Stateside Service: The Mohave Dessert and Tank Destroyers


When basic training was completed, I got what I asked for and was assigned to the 775th Tank Destroyer Bn., on maneuvers in the Mohave Dessert. I left the train at Needles and was trucked out to Camp Ibis, a tent camp in the desert, to join my combat outfit. The TD patch was a tiger crunching a tank in its mouth, very dramatic and gung ho. The battalion was in training for desert warfare. The desert, particularly at sunrise and sunset, was beautiful but during the day it was extremely hot and dusty but biter cold at night when you were on guard duty. It got so hot you couldn't touch the tanks, which is why we had two hours off every midday except when on field exercises. The Battalion had a Reconnaissance Company composed primarily of Harley-Davidson motorcycles and jeeps. For weeks, I worked in the motor pool with a promise I could learn to ride a bike, a boyhood dream. On my first maneuver, they gave me one and I quickly learned differently. The desert is full of potholes, stones, etc., making steering and balance very difficult, not to mention exhausting. When I returned, that career was abruptly scuttled. For the remainder of the two or three months we were in the Mohave dessert, I was assigned as a gunner on a destroyer and, glasses and all, was pretty good at it. It was fun, even when the dust from the tanks ahead of you made breathing almost impossible. I'll never forget how good even an ice-cold shower felt after being out on the dessert for long periods.

While it had its discomforts, life wasn't that bad. My tank crew and Sergeant were tough but good guys, some of them from the coal-mining area of Pennsylvania, and there was a definite commraderie in the group, which I enjoyed when accepted into the squad. One day I received a box or tin of marshmallow Easter chickees from my Aunt, which I always loved and still do, and shared them with my amused but nevertheless grateful comrades. I think I went into Needles once and that was enough. We did take a trip into Arizona on a weekend for a welcomed swim and, except of a very occasional movie in the field, but that was about it.

At the same time, the American invasion and deployment in North Africa was going on and superior German tanks were creating murderous havoc with our antiquated tank destroyers. At that time, our tank destroyers were halftrack vehicles with an old (World Was I) 3 inch naval gun, mounted in the complete open, behind a shield of only a quarter inch of armor and with a gun traverse of only 90 degrees. They were, in effect death traps as was being proven in North Africa. After hearing stories and rumors of their devastation, I began having second thoughts about committing outright suicide for my country, but fate took a hand. I broke my only pair of GI eyeglasses and went to the Battalion MD to obtain a new pair. To my surprise, he checked my eyes but this time repeated what I actually saw which, without my glasses, is not much. He sent me off to the Army Hospital in Needles for an eye test, new glasses and reclassification back to "limited service". When I protested, although my conscious forbids me from describing it as vehement, he explained that as a gunner the life of my crew and others might well depend upon my eyesight. I must admit a sense of relief but combined with some shame.

Owens, Me, and Rocky

After my exam at the base hospital, a Board was convened, chaired by a full Colonel, a Major and a Captain of the Medical Corp. I was asked to explain the suspicious difference in my eye test taken at Camp Roberts and the one they just gave me. Nervously, I explained that I memorized the eye chart and why. When I was finished, the Captain said to the Colonel that this was ground for fraudulent enlistment and my heart fell to my stomach. After a pause that seemed like an eternity to me, the Colonel replied something like this: "Yes, technically you are correct but I wish we had thousands of more fraudulent enlistments like this." So, I was reclassified and returned to my unit for transfer. Any guilt I may have felt at the time was erased when, first, no transfer out of the 775th was arranged or planned in the time I remained with them and, a few months later as manpower needs in both the Pacific and European theaters of war increased, "Limited Service" was abolished.

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