September 1943 Camp Granite, California December 1943

Although the fighting in North Africa had ended by this time, training in the desert was considered highly valuable from the standpoint of physical conditioning, moving and maintaining direction at night, operating efficiently with limited water and food supplies and for logistical experience. Camp Granite was a tent camp located in the Mojave Desert of southeastern California. Forty miles east of Desert Center and about the same distance west of Parker, Arizona. This new base of operations for the 90th was situated on a broad sand and volcanic rock plain at the base of a southern spur of the Granite Mountains.

An engineer general service regiment had been working on the camp for several months but had been transferred to another job leaving the streets only partially defined, the pumping system only partially installed, a few of the shower houses completed and most of the kitchen tent frames and latrines constructed. An advance party from the 315th Engineer Battalion had been on the site approximately two weeks when the battalion arrived at the Freda railhead on 3 September 1943. Construction plans had been made and as soon as the battalion had pitched its pyramidals, work assignments were begun, streets were graded and marked, shower houses were completed, plumbing was installed and to Company A went the honor of the layout and construction of facilities for division headquarters. But the completion and operation of the water supply system was to be the big problem.

Thin walled steel pipe had been laid from the partially completed pumping station to a partially finished elevated wooden storage tank but many long sections of the line had been left uncovered. During the day the sun beat down and heated the dry desert air to 115 degrees. In this heat the pipe expanded and buckled around in the trenches like a huge snake. Then, when each cold desert night suddenly closed in, the rapid contraction of the lines opened countless minor and many major breaks in the welded joints.

Fortunately the actual source of water was plentiful. From Parker Dam on the Colorado River 50 miles to the east, water flowed past Camp Granite in the Los Angeles metropolitan aqueduct. A huge fenced-in trapezoidal concrete ditch running some 300 miles into Los Angeles. This open channel was tapped at a siphon under the Parker‑Desert Center Highway near the point where the flow entered the Iron Mountain Pumping Station of the aqueduct system. Two gasoline motors of doubtful vintage driving a five stage centrifugal pump, of equally doubtful origin, constituted the primary equipment with which the H & S Company motor section was to supply water for the entire division camp. The distance from the intake to the elevated storage tank was approximately five miles and the lift was about 350 ft. Time and time again the pumps heaved the load up the main line and time and time again a joint would split and the system would have to be drained.

Finally, after much sweating, swearing and all night work, water was lifted to the storage tank but again an adequate camp supply was to be denied. The hot dry air had so thoroughly dehydrated the staves of the tank that even after careful preliminary caulking the water came out the cracks just about as fast as the pump could put it in. Furthermore, the downpour of water from the tank bottom scoured the ground and threatened to undermine the concrete foundations.

During all this time the infantry troops in the lower end of camp had water but the artillerymen on the high side of Granite did much plain and fancy swearing at the 315th "Post Engineer Battalion".

Gradually the staves began to swell and as the leaks diminished the water level assumed a more respectable height. Within three weeks, with major construction work accomplished, the battalion turned again to the training for the more important missions ahead. A small crew of H & S men continued to maintain and operate the camp utilities but the bulk of the battalion was again off on another round of combat firing. Anti-aircraft firing at towed targets and radio controlled miniature planes and training with the regiments in RCT problems. During the interim at Camp Barkeley between Louisiana maneuvers and the movement to the desert, the battalion had conducted a series of squad leadership problems. The squads had made individual marches on given azimuths through the Barkeley thickets from one control point to the next. At each they received new instructions, additional rations and had marched off to another point with another squad mission. The last day of each of the squad problems involved the inflation of rubber boats and the crossing of Lake Abilene. Now, in the desert, it was time for platoon leadership problems.

In succession the lettered companies moved to a bivouac area between Highway 95 and the Colorado River about 25 miles north of Blythe, California. Here in an assumed tactical situation each platoon was ordered to ferry its vehicles across the Colorado and move to a point in the desert some 15 miles to the northwest where it was to organize a portion of a defensive position. (Actually the ferrying operation was from one point on the California side upstream to another point on the same side but technical problems involved were the same as for a cross-river operation)

Each morning a platoon would begin the five day problem by building a raft and ferrying its four 2½ ton dump trucks and jeep upstream to the designated landing site. Upon debarkation and assembly the "motorized" platoon was off into the desert on its first tactical mission. But each day as each successive platoon reached a certain fork in the road it was ambushed by a team from the control group armed with blank ammunition and previously prepared TNT charges simulating enemy fire.

In the skirmish all vehicles were ruled destroyed and the platoon was afoot for the duration of the 50 mile problem. Each day confronted the platoon with a new situation and a distance of about 10 miles to march across the greasewood and cactus covered wastelands. The last night out involved the installation of a minefield and the defense of a road block across Highway 95.

All during the problem the platoons were subjected to surprise attacks and raids by details from the control group. The training was rugged but many a “kink" was eliminated which might have spelled disaster in the days to come.

About 150 miles to the southeast of Granite and near the city of Yuma, Arizona, on the Colorado River, there is a dam which diverts a portion of the river into the All American Canal that carries water to the fabulous imperial valley of Southern California. Below this dam the Engineer School of Fort Belvoir had established a station for the testing of floating bridges and other engineer equipage. Upon the invitation of Lt. Col. George W. Howard, chief of the bridge section, companies of the 315th moved in rotation to the testing sight and spent days in intensive bridge training. Here, in a stream, where the current could be regulated by the discharge gates on the dam, the value of the training for future combat operations greatly exceeded that which had been previously received on the still waters of Lake Abilene and in the sluggish current of the Sabine in Louisiana. The bridge training was cut short however, for on 21 October the battalion moved into the Harquahala Mountains area near Salome, Arizona.

Colonel Stilwell was promoted to the position of Division G‑3 and Major C. C. Tabor had succeeded him as commander of the 315th Engineers when the first phase of the desert maneuvers began. With the entire division again in the field together, RCT problems were run in an area which had once been the scene of extensive gold mining operations. In the Harquahala, the Harcuvar and the Eagle Tail Mountains, battles were fought among the giant saguaro, the ocotillo and other species of the cactus family which have such a firm control of that area. Roads were mined, crater charges were prepared and some soldiers did a little private prospecting for gold on the side.

After three weeks of this maneuvering the division moved back into California and to an assembly area south of the Chuckwalla Mountains near Glamis, California. From this area an attack was launched northward in a corps maneuver against the 93rd Infantry Division.

For 20 days the battle raged, and for about 10 of those days a blinding dust storm blew in from the northwest. Except for a narrow pass through the two mountain ranges to our front there was little terrain, which favored "engineer" road and obstacle warfare. But from the standpoint of physical and mental conditioning for the combat ahead the maneuvers were excellent.

The 93rd doggedly defended and dropped back to defend again as the 90th advanced through the Chuckwallas, across the Desert Center‑Blythe Highway and into the Granite Mountains. Here the principal battle was to be fought. Palen pass was a strongly fortified position astride the sand and rock filled road leading through the mountains, past our base camp (Granite). Past Rice and Freda and on northward toward Needles. After days of heavy fighting the infantry broke through the Palen fortifications and a pursuit was on. The maneuver ended on 1 December with the entire division north of the Parker Desert-Center Highway hotly striking at the 93rd Division's rear guard.

Now the troops of the 90th division were informed that this had been their last maneuver. All knew what this meant, but they were ready and did not mind saying goodbye to the desert with its sand and rocks, its blistering sun, its cold nights and its eternal loneliness.

But the "rumor mongers" ground cut another good one. This time the 90th was going back to Barkeley to fill up the foxholes on Hankins Ranch and would then become the home guard for the city of Abilene. Instead on 26 December 1943, the battalion entrained at Freda, made a transcontinental trip and arrived in Fort Dix, N. J. the night of 30 December 1943. Surely this would not be another "dry run".

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