Mount Vernon News

MOUNT VERNON — Nelson Reed is modest about his service to his country.

“I do not believe I merit attention on Veterans Day because my Army job was like working in an automobile dealership service department,” said the World War II veteran.

Nonetheless, the great war could not have been won without the great contributions of those behind the lines supplying and supporting the troops fighting on the front lines.

Reed, who was born June 23, 1916, was ordered to active duty on March 18, 1941, in the U.S. Army Ordnance. He served as an automotive repair officer in the American and European Theaters of operation. It might sound like a cushy assignment, but it was not without its dangers.

“In Chicago, with 28 others, we received a shipment of improperly refrigerated yellow fever toxin,” Reed recalled. “Seven of us went to Fort Sheridan Hospital with yellow jaundice and one died. Luckily, I had no jaundice.”

Later that year, Reed was assigned to the 624 Ordnance Base automotive maintenance battalion at depot G-25 in Tewkesbury, England. The depot performed truck repair and did engine rebuilds. It was not all that far from the action, as Reed recalls.

“On D-Day the heavy weapons moved through town, shaking the old buildings enough to bring down ceiling plaster,” he said.

Even though it was England where he was stationed, Reed did have some challenges with a different culture.

“A few days after arriving in Tewkesbury,” he recalled, “I had the tricky job of making payroll for the company I was assigned to. I found the pence, shillings and pounds confusing to work with at first. But I did finally figure it out.”

Reed found more than a few differences between American and English ways of doing things. Small things, but important things.

“Don’t ride on English trains without a ticket,” he advised. “You need a ticket to leave the platform at your destination. Once, without a ticket, I received a nice little lecture from an official lady. She then proceeded to take me around back of the station and freedom.”

Reed’s experience with the English was not all frustrating. He did make friends with two families while he was stationed there.

“It was my good fortune to meet two hospitable English families while I was there,” he said. “They were the L.R. D’Arcy Fisher family in Tewkesbury and the C.W. Elvis family of Coventry.”

These two families welcomed Reed and some of his buddies into their homes. This added a little touch of home for a bunch of GIs far from home. These were also friendships that endured.

“I got a chance, after the war, to visit them while I was on a business trip,” Reed said.

Although far from the front, the British Isles were under attack at times and under full military operations. Reed recalls a lot of activity in the days leading up to the D-Day invasion.

“Prior to and on D-Day I remember we saw a lot of heavy weapons moving south,” he recalled.

Reed and his buddies were in a position to see some history in the making, if not in the happening.

“We joked about hearing some stupid reports of people seeing planes without propellors,” he said. “Of course we later found out those were Frank Whittle’s jet planes flying out of Gloucester or Worcester.”

Nor was his job without incident.

“One day I received orders to be part of a convoy taking 30 90mm guns from our depot to the coast for shipping to France,” Reed recalled. “This was about the time the Germans had their 88mm guns holding up Montgomery near Caen. The round trip took 31 hours and we couldn’t sleep the whole trip.

“And several things went wrong. The artillery tractors had caterpillar tracks and they would skid going down cobblestone streets. To keep them from Jack-knifing, we had to set the gun brakes on maximum. This made the guns bounce, leaving black tire marks every 5 feet.

Other tractors were parked at an angle, which caused the rain to drip into the distributors; this caused rust, which stopped the engines from running.

“We fixed that by using carbon tetrachloride fire extinguishers to spray the rust,” Reed recalled. “This got us another 20 miles.”

Toward the end of the war, the depot was used to house German prisoners of war.

“We had about 7,000 prisoners at the base,” Reed said. “These men had been trained to tell their captors they were trained as either bakers or locksmiths. After they spent some time sweeping floors, one might admit to being a welder.

“One day we got a shipment of eggs. We offered to share these with the prisoners. This was turned down because they only wanted something that could be put in a stew. Stew meant everybody got equal rations.”

After the war, Reed married his sweetheart, Marjorie. They have one son, Edward, and two grandchildren.

Reed had been working at Allis Chalmers in Milwaukee before the war, and returned to work there after separating from the military. In 1951, Reed moved his family to Mount Vernon, where he went to work for Cooper-Bessemer. He retired in 1981.