Army & Navy – Persistent Poles

Someone in the Army Service Forces, which thinks of everything, thought that U.S. invasion troops would need a lot of telephone poles. Two years ago troops had scarcely landed on North Africa when ships and trucks arrived laden with poles from the U.S., poles from Argentina, native poles — 8,000 in assorted sizes from 20 to 40 feet.

Signal Corps Lieut. John Johnson, of Atlanta, Ga., and others took a baffled ‘ look at what A.S.F. had sent, and hurried on. Combat units merely unroll their telephone wires along the ground or string them through handy trees. They have no time to put up poles.

But Service Forces officers had their orders and they carried them out in the old Army way. As the invasion moved across Algeria, they moved the poles. Trucks carried the supply (which included crossarms, insulators, copper wiring) some 400 miles over the mountains to Constantine, on to Mateur, on to Bizerte.

That winter was cold, and soldiers finally found a use for the poles. By the time the Army began jumping into Sicily and up through Italy, some 5,000 poles had dis appeared into G.I. bonfires and cookstoves. But last week Lieut. Johnson groaned again. Onto his beach in southern France a ship was unloading the remaining 2,800 poles. “I’m afraid when the war is over and I am back with my family,” Johnson declared, “someone is going to deliver those things to my backyard.”