The other day I had just finished emailing an aunt about my grandfather's war service record when I had a very lucky strike on The Googles. I came across this Ebook written by Leonard H Cizweiski and Donna Burolla (as best as I can tell, there is no attribution page!).
Here is the book. The unit is the 32nd Machine Records Unit. I had heard his job involved early computers, and he had come to my class in 6th grade to talk about his service but sadly I have absolutely no memory of this! So how pleased was I to discover this deeply personal account. The book is based on the diary of Otis F Wollenberg, and contains photos of the soldiers, little biographies of each, fragments of letters (not attributed though), an account of the locations they passed through, and how their job worked during the war. It was such a valuable resource I wanted to make sure to share it for others who might be interested.
Here is the blurb about Malcolm "Our junior repairman from Seattle is uniformly interested in all things mechanical and chemical. He is especially interested in building model planes and in photography. His civilian job was IBM Operator for Boeing in Seattle. His father is an Episcopal minister there. So far he is unmarried, but most girls fall for him if given a chance". This is so funny, given my memories of my grandfather as a quiet nerdy guy, but his young fellow soldiers saw him as quite the ladies' man! Of course I knew about the model planes and I have one of his old cameras now, but some of this was new to me!
Apologies for the poor quality of the photo, I took a phone photo of a computer screen since I'm awful at remembering how to sccreenshot on all my various devices.
Machine Records Units utilized early IBM computers to punch and count punched cards to produce reports for command. They were crucial to the flow of correct information and worked in 'round the clock shifts to make sure nothing stopped the signal. Here is an overview of MRUs from Peter E Greulich, and another from Charles M Province about his personal experience with MRUs.
My grandfather worked for Boeing up until 1943 when he enlisted, and it sounds like this unit was made specifically for folks like him, as the unit was comprised of insurance actuaries, accountants, bookkeepers, and data specialists of all kinds. At that point he was listed as a machine operator, so he may have been familiar with this type of machine. After the war he got his electrical engineering degree via the GI bill, and returned to Boeing.
The most fun photo--when I saw this, I laughed out loud!
It is captioned "Post taking a helmet bath in the apple orchard at St Lo". I laughed because a) he's naked! and b) I had recently seen a very similar photo, of him bathing al fresco on a camping trip with my grandmother for their honeymoon!
This book is so fantastic, and I have a much better idea of these gentlemen and what they did, and my grandfather's part in it. We had always heard he was "backstage" during the Battle of the Bulge, but now I know they got "battle credit" for being near the lines at Soumagne, quite a bit North of Bastogne. I also read that, after the unit arrived in Germany, they were present at Buchenwald after it was liberated but before all the prisoners had been moved. I had never heard this story and can only imagine what their experience was like.
Because this unit was behind the lines with HQ, they never had to fire their rifles, and didn't lose men in action, so their unit was very tightly knit. They still experienced privation and difficulty, though not on the scale of front-line combatants, and they bonded and you can tell by the jokes and stories written within. I feel incredibly fortunate that I got this look into their service together.
I have some photos from 32nd MRU reunions that I'd like to share, but I have no data to go with them yet (like, WHO are the people in the photos?!) so perhaps I will eventually learn enough to share them with something valuable.
