Bringing the boys home with Project Green

Yet here in Trinidad there were still food shortages, car and bicycle tyres were as scarce as hen’s teeth and, although there weren’t as many of them around, the Yanks were still here in Chaguaramas (where they were to stay until 1967) and Waller Field/Fort Read (until 1949).

Hundreds of thousands of US and Commonwealth troops were still in Europe. Now that the fighting was over they wanted to come home; as the days, weeks and a month or more passed they became restless. They’d done their bit (or not, as the case may be), now they wanted to throw off the restrictions of army life, the rules, regulations, saluting and drills and go home to their wives, their children, their sweethearts.

The only way to avoid a mutiny was to get the troops home as quickly as possible, leaving regular troops to keep the peace in countries occupied by the Germans and in Germany itself, (as opposed to men conscripted — in the British and Commonwealth forces — and drafted — in the US — into the army) until the civil authorities could take control. Troopships, luxury liners converted to carry troops, were, until then, the only way of transporting troops across oceans; but voyages across the Atlantic ferrying troops were too slow to please those conscripted or drafted into the armed forces, whether they will or no.

‘Project Green’ was the US Army Air Corps’ solution to the problem of repatriating troops in record time. This was an airlift of mammoth proportions in which Wallerfield and Mazanilla were to play key roles.

The airlift began in May, 1945, continuing through June, July and August. For three and a half months, Wallerfield was the world’s largest airport with aircrafts taking off and landing at the rate of one every three minutes.

Never before had so many men been moved by air from one continent to another. With so much air traffic, safety was the prime consideration. Project Green demanded, and got, the very best air traffic controllers to regulate the flow of air traffic. In four months (give or take a week or so) Project Green moved eight divisions (that’s 100,000 men) from Trinidad to Miami with surprisingly few accidents or crashes.

Just as the troops had to adjust to life in the front line, and in the battered, immediately post-war Europe, so, the Army felt, they needed time to adjust to civilian life once more. That time, for those coming through Waller Field, was spent in Manzanilla, whether they liked it or not.

The Army decided the ideal place for two weeks’ rest and recreation for the returning troops would be the peace and quiet of the beach at Manzanilla. As troops left the transport planes they were marched to lines of trucks waiting to take them to Manzanilla. When they arrived at their destination they saw troops lined up with their kit ready to board those same trucks that would take them to Waller Field and the planes waiting to fly them back to the good old US of A.

Gaylord Kelshall says for four months there was a constant stream of trucks carrying troops to and from Manzanilla. There were also bored US troops who didn’t appreciate the peace and quiet of South East Trinidad, trading whatever they had with the local people for cash to get to the bright lights of San Fernando and Port-of-Spain.

Project Green made history in the annals of warfare and troop movements. Yet, had it not been for the Berlin Airlift Project Green might have been forgotten. After the mammoth airlift the plans and complex schedules were filed away in archives in Fort Read, where they might have stayed until they were eaten by termites, or been sent back to the US when Fort Read was abandoned.

For younger readers who may not have heard of the Berlin airlift here is a brief summary of the crisis that nearly started a Third World War. After WW II Germany was divided into four sectors, three for the Western Allies, the US, Britain and France, and one, in the East for the Soviets. Berlin, the former capital city (as it is again today) lies to the East and therefore well inside the Soviet sector but as it was the largest, most important city in Germany Berlin, too, was divided into four sectors.

In June 1948 the Soviet Union tried to control all of Berlin by blocking the roads from the West leading to the city of West Berlin. The world was on the brink of a Third World War as the US and British cooperated to organise an airlift to bring food and fuel into the City. The planes flew down a narrow air corridor to bring supplies to the city, a corridor that even the Soviets dared not block.

As it was in Waller Field, so in Berlin, planes were taking off and landing on Berlin’s two airfields every three minutes bringing in relief supplies. The airlift lasted for a year, to be precise, until May 12 1949 when the Soviets gave up the attempt to control the city and lifted the blockade.

Supplying a city of around two million people was a daunting task. It had never been done before - or had it? War veterans remembered the US supplying Chinese troops with war materials by flying ‘over the hump’ (the Himalayas), and the Atlantic Airlift supplying ammunition and equipment via Waller Field - and the rapid repatriation of troops from Europe, also via Waller Field.

Gaylord Kelshall relates that the newly formed US Air Force sent cables to Fort Read asking for the files on Project Green. These files, together with the files on flying ‘the hump’ were the blueprints that saved Berlin.

Kelshall also tells of a couple of bizarre happenings as the world tried to sort itself out after WW II. In the first, two Frenchmen arrived in Trinidad, both asked for transport to French Guiana (now Cayenne) to accept the surrender of the Vichy French who controlled that French colony during the war. One of the Frenchmen was the representative of General Charles de Gaulle of the Free French who had fought against the Germans throughout the war. The other Frenchman represented General Giraux of the Vichy Government that had collaborated with Hitler.

The US authorities who, obviously, hadn’t been following events in Europe very closely, scratched their heads. Which one should they send? One imagines they must have tossed a coin —and sent the Vichy representative to accept the surrender of the Vichy authorities in the colony.

The second strange happening came to light only five or six years ago when Gaylord Kelshall got a letter from a former US serviceman in the 33rd Infantry Regiment. He claimed he had seen wounded troops being carried out of a plane in Waller Field. The US veteran said he was told they’d been injured in a battle in Dutch Guiana (now Suriname) while defending the bauxite installations.

In tribute to those who defended these islands I end this series with a short, edited, excerpt from the log of USS Patrol Craft 469. "We arrived in Teteron Bay early afternoon October 3... I was informed an army aircraft had bombed a submarine near the Orinoco Delta, a surface vessel was required to determine (whether or not it had been sunk)." Although he had been on duty since 4 am, and two officers and 8 crew had gone ashore and not returned, he sailed at 1 am on October 4 through the Bocas and went full speed ahead (20 knots) then slowed for a sonar search of the area off the Orinoco delta.

"It was 12.15 p m when they made contact with the Army aircraft that had bombed the submarine. For the next three hours PC 469 made runs over the area dropping 26 300 lb depth charges, spotting debris and life jackets rising to the surface in a welter of diesel and bunker oil.

"I was just about to return to Trinidad," writes the author of the log, "when a message dropped from another Army aircraft" informed him of a lifeboat with survivors. "We discovered that the lifeboat was from the torpedoed SS Caribstar . . . with" 4 officers and 28 crew. "21 men were very seriously burned and all were covered with bunker oil. . . . a cargo light was required so we could see to remove the burned survivors from the lifeboat. All hands turned to except for a crew for the No 1 gun and a depth charge crew. I held my breath until we could dowse the light, but by 1900 hours" (seven at night) "all 32 were on board . . . and the seriously injured" moved to lie on tables in the mess "and in every spare deck area with all available hands working diligently to clean the suffering men."

They tried desperately to save one man as the writer decided to return to Trinidad at full speed, breaking radio silence to inform the base what had happened. Sadly, the badly injured crewman died. It was 9 in the morning of October 5 that USS PC 469 moored in the dock at HMS Benbow where British and US doctors and ambulances were waiting to take the injured survivors to hospital . . . and the writer, at long last, got to climb into his bunk for a well-deserved rest.

So, let no one say that WW II was no concern of Trinidad, or Tobago. We may not have realised it, but without what so many see as the American Occupation, had Britain collapsed we could have been next on Hitler’s menu — and, remembering his treatment of the Jews and ‘inferior races’ what would our fate have been then?

Comments on this series to annehilton@rave-tt.net.