Date published: 8/13/2005   –   Boutchyard is a Falmouth native

IT WAS LIKE a scene out of "Titanic." Only, it was the beginning, not the end.

Cases of eggs rolled off long benches onto the floor of the ship's galley, smashing with a thud and oozing huge puddles of yellow and clear fluid. Dishes crashed to the floor. Back in the meat locker, a huge chopping block rolled like a railroad car out of control, toward the wall.

No problem, except that it was coming toward the butcher, Sgt. A.R. Peffley, who was trapped between it and the wall. There was no time to think, so Peffley hopped on top, where there was a slab of bacon, and rode with it, crashing against the freezer walls.

"It was a night to remember, all right," says 85-year-old Edward M. "Ed" Boutchyard, relaxing in his Fredericksburg home 63 years later, as he recalls his trip aboard the Queen Mary. Then home to 18,000 U.S. troops and 1,000 crew, the former luxury ship zigzagged its way across the Atlantic Ocean with the 437th Signal Heavy Construction Battalion, among others, on board. It was sometime between Sept. 5 and Sept. 11, 1942, and World War II was under way.

"I was working at Virginia Sales and Service of Fredericksburg," Boutchyard says. "One of the car salesmen was a pilot, and his friend Red Marshall ran an automobile-parts place. I became buddies with them. They didn't actually own airplanes, but were good friends with a man who had a small airport just outside Fredericksburg."

On Sunday afternoons, Ben or Red would take their friend flying in Piper Cubs or Cessnas. "I just loved that," Boutchyard recalls, smiling.

So it was no surprise that on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Boutchyard was up in the air, flying with his friends.

"There were a couple of Marines flying with us. When we come down, they had to rush back to Quantico," he says.

As they touched ground that morning, Boutchyard had a whole new vision: "I wanted to fly; to join the Air Force, and get in an airplane and take care of them Japs," he chuckles. "That was on my mind when I received my draft notice to report to Richmond Jan. 13, 1942."

Boutchyard went to the local recruiting office, hoping to get a choice of branch of service, but had no luck. But there were vacancies in the Army Signal Corps, which was similar to the Air Force, so he joined.

On Dec. 27, 1941, Boutchyard stepped onto an Army bus headed for Richmond. There, his group was sworn in, given shots and issued uniforms, overcoat and shoes. Boutchyard, 5-feet-6 and 116 pounds, asked for a size-14 shirt collar, and 5 shoe. He was given a size-15 shirt and size-9 shoe. When he protested, he was told: "They're yours. Wear 'em."

Out of a group sent to Camp Lee in Petersburg, he and three others–Okie Noell, Emerson Hunsberger and Ben Parkerson–were assigned to Hampton's Langley Field. "We went to the same company, which formed the 435th Maintenance Signal Company. Then the 432nd Signal Maintenance Company joined us, and we became the 437th Signal Heavy Construction Battalion," says Boutchyard.

"Since we were the Signal Corps, one of our first jobs was to lay an underground cable across the air field. I was out there, with a pick and shovel, digging a trench. The next day, I was on KP [kitchen patrol]. It was warm inside, and they fed me so good, and seemed to appreciate my work.

"As the mess sergeant came by, I said, 'Mister, how do you get a job working in a place like this?' The mess sergeant replied: 'Well, we're going to be opening a new mess hall soon, and we're going to need some cooks!'"

Scared, and feeling inadequate at the prospect, Boutchyard backed off: "I'm not talking about cooking! I just want to work in here, like washing pots and pans, and doing anything else needs to be done. I don't know anything about cooking."

The mess sergeant smiled. "You don't know anything about cooking? Well, there's nothing to it. When it's smoking, it's cooking, and when it's burned, it's done!"

"I can do that," Boutchyard recalls, laughing. "So they made me a cook."

At Langley, Boutchyard worked the night shift, cooking breakfast, starting at 9 p.m. "There were 30 dozen eggs in a case, and we would steam them by the case. Later on in the war, I would be cook to about 15 guys. They got three meals a day, seven days a week."

Being a cook had advantages, he says. "Every night, while fixing bacon and eggs, or something of that nature, the kitchen staff ate steak and eggs."

Boutchyard's unit boarded the Queen Mary and arrived in Grenoch, Scotland, on Sept. 11, 1942. The troops would have arrived a day sooner, but the ship had to change course every 10 minutes to avoid the German submarines that were roaming the Atlantic.

Changing course made the ship roll, and one night when it made the turn, the Queen Mary rolled over at a 45-degree angle, and stayed there.

"With that many troops on board, it could have been tragic," says Boutchyard, "but the ship finally did right itself. We were in the galley, and had stuff going in all different directions."

Once ashore, the troops soon boarded a train and rode through Scotland to Norfolk County, England. The Signal Corps bivouacked in East Anglia, outside the city of Norwich.

In mid-December, the 437th Heavy Construction Battalion finally sailed on the HMS Empress of Canada, headed for Oran, Africa, where its troops' page in the history books awaited them, along with their equipment and rations.

"We left Liverpool in the evening about 4 p.m. Night came; we seemed to be alone. But when I got up early the next morning, as usual, I went up on deck. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but ships, so many you couldn't count them. They had all emerged during the night, in one big convoy."

Knowing he might not pass that way again, Boutchyard took it all in.

"One of the prettiest sights I've ever seen was Portugal, just before we got to Gibraltar. It was a neutral country, and as we passed with the city lights aglow, it reminded me of the Bible: 'A city set upon a hill can't be hid.' When we actually went into the Straits of Gibraltar, the Mediterranean waters were crystal clear, like glass."

In Oran, North Africa, the men dug in, occupying a hillside they called Mud Hill. It was Dec. 22, and it started raining.

"We didn't know what was going to happen, and we were scared to death," Boutchyard recalls.

On Christmas Eve night, the rain stopped, and the entire encampment sang Christmas carols.

"A couple of days later, our rations caught up with us, and we had turkey for several days." remembers Boutchyard, smiling.

C-rations consisted of a can of meat and vegetable hash, a can of corned beef, a can of meat and beans, a couple of crackers, two cigarettes, a stick of chewing gum and some toilet paper. The D-ration, a very hard chocolate bar, was supposed to be used only as a survival supplement.

From there, they moved on to Oujda, Morocco, by train. "Our move to Oujda, along with a substantial part of the American armed forces, was to prevent a counterattack by the Germans. In the spring of 1943, Company A and Battalion Headquarters moved to a place near the city of Constantine, Algeria. Their mission was to build and maintain telephone lines to and around the air bases from Phillipville, near the coast, to the edge of the Sahara desert. It was hot during the day, and cold at night.

"With the capture of the airfield in Palermo, Sicily, things began to really move. Company A, 1st Platoon, was sent to that city. Half of the men were airborne, and the other half, including Boutchyard, went by LST, Landing Ship Tank.

"As soon as the Germans were pushed out, they went north, to Italy. In Sicily, the 437th transferred from the 12th Air Force Service Command to the 12th Air Force Fighter Command. As soon as Sicily was cleared to use those airfields, we had to replace all the telephone lines so that the 12th Air Force could operate.

Once all new telephone lines were built, they moved on to the "boot" of Italy."

Within 10 days, of their arrival, 1st Platoon, Company A, received urgent orders to return to Palermo, Sicily, via LST. "Company A was in direct support of the airfields, and their communications were so vital that we stayed on or near an air base most of the time," says Boutchyard.

When they left Sicily, a British signal unit replaced them, and apparently did a poor job of maintaining the lines Company A had just built. One, by one, the exposed copper wires "were stolen by the Sicilian people, who sold them on the black market," Boutchyard says. Soon, telephone service failed. Company A was tasked with putting the lines back up again, which they did quickly, then received orders to return to Algiers.

Staying in Algiers through Christmas Day, the men's second holiday overseas was unremarkable. They sailed Dec. 28, from Bizerta, Tunis, to Sardinia, a small island in the middle of the Mediterranean, due west of Rome, Italy. There, they hooked up with the rest of their platoon.

First Platoon, Company A, 437th Signal Heavy Construction Battalion, set out in the night of Dec. 29 toward Bastia to the south, its ship escorted by two mine sweepers. "The waters were dangerous, and heavily populated with floating mines," recalls Boutchyard.

The morning of Dec. 31 was remarkable.

"About 6 a.m., I came up on deck. It was still a little dark, but dawn was breaking. In the far distance, I could see the mountains. It was Corsica. Around this time, the wind began to blow, a little. I thought nothing of it. Soon it began to rain hard, and the winds picked up. By 7 a.m, the boat was going every way but straight," he says.

"About 8 a.m., I heard an explosion. It sounded like a depth charge, but it wasn't. One of the escort ships had hit a mine. It was quickly sinking, and I could see the men climbing up on the ship, as it went down. The other mine sweeper was circling, trying to pick up any survivors. We were without escort, and just then, the captain shut the engines down. The ship was just about at a standstill.

"By then, the other mine sweeper was in action, moving on up ahead. I was on the deck, in a truck, reading a book. The water got too rough, so I decided to go below. My bunk was at the bottom of the stairway, where I could get fresh air. Around 11 a.m., I heard a tremendous explosion, knocking me out of my bunk onto the steel floor. The room went dark. I made it to the stair, and up on deck. The truck I had been sitting in was upside down. There was a huge hole that had been blown from the bottom of the ship, all the way to the deck."

The mess truck, among other heavy vehicles, went to the bottom. Boutchyard's photos and most of his effects, inside the truck, went with it.

"They were bringing up the injured from down below, and told us to take our shoes off, we were going to have to get into the water. That's when I lost the leather boots I loved so much," he says. "About noon, the captain gave the order: 'Abandon ship!' It was listing so badly. When I pulled the plug on that CO₂ cartridge of my life belt, I hit the water, and it came up, forcing my arms straight up. It was impossible to swim, so I finally reached down, unbuckled it, and let it go.

"I swam to a life raft. While hanging on to the side of it, the wind carried us around the back of the ship. Around the propeller was this huge bumperlike piece, and when we drifted around back, the ship went up, and down, hitting the edge of the life raft, throwing us all back into the sea. So I tried swimming to the next raft, but before I could get to it, this guy I knew well came near me, and when our heads come up, he grabbed me around the neck, and was about to drown me!" Boutchyard laughs.

"So I got to thinking. I had heard from the Boy Scouts about lifesaving–that if the drowning person fights you, you go down, and they're not going with you. So, I went down under the water. When I did, he turned me loose."

Once rid of the man, Boutchyard was swimming to the other raft when a PT boat arrived. "These guys that they were headed for started screaming and crying, 'It's Germans! It's Germans!' But of course, it was American boats, and they were picked up and carried on to Bastia."

Boutchyard clung to a communal life raft in the freezing waters of the Mediterranean until their raft was rescued by another mine sweeper. It had been 11/2 hours since the captain cried, "Abandon ship!"

But to Cpl. T-5 Boutchyard, it had seemed an eternity.

Of 60 men, they lost two, including their commander.

Once rescued, "it was getting night, and we were all alone, facing another storm," he says. The cards were stacked against them: The ship was overloaded, the Germans were on the island of Elba, and they were alone in the midst of a floating minefield on New Year's Eve.

"Don't even think of a life belt," their ship's British captain admonished the men. "That water is so cold and it's so cold outside, you wouldn't survive 10 minutes," says Boutchyard, in tears, as he remembered the grim choices of that night. "But," he adds, "we could pray."

And they did. "So we turned, into the storm, and did make it back to Sardinia by morning."

The platoon was taken by ship back to Corsica, and sent to its western side, where they stayed in a small village called Aleria. While there, they did telephone work for Corsican radar stations. Boutchyard moved with them, as cook.

In the summer of 1944, Boutchyard got a call from Master Sgt. Okie Noell (one of the original four men at Camp Lee), wanting to know if he would like to be transferred to headquarters in Italy, to be his mess sergeant. Elated, Boutchyard replied "I most surely would love to."

But when Boutchyard reached Pisa, Italy–headquarters of the 437th–he soon realized getting the new job was one thing, and getting the higher rank was another.

"When I got to Italy, I found out the mess sergeant's rating had been given to a mail clerk, back years ago. Even the "first cook's" rating was given to a jeep driver. So I stayed corporal T-5. But I was into it, and we had a good mess," he says.

At headquarters, Boutchyard was no longer in the line of action. "Toward the spring of 1945, headquarters joined up with Company A again, and we went north to Verona, Italy. That's where we were when the war ended. When I was discharged, I left Italy."

Determined never to go anywhere again on a boat, he hitched a plane ride from Naples to Casablanca on a B-17, and departed from there on a four-engine plane to Dakar, French West Africa, with 79 others. From this point, the road home was the same for all the troops: from French West Africa to Brazil to Puerto Rico to Miami, Fla.

Stateside, the troops wound their way north to Fort Meade, Md., where Boutchyard was honorably discharged on Sept. 9, 1945, with a Good Conduct Medal and six stars on his ribbon for each campaign he served in.

As a unit, the 437th Signal Heavy Construction Battalion earned a meritorious service plaque for superior performance from Sept. 15 through November 1944.

Of his youth, Boutchyard remembers: "As a boy, my grandparents lived on the top of the hill on Forbes Street [in Falmouth], where we would sleigh ride, taking sharp, dangerous turns at various side streets, avoiding U.S. 1, until we would slide on down to River Road, and out across the river."

For Ed Boutchyard, the "fear factor" was never really a consideration.

JUDY STOBBE of Stafford County is a Realtor and freelance writer.