American Visitors - 1942

Irelandseye presents a look back at the ‘Yank invasion’ of the early 1940s, using extracts from Home Away From Home by Mary Pat Kelly, published by Appletree Press.

Most Americans are surprised to discover that the first US soldiers to enter the Second World War landed in Northern Ireland. Spring 1942 found many American service personnel stationed in Northern Ireland, as part of the United States reaction to the events of 7th December 1941, and the attack on Pearl Harbor naval base. Preparations for war were underway, and yet many were experiencing a lull before the storm. Chuck Leighton, of the 119th Engineers, spent the most idyllic part of his stay on the banks of Lough Erne.

Fishing was my special hobby. I did a lot of fishing on Lough Erne. See, we went in there and took over a camp that had been built by American workers. They were just leaving. They had been there since way before Pearl Harbor. It was kind of a secret base. And their part in building it was secret, too. It was well camouflaged and it was an inland sea-plane base. We were there to guard that base.
The people told me there was an island in that lake for every day of the year. This one day I had some fish, oh, eleven or twelve inches long, that I'd caught on a spinning rod my mother had sent. I got some chalk line and threw it out there and I'd reel it in by hand.
This Irishman came up and said, "What are you catching there, young fellow?"
I said, "I'm getting some nice fish."
He looked and said, "I'd use those for bait."
So I said, "Where do you catch bigger ones?"
He said, "I'll bring some over."
He brought fish over that were two or three feet long. He'd got out over around those islands and trolled with a rubber fish that had great big hooks in it as big as my finger. And I went back to camp and I thought, ‘How can I get me one of those?’
But we couldn't really go out in boats at all. This was right there where we camped
Chuck Leighton

I knew that base was made for sea planes to fly Atlantic patrols. It was very well camouflaged. Those Quonset huts were all out there among the trees. I remember one day a guy from our company was hanging out his laundry on a clothes line he'd rigged up from tree to tree. Our sergeant in the engineers was an American Indian. His name was Milt Sessions. He was from the Black Hills of South Dakota. He had a permanent rank of sergeant that was given him by Congress. No one could break him.
Milt saw a guy hanging out his underwear. We had dark brown shirts, green underwear and shorts. But this fellow had white ones and he put them out on the laundry line. The American Indian, Milt Sessions, came out. He took an axe and threw it maybe ten yards. It struck into the tree and cut that rope.
He said, "Get your damned white laundry off that!"
Everything was camouflaged except for the underwear among those trees!
Milt Sessions said, "Now wash them again!"
Chuck Leighton

I grew up in Englewood, a little town in the northern part of New Jersey. I went to school there at St Cecilia's Grammar School and Dwight Morrow's High School and left to go to Massachusetts Institute Technology, class of 1941. I was at MIT when the Second World War began. I was glued to the radio on 7 December when Pearl Harbor was attacked. The next day, in my Reserved Officer's Training Corps meeting, I was told, "Cadet Larkin, report to me after class." Right then I was ordered to active duty; I hadn't even graduated.
I entered the army as a reserve officer really just hours after Pearl Harbor. I was actually thrilled and delighted. I'd been taking flying lessons, learning to be pilot. So I sent my father a telegram: "Please send birth certificate. Will explain later."
He responded: "Telephone home immediately! Explain now!"
He wasn't too thrilled with this. I ended up with my lieutenant's commissions and requested transfer to the Air Corps. But while I waited I went overseas with the 209th Coast Artillery.
I shipped out of Brooklyn in April 1942 in a large convoy. We encountered German submarines almost immediately off of Long Island. It was depth charges all the way thereafter. We finally arrived in Belfast in early May and went to Palace Barracks in Holywood, of all things.
We were welcomed royally and we got along well. I can remember going down into Belfast on Saturdays and Sundays in the pitch black darkness of the city. Lights were shut down to prevent bombing. We danced at the Red Cross Club with female military personnel.
Joe Larkin