Family History Writing Challenge Day 22

St. Louis home

Once baby LeRoy gained a sufficient amount of weight, he and Catherine were able to travel by train to St. Louis, where they set up their household on the south side of town. The house was located in Lemay on Perrin Avenue, close to Notre Dame High School and Jefferson Barracks. Once a single-family home, this house had been converted to a rooming house to meet the needs of soldiers and their families. The Kublers made the most of their time in St. Louis, enjoying Forest Park and the zoo, among other attractions.

bear at the St. Louis Zoo

By October of 1943, Catherine was expecting a second child and received medical care at St. Louis University Hospital. Coincidentally her brother-in-law Kevin McGann, who was married to Roy’s sister Jane, was training as a family practice resident at St. Louis University. Catherine always requested not to be seen by Kevin. She thought it was a little too personal to share that kind of exam with Kevin!

In May of 1944, Roy was given his orders to report to Greensboro, North Carolina to prepare for overseas training. At this time the family had a car, so Roy drove Catherine and LeRoy back to Cincinnati. Most of the trip was made during the night. With the rationing of gas and tires, the long road trip found Roy patching and borrowing tires along the way due to frequent blowouts. At one point, the car was making a funny noise. As Catherine drove, Roy stood outside on the running board listening to the engine. Little LeRoy stood on the seat saying, “Bye-bye, Daddy. Bye-bye, Daddy.” Catherine thought he was waving to his daddy out the window. A few miles passed before she realized Roy was no longer on the running board but had fallen off. It probably was a pretty quiet drive back to Cincinnati after that. Catherine and LeRoy moved in with her parents, Michael and Mayme Crusham (who still had five children living at home!), and Roy headed off to Greensboro.

LeRoy and Roy

During his overseas training at the Eastern Overseas Replacement Depot in Greensboro, Roy’s daughter, Kathleen Mary, was born in Cincinnati. He was not given any leave time. Upon completion of his training later in June, he was sent to Norfolk, Virginia to ship out. 

USS Anderson

In late June, Roy boarded the USS General A.E. Anderson (AP-111), captained by William Miller. On 29 June 1944, his twenty-seventh birthday, the ship left port headed for Bombay, India. While on the ship Roy quickly learned that the food available to the troops was not that good. With his experience in cooking at Jefferson Barracks, he arranged to help out in the kitchen on the ship. He received much better food and was able to get to know the officers on the ship. 

The USS Anderson passed through the Panama Canal on the 4th of July, and crossed the Equator on July 8th and the International Date Line on the 18th. It made a brief two day stop in Melbourne, Australia before arriving in Bombay on 7 August 1944.

Another Shipmate

I was looking at the CBI Theater website, which is a great resource containing lists of other websites discussing the China-Burma-India theater during WWII, and I began perusing sites that contained pictures of the area. Lo and behold I came across a woman who had placed her dad's pictures on the web. And guess which ship he traveled on to get to India? Yep, the USS General Anderson on the SAME voyage as my dad! I quickly looked for a way to contact the author. Finding none, I did a search of her name on the Internet. I found a woman with the same name who had written a genealogy article. Right woman? Deciding to take a gamble, I shot her an email. Bingo! She is on vacation in Colorado right now, but she had her dad's journal with her. (Only genealogists travel with all their relatives in the suitcase. You never know what you might discover on a trip.) She emailed me his day to day entries on the "Andy". What a find!

We are going to talk by phone when she gets back home to Boston so we can compare notes. I doubt that I have much to offer her, but I hope she'll let me put her dad's thoughts on the voyage in my book. His words paint quite the picture of life on the ship. Isn't the Internet great?

Hooray for Harry

All the "Anderson News" scans were emailed to Harry, and I assume he received them. They didn't bounce back to me, but he has not said anything about them yet. I had also sent him an aerial photo of a ship that I found in dad's things, asking if he knew what kind of ship it was. Harry did reply to that, indicating that it was a freighter. So I can now label that photo in the book. I guess I'll have to email him again and make sure he got the other 17 documents okay.

I called my aunt one day last week to confirm a few facts regarding where my mom lived when dad took her back to Cincinnati before he shipped out. Other than that I have not worked on the book at all. My sister was staying here with me for a few days, so I got my normal work accomplished during the day but didn't want to leave her sitting alone while I worked on the book. She took off for home today, so I may squeeze in a little time this afternoon to work on the book a bit.

Brain Scan

Today's contribution to the book was having the ship "newsletters" scanned at my husband's office. When I tried to scan them on my 10 year old home scanner, the ink from the reverse side of the newsletter read through. Jim had just purchased a new high-end scanner/printer for the landscape architecture firm, so I decided to see what the new smart scanner could do. Not only do I want to include the newsletters in my book, if they are still legible when reduced to a 6"x9" format, I promised my new friend Harry at the USS General Anderson website that I would email them to him.

Because I didn't want to be the one to break a machine that costs more than the average family makes in a year, I had Mindy scan the documents for me. The plan was to scan them directly to my email. The machine is super-fast, so before long she hit the "Send" button. Failed. Are you smarter than a scanner?

Maybe my mailbox couldn't handle the file size? Super-expensive scanner did not store the documents, so Mindy had to start over, this time emailing them to herself. Failed. On the third try she scanned only six pages at a time to email to herself. She then put the documents on a thumb drive for me to bring home. Success! Now I just need to place them in the book, and see if Harry's inbox can handle this size file!

Ship Shape

In today's mail came a CD I have been waiting for. A book about the USS Anderson has been scanned and copies are available on CD. Luckily I had found a guy online who wasn't asking an arm and a (sea)leg for a copy. Several of the documents on the disk are pertinent only for navy personnel, and my dad was in the Army Air Corp. But the 95 page book on the CD is a treasure trove of information about the ship. Numerous photos accompany the text which describes life on board the "Andy". Ships logs are included for voyages 1-12. My dad traveled to India on Voyage 7, so we're covered there, but the book ends by stating that on Voyage 13 they headed to Karachi. Karachi is where dad boarded the ship for the return voyage. Bummer!

I emailed the man I got the CD from to inquire about a Volume 2. His response, were it a verbal conversation instead of text in an email, would have involved snickering. Apparently there are very few books out on these ship voyages, so I'm lucky to have found one on the "Andy". "That's all she wrote", he told me.

So, I count my blessings that I found this one (especially without paying $50 like some on the web are asking). I'll be able to add some nice background to my book regarding the ship transports. And some great photos as well.