Training for the Front

Uncle Leonard's Fourth Letter

In this letter I learned that Uncle Leonard was upset with his parents, my grandparents. My grandparents came from Poland, and eventually became naturalized U.S. citizens. They learned to speak and write English as their second language. They did the best they could considering the differences between the Slavic tongue and the English. To me, it seems that the Old Adam is very much alive in Leonard.

The people mentioned in this letter include my Uncle Al, who lived next door to us. He was the youngest of the four Cwynar sons. He worked as a pipefitter at St. Joe Lead in Potter Township. Uncle Al was quite ill by the time I was 30. On the day of my First Mass as a Priest, he came to our home and talked with me, handed me a card, and left. Not long after that I conducted his funeral at St. John the Baptist Church in Monaca. True to himself, he did not don a necktie when laid out for viewing. He was a good man.

The other person is Felicia. The only Felicia in our family that I knew was Felicia Rapp. She was a cousin to my father and uncles. She lived in Mt. Lebanon, PA, and was a member of St. Bernard. I saw her a few times when I served in the Diocese of Pittsburgh. Yet even though she was older than Dad and his brothers, I don’t know if this is the same person Leonard mentions.

Another thing I learned through this letter is that Leonard, other than being annoyed by his parents, is that he was transferred to a new company. E.R.T.C. stood for Engineer Replacement Training Center. Rather than a fixed combat unit deployed overseas, these centers were temporary training hubs in the U.S. designed to turn new recruits into combat engineers before they were sent to the front lines.

I discovered that if your relative or ancestor was in “D Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Platoon,” as Leonard was, they were undergoing this specific initial training. In 1943, at the height of WWII, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers operated three primary training centers: Fort Belvoir, Virginia: The oldest and largest, training thousands of engineers per month; Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri: Trained combat engineers and provided specialized replacement training. Camp Abbot, Oregon: Operational starting in mid-1943, this was the ERTC in the West, graduating around 90,000 trainees.

In 1943, the Army used a standardized structure for its replacement and training units: The Training Battalion handled overall administrative and logistical support for a large group of trainees. The Company was labeled alphabetically (such as “D Company”) and typically consisted of 100 to 200 soldiers. Companies were where the recruits lived, took roll calls, and received the bulk of their physical and basic soldier conditioning. The Platoon was usually divided into three smaller squads (such as the “1st Platoon”). This is the micro-unit where recruits were taught specialized combat engineering tasks, such as bridge-building, handling explosives, mine warfare, and constructing field fortifications.

Because ERTC records track the training camp rather than specific combat operations, you can trace a trainee’s history using their name and military serial number: Search the National Archives using the soldier’s full name and serial number to find official enlistment and draft records. View archival photographs and official post maps, such as the February 1943 D Company 8th Battalion photo at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which highlight exactly what life and pose formations looked like at these centers. Look for original unit yearbooks on historical auction sites like eBay, as Company D was featured in multiple base publications throughout 1943.

All that said, here is Leonard’s 4^th Letter.

No Address Listed

Tuesday, September 25, 1943

Dear Mom and Dad,

Just received your letter and it wasn’t any too cheerful. First look at the address on the letters I send you. It isn’t my old training base but a new base, a causal company. Why does Mom want to know why they shipped me back. I wasn’t supposed to be shipped there in the first place. I explained that when I was home the first time. I mean the time I was home about five hours. I be hanged if I’m going to write a detail explanation by letter, so the hell with it.

How is Mom’s hay fever? I’m glad that Pop came back from the hospital, and tell him I said to cut out being a nuisance. Forget the idea about running away because Felicia wrote me a letter saying your [sic] very valuable at home. She says you are a very nice boy. Boy what you folks need is too [sic] serve a hitch with the Army. Why don’t you cooperate a little more at home?

I don’t like the idea of getting a tractor made. I hope you guys are going to put the money from selling the stock in War Bonds or something very useful -----

I’ll let you know when and if I get a furlough. As for pay I haven’t even got paid yet. Why does Mom ask … Do you need money at home?

How is Alfred getting along? I haven’t got the old wallet I’ve had another for over two months now. I had it when I was home on that five-hour trip. Boy you really wear a fellow out by something you write. Another, put my address correctly on the envelopes so I don’t have to wait 10 to 14 days just to get a letter form home. And for heavens sake learn how to spell. The best of luck, wishes and happiness from your Son & Brother.

Leonard

To the whole family

P.S. Correct Address

PVT L.F. CWYNAR

Co D 2^nd BN

1^st PLATOON E.R.T.C.

FORT BELVOIR, VIRGINIA