The Ghost Mountain Boys - James E. Campbell [20]
On May 7, the convoy crossed the International Date Line, and eight days later the ships docked at Port Adelaide in South Australia in the early afternoon. The 32nd Division had traveled 8,500 miles in twenty-one days.
Throngs of Australians turned out to greet the division. As the men walked down the gangplank, they received a hero’s welcome that rivaled MacArthur’s. Some of the men expected “to be met at a primitive wharf by aborigine porters on kangaroos.” What they got instead were young Australian women who swooned at the handsome American GIs.
“I could get used to this awful quick,” Willie La Venture said, winking to his best buddy Stan Jastrzembski. La Venture and Jastrzembski had been through a lot together, but they had never seen anything like this reception. They had not even fired a shot in defense of Australia, and already they were being celebrated as heroes. According to Jastrzembski, “Young women were throwing flowers, blowing kisses, waving handkerchiefs, and crying.”
The adoration was short-lived. Officers herded the men onto trains as swiftly as they could, and shortly after six that evening the division was bound for one of two camps outside of Adelaide—the 126th went to Camp Sandy Creek, and the 127th and 128th went to Camp Woodside, thirty miles from Sandy Creek. Two hours after leaving Adelaide, the battalions arrived at the appointed camps in the dark of the night without lights to guide them. Both Sandy Creek and Woodside were under strict blackout orders.
“Damn, it’s cold,” Jastrzembski said, stepping off the train. “It’s like winter. I thought Australia was supposed to be warm.”
“Where are the beaches and the girls?” someone asked.
“They’re here, all right,” another guy said. “The army’s gonna surprise us.”
The following morning they were not joking around. Camp, they discovered, was a bunch of tin warehouses and huts with canvas roofs and no insulation. Their beds were nothing more than burlap bags filled with straw.
The various units spent the next week getting settled. They worked fast because company commanders were eager to get them on their feet again. After three weeks at sea, the men had grown soft, and because of the seasickness, many had also lost weight.
By late May, the division began its “toughening up” anew in South Australia’s gently rolling farm country. “Toughening up,” at least initially, meant basic, no-frills road marches. Eventually, as the men regained their strength, they performed scouting, field, and patrolling exercises, and put in lots of hours at the rifle range.
Like many of the men of the 32nd, Stanley Jastrzembski was dumbfounded to find himself in Australia. Jastrzembski was twelve years old before he ever even left Michigan. He was a small kid but wiry and athletic and did the high jump and broad jump for the Polish Falcons of the National Polish Alliance. When the Falcons were invited to LaPorte, Indiana, for a regional track meet, Jastrzembski accompanied the team. Although he won two medals in LaPorte, he will always remember that trip for another reason: The Muskegon team stayed in a hotel. There, Jastrzembski took a bath in a real bathtub for the first time in his life.
Although the division was being prepared for battle, the men felt more like wide-eyed sightseers on a tour of “Down Under.” Adelaide had a powerful draw on them. A city of roughly a million people, it offered abundant entertainment. According to Stutterin’ Smith, who was no puritan, soldiers quickly learned to indulge in the “Aussie penchant for having a good time.” The men learned to “Give ’er a go” Australian style,