Ray Riling Sr. Reflections

The story that follows is a short depiction of moments in the life of my father, Raymond Joseph Riling Sr, self-authored in his 84th year. It does not begin to define the man, nor suggest the influence that he exerted upon the family and friends that he gathered and nurtured in the course of his life. Dad is content to recall the times of his youth, and to mostly consider those events that shaped his formation and helped to chart the course that he followed. Dad’s service in the Second World War is something for which he has been particularly proud, and a personal reference for his life accomplishments. There is nothing that Dad held more dearly than his American citizenship.

Ray Riling Jr.

September 2024

Youth

My brother and I were born on March 25th, 1924, to our mother Ada (whose maiden name was Wilkinson), at the Good Samaritan Hospital in Philadelphia. My mother died from peritonitis seventeen days after giving birth to us; she was twenty-one years old.

My brother Joseph and I were raised by two aunts: Lillian and Frances. We grew up at 1425 West Venango Street in a three-story brownstone row home. My grandmother Anna lived with us. We grew up in a great environment. My folks owned a summer home at 850 Stenton Place in Ocean City, New Jersey, where we spent our school vacation each year. Frances taught school, and Lily was mom to us. Growing up in a family with no father present required us to take over the male counterpart once we were teenagers. We did the heavy work; shovel coal for the furnace, take out the ashes. Grandmom had broken her hip and was living on the third floor, and it was our job to empty the commode, deliver her meals etc; anything that was asked for us to do we did with no fuss.

We went to St. Steven’s Catholic School through third grade; then, because Frances was a public school teacher, changed over to Kenderton Public School, two blocks away, at 1500 West Ontario Street. We graduated from there and went to Gillespie Junior high school for one year. Our grandmother had died, and at that time our parents sold both houses and we moved to Mount Airy, to a row home at 7029 Mower Street. As I remember, we were eleven years old. We attended Roosevelt Junior High on Washington Lane. I went there until eleventh grade, at which time I quit and got a job at Bendix Aviation.

I started out as a shop boy in the Precision grinding department, but between jobs I watched and learned how to run the various grinding machines. There were a number of types of machines in the shop; one was a Centerless Grinder, of which there was only one unit in the shop. I was very friendly with the guy that operated it and he showed me how to set it up and run it. He was running a special job making vanes that were part of air valves for Submarines. One night the guy didn't show up and they found that he had passed away, and no one knew how to how to run the machine. I told the Boss that I could, and he immediately promoted me from shop boy to Machine Operator. Six more units arrived at the shop, and I was promoted to Setup Man, plus I had to teach the new operators how to run them.

My brother had left school shortly after me and was working at Midvale Steel Company (a couple of blocks away from Bendix), making more money on the Repair gang there. War jobs were frozen at that time, so I had to say that I was going to enlist in the service to get released from Bendix. I lied, and got a job at Midvale in their grinding shop. While there, we finished ground rolls in pairs, and 16-inch naval cannons for the battleships; the tolerance was one ten-thousandths of an inch. The unit that we used was made by Mesta and was the biggest machine that I saw. One night, one of the operators didn’t properly grease the centers, and the cannon came out of the machine and rolled over him like he was a pancake. We also had rolls explode if the outer surface was ground too much. I figured I had a better chance of not getting killed in the Army, so I quit after two months and enlisted in the service.

I had just turned seventeen. My brother was drafted into the Navy, where he became the chief Radio Man on an LST [853]; he was in the invasion force at Okinawa. I served four years in the Army and was discharged in 1946. I had a lot of time coming to me on the G.I. Bill of Rights, so I went back to school. My brother also went back and finished his High School education. I went to the Radio Electronics Institute at 13th and Arch Streets. The first course was Basic Radio, and after that I took a course in advanced electronics. Television was in its infancy, so I took a course in that, and then a course in Color TV. At that time there were no sets on the market. At the same time, I got a job repairing Radios at a local record store that did radio repair. RCA just brought out their first TV [Model 630]. The other guy in the shop didn’t know anything about TV, so I talked the boss into taking in televisions for repair.

One day we got news that my Boss dropped dead. They closed the store, and I was out of work. I did both shop work and outside repair calls for twenty-five years with that company.

Army Life

On December 12th 1942, I enlisted in the Reserve Corp of the Army. I was only 17 years old and had to get my father’s permission to enlist. I had some Military training as I had spent six months in the Pennsylvania State Guards, training nights and weekends at the Armory at Broad and Callowhill, which was also known as the 103rd Engineers Armory.

I was sent to “Chamberlain Aircraft School”, located at Broad and Spring Garden Streets in Philadelphia, where I had training for Morse code. My cousin Barry Fisher was a ham radio operator and made me familiar with the code because I would use his set to listen to Ship to Shore Stations.

I was then inducted into active service and sent to Fort Meade, MD. The first night there I pulled KP duty. I never saw such a large Mixmaster in my life; you had to put eggs in by the crate. Every hour a new group of personnel would show up to eat.

After being there for about a week, I shipped out to Camp Crowder, MO, for eight weeks of basic training. The training included the usual combat stuff; rifle range, crawling under barb wire (while they fired live ammo overhead), pole climbing, wire laying, obstacle course, etc. The Drill instructors also would surprise us with mock gas attacks (Tear Gas) while marching from one location to another.

There was one guy in our squad that no one cared for, a real F_ _ K UP who would constantly get the squad in trouble that would lead to our weekend pass to town being pulled. The way the Army gas mask worked was by a very flexible rubber “flutter valve” that allowed you to expel breathed air which was obtained from a filter canister through a hose to the mask, but stopped one from inhaling outside air. This gave the guys (I’m not confessing) the perfect answer to retaliate for all the “lost weekends”. We had two options; one was to stuff a sock down the hose therefore blocking safe air altogether or removing the “flutter valve” completely. In the service you “always want to have a backup so we chose both”. The next gas attack proved the most interesting and satisfying one that the squad had ever witnessed. The Platoon Sergeant hit the gas alarm and everyone put on their masks. The guy got three days of KP for trying to remove his mask to get air. Needless to say we never lost a weekend pass again.

At completion of this training, I was assigned to attend Radio School, which was the general training in code (15wpm) and procedure, upon which time you would be assigned to a unit as a field radio operator in the Infantry or some other branch of the service. My grading with the course lead to me to assigned to High Speed School (25wpm), which generally leads to an assignment in a higher echelon station. I finished HSS and was ready to ship out, when I was approached by the Captain with the news that I was to be assigned to Radio Intelligence School.

At this school I was taught the same procedures as if I were a German Radio Operator, and had to show that I could copy German code at 35 wpm to qualify. The course lasted about eight weeks and I breezed through it. I was then sent to “Camp Miles Standish” near Boston, which was the port of embarkation and boarded the British Cruise ship the “Mauritania” that was the sister ship of the “Queen Mary”, which had been converted into a troop ship.

We sailed escorted by a Navy Destroyer and a Navy Blimp for about two hours then our escorts left and we were on our own. The ship did a zigzag course for the next six days as she was very fast and could outrun enemy submarines. About the night of the third day, a submarine was detected and the engines were stopped and we sat silently there for the rest of the night with all water-tight doors closed, ready for the worst. Every day on the trip the British Gun crews would have target practice. The ship was armed with four Twin Bofors cannons, two multi- tube rocket launchers and at the stern a five-inch cannon. They would launch a parachute target from one of the rocket tubes and fire at it. I never saw them hit any, which was very reassuring.

On the sixth day we arrived at the Port of Liverpool, England and disembarked. From there I was sent to a replacement depot called “Fresbie Farm”. The next day I was on a train headed for East Bourne on the coast to join my outfit that originally formed in Texas, the “129th Signal Radio Intelligence Co”. Our company originally was designated the 114th, but I had wondered why it was changed to the 129th. I was not sure if another outfit had been formed using that designation, but later found out it had been assigned to the 3rd Army. As the train pulled into the station, which was the end of the line, and I opened the door I heard this putt-putt sound and looked up to see my first V1 “Buzz Bomb” being chased by a Spitfire with machine guns blazing. He did the job as the bomb was hit and exploded. The British sailor that I had been with in the railroad car told me that I would see plenty of them and he was right. They were designed to run out of fuel about the time they were over London. The British had made up their minds that this would never happen; sorry to say it did very often.

I reported into Headquarters which was located in a Boys Military Academy, and was told to go to one of the cottages. Each billet housed a squad of eight men and I met my new buddies and was issued a Thompson sub-machine gun as my weapon. I went down to the Channel, which was only a couple blocks away to take a look. It reminded me of being at the beach at Ocean City, NJ, except the whole beach was nothing but barbed wire and tank obstacles placed there to ward off German invasion troops. The British has also placed a pipeline under water along the coast so they could pump fuel oil into the water and ignite it setting the surf on fire. Right\off the coast the British had “Flak Barges” that were armed with anti-aircraft guns. V1s (Buzz Bombs) came over constantly, and some were destroyed, but many hit the London area. Some would run out of fuel early, and as long as you could hear the putt-putt sound you knew you were ok.

One day I was getting ready to leave the house when I heard one overhead, then the silence. I dove under a big heavy oak table that was nearby just before it hit. The ceiling fell down on top of me, but the table saved me. Unfortunately the British searchlight crew of six got hit directly and were all killed. The crew was made up of “Wrens” the Brits name for the Army “Wacs”, so war has no gender.

Always being a souvenir hunter I went out to the tree in front of the house and picked out chunks of shrapnel to send home to my Dad. Nighttime was Air Raid time. The Germans would come over nearly every night. I used to go out on the roof of the headquarters and watch the planes come over, headed for London. It was like the 4th of July, with searchlights and tracer bullets, and now and then a plane would go down in flames.

In the daytime, raids were fewer, but I would see B-17’s on their bombing runs or coming home, some ditching in the channel, others with part of the plane missing. The British Spitfire and Hurricane Fighter pilots were unbelievable. I actually saw one Hurricane pilot catch up to a Buzz Bomb, get his wing under the bomb and flip it so the gyro sent it back over the channel.

Then came an even more terrifying weapon the “V2” rocket. This weapon gave no warning before hitting its target and its destruction was even greater. When one hit it made a thirty-foot deep crater. This was a much more accurate missile, and they really rained terror on the civilian population. Again, the good Lord was looking after me: I had been on a two day leave in London and had just left “Charring Cross Station” and was about two blocks away, when a “V2” hit, causing great devastation and death. I can’t begin to tell you how courageous the British people were during the Battle of Britain”. They had a 9/11 every day.

I was stationed at Eastbourne for about a month before D-day. Our outfit was made combat ready and went by convoy to the port of Plymouth, and there we boarded an old Victory ship for the Channel crossing to France. It was a rough crossing and most of the guys got seasick. Our ship stopped off the beach and we were transferred by cargo net over the side into a Higgins boat which took us onto Omaha beach. The beachhead already had been taken by units of the 29th and 1st infantry divisions. The Germans had put up a heavy resistance, and the Infantry really had a tough time fighting as the land was made up divisions called Hedgerows, but finally the Germans were on the run. We stopped on the outskirts of Paris at a small farming town called " La Ferté-sous-Jouarre”, where I went to one small house and presented the billeting paper I had been given and was granted permission to stay there. The family consisted of the Mom and Pop, a young daughter and young son, and a little lamb that was the kids’ pet. They showed me my room, which was small but had a large goose-down bed in it, and needless to say I had a good night’s sleep. The next day I was told it was the little girl’s birthday, so I went out and shot a large rabbit for dinner. I have to confess that I also stole from the mess tent a gallon size can of carrots. That night we really had a feast, and the old man brought out a bottle of his homemade booze. I must mention that (as I had provided the meal) they gave me the choicest part (in their mind): the Rabbits HEAD.

The next day we were back online. Our outfit went through towns such as Empery-Chateau Thierry-and other WW1 battlefield locations. We entered Germany at Saarbrucken and went thru the Dragon’s Teeth fortification of the Siegfried line. I had taken the grips off my .45 auto pistol, which I carried for four years and still have today, and pasted papers inside them to keep track of the various towns we entered but unfortunately they got lost after the war. Some of the towns - Saarbrucken; Bitche; Manheim; Worms; Strassberg; Colmar; Luniville; Saverne; Nancy; Saarburg; Bensheim; Fulda; and Kaiserlauters, I can remember. Our Company was awarded a unit citation (we called it the toilet seat). The French gave us an award also. We were in the 6th Army Group, commanded by General Divers, consisting of the American 7th Army (13 Steps to Hell, as it was known) commanded by General Patch, and for a short period with the 1st French commanded by General de Tassigny. The last Division we operated with was the 3rd (Rock of the Marne) and, incidentally Audie Murphy’s unit and also my father’s in WWI. He was in Company F, 4th Infantry and was a 2nd Lieutenant. I still have the sidearm he carried in the war. Our outfit swung south down the autobahn past Munich, whose center strip was painted to look like it was divided from the air. We encountered Germans planes and destroyed them with machine gun fire from our ring mounted .50’s.

My Army organization number was 738, which translates to (Radio Intercept German). Our company was comprised of about 250 men, consisting of Intercept Operators 3-Direction finding units (portable and mobile). We had about 47 vehicles: 21 1/2 ton GMC trucks, a ¾ ton weapon carrier, jeeps, a decipher team, and a mobile transmitting station (SCR299) that contained a 500 watt transmitter used for long distance communication, plus teletype equipment. Our outfit was mobile so we were able to be assigned to any division or group that needed us. We also had a team that spoke German fluently, so we could copy Handy-Talky intercept. Our job was to locate, identify and determine the next move of the enemy.

We had what was known as the “Q Book”, which contained information: outfit, number of men, armament - the works. These messages were encoded in the German field code known as HST. The German operator would set his encoding machine (“Enigma”, developed incidentally as a commercial cipher machine in the early 1920’s then adopted by the Germans and modified for military use) each day with a three letter setup. The machine looked like a typewriter. When the operator pressed a key it sent an electrical signal from the keyboard to a set of rotors and plug board that lit up a code alphabet. These rotors were changed at least once a day plus the plugs were rearranged. In order for the receiving station to read the coded message the other operator had to know the exact placement of the rotors plus the three letter setting code that told him how to reset the rotors and the plug board.

The first three letters of the message therefore contained the machine setting. For example, a sequence entered on only one of the keys would repeat itself only after 17,000 entries. By changing the starting position of the keys and further complicated by a built-in 26 socket electric plug board, up to 159 million starting positions were possible. The coded messages were then transmitted in five letter code groups. Our allies the Poles and Brits had broken the German code early in the war and we also had captured a German “Enigma” machine. The last code to be broken and the toughest was the Naval code as they used up to five rotors on their machines. One was finally grabbed off a sinking German submarine by a boarding crew from a British destroyer.

Once the enemy broke radio silence their goose was cooked. We tri-angulated their signal, and if they were to our immediate front we either captured or killed them with ground troops or called in air support and knocked them out. German transmitters had a very distinct clean sound, and Americans were very chirpy, and after a bit you could even recognize the German operator by the way he keyed his transmitter. We were taught to send with what was called a “Mechanical Fist” to avoid this. At one point one of the outfits similar to ours had been captured and the Germans changed their code, and for a number of months our intelligence was nil until we broke the new code.

The Polish (before their country’s invasion by Germans) and British were the real Code Breakers, and they are the ones that deserve most of the credit. It was their work done at Bletchley Park, their headquarters in England (about 50 miles north of London) code-named “Ultra”, where Postal Engineers developed a decoding machine that would read paper tapes at excess of five thousand letters per second. They called the unit “Colossus” (used to crack the Lorenz Cipher) because of its large size. The computing power of the machine could now be put into a microprocessor the size of your thumb today. Actually, it was the first programmable computer.

Our notable intercepts: One was when we were in the woods just outside of the town of Saverne. The Germans had a large Railway gun that had been bombarding the town fiercely. The Germans made the mistake of sending a message that was intercepted by us. The gun position was located, and was destroyed by British bombers that we called in. The other instance didn’t have such a happy ending as we followed the armored buildup for nearly a month in the Ardennes and reported it to a higher headquarters. They claimed the Germans were simply playing transcriptions of tank movements and didn’t act on it. The result was the “Battle of the Bulge”, and a lot of dead GI’s would still be alive had they listened to us.

I passed through the town of Baden-Baden in Bavaria, where my Great-Grandfather was born. I was in Austria when news came of the passing of our Commander-in-Chief (FDR). It was really a morale buster, as just about then the War was over. We had reached the Brenner Pass in Italy.

Then the war was over, and VE Day had arrived. The company was sent north to a town just outside of Kassel, Germany. Our job was finished. We had about fifty men left in the company for various reasons, plus some German prisoners that did all the work. I had been promoted twice and was put in charge of the Motor Pool. So my time was spent riding around in a jeep and hunting with my buddy at Herman Goering’s private estate, which encompassed quite a few hundred acres of ground and provided the company with fresh meat and a lot of fun for us. My buddy and I shot Rey (a small deer much like a chamois), Hirsch (similar to our Elk) and Wild Boar. He was crack shot and used a captured Mousers 98K to hunt with, while I used an MI Garand. We would always drop off some game when returning from a hunt at this small farming town that had a center square with a watering hole in the center for their oxen to drink. The people would wait for us, ready to divide the meat amongst the townspeople. Thank God when VE Day arrived.

I organized a dance band (I played trumpet), and used to play Bob Hope shows and various dances at different outfits: it was a bum’s life. We played one job at an officer club and the tenor sax guy in the band swiped five bottles of American Whiskey, put them in his Sax case, and started to walk across the dance hall floor. It didn’t go too well for him needless to say. My Buddy and I took a trip to visit Hitler’s summer retreat the Berghof where I stood on the same ground where that maniac stood. We also took pictures looking out the large picture windows that are always shown in a newsreel or movie. The house itself had been heavily bombed, so it was just a shell. A couple of months later, replacements came into the company as members of the Army of Occupation. I had plenty of points to come home so I figured it was time to go. I was asked to stay as a sergeant if I re-enlisted for another hitch, but I had had enough and besides, my mother was home and waiting. I knew my brother was back home from the Navy and was with her or I wouldn’t have stayed as long overseas. My hunting buddy did stay in the service, and our Company became part of the National Security Agency. He stayed in the service for 35 years before retiring. I still hear from him today.

One experience that I would like to tell about. When the Company was at rest in the German town of Bensheim, I got to know an old man by talking to him a number of times while I was on Guard duty. He was a Butcher, and he invited me to dinner a couple of times, even with the scarcity of food they had. His son was a German soldier and had been killed in action. He told me that I reminded him of his son. Then our company was sent back online, but I never forget how kind he was to me.

On Christmas Eve the war was over. It was snowing, and I went to the supply tent and grabbed a 10-in-one ration box (containing 3 meals for 10 men). The Army issued three types of meals: K ration, which were individual one meal packs that contained a small can about the size of a can of tuna fish, a small pack of drink or bouillon powder, four cigarettes and a piece of hard candy and some hardtack known as K-1 biscuit (this was the usual ration issued on the line and we were issued three a day). The “C” ration was in a can similar to a can of beans that you could either eat cold or put in hot water to heat. Then came the10-in-1, and then finally a hot meal supplied from a cook tent when you weren’t on the move. I jumped in my jeep and drove about forty miles to Blenheim and presented the Family with “Christmas Dinner”. We really had a party: he had his son’s accordion, and I played a bunch of German traditional songs and some of the popular American dance music.

I will never forget that old man. He must have been about eighty years old.

Another time I had driven a 2 1/2 ton truck to Paris to pick up some motors for our weapon carriers. I had taken a bunch of clothing that I talked the supply Sergeant out of (he wanted to trade for a trip ticket for a jeep that could only be issued by me so he could visit his girl in the next town). I swapped the duds for cases of Wine and Champaign. The weather was horrible; cold as a bitch, and snowing so bad you could hardly see the road. My gas was really running very low when I spotted a sign that pointed to an armored outfit, so I drove there figuring if anybody had gas, they would. They were giving a party for a guy who had just been awarded the Medal of Honor, a little short guy that you would never take to be a hero, proof that what you see may not be what you get. I gassed up and started back down the road and I spotted a woman with a baby struggling her way in the storm. I stopped the truck and talked to her with the sparse German I knew and she told me she was going home to a town that was a bit out of our way. My buddy and I helped her in the truck and took her to the town and dropped her off.

The day finally arrived in 1946 when it was time to bid goodbye to Europe. I left for home from the Port of Cherbourg in France aboard the troop ship General Brooks along with hundreds of other guys retuning home. As I remember, the trip took seven days and I can still picture passing the “Grand Old Lady” in New York harbor. I could hardly believe it, but there waving to me from the dock, was my father. What a nice meeting after four years. Pop had a way of getting where others couldn’t go, as he had a Government Pass because he was employed at that time by the Army Signal Corp. I got permission to visit with him for a bit, then took a bus to Fort Dix, NJ, where I was mustered out and took a bus back to Philly and a taxi home. I gave my Mom a big hug and kiss and took off my uniform for the last time.

P.S.- I am not sure as to the spelling of the towns, nor will you find anything in the above about the devastation and gory parts (the German atrocities at Dachau that to this day give me flash-backs, yet some deny they ever happened). I can tell you that if it wasn’t for the 129th SRI Company and similar outfits (eight in the European Theater) and the guys in them that made the sacrifice, the American body count at the end of the war would have been much greater. I salute all those that served, including my sons Ray and Richard, his son Dennis, and my brother Joe. Our family spans three wars, Theatres and services. God Bless America and the Polish and British, for their skills in Code Breaking.

RAY RILING

UNITED STATES ARMY

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