Interview with James Wilbur Lovell
Author: Ben Tamashiro, D Company
Title: A Bastard Outfit – What Else?
Publisher: Puka Puka Parade
Source: Puka Puka Parade, Jan-Feb 1980, Vol. 34 No. 1 (Part 1)
An interview with James W. Lovell, Headquarters Chapter: Executive Officer, and Commanding Officer (CO), 100th Infantry Battalion
When “Jim” Lovell’s grandfather came to America from England, he first scouted around Nebraska, then wandered around neighboring Colorado for awhile. But then he returned to Nebraska to stay, in the township of Hastings. And Jim says this gravitation to Hastings is not at all peculiar because the town was probably given its name by Englishmen to begin with, who were early settlers in the area. For, you see, the name Hastings has an understandable draw for all Englishmen.
The year was 1066 and Harold Godwin had become king of England. But William of Normandy also claimed the title so Harold began to prepare for the expected invasion from across the channel. But then Harold was diverted when the king of Norway suddenly invaded northern England to assert his claim also the English crown. This forced Harold to march northward to fight the invaders from Scandinavia; he won the battle.
In his absence, William landed his army without opposition on the southern coast of England. So Harold had to turn right around and push his army into another forced march, southward this time. He and William joined in battle near the town of Hastings. In the one-day battle known as the Battle of Hastings, Harold was killed by a Norman arrow. But England became the beneficiary of the “Norman Conquest” inasmuch as it greatly influenced the development of English language, literature, and history (the Magna Carta of 1215, for instance, had its beginning in the Norman rule).
So it is that Jim Lovell finds the roots of his military heritage in the Battle of Hastings; by association, at least, because it is in Hastings, Nebraska, that he was born, on February 6, 1907.
“As a young man, I spent much time with my father who was a great baseball player,” says Jim. “And he spent a lot of time with us. My father was in the grocery business, my mother was a housewife. She spent all her time taking care of the family of four boys and two girls. Throughout my junior high and high school days, all of us spent time delivering newspapers and working part time in my dad’s store. About the only time I had for athletics was in twilight league baseball. But it seemed I was always playing on some team, as well as in YMCA basketball.”
Jim played first base. But it was basketball that first got him military-minded because in the year of his graduation, he was invited to play with the Nebraska National Guard team although he had not yet joined the Guard. He spent that summer in the Colorado mountains on an outing with his uncle, then joined the Guard in the fall.
“As the 1929 depression was approaching, and my father had taken over the business completely from his partner, he asked me if I would stay with him for a year and work, then he would send me to college. It so happened that things were getting worse and worse so I stayed with him for three years. But after these years I was still offered a scholarship at Hastings College (liberal arts, Presbyterian) so I told my father he was released from any obligations to me; that I was going to have to go to school if I expected to get a free education. This was the start of my college career in education and athletics.” After one semester at Hastings, Jim transferred to Nebraska State where he lettered in baseball, football, and track.
To Hawaii
At the end of his third year, there came a call for industrial arts teachers in Hawaii. The recruiter was the head of the industrial arts program in the then Department of Public Instruction in Hawaii; he had formerly served in the same capacity for the state of Nebraska so consequently, in fulfilling the needs of the DPI, he turned to a place he knew. Jim still had one year remaining in school but he accepted the offer and with two others came to Hawaii in the summer of 1930.
While in the fifth grade in Nebraska, one of Jim’s classmates had been a Korean national studying English, but he was a young man of 20! This had been Jim’ s one and only contact with Orientals prior to coming to Hawaii. Now, in his first assignment in Hawaii, at Washington Intermediate School, where the enrollment was 2,400 – 95% of them were Japanese! There, he taught mechanical drawing and coached basketball and track and assisted in football. In his second year, he became the head football coach. But he quickly realized the severe limitations in coaching because of Hawaii’ s isolation and its resultant lack of exposure. A high school coach in Lincoln, Nebraska, for instance, could look to the universities of Iowa or Kansas or any number of such places. Here, there was only the University of Hawaii. So Jim set his sights on becoming a school principal and going up as far as he could in the school system… which prompted him to become better acquainted with his students .
“I developed a sort of admiration and respect for those in mechanical drawing who really did a good job. Because it’s a sort of art, an artistic thing, I used to see the kids put on their blue coats, put on shoes, then go to Japanese language school. And the girls would do the same; put on their outfits and go to sewing school or something. I admired this. In Nebraska, there were a lot of Bohemian and German children and they had this sort of education system, too.”
After three years at Washington, Jim moved to Roosevelt High School. “It was a different situation altogether. The few Oriental kids we had at Roosevelt were the children of professional men. And I don’t want to make a mistake, and say they were high class kids; all I want to say is that they came from a better situation. Because of the professionalism of their fathers, and perhaps their mothers, too, they had to speak better English because Roosevelt was an ‘English-standard’ school. So it was a bit different. But we had some outstanding Japanese boys at Roosevelt.”
In 1939, Jim went to McKinley and taught physical ed, was head track coach, coached junior football and basketball, and taught some core studies. It was a bit more like Washington; most of the kids came from Washington, anyway, and it was about the size of Washington. In his second year at McKinley, Jim became assistant principal, or dean of men.
Beginning of the War Years
“We were very startled when on October 15, 1940, a national emergency was declared and the 298th Regiment of the Hawaii National Guard, and the 299th, were two of four regiments called into federal service. The others were Washington and California. So I went to Schofield with the 298th. I was the regimental adjutant.”
Jim had been with the Nebraska National Guard ever since his enlistment after graduation from high school and when he came to Hawaii in 1930, he transferred to the Hawaii National Guard. He was a Private the first week, First Sergeant the next. He then took a series of officer qualifying tests and advanced rapidly from 1st Lieutenant to 2nd Lieutenant to Captain, at which point he became CO of the Service Company. Upon federalization, several officers resigned their commissions and one of them was the regimental adjutant. Colonel Anderson, 298th commander, appointed Captain Lovell to the vacancy.
The 298th went to Schofield and became part of the 22nd Brigade. “And this was our first contact with Colonel Fielder,” Jim says. (In the story on General Fielder in the August issue of the Puka Puka Parade, when asked whether he had had any contact with Niseis prior to coming to Hawaii, Fielder replied, “None whatsoever. When I was first assigned to Schofield Barracks, one of the responsibilities of my battalion was to train the 298th Regiment of the Hawaii National Guard; this was my first contact with the Nisei boys. As I worked with them, I discovered that they were as good soldiers as one could find anywhere in the army. I worked with them at the 298th and the university. I had no doubts about their capabilities, their loyalty to America. “)
For the next year, up to the time of Pearl Harbor, while engaged in training, there was time for plenty of athletics, too. Farrant Turner was the regimental executive officer. And Jim went to Ft. Benning on a routine assignment, to attend a three-months long battalion commander’s school. Not much else happened until the 298th was put on Class A alert a week before December 7, 1941.
“On December 1, we moved one battalion into positions they had dug all the way from Kualoa to Makapuu lighthouse. The positions were manned at half-strength; there were only two battalions in the regiment at that time. The men were to be chain-relieved on Sunday morning, December 7. We were also scheduled to play our final football game that afternoon so the boys were supposed to be at camp by 10:30 to dress for the game. I had come in on the morning of the 6th with Colonel Anderson and then had gone to see the Shrine football game. He went home that night and I went home (Nehoa St.) also.”
Pearl Harbor
“Sunday morning, I heard this loud noise and I thought they were doing some blasting at the university quarry. Then the phone rang. A friend living on the heights back of Roosevelt asked me what was going on, there was a large fire at Pearl Harbor. I turned on the radio and the announcer said that this was the real thing. So I called Sam Keala who was supposed to pick me up; he came right 8 down. We picked up another officer and headed straight for Schofield. We went right past Pearl Harbor during that second attack, right by those oil tanks. Soon as we got to Schofield, we got everybody ready and moved out to Kailua, Kaneohe, and clear out to Waimanalo. All of our troops were out and in position that afternoon. Our biggest delay was getting trucks.”
Jim recalls that they got all kinds of calls that night. Lots of people didn’t know, for instance, that the Islands were on a blackout. Even a few street lights were still on, and as coconut tree leaves swaying in the breeze cut across the solitary lights peeking through the black of the night, the tenseness of that first uncertain evening made people imagine that dot-dash signals were being flashed out to sea! “But our greatest concern was what was going to happen at daylight. ”
The Two-man Sub
“So I got in my Jeep and headed for the beach to see what had to be done between now and daylight. I could see the horizon and there was not a ship in sight. But we soon had a call from Bellows Field that a two-man submarine had been spotted. Our artillery officer asked permission to fire on it but the Navy put a ‘No!’ on that; they wanted the submarine. They sent a bulldozer with cables to tow it in. Meantime, when our men spotted the submarine, they saw this man swimming ashore. This Hawaiian soldier fired a shot; the man started swimming back to the sub. The Hawaiian fired another shot over the guy’s head; he turned around and swam ashore and they captured him and took him to Ft. Shafter.
“The Navy towed the submarine in and one of our boys, I can’t recall who, went into the sub and got these papers out. And I think it is the only evidence the government had of what really happened. The papers showed the line of entry into Pearl Harbor, right on the Waipahu sugarmill smoke stack; the azimuth was right on the smoke stack. And this submarine had sat in Pearl Harbor during the entire attack and had kept a running box score on a map. There was Ford Island and all those ships around it. He made one mistake; where the target ship Utah was, he had a carrier. That was the only mistake he made. He had x ‘d these out, everyone, as each ship was knocked out.
“Then after that thing was over that afternoon, he must have gone out of there, c l ear around the Waimanalo end, and I think he was going into Kaneohe Bay, but he came into Bellows and got caught on the reef. There were two men there because our man brought out two cans of rice, two cans of fish, two cans of vegetable. But we only got one man.”
The two-man sub beached off Bellows Field. Picture is from the book, “The Complete Book Of Submarines,” by Rush, Chambliss, & Gimpel; The World Publishing Co., 1958. Narrative says that “She had drifted around to the windward side of the island of Oahu, finally got hung up on a reef, and later beached herself off Bellows Field, an Army Air Force base. After setting a demolition charge, the skipper and his assistant tried to swim ashore. The demolition charge failed to detonate, and the assistant drowned before reaching the beach. The surf washed the skipper up on the beach unconscious, and he shortly afterward had the dubious distinction of becoming the first Japanese prisoner of war in World War II.”
Nothing happened the next morning, and the mornings that followed. The 298th continued to improve their beach positions and guard the Windward beach fronts.
The 100th – Its First Steps
Then about the end of April 1942, they were pulled back to Schofield on the pretext of going through further training. But unknown to most everyone, plans were developing for the employment of the AJAs in the 298th and 299th into a separate combat unit. On May 31, Jim was handed a wire for delivery to Colonel Anderson which called for him to assemble all of the AJA boys, and await orders.
“Several people volunteered to be the commander of the new battalion. Since Anderson had not made a decision, (Farrant) Turner asked me if I would go with him if he got the job. He then went to Ft. Shafter to see General Collins who told him that if he was chosen, he could take whomever he wanted. Then the general told Turner that if he wanted the job, it was his! Turner went back to Anderson and told him that he was going to take the job and that he was going to take me with him. Anderson said he’d better ask Lovell; Turner said he’d already done that.” Jim was then the 298th Plans and Training Officer, a Major. He became the Executive Officer of the new battalion.
“So, the next five days, the boys came from the other islands; we started getting them lined up into companies and fitted out and ready to leave, but with no idea where we were going. Meanwhile, the Battle of Midway was raging. We could see all those B-17s coming in with only two motors going, part of their tail shot up, and all that . We sailed out of Honolulu on the old S. S. Maui on June 5th, about the last day of the Battle of Midway. We had 1406 men – the Hawaiian Provisional Infantry Battalion.”
Camp McCoy
The battalion landed at Oakland and boarded five separate trains for the long ride eastward, finally arriving at Camp McCoy, Wisconsin. Besides being a training camp, McCoy was an internee camp for German and other nationals. Upon seeing the barbed wire enclosures, the men from Hawaii thought they, too, were to be interned. Happily, this was not to be.
“There was a tailor I used to go to over at the internee camp who fixed up all my clothes. He’d been a machine gunner in the German army in World War One. He was now a tailor in Louisville, Kentucky. They came and picked him up on December 7 and brought him to McCoy. ”
“We moved into a tent city. The only other troops at McCoy were housekeeping troops; it was the old Wisconsin National Guard camp. No sooner we arrived then we started getting visitors. General Ben Lear of the Second Army in Memphis, Tennessee, under whom we were assigned, constantly sent inspectors and observers to see what we had and what we could do. Within the next several months, we were the most observed and inspected unit in the entire army. Then we had the photographers, newsmen, magazine representatives; flocks of them, all curious to see what we were made of.”
A Bastard Organization
While enroute from Oakland to McCoy, the battalion was given the designation of 100th Infantry Battalion (Separate). Jim has no explanation as to why or how come we were assigned the number 100. A battalion is simply designated as the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd battalion – of a numbered regiment (like the 442nd Regiment, for example). “But we were a bastard outfit because we had no parent; no regiment to report to. Normally, it is the regiment’s responsibility to house, clothe, feed, provide transportation and ammunition and medical care, to a battalion. But we had nobody to give us any of these so we formed our own supply section, a medical section; we had our own pioneer platoon and anti-tank platoon. In other words, we formed a small little regiment within ourselves. And, of course, we had seven companies instead of the normal five.”
Jim’s guess is that when the Pentagon planners were faced with the problem of keeping track of this oversized and as nonconforming a battalion as they would care to be faced with again, they were probably more conscious of the philological aspects which, to begin with, lay at the roots of its nonconformance: it was the first all- Nisei combat unit in the history of the United States Army, a group of men who were not descendants of those who followed in the wake of the Mayflower but whose presence in America was of more recent vintage with a genealogy tied to the Land Of The Rising Sun, so whose physical features were more akin to the enemy’s than that of Anglo-American men in arms; who came from a place which was not a contiguous part of the nation, not even a state of the union; and whose speech, although it was the one common tongue of the place they came from could just as well have been as foreign as that of the enemy’s, for all its unintelligibility to the uninitiated.
For these considerations, then, among others, it is likely that the planners must have decided to give the new unit a distinguishing number and in the process simply reached far enough forward, to the number 100, on the reasoning that that would also leave plenty of room in between for designation of the burgeoning number of more-standardized units.
“Finally, I was asked to prepare a Table of Organization that would suit a separate battalion, I did this, based on our own organization, and delivered it to Washington when I was there on the ‘dog’ program. When questioned by the army brass in the Pentagon as to how the 100th was being quartered, fed, supplied, trained, transported, and its medical needs taken care of, I carefully explained our setup. That proposal then became the model for others because it worked. And as the wheels turned slowly, we received our first copy of the approved Table of Organization while we were in Oran, North Africa!” The TO was printed exactly as Jim had presented it to the Pentagon.
Sports
Sports played a great part in the life of the 100th. “Doc Kometani, as Special Services Officer, formed a sort of baseball club consisting of three teams, and each weekend and occasionally in the evenings, they would play the neighboring teams. Later in the season, we combined the best of the three teams and played the Wisconsin state league teams, and were successful on all occasions. I can’t remember when we ever lost! And we must have played at least 20 games. “Then in the basketball season, we did pretty much the same thing except that in the middle of the season we were transferred to Shelby; there, we won the 85th Division championship. And the boxing team also performed extremely well at Shelby. I can’t recall the details but we did win the post championship. We also had some baseball at Shelby; we built our own field and had a couple of games with the 442nd and we did take a couple of trips.”
Cat Island: Perchance We Even Smelled Differently?
At McCoy, in early September 1942, while the battalion was on an all-day hike, both Turner and Lovell were Jeeped back to camp to meet with some visiting brass from the Pentagon. Jim was informed that he had been picked to head a special project. The project itself was not disclosed; orders would follow. Two days later, he was instructed to report to the Special Projects Section at Ft. Myer, Virginia. The term special projects embraced any and every kind of unorthodox activity – ski, underwater, mountain climbing, dogs, whatever.
It was then disclosed to Jim that a Swiss captain who had been a hunting guide had managed to convince President Roosevelt that he could teach dogs to bite only Japanese! Through the sense of smell! The idea was that dogs so trained would be invaluable in the islands-hopping campaign in the Pacific. Jim’s part of the project was to pick a platoon of men and two junior officers.
“The next morning, we rode a plane, landed at Keesler Field in Biloxi, Mississippi, and boarded a launch which took us out to Cat Island. It is one of three islands in the group – the other two being Rat Island and Ship Island. They lie about a dozen miles off the Mississippi coastline in the Gulf of Mexico; not visible from shore, of course. Dense, semitropical vegetation covers Cat Island. There is an old Civil War-built fort on Ship Island which was used to house Northern prisoners.
“There was housing for the men in an old Coast Guard station on Ship Island. The dogs, ironically, were on Cat Island. My job was simply to deliver the men to the project officer, Colonel Nichols.
“We went back to Washington and I was given data sheets for each man to fill out. The questions were primarily pointed to their loyalty. I told the army brass that these men had already been accepted in the army and if there was any question of loyalty, it was too late; I refused to take the forms. I was then instructed to go back and select my people and wait for orders and not to divulge the project. I went back to camp and selected a platoon of B Company and informed them to get fishing lines, fish hooks and bathing trunks, and keep all their gear close because they could be expected to leave almost any time. On November 3, we went to Camp Williams and boarded two DC-3s and left for the New Orleans airport.
“When we arrived at the airport, the entire field was vacated and ringed by MPs so that no one could possibly see who had arrived. I walked out of the door of the plane and into the back end of a 2-1/2 ton truck; the others followed. We were immediately transported dockside and put on a launch to go to Ship Island. The men had no idea yet what the project was; this was supposed to be done by Colonel Nichols.
I had asked for rice but typically, our first meal was bread, and all styles of shrimp, raw fish, steamed fish, fried fish. Tokuji Ono had found a small skiff and paddled out to the shrimp boats and bought several pails of shrimp. The fish were caught right off the pier on Ship Island.
“After two days of lolling in the sun and fishing and swimming, the men were taken to Cat Island. I told Colonel Nichols that it was his duty to explain the situation to the men… that I expected to return to Hawaii and live with these men. He replied that he didn’t have the heart to do it; that I would have to do it. So upon landing at Cat Island, I assembled the men and explained what the project was and told them there were some dangers, but we wanted to perform this in the same manner as we had performed all of our jobs: give it the best effort.
“The procedure was that two men would be put in to fight the dogs. Some were bitten but not seriously. The tests proved absolutely false. Blood and perspiration of our boys did not attract the dogs any more than others. The project ended up with our boys hiding in the trees and the dogs becoming scout dogs, whereupon the camp was disbanded and the dogs taken to Monterey to the dog scout training center. The collection of dogs, about 50 in number, was probably one of the greatest ever assembled. Russian Wolfhounds, Doberman, German Shepherds, Airdales. It was absolutely frightening to walk through the camp and have a dog lunge at you, only to be stopped by a big heavy chain. I saw a sergeant take his dog and heel at a mannequin with an open throat. Then he’d put a chunk of meat in the throat, take the leash off the dog and say ‘Strike!’ and the dog would go from a sitting position to that pound of meat – on the fly!
“But the boys enjoyed themselves. It was 16 below in McCoy and these men were in their swimming trunks, fishing and swimming. They rejoined the outfit in the spring, in March, when the 100th was in Camp Shelby.”
In retrospect, one has to wonder how a president of the United States ever came to buy the theory that blood and sweat smelled differently, one race from the other. On the other hand, under the exigencies of the times, the president was susceptible to any well-intentioned idea that would exact yet another pint of blood from the perpetrators of “the day of infamy.”
But perhaps FDR was not that far off, after all . Today, we see that a British research team at the University of Warwick has isolated a substance in the sweat of males – with scents that influence behavior in many species of the animal world. But even more fascinating, it is a sex substance which attracts females, and on that note, perfume manufacturers are converging on Warwick in the hope of bottling the precious essence as after-shave lotion that will prove irresistible to women!
All of which portends the day when the verity of this jingle from a familiar nursery tale shall come to pass: “Fe, fi, fo, fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman!”
Of Fights, Lovers, And A Test In The Snow
“In the meantime we had three special event s taking place at McCoy. We had moved to the new camp, into wooden barracks. And one night General Robertson of the 2nd Division came to see Colonel Turner to complain of the fights then going on between the men of his di vision and the 100th. Turner informed the general that the 100th could not take on the whole division, but it could take it on, one battalion at a time. From that time on, the men became more amicable towards each other.”
There was also a civilian aspect to the some of the rowdiness of the boys. Jim says that one of his unspecified special duties at Camp McCoy “were Saturday night trips to LaCrosse to see the Sheriff who would be holding a few boys to be returned to camp; because of these frequent weekend trips, I established quite a rapport with the Sheriff and Colonel Turner’s sedan got to be a familiar sight at the jailhouse door. I also spent some time in civil and military courts assisting some of the boys get out of a predicament or two and even helping some civilians recover their daughters.” What Jim means on that last score is that some of the more amorous types wanted to get married to their new-found haole lovers but their parents would have no part of that so they’d ask Jim to break up the lovers’ trysts.
“And about this time, about 60 officers arrived from the 6th Corps and told us that we would have a full field test the next morning. The weather was about 16 degrees below zero. All the companies moved out the next morning, each company assigned a problem to perform. The battalion received an excellent rating for its performance. And a special commendation was given to D Company for their field firing of water-cooled machine guns.”
Getting Ready For Overseas
In the first week of January 1943, Jim took a cadre to Camp Shelby, Mississippi, followed shortly by the rest of the 100th, in the move from Wisconsin to Mississippi. Jim led Colonel Turner to General Haislip’s headquarters to pay his respects. “We were met by Colonel ‘Bull’ Kendall, Chief of Staff, who inquired, ‘Well, Turner, have your Japs arrived!’ Whereupon, Turner replied, ‘The word Jap is an opprobrium which is reserved for the enemy.’ ‘But what if the general wants to use the word,’ bristled Kendall. Turner replied, ‘In his own quarters or office, it will be all right. But don’t use it in our area…’”
Jim then recalls three important events in Shelby. “First, we received our colors. Second, the 442nd arrived. And third, we went on Louisiana maneuvers. After the maneuvers, we returned to Shelby and soon were ordered to report to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey. This meant overseas departure to us.
“At Kilmer we were issued new weapons and received medical checkups. One-half of the battalion were given passes. As the other half was about to go to New York for the weekend, we were alerted. All telephones and telegraphs were shut off to us as we awaited orders. Two nights later we were on a train headed for Brooklyn to board the transport James Parker for Oran, North Africa.”
Goat Hill, the 34th and General Ryder
“On the first night out, Secretary of War Henry Stimson announced that the first contingent of Japanese American troops had sailed for North Africa. The Secretary’s announcement was a puzzlement to us because we had been denied even a single telephone callout of Kilmer, and here he was, telling the world that the 100th was on the way; it was difficult to comprehend the logic of it all, if there was any such. We were part of a great big convoy; I think the battle – ship Nevada which had been sunk at Pearl Harbor, then raised and fixed up, was one of the guardians of the convoy. We zigzagged quite a bit and it took us about two weeks to make the crossing. The feature of the trip was those constant crap games.
“We landed in Oran and were encamped in a place called Goat Hill, aptly named because the place was smelly, barren, hot and dusty as a goat compound. We stayed there about three days, then moved to the Cork Forest at Ein-el-turk, about six or seven miles away.”
The sprawling Cork Forest was headquarters of the 34th Division. There, General Ryder informed Colonel Turner that the 100th would be taking the place of the 2nd Battalion of the 133rd Regiment which was acting as a special military guard at General Eisenhower’s headquarters in Oran.
The initial contacts with the 34th took several forms. Baseball, for instance. The 34th had been taking a beating the last several weeks from other teams in the area and the men were unhappy because they had lost heavily in betting on their team. So at the invitation of the 34th, Jim took several players with him to bolster the 34th: Paul Fronin, Hide Yamashita, Mushy Miyagi, George Takata and Blackie Kaneshina, as he recalls it. And in the game for the North African championship, the 100th players were instrumental in helping the 34th win, 4 – 0 (see also Turtle Omiya’s story in the June ’79 issue of the Parade). And happiness was the order of the day for the men of the 34th; they had recouped all their previous losses in that one championship game.
As for General Ryder, in his first talk to the officers and noncoms of the 100th, he cautioned that no outfit is any good, or nobody knows how good they are, until it has been bloodied once. In other words, crucial is the behaviour of an outfit in its baptism of fire.
And the 100th was headed for that baptism. “While at Goat Hill,” says Jim, “Colonel Turner, Jack Johnson (S- 3) and I had gone to Mastagenem , fifty mi les down the coast from Oran, which was the headquarters for the 5th Army in North Africa. There had been some discussion that the 100th would be guarding railroad trains. But at Mastagenem, Turner was handed a telegram committing the 100th to combat. “