Published: Monday, May. 31, 2010 / Updated: Tuesday, Jun. 01, 2010 01:37 PM
‘If you lived to be 100, you’d never forget’
FORT MILL --
The event which occurred the first day of deployment for U.S. Army Sgt. Henry Hammond was indicative of his World War II experience.
It was the summer of 1942, August to be exact, and he nary had time to catch his breath.
“We set sail before daylight so no one would see us depart,” Hammond said. “That very same day, in the night time, we got hit by a torpedo.”
Before delving into the three years, one month and 27 days Hammond spent overseas, perhaps it’s best to start at the beginning. Hammond was born in Fort Mill, on April 22, 1922 and it’s where he resided until 1940. That was the year that Hammond, then a member of the National Guard, mobilized with 82 fellow guardsman to Fort Jackson in Columbia.
He never had the chance to graduate from Fort Mill High School.
“We mobilized Sept. 16, 1940, getting sent to Fort Jackson where we would train for two years,” Hammond said. “When the 83 of us left town, Fort Mill had no more than 500 residents and was still suffering the fallout from the Great Depression.”
The iconic figures of World War II made themselves known very early during Hammond’s service, with one more instance occurring later on in his career.
“We stood at full formation when Winston Churchill and FDR visited Fort Jackson,” exclaimed Hammond before unveiling a humorous story:
“FDR smoked Chesterfields; he was smoking one when he drove past us in a convertible, and flicked the cigarette to the ground. It landed at the feet of one of my buddies to the left of me. The look on his face stated he had every intention of grabbing it as a keepsake and as soon as FDR passed he dove for it…from my knowledge, he held on to the cigarette butt for the rest of his life.”
Training was your standard affair, and in the late summer of 1942, Hammond’s number was finally called.
“We got on a train at Fort Jackson, a passenger train with the windows blocked off so nobody could see in or out. We were headed to New York, but after that it was anyone’s guess.”
And the minute Henry Hammond and his company set foot in New York Harbor, their duty to the United States Armed Forces began, having no chance to get acclimated to their new surroundings.
“There was no time to sight see or get comfortable when we got off that train,” Hammond said. “We got in that night and immediately began loading our ship.”
Which brings us to that day in August 1942, when the freshly loaded ship housing Hammond was targeted, and struck, by a German U-Boat their first night at sea.
The German-manned submarine was lying in wait just outside the Atlantic coastline, its crosshairs sizing up ships containing ground troops that would ultimately decide the fate of the war.
“It was almost, but not quite, near New York Harbor the night we were hit. While we escaped and could still pilot the ship, the electricity and most everything else was shot. We were at sea, damaged and literally in the dark.”
However, through deft navigation and a little bit of luck, Hammond’s ship reached Halifax, Nova Scotia, where it spent the next two days receiving repairs. After that, the serviceable but underequipped ship made it to Boston Harbor, where, for the following weekend, Hammond and his company partook in a welcomed respite from the early trauma: A baseball game.
“We all got leave and had the chance to go to a Red Sox game,” Hammond, a lifelong baseball fan, said with a smile.
“We were admitted for free and got to sit wherever we wanted to. The Sox were playing the Washington Senators, who just so happened to have S.C. native Bobo Newsom pitching for them. Ted Williams was playing, too. Fenway Park looked the same back then as it does now.”
It was an unforgettable afternoon for Hammond, but his experience in another city foreign to him was once again short-lived. He wouldn’t have a moment of serenity like this day for quite some time.
“That was a great day, that day in the ballpark…but that night we loaded up a new ship set to leave Boston Harbor in the still-dark morning. The ship that was waiting for us was called the Duchess of Bedford.”
The Duchess of Bedford would achieve mild celebrity in the years following World War II, earning the nickname “the most bombed ship still afloat.” During its service, the ship was credited for sinking one U-Boat, damaging another, being shot and bombed at numerous times and striking an iceberg – receiving only repairable damage
Unfortunately, Hammond experienced a large part of these attacks as the ship and its surrounding convoy charted a course for Iceland.
“We left Boston in the middle of the night sometime, and because of the timing we survived the first night unscathed,” Hammond said. “However, the next night, they started on us, and it continued for nearly every night after that.”
The Duchess of Bedford was part of a 200-ship convoy and because of the need to sail in unison, the faster ships were forced to keep pace with the oil tankers and large freighters. The Germans, knowing this, would haunt the convoy in packs of 25-30 submarines, scouting them during the day…and attacking at night.
“Some of the convoy was headed to England, some to Iceland. When an attack was imminent, ships would huddle around us, as there were 3,000 men on the Duchess. So when we looked out and saw ships beginning to flank us, we braced for a rough night.”
And one particularly “rough night” sticks out in Henry Hammond’s mind.
“We had a huge oil tanker to the left of us, and the U.S.S. Ingram to the right of us,” said Hammond as the memories began to flood back.
“I was asleep in a hammock when the oil tanker suffered a direct hit. The resulting explosion lifted the Duchess into the air and nearly capsized it. When we ran up to the deck to investigate, the water was on fire from the ignited fuel coating the ocean, lighting up the sky and the convoy all around us.”
Hammond had hardly a second to mull over this sight when the U.S.S. Ingram flanking the right-hand side also took a direct hit, sending the 250 man crew of the ill-fated ship into the ocean.
“After the Ingram sank, the Canadian Destroyers, who were our only protection, covered us and were chucking depth charges in every direction. During the chaos, our captain decided to break free from the convoy because the U-Boats couldn’t outrun us in open waters. It became a race for our lives.”
The following day, the men of the Duchess were greeted to the eerie sight of a desolate, empty ocean, with their ship the only thing visible in every direction. But once again by a stroke of tremendous luck, they rejoined the convoy later in the day and were miraculously near land.
“Eventually, we caught sight of the convoy, and on top of that we were near land,” Hammond said. “We knew because a Navy BPY plane flew overhead, meaning a naval base was nearby.”
Hammond and the crew of the Duchess also made history as well, brought to their attention by an ill-conceived prank orchestrated by the captain.
“One day our ship came alive with sirens and warning alarms, getting everyone into a panic and onto the deck,” said Hammond with a grin. “Come to find out, it was the captain’s idea of a joke to inform us that we were the first combat unit to cross the Arctic Circle. Needless to say, we cussed him with everything we had!”
After rejoining the convoy, it was on to their destination; the fishing village of Akuryie, Iceland, but not before one last nerve-rattling attack.
“Our captain promised to get us to our destination unharmed, and he mostly lived up to it, mostly,” Hammond said. “But right outside of Akuryie, an air raid tried to take us down.”
The air raid was perpetrated by the Fokke Wolfe Condors, a German bombing division, but fate prevented the worst case scenario from occurring. They launched three bombs, each hitting near, but not directly on, The Duchess of Bedford. After surviving one last attempt on their lives, Henry Hammond and crew finally set foot on the dry land of Akuryie, Iceland.
“I spent 13 months in Akuryie, holding a post once guarded by the English. We were but two divisions, with more than 40 German divisions 400 miles away in Norway. Iceland was a crucial piece of land during the war, because any supplies sent by the Allied Powers to Russia would go through where we were stationed.”
Scattering the men of the two divisions throughout Akuryie to appear more imposing than they really were, Hammond and his men “made the most of what little they had” until December 1942. His unit now comfortably established in Iceland, Hammond was commissioned to attend ski school in North Iceland.
“The glacier we were sent up to was consistently 32 degrees below zero,” recalled Hammond. “There were 40 of us, the school, a base supply camp and that was it. Ponies couldn’t run supplies up to the school, so whenever we needed something, we had to snow shoe it to the base camp.”
And during one of these runs, Hammond was once again subject to a harrowing experience, this time without a single German shot fired.
“One supply trip we did was hit with a nasty storm. It was in the middle of the sunless Iceland winter and we were about eight miles from the school.”
(Note: due to Iceland’s location in the Arctic Circle, day and night cycles would last days, even weeks, similar to Northern Alaska/Canada).
“The Norwegian instructor leading the five of us connected us together with a piece of rope, and we had to walk step and step with one another. We couldn’t see two feet in front of us, and our noses were frozen, forcing us to breathe the chilled air in with our mouths. We eventually made it up the hill by the grace of God, but my tonsils were dangerously swollen.”
Unable to eat or talk, and with each breath harder to gasp than the last, something had to be done…and what followed was out of grisly desperation, something Hammond refused to talk about until two or three years ago.
“They wanted to cut a hole in my throat as a short term solution, and I was having none of it,” said Hammond, able to laugh about the situation some 60 years after it occurred. “So I just said, ‘Take my tonsils out then!’ which I would later regret.”
Henry Hammond’s reluctant cohorts obliged him. Having nothing to help dull the pain, and with only limited instruments, they went to work.
“They strapped my arms and legs to what looked like a barber chair. Two men on either side held me down, and they began to cut my throat open before I could change my mind. They only had a set of tweezers and a pair of scissors, and the operation took over an hour. They got my tonsils out alright, but also with a piece of my voice box, and I bled like a stuck pig for a month.”
It took several weeks after the bleeding stopped to show signs of recovery, and Hammond credits the makeshift operation with why, to this day, he doesn’t have full use of his throat.
“When I finally told my wife, Francis, all those years later, she didn’t believe me! But it happened, and I’ve been taking medication for my throat every day since that day in December.”
Shortly after the operation, a still-recovering Hammond was shipped to Chard, a quaint town on the southern coast of England. Now a Staff sgt., Hammond’s stay lasted three months before being tasked with a mission from another World War II icon.
“We were informed that Gen. Patton was planning an invasion of Norway. We were the beginning of that plan.”
Arriving in Northern Ireland, Hammond was taken aback by the men, or lack thereof, that were assigned to the mission. His company was the only one there, comprised of only 250 men. Further compounding the bizarre scenario was the marching orders they received, which quickly spiraled into monotony.
“We marched 25 miles in different directions every day,” said Hammond, a raised eyebrow conveying the confusion he felt back then. “Empty roads, bridges, just marching in broad daylight out in the open. We didn’t know what to make of it.”
It was soon discovered by Hammond and his division that they were merely a prop in a grand scheme devised by U.S. military planners to swerve the Germans.
“We later found out that we were called ‘Patton’s Paper Army.’ We were in Ireland to distract the Germans from [planners’] true intention, which was a full scale invasion of France. We made them think we were taking Norway, and that’s why they had us parade around in the open.”
Having seen General Patton in person several times, what did Hammond have to say about him?
“The movie (“Patton”) was a pretty good portrayal of him. He’d make appearances just to have his picture taken and put in newspapers, just to be seen.”
After the successful decoy mission that kept 40 German divisions in Norway at bay, Hammond traveled to Warminster, England, residing at an army base for nine months that trained men slated to take part in the invasion of France.
“It was something that if you lived to be 100, you’d never forget,” said Hammond regarding the phalanx of troops destined for France.” The land was shaking almost, and C-47 transport planes bogged down by troops were flying overhead.”
Troops including kids barely of age, with no basic training whatsoever.
“I was 22 years old at the time, still in Warminster, when the replacement pools ran dry and kids were being sent to us,” lamented Hammond.
“I would pick them up off of the train, and they would still be wearing tennis shoes. They didn’t know how to load a pistol, or even stand at attention. It was dark when I met these kids, and I told them we’d see them the next morning to start training…morning came, and they were gone. I received word that they had crossed the (English) channel that very same night. Where exactly they went from there I can’t say for sure.”
Hammond inevitably found himself in France as well, training troops that would help fight and win what eventually became the last big skirmish of World War II – the Battle of the Bulge. That battle, a desperate offensive by the Germans, was so named because the German army was able to drive a serious bulge in the Allied lines, but was unable to break through.
The Allies, with help from Patton’s tanks, regrouped, consolidated control and preceded to drive the Germans back across Europe.
Henry Hammond and his men started their trek through the city of Le Havre, one of the most devastated sectors of France during the War. Le Havre was stricken with over 5,000 deaths and 16,000 houses and buildings destroyed during Germany’s violent takeover. And, flanked on both sides by troops and weighed down by a litany of infantry gear, Staff sgt. Hammond led his patrol to the dry land of Le Havre.
“The water was extremely rough, and our view of dry land kept getting obscured by the waves. Everyone was getting sick, and since we couldn’t get to the railing we just had to let it go. We were loaded down to the gills with everything from a gas mask, two ammo bandoliers strapped across each shoulder to a rifle held over our heads. Our British Captain got us as close as he could without jeopardizing his ship, and it was on we went into the cold water.”
The unpredictable waves nearly cost Hammond his life, had it not been for a fellow comrade and friend’s quick thinking.
“Leading my men, I stepped into a shell-hole, going in completely over my head,” Hammond said. “I would’ve sank like a stone, had Clyde Wright (also a Fort Mill native) not of caught me and gave me a hard shove, which made my feet hit solid ground again.”
Despite the dangerous conditions, Hammond and his men eventually reached dry land, and then it was onward through Le Havre. The deserted, crumbling city was a forlorn sight. But through the rubble, a familiar site reinvigorated Hammond and his men, a reminder of the home that was awaiting them should they survive the war.
“A wall that was completely undamaged held an advertisement for a F.W. Woolworth retail outlet,” recounted a nostalgic Hammond. “I shouted out to the boys, ‘Hey, look, fellas, we’re back in the United States!’ It was fun while it lasted, but we had to keep moving.”
They kept marching, until reaching a train that was departing from Le Havre. Once again, Hammond and his company were left out in the dark regarding their destination. However, the slow-moving train ride lasted a day, and yielded another moment which Hammond recalled with a laugh.
“I was with the men I was in charge of, 40 of them, in one car when we heard someone shooting near the back of the cars. One of the officers instructed me to find out what the firing was about, and I went back there with a couple of men. Come to find out, one of the 500 gallon wooden tankers that we were transporting was full of wine, and the boys were shooting holes in it…wine was shooting out everywhere you could see, and men were filling up everything they could.”
And, upon returning with his report to the officer, what did Hammond do? What any good Staff sgt. would do if placed in this situation:
“I told him that everything was under control, and there was nothing to worry about!”
The train came to a stop at night time, and Hammond and his company searched for a suitable place to sleep, settling on a series of concrete slabs, their purpose unknown.
“We had no idea where we were that night, and we stumbled upon these slabs, not knowing what they were either,” Hammond said. “In the daylight, we discovered that there were engravings in French on the slabs. A couple of the boys could read French, and as it turned out, we had stumbled upon a historic landmark.”
Hammond and his men, ironically enough, had slept on top of concrete memorials that marked the conclusion of World War I. They were in Compiegne, France, the exact spot where, in 1918, the Armistice of Germany agreed to end the “War to End All Wars.” These slabs were once a symbol of peace, but in 1944, they were used as comfort for American troops in the midst of another full scale global conflict.
In Compiegne, as the number of infantry units waned, the array of men to be trained once again became increasingly, and frustratingly, diverse.
“We got about 200 Air Force men thrown at us later on when actual ground troops were running low in numbers,” said Hammond, reminded of their inexperience. “They were full colonels, majors, captains, men that supposedly outranked me. But none of them had the slightest idea about how to fight on the ground, much less lead people. And we were tasked with training them!”
Christmas 1944 was when the “breakthrough” occurred in France. The Nazis, throwing every last ounce of offense at U.S. troops, managed to wipe out several divisions, forcing American troops on their proverbial heels. They began regaining ground, and the brute force which they used to accomplish this killed many of the men Hammond trained, including a loved one.
“My wife’s brother Voyd Faile, a paratrooper, was killed during the Battle of the Bulge,” Hammond said. “Several of the men I trained were a part of the divisions that Germany completely obliterated. I could’ve been one of the men killed, but the military sought out riflemen. I was listed as a mortar man and was also highly valued as a trainer of troops.”
Yet, when Patton’s 3rd Army shifted to France, subsequently pushing the Nazis back to Berlin and eventually leading to victory, Hammond was mobilized.
“I made it to Germany as part of the 118th combat regimen, K-Company, and later joined the 106th division that I helped train. However, as part of the 118th Division, I was instructed to oversee the rebuilding of a small town called Heiligenwald. The war, in Europe at least, was now over.”
Hammond also was tasked with giving German POWs a discharge.
“We’d give them a few francs, some rations and send them on their way, though most of them likely didn’t know where they were going.”
The 118th Division was disbanded shortly after Hammond arrived in Heiligenwald. He then joined the 106th Division around the time that the United States and Japan escalated the war in the Pacific.
“We got word that they were planning on sending the 106th Division to Japan, and we immediately began training for it,” Hammond said. “We had every intention of engaging in combat; but then Truman dropped the bomb and the war came to an end for good.”
After more than three years of serving during the height of World War II’s European campaign, and with a trip to Japan averted, Hammond’s wartime service finally ended. He shipped out from the same place he came in, the city of Le Havre. Passing through the war torn city once more, Hammond was greeted by an uplifting, and symbolic, sight.
“When we passed back through, Le Havre was in the process of cleaning up and preparing materials for the eventual rebuilding of the city. Massive stacks of bricks and concrete were ready for use, and German POWs were tasked with cleaning up the city they helped destroy.”
Hammond arrived at New York Harbor in October 1945 – the same place from which he set sail more than three years prior. But his return home, though very much welcomed, was also bittersweet.
“When we came back into New York Harbor, you know who greeted us at the boat? Two Red Cross girls giving out candy when we already had bushels of candy on the boat going home. There wasn’t a flag, no whistles, no crowds…not a soul was there to welcome us home.”
But that feeling of disillusionment soon passed when Hammond arrived at Fort Bragg, N.C., for his discharge, and heard a name that rang familiar.
“I sat there and waited for my name to be called, and they shouted out a name I immediately knew,” Hammond said. “His name was James Hopkins, another Fort Mill boy.”
Hammond quickly ran up to greet him, and the two men eventually car pooled with Hopkins’ brother back to Fort Mill. From there, Henry Hammond was dropped off at the end of a long, dirt road.
“I was 23 years old when I finally came back to Fort Mill. I walked down that long, dusty dirt road with my little bag on my back and saw my Mom for the first time in five years. You couldn’t describe the feeling.”
He would go on to marry Francis Faile, the woman who waited five years for him to return home; They had met in 1938 and began dating in 1940.
“Francis wanted to get married before I was deployed overseas…I was hesitant because I didn’t know if I’d make it back alive.”
Hammond would also continue his service to the National Guard, eventually becoming the commander of the Fort Mill armory and finally retiring in 1982. His service in World War II, however, wouldn’t go unappreciated.
“I went up to the Washington, D.C., memorial recently for an all-day affair. I flew out of Columbia,” a smiling Hammond said. “It was a wonderful experience, and the only type of recognition I’ve ever had for my time served.”
And though it rained that day in D.C., Hammond was able to see all of the World War II monuments that are scattered throughout our nation’s capital. He also received a resounding heroes’ welcome departing from and arriving in Columbia.
Hammond was also given a World War II veteran’s hat...a hat that has people of all ages taking time to shake his hand as he goes about his daily routine.
“They gave me a World War II vet cap to wear, and I’ve been wearing it most everywhere I go. I went to Home Depot the other day, and three or four people went out of their way to shake my hand and thank me for what I’ve done. I even got a discount!”
Regarding the D.C. trip, the Columbia reception and the respect shown to him by the community, a noticeably moved Henry Hammond had this to say as the interview drew to a close.
“It was worth the wait.”