The Essays of Sam Person
Chance Meeting on a Bus
.....By Samuel Person
May 22, 2000
While this story evokes memories of World War II, my objective is not to write about war, but rather about the vagaries of life that thrust people into circumstances which reveal that they had much in common, and yet would never have known each other except for a chance encounter. The oddity is further enhanced by the series of coincidences that involved the lives of two New Yorkers who were destined to be on the periphery of one of the most unfortunate events that occurred during World War II in Europe.
My wife and I were en route from Florida to our summer residence in New York City early in May 2000. Our mode of transportation was one that we had used several times previously. As such, we were two of some forty-nine passengers on a "luxury" bus owned and operated by the "Hampton Jitney" company of Southampton, New York. This company provides convenient bus service for "snow birds" making the trip back and forth between Florida and New York, and (as an added convenience) also uses its own car carriers to transport automobiles.
As might be expected, we struck up an acquaintance with some of the other passengers, and got to learn a little about them. Conversation was possible either on the bus while it rolled along, at one of the stops we would make to stretch our legs every couple of hours, at the two lunch stops (one each day), and/or the one dinner stop that we made. (The trip from our home near Naples, Florida to the terminus in Southampton, New York took one and one-half days with one overnight stay at a motel.)
Fred Kastner, a ninety-three year old gentleman who resides in Southampton, New York, was seated right across the aisle from my wife and I, and we would chat with him. He was sharp as a tack, and could easily have been taken for someone twenty years younger.
On the lunch stop of the second day of our journey northward, my wife and I decided to head for a restaurant other than the one our bus companions were heading for, since the latter facility was rather crowded. Coincidentally, Fred Kastner had the same idea, and we ran into him at the restaurant that we had selected for a quick lunch. During the course of conversation I inquired as to what he had done for a living. "I started out as a professional baseball player," he offered, which was intriguing to me since I am a baseball fan.
Even more interesting was learning that he had been in the New York Yankee farm system, as I am a long time Yankee fan. He never made it to the major leagues, and gave baseball up after a couple of years, at which time he went to work for the electric utility in Long Island, New York, and remained in its employ until he retired. He regaled me with stories of baseball personalities of his era, and we also discussed the players of this generation. Listening to him was a treat, and our conversation continued as we walked back to return to the bus.
Outside the "Cracker Barrel" restaurant where the rest of our bus companions were still having lunch, there was a series of comfortable looking rocking chairs. These chairs were obviously on display for sale, but a smart marketing person had them positioned for patron use. "Sit, rest and buy" seemed to be the philosophy; I have a hunch it works.
Fred and I claimed two of them and sat down. For no apparent reason, I commented "Given your age, I suppose you missed World War II." "Actually not," he said. "Did you enlist?" I asked, to which he responded, perhaps facetiously, "No, I wasn't stupid. I was drafted." Over time I have learned that this reply is often a badge of honor, as it were, for a war veteran. After all, one never volunteers, right?
He was thirty- five years old when he was drafted for service, which might well have earned him the nickname of "Pops," or something along those lines, from the eighteen to twenty- one-year-olds that he probably served with. My comment relative to his service in World War II seemed to rekindle some memories, since he proceeded to share various recollections of his military days.
"I was drafted in March 1944 and completed basic training in August 1944. A little while after that, I had gotten a furlough and went home. Some time before I had returned home, my wife had tea with a friend, who learned from my wife that I was in the 66th Infantry Division."
The wife's friend knew of an officer at headquarters of the 66th Infantry Division, and Fred was told of this chance development. When he heard the officer's name was Edmond Rowan, he was taken aback, since it sounded like somebody he had known at Evander Childs High School in the Bronx, New York. Fred recalled that while he played baseball, this individual had been on the track team, and appreciated Fred's ability at baseball. He also recalled that this high school chum went on to West Point, and he wondered whether or not the officer in the 66th Infantry Division was the same person he had known years before.
His wife suggested that he look the officer up when he returned to his post. "I am a buck private," he told her. "I can't walk into Division Headquarters and look up an officer. They'll think I'm nuts."
On a warm spring day in Fredricksburg, Virginia, Fred Kastner sat and turned the clock of his mind back over seventy years. "I remembered the guy's name as Ed Rowan. I recalled that at a game against DeWitt Clinton High School, which he watched. I hit two home runs, and he was impressed, and told me so after the game."
"A few years later," he went on, "I was playing baseball for New York University at West Point, and he was a cadet there. Ed Rowan was at the game, and after the game he came up and gave me a pat on the back and a hug. He remembered me and the two home run game. I had not seen him since high school."
Fred decided to look up this officer, and upon returning from his furlough, he did so. He went to Division Headquarters, sought out the officer, went to his office, and asked to speak with him on a personal matter. He was given a quizzical look by the Sergeant at the door to the office, but was allowed in.
When Fred Kastner saw Edmond M. Rowan, a West Point graduate, and then a Lt. Colonel in the 66th Infantry Division, and Assistant Chief of Staff for G2 (Intelligence), he recognized him on sight, just as Colonel Rowan recognized Kastner. Fred Kastner recalls that Colonel Rowan "Greeted me like a long lost brother." "We spoke a while, and then he picked up the telephone, and had me transferred to Division Headquarters and promoted to Corporal."
After hearing of this serendipitous meeting, I asked the old soldier if he served in Europe. "Yes," he replied, "I landed in France on D-Day plus six months. It was Christmas Eve, 1944. It was a hell of a Christmas Eve," he continued, "A troop ship carrying men from our division was torpedoed, and a lot of men drowned."
Fred's comment rang a bell. I wondered if the 66th Infantry Division's complement of forces included the 262nd and 264th Infantry Regiments. These two regiments were on the Belgian troop ship "Leopoldville," which was sunk by a German submarine just five and one half miles from its destination in Cherbourg, France, and lost 763 men (including 493 missing, never found, and presumed to be dead).
I had learned of the two regiments while visiting the American Military Cemetery in Normandy in 1995. At the cemetery, there is a monument that includes tablets listing the names and units of the 1,557 Americans missing in action during the Normandy campaign. As I walked the path containing the tablets, the unit numbers stuck in my mind. Because the number of men lost from those two units seemed disproportionate to the total names listed, I was curious to know what happened. Therefore, I inquired of a cemetery official, who briefly told me of the incident. While I learned of the sinking in general terms, at the time I was unaware of any connection to the 66th Infantry Division.
"Just a minute," I said, "Were the 262nd and 264th Infantry Regiments part of the 66th Division?" "Yes" he said, "But how do you know?" I told him that I was aware of what had happened that Christmas Eve. Ironically, as I mentioned the words "66th Infantry Division," another passenger on the bus, who had quietly occupied a rocking chair near the two of us, joined the conversation. "Hey, I was in the 266th Combat Engineers of the 66th Division," he informed us. Then, I sat back and let the two veterans of World War II exchange stories only as those who had been there could.
Stanley Margolin of Long Beach, New York, now close to eighty years of age, was a Corporal and radio operator in the Combat Engineers attached to the 66th Infantry Division. Prior to his army service, he had been a civilian stenographer in the Department of the Navy in Washington, D.C., working in the office involved with lend-lease operations. After the war, he would pursue several careers, and ultimately wound up in the liquor business.
In due course, we got back on the bus, and the conversation continued. Surely, the circumstances that brought the two veterans together on the same bus, with Margolin seated directly in front of Kastner, seemed an incredible twist of fate.
My belief about those who have seen war at its worst is that they are more apt to discuss circumstances not directly related to combat, and particularly reflect on personalities they knew. Almost at the beginning of the conversation, Stanley Margolin fondly recalled his old Sergeant, who had "looked out for him," as older soldiers do. Of that man, Stanley said "He had more ability to have men look up to him and take to his leadership than any one else I met in my entire life." Stanley was convinced that after the war, the Sergeant would have gone on to other things and been rather successful.
Margolin told of how he managed to look up his former comrade (who survived the war) when he was on vacation near the latter's home in California some years after the war. Believing that the Sergeant would have ended up "as the CEO of a large company," Stanley was quite shocked to see him and learn that was not the case. In fact, it appeared that he had not taken good care of himself physically.
One may philosophize that people reach the peak of their ability at different times and under different circumstances. For Stanley Margolin's wartime Sergeant, that evidently occurred in 1944 when he was in the United States Army leading men on a beach in France. Based on what Margolin saw during his visit, he sensed that the man's career following his military service in World War II did not reach any greater heights.
After talking about his 66th Infantry Division Sergeant, Stanley Margolin commented that "Other than for my visit with him, I have never run into any man from the 66th Infantry Division until today."
"How about you?" I asked Fred Kastner. "I had dinner once or twice with Colonel Rowan after the war, and that was it," Kastner said. "Rowan," he went on, "Also survived the war, but died rather young, somewhere in the early 1950's. I have never run into any one else from the 66th since the war ended, until today."
It occurred to me that Fred Kastner, at 93, might well be one of the oldest living survivors of the 66th Infantry Division. Further, it struck me that the individuals most influential to the two veterans (Colonel Rowan for Kastner and the Sergeant for Margolin) had been the only fellow veterans of the division that they had ever seen again, either by accident or by design.
Kastner and Margolin continued to talk for quite some time as the bus rolled on. They discussed the events of Christmas Eve, 1944, and the disaster that took place that night. The story of the "Leopoldville" was covered up for many years, and only recently has the event attracted any official attention; it was not until 1996, for example, that the British (involved because one of their destroyers was active in the rescue attempt) declassified the details of the sinking.
That the "Leopoldville" incident happened was a function of the oddest and most incredulous of wartime circumstances, and is a story unto itself. It was a situation in which anything that could go wrong did go wrong, as a consequence of confusion and inaction by many different parties. Despite the sheer enormity of the disaster, or perhaps because of it, Allied officials wanted the episode downplayed for various reasons.
For Fred Kastner and Stanley Margolin (and Rowan and the Sergeant as well), while they were in the 66th Infantry Division, it was their good fortune that they were not assigned to either of the two infantry regiments that were wiped out that night. They crossed the channel from England to France on two different landing ships rather than the "Leopoldville." Kastner landed at Le Harve and Margolin at Renne in Brittany; they went separate ways, never having met until that day in May 2000 on a bus from Florida to New York.
Margolin relates that as a radio operator, he was in the radio room on the landing ship crossing the channel, and that since he understood Morse code, he was aware that the tragedy was taking place. On the other hand, Kastner recalls spending that Christmas Eve in France, and did not become aware of the disaster until a day or two later at Division Headquarters.
The 66th Infantry Division was on its way to reinforce American troops at the Battle of The Bulge, the epic battle of World War II. However, it never got to that scene of action, because, as Margolin put it, "The 66th was decimated as a result of what happened to the two infantry regiments. So, we were held back and were not sent into the line at that time." They were both to participate in action in the European Theater of Operations and return to New York unscathed.
As if there were not enough ironies in this story, one more remains. Stanley Margolin graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, New York, in 1938. Graduating with him was Joseph Person, my late brother, who like the others referred to in this story, survived World War II (in the Army Air Corps).
