World War II in Hampton Roads: Life at Home

When the United States started preparing to send troops overseas in World War II, no other place in the nation could match Hampton Roads' record as a military port.

Beginning as early as the Mexican War a century before, soldiers had traveled here from all over America to be shipped to distant battle fronts — and that association only grew when Old Point Comfort became the staging ground for every major Union amphibious expedition against the South during the Civil War.

Four decades later during the Spanish-American War a vast tent city rose on the shores of the James River in Newport News, underscoring the standout rail and shipping connections that — in World War I — enabled the nation's second busiest port of embarkation to ship 261,820 soldiers, 4,133,873 tons of military supplies and 47,263 horses and mules to Europe.

Nearly 450,000 troops returned through the same gateway, giving the port an indelible reputation among the Army officers charged with selecting the embarkation sites for WWII.

So it came as no surprise on June 15, 1942, when they tapped Newport News as the headquarters for the port that would rank third in military transport behind only New York and San Francisco — and serve as the primary conduit for the invasions of Africa, Sicily and Italy and the Mediterranean war.

"The experience of World War I taught the U.S. Army some critical lessons about transporting men and material to Europe," says John V. Quarstein, former director of the Virginia War Museum in Newport News.

"They knew the city had excellent rail connections. They knew it had an excellent deep-water, ice-free port. And they knew it had several WWI camps that could be reactivated very quickly and reused.

"It was the logical place."

Winning assets

Unusually favorable geography played a crucial role in Hampton Roads' selection, providing it with numerous advantages over other harbors.

In addition to the deep water off Newport News Point, there were excellent anchorages just up the James, around Old Point Comfort on the York River and inside Cape Henry at Lynnhaven Roads, giving the port commander ample room to assemble vessels and organize them into convoys.

"You could bring hundreds of ships into this harbor — and they would all be protected by the mine fields at the mouth of the bay and the Hampton Roads channel, the coastal artillery at the capes and Fort Monroe and the air cover at Langley Field and Naval Air Station Norfolk," Quarstein says.

"How many other ports had that kind of size and protection already in place? Hampton Roads made total sense."

The dual tracks of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway ranked as a decisive asset, too, connecting Newport News to the interior with a network of routes that stretched to Chicago.

At their eastern terminus on the James River a half-dozen well-maintained merchandise and freight-handling piers jutted from the shore, underscoring the port's prewar status as the nation's busiest behind New York and Philadelphia.

Nearly 2 million square feet of warehouse space helped seal the deal as the Army — repeating WWI — pushed aside pressure from factions in Norfolk to locate the HRPE headquarters in Newport News.

"At that time the Norfolk and Western was a smaller railroad primarily focused on moving coal. But the Chesapeake and Ohio was a major network with much better connections," Virginia War Museum educator Chris Garcia says.

"And where the N&W was mostly handling coal, the C&O had extensive freight handling capability, and its rail cars went right up to those piers.

"You couldn't have asked for better facilities. Everything was plug and play."

The city's WWI history played an important role in its selection, too, providing ample evidence of the way the civilian population had supported the nation's troops during the often trying process of embarkation.

"Hampton Roads was all about the men and women behind the men with the guns. That's why you get so many 'Donut Dollies' from WWI doing it again in WWII," Quarstein says, describing the flood of paid and volunteer help in the camps and at the piers.

"We knew these soldiers and sailors needed our support, and that's because we remembered. Not every place did."

Big build-up

Setting up its HQ in the C&O's Newport News office — then the nearby federal building — the HRPE quickly took over the Casino Grounds waterfront between 25th and 28th streets, where it erected barracks and support facilities for the Military Police, port band and newly formed Women's Army Corps companies that would play such key roles in the day-to-day operation of the embarkation process at the piers.

It also reactivated and rehabilitated the WWI barracks and support buildings at Camp Hill near the James River Bridge, where it housed an indispensable black labor battalion, writes port historian Maj. William Reginald Wheeler in "The Road to Victory: A History of the Hampton Roads Port of Embarkation in World War II."

Additional construction projects revived and expanded the WWI supply base at Camp Morrison in what was then Warwick County and erected a complex of 20 giant concrete ammunition bunkers near the Oyster Point rail depot.

But by far the biggest job took place a few miles west at Camp Patrick Henry, where thousands of laborers began clearing roads and building sites on a heavily wooded 1,700-acre parcel not long after the port's June 15 activation.

By December, builders had completed hundreds of barracks, mess halls, offices, warehouses and recreational facilities, transforming a vast boggy pine forest into a staging area capable of housing and processing 35,000 soldiers at a time.

"Camp Patrick Henry had certain aspects of a sylvan hotel managed by the Transportation Corps," wrote wartime Public Affairs Officer Capt. Donald Higgins, describing the huge expanse of structures hugging the C&O rails.

"Here among the trees were hundreds of single-story, tarpaper-covered hutments of purely temporary construction, symmetrically laid out around seven huge consolidated mess halls, each the hub of what was known as a regimental area.

"Here were warehouses, post exchanges, theaters, service clubs, and a station hospital with the finest up-to-date medical equipment.

"Here, capacity shipments of troops waited anywhere from five days to two weeks for their convoys to assemble."

Beginning Dec. 2, 1942, and continuing through the war, nearly 1.5 million people would pass through the gates of the giant complex on their way to or returning from the conflict.

"At that time, this area was still mostly agrarian. So you could carve a huge base out of nowhere — and that's what happened at Camp Patrick Henry," says Lee Hall Mansion Curator J. Michael Moore.

"It was enormous — and it was very, very busy. The number of people they moved in and out of there was just amazing."

Making ready

Camp Patrick Henry reflected a crucial lesson of WWI, when the large number of scattered camps funneling troops to the piers often led to congestion, confusion and delay.

Instead the Army consolidated all the soldiers into a single giant camp, then developed a system of procedures for processing and embarking them that stressed speed and efficiency.

"When ships sat idle, it cost money — sometimes thousands of dollars a day —and it could screw up operations both here and the places where they were headed," says Curator Marc W. Sammis of the Army Transportation Corps Museum at Fort Eustis.

"So they tried to get them in and out of the port as quickly and smoothly as possible."

Every troop movement started with advance requests from the various operating theaters, followed by schedules developed by the Transportation Corps' Movement Division and the port commanders, writes Chief Historian Chester Wardlow in his 1954 account of the Corps' activities during the war.

Revised monthly and then confirmed through daily coded teletype conferences between the port commanders and the Transportation Chief, the plans coordinated the movements of thousands of trains and more than a thousand transport vessels as well as millions of troops, linking the inland and ocean carriers with a precision designed to "turn the ships around at the ports as rapidly as possible," Wardlow writes.

At Camp Patrick Henry, the process started with the troops' arrival at the Oyster Point railhead, where a billeting officer met them and led them to their barracks.

Each soldier then went through a battery of tests and inspections to check their medical condition, fitness and inoculation record as well as their marksmanship and equipment, including a "showdown inspection" in which each one would spread out his kit on the barracks floor.

While some camp staff members helped the unit commanders resolve any deficiencies in training, manpower or equipment, others worked with individual soldiers on such personal matters as insurance, wills, taxes, power of attorney and service records, Wardlow writes.

"Abandon ship" drills were part of the process, too, with nearly a million troops scrambling down the side of a mocked-up transport ship built in an artificial pond.

Still, most soldiers had time to patronize the camp's movie theaters, stages, concert halls, lectures, libraries and athletic facilities, not to mention "The Last Chance" nightclub where many spent their final hours before departing for the piers.

"The camp's mission was to house, feed, process and entertain all those who were going overseas," Wheeler explains.

And photo after photo of troops enjoying such entertainers as Fred Astaire, engaging in sports and carousing in the clubs and snack bars shows it took the issue of morale very seriously.

"The staging area had an important role in keeping the soldiers' spirits up and holding disciplinary problems down," Wardlow writes.

Up the gangplank

Most units received their embarkation orders at least 24 hours in advance, giving them time to pack and tie up last-minute loose ends.

Each soldier was told to stow his essentials in an "A" bag — which he would carry along with his helmet, backpack, gas mask and weapon when he boarded — and a "B" bag of less important items that would be transported in the ship's hold.

But numerous photos of soldiers carrying guitars, baseball bats or other favored belongings show it was a rule often broken.

Marching to the Oyster Point railhead, they checked in according to a passenger list and had their helmets chalked with a boarding number, then got on the train for the short trip to the pier.

There they stepped off into a long line led onto the ships by a busy assortment of MPs, the port band and loading officials.

Many of those shepherding them into place were members of the Women's Army Corps, who not only provided a calming influence but also ranked among the most important cogs in the smooth running of each embarkation.

"The Transportation Corps was one of the few areas in the Army where women had real opportunities," Sammis says.

"They did everything from checking people in and showing them where to go to driving tanks for loading — and by doing those things they released a lot of men for combat."

Just how rapidly and efficiently most departures unfolded can be seen in the records for such large troop transports as the Queen Mary and USS West Point, formerly the SS America.

Even when they loaded as many as 10,000 troops, Wardlow writes, the boarding process was normally completed in less than 5 hours.

Long before then, the port band began playing, serenading the soldiers continuously as they loaded and their ships departed.

Though the concern for morale helps explain why the musicians played such tunes as "Deep in the Heart of Texas" for soldiers from the Lone Star State and the Boogie Woogie for black troops, the port commanders also knew from experience that the lines moved more efficiently with music.

"There were so many problems in WWI. But it taught the Army a lot of lessons," Garcia says.

"That made the process much more streamlined and efficient in WW2. They had it down to a science."

'Welcome Back!'

The HRPE received returning troops, too, and by mid-1943 it was processing so many wounded soldiers that it had to expand its ambulance and ambulance bus fleet and add 500 beds to its 1,000-bed hospital.

But when hostilities ended in 1945, it shifted gears in earnest, welcoming nearly 700,000 people back from the far-flung corners of the war.

Returning veterans steamed in to find a giant star-spangled sign of "Welcome Back! Well Done!" painted across the piers — and the bands at both the port and Camp Patrick Henry played around the clock to greet each new group of arrivals.

"They'd serenade them when they left. They'd serenade them when they came home," Sammis says.

"And they didn't just sit there and play. They would parade back and forth in a very elaborate ceremony — down one side of the wharf and up the other as the troops loaded and unloaded."

Marching through Camp Patrick Henry's Welcome Home arch and down the Avenue of the States, the soldiers would assemble for a welcome home speech before heading for their barracks.

Then came a hot shower, a steak dinner and the chance to call home.

So busy was the square of 20 booths at Telephone Exchange X — which never took incoming calls — that the operators could easily log as many 1,500 collect calls in 24 hours.

"No booth is out of use for more than 45 seconds," reported Esquire magazine, "the time it takes the chief operator to announce: 'Corp. Smith calling Ashtabula, Ohio, please go to booth 4.'"

By the time the port closed in January 1946, the camp operators had conducted nearly 700,000 calls.

The busy post office had handled nearly 50 million incoming and outgoing letters.

Nearly $7 million worth of food had been served in the camp mess halls — a figure that amounts to nearly $100 million today.

Another $2.7 million — or $37 million today — was spent on movies at a time when tickets cost 35 cents.

At the port itself, the last ship to disembark brought the total number of troop and cargo vessels handled to more than 4,000.

"Hampton Roads has more than lived up to the example set by its illustrious predecessor of the last war," Transportation Chief Maj. Gen. C.P. Gross noted.

"In a little more than three years, nearly 1.7 million troops and over 12 million ship tons of vital war cargo passed over its piers. The tonnage handled exceeds by almost 50 percent the total shipped overseas through all Army ports during World War I."
http://www.dailypress.com/news/newport-news/dp-nws-ww2-port-of-embarkation-hampton-roads-20170616-story.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hampton_Roads_Port_of_Embarkation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hampton_Roads_Naval_Museum

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