World War II and My Military Memories

Coffey

Pearl Harbor

T hose born in the last few decades remember where they were on 9/11 when the World Trade Center Buildings were destroyed. Those alive in the 1960s remember where they were when President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963. Those alive in the 1940s remember where they were when the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

Dad and I were visiting with my Uncle Elliott Murray from Tupelo, Mississippi on a Sunday afternoon, and the announcer said that we have a special news bulletin. We have the President of the United States on the radio, and the President stated, This is a day that will live in infamy. On this Sunday, December 7, 1941 the United States of America was attacked by the forces of Imperial Japan! I remember so well the President of the United States of America announced that our country was going to war against Japan. What a sad, trying time for our country and indeed the world. So many men and women of our Air Force and Navy were wounded or killed at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

While Dad and Uncle Elliott discussed the attack, I realized the time would soon be coming when I would have leave my home and family in the little country town of Myrtle, Mississippi, and possibly never see them again.

Defense Plant

A fter graduation from Myrtle High School, our class went to the State Fair in Memphis, Tennessee. We went in Mr. Frazier Hitt’s old bus. Everything needed for the war effort was either rationed or unavailable, especially rubber for tires. You used whatever tires you had then. There were no new ones. If you went anywhere, you took tire repair material with you. It took our class several hours to get from Myrtle to Memphis with seven flats. After the senior trip, it was time to start the summer and get to work. I worked for four months at the U.S. Small Arms Factory Defense Plant in St. Louis, Missouri along with about 50,000 others employed there in the defense industry. My Uncle Elliott Murray got me the job making some of the smallest and largest shells in the world. My job was overseeing 12-14 women who inspected the finished shells. By the time I finished the work, I believe I had accumulated about $600 for my future wife Kitty and me to get married on, whenever World War II would allow that to happen.

Uncle Elliott and Aunt Eunice were so good and helpful to me while I worked at the plant in St. Louis. I had many meals with them and they took me all over St. Louis, which was a treat to me, being from a small town in North Mississippi, and getting to see all the sights in a big bustling city like St. Louis. I also got to see the old St. Louis Browns (now the Baltimore Orioles) and the St. Louis Cardinals play baseball.

When I attempted to leave to head for Mississippi State, the plant manager said I could not leave and if I tried to he would immediately have me drafted and keep me working at the U.S. Small Arms Factory of the United States. I reasoned with him and told him I already had a place in the military and had applied to the Army Air Force Cadet Program, as I wanted to try to become a bombardier in the United States Army Air Force. So he grudgingly allowed me to end my work at the plant and leave St. Louis when the summer ended. They would allow me to enter Cadet School as soon as they had cadet openings.

One weekend, while I was still employed by the defense plant, I had come back to Memphis and Aunt Effie had Kitty, my future wife, and me, over to her and Uncle Sam’s and their son Donald’s home for dinner.

So Kitty and I had a very good dinner with them and they said Uncle George Murray had called and said he wanted us to come over to his home to see him. He was a fire fighter and had been in a lot of combat in World War I.

So we went to see Uncle George. As a kid, I used to drive every one crazy when Mom and Dad would take me to Memphis to purchase clothes, shoes, suits, etc. and they said no one could handle me as well as Uncle George did. He often gave me marbles and had also given me all the guns I owned when growing up. After visiting with Uncle George, he said he knew that I would be leaving later to head for war in Europe and who knows if you will return, but we are so in hopes you will return and in good health. But I want to drive down to see you, your Mother and Dad and Uncle Tom and wish you a good send-off before you leave for Europe.

After Kitty and I had dinner with Aunt Effie and family, I walked her back to her apartment, then I went back to Aunt Effie’s and she and Uncle Sam and Donald took me down to the train and I rode all night to St. Louis, Missouri to go back to work. Uncle Elliott and Aunt Eunice met me at the train station in St. Louis. What a story for the summer of 1942. After four months working in the Small Arms Factory of the United States, then I was off to Mississippi State University, or Mississippi State College as it was called then.

Mississippi State University and ROTC

M other and Dad and the rest of my family planned for me to go college at Ole Miss, not far from Myrtle and New Albany. I had seven other friends who planned on the same thing. However, Mr. Jamie Houston, Sr., who went to college at Mississippi State College and graduated and went into the military for two years and was a Second Lieutenant between WWI and WWII, had other plans for us boys.

He had said to Dad that he did not want any of us boys to go to the University of Mississippi at Oxford, known as Ole Miss, but instead to go to Mississippi State College at Starkville, where we could train to become military officers. They had ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps) there and we would not be drafted as Privates, instead we could be Second Lieutenants. So all eight of us went to Mississippi State, but you had to be signed up and be in some branch of the military before you could go to Mississippi State. We eight good friends did and after we all went to Cadet School, we went our separate ways during the war and never saw each other until after the war.

I entered Mississippi State College on September 1, 1942 after graduation from Myrtle, Mississippi High School about April 25, 1942. I started out in Chemical Engineering, but later changed my major to Geology after returning to school after the war.

After completing my job at the Defense Plant, I caught the bus to Myrtle. Busses and trains were the only affordable modes of public transportation and it was wartime, so the bus was packed with people. A lady named Miss Prather got off with me and I walked her home. Her parents home was out in the country well past my Uncle Bill’s barn and on nearby Sandy Road. She was so glad I did.

The next morning Uncle George came to Mother and Dad’s home and Mom fixed a big breakfast. I said good-bye to my family, which consisted of Mother, Dad, and sister Virginia. My little brother Lee had died at four and my other sister Bet was already off at college in Tennessee.

When I entered Mississippi State College, I was a student in the ROTC and was a real military student at a real military school. Many have reported that Mississippi State was the toughest military college in the nation. Even before I had elected, which was my mistake, to enter Mississippi State with my other seven friends, I had been selected to be in the ROTC program.

When seven of my friends and I went to Mississippi State, we knew very little about the college when we decided to go there. However, we found out a lot more about the highly disciplined military program at Mississippi State College after we got there. It was my desire to be able to enter the United States Army Air Force to become a bombardier and receive a commission as a Second Lieutenant. At that time the Air Force was part of the United States Army. Later in the war, it became a separate branch of the service like the Army and Navy. I felt that taking courses at a military college would give me the opportunity to pursue that.

Mississippi State College ROTC was the worst military organization I was attached to in my years of military service, due to the harsh discipline and constant hazing.

When we got to State, four military men met us at the door of the bus. Two were Master Sergeants and two were First Sergeants, and all had been Captains or Majors during World War I, but demoted to the peacetime ranks when the US Army felt World War I was over and they would no longer need military men. These four military men were then regular Army soldiers wishing to remain until retirement and wanting to get their ranks back with World War II now breaking all over the world. A short time later each of them were kicked back up to their previous ranks as officers.

In the meantime, they treated us as you would expect non-commissioned officers to treat new recruits. They told us to get off the bus and follow them to the building that was the quartermaster operations, to get in order, get in line, and to march. When we got to the quartermaster, other non-commissioned officers ordered us to change from our civilian clothes into military uniforms. It was summer, but we were given winter uniforms with woolen strap leggings around our ankles that had to be wound up almost to our knees.

My cousin Joe Lee Coffey, who was already at Mississippi State College, had one year there before I arrived. Our other first cousin who went to the military, Nesbit Gassaway Coltharp, was attending Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Joe Lee Coffey, Cadet, prior to WWII.

Mississippi State was a tough place to get an education then. When I missed classes to