"DEAR MOTHER AND DAD,"
_________________
Richard J. Adams
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The second group of troopers from New York.
March 11th, 1945 |
Dear Mother and Dad,
One night on
Corregidor I was talking about school and I
mentioned I was from N.Y.M.A.. The Lt said there
was a Lt in I Co, from N.Y.M.A.. I met him to�day,
DeRond, knew him quite well. He is going home on
furlough in a few days and so I am going to ask to
take this with him. We left San Francisco on Oct 27th arrived at
Oro Bay about twenty miles south of Buna (New
Guinea), we stayed there in a replacement depot,
had details loading boats, moving supplies etc, on
Dec 3l we loaded on board ship on the way to
11/A/B, from Oro Bay we went to Finchman, N. G.
.then over to Manus Island in the Admiralty
Islands. We spent a few days there and then over
to Hollandia N.G. we stayed aboard ship all the
time, I did get a chance to get off at Manus, got
some ice cream. From Hollandia we went up to Leyte
around the east aide of Mindanao. We disembarked
on the beach at Leyte on about the 29th of Jan.
It took us about three days to get to Mindoro
where we joined the 503rd. The boys who were
originally supposed to go to 503rd went to 11 A/B
and we to the 503rd.
Pat and I am in a 81 M/M/ Mortar Squad we sorta
like it, I believe we could get into
communications, we may not try. On the 15th of Feb I received about l0 letters,
it took me till 2 A. M. to read them all, we had
been breaking camp all. day. We had to get up at
4. A.M. Feb 16th, had chow although no one ate too
much, all the tents had been taken down the day
before, duffel bags put away at R. S. O. we were
sleeping on cots in the open ready to go. The cots
were stacked up in the Co street, and then we got
into our equipment, fatigues work clothes, boots,
steel helmets, mussette bag, carbine, two
canteens, jungle kit( first aid) 7 clips of
ammunition, two grenades, change of socks, toilet
articles, Trench Knife, Knife Dad gave me, Mae
West, then our chutes. Amen.
We loaded on trucks I was in truck number 27 it
would go to C-47 number 27. From there to the air
strip, it was just like it would be in pictures,
dark, just the faintest gleam of light, you could
see the rows of dark planes against the sky line.
Some P-38 and a few A-20 were taking off. As we
passed the M. P. gate on to the strip someone
yelled--Good Luck---Give em hell.-- I forgot we
didn�t put our chutes on till we were alongside of
the ship.
About 7.40 we took off, it took us a little
over an hour to reach the target, we were to jump
at 8,30, They had been dive-bombing and had Navy
big guns firing at the Island and they had started
fires in the jump zone. We Jumped about 9.20,
Funny I didn�t sweat it out a bit, in fact I
sweated out the fact I wasn't sweating it out.
The day before the jump we had been briefed
quite thoroughly, maps, air photos and then a
scale model so we knew what it would look like
...Each plane made three passes at the field,
(What field) 8 men on each pass, I was about 5th
man in the third stick.
The 3rd Bn was the first wave--we jumped-I
didn�t count--when the chute opened I never
checked it, I was watching the ground-I was right
over the field ( we jumped at about 600 feet) we
learned later there was about a 23 mile an hour
ground wind--I climbed the risers and tried to hit
the field but the wind was too strong it took me
right over the Cliff. |
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Document courtesy of
Alyson Adams.
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