Stories from the Black Panther Division

John R. Johnson
Submitted by his granddaughter, Rhonda England
Sand Gap, Ky.

Fort Rucker Alabama & The MP’s

We arrived at Fort Rucker at daybreak one morning and got our trucks off the train and our put our personal belongings in the barracks. Five of us wanted to see what the small town that was nearby looked like. We loaded into a Sergeant Corporals jeep, which we all should have known better than to even leave without writing a trip ticket for the jeep. We all crowded into the jeep and went out the back reservation towards town.

We drove five or six miles on the dirt road and pulled on to the blacktop. The dirt road had deep ruts in it where the vehicles pulled the large guns out. When we pulled onto the blacktop the jeep dragged in the deep ruts. We could barely get it onto the highway. We turned left and went one mile to town. We passed a large swimming pool with lots of good-looking women dressed in swimsuits.

We noticed there was another dirt road coming from town by the swimming pool that joined there with the highway. We kept on the main highway and went into town, which proved to be the main street. We were riding up the street looking over the town. We knew we were traveling illegal, with no trip ticket and five men in the jeep, only three were allowed to ride in a jeep.

We were getting almost through town when we met two MP’s coming. They were looking us over and started turning their jeep around. We turned around and met them coming for us. We were in a hurry to leave and get back out of town. We were headed that way. I was riding in the back of the jeep and I could look back and see the MP’s headed after us.

The driver of our jeep concentrated on the driving. We told him to take the road that went by the swimming pool. It would be the fastest way out of town. We could look back and see the other jeep gaining. The race was on! We shot over the top of the hill on the short cut, the black top ended and we were hanging on tight to stay in the jeep.

The MP’s was close behind and we quickly started turning onto the main highway at the pool. One more mile and we could give them a royal dusting on the dusty road through the reservation.

We were speeding on the highway; neither jeep had more speed than the other. They were about fifty feet behind us and could not get any closer. We came out at the end of the mile stretch to the turn off. Our driver slowed a little but not nearly enough. He turned the jeep onto the dusty dirt road. The jeep hit the deep ruts and went through them about thirty yards. We were holding onto anything we could. It was like riding a bucking bronco at the rodeo. It threw me up and backwards and I hit the cross bar that supported the top right between the eyes. The road smoothed out and all we could see was a cloud of dust. The driver really went the six miles in a short time. We tried to see if the other jeep was following but we couldn’t tell for the dust. The dust seemed to stay in the air for a mile back.

I knew that I was hurt. My head was now aching and my vision was blurred. We pulled into the company area and hid the jeep beside the barracks and went in different directions. I went into the dispensary that was close by. Both of my eyes were almost closed and bruised. It looked like I had been in a heavy weight-boxing match and had took a devastating blow between the eyes. The doctor asked how that had happened, and I told him we were putting the bows across a truck so that we could put the tarpaulins on and one of the bows swung around and hit me. He prescribed an ice compress for my forehead and gave me some pain pills. He marked me no duty for two weeks and asked if I wished to go to the hospital. I thought I would have it made for two weeks doing nothing, but it took a full two weeks and then my black eyes were not fully recovered.

The Big Apple and Going Overseas

The captain announced in the mess hall the names of the ones picked to go on the advance party to Camp Shank, New York to help get the camp ready for the whole division for shipping overseas. My best buddy's name and mine was called along with twelve others.

The captain said that our duties would be to drive staff cars and take officers anywhere they wanted to go to get a large convoy ready to leave for overseas. We were paid early and got on the train for New York. On the way up on the train we had a big poker game and when we arrived in New York I had four hundred and fifty dollars in my pocket and my buddy had won over six hundred dollars.

We decided we had plenty of money to take on a big splurge in the city. We found two blank passes and filled them out and left. We went to town walking and wound up in Times Square and then we started walking and hitting those high-class joints where the big bands were playing.

We wound back up at Times Square in front of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel and the president election returns were flashing on the hotel. We watched some of the returns and hit our whiskey bottles. There was a sea of people gathered there watching the returns.

Our division came on up to Camp Shank and was asking all kinds of questions about the big city. We told them of our spree that we had taken in over night in the Big apple how we spent close to a thousand dollars in the Big Apple.

In a week or so we were called down to the ferry to transport out to the large convoy that was anchored in the harbor. We ferried past the Statue Of Liberty and boarded on the troop ship, George Washington on the B deck above the waterline. That was our quarters until we reached England.

The large convoy pulled out in the night. The next morning we were on the high seas. We could count fifty or sixty ships of all kinds, aircraft carriers, destroyers, merchant transports and battlewagons. Our ship was rumored to be carrying five thousand of our division troops. There were six troop-carrying ships in the center of the convoy. That would figure out to about thirty thousand troops in that convoy if they all carried the same number of troops.

It so happened we were on the B deck above the waterline and the longer I was on ship the sicker I got. I thought I would die. I took to my bunk by day and at night I would go out on deck and sleep on the hatch that went down into the ships hold. I would sleep with a life jacket under my head for a pillow and put my feet on each side of the hatch on the deck floor. The mist off of the ocean seemed to revive me and help my seasickness.

Once we was on our bunks playing poker to take our minds off of getting sick when an enemy sub had gotten inside our convoy and was near the troop transports. Someone came into our compartment and said everyone on deck, enemy sub. Two destroyers were going around the troop ships dropping depth charges. Then someone came back into the compartment and said the destroyers had mad a kill on the sub as there was debris and oil floating on the water.

In four more days our convoy made a split and half went to Liverpool and we stopped off at Southampton. We were in England at last after eleven days on the high seas. 

Southern France

We went back to Southern France to the Arles. We were sent there to redeploy troops to the Pacific as the war had not ended there yet. We went by train with just our personal items in our duffel bags. We would use the vehicles that the staging area had when we got there. The boxcars on the siding was loaded with human skeletons that were part of the extermination of the Jewish people or the hungry starved children crippled and maimed. We passed through a lot of devastated cities on our route back to Southern Fr