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Editor’s note: This is the first in a two-part series from area farmer Willis Anderson of Tiskilwa.
I was born to Henry and Ida Marie Anderson on Dec. 4, 1919, at our family home in Wheatland Township in Bureau County with the assistance of a doctor’s attendant who traveled to our home by horse and buggy from Whitefield. I had two sisters and a brother.
As a child, my playground was a grove of maple trees where I used a worn out shovel from a one-row cultivator to make roads to run my toy Avery tractor. We also had a toy wagon replica of the large, wide steel-rimmed wheel wagons which were used to carry double or triple boxes. These were used to haul oats or to pick corn. Someone had made us a toy hayrack to fit on our toy wagon, and when Dad made loose hay, I would take my toy wagon and hayrack out to the shocks and load them up to carry back to the barn. Other chores included having a cow to milk, helping my mother gather chicken eggs and carrying drinking water to the house.
I attended the Lone Tree One Room Schoolhouse where I completed my grade school education. Around that time in 1933 is when I attended my first Farm Bureau meeting. I went to Tiskilwa High School to focus on more studies and play some of their team sports until I graduated in 1937. I also earned a State Farmer degree/pin during my senior year.
In 1936, Dad gave me the task of hauling bundles to the thrashing machine. It was 114 degrees the first day of thrashing. In those days, we cut the oats and wheat with the binder drawn by four horses which made bundles tied with twine. The first pass around the fields bundles were kicked out one at a time. My brother and I had to shag these bundles until we gathered three or four and move them out of the way, so the binder could cut the oats on the outside round. If you had a 40-acre field of oats, that meant we had shagged bundles a mile around the field.
After that, there was also a bundle carrier on the binder that would hold three to four bundles. After three or four bundles, he would start a win row, and the next time around, we would drop bundles off at that same spot. By then, on the third round, we could start shocking the grain.
Soon after graduation, I was preparing to attend Rockford College to further my studies, but a man had offered my brother Everett and I 80 acres of land with rent that was half of the crops, and we just couldn’t turn it down. Without these 80 acres of land, I might not have been a farmer. On Jan. 1, 1939, my brother, Everett, and I bought out half of Dad’s machinery, horses and livestock. On Jan. 1, 1941, we bought out the remaining half of Dad’s machinery and livestock.
My brother-in-law, Ted Moeller, who married my sister Edythe, came from Nashville, Ill., to work as a hired hand on a farm. He was able to save up enough money to rent a farm and that was another way that men were able to become farmers in those days.
Looking back on the period from May 31, 1937, to Jan. 1, 1939, when we acquired half ownership of the farm equipment, I believe that was our apprenticeship. We plowed, planted wheat, oats and corn, filled manure into the spreader, pitched hay, scythed weeds, trimmed two miles of hedge, picked corn, shelled corn, butchered hogs and beef, plucked chicken feathers, dug post holes, mended fences, cleaned the barn and hauled bundles of oats. I also managed to find time to play third base on the Tiskilwa Church League team, attend Sunday school, attend church and Epworth League. Everything we did for those 20 months was our introduction to being a farmer.
The next four years would prove to be critical
The next four years would prove to be critical, not only to our country, but to myself as well. As we all know, the United States was not prepared for war. We had too few tanks, too few guns, too few airplanes, too few ships of any kind, and too few soldiers and Marines prepared for combat. We had German subs operating off of the East Coast, sinking cargo ships within sight of our country. Somehow our factories were quickly geared up to produce tanks, artillery, Jeeps, trucks, ships and planes.
In the case of ships, the blueprints for LSTs (Landing Ship Tanks) were beginning to take shape on Dec. 7, 1941. As the blueprints were drafted, they were sent to shipyards to take on the task of building a model of an LST. Changes were soon made on the blueprints, expanding the 280-foot-long design into a 327-foot, 9-inch ship — large enough for 20 big tanks on the tank deck and artillery, Jeeps and trucks on the top deck.
They also had room in both sides of the ship to bunk up to 250 military personnel. The crew’s quarters were in the stern and the officer’s quarters were above them on the top deck. We started out with one 3 and 1/2 inch gun located on the stern. We had one 40mm anti-aircraft gun on the bow and six 20mm anti-aircraft guns on the deck. We didn’t pick up our LST until almost a full year after I enlisted.
I enlisted in the U.S. Navy Reserves on Jan. 20, 1942. Boot camp training was at Great Lakes, Ill. From there, I was sent to mechanical school where we worked with lathes and other mechanical equipment for four months. Then I was assigned to Cleveland, Ohio, for diesel school for eight weeks. After completing that training, we were sent to Solomons, Md. From there, we were put in a draft of 80-100 men and sent to Brooklyn Navy yard where we boarded the LST-311.
On Jan. 11, 1943, the LST-311 was officially commissioned. I was a member of the engineering force that operated the ship’s diesel engines, and I was assigned to the main engine room. There were three watches that consisted of four hours on and eight hours off. On each watch, we had four men in the main engine room and three men in the auxiliary engine room. The men in the main engine room controlled the throttles on the diesel engine that propelled the ship. We also had to check the boiler room, the shaft alleys and the refrigeration unit. I was put in charge of our watch in the main engine room. After a shakedown cruise, we acquired a new captain.
We were sent to New York to pick up an LCT (a 105-foot Landing Craft Tank) to put on the topside, 250 army soldiers to fill the bunks and 20 tanks to fill up our tank deck. We then headed to Arzeu, North Africa. On July 10, 1943, we were unloading our cargo in Gala, Sicily, with our two pontoons in front of our ship so the vehicles could be transported to the beach. At that time, LST-312 was on our port side, and LST-313 came in on our starboard side. German dive bombers dropped bombs, striking our pontoons and splitting them in half. Another bomb went down the elevator shaft of LST-313, igniting a huge fire. The soldiers driving the vehicles died in their vehicles on the tank deck, one sailor died at the bow section, and many had suffered burns and injuries.
Our captain retracted the ship and put our bow section next to the stern section of LST-313, and we rescued 81 men and transferred them to a hospital ship. LST-311’s captain, Captain Coleman, received a Navy Cross and our ship received a commendation. It took us seven to eight trips to Africa to restock the Army supplies to Sicily. On Sept. 9, while we were on Solerno Bay waiting to unload the soldiers and supplies, German 88s located up in the mountains zeroed in on our LST-311, and we got underway just in time. We landed on the Solerno beach twice on the first day, escaping more German 88s. We also made trips back to North Africa to restock supplies for Solerno.
Read more of Willis Anderson’s story in Tuesday’s BCR.