Camp Pickett Virginia is located in Blackstone VA., about 30 miles west of Petersburg. The camp had been shut down since the end of WWII and was in pretty bad shape. Our first task was to get it back into condition as a host facility for training an Infantry Division. When that was done, we began a rigorous period of infantry training. I was platoon sergeant for the second platoon of Company G, 2nd Battalion, 102nd Infantry Regiment of the 43d Infantry Division, a Connecticut National Guard unit, federalized at the start of the Korean war. We were federalized while at summer camp at Fort Drum, NY. (At that time it was called Camp Drum or Pine Camp).
Our unit arrived at Camp Pickett in August of 1950. Our training went on day and night. At times we received orders to pack everything, including all supplies and kitchen equipment onto trucks and just drive off into the night and then return and unpack, just for practice. In early November I got orders to go to Fort Dix, NJ to attend leadership school. My job there included being cadre to new recruits undergoing basic training. I was there for about two months, during which time I was able to go home on weekends. That was great duty, although it was very cold that winter. While out in the field, the cadre were able to sleep in squad tents, with heaters, while the new recruits slept out in their pup tents. Quite a few had to be hospitalized with frost bite.
While at Fort Dix, one day I received a telegram informing me that Therese was in New York at Grand Central station, would I please pick her up. I was able to borrow a car and drive to the city. I looked all over Grand Central station, but I couldn't find her. Finally, a man tapped me on the shoulder and said " I think that girl over there is looking for you" . Sure enough, there was Therese. We drove back to New Jersey and I found a room for her to stay until the weekend when we would go home. She was having problems with her mom, so we talked about getting married, and decided on a day in December during the Christmas holidays. Later, I returned to Camp Pickett and waited for our Christmas leave.
Just before Christmas, I was lucky to hop a ride to CT from Camp Pickett with our First Sergeant and some others. I had no car, so I needed to make arrangements with whomever I could. This was to be a fortuitous arrangement as I found out the next day. When I read the newspaper the next day, (December 23 or 24), I was shocked to read the headline. Three soldiers from the second platoon, (my platoon) Company G, 102nd Infantry had been seriously hurt in an explosion... one, fatally.
December 27th, 1950, we were married at St. Mary Magdelene Church in Oakville, CT.
During the time since we arrived at Camp Pickett, it seems that some of the guys had been taking ammunition from the training sites and hiding them in the barrack's attic. Then when they were going home on leave, they were to take them home as souvenirs. However, when the time came, they either had a change of heart and began to toss them to others, or maybe they were just being careless with the ammo. I don't know. In any case, a bazooka shell was tossed around. One hit the floor and exploded. This happened on the second floor, just outside of my room. I was the platoon sergeant and had a room on the second floor just to the right past the staircase. The explosion propelled one soldier down the stairs, into the street, killing him. I believe that was Pvt. Avitable. Another had parts of his legs blown off. A third was also seriously wounded.
Since our 1st Sgt. had privileges, our group was able to leave earlier than we normally would. I was spared whatever damage would have been done to me if I had been there when the incident happened. More than likely, I would have tried to stop whatever was going on, as would have been my duty to do. This was my first close call; there would be others.
When I got back to Camp Pickett after my furlough, I went to my room, which was to the right at the top of the stairs, and saw that the door had been blown off; there was shrapnel in my duffel bag; and my canteen cup was bent into the canteen by way of a shrapnel hole. The barracks had been shut down and we all had to live in another barrack until the mess was cleaned up and the investigation over.
Soon after, there was a command wide inspection of barrack attics. They turned up truckloads of illegal ammo. It's hard to imagine the stuff that souvenir hunters will hoard.
Ranger reunion, 1998, Niantic, CT
Not too long after getting back, I learned that Therese and her friend Betty, Harold's Hodgkinson's wife were coming down to Blackstone VA. Harold was a good friend of mine. (Click on picture for Harold). We were buddies from the National Guard. When they married the previous summer in Watertown, CT, I was their best man. Little did they realize that we were camp bound. There were no passes into town and the only way the girls could be with us was by taking a bus into the camp, where we would spend the evening in the service club until they had to leave by the latest bus back to Blackstone. This routine went on for about a month until, finally, the restrictions were lifted.
Sometime in February, orders came down to form a Ranger Company within the division. It seems the Army was outfitting all Infantry Divisions with a Ranger Company, and the 43d Division was forming the 13th Ranger Company. Volunteers were being sought. It was Hodgkinson's idea, but I went along with it; anything to get out of camp Pickett. Volunteers were required to sign up for jump training at the parachute school in Fort Benning Georgia, something I was previously sure I never wanted to do. But again, anything to get away from Camp Pickett.
There were some 700 volunteers in the division. We all went through preliminary training to weed out those who couldn't handle the physical tests. In March, about 250 of us departed for Fort Benning for jump school and Ranger training. The training was to be intensive, so wives were not allowed to follow.
Jump school lasted three weeks. One week of ground training; how to wear a parachute; how to control descent, how to land, etc. One week of tower training; jumping from a 34 foot tower; parachuting from the 250 foot tower, etc and one week of actual jumping from a plane. We never walked anywhere, always running, always doing push-ups.
Before the first week was out, we (Harold & myself) got another telegram from Therese & Betty that they were in Atlanta, would we please come pick them up. It was as if we could drop everything and just drive up there anytime we wanted. Well, we talked our instructors into letting us go. We drove up to Atlanta's Greyhound bus terminal and picked then up.
They stayed at a hotel until we could find a more permanent place for them. We located a house on Warm Springs Road in Columbus GA, out in the country, where they stayed until the summer. Eventually, Harold and I were able to live off post, so we shared the house, each with our own bedroom. But we shared the kitchen, which eventually caused bad blood between the girls and they became increasingly hostile towards one another. Betty eventually went back home, but Therese stayed on.
As a postscript to the Korean War, I would like to honor my cousin, Gerard, who was killed in Korea in 1950.
Gerard LaCourse was my close friend as well as my cousin, growing up in Waterbury. The LaCourse family lived on Lounsbury St, in Waterbury, and though it was a long walk from Baldwin Street to his house, we got together quite often in the years before we moved to Wolcott. Gerard always got neat toys for Christmas, and I looked forward to playing with him. One thing we enjoyed doing together was roller skating. Not skating on a hardwood floor, but sidewalk skating with our four wheeled roller skates that were clamped to our shoes and that we literally wore through the wheels. We were the same age, but in school, Gerard was not very industrious. He was intelligent enough, but couldn't handle school. So it was not so surprising that he didn't graduate from grammar school and joined the Army in December 1948, at age 17.
He was with the 2nd Infantry Division ( The Indianhead Division ) stationed at Fort Lewis WA. When I saw him on leave, he was really proud that he had finished cook and bakers school. No Infantry training mind you, but cook and bakers school. Not too long after he joined, the Korean war broke out and like many others like him, rushed to the front to plug up holes. Without proper training or equipment, these poor guys were just cannon fodder. The 2nd Div. was the first division to go directly from the states to Korea.
Five years earlier the Second World War ended and the military had been reduced to a pitifully low point. In addition, most of the leftover military equipment had been scrapped. With the Army in such a condition, these men were expected to hold the North Koreans until a decent Army could be put together.
Gerard was wounded once, hospitalized and returned to duty. The second time, he wasn't so lucky. I would just like to pay my respects here to my cousin and my friend, Gerard LaCourse.
Gerard had an older brother, Raymond, who served in the Air Force during the Korean War. Unfortunately, Raymond was shot and killed by a robber as he left work from a store he ran in North Carolina. He operated a convenience store near a military reservation in North Carolina. Ironically, the killer was an American G.I. A sister, Doris, was in my grammar school graduating class. (Bottom row, 3rd from left).
