Mardon Common in World War Two
Eighty one years ago life in a Dartmoor community changed dramatically with the arrival of about 1500 American soldiers. In the spring of 1944 the mainly white US army officers of the 392nd General Engineer Service Regiment were billeted in what one recalled later as ‘a little bitty town called Morton hempstead’. While the mainly black GIs built and lived in a tented camp on nearby Mardon Common. In recent years Moretonhampstead History Society has worked with the Mardon Commoners and the DPA to uncover, literally and by research, and record what they were about and how it affected the lives of Moretonians.
Mardon Common still belonged to the family of the last lord of Doccombe Manor before it was bought by six farms around it in the 1990s. It covered about 450 acres of typical moorland in the north-east corner of Dartmoor. At about 800 to 1000 ft above sea level it has been traditionally used by local farms exercising their commoners’ rights for rough grazing and cutting bracken for winter bedding. Today as it is grazed and ‘swaled’ rather less there are rather more trees, gorse bushes and sprawls of bracken that have had to be cleared outside of the nesting season to reveal the remains of the American activities. It was part of the hinterland in Devon used to prepare for D-Day and the subsequent Liberation of Europe and usefully resembled the bocage countryside where they would fight in Normandy.
The predominant feature uncovered is an earthen embankment (see photo above) that follows the curve of a contour line for about 750 metres yards from the south-east corner to the south-west corner of the moor. It is flanked in places by long wide trenches or ‘scrape outs’ that supplied the earth to build up to a level of about 4 ft while in one section there is a cutting between banks of a similar height. About two-thirds of the way along there is a significant gap across a small road (near the Headless Cross) that for good reasons has since been called ’bailey bridge’ though none survives. Accompanying research shows that this embankment was what the Americans called variously a ‘cordway’, a ‘palingway’ or a ‘treadway’. Logs or strips of paling, readily available from the adjacent Dartington woodlands, were laid along the top of the embankment for wheeled and caterpillared vehicles to move over. The earth-moving D7 dozer tractors of the 433 Engineer Dump Truck Co and the amphibian tractors of 539 Ordnance Heavy Maintenance Co., that worked and practised there, probably explain memories of ‘trains’ being seen on Mardon by young locals who snuck up there.
Alongside the embankment and scattered around the moor are masses of slit trenches or ‘foxholes’ dug to give some protection on open land from aerial attack. V shaped ones overlooking the approaches to the moor were probably for small anti-aircraft firearms and four large pits along the ridge known as Mardon Down contained enfilading artillery or mortars to hit the enemy ‘in the crossfire’. More difficult to explain are longer trench systems of various shapes, including a square one and some with iron pins along them (for holding corrugated iron support earths?), that are more reminiscent of the previous world war. A few small quarries also remain where dirt paths and green lanes were upgraded to tarmac roads although the Americans’ suggestion to ‘straighten’ the present A382 from Bovey Tracey, unfortunately, remains largely unfulfilled. Small personal items such as Zippo lighters, K rations cutlery, instant coffee packets hitherto unknown in England and a dog tag have also been found over the years but as yet none of the Harley Davidson motor bikes allegedly buried there!
There have also been finds of beach pebbles on the moor that bounced off the military vehicles as they came up the narrow lanes from the main depot at Torquay where parts of the US 29th Infantry Division were being assembled and trained for D-Day and the invasion of France. The troops on Mardon were combat engineers; their slogan we keep ‘em movin’ summed up their role in repairing and building means of communication for the infantry and artillery units such as railways, roads, bridges and tunnels – hence the earthworks on Mardon. Much of the infrastructure across the Channel was damaged either by the French Resistance prior to D-Day to hamper the Germans or later by the Germans in ‘scorched earth’ tactics to delay the Allied advance.
How did this affect Moretonians? Apart from grumbles about the pubs running out of beer, there seems to have been remarkably little friction. Perhaps it helped that the town has always been cross-roads with lots of outside contact and a history of previously welcoming parole prisoners in the Napoleonic war, a New Zealand force a century later and recent evacuees from the London Blitz. They laughed at the American complaints about warm beer, narrow lanes and having to drive ‘on the wrong side of the road’. They enjoyed listening to the GI’s jazz band at dances, being given tins of fruit and candy bars, rides in their jeeps, having their bikes fixed by the engineers and sneaking up to see Joe Louis, the world heavyweight boxing champion, fight a demonstration match on Mardon. In turn they introduced their ‘American visitors’, as they were known, to fish and chips, pasties and rough cider. While the MPs and local magistrates sent a number of ‘ladies of the night’ packing for trying to enter the area ‘to visit their American cousins’.
The main friction was between white and black GIs; following a violent incident in the town centre whites and blacks were only allowed into the town on particular and different nights of the week. Moretonians are proud that they stood up against the racism. Mrs Wotton ran a servicemen’s canteen on Cross St and recalled fifty years later that some white soldiers refused to eat alongside their black colleagues. She told them that she didn’t ‘care if anyone was black, or white or purple’ they should eat together or leave. They left.
The 392nd GESR regiment, the principal unit trained on Mardon, had only been formed in and trained for a year before its arrival in Clydeside on the Queen Mary in the summer of 1943. They worked on various projects, including building a camp at Ivybridge and a military hospital at Stover - later used as a camp for Polish refugees – before arriving at Mardon. They subsequently took part in all the major campaigns in France and Germany: restoring ports, bridges and railways; clearing mine fields; and building prisoner of war camps. Their most notable achievement was restoring the Darnetal railway viaduct that was a crucial link between Rouen and Paris. The Germans blew up nine arches before they retreated; it took eight days to clear the rubble using the D7 dozer tractors that they trained on at Mardon. They cut down timber from a forest as they had learned to in Fingle Woods and used it to replace the stone arches. In pouring rain, they worked around the clock in ‘a remarkable engineering feat completed with astonishing rapidity’ (as described in dispatches) to reopen the line it under the command of Major Rickey who received the Bronze Star Award.
In the Battle of the Bulge at Christmas 1944, one of the war’s largest and bloodiest battles fought by US troops, both their combat and their engineer skills were tested as they were used to stop the German counter offensive by placing explosives, land mines and roadblocks along a twenty-five mile sector of the Meuse River. They patrolled the area in the knowledge that a dozen Afro-American soldiers recently captured nearby had been murdered in a barn.
After the war ended the regiment quickly disbanded and most of the troops went back to civilian life. Each man was given a badge copy of the Meritorious Service Unit Plaque awarded them for ‘superior performance’ in helping to win the war. Moretonhampstead is also proud of the heritage that remains on Mardon from the part it played in preparing for that victory.
Comments