Pottstown native Harold Cullum enlisted in the United States Army Nov. 26, 1941. On Nov. 8, 1942 PFC Cullum was part of a force that attacked the harbor at the city of Algiers in North Africa. Although severely wounded he survived. He was discharged in November 1945 and returned to Pottstown where he spent the rest of his long life. He died Dec. 13, 2013, and is buried in Highland Cemetery, Pottstown.
Dorothy Gaul was an experienced operating room nurse when she enlisted in the army at the Pottstown Post Office in January 1943. Commissioned as a lieutenant she served in England and France and her unit was packing up to go to the front line in Germany when the war ended. Gaul was proud of her service but didn't like to talk about the wounded soldiers that she worked on. In the photo Gaul is second from the left. Probably taken in France, the nurses' heavy uniforms and the mud-smeared boots show the harsh conditions under which they lived.
During World War II Lorah S. Rhoads was a farmer in Berks County near Pine Forge. Most automobile owners were issued "A" stickers which entitled them to three gallons of gasoline a week. Because the government considered agriculture essential to the war effort farmers received a higher allotment.
Harold Cullum's experience was so unique that historian Rick Atkinson included it in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book "An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943," describing the action as the destroyer "zigzagged from the harbor, smoke trailing her like a veil.
The United States had been in World War II for only eight months in July of 1942 and was faced with fighting a two-front war in Asia and Europe. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his top military advisers made defeating Germany their priority. Of course, the only way to beat the Germans was to invade Europe, but America wasn't strong enough for that yet.
Nevertheless, it was necessary for the U.S. to engage the Germans at some point in 1942 to gain the experience of fighting them and to take some of the pressure off the Russian army that was on the receiving end of the full might of the Nazi war machine's power.
The British favored an invasion of North Africa to gain control of the Mediterranean Sea and stop the German drive on the Suez Canal, to set the stage for the invasion of Sicily and Italy, and to force the Germans to divert troops from the Russian front to deal with the threat to their conquests in the Mediterranean.
President Roosevelt liked the plan and on July 30, 1942, ordered his generals to prepare for it. In late October American forces under Gen. George Patton sailed from Newport News, Va., headed for French Morocco on the Atlantic Coast. At the same time, an American and British force sailed from Great Britain into the Mediterranean to land at the Algerian ports of Oran and Algiers. From there the invaders would push east to Tunisia, driving the Germans completely out of North Africa and setting the scene for the invasion of Sicily and Italy.
The landings took place on Nov. 8 and 9. From that point the combined American/Anglo force joined by a few French troops fought their way east to Tunisia. They reached their goal in early May; the Germans surrendered on May 10.
In the three-quarters of a century since the war's end, the North African Campaign, overshadowed by the massive D-Day invasion of France and the ultimate defeat of Germany, has largely been forgotten, relegated to backwater status. Nevertheless, the campaign and the timef rame in which it was fought were very important to the people of the Pottstown area.
There is no way to know how many Pottstown area soldiers were in North Africa, but combing the back issues of The Mercury reveals the stories of a few of them.
On Nov. 26, 1941, Pottstown native Gerald McGee was inducted into the U.S. Army. The 27-year-old McGee lived with his widowed mother at 516 N. Franklin St. and drove a bread truck for Schultz's Bakery. McGee was part of the North African Campaign. On May 3, just as the fighting in Tunisia was ending, his mother received a government telegram informing her that her son had been killed in action in Tunisia on April 9, 1943.
The same day another government telegram was delivered to William Drumheller in Reading. Like Mrs. McGee, he received bad news. His son, Roger Drumheller, "died in North Africa on March 30." Drumheller was drafted into the Army in February 1942 from Boyertown. In addition to his family he left behind his fiancee, Gladys Hartline of Douglassville.
Harold Cullum of Pottstown provided an illustration of the old predestination adage that "a man who was born to be hung can't be shot." This is not proposing that Cullum merited the rope but, based on what happened to him on Nov. 8, 1942, it was obvious that he was not meant to die of lead poisoning.
Very early on morning of Nov. 8, Cullum was part of a force of 686 American soldiers aboard two British destroyers who were sent to capture the harbor of the city of Algiers. The plan was an abject failure. One of the ships didn't land. The ship that carried Cullum did. Cullum along with the rest of the infantrymen on board stormed ashore and began fighting. Later, after the destroyer was hit by five French artillery shells (The French Vichy government initially fought the Allied landings.) the ship left the harbor, stranding 250 American soldiers ashore. Harold Cullum was one of them.
Cullum's experience was so unique that historian Rick Atkinson included it in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book "An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943," describing the action as the destroyer "zigzagged from the harbor, smoke trailing her like a veil.
Stranded on the dock with a bullet wound in his arm and "nine perforations of his abdomen," the Pottstown private was picked up by French soldiers and taken to a French hospital where, as he related later, French doctors saved his life.
On Feb. 28, 1943, Cullum, on a nationally broadcast radio program from Algiers, told Americans that "his life was saved by the use of blood plasma." While the lucky private was in an American hospital in Algiers a Purple Heart was presented to him by Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, commander of the African Campaign.
So, it took more than fusillade of French bullets to kill Cullum. After his discharge he returned to Pottstown where he lived at 281 Prospect St. He died on Dec. 4, 2013.
Because war planners knew that the invasion of Europe would require millions of men, on Dec. 5 1942, Mercury readers learned that young men who became 18 years old by June 30, 1942, were required to register for the draft. A quick survey in The Mercury shows that in 1943 the number of Pottstown area men drafted increased; on Feb. 1, 181 men boarded a train at the Pottstown Reading Railroad station on their way to become soldiers. On May 7 an even 200 did the same. It wasn't long before young men became a scarce commodity.
The increasing need for weapons and supplies for the military forced a cut in production of goods for civilians. Beginning in late 1942 rationing began. Food was rationed. Everyone, including children, had a ration book that enabled the purchase of food.
By the early 1940s America was awash with cars and trucks so it is no surprise that gasoline and tires were tightly regulated. A car owner's weekly gasoline allotment was determined by what his automobile was used for. This system was controlled by the Office of Price Administration (OPA), a federal bursary that had the power to place ceilings on all prices except agricultural commodities and to ration supplies of other items.
Most car owners had an A sticker which entitled them to three gallons of gas a week. To further curtail the use of automobiles in January of 1943 the OPA announced a ban on all "pleasure driving" in the eastern part of the United States. To make sure the directive was followed, local police were instructed to note the license plate numbers of cars that violated the stricture.
OPA agents came to Pottstown on a Saturday night in late January 1943 to conduct their own survey. Their evening here resulted in five people being cited as violators. The pleasure ban was later relaxed, but by 1943 was reinstated. When a Mercury reporter paid a visit to Brookside Country Club in May he found no cars in the parking lot and that the few patrons inside had either walked there or ridden a bicycle.
Tires were so scarce that in November 1942 the OPA decreed that all tires must be registered, and that no one could own more than five. It was a complex procedure and to meet the timeline area schools were closed and teachers were turned into the clerks to help everyone through the paperwork. Pottstown area car owners complied and by November 8,000 people had dutifully registered their tires.
Human nature being what it is, it was inevitable that there would soon be a brisk black market for tire sales. Following an investigation in February 1943, the OPA announced that it had secured indictments against 150 people from the Pottstown, Limerick, Royersford, Boyertown and other nearby communities. Among them was a gas station owner from Limerick who was also a justice of the peace and clergyman from Royersford who also operated a gas station. When smoke cleared most got off with a fine, but the Royersford preacher was sent to jail for six months.