Recollections of World War II with the First Infantry Division

By Major Raphael L. Uffner (Ret.)

Maj. Uffner chronicles his experiences as a young officer with the infamous First Division during World War II, from the pre-war build-up of American forces, combat in North Africa, Allied invasion of Sicily, to the D-Day landing in Normandy and beyond.
As a child growing up in the Bronx during the 1920’s, Raphael ("Ray") Uffner was fascinated by the photographs and movies of the Great War, subsequently developing a strong interest in the Army.
Entering CCNY at sixteen in 1934, he concurrently joined the ROTC and New York National Guard. Continuing to add military activities to his college schedule, Ray honed his soldiering skills long before any rumblings about another war in Europe. Around this time he met the love of his life, Edythe, whom he would later wed days before shipping out for the front lines. Maj. Uffner's adoration for Edythe is obvious in the snippets of letters to her that appear throughout the book.
In the years leading up to the United States’ entry into World War II, Uffner earned his officer’s commission; became a champion marksman; learned drill, maneuvers, small-unit tactics, infantry weapons, amphibious training, horsemanship and skiing; and served as an officer with the Regular Army. When the time came to go to war, he was ready.
There is plenty of history here, as Maj. Uffner richly details his experiences leading up to and including decisive battles in North Africa, Sicily, and France; in fact, several references to this work appear in the Pulitzer Prize-winning An Army at Dawn, by journalist Rick Atkinson.
But there is much more than history in this memoir. It is a story of an officer's bravery, ingenuity, and unfaltering commitment to his duty and the welfare of his men.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fountain Pen Press
• Release date: Nov 11, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005789800

Major Raphael L. Uffner (Ret.)

Raphael L. Uffner (1917–1993)Raphael Louis Uffner was born in the Bronx, New York, the first of two sons of Louis Uffner, a Columbia University-educated architect emigre from Czarist Russia; and Minnie Stiebel, a native-born nurse.Small, pale, and skinny, with a shock of platinum hair that begat his nickname “Whitey,” Raphael played in the streets and vacant lots of the Bronx. As a boy he was strongly drawn to the Army, influenced by the Great War photographs and movies of the 1920’s.In his early teens Raphael studied violin at Juilliard School of Music, but dropped out when he qualified for Townsend Harris High School, an elite public school in Manhattan, where he was captain of the fencing team. In 1934, two months shy of his seventeenth birthday, he entered City College of New York (CCNY), where he continued fencing, played baseball, and entered the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC).Raphael enjoyed the military service so much that he added the New York National Guard to his extra-curricular activities while at CCNY as he turned eighteen. Continuing to study toward an engineering degree, he joined the ROTC rifle team, becoming a champion marksman.Around this time, Raphael met sixteen-year-old Edythe Tompkins at his counsin’s sweet sixteen party. A few years later he and Edythe, now a dental hygienist, met serendipitously in a downtown government office. They would marry in 1942, just before he left for North Africa.During the war, Raphael served with the First Infantry Division, 26th Infantry Regiment. He earned a Silver Star, Bronze Star, Purple Heart, European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal, American Defense Medal, Victory Medal, Infantryman Badge, and Fourragere in the colors of the French Medaille Militaire.After the war, Raphael resumed his studies at CCNY, completing a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering in 1948. He was a civilian project engineer for nine years at the Special Devices Center, Office of Naval Research, where he worked on radar, weapons control, electronic warfare, communications, and navigational training devices for all the Armed Forces. In 1959 he moved his family from New York to California and joined Hughes Aircraft Radar Systems Group, where he served as systems engineer in airborne radar and weapons control systems for twenty-three years, until his retirement in 1983.Raphael and Edythe raised four daughters together.In 1989, when Raphael was seventy-one, the director of the First Division Museum asked him to record some of his memories for the Museum. Two years later Raphael submitted a manuscript of over 400 pages, “Recollections of World War II with the First Infantry Division.”In late 1993, at age seventy-six, Raphael died suddenly from complications of treatment for a heart attack. Edythe lived to be ninety-seven before passing away of natural causes in 2016."Recollections of World War II with the First Infantry Division" was published posthumously by his daughter, Marilyn, in 2020. Raphael's original manuscript still resides in the First Division Museum.

Book preview

Dedication

To my loving wife, Edythe, the inspiration behind this work, and the provider of many of these recollections through her thoughtful preservation of my correspondence.

My heartfelt appreciation to my daughter, Marilyn, for her sincere and professional job of word-processing the numerous drafts of this manuscript.

To my comrades living and to those who have made the supreme sacrifice.

Major (then Captain) Raphael L. Uffner, 26th Infantry Regiment

Foreword

I never really knew my father, although as a child I adored and idolized him. He always seemed to be hunkered down in his easy chair, engrossed in some thick library book, quietly keeping to himself.

I’m a great reader of history, I once heard him tell someone. Military history, to be exact, as I later learned.

Despite his remoteness, however, I never doubted my father’s devotion to the family and his unconditional love for his four daughters. In those days, after all, mothers raised the children and did the housework while fathers brought home the bacon and doled out the discipline. My father left for work early every morning and returned home before dinner every night. He put food on our table, clothes on our backs, and boutonnieres in the lapels of our prom dates. It never occurred to me that life could be any different. 

Growing up during the bland 1950s, I was oblivious to the horrors the world had endured only a decade before. To me, World War II was ancient history, so what did I care? The last thing I wanted was to hear my father’s war stories. 

Nevertheless, on special occasions, with the extended family gathered ‘round the dinner table, he would drag out an old favorite. He spoke slowly, pausing only to shovel a forkful of food into his mouth, then continued with enthusiasm. No one dared interrupt him. Bored, I shifted uncomfortably in my chair and ate faster, as if it would speed him up. 

Fast forward to 1990, when my father, then seventy-three and retired, phoned me with a proposition. He had been dictating a memoir of his World War II experiences and wondered if I could transcribe his recordings. For the task he would buy me a word processor, which I could then keep for my own. I accepted the mission, but not before negotiating an upgrade to a state-of-the-art PC. My father was delighted with my interest in computers; I was happy to do him the favor. We were in business.

Impressed as I was at my father’s ambitious undertaking, I still lacked interest in his military affairs. Nonetheless I dutifully transcribed sixteen 90-minute cassette tapes, yielding a manuscript of over four hundred pages. In 1991 my father submitted Recollections of World War II with the First Infantry Division to the First Division Museum. 

Not long after, as my parents were planning to attend the 50th anniversary of the D-Day invasion in Normandy (where my father and his beloved 26th Infantry Regiment landed with the grand armada in 1944), my father surprised us with a heart attack. His treatment, a blood-thinner that successfully arrested the coronary, released a torrent of bleeding on his brain. He died two days later. 

As I write this, I have reached the age of my father when he completed his memoir. I decided to publish his Recollections as an e-book—for the family, for historians, for military scholars and anyone else interested in eyewitness accounts of these events. 

But before releasing the book, I gave it a good copyedit. As I revisited my father’s words, I heard his voice, unpretentious and pragmatic, peppered with his signature wisecracks. I clearly saw how much my father loved the Army and cared about his men. He was a goddamn natural.

I always felt my father was some kind of hero. In these stories the depth of his bravery takes shape, as do the harsh conditions, droll ironies, extreme perils, and heart-wrenching sacrifices he and his comrades endured. I now feel I understand my father, not only as a dad, but also as a man. I hope other readers find his account as insightful.

Marilyn Uffner Alan

San Francisco

2021

Preface

I was interviewed by John F. Votaw, the director of the First Division Museum, for an hour and a half about my experiences during World War II. This interview took place during the annual reunion of the Society of the First Division, at Colorado Springs in August 1989. With his encouragement I recorded 18½ hours of my memories at home. The following reminiscences are the result.

From time to time, while writing and thinking over what to put in this history, I experienced a sudden flash of a vignette, which I felt obliged to include. These may not fit in any particular chronological order but I’ll signal them by saying, Flashback.

Raphael L. Uffner

1991

Contents

Dedication

Foreword

Preface

1. My Family and I

2. College Life, ROTC, and the National Guard ~1934

3. Second Lieutenant, Infantry ORC ~ 1939

4. Active Duty with the Regular Army ~ 1940

5. Infantry School, Fort Benning, Georgia ~ 1940

6. 26th Infantry Regiment, Plattsburgh Barracks, New York ~ 1940

7. Work and Play at Plattsburgh Barracks ~ 1940

8. Recruit Training at Plattsburgh Barracks ~ 1940

9. Special Training at Lake Placid, New York ~ 1940–41

10. Fort Devens, Massachusetts ~ 1941

11. Events On and Off the Post ~ 1941

12. Amphibious Training ~ 1941

13. North Carolina Maneuvers ~ 1941

14. Pearl Harbor ~ 7 December 1941

15. Camp Blanding, Florida ~ 1942

16. Special Service School, Fort Meade, Maryland ~ 1942

17. The Last of Camp Blanding ~ 1942

18. Fort Benning Revisited ~ 1942

19. Indiantown Gap and Cannon Company ~ 1942

20. On the Queen Mary ~ 1942

21. Tidworth Barracks, United Kingdom ~ 1942

22. The Carbine Company Becomes Cannon Company ~ 1942

23. Cannon Company Rejoins the Regiment ~ 1942

24. Operation Torch ~ 8 November 1942

25. Oran, Algeria ~ 1942

26. Winter in Tunisia ~ January 1943

27. Combat in Southern Tunisia ~ February 1943

28. After the Kasserine Affair ~ 1943

29. The First Division Attacks El Guettar ~ March 1943

30. II Corps Heads North ~ April 1943

31. The End of the Tunisian Campaign ~ May 1943

32. My First Command ~ 22 May 1943

33. The Invasion of Sicily ~ 8 July 1943

34. Hospitalized ~ July 1943

35. Back with the 26th RCT ~ October 1943

36. Recuperation in the United Kingdom ~ November 1943

37. United Kingdom ~ 1944 Before D-Day

38. The Normandy Invasion ~ 6 June 1944

39. The United Kingdom Revisited ~ 14 June 1944

40. The Beachhead Again ~ 15 July 1944

41. The Breakout at Saint-Lô ~ 25 July 1944

42. The Bridgehead at the Mayenne River ~ August 1944

43. On to Paris and Beyond ~ 13 August 1944

Postscript

26th Infantry Regimental Coat of Arms and Insignia

Photographs:

Maj. (then Captain) Raphael L. Uffner

Raphael and Edythe, circa 1940

Officers of the 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry, North Africa, 1943

Regimental Coat of Arms and Insignia, 26th Infantry

About Raphael L. Uffner

1

My Family and I

I am Raphael L. Uffner. I was born on November 3, 1917, in The Bronx, New York, delivered at home by Maj. Robert Stiebel, Medical Corps Reserve. He was my father’s first cousin.

My father, Louis R. Uffner, was an architect. His widowed mother, three sisters, three brothers and he emigrated from Czarist Russia around 1908. He was educated in the United States at Cooper Union and Columbia University. During World War I, he was a civilian employee in the New York office of the Army Corps of Engineers. He supervised the building of barracks and other structures.

Between World Wars I and II he had his own architectural business, and he worked for the Federal Public Works Administration during the Great Depression. Between 1939 and 1945, he was the senior civilian in the New York office of the Corps of Engineers. My father passed away in 1952.

My mother, a distant cousin of my father, was native born. Her education was interrupted in her teens by economic necessity. During World War II she became a civilian nurse and continued in that occupation through 1968 when she passed away. She was seventy-five years old.

My father and mother were married on New Year’s Eve, 1916. They were loving and understanding parents.

I have one brother, Melville, who is four years younger than me. During World War II he was an Artillery sergeant in the European Theatre Corps Artillery. He was a section chief in a 155mm Long Tom Battalion. He received a field commission after V-E Day and served a couple of years in the Army of Occupation. After World War II he earned a degree with honors in Chemistry from McGill University in Canada. He received his Master of Education in Science from Albany Normal School. A first lieutenant, Army of the United States, he was called up for the duration of the Korean War, serving as officer-in-charge of a mobile petroleum laboratory in Europe. Mel was a chemist after Korea until he retired several years ago.

I married Edythe Paula Tompkins on February 16, 1942, before the 1st Division moved from Fort Devens, Massachusetts. She was a dental hygienist from Columbia University; born, bred and educated in New York City. We have four daughters who were born after World War II. All graduated college and two have master’s degrees. There are six grandchildren, the oldest grandson having just graduated from the University of California at San Diego with a degree in mechanical engineering.

In my youth I developed a deep desire to be in the army, influenced by the Great War photographs and movies of the 1920s. I recollect many years of childhood illness and much reading in bed. I finished the whole set of The Children’s Book of Knowledge during one illness. I played in the streets and empty lots of the Bronx. I was small and skinny.

During 1930 and 1931 I studied violin at Julliard School of Music. I dropped out of Julliard when I graduated from P.S. 80 and qualified for Townsend Harris High School in 1931.

Townsend Harris, a special high school, was associated with the City College of New York, occupying premises in its School of Commerce at 23rd Street and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. One graduated in three years the full normal four-year course. Many prominent people went to Townsend Harris before me: Jonas Salk, of Salk vaccine fame; Herman Wouk, the author; Sam Jaffe, the actor (Gunga Din); and Cornell Wilde, the actor, are some. Very precocious children went to Townsend Harris, some graduating in short pants and going on to Princeton, Yale and Harvard at the age of fourteen and younger.

I was on the fencing team at Townsend Harris, and in my senior year was its captain. I graduated Townsend Harris in the spring of 1934, entering City College without entrance examination, two months shy of my seventeenth birthday.

2

College Life, ROTC, and the National Guard

1934

City College was a subway school. Everyone commuted by bus or subway train. I spent a lot of time that I could ill afford with athletics at City College, participating in fencing and baseball.

I entered the ROTC in the fall of 1934. At the end of my two-year basic course I was a first sergeant. I loved it. ROTC required three drills a week and other odds and ends that went with it. ROTC didn’t count towards the scholastic credits necessary for graduation.

I didn’t have enough army life in the ROTC, so I enlisted in Company E of the 102nd Combat Engineers Regiment, New York National Guard, in November of 1935, as I reached the age of eighteen.

The year 1935 was a fortunate year for the Uffner family. My father got a good job with the Federal Public Works Administration, which required leaving New York City for upstate New York. He was in charge of building various edifices that were 90 percent financed by the federal government. My mother and brother accompanied him, leaving me in New York City, boarding on my own.

I was a pledge to a fraternity, Delta Beta Phi, which substituted for my absent family. I did not have the discipline of my parents during this period of my life. I was a sophomore who filled up most of his study time with extra-curricular activities. I was in the ROTC, the 102nd Combat Engineers, the fraternity, and on the baseball squad. I had been dropped from the fencing team because I couldn’t keep up the required scholastic average.

After two months in the National Guard I was promoted to corporal. This required another night in the week in addition to my drill night for non-com school. I felt it was my patriotic duty to go out for the regimental track team, which required another couple of nights a week on the indoor track.

The 102nd Engineers was located at 168th Street, off Amsterdam Avenue, across the street from the Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. I’d finish classes in the afternoon and work out with the baseball team. Then I would hop into the subway and run up to the 102nd Engineers for track or drill.

About this time I met Edythe Tompkins, the lady who would become my wife, at my cousin Lucille’s sweet sixteen party.

In preparation for this book, Edythe and I dug out some of our old letters. I found one relating to the time that I attended my first National Guard summer camp at Camp Smith, Peekskill, New York. I was a corporal. This is an extract from my first letter to Edythe, dated September 1, 1936. I quote:

I was unable to write to you due to the haste and multiplicity of the tasks before me as a non-commissioned officer of the 102nd Engineers. The regiment pulled out on Sunday the 23rd of August. At camp, due to my inexperience, I found very little, if any, leisure time. We were awakened at 5:45 A.M. and we pulled out for work at 7:00 A.M. Our various duties included bridge-building, barbed-wire entanglements, demolitions, surveying, map-making, and several other minor things. Recall sounded at 4:00 P.M. You may think our work is through then, but no, there are rifles to be cleaned, mess kits to be washed, cross-belts whitened, brass buttons and belt-buckles polished, shoes cleaned, clothes to wash, and, to top it all, at 5:00 P.M. the entire regiment falls out in dress uniform for retreat evening parade. The dress uniform was patterned after the West Point cadet uniform except that the coat was scarlet and the trousers were black with a red stripe, and we wore black shoes. We had the tar bucket and the whole rigmarole. The officers wore peacock feathers in their shakes, and carried swords on magnificent golden belts. The 102nd Engineers put on a very, very presentable parade.

Our regimental commander, Col. Humphrey, was a West Pointer who resigned his commission to take over the family business, Humphrey’s Pills. He was a very fine, dignified man. My battalion commander in the 2nd Battalion was Maj. Burns. (Maj. Burns came out of World War II a major general.) He served after World War I in the Siberian Expedition and was a proud wearer of the Polar Bear patch. The adjutant of the regiment was also a West Pointer.

The regiment had been called the 22nd Regiment and was organized by Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, its first colonel. The bandmaster was Victor Herbert, the composer, and the bandsmen were the members of his orchestra. This band was the only volunteer organization of its kind in the New York National Guard. The other National Guard regiments hired their musicians, who were salaried. I fired my 1903 Springfield, bolt-action rifle the first time and qualified.

In the fall of 1936, I entered the ROTC advanced course, which added a couple of more days a week of extracurricular activity. Things got so bad scholastically that I had to sit out a year of ROTC and a scholastic year, 1937, returning in 1938.

I had to take my six-week ROTC summer camp in 1938, at Plattsburgh, New York. As fate would have it, my 1938 National Guard two-week summer camp at Camp Smith and my six-week ROTC camp periods overlapped. It was necessary for me to get an extract of the army regulations that required that I take my ROTC camp in preference to my National Guard camp. This didn’t sit too well with my National Guard company commander. At this time, I was on the regimental rifle team of the 102nd Engineers. My CO wanted to assure that I fired for qualification. There was a bargain struck between the National Guard and me: I would attend the first week (the last week of June) at National Guard camp and fire for qualification. The National Guard would muster me out on Saturday, the end of the week at Camp Smith, so that I could get to ROTC camp at Plattsburgh Barracks, Plattsburgh, New York, on Monday, the first week of July.

I also was a member of the City College ROTC rifle team. I won first prize the spring of 1938 at the Metropolitan ROTC Rifle Matches against the ROTC colleges in the New York area. The match took place at Camp Smith, New York. We fired the 1903, 0.30 caliber Springfield rifle.

I took my ROTC advanced course uniform with me to the Camp Smith 102nd Engineers camp to wear to Plattsburgh in accordance with my travel orders. This uniform was identical to that of an army officer’s except for the ROTC insignia. At Camp Smith my first thought was to secure my uniform. I took up this problem with my company commander, who said he would be glad to take custody of my uniform for me.

I had a very successful National Guard camp. We did our practice shooting and then we shot for record. Every man in my squad qualified, most of them higher than marksman. Several privates and I in my squad qualified expert. I had a remarkable shooting run. I got a possible (maximum score, 50 out of 50 points) in prone, sitting, and kneeling. I dropped four points to possible standing, and I shot a possible in rapid fire. Yes, I was only down four points to a possible 250 during my qualification run.

On Saturday morning I went to my company commander for my uniform to shine my leather and brass. My orders to ROTC camp required that I travel in ROTC uniform. It required my battalion commander’s intervention before my uniform was returned. I wore the britches and boots variant of the ROTC advanced course uniform.

After recall Saturday morning I walked to the post finance office at Camp Smith with my orders to be mustered out. At Post Number One, the soldier in front of the guardhouse recognized me and saluted. I was paid in cash at the post finance office, and, as I retraced my steps past the guardhouse, the guard arrested me. The corporal of the guard said he had orders from my CO to arrest me for impersonating an officer, and I was held in the guardhouse.

A couple of my buddies from Company E, who came to take me to the railroad station in Peekskill, New York, asked at the guardhouse whether I had passed through. When they found out that I was under arrest in the guardhouse, they went to the regimental commander, who called my battalion commander, who sent for my company commander. The two senior officers reminded my company commander that the three of them had agreed with me that I be relieved from camp that Saturday. They wished me well, with handshakes all around, and I left Camp Smith.

I made my first contact with the 26th Infantry of the First Infantry Division at Plattsburgh Barracks, where the 26th Infantry supported the ROTC camp. The camp commander was Lt. Col. James I. Muir, professor of military science and tactics at Cornell University. I was to meet him again as the regimental commander of the 26th Infantry when I reported to the 26th Infantry in 1940. One of the other officers at the camp was Col. Knight, who had a short tour as executive officer of the 26th Infantry when I was on duty there.

I was to meet several of my future comrades, cadets from other institutions of higher learning who would serve with me in the 26th Infantry: Ed Masso, known among the cadets as Moose; Paul Gale, from the New York Military Academy; and some of the CCNY cadets at the camp, who were to serve with me in the 26th Infantry as well.

I qualified very high in rifle marksmanship during the ROTC camp, making the ROTC team, which represented the Second Corps Area at the National Rifle Matches at Camp Perry, Ohio, in 1933.This started another hassle with my National Guard regiment. I had official orders from Headquarters, Second Corps Area, ordering me to Camp Perry, Ohio, for the National Rifle Matches, directing I be paid daily cadet pay and the cash for the trip.

I sent a telegram to my company commander telling him that I was going to Camp Perry. The period the Matches were held in 1938 happened to overlap with the drill schedule of the 102nd Engineers. There was no reply to my telegram. I then wiped from my mind any thought of the National Guard and concentrated on my practice for the National Matches.

I rode to the National Matches on the back of a HarleyDavidson motorcycle owned and driven by a teammate, Frank Lantay. (After World War II Frank became a captain of detectives of the New York Police Department.)

I had an outstanding shooting score in the National Military Match, up to the 1,000-yard, twenty-shot, final event. Until then, I had never lost a point on the 1,000-yard range including the ROTC qualification, the National Guard State Matches, and the Metropolitan ROTC Matches. At Camp Perry, before the last event, my score was so high I hesitate to mention it.

Then I pulled a rookie trick. I didn’t check the range setting of my rear sight with the micrometer after the first two warm-up shots, both of which were in the five ring, nor did I tighten the slide. I got the red flag (Maggie’s drawers) for the first three shots for record, after which I discovered that my rear sight slide had dropped. By then I was out of the running for anything. I had a very respectable score but I had my heart set on becoming one of the President’s Hundred, privileged to wear the Distinguished Rifleman’s Badge. Enough said about that.

At the first drill night after I returned from Camp Perry, I was presented with a summons to a summary court martial for AWOL, which I rejected. I asked for a Special Court, my privilege as a non-commissioned officer (I was still a corporal). My company commander and I went around and around until finally the National Guard dropped the whole thing. This was in September of 1938. My hitch in the National Guard was up in November 1938. My CO tried to re-enlist me. I reminded him that I was a cadet in the ROTC Advanced Course who was scheduled to get his commission in June of 1939, and I respectfully declined. That was the end of my association with the 102nd Engineers.

Through all of this my parents were very tolerant about my affairs at school. I reached my twenty-first birthday with not much to show for it. My father visited me in New York City, backed up by two of his professional friends of long standing, who had known me since I was a baby. They asked me what I intended to do with my life. I told them I wanted to get into the Regular Army. I stated that this was far from a sure thing, and it was my intention to change to a civil engineering curriculum in the School of Technology. They were very happy about this—all except for the gentleman who was a civil engineer. He was lukewarm. He grumbled that it was awfully hard to make a living as a civil engineer. But that’s what I felt I was capable of doing and enjoying.

The next school day I saw the counselor at the School of Engineering, Dr. Allen, who examined my scholastic record. He was dismayed by what he saw. He said, Normally I’d advise a science student with a record like yours who wanted to change curriculum, to take social studies or physical education. I haven’t had anybody come in with a record like yours who wanted to go for an engineering degree. Then he continued, Well, what can we lose? Let’s try it. He transferred me to the School of Engineering and my grades remarkably improved. I had to put my nose to the grindstone, as they say, because I had already taken all the easy courses. All I had left to successfully finish were mathematics and physics and engineering courses. I took to these with enthusiasm.

My family was still out of town and I lived alone. Shortly after the invasion of Poland, my father became a senior civilian employee of the Corps of Engineers in the New York District. My family returned to New York City, and, after four years, I was back with them. I enjoyed this enormously, although I can’t remember having one day of homesickness.

3

Second Lieutenant, Infantry ORC

1939

I was still working hard on my engineering degree after I was commissioned second lieutenant, Officers Reserve Corps (ORC), in June of 1939. I applied for the Thomason Act and was accepted as a candidate, but failed the physical examination through an erroneous diagnosis of chronic bronchitis.

I pulled a blunder of catastrophic dimensions by not taking the problem immediately to my family doctor, Dr. Stiebel, who, in 1939, was a full colonel in the Medical Corps Reserve. He performed many of these physical examinations at the 90 Church Street, Manhattan facility. By the time I took the problem to him, the opportunity had passed, and the slot was filled. Dr. Stiebel said to me, I’ve known you all your life and there’s no physical defect in you at all, and I’d be happy to sign suitable medical documents for your candidacy for the Thomason Act, but it was too late. I applied for a year of extended active duty under another regulation.

While I had my commission in June of 1939, I continued working on my engineering degree. I took a proposition to the City College Professor of Military Science and Tactics office: Given that nobody is permitted to shoot on the rifle range at the college unless a commissioned officer is present, and the only officers available are the field grade officers in the PMS&T office, this wasn’t a very economic use of manpower. I am still eligible to fire on the varsity rifle team, and I am on the rifle range frequently. I am a commissioned officer. Declare me the officer-in-charge of the rifle range, and I will work for reserve points.

The office concurred and I became the range officer. While I was range officer, I was also assistant coach to Sgt. Bohlen. He was a master rifle coach, and a regular army sergeant.

In 1939 I was assigned for ORC duty to the 40th Infantry RAI (Regular Army Inactive), a fully staffed, reserve regiment less enlisted men. Many of its officers had served during World War I; several had served with the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps). In August 1939, my reserve regiment was ordered to Plattsburgh Barracks to take over the training of the Civilian Military Training Corps (CMTC) for two weeks. We were supported by the 26th Infantry; this was the second occasion I rubbed elbows with the 26th. It was a very pleasant two weeks. At this time there were several City College of New York ROTC graduates serving with the 26th Infantry at Plattsburgh Barracks under the Thomason Act. Army Pohan, a former teammate of mine on the ROTC heavy-bore rifle team, comes to mind.

Then we pass to 1940, and a sad story about a fellow officer in the 40th Infantry RAI. Sheldon Mendelson, who was a classmate of mine in the City College ROTC and had his Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering, enlisted in March as a private in the 32nd Infantry, Regular Army, which was stationed in the Philippines, because he couldn’t get a job as a civil engineer and his parents couldn’t afford to support him. I was luckier than most: My father supported me while I was going to college. (Fortunately I wasn’t expensive—I was miserly.) Sheldon and I corresponded until Pearl Harbor. When the emergency was declared and Congress voted the draft in October 1940, Sheldon was discharged as a private and placed on active duty as a second lieutenant and adjutant at Clark Field with the Air Corps. He was so unfortunate as to be captured when the Japanese took Clark Field after Pearl Harbor. He spent the whole war in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. He was one hell of a good officer.

In May of 1940, my college rifle team, of which I was captain, won the college Small-Bore Indoor Metropolitan Championship. I was denied the individual championship after a recheck was made of targets of the top five individual scorers. The target consisted of five bull’s eyes on an 8½ by 11 sheet of paper. Each bull’s eye had ten concentric rings. The bull’s eye center ring, the diameter of which was smaller than that of the projectile, counted ten points. Two shots were fired at each bull for a total of ten shots per target. The maximum possible score per target was 100 points. We fired in four positions: prone, sitting, kneeling and standing, at fifty feet.

I hadn’t lost a point to a possible 100 points per target in the prone position for three years.1940 was no exception. At the end of the match I led the pack by seven points. The judges found nine ten-point holes in my prone target. One bull had one hole. I maintained there were two concentric shots creating one hole. When the team score earned City College of New York the championship, the judges left to Sgt. Bohlan, my coach, the decision on my prone score.

He applied his scoring gauge into the hole in question. The gauge was a plug the diameter of the bullet. The gauge fit the hole exactly, within the ten ring. There were no extra holes on any other shooter’s target or misplaced rounds in another bull’s eye on my prone target, so the sergeant ruled one of my shots missed the 8½ by 11 sheet of paper, and the individual championship went to St. John’s University, the host of the match. Sergeant Bohlan confessed to me afterwards that he bent over backwards for good will toward St. John’s.

We were invited to Joe Marsiglia’s home for one of his mother’s famous spaghetti dinners in celebration of our team victory. Joe had been captain of the 1939 varsity team. He had used all his competition eligibility in 1939. I was awarded second place and second place shooters received no medals. In retrospect, I believe Sgt. Bohlan considered me a pro, even though I was still eligible for intercollegiate competition.

In June 1940,