Posted by Slipdigit on behalf of Old Hickory

This is Old Hickory.

On a cold morning, we boarded a sea going ship, the USS John Ericson, headed for we didn’t know where. We were going to places unknown. We spent most of the day gathering a large convoy. There were naval ships, and a lot of supply ships. Late in the afternoon, we left.

The sea was rough, the weather was cold. We were crossing the north Atlantic in the wintertime. I’ve never seen as many sick people from the rough sea as there was. They were laying all over the decks and everywhere else. Twice, during this trip, we thought we were in the midst of submarines-German submarines. They threw a lot of depth charges at them.

We went through this rough sea. The trip to Liverpool, England lasted 15 days. We got there late at night. The German Air Force was bombing fairly close to us. The next morning after daylight, we got off the ship and went through Liverpool, where we’d heard the noise, the sirens, and the anti-aircraft fire and bombs the night before. [Slipdigit-This as 23 Feb 1944]

We went to Chichester England. We were staying on this base with the 117th Infantry [Regiment]. They had the best places to live. We had to go through their living quarters to get to ours. They fixed their things up real nice. They put pebbles [on the ground] that said “117 Infantry.”

Shortly after we got to Liverpool, we went to Tidworth, England to draw our vehicles: 13 armored cars, 5 halftracks, 24 jeeps, and 2 GMC trucks. When we came back, the place to go in was not big enough for the vehicles we had and we tore out the name of “117 Infantry”. We spent a week repairing it and getting to where we could get in and out of there.

We started training, mostly physical training. They sent 4 sergeants off to get Ranger training and they came back and gave it to us. That’s the roughest training I had in the war. I thought they were going to kill us before it was over with.

They decided we needed to fire our 37mm cannons with armor-piercing shells, so we went up to Scotland to fire them. The first day we were there, one of the shells ricocheted over a hill and went into the top of a house. That stopped the firing of those things. There’s not many places that you can fire armor-piercing shells in England.

We stayed in Chickister a month or 6 weeks. They moved us out to a place where we were living with the people in England. That didn’t last but about 2 or 3 weeks.

Then they moved us to Slough, England, which is on a hill above Windsor Castle, on Lady Astor’s estate. We stayed in the houses [outbuildings], we didn’t stay in the castle. During the time we were there, we had to guard the gate on her estate.*** Several meetings took place between Gen. Eisenhower and high ranking people. They said that Sir Winston Churchill was there on a couple of occasions.

The story has it that one evening, Lady Astor was serving tea. She went by Sir Winston and said,, “If you were my husband, I’d put poison in your tea.” Sir Winston replied, “if you were my wife, I’ drink it”

We’d go on a picnic with the English people at Windsor Castle and ride bicycles and come back up that hill. We did that often until 2 or 3 days before D-Day.

***Although, he said in our discussions that he never had to server guard or KP duty while he was in England. He said he saw Eisenhower, Montgomery, Bradley and several other brass come in and out of the castle while he was there on several occasions.