Roy Hugh: The Boy from Bisbee That Went to War Pfc to Brigadier General

By Roy Hugh and Carole De Cosmo

The theme of this book is one man's patriotism and service to his country. Follow Roy Hugh's life journey from a small boy in Bisbee to his retirement as Brigadier General in the Arizona NAtional Guard. Roy's journals, photographs, letters and postcards chronicle his love of his country and devotion to friends, fellow soldiers, family and people he met during his life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Sep 15, 2008
• ISBN: 9781468583571

Book preview

Roy Hugh

The Boy From Bisbee That Went to War PFC to Brigadier General

Carole De Cosmo

with Roy Hugh

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AuthorHouse™

1663 Liberty Drive, Suite 200       

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: [phone]

© 2009 Carole De Cosmo. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 3/23/2009

ISBN: 978-1-4343-9442-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4685-8357-1 (ebook)

Bloomington, Indiana

Contents

Foreword

Introduction

Chapter One Growing Up In Bisbee

Chapter Two Arizona State College

Chapter Three The Country Prepares

Chapter Four The War in Europe

Chapter Five Preparing for War

Chapter Six Camp Atterbury, Ohio, March 1944

Chapter SevenThe 313th Infantry

Chapter EightThe Taking of Cherbourg

Chapter NineJoining the War

Chapter TenFriends and Comrades

Chapter ElevenMail

Chapter TwelveThe Race to Alsace

Chapter ThirteenPerception

Chapter FourteenThe Battle of the Bulge

Chapter FifteenCrossing the Rhine

Chapter SixteenThe Occupation

Chapter SeventeenGoing Home

Chapter EighteenGlendale and Squirt

Chapter NineteenThe National Guard

Chapter Twenty In Conclusion

Epilogue

Bibliography

Foreword 

I was the director of Historic Sahuaro Ranch when I first met Roy in 2002. Curating an agricultural exhibit I was looking for pictures of the Squirt Bottling Plant, more commonly known today as the Beet Sugar Factory, in Glendale, Arizona. Phil Randolph, president of the local community college, recommended I call Roy Hugh, a retired chemist from Squirt. As we talked about Squirt, we started to talk about his life in Bisbee and he shared his World War II Journal with me.

The Journal begun on June 5, 1943 and completed on June 4, 1944, is a young mans daily account of basic training to go to war. I found Roy to be a historians dream, knowledgeable about the subject with many photographs with names and dates on the back. During a later oral history he shared his more of his World War II experiences, and more photographs, letters and other memorabilia with names and dates. At that time I encouraged Roy and his daughter, Karen Hugh Hall, to think about doing a book.

After I left Sahuaro Ranch in February of 2006, Roy and I again talked about a book. Karen had transcribed the journal and all the letters, notes and postcards he had written home during his time in France and Germany from 1944 to 1945. We agreed that spring that I would take on the project to write the book, and thus began a series of oral interviews and research on which this book is based. It is a memoir of war through the journal, letters, postcards and photographs of a young soldier and the man he became as he later joined the National Guard as a 1st Lt. and retired a Brigadier General.

Working with Roy to write this book has been an adventure. The first thing I learned was my knowledge of World War II had been severely colored by John Wayne movies. As I began the research to place Roy’s story into the history of World War II I became fascinated with the small details about the war that are never written about or discussed by historians. If you compare today’s manufacturing, communication and transportation with the 1940’s you will see the accomplishments from 1940 through 1945 were miraculous. United States manufacturers adapted from peace to war production in an incredibly short time. Our country came together as one cohesive incredible force that would not accept defeat.

There are many to thank for their help: Roy Hugh and his wife, Beverly; Karen Sue Hugh Hall; Ivan Hugh’s wife, Patsy, daughter, Margery Kmieciak and son, Ian. Roy’s life long friends from the Lambda Phi Sigma Fraternity: George Ahrens, Louis Coor, Ed Fleming, Frank Ivanovich, Ken Parker, Dean Smith, Ed Ringenberg, Paul Schwark, and Don Van Camp, and Bill Soderquist, a member of the 44 Infantry that became his sons father-in-law. These men shared a memory or two from their war experience. I only wish each of them had saved a few of the letters they wrote to each other from around the world during the conflict.

I also want to thank my best friend, Carole Miller, who at times when I was discouraged and doubtful of my skill said, get over it and write, and Carolyn Harrold and Dean Smith, for reading and proofing the manuscript. Last, but not least, my husband, Tom, who has always supportive of my work. I hope the reader will enjoy this tale and it will encourage them to read more about the hidden stories of World War II; the growth and the development of the United States since the war; and the accomplishments of the National Guard not only in Arizona, but across the country.

I love quotes and I will leave you with this one by Winston Churchill talking about writing his WWII memoir in 1949. Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement, then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him to the public. The quote mirrors my feeling about the experience as I fling my first book out to you.

Introduction 

I served as a Private, actually Private First Class (PFC), in World War II. The units were the 79th Infantry Division, 313th Regiment, 3rd Battalion, M Company 3rd Platoon. I can’t, in good conscience say I’m proud of that fact, because it implies those other countrymen that served me and supported me at home, keeping the home fires burning and making the equipment, shipping it to the men in combat zone did not serve.

This story chronicles a college student leaving college, only needing 12 hours of studies to get his degree. After the war one might ask what has the government done for me lately? Well, my government did plenty, they gave me tuition and books so I could complete my degree at Arizona State College and get on with my life.

What is more important was during the war my country was supporting me all the way. I shall point them out through out the book. One cannot continue talking about my country with out explaining what I consider my country. Today, it is the fifty states with great natural resources, and the PEOPLE living here…that is my country.

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1926, Ivan and Roy on vacation with our Dad, on a lake near Safford, AZ

Chapter One

Growing Up In Bisbee 

My story begins in Bisbee, Arizona, a small copper mining town located in the Mule Mountains in the southeastern part of Arizona. Founded in 1880, the town was named for Judge DeWitt Bisbee, one of the financial backers of the Queen Mine. By 1900, Bisbee had a population of 20,000 and was the largest city on the railroad between St Louis and San Francisco.

Bisbee was known as the Queen of the Copper Camps because of the richness of the copper deposits. In Lynn Bailey’s book Bisbee, Queen of the Copper Camps she writes, an example of the richness of Bisbee was from a tract of ore-bearing land, two by three miles on the surface, by 4.6 cubic miles deep, an astounding amount of metal was produced: eight billion pounds of copper, 355 million pounds of zinc, 324 million pounds of lead, 100 ounces of silver slightly less than eight million ounces of gold and other trace elements.

The history of Bisbee is the history of mines. Bisbee went through many stages. It evolved from a typical 1890’s smelly: smoke filled, rag-tag copper mining camp to a town that piped clean water and had a fourteen mile sewerage system by 1908. As miners arrived with their families Bisbee changed again, cleaning up the town, building schools, encouraging family business, and forming community spirit.

When World War I came to Bisbee in April 1917, it created a visible dividing line in the community’s history. The war years were marked with increasing copper prices, a rising cost of living, and the bitter labor dispute that Bisbee would never forget. The deportation of nearly twelve hundred alleged labor radicals in July 1917 marked the city for ever. The deportation ended Bisbee’s growth, and innocence. By the time the World War I ended, hatred of organized labor had spread across Arizona, a state once noted for its friendliness to trade unions.

The Hugh family emigrated from the Cornwall district in England. My father, Lewis Arthur Hugh arrived at Ellis Island on June 25, 1905, on The St. Paul; His younger brother, George, and father, William, followed in 1906, they all settled first in Michigan. They were ‘Cousin Jacks’ from Cornwall, famous for the quality of their miners. Dad left Michigan to work in Jerome, Arizona for Calumet Mining, after Jerome he went to Bisbee.

My father made two trips back to England to visit family. On his second trip in 1909 he married by mother, Muriel from St. Austell, Cornwall, England. The couple arrived February 2, 1909, on the St. Louis. They settled first in Hancock, Michigan before moving to Bisbee in 1906 where my father, Arthur, would work for the Calumet & Arizona Mining Company. As I look back I imagine Bisbee must have been a cultural shock for my proper British mother. Raised in the green countryside of Cornwall she was plopped down in the desert mining town environment of Southwestern Arizona. She was a British lady to the core, never leaving the house to go down town without her hat and gloves.

Bisbee is one of three towns in the Warren District; the others were Lowell and Warren. Bisbee was mostly built on the mountainsides while Warren and Lowell, down in the flats, were laid out in blocks. I grew up in the Tombstone Canyon district not having to know North and South or East and West because the streets in Bisbee would follow the terrain wandering along the contour of the hills.

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Roy, Margery and Ivan

US Hwy 80 is the main street. The highway ran from Douglas to Bisbee and on to Tombstone. When I was a child, Hwy 80 to Tombstone climbed up a very steep and winding road to the top of the canyon. At the top of the hill was a monument stating this is the Great Divide, elevation 6,040 feet. The Greyhound bus and trucks used the route, and if you were unlucky to get behind one of them, you had to drive the slow speed, which was annoying but necessary. Everyone in the district loved it when the trucks and buses had diesel motors and could climb the hill easily. Today you go through a tunnel driving under the old road.

There were three children in the family, my sister, Margery, by brother Ivan and me. We are first generation children of English immigrants. Bisbee was very multi-cultural, there were immigrants from a variety of countries: England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. There were also Europeans from France, Norway, Sweden and the Balkans. Growing up in Bisbee was an ideal life in a small town. Everyone knew everyone else and the kids played together regardless of heritage.

My sister, Margery, was seven when she was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. I don’t have any childhood memories of her before she was crippled by arthritis. My mother cared for her until her death at age thirty-seven. I have always felt that Mother’s life was very hard. Her first child had been stillborn and then she had the responsibility of an invalid child plus the care of a home and two sons.

Because there was no home mail delivery, everyone had to go to the post office mail. Those that didn’t have a box would pick up their mail at the General Delivery window, therefore the post office was a gathering place for information. This resulted in a closer community because we would see each other more often than folks in other towns. I remember Mother putting on her gloves and hat to walk downtown to pick up the mail.

My junior and senior years in high school I delivered the Special Delivery mail. I was at the post office before school in order to deliver letters when the morning mail arrived, then after school I delivered the evening mail. This was seven days a week, the cost to send Special Delivery was 10 cents and I got 7 cents to deliver it. Some deliveries were close to the post office such as the Copper Queen Hotel. Which would have three or four at a time, while some were a mile and a half up the canyon from the post office. I got 7 cents for delivery regardless if it was a two to three mile walk.

One of my long time friends, Russell Daughtry, lived next door; Russell had a brother, John, which was two years younger. The Daughtry family was transferred by the United States Postal service to Bisbee from Enid, Oklahoma, to become the Assistant Post Master. The assistant postmaster got a two-week paid vacation each year, and the Daughtrys’ used the vacation to make a visit to Enid.

Miners did not get paid vacations, so we didn’t go on family vacations. But one summer Mom stayed home with Margery and Dad took Ivan and me on a two-day vacation in the 1926 Dodge. We went first to Tucson. In Tucson, I was fascinated with all the tall buildings, 10 to 14 floors. While walking around downtown Tucson a fireman at a fire station showed me my first long-ladder fire truck. Later when I saw the three intersections with traffic lights I went back to the fire station and ask, What happens when you get a fire call? He told me, well I’d just walk over and push this red button to turn all the lights red. We went on to Safford and stayed over night at a motel. The next day Dad rented one of their rowboats and Ivan and I rowed around having a good time on the lake.

Important holidays in the community were November 11, Armistice Day and July 4th. They called for a parade, a coaster race down the Hill and a football game with Douglas High School. Bisbee and Douglas annually played two football games one on November 11 and Thanksgiving. Because of that, those two schools hold second place for the most games played by two teams. Two teams in New England hold the record. The Tucson Daily Citizen sponsored the coaster races, and Ivan and I built a car and participated in the race. We never won but had a great time.

My brother, Ivan, was two years older than me. When he graduated from high school in 1937 he chose to go to work in the mines. His best friend, Leland McPherson, went to Arizona State Teachers College in Flagstaff. Leland came home each summer and Spring Break to work at the mine. The Phelps-Dodge Company was very helpful to college students in Bisbee. They made places for them to work during the summer breaks. I worked as a mucker there after high school and during the summer breaks from college.

When a teenager, I was always very shy if I had to speak in front of a large crowd, but one on one I was fine. In the summer of 1941, I came home from college to work in the mine. The AFL and the CIO labor unions had representatives in Bisbee recruiting members. These recruiters were telling the miners that laborers had to join a union. I got into a discussion with one of the union representative and refused to sign up. I didn’t believe laborers were required to by law to join a union. Not knowing for certain. I wrote to Senator Carl Hayden in Washington and received a telegram in reply telling me that workers were not compelled by any Federal legislation to join a union unless they decided to.

Paul McPherson, Leland’s little brother and I were best friends and we graduated from Bisbee High School, class of 1939. Ivan had a 1928 Dodge Coupe with a rumble seat where Paul and I would ride when we went places with them. In September 1939, Paul and I were starting classes at Arizona State Teachers College at Tempe, now known as Arizona State University. Ivan and Paul’s brother, Leland, were working the night shift at Phelps Dodge and when they got off work on September 1, 1939, they drove Paul and me to Tempe to start college. We had just passed Tucson when we heard the news on a radio I had built for the car that Hitler had invaded Poland. At the time, none of us could imagine what a change it would make in our lives. The world today is still living with the consequences of World War