This Military Service Page was created/owned by
SSgt Harry McCown (Mac)
to remember
Ellis, Howard (Doc), MSgt USAF(Ret).
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My wife and I are in full retirement at our home in Moreno Valley, California. I quit high school in University City, Mo., and enlisted in the Army Air Force on Oct. 24, 1942 and served with the 1074th Signal Svc. Co. and then 877th Sig. Svc. Co., from 1943 in England to 1945 at Munchen-Gladbach, Germany. Subsequently I re-enlisted and served in the army communications center, Pentagon, for one year as civilian. Then, in 1946, I re-enlisted in regular army (1946-50)still at the Pentagon, and was TDY-ed to Eniwetok, Atoll, S. Pacific, for Operation Sandstone A-bomb testing, as cryptographer. Subsequently, was assigned to Hq. in West Berlin as editor of post newspaper, BERLIN OBSERVER. IN 1950, was Honorably Discharged from the Army and enlisted in USAF and was assigned to Davis-Monthan AFB, Arizona, as information tech and editor of post newspaper. Subsequent assignments, all as info tech and base paper editor, were at Elmendorf AFB, Alaska, from 1955 to 1957, March AFB, California, 1957 to 1963; then Goose Air Base from 1963 to 1964, then to Castle AFB, Merced, Ca., to retirement in 1965. I met my wife in Berlin in 1949 during the blockade era and we were married in 1952. We have three sons and two daughters and six grandsons...sort of bonus for our military service. After military retirement in 1965 I was a reporter and columnist on a San Bernardino, Ca. newspaper, The Daily Sun-Telegram from which I retired in 1990. 'NUFF SAID.
Other Comments:
DURING WORLD WAR II, as mentioned earlier, I was assigned to the Army Air Force as a (SSgt) Cryptocenter NCOIC in the 1074th Signal Service Co. (commander Lt. Robert Scott Gruhn of Wilmette, Illinois)from Oct. '42 to Dec.'43, from Harding Field, Baton Rouge, La, to Windsor, England, 8th Air Force support command, 8th AF; I was then transferred to similar assignment to the 877th Signal Service Co., 9th AF (company commander Capt. William T. Wills of Cheyenne, Wyo., 16th TAD commander Maj. Joseph A. Plihal). I served with the 877th through Normandy (safe arrival in July '44), through Rheims-Courcy AAF station in France, to Munchen-Gladbach, Germany in April '45 where we remained to war's end. We were,in July '45, returned to France - Camp "20 Grand" at LaHavre, for transport home and then to Laredo Army Air Field, Texas, for processing into civilian life on Oct. 16, 1945...but of course I ended up re-enlisting...smartest decision of my life along with my original enlistment decision Oct. 24, 1942. AND, TODAY, OCT.28,'09, got a letter from - of all people - then 2d Lt. Bob Cross (now 94 years old and Lt. Col., USAF, retired) who was OIC of our communications section in the 877th...he was my boss...we'd found each other via internet several years ago and been in touch until few months ago and I thought I'd lost him and I was the 877th's "last man standing" but Bob reassures me I'm not alone 'though he's in an 'assisted' living home in Maine. He does advise me he's the last of the 877th's officers still standing and neither of us knows if any of my fellow "enlisted men" are still somewhere sharing our old age. I gotta tell, no B.S.involved, our 877th was one of the finest military units serving in the ETO in WW2 and I am grateful Bob Cross is still with us and grieve for those who aren't...they WERE my BROTHERS too.
World War II
From Month/Year
December / 1941
To Month/Year
December / 1946
Description Overview of World War II
World War II killed more people, involved more nations, and cost more money than any other war in history. Altogether, 70 million people served in the armed forces during the war, and 17 million combatants died. Civilian deaths were ever greater. At least 19 million Soviet civilians, 10 million Chinese, and 6 million European Jews lost their lives during the war.
World War II was truly a global war. Some 70 nations took part in the conflict, and fighting took place on the continents of Africa, Asia, and Europe, as well as on the high seas. Entire societies participated as soldiers or as war workers, while others were persecuted as victims of occupation and mass murder.
World War II cost the United States a million causalities and nearly 400,000 deaths. In both domestic and foreign affairs, its consequences were far-reaching. It ended the Depression, brought millions of married women into the workforce, initiated sweeping changes in the lives of the nation's minority groups, and dramatically expanded government's presence in American life.
The War at Home & Abroad
On September 1, 1939, World War II started when Germany invaded Poland. By November 1942, the Axis powers controlled territory from Norway to North Africa and from France to the Soviet Union. After defeating the Axis in North Africa in May 1941, the United States and its Allies invaded Sicily in July 1943 and forced Italy to surrender in September. On D-Day, June 6, 1944, the Allies landed in Northern France. In December, a German counteroffensive (the Battle of the Bulge) failed. Germany surrendered in May 1945.
The United States entered the war following a surprise attack by Japan on the U.S. Pacific fleet in Hawaii. The United States and its Allies halted Japanese expansion at the Battle of Midway in June 1942 and in other campaigns in the South Pacific. From 1943 to August 1945, the Allies hopped from island to island across the Central Pacific and also battled the Japanese in China, Burma, and India. Japan agreed to surrender on August 14, 1945 after the United States dropped the first atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Consequences:
1. The war ended Depression unemployment and dramatically expanded government's presence in American life. It led the federal government to create a War Production Board to oversee conversion to a wartime economy and the Office of Price Administration to set prices on many items and to supervise a rationing system.
2. During the war, African Americans, women, and Mexican Americans founded new opportunities in industry. But Japanese Americans living on the Pacific coast were relocated from their homes and placed in internment camps.
The Dawn of the Atomic Age
In 1939, Albert Einstein wrote a letter to President Roosevelt, warning him that the Nazis might be able to build an atomic bomb. On December 2, 1942, Enrico Fermi, an Italian refugee, produced the first self-sustained, controlled nuclear chain reaction in Chicago.
To ensure that the United States developed a bomb before Nazi Germany did, the federal government started the secret $2 billion Manhattan Project. On July 16, 1945, in the New Mexico desert near Alamogordo, the Manhattan Project's scientists exploded the first atomic bomb.
It was during the Potsdam negotiations that President Harry Truman learned that American scientists had tested the first atomic bomb. On August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay, a B-29 Superfortress, released an atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan. Between 80,000 and 140,000 people were killed or fatally wounded. Three days later, a second bomb fell on Nagasaki. About 35,000 people were killed. The following day Japan sued for peace.
President Truman's defenders argued that the bombs ended the war quickly, avoiding the necessity of a costly invasion and the probable loss of tens of thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of Japanese lives. His critics argued that the war might have ended even without the atomic bombings. They maintained that the Japanese economy would have been strangled by a continued naval blockade, and that Japan could have been forced to surrender by conventional firebombing or by a demonstration of the atomic bomb's power.
The unleashing of nuclear power during World War II generated hope of a cheap and abundant source of energy, but it also produced anxiety among large numbers of people in the United States and around the world.
My Participation in This Battle or Operation
From Month/Year
January / 1942
To Month/Year
September / 1945
Last Updated: Mar 16, 2020
Personal Memories
Memories With the D-Day anniversary this June 6 I just wanna recall that day with my unit, the 877th Signal Service Co., 16th ADG, 16th TAC, 9th AAF...we were stationed at Swindon, England when the guys hit the beaches of Normandy. I had jeeped to a town called Tidworth (as I recall) to pick up some special D-Day back up crypto codes (I was then NCOIC of the unit msg. center and code room. On the way back to Swindon my driver Cpl. Fredericks and I stopped at a pub for refreshments and heard on the radio D-Day was underway. We jumped back in the Jeep and headed for home base like crazy...and when we got there and delivered our "documents" we joined the outfit at outdoor chapel to pray for all our buddies in every damn unit hitting that beach...the rest of the day was spent wondering "when do WE GO...?" But we didn't get there until July 14 when it was safe and sound...thanks to our combat guys. I now live a short distance from March Air Force Base at Riverside, Ca. Recently I went to the BX there and when I walked into the store I spotted an old guy (like me) sitting however, in a wheel chair. He wore a field cap with an emblem reading "Battle of Normandy". I went up to him and said I wanted to thank him for my still being alive "because you and your guys did such a damn good job clearing Omaha and Utah beaches when my guys and I came ashore in July we felt like tourists. He just looked at me for a moment and reached out with a "gimme a hub brother" look...and told me, "in ALL these years since then you're the first guy to say "thanks personally to ME...it means a lot!" At that point his granddaugter came up to fetch him to the car and home, and right there in the BX we saluted each other...and he was gone. How we do span the years. I'd give my soul to see one of my own buds right now...and one day I will. "DOC"
