have all officers report to the hospital for some tests. The two were held in the hospital “for observation” until after we left for Europe and we got replacements shortly after we got there.
On September 12th we finally sailed from New York. The medical battalion went overseas on a Swedish liner, the Gripsholm, and I shared a stateroom with two of our doctors and an officer from some other unit. Actually, one doctor, Jim Prigden, a Texan and a nice guy and Bernard Margolis who was also a MAC whom I had met at OCS and we had joined the division together. The two were in Company D with whom Headquarters travelled throughout the war.
He only spent minutes with us, except to sleep. The rest of the time he was with his friends. We were told that our convoy of over 60 ships was the largest to leave for Europe to date. I’m not a seaman, and I was seasick from the second day out until we arrived at Weymouth, England. We didn’t debark there, however remained in port overnight and the next day sailed to Cherbourg, reportedly the first convoy to go directly to the continent. Cherbourg had been the first port that was opened to Allied convoys.
The one thing I remember of the crossing [was that] several times during each day the entire convoy at a specified signal would turn left or right at some specified angle. This was supposed to confuse any German submarines, if there were any. I heard some officers remark that a sub had been fired upon. I never heard any firing. Anyway, the entire convoy made the crossing without any losses.
Jim LaNasa and Joe Forejt, incidentally, had been part of the advance party. Jim, as executive officer of our battalion was a “must” and he asked that Joe accompany him as the second officer. We were all united at the dock at Cherbourg, loaded into trucks and headed inland into the “hedgerows” of Normandy. These were large rectangular parcels of land bordered by hedges anywhere from four to six feet high on all sides with openings for the farmers to enter and leave. Our large 2.5 ton trucks were all taken away from us to be used for the Red Ball Express to move supplies and ammunition to the front line troops. We had to wait there for the next convoy to arrive when our trucks were returned and we moved up to Holland, at the outskirts of Maastricht, near the German border.
We had arrived in France during the rainy season, and the hedgerows were rich farmlands that had seen no use for a while. I mention this mainly to remember Jim LaNasa, our “neat freak”, who used to shine his shoes every night. When we first arrived the ground wasn’t too bad, but in a day or two it all changed and I can recall Jim stepping out of his tent and sinking to his ankles in the mud! We lived in that for over two weeks before moving up to the front.
