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How the Warden
Got His Name
(Don Abbott Fesses Up)
The 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment left the United States on 20
October 1942 on the old Dutch Motor, the Poelau Laut, which had just been
converted from a cargo ship to a troop transport.
The
ship was built in 1929 in Amsterdam, Netherlands and had served, in the interim,
to handle cargo between Europe and the Dutch East Indies.
For the time she was built her speed of 15 knots must have been very
satisfactory for that trade. The
ship had five cargo holds and gear for handling miscellaneous cargo utilizing a
lot of longshoremen.
The Poelau Laut had been designed to handle about thirty passengers on its
voyages to the Dutch East Indies. The
passengers, who must have lived a unhurried
life of leisure, occupying small but comfortable staterooms.
They had a spacious lounge where they could read, smoke and play cards.
The dining room, as well, was spacious for the number of people on the
passenger list.
When the United States entered World War II the country had only a few ships
designed to haul troops. Those,
which existed, were far from adequate to move the huge numbers of troops having
to be moved to the far reaches of the world.
Consequently ships like the Poelau Laut were taken over by the United
States and converted into vessels capable of moving large numbers of troops.
In the case of Poelau Laut all five cargo holds were fitted with a tiers of
canvas bunks, piled one on top of the other. Frequently, where there was (almost) adequate room, six tiers
of these bunks would be installed. The
top man had a long climb and woe to the man who would fall out of his bunk--it
was a long way to the deck. The
bunks were so close together it took a cooperative effort of the whole stack of
men for any one man to turn over. This
was a bit difficult to coordinate in the middle of the night.
Every Enlisted man was assigned to one of these dismal abodes.
Part of the deck in one hold was converted into mess facilities for the troops.
Since, in theory, the men had no heavy work to perform they would not get
hungry and need to have three meals a day, the whole shipload of men were fed
only twice a day. With the ship
almost at capacity and only two mess lines to handle the feeding of the troops,
the men spent many hours in line waiting for their food.
The officers had things a bit more luxurious.
The dining room which had served the 30 passengers was used to feed the,
roughly, two hundred officers of all ranks.
Individual tables, seating four, had been replaced by two long tables
serving about 20 officers at a time. A
wait was required for these tables but nothing to approach the Enlisted ''chow
line''.
Beginning with the Lieutenant Colonels, of which there were a handful, and
reaching down into the high seniority Captains some officers were given state
rooms. Where there had been two
civilian passengers now there were six officers. This left the
low ranking Captains and the First and Second Lieutenants.
There were, probably, about 150 of these.
Four plywood boxes were built, two on each side of the ship, to house
these Officers. About 40 Officers
were crammed into each of these ''cabins''.
The bunks here were stacked three high, in most places, which, while not
well-appointed, can be endured. Each
of these ''cabins'' had a head, wash stands and showers served with fresh salt
water. Once in a very long time the
showers were supplied with fresh water from the ships evaporators. The evaporators were barely adequate for the needs of the
ship machinery so fresh water showers were a rarity.
The night the Poelau Laut left San Francisco Bay she was in a convoy with about
ten other ships and several destroyers as escorts.
At dawn the next morning the troops awoke to see the convoy, with its
escorts, disappearing over the horizon to the West while the Poelau Laut turned
to Port and headed, more or less, to the South.
After several days the ship pulled into Panama City where it took on the
501st Parachute Infantry Battalion, which was later merged into the 503rd as its
Second Battalion.
The Poelau Laut didn't let any sea weeds grow on its keel at Panama and by the
end of a day for loading the 501, it
resumed its voyage.
The Commanding Officer of the 501 was Lieutenant Colonel George M. Jones.
The Commanding Officer of the 503 was Colonel Kenneth Kinsler, who had
preceded the outfit by flying to Australia.
LTC Jones was the ranking Lieutenant Colonel on the ship so became the
troop commander.
By the time the ship left Panama the Poelau Laut held about 1700 Paratroopers
and another 300, or so, other people such as Air Corp, Quartermaster and Anti
Aircraft Artillery troops. She was very near her stated capacity of about 2100
troops.
Being limited to a speed of 15
knots the ship had not been able to keep up
with the other ships in the convoy out of San Francisco. We were destined
for a solo crossing of the Southern Pacific Ocean to Australia (as it turned
out). Our voyage took place not
long after the first Battle of the Coral Sea and it was feared there might be
damaged Japanese warships which had headed South to ''lick their wounds''.
They would not stand a chance against American warships but could easily
sink the Poelau Laut which had only a few small guns abroad.
Consequently, our course took us well to the South of the great circle
route and actually below the Antarctic circle.
Our voyage was, eventually, to take 43 nights and 42 days.
Paratroopers were not noted for going long periods without any alcoholic
beverages. There was a good deal of
discussion between the troops about how nice it would be to have a ''nice cold
beer'', a ''gin and tonic'', or whatever. Having
some 2,000 men crammed into a relatively small ship it was, reasonably, decreed
that there would be no alcohol of any kind allowed.
Everyone understood the reason for such prohibition but would have taken
a chance to get their hands on something, if they had the opportunity.
Sometime, after being at sea for a little over 30 days that opportunity
presented itself one night. One of
the junior officers in the ''stateroom'' I'd been assigned to managed to make
contact with one of the Malay waiters from the ''Officers Mess'' and talked him
into getting cases of beer for us. A
collection was taken up and the man delivered several cases of Dutch beer to the
''stateroom''. We set out to guzzle the beer as fast as the bottles could be
opened. After more than a month of
enforced prohibition the officers became quite mellow very fast.
Someone suggested, perhaps, our man should be contacted to see if he
could get us something more substantial, like bourbon, scotch or gin.
The man was easily bought and soon he returned with several bottles of
Dutch Gin.
The party, then, began to get a bit rowdy. The singing and shouting made quite a bit of noise but with
the overriding noise of the ship, all the merriment should not have been heard
outside the ''stateroom'' but it was. Someone
had heard all the noise and squealed on us, probably because he had not been
invited to participate. The Troop
Commander, a Quartermaster Major, was informed and he soon entered our
''stateroom''. To say he was
shocked is to put it most mildly. He
nearly had a stroke seeing all the beer bottles rolling around the deck and the
canteen cups of gin being nursed. He
said ''I am going to get your Commanding Officer and he will, certainly, court
martial the lot of you.''.
We recognized this threat as a real possibility because we were defying direct
orders prohibiting drinking. We
made fast work of dumping all the bottles over the side.
This action in itself could have had us all
court martialled since we were under very strict orders to throw nothing
overboard. Debris tossed overboard
could be found by Japanese submarines and used to determine our course.
But we were desperate by that time and disobeyed another direct order.
After all the bottles went over the side we all jumped into our bunks and tried
to look innocent.
LTC Jones arrived after 15 or 20 minutes and was somewhat shocked at what he
saw. Having been a Parachutist for
several years he survived the shock somewhat better than the QM Major.
One of the “casuals” in the “stateroom” was a Quartermaster Captain
Jones, who was an expert in unloading ships.
He and his assistant, a 1st Lieutenant, were on their way to Australia to
organize the unloading of American ships with war supplies which we beginning to
pour into Australia. LTC Jones
asked for the Senior Officer Present. This
happened to be Captain Jones. Captain
Jones was a tall fellow, about six foot four.
He had, of course, been imbibing as much or more than the rest of us.
Colonel Jones, who was not a short man himself stepped in front of the taller
man and, looking up, said ''Captain, you have been drinking''.
Captain Jones, whose speech slurred at the wrong time, said ''No Sir, I
haven't been drinking''.
Captain Jones assistant's bunk was right below mine.
About this time he stuck his head out of his bunk and said ''I think I'm
going to be sick''. I whispered down to him ''not now you bum, not now''.
Luckily he didn't get sick or we'd been in worse trouble than we were
already in.
There was no question. We would be
punished. Would it be a court
martial, or what? About the tamest
punishment available was restriction to quarters. Colonel Jones chose to restrict the whole cabin to quarters
for the remainder of the voyage. Thus
Colonel Jones became the Warden and I became one of the Wardees.
At the time we had no idea how long the voyage was going to last.
The days would dawn and here we were confined to quarters.
The exception was the two meal times when we were allowed to make our way
to the dining room. After a day, or
so, we got sick and tired of being
cooped up with only the other
Wardees to look at. After
you have had a day, or so, of
reading or rereading your books, you really
long to spend
your time watching the sea.
But we were not allowed to do that.
When we were placed under confinement we had no inkling of how long our voyage
would last. The reasoning must have
been that we might have passed
word to the Japanese so they could find us as hit us with a torpedo.
It is a bit hard to figure how we could do that but we didn’t know
where we were.
Fortunately, it turned out
we were only about 4 days out of Brisbane, and when we
pulled into the entrance to the harbor we were released from confinement.
Our experience as Wardees of the Warden was not as long as we had feared
it might be.
Don Abbott
© 2000
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