2011; George Underwood

Corsica of 1944 and WWII remembered.

We climbed into our B-25 and cleared Valle near Phillipville (now Anaba), North Africa in the early afternoon and landed at Ghisonaccia-Gare, Corsica a couple of hours later. First thing we saw was a shot up, full of holes, wrecked, B-25 with blood all through the machine. That sight shook us up some. We had arrived with our 75mm cannon toting G models and we were now in combat. The date was January 21, 1944. I was billeted in a two story rock building along with my radio gunner Jim Heaney and tail gunner Herb Campbell again. The room, on the second floor, overlooked the main street and the old railroad station, had a great fireplace that kept us warm evenings and produced enough light, along with some candles, to let us play our Monopoly game and cook those midnight meals we enjoyed. There seemed to be enough wood around to scrounge so that was not a problem. No cots, of course, so we just slept on the wooden floor and just where the Monopoly game came from is still a mystery.

     Outside our front window (we were on the second floor with windows overlooking the rock station building and the road) next to the station was a railroad engine that had been sabotaged and badly damaged by the Germans as they left. It sat near the ‘theater’ where we had occasional movies and even more occasionally live shows both British and American. Our theater chairs were upside down bomb crates. The British shows were better generally and it seemed that our shows did not provide the talent available that the British did. Maybe it was because we were in an ‘unusual’ area for shows to visit. After all we were about a hundred miles behind the German lines. Only one show stands out and that was a Joe E. Brown U.S.O. troupe and show and he was terrific. It was small but good with a couple of real live American girls in it.
     Our food is very good now compared to when we first arrived on Corsica. Few ‘C’ rations and well prepared meals now and we had lots of ‘C’ rations mostly stew and dehydrated stuff early on. Now our squadron sends an aircraft to Catania, Sardinia, where they load up with fresh vegetables and fruit. Even some fresh meat from time to time and the entire squadron get the ‘trots’ from the fresh food after a time on army rations. We go back on ‘C’ rations when the fresh stuff is gone and another aircraft is sent for a re-supply.
     The Red Cross Service Club finally opened and we could get doughnuts and coffee. It features a radio and we can listen to some very good swing music with comments from Axis Sally and her announcer friend ‘George’ who bombarded us with nasty propaganda trying to scare and discourage us. According to them we had lost the war already but the only piece of accurate news we got from them was a warning of a bomb raid on the 340th Bomb Group up the coast from us. They announced that they (the Germans) would bomb them out of existence soon. No dates or time of course, just soon. And it happened one night a week or so later when the 340th did loose a bunch of aircraft again. They lost all 80 of their aircraft when Mt..Vesuvius erupted in March of 1944.
     I was able to visit Adjaccio on the western side of Corsica, birthplace of Napoleon, on a three day pass and it proved to be a beautiful city that I enjoyed very much. I wandered through the narrow streets, along the boulevards with genuine busses running in this the most modern city I have seen so far here in the Mediterranean area. Well dressed people sat in sidewalk cafes eating and drinking. Getting there and back was relatively easy. I just stuck out my thumb and the next 6x6 truck that came by stopped and drove me over the hill from Ghisonaccia to Adjaccio. The road was very narrow and windy and in places steep and it took several hours to make the trip over the 7,000 foot snow capped ‘hills’. We crossed the narrow gauge train tracks several times but encountered no trains. The trains, I am told, are very old, small and still have an oil lamp for a headlight. The mountains were beautiful and reminded me of home and Southern California.
       Home construction I saw on Corsica was interesting. There are lots and lots of rocks all over the place so that is the main building material used. A square of rock walls is built of rocks up to about 8 feet by 2 feet wide, there they stick a long log across to the other wall, add more rocks until the desired height is reached leaving openings for doors and windows. Then they either burnout or pull the logs from the walls, fill the holes with more rocks. Houses are quite small and each room seems to have a fireplace for cooking and heating. Kitchens are low, raftered, and dismally dark. Packed dirt floors or an occasional wooden floor contains a dining area also. Hanging from the rafters are various kinds of meats, spices and herbs. Lighting is by a single light bulb or oil lamps and candles. Toilets, of course, are outside the houses. The post man rides as bicycle wearing a funny hat and a uniform…very official.
     Clothes washing is always done by the women in the cold, fast flowing river using rocks as washboards. Black dresses are almost always worn by the
women and water for home use is drawn from that same river, carried to the houses by women. Various kinds of water containers balanced on their heads with a bucket or pitcher in each hand. An occasional look at the animals near the house seemed to be the work of the men folk who usually sat by the fire smoking and drinking. Electricity it seems is in the cities mostly and in a few farm houses that will have a single low watt bulb hanging from the ceiling and usually in the kitchen which seems to be the equivalent of our family rooms today.
     Ghisonaccia-Gare, a village on Corsica was our base. It had been a depot for the narrow gauge railroad that serviced Corsica. The nearby airfield had been a German fighter base and the runway was extended and enlarged to handle our B-25's. Our Army engineers added the pierced steel strips that made the field useable in wet weather. This village had been a railroad depot sort of town and was made up of a row of stone two-story houses with a two story building in the middle across from the row of houses. This building was the depot itself. The window overlooked the center of the village and the beautiful mountains beyond. We thought it was the best room there was in the village. This was later proved correct when the Squadron CO ordered us out to the tents with the enlisted men and he moved in.
     The swampy land, where our airstrip was located, ended at the beach a mile or so away from the railroad station town of Ghisonaccia Gare. Yeah, Corsica had mosquitoes and Malaria. I had a taste of that. The Army engineers just drained and cleaned the swamp, enlarged the airfield and got rid of most of the mosquitoes in the process. They used lots of DDT again as well as oil and other chemicals to rid us of mosquitoes. Got most of them but not all. Anyway it was cooler there.
Corsica is a beautiful place. 8,000 foot mountains with snow in the winter, winding, narrow roads, lots of trees, and a narrow gauge railroad runs up and across the mountains from the east side to the west where Adjaccio (the home of Napoleon) is located. A fast moving river, the Piumorbu, runs just north of Ghisonaccia from the mountains and out to the nearby sea and I would go there for a swim or to the ocean beach also nearby. Both had cold water. Because of the mosquitoes, in the area where our field was located, (until the engineers cleared the swamps) were so thick and hungry the native Corsicans would move to the mountains in the summer to avoid them and it was also cooler in the mountains. Many just stayed and conducted whatever business they had. People in Corte, however, stayed year-round.
      Corte was a medieval city with a castle on a cliff, narrow streets and houses made of stone and with stone floors. It was located a few miles north of Ghisonaccia and much higher. There was some electricity available and if they had it had only a single, low wattage bulb, would hang from the ceiling beams. Plumbing, of course, was outside. In and around rural areas the women in the household carried the water from the stream. City homes while years behind our standard of living did have water and some toilets inside. Not many.
I was delighted to find that, as in Valle, Algeria, North Africa, there was a public hot bath in a nearby mountain town. Dating back to Roman times these natural sulfur, hot baths were wonderful. In small rooms the carved stone tubs were delightful on cold Corsican winter days and were enjoyed by the Roman Legions as well as us GI’s of WWII. Rock buildings lined the narrow twisting road and a steep trail led down to the bathhouse in the small mountain town of Pietrapola.
This we visited as often as possible but it was hard to get to on windy narrow roads and not too many GI trucks used it. Hitch hiking was not good. However, upon stopping a GI supply truck for a ride, found that we could toss a couple of boxes of food over the side to be picked up later. Good idea except that in the dark we couldn't read the contents. We had eaten, for weeks it seemed, Vienna sausage. I'm not terribly fond of that particular item and guess what…the two cases we tossed off that truck were. Right! Both were Vienna sausage and probably headed for our mess hall.
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     George B Underwood -- 310th Bomb Group/381st Bomb Squadron WWII B-25 Mitchells.

George Underwood 310th Bomb Group