Part I

 

 Part II

 

 

727th Italian civilians [The Yankee Boomer - Londra, 9 marzo 1944, pagine 1-2] [ 509 ITALIAN CIVILIANS KILLED BY FUMES WHEN FREIGHT TRAIN STALLS IN TUNNEL

More than 500 Italians lost their lives last Friday in what was probably the most unusual and the most ghastly catastrophe in the history of world railroading. They died, 509 of them, peacefully and without ever knowing what was happening to them, as the freight train on which all but the crew were unbidden guests stalled in the depths of a tunnel, and the locomotive poured lethal fumes into the damp darkness. 

Searching parties who struggled into the approximately two-mile-long bore through a lonely mountain stretch of southern Italy to see what was delaying the train found the victims lying and sitting about as if asleep. There had been no panic, no struggle for life. They had simply grown drowsy, drifted into unconsciousness and died while they wondered what was causing the train to halt. News Slow in Arriving Because the mammoth tragedy occurred in a desolate and isolated stretch of countryside, it was a ful day before reports reached the outside, and even last night many details were lacking. It was known, however, that the train was all-Italian as to crew and passengers. Barring the off chance that the body of a straggler would be found as the macabre task of clearing the tunnel progressed, no Allied military personnel perished. First reports of headquarters of the Miliatry Railway Service, which supervises all schedules on the Italian State Railways in Allied hands but had no actual hand in the operation of this particular train, indicated that only one crew member had escaped from beneath the mountain. This was a fireman on the locomotive.Reuter's news service said some fifty persons were hospitalized. Reuter's put the death toll at 502. 

Gray orders investigation Brig. Gen. Carl R. Gray, Jr., Director General of MRS, immediately appointed an investigating board headed by Lt. Col. Fred W. Okie, commanding officer of the 727th Railway Operating Battalion, to report on the accident. The board contained both American and Italian railway personnel. General Gray, in a formal statement, characterized the tragedy as one of “the most regrettable and the most unusual” in his experience of railroading. Pending the report from his board, he declined to discuss possible causes. Railroad officials pointed out that a large preponderance of empties in the freight car string brought the death rate to such a huge figure. There were thirty-three empties in the train. 

Kind-hearted Italian train crews, not burdered with responsibility for valuable military freight as are the MRS crews who haul Allied supplies, may have looked the other way as the hordes of refugees and ex-Italian soldier filled the empties at stops before the tunnel was reached. Or they may have been unable to cope with the rush. The train's schedule called for a stop in a yards not far before the tunnel point of entry, and it was dark when that stop was made. Since only the fireman appears to have survived out of the entire train crew, the crew's responsibility for the ticketless passengers may never be definitely fixed. What caused the train to stall in the tunnel was not immediately apparent. Railroad men said, however, that the train was on a upgrade. The fireman may have been down on the “deck” to avoid the worst of the exhaust gases and hence not kept up sufficient steam, or else the wheels may have commenced slipping and the engineer may have been too overcome to correct the situation before it was too late. 

The accident recalls a similar one recently in which an Italian locomotive fireman died. In that particular accident, the engineer, the rest of the crew, and several passengers owed their lives to the coolness and efficiency of an American MRS train crew. As in Friday's catastrophe, the Italian Crew of a locomotive were overcome by tunnel gases, but the Americans in the cab with the ferrovieri brought the engine out. The they managed to revive all but the firemen. Among the passengers they saved were two Italians nuns Balvano train disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balvano_train_disaster

'Titanic of train disasters' by Nancy Cunningham on Scribd

Obituary for Ralph L. Ott Ralph L. Ott, 93, of Chambersburg passed away on Sunday, October 27, 2013 at Menno Haven Nursing and Rehab Center He was born on Thursday, December 25, 1919 in Scotland, PA the son of the late G. Harold and Rhoda (Jones) Ott. He spent his early years in Chambersburg, attending schools in the borough, graduating from Chambersburg High school in 1937. He attended Tampa University in Florida on a Football Scholarship. Ralph worked at the Pennsylvania Railroad in Chambersburg before being drafted into the U.S. Army in 1941. He spent four years in the Army, 2 ½ years of which were in Iran with the 730th Railway Operation Battalion. Upon his return home, he married Helen Wise on November 8, 1947. He returned to the Pennsylvania Railroad shops in Chambersburg until 1972; then took employment at Letterkenny and retired from there in 1981. Ralph was a member of the First United Methodist Church and the following organizations: The Chambersburg Club, V.F.W. Post # 1599, American Legion Post #46, Amvets and the Marine Corp League. He is survived by his wife, Mary Wise Ott, who he married on November 25, 1977, two sisters: Evelyn O. Franklin and Shirley O. Barkdoll, nieces and a nephew. He is also survived by a step-son, David Shetter, wife Angela and two step grandsons: Vincent and Mitchell. The Funeral Service will be held at the convenience of the family. Burial will be at Lincoln Cemetery. Online condolences may be expressed at www.sellersfuneralhome.com

Bruce writes ....
Henry Brill was born in Yorkville, Manhattan, New York 24 January 1913. Yorkville was known then as a German neighborhood and --according to the 1920 Census, it has 8 year old Henry's language at home as German. His German speaking ability, I believe, came in handy in the army as the 757th advanced through Germany and then set up headquarters in Kasel, Germany. At the same time, my Dad was Jewish and he was given two different sets of dog tags: his official with "H" for "Hebrew" indicating he was Jewish; and an alternative set with "P," Protestant, for when the battalion landed in Europe and confronted the Jew-hating German forces (in case of capture) . Dad didn't talk much about the war except to mention that there was German resistance when his unit landed on the Normandy beach (even if it might have been a day or two after D-Day) and he hid behind a rock, which, he said, was "his best friend" that day. He also mentioned that when advancing on towns, that artillery would bomb certain factories and leave others untouched, which seemed strange to him. Only just now after viewing a conspiratorial-type documentary in which they maintained that Auschwitz and other concentration/extermination camp were actually more factories of "robber barons" which were big profit makers since they used slave labor. (and maybe --this is my own "thinking out loud"-- that's why Auschwitz

itself wasn't bombed??) Back to my Dad..... If you watched "Band of Brothers," one of the running themes was American GIs risking their lives to get a hold of a German Luger. Dad had one and sent it home (along with three sniper rifles, a German officer's sword, a Voigtlaender camera and other "souvenirs"). Before the war he tried to open a couple fruit and vegetable stores and each time they didn't make out and closed. . . so, the joke was that once he became part of the war effort, the war, too, would soon be over too. One very piquant story: sometime in May '44 he sent my Mom a letter from Great Britain and asked her to "give Aunt Sherry Berg birthday wishes for her birthday on June 6th" ..... Get it?....My Mom knew D-Day would be June 6th at Cherbourg ("Sherry Berg"). No one can figure out how Henry and Evelyn Brill knew when and where D-Day was going to happen when General Eisenhower himself didn't know! (I WISH I had that letter: no "experts" believe this story). After the war he began working for the Post Office as a letter carrier. Retired in the mid-70s to Florida. Loved fishing.

Taking the photo of my wall with Henry's grandson's (named for him, "Henny,") caricature along with photos of Dad and Mom with the trophy fish, brings my attention to another Henry-Brill-WWII item: that knife hanging on the wall. My dad made that knife himself in Kasel from an airplane propeller! I forgot to mention his rank: He was a buck private going into the army AND COMING OUT. I don't understand that. It SEEMS like it was a conscious decision not to take any rank ...not even Pfc, which, I thought came automatically after a few months of service. Am I mistaken? When I was in the army in the early 70s, I got E-4 in about a year. Dad was in for 3 full years. 

 Thanks to Bruce for sharing these amazing photos  ...

Thanks so much to author, Michael Heinzel for providing to the blog an English translation of a chapter pertaining to MRS units from his new book, Buch Eisenbahn in Ostbelgien nach dem 2. Weltkrieg: Besetzung - Befreiung - Wiederaufbau (Railway in East Belgium after World War II: Occupation - Liberation - Reconstruction) 

Reports from a German, American and Belgian perspective The railways in the Belgian-German border area served as deployment lines for the German invasion of Belgium in the First and Second World Wars. 

During the First World War they were only slightly destroyed, but then mostly ceded to the kingdom. During the Second World War, the destruction was serious. The local events of the years 1940-59 can be reconstructed using original documents from the Federal Archives, diary reports by American railway pioneers and official SNCB files from the Belgian train station Weywertz, and interesting insights into the political upheavals of that time can be gained. 

You can purchase in German here you can purchase in German here: Softcover 14.7 x 21cm 103 pages : https://bityl.co/B7jj 

 

If you can't see image click here : https://drive.google.com/file/d/165mOKwCNngH8q7hrAjwgEaQJGOWIOzK9/view?usp=sharing

 A Tragic Truck Train accident in Palestine kills 3 members of unit on their way home from leave to visit Jerusalem.

Sam Reed has a wooden desk plaque of his grandad's,(759th Railway Operating Battalion T/Sgt. George A. Akers) who he thought had been given to him by a soldier he knew in training who later died during service. I did some snooping in old newspapers and contacted a few families of these soldiers through Ancestry. 

Sam thinks the "Bill" might be PFC William Evans - he writes ...  "he was with the 711th and was killed in action Oct 31 1944 in Carthage, Tunisia. The 711th and 759th overlapped at Camp Claiborne for nearly two months in Sept. and Oct. 1942, and they did some training at the Southern Railroad shops in Meridian MS."

Some articles from his local paper and his internment record.

other from the unit were Eric Fall:

Sam writes about his grandfather, T/Sgt. George A. Akers.. 

I'm also attaching his formal Army photo in dress uniform, along with a snapshot of himself in a regular duty uniform and one of his wife, Mary Elizabeth (King) Akers that he carried throughout the war in a small brass envelope-shaped photo holder with two photo windows. He's wearing corporal's stripes in the snapshot, which would date it somewhere between May 2, 1941 and June 2, 1942. Outside of Army service, Grandpa worked for the Missouri Pacific in the DeSoto, MO
shops his whole life (other than a short stint when the DeSoto shops were closed and they were all commuting by train to Dupo, IL). He was a reservist, and called up to active duty with the 140th Infantry in late 1940. When the 727th ROB was formed, he was transferred there, and then was one of the core members of the 759th when that unit and others were activated and some soldiers from the 727th were transferred
to the new units. 

After the 759th was transferred from Italy to France, he was temporarily transferred to the 756th, HQ company, at Marseilles. In the last month of the war, he was returned to the 759th.

I'm attaching a much better scan of the 759th group photo if you would like to upload it. My grandfather, T/Sgt. George A. Akers, Company B, is in the fourth row, just left of the leftmost officer. When I had his copy of the photo professionally unrolled and mounted after 70+ years rolled up, I also had a high-quality scan and several duplicates made by a local photo shop.