Stories from the S.S. Mount Whitney – August 1946: Gdansk on the brighter side

Despite frightening times in Gdansk, Poland, in August 1946, the seagoing cowboys of the S.S. Mount Whitney also had many pleasant experiences. They had the satisfaction of seeing the horses they had tended unloaded and ready to serve the Polish farmers – as well as the unloading of the manure the animals had generated on the ship that would provide rich fertilizer to help rebuild the soils abused by war.

UNRRA horses unloaded from the S.S. Mount Whitney in Nowy Port, Poland, wait to be driven to a collection center, August 1946. Photo by James Brunk.

Horse manure being unloaded from the S.S. Mount Whitney for the fertilizing of Polish fields, August 1946. Photo by James Brunk.

As UNRRA did for most of the cowboy crews, they and the Polish Department of Agriculture took the Mount Whitney men on a tour. They visited one of the collection sites where Polish farmers came to get their new horses.

One of the collection centers near Gdansk, Poland, for the distribution of UNRRA horses. Photo by James Brunk.

Polish farmers receive their new horses from UNRRA, August 1946. Photo by James Brunk.

They toured an agricultural school outside of Gdansk, complete with a stork’s nest, which many cowboys photographed.

An agricultural school near Gdansk, Poland, August 1946. Photo by James Brunk.

Children gather to see the seagoing cowboys at the agricultural school outside Gdansk. Photo by James Brunk.

The stork’s nest at the agricultural school attracted many a seagoing cowboy. Photo by James Brunk.

They experienced the magnificent pipe organ constructed in the late 1700s in the Oliwa Cathedral which had been founded in the 13th century by Cistercian monks. The largest pipe organ in Europe with over 5,000 pipes when built, its architecture incorporated sculpted wooden angels holding bells, trumpets, stars and suns. “The keyboard was about two stories up,” cowboy Alvin Zook said. “A man got up in it and played ‘Rock of Ages’ for us. When he did, the figurines and horn would move to the beat of the music.”

Seagoing cowboys visit the famed cathedral in Oliwa, Poland, July 1946. Photo by Ben Kaneda.

As all UNRRA tours in Poland did, this one ended at a restaurant in the resort city of Sopot where the Polish Department of Agriculture treated the cowboys with a banquet to thank them for their service to Poland.

Restaurant in Sopot, Poland, where UNRRA and the Polish Department of Agriculture treated the seagoing cowboys, August 1946. Photo by James Brunk.

Largest and fastest of the livestock ships, the S.S. Mount Whitney completed her maiden livestock voyage in Norfolk, Virginia, August 23 – less than four weeks after departing from Newport News – another record broken. Nine days later, she would be on her way to Poland with another load of horses.

 

Stories from the S.S. Mount Whitney – August 1946: A volatile time to be in Gdansk

On its maiden livestock voyage, the S.S. Mount Whitney docked in Nowy Port, Poland – Gdansk’s port city – August 8, 1946, with its load of nearly 1500 horses. Since “liberating” Gdansk from the Germans in March 1945 and obliterating the once beautiful city to ruins in the process, Russia had been tightening its vice on the city and the country.

The ruins of Gdansk, Poland, August 1946. Photo by James Brunk.

Between the Russian and Polish police, Russian soldiers, and Polish resisters, the unrest made it an unstable place for seagoing cowboys to roam.

“About a minute after this picture was taken, snipers shot and killed the soldiers in this car,” says cowboy Alvin Zook. Photo by Alvin Zook.

“Russians were everywhere,” said cowboy James Brunk. “Their headquarters was a large building in Gdynia with Stalin’s picture up on the front. If anyone was seen taking a picture of the building, the film was immediately confiscated and destroyed.”

Leonard Vaughn managed to get a shot of the Russian headquarters on his first trip to Poland in May, 1946. Accounts differ as to whether this was in Gdynia or Gdansk. Photo by Leonard Vaughn.

Cowboy foreman Leonard Vaughn, had made some Polish friends on his previous trip to Gdansk in May. He and two shipmates set out after supper the day their ship arrived to visit the Porlanski family in the nearby town of Wrzeszcz. “A French-speaking Pole attached himself to us and we couldn’t shake him off,” Vaughn said in his journal. After having tea with the couple, the foursome left. “I wanted to walk home, but Frenchy didn’t,” Vaughn continued. “Soon we were completely lost. Frenchy wanted something to eat, so I gave him some money and told him we’d walk slowly on. As soon as he left, we ran. We walked and walked. We crossed a field and expected to get shot at. We came to a railroad and followed it. Every so often we met Polish workers and we asked ‘Nowy Port’ and they kept pointing the way we were going. Then we came to a dark place. Suddenly a shot rang out. We were paralyzed. In a moment we saw a cigarette light in the darkness. I yelled ‘Amerikanski’ and someone answered “Russki”. They were 2 Russian soldiers. We said ‘UNRRA’ and they nodded. We said ‘Nowy Port” and they pointed. We shook hands and left. I was really frightened. Soon we came to a road and we got on it. All at once it ended and there were 3 men. One was a Polish soldier, and all three spoke German. They told us to follow them and they led us thru fields and woods. We expected to get shot at any moment. Soon we came to a road and there stood Frenchy. But we went on and were handed over to another guard. This guard after a little walk handed us over to 2 boys. They were grand kids and I promised to visit them. I was so happy to see the ship that I almost had a heart attack. I never expected to see it again.”

Vaughn, Brunk, and shipmate Alvin Zook all noted another unsettling incident when the stevedores went on strike. “After about three days,” Brunk said, “a man on the dock was trying to get them to go back to work. They found out he was a ‘Russian secret policeman’. They charged him – killed him with a brick. That evening the Russians rounded them up, shot 56 of them in the town square, sent the rest of them off to Siberia. We had a new group of stevedores the next morning.” Zook noted, “They were only making 90 cents a day in our money. It was costing some of them 70 cents just to get to work.”

Zook was with a group of cowboys who toured a nearby battlefield. Bodies of German soldiers still lay among the brush, in trenches, and in an armored vehicle.

Seagoing cowboys tour a battlefield near Gdansk, Poland, August 1946. Photo by James Brunk.

Shell casings on the battlefield near Gdansk, Poland, August 1946. Photo by Alvin Zook.

Being a Sunday morning, the group sat down on a bunch of shell casings next to a large gun that had jammed to have a worship service. “A young man from Minot, North Dakota, told the Christmas story, and it was very real to us,” Zook said. “Peace on earth, good will to men.”

How a novel turned into a blog

This will be a more personal post. At my presentations, I am often asked how I got into this seagoing cowboy history. So today, I’ll share that story with you.

It all started with an envelope of my Grandpa Abe’s photos my father gave me some years after grandpa died.
Turns out, Grandpa Abe had been a seagoing cowboy, accompanying a load of horses to Poland the end of September 1946.

I grew up in the Church of the Brethren, the denomination responsible for recruiting all of the livestock tenders for UNRRA’s shipments of farm animals to Europe after World War II. From my youth magazines, I knew about these “seagoing cowboys.” But I DIDN’T know that my grandpa had been one of them. He never talked about it with us grandkids, and we never knew to ask. I knew there were a couple of Polish dolls in grandpa’s attic where we grandkids often played, but I didn’t make the connection until seeing his photos.

After receiving that envelope of photos, I got curious about what grandpa’s trip may have been like. So in January 2002, I interviewed a man from our church, Al Guyer, who I knew had been a seagoing cowboy to Poland. The end of that year, I signed up for a book writing course through the Institute of Children’s Literature to write a young adult novel. Grandpa’s photos and stories of Al Guyer’s eventful trip kept beckoning to me, and I thought, what a great topic! The trip of a 16-year-old seagoing cowboy to Poland! My instructor agreed. The topic was “something new and different under the sun,” she said. Being historical fiction, it would require a great deal of research, so I sought out more seagoing cowboys to interview.

Interviewing J. O. Yoder about his trip to Poland on the S. S. Clarksville Victory in December 1945.

One cowboy led to another, and another, and another. And their stories were so fascinating and compelling that I was hooked! It didn’t take long to realize that this was a rich history, just hiding away in people’s minds, and drawers, and attics, and my mission changed to that of documenting this little-known, not-to-be-forgotten history of how men of all stripes delivered hope to a war-torn world. I’ve been at it for twenty years now, accumulating a sizable archive of cowboy photos and stories too significant to just sit on my shelves.

In 2007, I created a DVD documentary photostory, A Tribute to the Seagoing Cowboys, which I took on a Tribute Tour around the country meeting more cowboys and gathering their stories.

Meeting and hearing from seagoing cowboys at Brethren Village retirement community in Lititz, PA, April 14, 2009.

I started my seagoing cowboys website in 2008, and what a game changer that was! I began to get requests for information of all types related to this history from as far away as Poland, Germany, Finland, and Japan. Inadvertently, I had become the recognized “expert” on the seagoing cowboys and the related history of the Heifer Project.

My novel did get drafted and revised, and revised, and revised, but never published. Instead, it sort of morphed into my children’s picture book The Seagoing Cowboy. In the summer of 2014, while that book was in the works, I decided the best way to get more of this history out into the world was to start a blog. And I’ve been at it ever since.

 

Special Post: International Day of Peace

On this International Day of Peace, I honor the Seagoing Cowboys
who helped usher in peace after World War II.

A seagoing cowboy reflects on visiting the memorial being built where the first shots of World War II had been fired. Gdansk, Poland, July 1946. Photo by Charles Shenk.

Seagoing cowboy Guy Buch, fluent in German, is being interviewed by German media. Buch was part of a special crew of Church of the Brethren seminary and college students intent on having dialogue with German Christians. Bremen, West Germany, July 1946. Photo courtesy of Guy Buch.

Another special crew tested whether black and white seagoing cowboys could work together on the same ship. The cowboys pray together on their return from Poland to the United States. July 1946. Photo by Ben Kaneda.

On this International Day of Peace,
I also honor the Brethren Service Committee and the Heifer Project
whose mission it was to build peace in a war-torn world.

Seagoing cowboy Martin Strate shakes the hand of a Japanese official after a ceremony to celebrate Heifer Project’s shipment of 25 bulls to Japan, May 1947. Photo by Norman Hostetler.

A “Campaign for Peace Action” brochure of the Church of the Brethren Peace Education Department, circa late 1940s. Courtesy of Heifer International archives.

May peace prevail in these troubled times.

~ Peggy Reiff Miller

 

Oceans of Possibilities: Turning Swords into Plowshares

If you missed my program for the Indian Valley Public Library last week and would like to see it, you can tune in to the 56-minute recording here. I talk about the ways in which the seagoing cowboys and the Heifer Project contributed to building peace after World War II. Enjoy!

~Peggy

War Bride Stowed Away on Livestock Ship

An undated newspaper clipping in the Heifer International archives carries this headline:

“Bride, Made Up as Negro Boy By Husband, Signed as Cattle Steward, Stows Across Atlantic”

The article, written by Harry P. Moore, appeared in the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, circa early November, 1946.

At the end of World War II, when American troops moved into Poland, US Army Captain Paul K. Cowgill met and fell in love with a young Polish war widow, Katrinsyka Spicyk. Early in the war, the Germans killed her husband and forced her into slave labor. After meeting Captain Cowgill in 1945, the couple courted for a few months and were married. After Cowgill returned to the United States, they had a dilemma—how would they get Katrinsyka there? They were told it could take weeks or months for her to get accommodations on a passenger ship, and she wouldn’t be allowed on a freighter.

Their transportation problem was solved when Cowgill, now out of the Army, signed on to the S.S. Edward W. Burton which he knew was bound for Poland. The UNRRA ship departed from Newport News, Virginia, September 28, 1946, with a load of 810 horses.

The ship that carried Captain Cowgill to Poland, September 1946. Photo by Nelson Watts.

“On the way to Europe,” Cowgill told Moore, “I looked the ship over carefully and finally decided that a good hiding place would be a big ventilator that was used to supply air to the cattle in the ship’s hold.” He removed some “bolts and minor obstructions” and crawled into the space himself to test it out. It would work.

On arrival in Gdansk, he looked up his wife. Now the question was how to get her on the ship. He realized that the only dark-skinned people the Poles see are those who come on the crews of the US merchant ships. “It occurred to me that it would be just the thing to disguise my wife as a Negro boy,” he said. When they were ready to go, he blacked her face and they went down to the ship.

“She was carrying a few packages and I was ordering her about to make the guard on the pier believe we both belonged on the ship,” he said. The ruse worked and he was able to get her inside the ventilator without being seen. He took a blanket to her, and there she stayed for five days, eating what food he could bring her.

Once the ship was in the Atlantic Ocean, with no possibility of Katrinsyka being taken off ship in Europe and sent back to Poland, the couple turned themselves in to the Captain who questioned them separately. “The girl appeared frightened despite her black face,” he said. Satisfied that their stories matched, he decided to give them a break. He took their statements, made copies, and had them signed. When the Edward W. Burton arrived in Newport News, Captain Simmons accompanied Mr. & Mrs. Cowgill to Norfolk to straighten everything out with immigration and customs officials.

Photo from the Norfolk-Virginian Pilot.

“I am happy now,” Mrs. Cowgill said, “glad to be in America. It is such a fine place. Everybody laughs and I shall laugh, too.”

If my research is correct, the couple died just months apart in 2009 and 2010 and are buried side by side in Arlington National Cemetery, with Katrinsyka having changed her name to Anna Anita and her maiden name being Prosniak.

 

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.

Creighton Victory cowboys adopt a Polish boy to their crew

The seagoing cowboys on the S. S. Creighton Victory trip of July 4, 1946, to Poland were a special crew of interracial students recruited by the Fellowship of Southern Churchmen for UNRRA to determine if they could send integrated crews to Europe. The practice up to that time had been for cattle tenders to be segregated into all white or all black crews.

Fellowship of Southern Churchmen interracial seagoing cowboy crew at Hampton Institute, July 1946. Courtesy of Ben Kaneda.

When this Fellowship Crew reached Poland, they took on a special mission of their own – as described in the newsletter they published during their trip called “The Atlantic Daily.” In it, they included profiles of the entire crew. Profile #36 describes their mission:

The thirty-sixth member of the Fellowship Crew could only be Rog Stanislaw, 12-year-old Polish waif literally adopted by the cattlemen. Rog (pronounced Rook) won the admiration of everyone of the S. S. Creighton by his ever-smiling good nature, his good manners, and his honest desire for cleanliness.

The first evening that Rog left the Creighton after visiting with the men aboard, one of the ship’s regular crewmen gave him enough money in the form of Polish zlotych to enable him to buy himself a pair of shoes. Although Rog could speak only one or two words of English and German, his pride of his new shoes was apparent when he returned aboard the Creighton the next day.

Rog Stanislaw aboard the S. S. Creighton Victory in Nowy Port, Poland, July 1946. Photo courtesy of Ben Kaneda.

In spite of the fact that Rog often protested taking gifts from crew members, he was loaded down with soap, candy, apples, oranges, and gum when he had to leave the ship in the evening. Knowing this affable young boy who never asked for a single thing provided the other side of the picture to the large number of Polish children who followed American seamen by the hoards asking for gifts of all kinds.

Polish children beg for treats from Creighton Victory cowboys. Photo courtesy of Ben Kaneda.

On the last evening in port in Poland, the Fellowship Crew took up a collection of 633 zlotych and presented it to Rog who was both bashful and filled with gratitude.

There were tears in the eyes of Rog Stanislaw as the ship prepared to leave Poland. He wanted very much to go to America too. As he stood on the dock waving, waving, and waving, he became a mere speck in the distance as the Creighton Victory headed her bow in the direction of the Untied States of America, the land of plenty.

The suffering of all Poland was brought home to members of the Fellowship Crew time after time in visits to city and rural areas around Danzig but certainly no more lasting impression of the grief and need that exists there could have been seen than the young tow-headed Polish Rog Stanislaw, homeless waterfront wanderer who wanted to become a part of America so badly that he cried openly when his new American friends pulled out for home leaving him standing on the dock . . . alone.

An Amish Seagoing Cowboy’s Story: Clarence Stutzman

Clarence Stutzman grew up in an Amish community in Hutchinson, Kansas. When I interviewed him in 2015, he said, “It’s still a mystery to me how my mother let me go.” When he read of the need for seagoing cowboys in the Mennonite Weekly, he thought, I can do that.

“I was a light-weight guy at the time—17 and 120 pounds. I remember my mom saying, ‘Aw, you’re too small, they wouldn’t take a child like you.’ I went ahead and sent in a letter. The first thing I knew, I get a telegram to report to New Windsor, Maryland. No questions asked. No physical, no interview, no nothing.”

It was a big thing in those days to get a telegram. “I guess my folks were so shocked they didn’t know what to do.” He said they didn’t want to go against MCC, so they agreed and bought him a train ticket.

On arrival at the Brethren Service Center in New Windsor, Maryland, where the seagoing cowboy office was located, he sorted clothing and did other relief jobs for a couple of weeks the end of December 1945 until his ship was ready to go.

On the campus of the Brethren Service Center, former Blue Ridge College. The old gym on the right housed much of the relief activity. Photo credit: Howard Lord.

There he learned that he had to be 18 to get a seaman’s card at that time. Fortunately for him, his birthday was December 31, as his orders were to report to his ship January 1st. He made it on board the S. S. Virginian when it departed from Baltimore for Poland January 4, 1946.

The cowboy crew on Clarence Stutzman’s ship, the S. S. Virginian, January 1946. Photo courtesy of Alpheus Rohrer.

“The trip was life-changing for me,” Stutzman says. His experiences mirrored those of other cowboys who went to Poland. Floating mines in European waters, a tour by UNRRA in the back of an army truck that took them to former concentration camps and battlefields, acquiring souvenirs. He bought a songbook from an old peddler scavenged from the abandoned Danzig Mennonite Church .

The Danzig Mennonite Church destroyed in World War II. Photo credit: Stutzman’s shipmate Richard Rush.

Title page of a songbook retrieved from the Danzig Mennonite Church by seagoing cowboy Levi Miller, summer 1946. The title means “The Day Begins.” Photo by Peggy Reiff Miller.

One souvenir in particular initiated the change in Stutzman’s life—a belt buckle that he cut off a dead German soldier’s uniform. Being Amish, he knew the German language. The buckle bore the words “Gott mit uns,” meaning “God is with us.” Having been taught all his life by his Amish and Christian upbringing not to fight, this hit him hard. 

Belt buckle of a German soldier. Peggy Reiff Miller collection, from the
family of cowboy Milton Lohr.

“We were thinking of the Germans as very heathen for what they were doing—not that there might be Christians on the other end of the fighting. When I saw that this was a Christian fellow and he was killed on the battlefield, how Christians were fighting each other, it put me into a real paradox theologically.”

Unlike Amish cowboys Cletus Schrock and Lores Steury who were excommunicated for taking their trips, Stutzman was welcomed home and treated well. His theological questioning had begun, however. About four years later, he left the Amish church and joined a Mennonite congregation. His obituary says he lived an “incredibly full life….He was full of ideas, grand plans, ingenuity, wonderlust [sic], and eternal optimism.” He traveled the world and had two patents.

“My experiences were real wide,” he told me. And it all started with a cattle boat trip to Poland.