How the Col. Got His Groove

William Ashley Chapman on Ascension Island in 1988.

I am working on an article about my father's unit on Ascension Island during World War II and I realize the one thing I haven't written much about here is that he returned to the island in 1988. He wanted to go back in 1982--for the fortieth anniversary of the completion of Wideawake Field--and started pestering anyone and everyone he could. He had to do that, because there were no civilian flights to Ascension in the 1980s.

He was a retired officer, a "full bird Colonel" as they say in the Army, so he could get people in the military to take his calls. But after a short chat any enlisted clerk could tell this old guy didn't have the one thing needed to get him there, i.e. pull. Ascension Island wasn't for tourists. It was a priority base. I think a flight there is unlikely. Sir.

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This Just In: "We Discover New American Air Base"

"Use of Ascension Island is Badly Kept Secret"
by
Peter Edson
Newspaper Enterprise Association
Washington Correspondent

December 30 1943

"Use of 34-square-mile Ascension Island as a U.S. air base at last can be talked about.  For more than a year, this tiny British island, 300 miles south of the equator in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean, has been a stopping point for short-range fighter planes being ferried to Southern Europe and African fronts, and even to the Middle and Far East.

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Birds on Ascension Island Were Comical, But Not to The Army

Air Force bomber takes off from Wideawake Field, 1943. Air Force photo.

The Birmingham News
"Birds on Ascension Island Were Comical, But Not to the Army"

Tuesday, February 4, 1947 (Page 11)

"Professor of physics at the University of Pennsylvania, Louis N. Ridenour served during the war on the staff of the radiation laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology."

by Louis N. Ridenour
NEW YORK, Feb. 4--(NANA)--"I have this story from a friend of mine who is a practicing ornithologist.  He was called in as a bird expert, at a time when the Army Air Forces found themselves at their wits' end--all on account of the habits of birds, and the love of a mother bird for her egg.

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"Soldier's Ode to Ascension"

I found this among my father's papers.  It is signed by Linn Garibaldi and notes that it is limited to 100 copies. (My father's is numbered 13.)

Soldier's Ode to Ascension©

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Time Magazine and Wideawake Field: January 1944

General George Marshall, Time's 

Man of the Year, January 3, 1944

Boobies on the Runway

Time Magazine

January 3, 1944

"If we don't hit Ascension

My wife gets a pension."

"So, sing U.S. flyers of the South Atlantic.

"This week the Army officially revealed why. Tiny (34 square miles) Ascension Island, 1,400 miles from the bulge of Brazil, is one of the vital links in the Air Transport Command's world-girldling chain of airfields. Ascension is the dot in the ocean that made it possible to fly Lightning (P-38) single-seated fighters across the South Atlantic to combat fields in North Africa and England.

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"They Took Dive To Fix Line"

Laying the gas pipeline on Ascension Island, 1942. The British had a representative on this British Overseas Territory and that's the only explanation I can find for the group of civilians sitting above left, watching the men work.

Ascension Island had no safe harbor, so the 38th Engineers had to lay a pipeline out to sea, so Allied ships could offload fuel for the aircraft coming into the field.  My father did tell us that since he was an expert marksman, he was on "shark duty" when the pipeline was laid, to prevent any danger to men in the water. What he did not tell us, is that he himself donned a diving helmet at one point and dove down among the sharks to help repair a leak in the line.  I found the story in a Richmond newspaper.

The Reflector
Richmond, Virginia
May 12, 1944

"They Took Dive to Fix Gas Line"

"Lt. William Chapman and Lt. Gaston Hollimon, along with their first C.O., Capt. [Harry] Tufts, got an introduction to seadiving in 55 feet of water off Ascension on one occasion ...

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Situation Normal (With Mail)

From The Reflector

Richmond, Virginia

Friday May 12, 1944

Page six

Boxed Sidebar story on the 898th Engineer Aviation Company's return to the States from Ascension Island.

"First Mail Call Hit Island Like a Tide"


"For 70 days, the Engineers sweated out their first mail call on "The Rock," and then a hot rumor sped around:  'There's a Navy destroyer offshore with our mail.'

When the destroyer put ashore its cargo, though, it was found that there was only second and third class mail for the Castlemen [the Corps of Engineers insignia is a castle]--newspapers, advertising circulars, etc. no letters or postcards.

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Officer Magazine's 1992 Salute to the Wideawake Work of 1942

Robin Chapman writes: I keep finding material my father wrote about Ascension.  This is something my father wrote when he was a young 73 and has the best detail of any of the other's I've seen.  Published in The Officer, the magazine of the Reserve Officers Association of the United States, March 1992, it was one of a series of fiftieth anniversary World War II memories collected by the magazine.

Wind, sand, lava and sky.  The men of the 38th Engineer Regiment (Combat) lay a fuel pipeline to an anchorage in the Atlantic.

WW II: Winter '42

30 March-10 July 1942
Wideawake Field, Ascension Island
The Officer/March 1992 (page 63)

Col. W.A. Chapman, AUS (Ret.), of Los Altos, Calif, was platoon commander of F Company when the 38th Combat Engineer Regiment of Ft. Jackson, S.C., departed Charleston, S.C., 14 March, 1942 aboard the USAT Coamo as part of Task Force Agate.  The group comprised 64 officers and 1,460 enlisted men, slightly above the 38th regiment strength.

After refueling at Recife, Brazil, and departing easterly on 27 March, the task force was finally advised of its secret mission and destination:  to construct a 6,000-foot paved runway, complete airport, and fueling facilities on Ascension Island in 90 days, as a base "urgently needed to provide a mid-Atlantic fuel and rest stop for US military aircraft en route to the Africa Campaign," Colonel Chapman points out.

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Ernie Pyle on Ascension Island

(I don't have a date for this column, which I found in my grandmother's scrapbook.  I'll quote it here and hope somebody can help me find the date.  I suspect it is collected in one of Pyle's books of wartime columns.)

SOMEWHERE IN AFRICA---(By wireless)---One of the sagas of this war--and one that can't be fully written until after the war--is the career of the - - - - - Combat Engineers. [At this point in the war, censorship didn't allow Pyle to use the name of my father's outfit--the 38th Engineer Regiment, Combat.)

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Ascension Island's Wideawake Airfield To Celebrate 70th Anniversary

Wideawake Field, Ascension Island, under construction, 1942. It is now operated under a command out of Patrick AFB in Florida. It is very likely one of the "leased" bases Churchill and FDR agreed to in exchange for all those ships we arranged to "lend" to England just before we joined the war in 1941. The leases were, I believe, to be for 99 years. Wonder if we have to give this one back?

In emailing the American Air Force staff, small as it is, on the British Overseas Territory of Ascension Island, I just became aware we are headed for the 70th Anniversary of Wideawake Field, built by the American 38th Engineer Aviation Battalion from March to June, 1942. The engineers were given 90 days to blast that thing out of volcanic rock and, as you might expect, they met their deadline. But of course.

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