Remembering Charleston at Easter (Again)

[bigtree]

10. thanks, frazzled

...it's always a pleasure to share this story; even more when folks can relate some of their own family's experiences to my own.

Dad's unit was basically a clean-up crew (all black regiment) sent into combat zones before or after the fighting was done to deploy or clean up munitions or to retrieve fallen soldiers. It's certainly possible, that they sailed on the same vessel to or from New Guinea.

Here are a few images of fliers from the vessel that took them there...







They were delayed for weeks on their return, stranded there, really, because of other war actions which made transport impossible.

Here's a short journal that Dad started on the voyage to New Guinea:

"Today is cruel:" he wrote, in a brief, but compelling journal of his first voyage and his first trip abroad. "the sky is cold. not a particle of cheery blue is seen. Nature has sketched a lifeless and deadly scene whose background is obscurity . . The elements are warring."

Members of the 628th Ordinance Company

,,,neat, knowing they both served in the same theater, if not in the exact same action.