Jim Trecker

Jim Trecker, Army 101st MP Battalion

I was a member of the Military Police (MPs). We covered from Rome up through Milan with our A, B, C, and D companies and headquarters. We were responsible for all of that area, policing the troops. It was strange duty, because Italy had surrendered before and were not really our enemy. The Germans who were occupying we were after. So it was a kind of strange situation that we were the military police.

I caught the tail end. I didn’t see any combat. Actually, it was interesting that I came over in December, 1945. Japan gave up in August and I was really trained to go to Japan. I went into service in June and even when we got on the transport to leave the States we thought we were going to go through the Panama Canal and go to the Pacific. We were issued jungle gear, mosquito netting, and so forth. We went south past Florida and then we turned east.

So they didn’t even tell you when you were on the ship?

I was told that the worst time to cross the Atlantic is in the winter months and that is why we went so far south and then across. I left from Norfolk and it would have been too rough.

How old were you at the time?

Eighteen. I thought it was interesting that we got there and we had all kinds of troops wanting to go home and we were replacing them. The war was over, both in Japan and Europe, and the troops all wanted to get home at once.

Well, they couldn’t release everybody at once, so they did it on a point system. If you had been in a big battle, you got so many points. If you were married and/or you were wounded, you got points. I thought I was going to be in the Army for the rest of my life! The troops that saw us coming were delighted because we were replacing them and they were going home. When I first got over there, we had Australian, New Zealander, British, Polish, every kind of troop you could think of at the ports all waiting to go in their own direction home.

I didn’t know there were troops from New Zealand?

Oh yes. The Battle of Italy had all mixed troops. We had the famous 442 unit. That was the Japanese American outfit that won all kinds of merits. We actually had a couple of those in our outfit. They were latecomers and didn’t get to go home with the regulars. I trained as an infantryman, actually a rifleman, which was probably just cannon fodder. When we got over there, I landed in Naples. We were being held at the University until we were assigned. All of a sudden, they said I was going to be an MP. It wasn’t too bad a duty because there was a thing going on between Tito up in Yugoslavia and the Italians arguing over Trieste. It was kind of a standoff. We were sending some of troops up there as just a figurehead.

So I said I don’t want to play soldier, I would rather be an MP. We carried out all kinds of duties. Florence, for instance, had been bombed several times. The Germans blew all the bridges across the Arno River so it would slow down the Allies. So when we got there, we had one way Bailey bridges which needed two MPs, one at each end, to get the traffic through. We had town and city patrol and we guarded the Officers’ hotel.

It could be fun because there were not just American officers there. So we would be standing there, looking at the shoulder insignia trying to figure out what they were. In saluting, it was fun too, because we were to salute the officer and then he was to return the salute. We tried to beat him by lowering our hand first.

I was trained on a rifle, and now I’m carrying a .45, so we had to be trained locally in basements to shoot and how to use the darn thing. The only other assigned weapon was a Thompson machine gun. I was on burial duty and we had to bury a Merchant Marine that committed suicide in the harbor and left a note that he wanted a military burial. We were issued the old Springfield rifles.

We had experiences with black marketing and had to stop that. We had a lot of German prisoners in compounds outside of Florence. They ran their own camps themselves. There were no problems because they did not want to go back to Germany. The Russians were in the east and they did not know what would happen to them. The only problem we had was when we were on town patrol and an Italian would run up and shout “Tedesco, Tedesco“ and we would say “Where?” and there would be one or two Germans walking along looking in the windows. “Tedesco” means “German” in Italian. They didn’t like having these guys walking around. We would take them back to the compound.

They didn’t want to escape too far?

No. We had one fellow who fell off the back of a truck and hit his head. We took him to our dispensary. He kept saying “Don’t send me back” in broken English and in German.

The thing that then happened to me was that I was in “A” company which was regular policing. The one thing I learned in the MPs was there was no such thing as a holiday and we ran three shifts. If you got off a shift at midnight, you might be expected to be back on duty at 8:00am.

Eventually, I got transferred to Headquarters. I had different duties there, but it wasn’t playing a policeman all of the time. And then I was transferred to Livorno, to the harbor. And then I got transferred back again to the medical detachment of the MPs. I thought “I’m no medic.” We ran a medical dispensary in town for any military people medical attention. One day I went on duty at 5PM. When I got there, they said they had a surprise for me. There was a soldier who had died in a motorcycle accident between Livorno and Florence. Grave Registration arrived and would not take responsibility for the body until I stripped off all of his clothes and took inventory of everything. I was very reluctant to do this. I was only 18 or 19 at that time.

At this dispensary, I would be on duty all night and you would have an ambulance driver with you. One night I had a member of the 442 unit with me. We had refrigerators run by kerosene burners. One was out, so he filled it up again and all of a sudden there were flames all over and we didn’t have any extinguishers that worked. It had previously been a restaurant and the walls were covered with a lacquer that fed the flames. We ran out to a nearby British theater and yelled for them to call the fire department. It did a little damage. While I was still on duty the next morning, some officers and Italians came and looked around and then pulled down some of the wall. Behind it was all kinds of wine and silverware that had been hidden before the Germans came. The Germans used the place as a cafe, but never found the items. So the Italians hauled everything away.

It was interesting on board the ship on the way home. I was a corporal and they assigned me duties on the way home and one was to the latrine. They kept calling my name on the loudspeaker and I wouldn’t answer it because there were so many men on the ship and they couldn’t find me.

How long were you over there?

It was over a year. I spent two Christmases there, about 14 months or so. I was in the service two years total.

How long were there US troops over there?

I was the tail end. They even offered me a promotion if I would stay six more months. They didn’t want to send a lot of brand new troops over. They wanted to finish up what they were doing. The Italian government was getting a little nervous – what were we still doing there, we weren’t an occupation force.

So it was almost the winter of 1947?

Yes. I was 18 years old and what did I know? We got over there and they said “do this, go there, eat here, sleep here.” When we got over three our rations were powdered milk and powdered eggs and that stuff, but gradually it got better.

Did the Italians cook for you?

They all wanted to work for us and we used a lot of their people in the mess kitchens but we had our own so called cooks. Some of them had to admit that the Italians knew better ways to feed the troops. While I was over there I was fortunate to go to Switzerland on a short leave and then I got to Paris. Unfortunately, I was a dumb 18 year old kid of German descent. They were announcing that if you had any German relatives in Germany the Army would fly you to the closest point where they lived. They would send you over there to meet them with some rations. They were trying to get the good will started. I didn’t know at the time that I had all kinds of relatives in Germany.

Tell them the General Clark story.

General Mark Clark was our general. Our MP battalion received unit citations from him many times because he used us as his own body guard. When I was in Company A, Mark Clark used to fly into the local airport. We had to block off all of the side roads so that when he got off of the plane, he could sail through with everything blocked. I was assigned to this airport to guard his plane overnight. We thought we could sit in the plane overnight but it was locked so we spent the night sleeping on the tire of the landing wheel. They had us figured out.

Where did you go to school?

I went to Carthage on the GI Bill. I think Uncle Sam was very fair to me. He gave me four years education and a diploma. I am now going to the VA for hearing aids and what not. I have no gripes at all.

The thing that was so amusing was that I was on the Honor Flight to Washington and I had never thought about it until all these people were shaking my hands and thanking me for my service. I thought “That is just nice.” When I got out at 19 years old nobody said anything. You just went home and started living. There was no “Thanks” or anything. Thank God it wasn’t like Vietnam where they were screaming at people.

When did you do the Honor Flight?

May of last year. Wives were not allowed but my son could have gone as my sponsor to look after me. I had a sponsor here in Chicago and when I landed at Dulles, I was assigned a local girl to push me around in my wheelchair. They tried to have everyone in a wheelchair so they could better move you around. They didn’t want to allow any walkers.

I look at my time in the service as a wonderful time of my life. Fortunately, I didn’t get killed or anything. I grew up in Park Ridge. I came here when I was one year old. I went to Maine Township High School. I went to Lincoln for grade school.

Can you tell us about your memory of Pearl Harbor Day?

I was in the basement and we had an old radio down there. When the bombing was announced, everyone asked what or where is Pearl Harbor. There seriousness of the event didn’t set at all. I don’t know if the news commentators didn’t go into detail or what. They just said it had been bombed.

Gradually, as more news was available and you saw pictures on the newsreels, you saw how serious it was and then war was declared by both Japan and Germany. Growing up at that time was interesting. We were picking up aluminum foil, making balls and saving it along with grease in cans. One of the casualties I always felt bad about was that in the park over here there was a WWI cannon. As kids, we would sit down at the cannon and pretend to blow up the school. They took the cannon for a scrap drive.

The other disappointing thing was there was an honor plaque in the park listing the names of all those who served during WWII. All of a sudden they took it down and announced that you could come and get your little brass plaque. I have mine. I am not sure when this happened, maybe in the 80’s or 90’s. It wasn’t meant to be permanent but they should have created something new that could be more permanent. They honor the Civil War veterans but nothing for WWII.

How old was your brother?

He was about 9 years older, a half-brother. He was in the Marine Air Corps. He didn’t live here very much. He was here when my Dad died in 1937. He was going to Northwestern and living with us. When my Dad died, he had to leave Northwestern because the money wasn’t there. My mother just barely held on to the house. Gillick held the mortgage and sold it to a private party. My mother was a registered nurse so she had a good job. My aunt, who was divorced with two kids, came here to live at the house and to take care of us kids. My mother worked to pay off the mortgage. It all worked out. We are still living in the same house. My family originally bought the house in 1928 when I was one year old. There was only one family that lived in the house before us. That man worked with my father and that was how he knew about the house. I was born in Oak Park and we lived in an apartment.

So I was just thinking, that when you were about 14 or 15 Pearl Harbor was bombed. All that time, were you anticipating that you would serve in the military?

It was interesting because I knew I would be going into the service. At that time, the war had started and we were starting to get back casualties. Some of them were fellows that I played football with in high school – juniors and seniors. Word came back that someone I knew had been killed. I knew that I was coming to that. My birthday was in March when I would turn 18 years old and knew when that happened the draft would get you. You have no choice. I wanted to get my high school diploma, so I asked for a deferment from March to June.

They took me the week after I graduated. I went to Camp Walter in Texas for basic infantry training. I got my notice to report to the Des Plaines train depot with quite a few others. They took us to downtown Chicago to the induction center for our physicals. All of a sudden they tell us to stand up, raise our right hands, and you’re in. We then took the old North Shore train to Fort Sheridan. I remember the first night I was in this room with a lot of others and I could smell this GI smell, like a formaldehyde smell from the equipment. When we were at Camp Walter, we would be in a room and they would talk about current affairs and refer to “yellow bellies”. I didn’t know what that meant. But they were building us up with hatred so we could shoot when necessary.

That is true, someone like you who grew up in a small town with a Christian background, why would you be motivated to hate these people?

That is right. The war in Germany was over but they were building us up for Japan which would have been a messy thing if we hadn’t dropped that bomb.

We had some scary times. We had to wear white helmets. Our captain said to keep the helmets on but there was an area on the other side of the Arno River where the people were not very nice to us and we had been shot at a couple of times. We learned real quickly that in the dark we took the helmets off because in the dark they were like spotlights.

As the Germans were retreating, the Americans in the 6th Air Force bombed both sides of the river and blew all the bridges except for the Ponte Vecchio enclosed bridge with all of the shops. The Americans in the 6th Air Force did not get a good welcome from the Italians when they came to Florence. I landed in Naples and was in Pisa and Florence.

Wasn’t it Germany’s plan to take over certain areas after the War so they did not bomb them?

We drove them all the way up to Florence as they created lines. They left it open all the way to the Austrian border so they could get out.

What did you call it when you were manning the corners?

Traffic Control. That was a cute story. We had this section in Florence where an MP would stand out in the middle of this four way road to direct traffic. Well, the Italians don’t like to listen and cars were coming at you. One MP got so frustrated, that he took out his .45 and shoots the back of this truck. He got into a little trouble.

You kept in touch with a couple of men?

Right. There are a couple that I have met with afterwards. I joined the MP Battalion Association. I was in the 101st MP Battalion when I got to Italy. They wanted to bring the 101st home but not the MPs, so they took the 101st home on paper and made us the 503rd. When I got my discharge, it was from the 101st.

One of our jeeps was stolen. The captain was so upset that someone would steal one of our jeeps. He called out all the on and off duty MPs to search for the jeep. We never found it.

I had the opportunity to come home early if I would come home on a prisoner ship. They were taking refrigerator ships that were used to ship over produce and using them as prisoner ships to go back to Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary in the States. They were American prisoners who had committed murder, rape, black marketing, offenses that they couldn’t work off in retention camps in Italy. I decided I didn’t want to escort a fellow GI to prison.

There was a lot of black market activity dealing with the United Nations food ships that came over.

Working in the dispensary, our captain was very nice. We got a bottle of 100 proof whiskey for medicinal purposes every month. The captain said this month he would get it and the next month we would get it and have a party.

Part of the duty was road blocks and I hated that because we would stop these cars driven by Italians. Okay, there are Dunlop tires which are black market and there is no way you could have bought them legally. Take them off. Some of the guys would find Lucky Strike cigarettes or a pound of sugar. The Italian police, the Carabinieris, would be with us and would take over.