Commanders, 97th Engineer Battalion (Construction):

Excerpt, Col. Atkins' autobiography

MAJ Robert A. Atkins, Commander 97th Engr Bn (Const) 1955-56

Born 12 June 1924—Died 21 June 2014

[Colonel Robert Atkins’ Personal Memoirs, used by permission] CHAPTER 16:

Advance Section, USAREUR COMZ:
I drove our 1948 Chevrolet sedan from Appleton to New Jersey where I turned it in at the port of embarkation for shipment to Europe. Within a few days I was aboard a US Army troop transport ship bound for the debarkation port of Bremerhaven, Germany. It was my fifth North Atlantic crossing by ship. In peacetime a military troop transport can cross the Atlantic in about six or seven days, making about 18 knots in good weather. We did not have good weather. This crossing was in wintertime and the North Atlantic is cold and the winds blustery. We plowed our way through one storm after another.

One afternoon we hove to in a fairly calm sea to bury a merchant seaman whose family had honored his request to be buried at sea. This is apparently a very common practice both in the Merchant Marine and in the United States Navy. The crew was mustered by the whistle of the boatswain to the starboard weather deck for the burial ceremony. With little or no steerage–way the ship sort of wallowed in the ocean as the weighted canvas bag containing the body was committed to the deep after the Captain had read the age old maritime ritual for burial of a sailor at sea. At the conclusion of the ceremony the Captain ordered the ship, “All ahead, full,” and the ship's bow slowly turned and we resumed our course generally east by north–east seeking a landfall in the “Old World.”

We docked in Bremerhaven where troop trains were waiting to carry us onward into Germany. Before the ship docked all of the American greenback money was collected from the passengers for conversion into occupation script upon our arrival. I was one of the officers charged with this responsibility. I took my money ashore under guard and traded it for a like amount of occupational script and returned to the ship and issued this script to the people who had turned their greenbacks into me. Much to our displeasure within an hour of making the payments Headquarters USAREUR announced an unscheduled conversion of script. I had to gather up all the script that I had just given to my troops, return ashore and get different script of a different color. When I turned in the first batch of script the Finance Officer who was doing the exchanging told me that I had a lot of counterfeit money I was trying to return to him. I told him I only got it from him a couple of hours before. He explained that most of the script I had initially received had been printed by the Soviet Army. In a great moment of weakness early in the occupation of Germany our government had apparently given the Soviet Army sets of plates so that they could print occupation currency. They were required to put a dash in front of the serial number so that the two different series of occupational script could be told apart and financially accounted for. The Soviet military apparently ignored the rules that had been agreed to and printed huge amounts of script with which their soldiers and officers purchased large amounts of stuff on the East German black market. So today was payback time because the Soviets were not going to get any of the new plates and they would be left holding about two hundred million dollars in worthless paper. Such is life in a “Cold War.”

When I left the United States I did not know where in Germany I would be assigned. When I got ashore in Bremerhaven I learned that I would not be going to Germany, but rather to France. I was assigned to the 32nd Engineer Group, stationed in Verdun, France. The Advance Section of the US Army Europe Communications Zone was based in Verdun and its logistical facilities were located in several large provinces in eastern France.

The Base Section Headquarters of the Communications Zone was located in Bordeaux, France, and had installations all along the French west coast's Bay of Biscay from the Spanish border north to the ports of St. Nazaire and La Police.

Communications Zone Headquarters was in Orleans, France, with some key functions having offices in Paris in what was known as the Seine Area Command. The NATO high command known as SHAFE (Supreme Headquarters Allied Forces Europe) was also located in Paris. Much later, when the French Government withdrew from the NATO Alliance, SHAFE moved to Brussels, Belgium.

The RTO (Rail Transportation Office) in Bremerhaven issued me a ticket from Bremerhaven to Metz, France, via Frankfurt, Germany. Trains in Europe by 1953 were operating on pretty decent schedules although there was still considerable railroad and railroad station damage that had yet to be repaired. The trip to Metz was uneventful. I arrived in the early afternoon and checked into the RTO to determine how I got from Metz to Verdun. The soldier on duty gave me a telephone number to call in Verdun. I called the number and got a duty officer on the phone who told me that a vehicle would be dispatched to Metz to pick me up, but that it would not arrive for several hours. So I had time to kill. Metz was the most famous fortress town in eastern France and had been seriously damaged during World War II. American troops occupied several facilities in Metz as part of the Advance Section of the Communications Zone. The train station was in the central part of the city so I took off on foot to see what I could in the couple of hours that had before my automobile or jeep arrived from Verdun, about sixty miles to the west.

I was not really prepared for what I encountered on the streets of downtown Metz. Girls were strolling on the sidewalks either alone or in groups of two or three. Almost all of them were prostitutes in search of business, or “business girls” in search of men with whom to do varied forms of sexual business. Two girls walked up behind me and started to pass me, one on each side. But they didn't pass but pulled up beside me and kept stride with me. I looked at each of them and I guess I smiled or at least I didn't look scornful. The one on the right spoke for both of them, in vernacular English, “You want good time?” I asked her “What is good time?” When I got her answer I knew that I did not need any good time from her or any of the other women on the streets.

An hour or so later a military sedan picked me up at the train station and took me into Verdun where I checked into the only decent hotel in town until I could find and rent my own place to live on the French economy, since there were no military quarters available.

In the morning I reported for duty to the Commanding Officer of the 32nd Engineer Construction Group whose headquarters was in a Quonset hut compound behind the main Maginot Caserne which housed Advance Section Headquarters and various other organizations. I was initially assigned as engineering officer in the S–3 Operations Section. My responsibility would be reviewing and approving construction project designs and supervising the enlisted men and officers who did design, drafting and design review work for projects being accomplished by the two Engineer Construction Battalions assigned to the Group.

The 998th Engineer Construction Battalion was based at Toul Engineer Depot, near the city of Nancy. Its companies were scattered about that part of France engaged in various projects including the construction of a large sewage treatment plant and an ammunition depot.

The other battalion in the group was the 97th Engineer Construction Battalion whose headquarters was in Maginot Caserne in Verdun and whose line companies were scattered about eastern France engaged in the construction of ammunition renovation buildings, roads and hardstands at various supply depots and the planning of an extension of a military railroad line in the vicinity of Verdun to service an Army airfield which was under construction by a French construction firm.

On New Year's Eve those of us who were still living in the hotel, which was owned and operated by a Frenchman with the nickname “Big John,” put together a party in and about our rooms. We mixed drinks in one of the bidets since we had no punch bowl (yes, we washed it out first!). The partying group included several women who were school teachers in the military dependent school located at Etain Air Force base, a few miles from Verdun and some women civilian employees (DACs – Department of the Army civilians) as well as quite a number of officers and a few French people who were employed by the Army in one fashion or another. At this party I learned that there was a room vacancy at a small hotel in downtown Verdun and that if I was quick about it I could rent the room in the morning. About a dozen American soldiers, some with their wives, a few officers and some Department of the Army (DAC) civilians lived in the place.

The next morning I found the small hotel and the owner rented me a second floor room with a window. I had a washbowl but had to use the common toilet on the floor. My next door neighbors were a young enlisted soldier and his bride who had recently arrived from the states. I had no refrigeration but it was quite cold outside so I could put things on the window ledge if I wanted to keep something like cheese or sausage cold. I visited the local French markets and purchased cans of soup, cheese, bread and processed meat so that I could fix supper for myself in my room using a small hot–plate that I purchased. I also purchased a small saucepan, a cheese knife, a couple of cheap bowls and a fork and spoon. My kitchen setup was now complete.

The first night in my room I learned that the next door neighbors must have still been on a honeymoon of sorts. The walls of that hotel were pretty thin and sounds passed through them easily. The dear girl next door made very lusty sounds when her husband made love to her. The two of them went at it on a pretty regular basis, sometimes in the morning, but mostly at night. It was all I could do to resist a knowing smile when I saw them in the morning, all three of us heading out for work.

I spent only a couple of weeks as a member of the 32nd Engineer Construction Group staff. The Commander–in–Chief, USAREUR, made a surprise visit to Toul Engineer Depot and in the process stopped in at the Headquarters of the 998th Engineer Construction Battalion. He was appalled at the living conditions of the battalion and not happy with their mission performance. Critical projects were behind schedule, particularly the sewage treatment plant under construction at Chalons. As a gesture of his unhappiness he relieved the battalion commander of his duties on the spot.

The group commander needed to find a new battalion commander quickly. There was only one Lt. Colonel in group headquarters and he was the executive officer and did not want any part of being a battalion commander. The only other Lt. Colonel was in command of the 97th Engineer Construction Battalion in Verdun. I was the junior Major in the group but the commander soon learned that none of the majors wanted the job of battalion commander. He didn't even ask me if I wanted the job. He told me to get to Toul and take command of the 998th immediately.

That put me in a very difficult spot for several reasons:
  1. The current executive officer of the 998th was senior to me.
  2. I was the new guy on the block, I knew nobody in the 998th.
  3. For all practical purposes I knew hardly anyone in the group headquarters very well either, and had no idea what type of support they would give me when I started to shake things up at the 998th.
Under these circumstances the military services have a unique and time–honored device they use to instantly inform the members of a unit, and everyone else, that a junior officer is taking command. I assumed command “at the direction of the President,” The Group order assigning me to the 998th Engineer Construction Battalion indicated that I would assume command “at the direction of the President.” The assumption of command Battalion General Order which I issued and signed contained the simple abbreviation “DP” which every officer in the armed services understands.

It was a struggle to make sense out of the 998th Engineer Battalion. Their tent city at Toul was a mud hole. Their showers didn't work because the hot water lines were clogged with lime. The inside of the tents were a mess which indicated poor leadership and low morale. The motor pool was a sea of mud and half the vehicles were not operable. These people obviously felt sorry for themselves and their situation and had ceased to care about their surroundings or their work. I suspended all construction projects and put the unit to full time cleaning up where they lived and getting their vehicles and equipment in working order. I made no friends—all enemies.

In the middle of this I got word that Eunice was embarking by ship for Europe and that I would have to travel to Germany to pick up her and the kids. I had found no place for my family to live because I was too busy trying to straighten out the battalion I was trying to command. My Battalion Chaplain (who was a worthless excuse for a man of God) lived in a fourth floor walk–up apartment in Nancy, France, about twenty miles from Toul Engineer Depot. He was scheduled for reassignment to the states and he made arrangements with his French landlord for me to occupy his apartment when he left.

I got into the apartment about a week before Eunice and the kids were to arrive in Frankfort, Germany. What a mess! The landlord's French furniture was in the apartment and usable. The fireplaces had been used by the Chaplain and his wife to burn their garbage rather than taking it to the street. They had left that crap for me to clean up. The kitchen was filthy. There was a dirty electric stove coated with grease and a small refrigerator that was not cleaned. I discovered that because of the high cost of electricity our Christian Chaplain had bypassed the electric meter and connected the electric stove directly to the incoming electrical main. The bathroom was as dirty as the rest of the apartment but at least it had an instant gas–fired water heater that started when you turned on the hot water tap. I managed to get the place cleaned up enough so that Eunice would not scream when she arrived. I left the cheating electric system the way it was. I was afraid that with my limited knowledge of electric wiring as practiced in France I might well electrocute myself if I tried to change it. I did tell the landlord but I doubt she would even consider telling the French EDF (Electricite de France).

I drove to Frankfurt, Germany to meet Eunice's train coming from Bremerhaven. The train was on time and Eunice and the kids were on it; hurrah! Eunice looked like she was just skin and bones and she told me that she only weighed about 100 pounds. The trip across the ocean had been miserable. She had three kids to supervise at meals and the weather was horrible so the ship wallowed around in the sea and nobody ate very much.

We piled into my trusty 1948 Chevrolet with “Power glide” and headed for France. Needless to say neither Eunice nor the kids were overly pleased to learn that their new temporary home was on the fourth floor of an aging building in the middle of medieval Nancy, France.

We sort of camped in that apartment until our own furniture arrived. In the interim I believed that I should invite the officers of the battalion and their wives to our home for a buffet lunch on a Sunday afternoon when they did not have a need to be working. I spent a great deal of time on the Saturday before making buffet foods and arranging things in our apartment. The invitation had been extended verbally by me to my senior staff with the request that they inform all the officers in the battalion of the invitation. Long time military custom dictates that officers receiving such an invitation have three choices, attend the gathering, or arrange to be hospitalized in grave condition, or die before the event is to take place.

Not one single officer or wife darkened our door that Sunday afternoon. When I asked my Executive Officer about it the next morning, he sort of shrugged his shoulders thinking that I would understand that I was considered to be an interloper. At least I knew where I stood and I knew that it probably was not going to get a great deal better. They would sort of grudgingly obey my orders but would not like it.

Even as I was trying, with the help now of some of the more cooperative younger officers, to raise the moral and the effectiveness of the 998th Engineer Construction Battalion rumors began to fly that the unit would be inactivated in order to help reduce the troop strength in France. Sure enough within a few weeks what had been rumor became established fact.

About that same time the commander of the 97th Engineer Construction Battalion, based in Verdun, finished his tour overseas and was reassigned back to the United States. The group commander reassigned me to command the 97th, again “at the direction of the President,” because the executive officer of the 97th, Major Walter A. Steers, was senior to me but did not want the job. Major Steers (my kids called him Uncle Walt) turned out to be a great friend and a good executive officer.
Major Robert Atkins' assumption of command
Again my family inherited housing from a departing officer, this time from the battalion commander of the 97th, who had been living in what the French call a “petite chateau” in the tiny village of Combres sur les Cotes, east of Verdun and right along the battle lines of World War I. Battle damage from the “war to end all wars” was clearly evident in the immediate vicinity. There were tortured trees with shells embedded in their trunks, huge holes in the ground where mines had been exploded under enemy trenches, both French and German, and live ammunition on and in the ground. The house was owned by a middle–aged French woman who lived in Paris. When I visited her in Paris she agreed to let my family rent her house and she also taught me how to drive in Paris, “Always look straight ahead no matter what you intend to do. If you look where you are going to turn some crazy Frenchman will cut you off!”

Our own furniture and household goods arrived in Nancy before we had to move to the Verdun area. To make room for our stuff I moved much of the landlord's furniture up to the fifth floor attic without his permission. He was quite upset when he learned what I had done and made it crystal clear that if and when we left all of his antique furniture must be restored to the apartment. So I not only had to struggle to get his “junk” up the long double flight of stairs to the attic but I had to reverse the process when we out–loaded our belongings into Army vehicles for the short trip to Combres sur les Cotes.

Moving into the little French town of Combres sur les Cotes was sort of a cultural shock, not only for me, but for my wife and kids. The petite chateau which we rented would be called a large country home if it were in the United States. It was a two story building with a large attic. The ground floor had a large kitchen with a wood or coal burning stove for cooking and rudimentary plumbing, but including a full bath facility with the only bathtub in the whole village. Also on the ground floor was a large dining room, a living room and the master bedroom plus closet and storage space. Upstairs on the second floor were three large bedrooms and a bath. The kids used two of the bedrooms and I eventually used the third bedroom in which to assemble and operate a model railroad.

Many of the men and officers of the battalion lived in surrounding nearby villages in much poorer housing than my family enjoyed. One group of four families was living in a renovated barn which they had turned into a multi–family dwelling with a large central public area on the ground floor. Other families of the battalion lived in other villages surrounding the ancient fortress town of Verdun.

During our rather short stay in Nancy Eunice and I had made up somewhat for the long separation so she was pregnant with our fourth child when we moved to the Verdun area. If you were based in Verdun the rules covering pregnancy and prenatal as well as delivery and postnatal medical care were different. Had we remained in the Nancy area Eunice would have been required to travel to Kaiserslautern two weeks before her prospective delivery date and be hospitalized until after her delivery. Now that we were ensconced in the Verdun area she could be delivered in the small maternity unit which was part of the Verdun Area Hospital, located in Maginot Caserne, where my Battalion Headquarters was also located.

Social life for officers in the Verdun area centered on the officer’s club, a modern military club built adjacent to the military housing area, which was nowhere near large enough to accommodate the number of soldiers and officers needing housing. Almost every Saturday evening the battalion officers would gather at the Officer’s Club and party, usually in the company of a lot of other people, including the Advance Section Commanding General, his wife, and members of his staff. We had live music, a cheap bar and we managed to entertain each other by writing and producing skits and musical numbers.

The engineering work of the battalion involved construction and repair tasks at several logistical facilities scattered within a range of about sixty miles from Verdun. We had responsibility for construction of roads at Trios Fontaines Ammunition Depot which was a major headache since the French Government let us use this piece of ground because it had been a swamp since before the time of Napoleon. We were given terribly cheap materials to use in road construction. Unknowingly we received a shipment of what was supposed to be asphalt cement which can be heated and mixed with crushed stone to make hot asphalt plant mix. Unfortunately the material was rapid cure water/soap emulsification type asphalt which had to be mixed cold. We heated it and mixed it with crushed rock and paved several miles of roadway before we had a heavy rain and all of water based asphalt washed out of the stone leaving us with a crushed rock roadway. We did a lot of road paving in the immediate vicinity of Verdun at several military caserns or depots located within and without the city. Company C of the Battalion was based in a Quonset hut compound just outside Maginot Caserne where the 32nd Engineer Group Headquarters was also located. Captain Ray commanded the company and was responsible for the local engineering jobs in the Verdun Area. Company A was based at Trois Fontaines and Company B was engaged in pipeline training and construction at the Pipeline School in Épernay, France.

I spent a great deal of my time traveling by jeep or command staff car to visit construction projects and coordinate things with the agencies we were supporting. We were also required to coordinate directly with various French governmental agencies.

The French forestry service had to account for every tree that we felled in their forests to construct buildings and roads.

The Ponts and Chausee (bridges and roads) service insured that we met French Governmental standards for road and bridge construction.

We were allowed to enter into various contracts for the supply of locally obtainable construction materials such as sand, gravel and crushed stone. I entered into a verbal contract with a French construction contractor in which my battalion provided a large two–yard track mounted shovel in his quarry to load both his trucks and mine. The contract required that neither of us would dispatch more than ten trucks per day for loading by the large shovel. He used ten ton trucks, I used 5 ton trucks. Guess who got the most rock! When a change in orders required that I relocate the large two–yard shovel to another quarry twenty miles away the French contractor sued me in French court for violation of our verbal agreement. Given the slow–moving nature of French justice I left the country before the suit ever came to trial.

The winter of 1955/56 brought one of the worst storms of the century to Western Europe. Ice and snow brought trains, automobiles and airplanes to a halt all across Europe. My car parked at Maginot Caserne was covered with four inches of ice after that storm and we could not even get into it for days. Then when spring arrived we had to put up with what the French called the spring breakup of the roads. French roads (German roads too) did not have proper subterranean drainage. They relied on so called “French drains” which were trenches dug on either side of the road and filled with crushed stone. When the ground was frozen everything was fine. When the frost came out of the roads the sub grade became unstable and the asphalt road surface broke up from the movement of traffic. The problem was so severe that by government fiat all traffic came to a halt on those roads most subject to frost upheaval. Hundreds of stranded truck drivers would clog small town hotels and cafes for a week to ten days waiting for the restrictions on driving on those damaged roads to be lifted.

About the time that Eunice was ready to give birth to our first son, Robert, Jr., I got sick with some kind of a bug. I managed to gather Eunice and her stuff and get her to the hospital, while our maid watched the kids who were sleeping at the time. When I got back to the house I put myself to bed, and Susie and Kathy took care of me for two days. I did manage to drag myself out of bed to visit Eunice on the day that she was discharged, and we brought the new baby home to our chateau in the woods.

I had to drive to Strausburg to visit the American Consulate to report the birth of Robert Jr. and arrange for him to be added to Eunice's passport. It was an all day trip compounded by seemingly endless waiting on the arrival of the counselor official responsible for such things. I think he took four hours for lunch that day, one more hour than normal.

We employed a part–time maid in Combres sur les Cotes. If I remember correctly her name was Maria. She lived across the street with her aged father, some chickens, a pig or two and a cow all of which were accommodated at night in the downstairs of the house. Maria loved peanut butter and could consume a whole jar in one sitting, plastering it on a loaf of French bread. She was a friendly young woman and good with our kids. One morning as I was leaving the house to drive to work Maria came running out of her house screaming, “Pere et mort!” Father is dead.

I went with her to the house and yes, father was stone dead in his bed. I took her to the next village to see a priest and arrange for his funeral and burial. The local French citizens made him a wooden casket, nailing it together in the front room of his house. Then they put him in the casket, nailed the top shut and tried to get him out of the house. No such luck. The casket would not make the turns to get out the front door. So they removed the front window and lowered the casket through the window into a hand cart. They almost dropped him in the process. The funeral was held in the local Catholic Church just 100 yards from our front door and only a few feet further from his house.

So far as we could ascertain from our maid, we had the only working bathtub in Combres sur les Cotes and the three nearby villages. It was custom that the people living in our house would permit young women about to be married to have their first, and probably their last, bath in a real tub with hot water. We were privileged to continue that custom for a young woman from a nearby village on the day before her wedding.

The most serious incident to happen in our village was the crash of an American Air Force F–100 fighter. The pilot was part of a flight of four such aircraft that were approaching Etain Air Force Base for a routine landing. The weather was foggy but they were being controlled by radar. For some unexplainable reason this one pilot got disoriented and apparently suffered from vertigo. He missed his first landing attempt and went around in a large five or six mile circle to try to land again. About five miles from our village he flew the plane upside down apparently without knowing it. The tail of his airplane struck a tree a couple of miles from Combres sur les Cotes. I heard the roar of a jet engine from our house but did not see the plane crash. I got to the crash scene a few minutes later. The plane had plowed into a farmer's field and buried the engine deep in the ground. Parts of the wings and the tail assembly were scattered about the field in about two hundred yards from the impact site. The pilot had apparently ejected from the plane just before it hit the ground, without knowing that he was upside down. His body was driven into his flight helmet and pieces of him were scattered all around where he hit. I contacted the Air Force base and they sent out a crew to pick up the body and collect the wreckage. The plane missed the center of the village by less than 100 yards.

388th FBW/563rd FBS) crashed 5 mi SW of Etain AB Sep 16, 1957 when pilot became disoriented in cloud shortly after takeoff. Pilot killed.
One of the highlights of our stay in France was a vacation trip we took to the Netherlands. We visited Belgium, stayed at a hotel in Brussels and took pictures of the “Little man who could pee.” The large public market square in front of the Hotel de Ville was filled with flowers and other goodies the day we were there.

We went on to Amsterdam where we had arranged through American Express to live in a private home on the fourth floor of a large building near the center of the city. The stairs were almost like a ladder and I was fearful that one of our kids would fall down the stairs. Our landlord provided two meals each day for us, breakfast in the morning and dinner in the evening. We rode on boats on the canals that link Amsterdam together and visited other interesting places in the city.

When we were leaving for home I took the baby's stroller down to the street before taking the baby down. When I got back to the car the stroller was gone. I figured that it had been stolen. The landlady directed me to the Police Station down the street a couple of blocks and I went in and waited in line to talk to an officer. When it was my turn the uniformed officer apologized for keeping me waiting but told me that he was involved in a murder investigation and he thought I would understand! I told him about the stolen stroller. He wrote down a description and told me his men would look for it but it was unlikely that they would find it. He said he would send it to Verdun if it was found and I could pick it up at the train station freight office.

Several weeks after we had returned to Verdun I got a notice from the Verdun railroad freight office that I had a package which needed to be picked up. Sure enough, the Amsterdam Police had found the stroller and sent it to me freight prepaid by them!

The next summer we took our family to Switzerland and drove back through the Rhine River Valley and the German Black Forest. On the last night of our stay in a Swiss hotel I failed to put the stroller into the back of the car. It was thus abandoned in the hotel parking lot. Several weeks later I got a call from the Verdun railroad freight office to come and pick up my stroller again. The hotel staff had found it and returned it at no cost to us for the freight. That stroller appeared to have nine lives like a cat.

We were also able to visit Germany's alpine country while stationed in France. We arranged to stay at a lovely hotel on a lake high in the mountains near Garmisch–Parkenkirchen. We rode cable cars up the Zugspitz and enjoyed the Bavarian flavor of the area, painted houses with steep roofs, the colorful costumes of the local people, particularly the lederhosen worn by the men, and, of course, the beer. Eunice and I were able to spend an evening at the famous Casa Carioca night club built by the American Army about a year after the war ended. It had a large dance floor which covered an Olympic–size ice skating rink. The large electric motor which operated the sliding dance floor came from a German military facility near Munich. The Soviet Army wanted the motor but the Commander–in–Chief, USAEUR informed them that we needed it and they couldn't have it.

The areas surrounding the fortress city of Verdun were the scene of horrible battles in World War I. During a one month period early in the war the French Army marched a division a day from Bar-le-Duc, the capital of the Meuse Province, to the trenches around Verdun. Over 300,000 French soldiers and a like number of German soldiers perished in those battles. Several incidents occurred during our tenure in the Verdun area that related directly back to World War I.

My battalion was tasked by group headquarters to assist the French Government in constructing a new parking lot and repairing the roads at Duamont National Cemetery, which includes the famous trench of bayonets and the Ossuary at Duamont, on the occasion of the French President visiting the area. It was necessary for a French priest to accompany each piece of our earth moving equipment to inspect the disturbed ground for bones and relics of the battles fought there. We uncovered numerous bones, bayonets, pieces of rifles, unexploded ammunition and the like during the course of our work on the parking lot. The priest inspected each bone or bones and the area surrounding it to determine if he could establish whether the remains were French or German. Any bones that he determined were likely to be French were placed in the basement of the Ossier with other French bones. The German bones had another repository. I have a German bayonet we found in a chalk deposit which was rust–free when we found it and remains rust–free to this day.

One Sunday afternoon a young soldier and his new wife went driving around the battlefields of Verdun. They stopped at what looked like an interesting place and the soldier entered a concrete bunker–pillbox and disappeared. His wife went looking for him but couldn't find him. She sounded an alarm and within an hour or two we had engineer soldiers searching the area for the soldier. I arrived about four hours after the bunker had been found. The bunker covered an eighty foot deep shaft cut into solid rock. The shaft was about eight feet square and ended in a pile of sandy dirt. My men were preparing to lower a soldier into the shaft when I arrived. I taught them how to tie a double bowline on a bight knot which can be used with a single clove hitch to lower a man, his legs in the two rounded bights and the rope about his chest. The first man down the shaft found nothing but loose dirt. I went down next and walked through the underground tunnels that branched from the shaft until I ran into a rock fall that closed the tunnel.

Then I went up and down the shaft in the rope sling inspecting the sides of the shaft for blood. I found a few spots, took samples and had them sent to the hospital. The missing man had type “A” blood. The samples I took were also type “A”. We were then pretty sure that the man had fallen into this particular shaft but there was absolutely no sign of him or his body. I had our men begin to move the pile of loose dirt at the base of the shaft. Again traces of blood were found in this dirt. After all of the dirt had been moved we still had found no body. A French priest sorcerer was called in by the French Army. He dangled a black ball on a string over the shaft and when the ball slowly began to circle he proclaimed that there was a body down there someplace.

I think it was on Wednesday when I finally went home to get some sleep after being in charge of the attempted rescue or body recovery for 48 hours. I left word that all of the dirt we moved from the base of the shaft would be moved again some twenty feet into the tunnel. While I was home in bed my men finally found the man's body. He had apparently slipped on a piece of plywood that partially covered the open shaft and fallen eighty feet, striking the sides of the shaft on his way down. He hit in the soft dirt at the bottom of the shaft and his body slid into a partially covered deeper shaft and the loose dirt covered up any traces of his body except for the small amounts of blood. In our initial moving of the dirt we had further covered up his body! His stiffened body was finally hoisted to the top of the shaft early on Thursday morning. In the process of searching for him in the surrounding battlefields two French soldiers were killed when they stumbled onto unexploded shells which detonated.

Editor: Comments from battalion personnel regarding the above incident:

SOLDIER DIES AFTER FALLING INTO A VERTICAL SHAFT:

Introduction by Peter Bridges, one of the search and rescue workers

As I recall, the story of the missing soldier has already been told on the 97th website. What I can offer from my no doubt failing memory is this. The missing man was, we were told, the top NCO in the office of our ADSEC COMZ commander—a brigadier general, I think—in the Caserne Maginot in Verdun. One Sunday the sergeant took his wife on a picnic out to the old forts. After they'd eaten he told her he was going off on a short ramble. He didn't come back. She went back to town and told the MPs. There was concern that someone might have done him in; he was privy to all the classified information in the general's office (which I think may not have been much). A search party went out, and found a plank stretched across the opening at the top of a vertical air shaft leading down into one of the old forts. It looked like there were footprints on the moldy plank—that stopped halfway across. A team went out from the 97th, and tried to send someone down the shaft on a rope, but the concrete walls were brittle, stuff fell into the hole, and the soldier came back up. With the fallen debris at the bottom it was impossible to see if a body was lying there.

The French provided us an old map of that particular fort and its various rooms and tunnels. There was a horizontal tunnel that led from the bottom of the air shaft to an entrance some hundreds of yards away. A squad of us from Headquarters company were called out and trucked to the tunnel entrance. Our job was to make our way to the bottom of the shaft; perhaps the missing man had made his way along the tunnel; perhaps we would find him at the bottom of the shaft.

We had lights of some sort, and I suppose picks and shovels, and we made our way along the tunnel for some hours. Much of the concrete facing on the ceiling and walls had fallen on the floor, so that there was not enough room to stand and it was hard to make our way over the rubble. We were fortunate that more stuff didn't fall and the Army didn't lose more good men.

After I suppose eight hours we were recalled. I lived off base with my wife, and went home to Rue St. Sauveur to sleep for a few hours. When I reported back to the caserne, not really looking forward to another shift in the tunnel, I learned that someone—was it Bill Schoonover?—had been successfully lowered down the shaft to the bottom and had found the sergeant's body under debris.

Peter Bridges [former member HHC, 97th EBC, 1956]

Editor: The incident described above is now the subject of an historical file produced from avalilable personal documents provided by 1LT T. Brian Heverin, who served at Permisans, Germany, and Fort Riley, Kansas, and from intense research within the growing internet history postings.

Tragedy at Fort Tavannes: The Death of Gerald H. Dunnigan
I was given a conducted tour of the Citadel, the central fortress within the walls of Verdun. From this underground fortress it was possible during the Great War to go by underground electric train to many forts surrounding Verdun. The tunnels leading to the forts were used to move men and supplies without exposing them to the terrible artillery shelling that went on day and night. According to French military experts the shelling by both sides lifted approximately 30 feet of sand, dirt and rocks from each square meter of portions of the battlefields, allowing much of it to blow away in the wind.

Given my position as a battalion commander I was often invited to special events hosted by local French Government officials or military units. The most memorable of these was a dinner hosted by the Prefect of the Meuse Province at his palace in Bar–le–Duc. I attended the gala dinner with a party made up of our Commanding General and senior members of his staff. The meal was typical French—seven courses all served with their own special wine. We ate and drank for a little over three hours, from around noon until shortly after three o'clock in the afternoon. Then I had to drive back to Verdun! The palace contained a lot of priceless furniture and objects d'art important in France's history. A bed/settee, on which Marie Antoinette had been sexually serviced by her husband King Louis, shortly before both of them were guillotined during the revolution, had a prominent place in one of the rooms.

A very sad event that occurred should also be mentioned. Captain Ray's wife was diagnosed at Verdun's small hospital with possible cervical cancer. She could not be operated on in Verdun, so Captain Ray took her a General Hospital in Germany. I never found out what the final diagnosis was, but it was determined that she should have a hysterectomy. The Rays were childless so this came as a hard blow to both of them since they wanted to have children.

Ray came back to Verdun a few days before the scheduled operation and then drove back to the hospital a couple of days later. He never made it. His car was involved in an accident on the highway, and he was instantly killed in the crash. Some Air Force Military Policemen were the first on the scene. According to statements given by German witnesses, the military policemen took Captain Ray's wallet from his body. We knew that it contained over $500 in cash, American greenbacks, which we used in France rather that occupation script. Before a full investigation could be conducted, the Air Force, in its wisdom, transferred the two men from Germany to Morocco, where we had an air base. We later heard that one of the men committed suicide, but whether he did so because of the stolen money we never were told.

Mrs. Ray was informed of her husband's death, and she decided to cancel the operation. All the battalion officers based in Verdun and their wives gathered at the Ray home in Verdun to console her when she returned home. It was a very difficult affair to be part of. It was then my duty to counsel her on her options as the widowed wife of a deceased Army officer. Rather than deciding to remain in France where she would have been offered employment by the Army. She elected to return to her home in Canada (she was a Canadian citizen) immediately. Our general put his personal aircraft and his pilot at her disposal, and I saw her off for Orly Field in Paris from our local airfield.

And there is a funny story that needs to be told, because it leads into the departure of Eunice and me and kids from France. During the latter stages of my command duty with the 97th Engineer Construction Battalion, I had a company deployed to Épernay at the pipeline school where troop units learned to construct, repair and operate four inch and six inch military pipelines.

One evening after a day of inspecting the training, I and several other officers visited a French night club in Épernay. It was located in a basement and the clientele were mostly French. Part of the evening's entertainment consisted of a young French girl dancing. Her dance was most unusual. She was naked, with strings circling her body above her breasts and around her waist. Wrapped around these tight strings were the strings of balloons, a couple dozen balloons, which semi–effectively hit her breasts and her genitals from view. During the course of the dance she distributed half a dozen sticks which the customers used to try to “un–balloon” her! Much to my chagrin I became the winner by managing to get the largest number of balloons off her body. At the end of the dance she was again stark naked. The prize for the winner was to dance one number with this lovely naked girl! Would I turn that down, of course not! There was much hooting and yelling but we got through the dance and she kissed me and called me “Mon Cheri!”

Fast forward a few months. We had packed up our household goods in Combres sur les Cotes and moved into a hotel in Verdun for one night. I sold our old faithful 1948 Chevrolet sedan to a soldier looking for some sort of transportation. That is about what he got—acceptable transportation. The next day we were taken by jeep to Bar–le–Duc to catch the train to Paris where we were to fly home across the Atlantic. We got to the famous Gare d'Est train station in Paris and took a taxi to our hotel, our baggage piled wherever it would fit on and in the cab.

That night we left the four kids with the hotel baby sitting service, and Eunice and I went out on the town. We ended up in the famous Pigalle “everything goes” area of the city and had dinner in a fashionable night club. During dinner the entertainment entered the room. Horror of horrors, there in her birthday suit, adorned with a couple dozen balloons was the girl from Epernay. She took one look at me, raced to my side, kissed me and called me “Mon Cheri!” My wife was flabbergasted. Nothing but the truth, the whole truth would have been acceptable at that time. I told her about the incident in Épernay. She bought it. But then the dear little dancer insisted that I take one of her sticks and contend again for the big prize of de–ballooning her! I cheated. I knew damn well how best to get the balloons off. I let someone else win. No way could I dance with that girl, naked as a jaybird, in front of my wife. But I did remove several balloons from around her breasts, being very careful not to even try to remove any from around her genital area. Discretion is a mighty virtue.

The next day we boarded a Canadian prop jet for the long and boring ride across the North Atlantic. We stopped for fuel in Shannon, Ireland, and again in Gandor, Newfoundland, before landing at the newly constructed Idlewild Airfield in New York. I was bound for my next assignment as Engineer Officer for the newly activated United States Army Combat Developments Command Experimentation Center (USACDCEC) in Fort Ord, California. For the first time in my Army career, I would be detailed from the Corps of Engineers to the General Staff Corps of the Army, for duty with troops.

Col Robert Atkins, USA (Ret)
Former Commander, 97th Engineer Battalion (Const)
France 1950's

COMMENTS:

Many thanks. Colonel Atkins tells a frank and fascinating tale. The undersigned EM and wife had their problems in France; I had no idea our commanding officer had so many. At least I didn't have to worry about the allegiance of subordinates.

The colonel mentions the executive officer of the 97th, Major Walter Steers. I think it was Steers whose commission expired when I was there, and since his "category could not be renewed" he enlisted as an SFC--they wouldn't even make him a master sergeant--in order to complete his twenty years for retirement. He was then transferred to some unit in Germany; obviously they couldn't leave him as a sergeant in an outfit in which he had been an officer. But for some reason they uncharitably made him enlist while he was still in the 97th. So here came our executive officer one morning, reduced to an SFC, to sign the enlistment papers I had prepared for him. We all felt embarrassed for him, and he was even more embarrassed.

I admired young Major Atkins—I think he was in his early 30s when he took over the 97th—and indeed I think we all admired him.

Peter Bridges
Colonel Atkins was my battalion commanding officer and was a Major at the time. Truly outstanding. His office was just across from mine at Maginot Caserne. MAJ Steers was the XO. I knew him as well as any EM could (he chewed my ass out!).

I remember having to change his records when his son was born and he became Robert A. Atkins, Sr..

I was one of the two people who discovered the body of the guy in the shaft. It was a helluva deep shaft, and it seemed like it took forever to get to the bottom. When the soldier hit the bottom, he bounced in another shaft which collapsed. We dug the remains out. Sp3 Libby received the Soldier's medal for searching other tunnels in the area. I was a PFC at the time and got nothing.

C'est la vie!

LTC Bill Schoonover, USA (Ret.)
I read with great interest the remarks of Colonel Atkins. I served under his command for a period of time I was there. I remember many of the events he spoke of. Very interesting reading. I served in Verdun and Vassincourt from July, 1956 until August of 1957.

Ron Ropel
Great read!

It would be interesting to know more of Colonel Atkins' background, if he would share. Example—his hometown, schools attended, how he received his commission, military assignments, etc..

Larry Castleman, MAJ, USA, Retired
Thanks so much for the history by Colonel Atkins. It was interesting to read about the 97th in the late 50's. I was there in 62–63 in Headquarters Company in Etain, with Colonel Carlson, who was one of the best officers I ever had the privilege of serving under—and then for a few months with Colonel Mountjoy. I had no idea of the history before 1962.

Bob Ostrander