Chester Storch Biography - Interview

I was born in Brooklyn in the year 1918 and lived most of my life, young life, in New York and finally left the States in 1942 to go overseas.

Is that for the war? Did you have to go to war?

Yes, that was for the Second World War.

So you were living there for the war? Where were you?

After the war, I returned to the States and lived in Long Island, New York, and subsequently moved to Florida. First Indianapolis and then to Florida and then back to Indianapolis again.

Okay. Were you like serving for the Army when the war started?

When I entered, at the time of the war, the first trip I made over was in 1942, in April of 1942. I had joined with an American construction company that was given a contract by the United States Corps of Engineers to go to Africa, North Africa. At the time, I didn't know where I was going because they wouldn't tell us. Everything was secret. The day I left New York, I went to stay in a hotel in New York, and we were then given— we were told where we were to report the next day And it was in Brooklyn Navy Yard where a ship was waiting for us, and we took off for Africa. We didn't know it was North Africa at the time. And we went by way of South Africa. We were 28 days at sea without a convoy. We were one of the New Liberty ships that supposedly could outrun any German submarine. Yeah, so we were on our own for 28 days in the Atlantic Ocean, and we finally landed at Cape Town, South Africa. And from there we went by— we went by train to Durban, South Africa, and then from Durban we flew by British OAC, British Overseas Airways, There were 27 of us in this crew for the contractor that we were going to do the work in, in Africa somewhere. And from Durban we flew to Larenco Marquis, which is north of Durban, and from there we went to Ethiopia, Asmara. It was all part of Ethiopia, but then the Italians had made a conquest in the Ethiopian area and they separated— it was separated, the Ethiopia from Asmara. And Asmara was the first place that we stopped where we had to do the work. Our work was to build hospitals and recuperation centers for the soldiers that were going to be wounded in the North African campaign. Now that was quite a distance away, but they, at that time, Rommel, the German general, was the head of the German Afrika Korps, which was a very fast mobile unit. And we knew there were going to be a lot of fatalities and wounded, so the plan was to move them all the way back to Ethiopia, or Asmara. And I was there, oh, about 6 months, and then we moved up to Cairo. At that time, Rommel was on the march toward Cairo, and we were sent up there to build various defenses for the U.S. forces. And, well, I stayed in Cairo A little over 2 years. And during that time, Rommel had approached Cairo. Uh, he was about 7 miles away from the city when General Montgomery of the British Army, uh, British Eighth Army, was the one that engaged the Germans at, uh, El Alamein, which was northeast of— northwest of where we were. And he was driven back, of course. And then we continued to do construction work outside of Cairo. We built a huge Air Force base and hospitals and repair shops for tanks and automotive equipment for the US Army, because the US Army was coming in at that time preparing for the invasion of Europe under— through Italy. And, well, that went on for another year, and then finally I decided to return to the States because at that time I had married—

Did you have any family?

Yeah, I had married my wife in 1943 in Cairo, Egypt, and at that time they were going to place a ban on war wives returning to the States until the war was over. Okay. But I wanted to get out before all that happened, and I arranged through my wife's family that we could get— who was a— one of them was a representative of a shipping company, American Export Lines, in Alexandria, Egypt. And he managed to get us on a freighter coming from Alexandria, going from Alexandria to New York.

Okay.

And that's when we returned to the States. That was in 1944.

Okay. Where were your parents like during this time? Were they like—

My father had died the year before I left the States. We were living in Long Island, and we had just moved into a new home that my father and mother purchased, and he died a year later. And one of the reasons for my going with this construction outfit was to get— earn more money so I could help in supporting my mother. Okay.

And were your parents like of German descent then?

Uh, yes, both were of German descent, and My mother was born in Germany, you might say almost by accident, because my grandfather, my mother's father, wanted my grandmother to go and visit relatives in Germany. When she left, she was just starting her pregnancy. She was supposed to come back— this is my grandmother— she was supposed to come back before the child was born. But she got over there and stayed long enough that it was unsafe for her to travel in her pregnancy. She was there several months. So that's how come my mother was born in Germany. But my father was born in the States. And was of German ancestry in the northern part of Germany. Okay.

Do you know where you were at, like at Pearl Harbor? Did you like—

at Pearl Harbor, I was at home. I was still at home. I was working in New York at the time.

Was that before you had left to go?

Yes, that was before I left to go.

Okay. And Did you have to go to Hawaii? What was—

well, when I came back from North Africa, uh, my wife was pregnant, and this was after we had arrived in the States. And I went to work for the agency, the government agency in New York that I had worked with before. And the Japanese part of the war was augmenting, and, uh, we all had a draft status. When I came back from North Africa, I was given a classification that made me eligible for the draft of military service, uh, when and if it was needed. And that happened, uh, about 5 months after I was home, and then I got notice that I had to report for induction in the Army, in the military service.

Okay.

And, uh, at that time, if you were— if you were expecting children, you could get a deferment for a certain period of time. Well, anyway, I did get the Fermet, and I was scheduled to report 3 months after the baby was born. In other words, they gave a 3-month period after the child was born for you to get your family settled, take off. So I got that notice and I went down to the, to the induction center and went through the physical examination, everything, and then They ask you all sorts of questions, and the person that was asking me questions about where I lived and so on, where I had been, and filling out information, at the end he said, "What branch of the service do you want to serve in?" I said, "The Navy." He said, "Why?" I said, "Because all my ancestors were seamen." they all served in the Navy or in Merchant Marines. And he said, "Oh, I'm sorry, today's Army Day. You're in the Army now." I said, "What are you asking for?" He said, "We just had to." Anyway, that's what wound up, and I went into the service. Sent to Fort Dix for military training, the 3-month training they give you before you go overseas. I was just assigned to the infantry, and I was a heavy weapons crewman, which meant that I could operate a.30 caliber machine gun, which is a water-cooled machine gun, and rifles and mortars, anything in heavy— light heavy weapons, as it were. And I received training in all of that. And then after 3 months in, uh, Camp Blanding, Florida. Uh, is where I took the basic training. And then after that, I was given a 5-day pass to return home to visit the family before I would be shipped overseas, which I did. I went home, stayed 5 days, and then I had to report again somewhere where they told me in New York, and they put me on a train, sent me to California. And from there to Hawaii. And in Hawaii, it was just base maintenance work. Since I had the engineering background, I was assigned— even though I was in the infantry, there was no fighting in Hawaii. The fighting was still in the islands and basically what they call mop-up, which was clearing out because a lot of Japanese didn't even know the war was over. When it was over. Yeah. And those islands had to be retaken again, and I was sent to New Caledonia, which is a small island that still had Japanese soldiers in it that we had to either take prisoner or fight, whatever was necessary to get them off the island.

And was this after the war was coming to an end, or is the war was coming to an end? Okay, they just didn't know.

So, well, then, uh, I returned to the States and, uh, started looking for a job like everybody, every former soldier was doing. And I had connected with the company that I went overseas with, and got assignments overseas. I went to Greece. I was there for a little over 2 years, but it was work that was being done by the Corps of Engineers. And in Greece, the civil— the Greek Civil War was still on, but it was confined more or less to the northern part. And the Germans had blown up the Corinth Canal, which was the seaway that connected that they didn't have to go all around Spain. They could come through the Adriatic and down into the Ionian Sea, and that gave a short passage to India. When the canal was blocked, the ships had to go all the way around, and our job was to clear the canal, rebuild the railways, rebuild tunnels that the Germans had blown up, or railroads service and put in new roadways for communication. And while we were there, the civil— Spanish— the Greek Civil War ended, and we were able to complete our work without too much problem.

Did you get to like keep in touch with family a lot? Was that—

oh yes, pretty hard being so far away? Letters, through letters, and once in a while phone calls. The only family I had left really, uh, was my mother and my sister. I had some uncles, but they had died while I was away. But we wrote regularly. I have a souvenir box of probably 300 to 400 letters. My mother completed a scrapbook on all my travels. I kept in touch with her because During the war, when I was in North Africa, practically everything was censored. All your mail was censored. And so I'd write long letters to my mother, and a lot of it was cut out with a razor blade. Sentences would be cut out of the letters, and sometimes my mother didn't know what I was talking about because there was no sequence of thought in some of the things that they cut out. Yeah, my father, uh, was in the Navy, and he joined the Navy in 1905, which was the year that Teddy Roosevelt sent the American Navy, which was called the Great White Fleet, around the world to demonstrate the power of United States to avoid wars, actually. And when he came out of the Navy, he continued with Navy service as civilian in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. And this was during the First World War. And the year before I was born, he was working at the Navy Yard and Suddenly we found out that my mother was under investigation by the Secret Service of the United States because there was a very infamous woman called Anna Storch who was a spy for the Germans. And since the names matched, my mother became suspect as being the spy because my father was working Navy, he had a U.S. government connection, and they were all concerned that my father might be giving my mother secrets for her to send back to Germany, whatever it was. But anyway, they investigated, and at one time they came, forced entry into the house where my mother was living, and ransacked the house— not ransacked, but in an orderly manner and searched the house. And they found letters from my grandmother— not from my grandmother, I'm sorry— from my grandmother's cousins who were living in Germany at that time. They were in touch because since my mother was born there, she had family, relatives that my grandmother had, and they kept in touch all through the war. But they did not find anything that would connect her with the spying operation that was going on with— they called her Madame Storch, was the German spy.

Okay, so did they—

so she was cleared of all suspicion, and eventually they did find out where— arrested, I think they did, or she escaped and went back to Germany. I don't remember what the story was there.

Okay. Well, I think that's actually about it, but I want to thank you very much.

Oh, it's okay. If there's anything else— The service in Hawaii, I was only there a short time before being shipped to New Caledonia, but I had heard so much about Waikiki Beach and all that area. As a vacation resort.

Like beaches?

Of course, it was still during the war. I was anxious to go down to see Waikiki Beach, and I was never so disappointed in my life because the beach was only about 50 feet wide. It was black sand and volcanic rock. I always thought, why would people go to Waikiki Beach when we have beautiful beaches at home in New York?

Was that before any of the things? Were you like in places where you had like seen a lot of the damage, like a lot of your repairs that you were doing?

When I went to Spain, again through this construction company that I had worked with, they were going to build bases in Spain because of the Cold War. This was during the Cold War in the '50s, and there was always a threat that we would go to war with Russia. So the U.S. government decided to build bases in Europe, in the southern part of Europe, because they figured that we need to have close proximity for US aircraft to get over to Russia, to bomb Russia if the war did come on. So in 1954, I went to Spain, and this was only shortly after their civil war, and there was still a lot of destruction in Spain in '54 that had not been repaired because the communists had bombed buildings in various cities and towns. Roadways were in bad shape. Railroad service was bad. But we basically went there to— we had come to an agreement with the Franco government that they would provide land for us to build U.S. air bases in Spain. So I signed on with the company to go over and assist them. In that operation, and I had an 18-month contract. I was supposed to work only 18 months. They knew the work would go on, but at the time, they were prohibited from signing long-term contracts with any civilian employees because of the uncertainty of what was going to happen. Well, anyway, I went for 18 months, and the stay lasted 31 years. I lived in Spain for 31 years because after the— well, the building of the bases was 10 years, uh, actually for the construction. That included Torrejón Air Base, which was the main B-52 bomber base in Spain. Then we had a submarine installation for the U.S. Navy in Rota, which was down in southern Spain. And then we built the 400 a 1,000-mile pipeline to supply another air base northeast of Madrid, which would be a fighter base, where the plan was to have the U.S. Air Force planes in northern Europe, in Germany principally, to be able to fly in what they call fair weather flying. It would get so bad up in Germany where the US air bases were that fighter pilot training was curtailed because of weather. So they decided that down in Spain would be an ideal place for when they can't fly up there, they come down to Spain and they do their maneuvers from Torrejón Air Base, which was 27 miles outside of Madrid.

Now, was your family— They were with you, of course, through that time?

Yes, they permitted me to take my wife and my children when we went to Spain, and then I had my mother join us later on. Then when that was finished, I wanted to come home to the States again, but the Air Force— after the bases were finished, the Air Force wanted me to stay on. For additional work that was going to be done. Since I knew the background of what had gone before, they asked me to stay on for another period of time, and I was with the Air Force for 10 years in Spain.

So after that, you came back to the States?

After that, I came back to the States. And then we moved from place to place.