Jim Medding’s Blog

I regularly glance though a lot of RSS feed headlines looking for subject matter of interest but rarely do I find an article that overlaps my interest quite like Jack Ganssle’s article on his visit to Bletchley Park. . In addition to having lots of photos, the article includes a pretty fair description of the historical significance of the place and the equipment itself.

Enjoy.

So far, I’ve read two books which were truly disturbing – Sheriff David Reichert’s Chasing the Devil and James Bradley’s Flyboys. I mention this to provide context for the following quote from Bradley’s book:

Few people reflect now that samurai swords killed more people during WWII than atomic bombs. WWII veteran Paul Fussell wrote, “The degree to which Americans register shock and extraordinary shame about the Hiroshima bomb correlates closely with lack of information about the Pacific war.”

While my grandfather, Walter L. Medding, was stationed in Japan in the early 1950’s he apparently made a couple of trips over to Korea. This news came as surprise to my father because when I asked Dad about it, he said “Grandpa was never in Korea.” The reason why I asked Dad is that I found three slides which had to be taken in Korea – they are of the negotiating tents at Panmunjom. And they were, most likely, taken by Grandpa. I’ve include two of the slides here.

All three slides are undated; the two here have legends, hand lettered by my Grandfather. The first appears to be in a very primitive setting – no road to be seen, a little gravel out in front of a standard army canvas tent. This slide is titled Panmunjom; Chinese guard at Panmunjom, Korea.

The second slide shows a bit more refined tent and surroundings. This slide is titled Panmunjom; Armistice tent Panmunjom. Two additional things about this second slide I find interesting- it was taken from, apparently the Chinese side and in the background, off to the right of the tent, appears to be a US solder using either a camera, or surveying equipment. Surveying would, conceivably, be a reason for my grandfather to make a trip over to Korea since this would be a service provided by the Corp of Engineers.

My grandfather, Walter Lyman Medding, left behind separate memoirs of his service during both WWI and WWII. Soon after his arrival in France in 1918 he was sent to Camp St. Menge for more training. He describes his arrival and training in the section of his memoirs titled Raspberry Camp. One of the vignettes in this section explains how coffee was made for the trainees.

The method of making coffee seemed to be that induced by a desire to expend the least labor upon it. A large GI can was set on the field range, coffee dumped in it and the can filled with water. As the liquid coffee was consumed, more water was added until the overworked grounds could no longer produce any semblance of coffee, where the can was emptied and a new brew started. The cycle was about a week.

This must explain my tolerance for anything slightly resembling coffee

In Stanley Weintraub’s 11 Days in December, Christmas at the Bulge, 1944 one story stands out, for me, more poignant than all the others. Weintraub retells the tale of Roscoe “Rockie” Blunt’s Christmas celebration from a fox hole.

“Hey, Blunt,” someone whispered from the next fox hole.

“What?” he whispered back.

“Merry Christmas.”

He hadn’t remembered what day it was. “Why bother keeping track of the date, for you had long resigned yourself to the fact you were going to die that day anyway. Of this you were always certain.” But he had stashed in his pack a four-inch artificial Christmas tree from home. He dug it out and struck it in the snow at the lip of his frozen foxhole. Then he extracted some candy bars he had saved, a can of C ration pork and beans, and a small can of fruit cocktail from home, which had come from his sister June with crackers and peanut butter. He shared it with Joe Everett in the next hole and they had a frigid yet festive party.

Rockie Blunt’s memoirs, Inside the Battle of the Bulge: A Private Comes of Age were published in 1994.

My grandfather, Walter Lyman Medding, served his entire professional career as an officer with the Army Corps of Engineers. His career began in the spring of 1917 when he earned a BS Engineering degree, a few months early, from MIT and joined up to be part of the American Expeditionary Forces. He retired 37 years later having served in Europe during both World Wars and the Far East during the Korean War. During his time in Japan, he was amused by the frequent language misunderstandings between the Japanese and Americans. The following tale, as retold by my mother, is a typically example of these miscommunications.

The US Army wanted to honor the students in the schools for U.S. dependents during Fire Prevention week. There were 3 of these schools. So they devised a contest for each school. In each, the winner would receive a badge ‘Fire Chief’ with the name of the school underneath. There would be 5 badges for the assistant fire chiefs for each school with the name of the school underneath.
The Army let out bids to several Japanese manufacturers. The U.S. contract read:

1 Fire Chief Badge – School #1
5 Ass’t Fire Chiefs Badge Ditto
1 Fire Chief Badge – School #2
5 Ass’t Fire Chiefs Badge Ditto
1 Fire Chief Badge – School #3
5 Ass’t Fire Chiefs Badge Ditto

Thus, the badges for “Assistant Fire Chief” all came back reading:

Rare book hound (and my brother-in-law), John Jenkins, tells me that the book Buena Vista’s Part in the World War, One Iowa County’s Record of Service and Sacrifice is very rare. He was able to uncover copies of the book in only seven libraries and none for sale in the rare book network he regularly uses. So here’s his list, in case you would like to peruse a copy yourself.

Sioux City Public Library, Sioux City, IA 51101
Grinnell College, Grinnell, IA 50112
Loras College, Dubuque, IA 52004
University of Iowa Library, Iowa City, IA 52242
WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY, Madison, WI 53706
Wisconsin Veterans Museum Res Center, Madison, WI 53703
New York Public Library - Research, New York, NY 10018

One of the cultural aspects to being an engineer is that people tell you some great stories. The stories are, generally, second hand and difficult to verify. Verifiability rarely stops one from passing a great story on. One of my favorite stories involves Texas Instruments using a very innovative marketing “technique” to sell a FLIR night vision system. Fortunately, I’ve recently been able to locate documentation of the story on the company’s web site:

During the peak of the gunship FLIR development program in 1968, the complexity of the system had grown to such an extent that the customer was concerned that both the sensitivity and the resolution of the system would be adversely affected. TI scheduled a night demonstration for its key customers on the North Building roof, located on the Central Expressway site. The project manager was nervous about the customers’ opinion of the image quality he would be able to achieve. He needed something big to make the point. He had read in the newspaper that a circus was in town, so he dispatched a project engineer to rent elephants for the demo. By the time the customers arrived, the elephants were stationed in the parking lot and could clearly be seen with the FLIR, which, on that night, was indeed the “greatest show on earth” for TI.

John E. Reese of Iowa was assigned to Company F, 316th Engineers Regiment, 91st Division during the Great War. On November 1st the allies began their final drive to victory; John earned the Distinguished Service Cross for “extraordinary heroism” during the Ypres-Lys offensive. The U.S. Army Center of Military History provides the following brief description of this offensive:

In mid-October Pershing dispatched two American divisions—the 37th and 91st—to the French Army of Belgium, at Foch’s request, to give impetus to the drive to cross the Scheldt (Escaut) southwest of Ghent. A general attack began in this area on 31 October and continued intermittently until hostilities ended on 11 November.

John’s description of this battle and his actions are as follows:

There are three canals and the river Scheldt running through Audenarde, and as all the bridges were blown up and the opposite banks well fortified we had to stop. Not much was known about the conditions of the bridges, etc., but we did know that the Germans were shelling the place so badly that it was impossible to get through. The Allied forces did not have any luck getting information with air service because of weather conditions and heavy bombardment. So volunteers were called for from the engineers. Our captain sent two of us in first to observe conditions. We were busy dodging shells and Germans until 5 o’clock in the morning, but by this time we had learned the location of their batteries and their machine-gun layouts, as well as the condition of the blown-up bridges. “Jerry,” as we call the Germans, is a bear on demolition work.
The next day we were in position to go in there - that is, after our artillery had moved Jerry’s batteries. We had plenty of shell fire even for a few days later while we were building bridges, but we soon crossed the river and had him on a high lope by November 11th.

In addition to the Ypres-Lys offensive, the 316th Engineers Regiment also participated in the St. Mihiel and the Meuse Argonne offensives. For more details about the 91st, and this battle, I recommend The Story of the 91st Division which includes more information about the 316th’s reconnaissance of the destroyed bridges and the town of Audenarde.

My mother-in-law handed me a copy of the book Buena Vista’s Part in the World War, One Iowa County’s Record of Service and Sacrifice. She has the book because it includes the service records for John E. Reese, her father, during the Great War. The book, published in 1920, is in an incredibly poor state and will probably not last many more years. I will do something to record, and preserve, the portions of the book concerning John Reese but that will be less than a page of information out of a 760 page volume.

Searching though this volume, as delicately as possible, I was able to find three references to John Reese. The first, a photo with his name in the caption, is not him. The second, in the “Honor Roll of Buena Vista County”, has his service records which are quoted below.

Born February 9, 1893. Enlisted September 22, 1917. Sgt. Co. F, 316th Engineers Regiment, 91st Division. Trained at Camp Lewis ten months; to camp Mills. Sailed from New York July 6th on Armeck; landed Liverpool July 20. To France at St. Mihiel September 11 to 16; to Meuse-Argonne September 26; at 1st Station for Army of Occupation; to Brussels; to St. Nazaire. Sailed April 6; landed Hoboken April 23. To Camp Merrit; to Ft. D. A. Russell. Mustered out April 298, 1919. Received the D.S.C. for extraordinary heroism in action at Audenarde, Belgium, November 1.

The editor added the following note: Data on this division shows that thirty members of the division were given the Distinguished Service Cross. John E. Reese was one of the men so honored.

The final reference to John Reese is his own description of his involvement at the Audenarde. Stay tuned.