Sheplives


Last Record Update: None
Army Shep's Army Career

Camp Atterbury

Shep was discharged through Camp Atterbury on December 16, 1944

People Shep spoke of: Army

	Name
•	Troop Train Ernie
•	Cletus
•	Parsons
•	Lt. Col. Abercrombie
•	Abernathie
•	Birnbaum
•	Ira Bodkins
•	Lt. Cherry
•	Homer Croft
•	Dye
•	Roswell T Edwards
•	Elkins
•	Gasser
•	Goldberg
•	Goldwater
•	Goldworm
•	Sgt. Kowalski
•	Nash
•	Captain Robinson
•	Private Sanderson
•	Szymanski
•	Watkins
•	Wilson
•	Zinsmeister

Where Shep Makes Reference To This Subject:

Time	Date	Category	Title
•		Army	Army
•	November 16, 1962	Radio	Great Expectations

Links to Further Information:

• Camp Atterbury website

Photos:

Shep's Army Record

Courtesy: Ed Murphy

Record: 2595 / ID: ar_2595

Notes and Assets

Dating Notes

No Notes Found

General Notes

Notes

Source: Jim Clavin (Date: 01-04-2009)
According to Atterbury webite history page: The base also served as an internment camp for approximately 15,000 Italian and German prisoners of war. They were housed in a large compound located on the extreme western edge of camp. Many of them left the POW compound during the day to work on nearby farms and in canneries in Southern Indiana. Symbolic of these captured prisoners, is a place of worship aptly named "The Chapel in the Meadow" located about a mile from the Post Stockade. It is a building, 12 x 18 feet, of poured concrete. Inside the Chapel is an altar and a coating of red paint, in lieu of carpet, leads in from the open front. The Madonna, Angels, St. Anthony, and the Dove of Peace were painted, in fresco style, into wet plaster by Italian prisoner artisens. Barbed wire has been strung around the Chapel to protect it from animals. The German-American and Italian-American clubs of Indianapolis are making plans to preserve the Chapel and to hold yearly memorial services in honor of the 19 Germans and Italians who were in the Atterbury Cemetery. The remains of these POWs have since been moved to the National Cemetery in Springfield, Illinois. From: shep@yahoogroups.com [mailto:shep@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of caribroamer1 Sent: Sunday, January 04, 2009 12:36 AM To: shep@yahoogroups.com Subject: [shep] Report From an Old Geezer With Too Much Time on His Hands Did some research from following sources" 1. Ft Monmouth History and Time Line 2. Shep show circa 1972, "Italian POWs" 3. Copy of first sheet of Shep's Army Discharge paper showing his years of service as 1942 to 1944, located in Jim Clavin's website. My conclusions based on circumstantial evidence (not admissible in a court of law) are: 1. The Army Signal School trained thousands of Signal Corp troops during WW2, during the years 1941 thru 1945. Most, if not all, Signal Corp technicians were trained here. 2. Radio Sets SCR-268 and SCR-270, the Army's first air search radars, were developed at Ft. Monmouth. SCR-270 was inproved version of the SCR- 268. SCR-270 was the type used in Hawaii, and detected the Japanese air attack of 1941, but the radar operators report was ignored by senior officers. The story about the senior officers resisting the installation of the radars, and discounting the usefullness of information coming from those radars is a tale unto itself. Shep was trained on SCR-268 (or possibly SCR-270) 3. Having listened to Shep's show on Italian POW's, I was puzzled about where he came across the POW's. He went into a lot of detail about the POW's and how the local Italian population would deliver wine and Italian delicacies to the POW's through the barbed wire fences. 4 In the Ft Monmouth documentation, I learned that several hundred Italian POW's were moved to Ft Monmouth in 1944 to do service work such as housekeeping, etc. to relieve US soldiers formerly doing this work. 5, I conclude, Ipso Facto, Cogito Ergo Sum, and In Hoc Agricola, that Shep was at Ft Monmouth in 1944. All of which still leaves me puzzled about the 1944 discharge date. Did he spend the rest of the war undercover as an OSS secret agent parachuting into occupied France or Yugoslavia? Did he entertain War Department brass with stories of his childhood? Did he serve as a radar instructor after attending the school? Can anyone offer answers to these burning questions? Zeke from Salem, tossing and turning at night thinking of these issues.

Technical Notes

No Notes Found

Research Notes

No Notes Found

"Can you imagine 4,000 years passing, and you're not even a memory?
Think about it, friends. It's not just a possibility. It is a certainty." - Jean Shepherd - 1975