Dec. 25, 2013
On this day in 1944 my late friend Bill Moomey awoke in a stone building in Cherbourg, France. The previous night his troopship, the SS Leopoldville, had been sunk 5 miles out; he escaped death by leaping a great distance to a steel deck below. The other ship, the HMS Brilliant, took him and hundreds of other soldiers to safety. Our uncle Carl Ralph Bonde, Jr. was never seen again and Bill and I wept and held each other in 2006. I recently received a Christmas email from Bill’s widow Doris.
Heard a book review on the radio: Vanished: The Sixty-Year Search for the Missing Men of World War II Hardcover by Wil S. Hylton (Author). He tells how he searched the waters near Palau to find the scattered remains of a wrecked bomber and the fate of 11 Americans lost September 9, 1944. The Pacific Theater of WW II has been underreported. I will certainly buy this book when it becomes available on November 5, 2013.
Christmas Eve 1944 exactly two soldiers from Montana died after the UBoat 486 sunk the SS Leopoldville. One was my uncle PFC Carl R. Bonde, Jr., of Kalispell. The other, from Dillon, was PFC Robert J. Rott. Prior to his induction Mr. Rott was a printer, born 9-15-24, and according to army records was 46 tall, wt 143. Were all heights nonsense? Uncle Carl’s height was listed as 80. Carl’s buddy Bill Moomey told me Carl was approximately as tall as he was, about 5’6″ or 66 inches.
My friend Gordon Weber, who died 2 years ago at 93, told me that no war is ever “over.” Now I see the wisdom in his words. We have seen the rancor in Congress over Obamacare. Which, by the way, nobody really understands. The left sees it as a way to get poor working people health insurance. The right sees it as a threat, somehow, from the “big brother” government. Everyone worries that it will cost them money. This is what I view as the aftermath of the American Civil War. Southerners vs Northerners. Guess where I weigh in? Hello! My great grandfather lived in Bartlett Illinois.
What is the aftermath of World War II? The American Dream. This is the America of the two car garage, the boat, the place on the lake, the green lawn. I love these things. I love Christmas presents, thanksgiving turkeys and school valentine mailboxes. Maybe that’s why we call the generation who taught us about these things the “greatest generation.” They defeated the Nazis. They liberated the Nazi death camps. They whipped the Japanese who worshipped their leader like he was god.
Well, they are nearly all gone, those who came of age during World War II. I love them and yet I am sort of glad they are gone. They constantly censured us, watched us, criticized us. I couldn’t drive across the country without one of them “directing” me to purchase a cell phone. Now that that person has passed on, I can bloody well do as I please! Coincidentally, I got a cell phone.
Today read to 3 groups of children at Community Day Care, worked puzzle, played blocks. Got tonight’s eye drops for cataract surgery tomorrow am. On driveway experienced late summer heat, smells of decay. Over ripeness. P. has sheets drying on the line. Above a squirrel complains about….a nut, I suppose. Perhaps another squirrel, maybe the eternal triangle in squirrel-talk. Tonight chorale practice. I’ll put the eye drop in at the 8 o’clock water break.
Annotated Bibliography regarding 66th Army Division directly or indirectly
Ambrose, Stephen E. Citizen Soldiers: the U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, June 7, 1944—May 7, 1945. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997. This widely read author devotes about a page to the SS Leopoldville disaster, and quotes Henry “Hank” Anderson, one of two living Army veterans who said he remembers my uncle, Carl Bonde. Mr. Ambrose’s book survived a most compelling critic for me: Gordon Weber, a 96-year-old friend with failing eyesight and dwindling strength, said he read every word. Himself an WW II Army veteran of the ETO, Gordon said that he would have been more frightened if he had known then what he learned from Mr. Ambrose.
Andrade, Allan. Leopoldville: Remembrance for Sacrifice. Philadelphia: Xlibris, 2005. This is a picture book of persons whose lives were changed by the sinking of the SS Leopoldville. Mr. Andrade has taken on this disaster as his personal crusade. Do a web search for works by Mr. Andrade, a retired New York police detective.
Andrade, Allan. Leopoldville: Remembrance for Valor. Philadelphia: Xlibris, 2007. This sequel contains a photograph of Carl Bonde posing with Irvin “Junior” Weaver, prior to his making sergeant. Somehow the negative got flipped and the Panther Division patch is backward on the incorrect shoulder.
Andrade, Allan. S.S. Leopoldville Disaster: December 24, 1944. New York: Tern Book Co., 1997. This patriotic book conveys many personal accounts of the tragedy. Unfortunately it is out of print and very expensive. It does contain Carl R. Bonde Jr.’s name, but William Moomey’s name is misspelled “Mooney.”
Anonymous. Tactics and Technique of Infantry Basic 8th Edition: a Text and Reference Book of Infantry Training. Harrisburg, Pa: Military Service Publishing Co., 1939. A contemporary of Carl Bonde’s, Lieutenant MacWilliams used this book at West Point Military Academy. I bought it on line. This book has some resemblance to one Carl left at his parents’ home in Kalispell. I am thinking Carl got his copy at Missoula or Grand Forks, ND where he took Army training. I got mine through Amazon.com.
Blumberg, Nathaniel. Charlie of 666: a Memoir of World War II. Big Fork, Mont.: Wood FIRE Ashes Press, 2000. Nathaniel taught me in Missoula aat the School of Journalism in 1967-8 and in 1977-8. He remembered the sinking of the SS Leopoldville because he was nearby in the English Channel on an LST on the same day in 1944. Nathaniel devotes some of his book to the sinking of the Leo. He died Valentine’s day, 2012, and his book had a very limited number of copies.
Boy Scouts of America. Handbook for Boys. New York: BSA, ca 1930. The similarities of the first aid illustrations in the Boy Scout handbook with the book of infantry training are intriguing. They suggest a unity of culture perhaps stemming from WW I. Carl Bonde was a Boy Scout in Kalispell.
Bradham, Randolph. Hitler’s U-Boat Fortresses. Guilford, Conn.: Lyons Press, 2003. Dr. Bradham belonged to Carl Bonde’s Army Company E, but he was among those placed on the HMS Cheshire in the confusion the morning of December 24. I met Randy at an Army reunion and we spent several days together. His book set the stage for our visit to France with my grandson Josiah Corson in 2009. We visited Saint-Nazaire, the site of one of the German bunkers. The French Curator mentioned Panther veteran Walter Merza, who served in the same Company E, 262nd Infantry Regiment, 66th Division as my uncle Carl. Mr. Merza donated his army uniform and photograph of himself for the Grand Blockhaus museum.
Braeuer, Luc. Guide Souvenir: le Grand Blockhaus Musee de la Poche de Saint-Nazaire. Batz-Sur-Mer, Fr.: SPEI-Pulnoy, 2005. I bought this book in France at a shop near the huge German Bunker, along with the following.
Braeur, Luc. Souvenir Guide: Saint-Nazaire During World War II. Batz-Sur-Mer, Fr.: SPEI-Pulnoy, 2004. Although the books have similarities, one is not simply the translation of the other. We met the author who asked me if I knew about Randy Bradham’s book, previously mentioned above.
Brokaw, Tom. The Greatest Generation. New York: Random House, 1998. This gives insight into the aftermath of World War II, and the effect of the returning masses of soldiers.
Evanier, David. Making the Wiseguys Weep: the Jimmy Roselli Story. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998. It has so many misstatements that it is certainly unreliable. Example: the author says that Jimmy fought in northern France against the Germans. False. He kept the German U-boat soldiers and sailors penned up in Western France and there was limited combat, according to Wally Mersa, who was Jimmy’s buddy. It says Jimmy was in Company E, 266th Regiment of the 66th Division. False. He was in the 262nd Regiment. There was no record of any 266th Regiment. I don’t think the book will give much. That said, Walter Merza, a veteran whom I met at the Army reunion, who had belonged to Carl Bonde’s Army Company E, absolutely adored Jimmy Roselli. Wally invited us all to his home and he played some of Roselli’s recordings for us.
Graduating Class of 1928. The Flathead. Kalispell, Mont.: 1928. Bud’s sister owned this high school annual. Recall that Bud was born in 1923. His sister Helen must have asked 5-year-old Bud to autograph it, which he did with a fine scrawl.
Hadden, Alexander H. Not Me! The World War II Memoir of a Reluctant Rifleman. Bennington, Vt.: Merriam Press, 2009. In NOT ME! The World War II Memoir of a Reluctant Rifleman, in its 4th edition, originally published in 2007, Alexander H. Hadden told how he was drafted, assigned to A.S.T.P, and was assigned to the 66th Panther Army Division, same as Carl Bonde. He described the chicken-shit treatment he and his fellow soldiers received at Camp Rucker, near Ozark, Alabama[1]. Useless, sadistic treatment and gratuitous orders for no purpose other than to bully and harass: chicken-shit. Mr. Hadden’s title Not Me refers to the maxim in the army that one should not volunteer for anything, and if volunteers are requested, just “keep your head down.”
Mr. Hadden described the difficulties the college A.S.T.P. soldiers had when the program was abruptly closed and they returned to GI life as infantry, as private soldiers, and when they faced older noncoms who did not have much schooling.
Loomis, Stanley B. My Life – My War – World War 2. Bloomington, Ind.: Authorhouse, 2010.
Pool, Raymond J. Basic Course in Botany: the Foundations of Plant Science. Boston: Athenaem Press, 1940. Carl R. Bonde Jr. wrote his name inside the cover of this text.
Roberts, Raymond J. Survivors of the Leopoldville Disaster. Sequel to Survivors of the Leopoldville Disaster. More Tales of the Leopoldville Disaster. Unknown City: Unknown Publisher, 1997. Mr. Roberts published many accounts of the sinking in the survivors own words. Roberts himself, though, was nowhere near the disaster when it occurred.
Sanders, Jacquin. A Night Before Christmas. Cutchogue, NY: Buccaneer Books, 1963. This is the best account available describing the fate of the men of the 66th Army Division who died crossing the English Channel en route from Southampton, England, to Cherbourg, France. Note the date of publication. Mr. Sanders was on a nearby ship and witnessed the men die at the hands of the Germans. He seems to be an independent, and thorough, historical researcher who amassed lots of information. The book has 320 pages, hardcover, and cost only about $10 new from Amazon.com in 2009. Mr. Sanders writes in a narrative style, drawing from extensive research.
Strengths: This account was the most contemporary of any after the SS Leopoldville was torpedoed and sunk. Its author was a trained historian and a professional writer and presented the views of many survivors in the late 1950s and early 1960s whose mailing addresses were systematically tracked down, questionnaires mailed out, then many of the responders were carefully interviewed by the author personally. He also located and reported historical records about the ship itself and researched and interviewed those responsible for the safe passage of its passengers and crew. One is impressed by Mr. Sanders thoroughness.
The book reads like a novel. A book about a ship’s sinking is, similar to a train wreck, a book about chaos. This ship’s sinking was complicated by chaos ashore as well as contradictory information aboard the ship. Of the three main books[2] written about the SS Leopoldville, this is the best edited and organized chronologically. The narrative is divided into 16 chapters, starting with the troops of the 66th Division boarding the ship and finishing with a critique of the many investigations into why there was such a large number of casualties.
Weaknesses: It has no index nor table of contents, however Mr. Sanders does have acknowledgements in the back, including a list of all of those who responded to his questionnaire, those whom he interviewed, including the relatives of principle figures of the tale and officials in the US, UK, Germany, France, and Belgium.
Some excellent tales are missing. Many of the most lucid and complete accounts by persons actually aboard the ship when it was hit and sunk are, through no fault of Mr. Sanders, not in this book. Absent are the particularly thorough, articulate accounts by E.P. “Bill” Everhard, Bill Loughborough, Bill Moomey, Maurice O’Donnell, Randall Bradham, Henry “Hank” Anderson, Bob Carroll, Al Salata and others that surfaced years later.
Although this is a weakness of Mr. Sanders’ book, he should not be blamed. Survivor Bill Moomey said that he remembers receiving one or two letters from Jacquin Sanders asking him for his account of the sinking of the SS Leopoldville, but Bill said he discarded them. Bill (and probably some of the other soldiers who escaped death Christmas eve 1944) did not want to recall and publicly share such a sad event that robbed him of so many of his dear friends only 15 years earlier.
Mr. Sanders lived in the Northeastern US and his interviews of the survivors were a sample of convenience of those living in his vicinity. Remember that travel and communications was far more difficult, expensive, and slower in 1960.
Read this one first. It is readily available, well made, inexpensive, readable, and as well researched as the technology and logistics in 1960 would permit. This book contains the testimony of some of Carl Bonde’s military acquaintances in Co E: Medic Cloyd Grubb, mortar men Ole Jensen and George Miller, and possibly others.
Sciboz, Bertrand. Epaves Des Cotes de France. Rennes Fr.: Editions Ouest-France, 2000. Sciboz has dived to the SS Leopoldville and gave the Struckmans a copy of his book, written in French, when they chartered a boat ride to visit the wreckage in the English Channel Christmas Eve, 2007. Clive Cussler located the SS Leopoldville 50+ years after it went down.
Senior Class of Flathead County High School. The 1940 Flathead: a Year Book. Seattle: Western Engraving & Colortype Co., 1940. Bud’s copy survived and it contains nearly 70 inscriptions to him from his high school classmates. They are transcribed in Appendix A. and also on the Internet at an historical website. This is a rich source of information, albeit written by adolescents in the throes of, well, adolescence.
66th Infantry Division (Panther Division), US Army. The Black Panthger. US Government, 1943. Camp Robinson, Arkansas, hosted the 66th division until 1944, when it moved to Camp Rucker, Alabama. Many of the junior soldiers in the photographs in this souvenir publication were shipped out from Camp Robinson to replace casualties in the European Theater of Operations (ETO). However, when the 66th was repopulated with A.S.T.P. soldiers, the division trained and shipped out in October, 1944, as a coherent unit under General H.F. Kramer to New York, and ultimately to England in mid-November.
Stokker, Kathleen. Folklore Fights the Nazis: Humor in Occupied Norway, 1940-1945. Madison, Wisc.: Univ of Wisconsin Press, 1995. Bud’s cousin, Earl Bonde, recommended this book telling of the Norwegian resistance in the early 1940s.
Terkel, Studs. The Good War: an Oral History of World War Two. New York: The New Press, 1984. Studs was one of the best at interviewing. One realizes no war is good.
Vonnegut, Kurt. Timequake. New York: Berkley Books, 1997. I liked the premise behind this book. In researching and telling histories, one has such an experience.
Wobeck, Earl F. Old Mill Stream: an Autobiography. Victoria, B.C.,: Trafford, 2004. Earl Wobeck’s book told how he was assigned to the ASTP at the University of North Dakota, same as Bud was. He attended college in Grand Forks, North Dakota, with civilian students, mostly girls. The dorm accommodations were relatively new, located, according to Mr. Wobeck, on the Red River plain on the outskirts of town. He said it was potato country, close to Canada, and quite cold from the wind. He attended just Fall quarter before the ASTP was disbanded. Some, like Mr. Wobeck, intentionally failed their classes in order to prevent being sent back to the army as privates in the infantry.
Mr. Wobeck’s photograph appears several times in his memoir, but I was not able to identify Mr. Wobeck in a photograph of Carl’s Co. B of A.S.T.U 3713 Grand Forks, ND Jan. 1944.
This copy of Bill Loughborough’s sketch shows where he and other members of Carl Ralph Bonde, Jr. Company E, 262nd Regiment, 66th Panther Division went at the time of the U-boat torpedo strike.
I just read the articles of incorporation of the Panthers Veterans’ Organization (PVO) that the survivors of the 66th Infantry Army Division formed after WW II officially ended in 1945 (in the European Theater of Operations).
The document had bravado; the glorification of the war, the gloating over killing of other people. All of this was historically okay during a time for some veterans but not for everyone. I say this advisedly, because in 2006 at an army reunion I conversed with some men who were there with my uncle Carl Ralph Bonde Jr. Men like Walter Merza, Bill Moomey, Hank Anderson, and Bob Carroll. I must hastily add that not all the soldiers at the reunion said war was foul. Randy Bradham and Al Salata, were more patriotic and pro-war but not by much. Al was the oldest soldier of Bud’s Company E present and unlike the others who were drafted as college kids. Interestingly, everyone at the reunion said he was a Republican except me
Old email messages: I kept all in a folder. The last time I heard from Bill Moomey was 3/7/2012. Now he is dead.
Bill was a close army buddy of Carl Ralph Bonde Jr., my uncle killed when the SS Leopoldville was sunk by a U-boat torpedo Christmas Eve, 1944.
Hi Daniel I got on emeil today for the first time in several days. Was happy to see that you had a bio of Carl on there. I have read it and it is very interesting. However, there is one thing that I wonder about. You say that he was only five foot tall and barely a 100 pounds when he entered the army. The Carl that I remember was about my size give or take an inch or two and a pound or two.I was 5′ 9″ and weighed in at around 165. I never fekt like I was taller or heavier than Carl. I don’t know how important that is but that is my memory.
What else is going on in your life? We are hanging in there. Our age is showing more all the time but we feel real blessed to be able to be in our own home and taking care of ourselves without outside help. I was 88 last Sept. and Doris will be 88 in May. When someone asks how are you doing I simply say slow and steady but good. My sister who will be 95 in May moved into an assisted living facility last Saturday, and seems to be happy about that.
I guess I don’t have anything else to talk about so take care and keep in touch.
Bill M
insearchofbud 