MP Railway Guards Find Job Is No Gravy Train

By Allan Dreyfuss

The corporal held out his orders to the GI train guard. He spoke above the clacking crescendo of the coach wheels as the train left Paris behind.

"Man, you guys really got it made," he said. "I sure wish I had your spot just ridin' back and forth on this gravy train."

The guard said nothing. He clenched his fist and tried to restrain his temper.

The gravy train crack was nothing new for him or the some 300 GI "riders." Officially, the men are members of the 540th Military Police Railway Guard Battalion. Unofficially, they find themselves saddled with one of the most demanding and time exacting jobs in the American security forces in Europe. Somtimes the job of guarding rail shipments of American mail or equipment may be exciting or dangerous but mostly it's a matter of boring routine. But, by no stretch of even the most elastic GI mind can their mode of transportion be called a gravy train.

You might think that the run on the overnight train from Frankfurt to Paris would be top prize for the riders of the 540th. Actually it rates near the bottom of the ladder. The job is rotated among all the guards to make it virtually impossible for black marketeers or smugglers in either Germany or France to establish a working contact with the GIs. The train's schedule which finds it traveling throughout the night makes it impossible for the guards to ever get a glimpse of Parisian "ooo la la" in off duty hours between trains. To top it off, the guards hardly ever see more of Paris in daytime than the streets between the station and an army-run hotel. They usually sleep away most of the free six hours they have available since they are required to be both awake and alert on the return trip to Frankfurt that same night. And, although each guard gets a per diem allowance of $13.25 with which to buy food on the trip, 99 percent of the "riders" would rather get the Friday night special run to Garmisch which lays over in that Bavarian resort for 36 hours.

Riders, track jockeys, or train guards. Whatever name you may call them, the Army wants them known first of all as MPs. On paper their job is to protect anything that moves on rails that belongs to the U.S. Forces... be it quartermaster beef, mail, or vacationing children. In the books the job totals up to a matter of protection and responsibility for x numbers of loaded cars between almost any two rail points in Western Europe. But in practice it adds up to an impossible spec number that calls for the diverse talents of a railroad yard master, information clerk, diplomat, detective, and just plain soldier.

Old timers in the outfit like Staff Sergeant Robert Seddon of Roselle, Ill., remember how the railway security guards had to be regular Sam Spades to deal with looting of trains.

Nineteen forty-seven was the year before the German currency reform and the last year that a carton of cigarettes on the black market represented a two week wage for the average German office worker. As a result there was looting and pilfering from almost every train with Army consigned goods aboards.

One wave of high powered thievery really had the GI train guards scratching their heads in bewilderment. Every freight car leaving the Bremen docks had its special sliding door linked with twisted wire and then fastened with a numbered seal. The cars would arrive in Frankfurt under guard with the seals unborken and no external signs of tampering but with as much as 600 pounds of coffee or sugar missing from torn sacks. It finally took a bright-eyed security guard to discover that the thieves crawled under the freight cars as they were being made up into trains and bored holes up through the bottom floor boards. Then after carefully removing the bung, they would ram a length of pipe up through the opening until it punctured a bag above and the coffee beans flowed down to waiting receptacles.

On another occasion at Bremen, one of the security outfit's static guards came into the sentry house and reported somewhat incredulously that the freight yard was with drunken Germans. Their breath smelled suspiciously charged with bourbon and rye. It took a few minutes tough searching to find the magic spring which gushed out its 120 proof waters. The guards found the thirsty thieves had managed to slide back the sealed door of a loaded freight, insert a steel rod and then by manipulating the rod had broken a large number of whiskey bottles inside. Then, as the precious fluid started to trickle down between the floor boards, the ingenious Germans waited under the cars with pots and kettles.

Guarding trains in those days was not without its dangers. In March 1947, military police found the body of GI train guard Pvt. French Eskew lying between the tracks with the legs severed and a gaping wound at the back of the skull. In August, six months after the body had been returned to the U.S. for burial, a CID agent discovered that the GI had died as the result of a blow on the head which caused him to fall beneath a train while guarding an army shipment. Later investigation proved that Eskew's train had been set upon by about 50 looters, as it stopped for water, just outside of Bremen. As the guard had advanced to disperse the looters, he had been felled by a blow from behind and left in the path of an oncoming train. Two Germans were sent to prison for the crime, but the case is not closed yet.

Sfc. George Young of Boston, Mass., has been, with the railway security MPs since 1945. He's ridden as far east as Poland and Hungary on army shipments. On his trip to Poland in February, 1948 he was a member of a crew of five GIs and an officer who were held prisoner aboard the train for 48 hours at the Polish border because they seized 500 American sparkplugs being smuggled by a Polish repatriate. His trip to Budapest was in 1946 when a railroad shipment of $1,000,000 worth of gold bullion being returned from Germany under U.S. auspices was shunted onto an obscure siding outside the Hungarian capital by Communists so that a welcoming committee of hundreds at the main station waited in vain.

According to SOP, "riders" are supposed to be at the station or freight yard at least 45 minutes before their train is scheduled to leave. On passenger trains, the guards must often act as walking information booths on schedules, stops, and stations. In the history of the organization, only one man ever got on the wrong train. He was a newly assigned eager-beaver second lieutenant at Furth, Bavaria, who figuring that the trainful of household goods he was to guard had arrived early, swung aborad and found out only after the first stop 100 miles away that it was an ordinary German freight.

On every trip, be it with mail, passengers, greight, or classified shipments, each guard must make out a "Guard Trip Report." This documents is enough to discourage sleepers for on it must be listed the times of every stop the train makes from departure point to destination. Before taking over a freight, the guard must inspect the seal on each car and then assume responsibility by signing for it. Technically he could be billed for theft of the car or its contents under a statement of charges. Although a few guards in the early post-war period have been court martialed for negligence, today's "riders" are diligence itself. At each stop on freights, they "walk the line" of cars tapping on the door seals with their flashlights to ensure they are, not broken. If there is any sign of tampering, it is listed for protection on the trip report.

N0 GI train guard is allowed to argue or interfere with German conductors or brake-men. Often they will be asked to explain or straighten out a difficulty relating to tickets or a pet rabbit that must be kept in the baggage car. But, all in all, their relationship is smooth and bilingually cooperative.

Many of the guards have learned enough German to help them on their jobs. In the outfit's Berlin detachment there are at least five Russian-speaking "train riders." One of them, Yugoslav-born Pfc Zivojin Savick can handle at Ieast six languages. Savick, who was a bartender at the Frankfurt Casino be-' fore going to the U.S. as a DP, spent only five months in the states before returning to Europe as a soldier.

Most of the time, riding the trains is about as routine as walking guard outside a motor pool. When there is excitement, it comes in big doses. Corporals Stephen Wallace of Quincy, Mass., and John Boudreau of Arlington, Mass., found that out when their Frankfurt to Paris train was rammed last August by an express near Metz. Both Bay Staters performed heroically in giving first aid and assistance to passengers aboard the train where 21 died, as well as rounding up a large number of U.S. mail sacks thrown from the guarded car by the collision.

Today, German rail police cooperate with the 540th in guarding all but a few classified shipments. Pilferage had dropped from a monthly high of $157,000 in January, 1946 to $82.90 for August this year. By the end of this year, GIs and officers of the 540th will have ridden on almost 20,000 trains in Germany bringing both "service and security" to the passengers and goods aboard. And to these hard-working MPs not one trip will be aboard a gravy train.

The company's job, along with the other units of the battalion, is the guarding of US mail and classified freight supplies and the patrolling of passenger trains throughout Germany. The job carries the company's 113 enlisted men to the far corners of Germany. A tabulation of guarded and patrolled mileage for 1953 shows an astounding total of 1,152,885 miles, or an average of just slightly under 100,000 miles a month.

Operating from Frankfurt/Main, located in the geographical heart of the Western Zone, the company daily performs mail runs to Bruchmuhlbach and Trier, Germany, and halfway through France to Paris. Passengr trains to Kaiserslautern and Munich are patrolled by the 540th. Frequently, there are classified shipments to any and all points in Germany. On these runs, men of the company have guarded trains the length and breadth of Germany.

Another boast the company feels safe in making is that it has encountered and dealt with some of the weirdest, most improbable incidents in the history of the Military Police Corps. The company's incident report files cover everything from smuggled black market goods to stunt-happy "buzzings" of trains
by unidentified aircraft.

Company A was recently awarded the plaque which is given monthly to the outstanding company of the battalion. The plaque is awarded on the basis of percentage of participation in Soldier's Deposits, new enrollments in USAFI and other off-duty education endeavors, and low frequency in AWOLS, serious incidents, accidents, personal injuries, court-martials, and company punishments.