@ABWorsham4 probably still scared the starving civilians , carrying rifles and 2 bullets each, half to death at the time though .
Guardians of Freedom; Pearl Harbor
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We did a great local history project with my mom and her elementary students back in 2000, called Guardians of Freedom. The timing and subject were great, I learned a lot about the war from this perspective, and the local vets were all from different forces, specialties, so it was the full range of theatres, experiences and roles represented. Many of the veterans have since died so it was an opportunity that wont be repeated, though the stories should and will be.
Many, many stories from this–I did 5-6 of the interviews but I edited the entire collection of 30-40 stories for readability.
Good one was from a guy that was already in the army in 1941, he was stationed at Fort Benning, GA if memory serves. He was standing guard over a road bridge on or near the base, in the middle of the night. This is a lonely duty and not much excitement in the country at night but at about midnight he sees another solider coming his way, hurrying along and, hours before the pre-dawn relief.
“Hey, are you here to relieve me?”
“Did you hear the news? The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor!”
“Oh gosh, that’s horrible! What are we supposed to do?”
“Sarge told me to tell you, and stay here.”
So, the response of the higher-ups to a full scale imperial surprise assault on a major naval base was to double the guard over a bridge in rural Georgia forty five hundred miles away, in the middle of the night.
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Great story thanks for sharing haha!
I had a long response I wrote, explaining that it may not have really been all that ridiculous to double the guard on that bridge.
I don’t have time to get back into the details. But during the WWII era and the 20 years prior, there was alot of concern about how quickly the US could respond to a foreign invasion. in 1919 a map (the pership map) was made up showing some 20,000 miles of critical roads deemed urgent to improve/repair/maintain. This later became part of the eisenhower interstate defence system.
In 1919 a Motor Transport company was ordered from DC to San Fran (Eisenhower was with the corps!) it took 56 days to arrive… (Granted they took 6 days of breaks, and fixed bridges they broke, but still…)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1919_Motor_Transport_Corps_convoyThe bridge, even in rural Georgia, if sabotaged, could have delayed major army mobilizations by hours or days. So perhaps doubling that guard wasn’t maybe all that insane after all! :P and it never hurts to keep soldiers busy in times of war!
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Thanks for the response Garg, I’ll do some more installments from the collection.
And you’re right–doing nothing was probably not an acceptable response, so they did the only thing that they reasonably could. It does stand in contradiction to the other, futile or counterproductive preparations made before PH (the radar debacle, the aircraft-parking and ammunition readiness issues etc.)
How people react and think in that present (of a historical situation) is going to seem unusual to people who, with the benefit of hindsight, get to “peek at the cards” and see how things really played out. We armchair generals live in the second perspective, not the first.
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