Ten young seagoing cowboys from Okanogan County, Washington, on an errand of mercy: Part IV

The story of the Okanogan County, Washington, seagoing cowboys concludes in this post with their departure from Poland*:

When it came time to leave on January 7, 1946,Yoder noted in his journal, “There didn’t seem to be any regrets with us on ship. It was a bit touching however to watch the natives all stop working, regardless of what, and passionately watch our big ships slowly turn around and then head out toward the Baltic. They all stood watching along the shore or several blocks inland as if paralyzed.”

On the dock, Nowy Port, Poland, January 1946. Photo credit: Nelson Schumacher.

A few of those natives made it onto the ship. “We had three or four stowaways on board,” Henneman recalls. “So I’d feed ’em. Took bottles of water down to ’em.” He gave his phone number to one who spoke good English. “I says, if you make it off ship, call me up and say, ‘I made it! I made it! I made it!’ I said, I’ll know what you’re talking about. A few months after that, he phoned me up and he says, ‘I made it!’ I often wondered what kind of a citizen he made. I bet he was a good one.”

Photo credit: Eli Beachy.

The ship returned to Houston, Texas, where the cowboys waited for their $150 checks from UNRRA before seeing some sights and heading back to school.

Yoder and two other cowboys took in the World Champion Rodeo and Texas Fat Stock Show, February 1, 1946. Yoder says in his diary, “Tex Ritter was there and The Lone Ranger and horse ‘Silver.'” Photo credit: Paul Bucher.

With the world opened up to them, these young cowboys came back to Tonasket with a mission. In a program for the local Lions Club, the boys described the conditions they had seen, the distress of people trying to resume their lives amidst the wreckage of war, and how the children were particularly vulnerable. The Tonasket Times summed up the tenor of their message about the people of Europe: “Their cry for help, which in this country is voiced through such organizations as the Lions Club should meet with a generous response by well fed, well clothed Americans, who have never had to endure in comparable degree the suffering that is the lot of Europe today.” A fitting statement that should make even J. O. Yoder proud of those boys.

Eight of the Tonasket, Washington, seagoing cowboys. Front, L to R: Gerald Vandiver, Dave Henneman, Johnny Woodard; Back, L to R: Jack Fancher, Kenneth Lorz, Bruce Pickens, Bill Dugan, Mark Bontrager. Photographer unknown.

* Excerpted from my article published in the Okanogan County Heritage magazine, Winter 2014.

 

Ten young seagoing cowboys from Okanogan County, Washington, on an errand of mercy: Part III

The story of the Okanogan County, Washington, seagoing cowboys continues with their sobering arrival in Danzig, Poland, on December 27, 1945*:

The Clarksville Victory approaches the pier in Nowy Port, Poland, December 27, 1945. Photo by J. O. Yoder.

In an unidentified newspaper article, 16-year-old Fancher said, “You have to see that country to believe it. Everyone is hungry . . . The children are in rags and most of them have not been to school since the war started. You walk down the streets and they run up to you, holding out their hands and begging for food.” One of the images that still remains in Fancher’s mind today is that of seeing people on the street cutting steaks off of one of the mares that died.

Children following the seagoing cowboys in Gdansk, Poland, January 1946. Photo by Nelson Schumacher.

Henneman recalls that their ship had apples from Tonasket. “The labels on the box tell you where they come from, and who packed it. Somebody we knew packed them. You knew their number.” In Poland, he carried apples off the ship under his jacket and handed them out to people. “I guess it was stealing,” he said, “but we had plenty. They didn’t have any.” He bought other items that he carried off the ship and gave to people. The guards, who would normally shake someone down they suspected of carrying things off, would let him pass because they knew he was giving everything away.

Dave Henneman shares a story from J. O. Yoder’s book about their trip with Peggy Reiff Miller in 2014 interview. Photo by Sandra Brightbill.

Cigarettes were the prime black market commodity, and other cowboys learned they could buy cigarettes cheaply in the ship’s store and trade them for souvenirs. Or they could trade their dollars for Zloties to make their purchases. Dugan was able to obtain a violin which he still has and which he played for dances after he got home. Fancher brought home a little wooden box with a hand-carved lid.

Entertainment options in Danzig were slim. Dugan remembers visiting battlefields with ammunition and the bodies of unburied German soldiers still lying around. “Danzig is like some old Wild West town,” Fancher said in his newspaper interview. “It is full of Russian, Polish and British soldiers, and all the civilians carry guns–pistols, rifles or tommy-guns. There are a lot of shooting scrapes. Two English and four Russians were killed during the 14 days we were there, and some of our boys were held up and robbed of cigarets [sic] and American money.”

Exploring a battlefield near the docks in Poland, January 1946. Photo by Nelson Schumacher.

Fancher and John Woodard told the reporter, “one sight in Danzig was three times as horrible as the worst Boris Karloff movie.” Woodard explained, “That was the [building] the Germans used for human medical experiments. They showed us thru it . . . it was terrible. There were human bones all about, human skin that had been tanned, soap made from human fat . . . the smell was sickening . . . there were two petrified bodies . . .” The experience is one the cowboys do not like to talk about today. Their crew was one of only a few that were taken through the facility before it was put off limits.

Photo by Clarksville Victory fellow cowboy Eli Beachy, January 1946.

(to be continued)

* Excerpted from my article published in the Okanogan County Heritage magazine, Winter 2014.

Ten young seagoing cowboys from Okanogan County, Washington, on an errand of mercy: Part II

The story of the Okanogan County, Washington, seagoing cowboys continues*:

Bushy Pier, Brooklyn, New York, December 1945. Photo by J. O. Yoder.

[December 4, 1945,] the crew of 32 cowboys boarded the SS Clarksville Victory at Bushy Pier No. 1 in Brooklyn. Problems in getting the horses to the ship gave the crew eight days of relative leisure to explore the wonders of New York City. The cowboys also got to watch the loading of the ship. Bill Dugan recalls that the 742 horses were loaded one by one. Some were lifted by a large strap put around the body, others in wooden crates, to be lowered into the holds of the ship. One horse got away, taking a swim in the New York harbor, eventually getting out at another pier and being brought back to ship.

On a cold Wednesday, December 12, the Clarksville Victory finally headed out into the Atlantic. The first night out, in [supervisor J. O.] Yoder’s words, the sea was “a swirling mass of boiling tar. It is one continuous up-heaving body—full of vales and knolls.” The result: “At least 15 or 20 fellows fed the fish and were consequently quite useless.” Dave Henneman recalls being seasick that first day, but fine after that. Dugan and Jick Fancher were two of the lucky ones who never got sick.

The rolling Atlantic Ocean, December 1945. Photo by J. O. Yoder.

The crew settled into the work and rhythm of watering and feeding the horses, which Fancher says were all types and of all dispositions. Henneman recalls, “There was one big old horse, he was kind of ornery. He got a hold of my coat one day and picked me right up off my feet.” Henneman’s experience with horses soon brought horse and tender to an understanding for the remainder of the trip.

The Clarksville Victory was one of the Victory ships built in mass during the war to transport supplies and troops. An article in the Tonasket Times said, “The boys thought a lot of their ship, which seemed well built. . . . Their bunks, arranged in three tiers were in the gunners quarters, only instead of having guns to tend and possibly an enemy to fire on, as did the former crew, our lads were on an errand of mercy.”

The ship that carried the Okanogan County cowboys to Poland, December 1945. Photo by Paul Bucher.

Their ship served them well when they ran into a storm that Gerald Vandiver told the Spokane Daily Chronicle “put two cruisers, an aircraft carrier and three merchant ships in dry dock, but our ship, the Clarksville Victory, suffered no ill effects. However, some of the horses were thrown down and were unable to get up. Fifty horses died on the trip, most of them as a result of the storm.” Of the rough sailing, Dugan recalls, “We were kids yet, and we didn’t have sense enough to be afraid. Four more degrees [of roll] and the ship wouldn’t have come up.”

The route of the Clarksville Victory took the Washington boys up through the English Channel, past the White Cliffs of Dover, and through the Kiel Canal to the Baltic Sea.

A ferry crosses the Kiel Canal ahead of the Clarksville Victory, December, 1945. Photo by Paul Bucher.

They spent Christmas Day anchored in the harbor at Kiel, Germany, where they got their first real taste of war aftermath. Kiel, an industrial center for submarine building, was heavily bombed during the war. Fancher described the harbor as “just a bunch of ship stacks sticking up.”

Dave Henneman in a 2014 interview with Peggy Reiff Miller. Photo by Sandy Brightbill.

Their arrival in Danzig, Poland, on December 27 was equally as sobering.

(to be continued)

* Excerpted from my article published in the Okanogan County Heritage magazine, Winter 2014.

 

Ten young seagoing cowboys from Okanogan County, Washington, on an errand of mercy: Part I

The texts for this post and the three to follow are excerpts from an article I wrote for the Okanogan County Heritage magazine for their Winter 2014 issue. In 1945, a Church of the Brethren representative went to the Tonasket, Washington, high school to ask for volunteers to serve as seagoing cowboys. This is their story:

Ten young men responded to the call, most of them students: Mark Bontrager, Jack (Jick) Fancher, Junior Hawkins, Kenneth Lorz, Charles Merrill, Bruce Picken, and Gerald Vandiver of Tonasket, William Dugan and John Woodard of Loomis, and Dave Henneman of Oroville. At the ripe age of 18, Bontrager, the son of a local Church of the Brethren pastor, was selected as leader of the group.

Bill Dugan recalls their adventure started with a trip to the Smith Tower in Seattle to obtain their seaman’s cards, as all seagoing cowboys had to join the Merchant Marines in order to work on a ship. The week of Thanksgiving, the boys departed for the East coast on the Empire Builder from Wenatchee. Two older Wenatchee gentlemen, Clayton Robinson and W. A. Holland, accompanied them.

From the album of Mark Bontrager.

The long train trek across the country was broken up by a stop in Chicago. Jick Fancher recalls, “My sister had a friend there who came and got us and took us to Thanksgiving dinner,” a bright spot in the trip for him after having his billfold stolen on the train with all his cash and cashier’s checks in it. He got the cashier’s checks back, but none of the cash. Dugan recalls getting meals in Chicago at the maritime service and eating dollar box lunches sold on the train.

From Chicago, the group took a train to Baltimore, Maryland. J. O. Yoder of Goshen, Indiana, cowboy supervisor for the boys’ trip, noted in his journal: “The entire group of 12 Washington state kids got on train at Balti [sic] for New Windsor! A pretty young and careless bunch.” Yoder obviously had not yet identified two the group as adults.

The Brethren Service Center in New Windsor served as home base for the group while they awaited their orders. They had time to travel to Washington, D.C., where they explored the nation’s Capitol and met their Representative to Congress, Walt Horan, who showed them around.

From the album of Mark Bontrager.

In the meantime, crews were being put together by the seagoing cowboy office for a shipment out of Portland, Maine, and another out of New York City. The Monday after Thanksgiving, November 26, Yoder recorded in his journal: “Looks like the Washington fellows will be on my boat—much to my chagrin.”

Clayton Robinson became Yoder’s roommate at New Windsor, and Yoder recommended him to be crew leader. But as fate would have it, a seagoing cowboy freshly returned from the first UNRRA cattle boat trip to Poland showed up at the Center. He spoke to the new cowboys after dinner and “Told of all the gory sights seen in Poland and of the hair-raising ride in stormy seas,” Yoder said, after which, “Mr. Robinson and Mr. Holland, leaders of the Washington group, decided tonight to go back home—leaving the boys without leaders! Worried me aplenty as that bunch shan’t be without someone to crack down on them.” Yoder appealed to the leaders of the program, “either the kids would have to go back to Washington, too, or Mr. Robinson stay! Well, the result is that it looks as if they will all stay and go Monday.”

Monday morning, bright and early, the group boarded the train for New York City where they stayed at the Seaman’s Church Institute. The next day Yoder notes, “Robinson and Holland have decided to quit and go home. Could tell they were extremely blue, homesick and bewildered. . . . so I was left without a crew leader. This whole mess made me a bit discouraged at the time.” But it must have turned out okay, as Yoder makes no further mention of the Washington boys in a negative light. They came from farm or ranch backgrounds and evidently proved themselves to Yoder by their hard work on the ship.

Myself and Bill Dugan after interviewing him in 2014.

(to be continued)

In Memorium

I end this year of blog posts with a Fifth Friday Memorium to honor seagoing cowboys who have departed this world. These are the most recent ones who have come to my attention:

Alderfer, Stanley D., December 4, 2016. S. S. Columbia Heights to Israel, 1951.

King, Paul, October 29, 2016. S. S. Gainesville Victory to Czechoslovakia, February 14, 1946.

Schrock, Olen L., December 18, 2016. S. S. Clarksville Victory to Greece, February 24, 1946; S. S. Stephen R. Mallory to Poland, November 14, 1946.

Schwartzentruber, Kenneth, November 17, 2016. S. S. Frederic C. Howe to Yugoslavia, November 15, 1946; S. S. Woodstock Victory to Greece, January 18, 1947.

Shank, Charles S., December 25, 2015. S. S. Zona Gale to Yugoslavia, June 28, 1945.

Troyer, Alfred Edward, July 8, 2014. S. S. Santiago Iglesias to Poland, February 7, 1946.

Yoder, J. Olen, November 14, 2016. S. S. Clarksville Victory to Poland, December 12, 1945.

I extend my deep gratitude to the family of Harold Joseph Slagell for their gift of memorial money to my Seagoing Cowboy Storytelling Project in honor of their father who was included in the September 30 Memorium post.

Rest in peace, dear Seagoing Cowboys.

The Brethren Service Center Serves and Is Served by Seagoing Cowboys

The Brethren Service Center in New Windsor, Maryland, March 1947. The gym in center of picture is where much of the post-World War II relief work was carried out. Photo courtesy of Howard Lord.

As noted in my post of May 22, many a seagoing cowboy and cowboy supervisor ended up spending time at the Brethren Service Center in New Windsor, Maryland, while waiting on his ship to sail. The seagoing cowboy office was located there, along with a swarm of activity related to other Church of the Brethren relief programs.

Ernest Bachman, supervisor of the SS John J. Crittenden crew of November 1945, noted that his men were assigned the task of raking leaves. J. O. Yoder’s time at New Windsor overlapped with Bachman. Yoder arrived on November 13 and was surprised to meet Carol Stine from his home town in Goshen, Indiana, working there as a secretary for the seagoing cowboy program. After that, he didn’t stand a chance.

Carol Stine, right, works out details for a seagoing cowboy. Photo courtesy of Brethren Historical Library and Archives.

The next morning, Yoder notes in his journal, “Carol Stine collared me after breakfast and made me say I’d do dishes. Lots of ‘em and about 3 of us did it. Couldn’t sneak away quick enough and so found 3 potato peeling knives in my hand and potatoes in pan all set to go. Never imagined a whole bushel under table was to be peeled for supper. Well – peeled for 3 hours right up to dinner time and had about ¾ bushel done. Ate a good dinner and went to my room and wrote.”

Yoder then spent a couple of days getting squared away in Washington, DC, to be a supervisor with UNRRA. There he met Bachman. They traveled back to New Windsor together on the 16th, and Bachman got collared, too. “Backman [sic] and I washed and wiped dishes,” writes Yoder, “while a speaker on CPS camps (Mr. Banta I—–) started talking to a meeting in mess hall.”

Saturday, the 17th, Yoder strolled around campus looking for work and ended up helping to build a new bed on the Center’s V-8 truck. That night he got in on some of the culture of the Center. “Ora Zeigler gave a very colorful talk on this trip through devastated Europe -,” Yoder wrote, “had many contacts with the most horrible evidences of starvation throughout entire war area…. Nearly every single person in that area has lost considerable weight due to insufficient amount of calories. Babies and small children are housed in large auditoriums, etc., where all windows and doors have been blasted out and cold winds are sweeping through. He told of picking up stiff and lifeless bodies – the way millions will go during the next year. The people of these countries will quite definitely favor the country giving the best relief….”

Sunday at the Center provided a day of rest. Yoder skipped church, “as I ain’t got a suit [with me],” he quipped in his journal. “I played the victrola in lounge and enjoyed it very much – Bolero, Lord’s Prayer, etc.” He went out to the nearby Roger Roop farm in the afternoon to see the Heifer Project cattle collected there for shipping. Later that night, he reveled in a game of Rook with a group of Kansas seagoing cowboys.

Volunteers bale and package used clothing to send to Europe after World War II. Photo courtesy of Brethren Historical Library and Archives.

Yoder’s time in New Windsor was lengthened when UNRRA lost his papers. As the next week rolled on, he made himself useful. He helped “pack and truck bales of used clothing to store room. Then went with truck to Post Office and got several hundred packages of old clothing, etc. – sent here by churches and peoples from all parts of U.S.A.”

Women sort relief clothing to be sent to Europe. Photo courtesy of Brethren Historical Library and Archives.

Another day he wrote, “went to the gym and helped unload a truck of relief boxes brought up from P.O. Weighed and noted each box then heaved it up to the top of the stack – clear up to ceiling! Toward noon I helped fill a shipping box with all sorts of toys, dolls made and donated by various church groups.”

Later, he helped prepare shipping cases for old shoes that had been rebuilt at the Center. “Nearly 40 cases containing from 85 to 150 pr. shoes are ready for shipping,” he wrote.

Volunteers repair used shoes sent to the Brethren Service Center after World War II. Photo courtesy of Brethren Historical Library and Archives.

Other days found him helping carry boxes in the food canning department or helping Carol Stine sort cowboy application blanks.

Volunteers help can food to be sent to Europe. Photo courtesy of Kenneth West.

Canned food ready to box for Europe. Photo courtesy of Kenneth West.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yoder’s three weeks spent at the Center weren’t all work and no play, however. Evenings were filled with games of checkers, Chinese checkers, jigsaw puzzles, singing around the piano, folk game activities, reading, and writing letters. Finally, on Monday, December 3, Yoder had his orders to report to New York City where he would lead the cowboy crew of the SS Clarksville Victory on their journey to Poland. There, he would have the opportunity to see firsthand the devastation which Ora Zeigler had described.

Next post: The Roop Farm