Edward L. Rowny
41st Engineer Regiment
Q ..
What was your first assignment after you graduated from West Point?
A ..
My first assignment was a very fascinating one in the 41st Combat Engineers under
"Smokey Joe" Wood, a colonel who became a general officer during the war. He
was a very imaginative and colorful individual. Although not a graduate, he was
a great booster of West Point. The unit was the famous 41st `Singing Engineers,"
stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, a Negro unit.
Wood was absolutely convinced the U.S. would soon be in a war and trained us
very hard. He was the butt of many jokes; many of his fellow officers thought he
was simply apple poiishing and trying to get ahead of his contemporaries. Wood
not only believed war was imminent but that it would start with an attack by Japan.
He was imaginative to the point of being thought eccentric. He constantly avoided
routine engineering tasks and during maneuvers employed us like a cavalry unit.
He loved playing General Sheridan.
We were around a campfire during a maneuver in South Carolina, on December
7, 1941, when we learned about the attack on Pearl Harbor. Everyone was stunned
except Wood who could have said, but didn't say, "I told you so." What he did
say was, "You men haven't seen anything yet. Now that we're in a war I'm going
to act like I've gone berserk. That's the way to rise to the top in time of war."
Wood's eccentricities were many-too many to go into. For one thing, he wouldn't
have any married officers in his unit. He wanted each to be, like himself, a
bachelor. "I want officers to be celibates, dedicated like Catholic priests to a
single cause, unencumbered with the responsibility of a family." He often quoted
the old saw: "If the Army wanted you to have a wife they would have issued you
one.
Most of Wood's ideas, though far out, were conceived to further the Army's
missions. For example, Wood hated the idea of "fatigue details? Soldiers should
"train, train, train,* he would say. "Things like peeling potatoes, cooking,
washing dishes, picking up trash, and other menial tasks should be left to
handicapped civilians who can't fight. Soldiers should train and fight."
Wood considered himself the best trainer in the Army. After the war broke out,
new units began to be formed for which we had to provide cadres, a new cadre
every month. Wood's concept was to give up his best men-"We owe it to the
new units," he said, "to start them off right. Besides, who can train new recruits
better than we?"
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