Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the July 30, 2023, issue of the Polk County Enterprise. It is about the service of Durwood “Red” Allen.
Down FM 2798 and past Plum Pudding Road, between the towns of Segno and Votaw, is the community of Holly Grove. It’s best to know where you’re going to find your way, because there are thousands of trees hanging over and around the dirt paths that won’t offer much help.
About to enter his 98th year on Earth, Durwood “Red” Allen has a front porch that provides a good view in Holly Grove. He hasn’t always known where he was going in life. The armed services supplied a few surprises in his time during World War II. Some were good, like four years ago, when he was taken to San Diego for an all-expense-paid three-day tour. Others weren’t as luxurious.
Allen was on the front lines in Germany during the war, but he first wanted to tell why.
“I was supposed to go to the Air Force when I was drafted. I wanted to be a mechanic and I was a pretty good mechanic anyway,” he said. “I wanted to be a mechanic on an airplane. It was approved and they carried me out to Mineral Wells. I was going out to Alabama to the B-24 bombers and learn to be a mechanic on those bombers. That’s what I wanted. All of my tests showed I was a good mechanic. They came out to the hut that we were in and this major said, ‘Pack your things, you are headed to Alabama. You are going to be trained to be a radio operator on a B-24 bomber.’ I didn’t want that, but I didn’t have the choice.”
Allen then said while at Mineral Wells, a colonel announced to all their plans had been changed. There was an order that infantry was needed, and Allen would soon be sent to Camp Fannin, located northeast of Tyler.
Camp Fannin transformed more than 200,000 young American men into Army infantry replacements between May 1943 and December 1945. When they had finished training, these soldiers were assigned to serve in both theaters of war at places like Normandy, Malmedy, Remagen, Bougainville and many other sites of combat.
Many would become casualties.
“It was one of the worst bases they had ever done,” Allen said. “They weren’t just strict with you; they were mean to us. We were mistreated. It is hard to think about. I was young, 18 years old, and I didn’t weigh but about 135 pounds. When you are small like that, everybody picks on you. Some of those guys want to fight. I learned to fight, I had to when I started school. If you were the smallest there, all of the other kids think, ‘Well, we will just whip you.’ They got fooled, because my dad had taught me. I’m not going to tell you I’m the best fighter in the world, but I could hold my own.”
No stranger to a rough time, he was born in 1925, and experienced the Great Depression as a youth. Sergeants and lieutenants at Camp Fannin did not have the ability to speak nicely, according to Allen. The men did learn use of military weapons, and the country boy from Texas said he already knew how to shoot. He was raised on a ranch in Freestone County. The small town of Kirvin, west of Fairfield, is where he grew up.
Walter Winchell, a popular reporter at the time, said Camp Fannin would make a Marine base look like a Boy Scout camp.
“I had been working outside in January and East Texas got cold back in those days. It was the toughest camp the United States had. I broke my ankle, but the first time I was in (sick call), I had come down with double pneumonia. The platoon sergeant wouldn’t let me go on sick leave. I was sick and coughing. Finally, on the third day, I just couldn’t get out of bed. I was so weak, I couldn’t raise up.
“I didn’t hardly have the strength, but I put my pants on and my shirt on and it was wintertime. I had a high temperature, so that cool air out there felt good. I started walking and I didn’t even have my uniform right. I met two guys, a major and a captain. There was a board, a 2-by-12 to walk across a stream of water. I got there first and walked across and that major started eating me out because I didn’t have my uniform on. That captain stopped him and wanted to know where I was headed. I told him I was headed to sick call. I couldn’t hardly talk. The captain asked me if I could make it, and I could see it a little ways up the hill. I was so weak, I didn’t know, but I made it.”
After reaching help, arrangements were made for Allen to receive a bed while he sat in the waiting room. Four days later, he woke up in a bed.
He was informed by a nurse that they had been fighting to keep him alive. He would spend six weeks in the bed with tubes in both arms and taking a new drug called penicillin.
Allen later broke his ankle during the last of his training. Jumping across a narrow stream of water, his foot hit a slick place and his ankle went across a rock. Superiors yelled for him to get up, claiming that he wasn’t hurt. After taking the boot off, his ankle had already swelled. Lying in a bed with his ankle hanging in the air, he was in the hospital for another six weeks.
Doctors documented that he would not be suitable for overseas duty. Therefore, he was assigned to train new recruits. His group would come from the Bronx. Allen said he was told they spoke English, but he questioned that. He was teaching the group how to break down an M1 rifle.
“It was the perfect rifle if you learned how to use it. You could sight your adjustments for wind and elevation and that thing would shoot 500 yards. I had medals hanging down to here (marks around his stomach). I was the best shot out on the range that they had in Camp Fannin.”
One of the new recruits would not touch the rifle and Allen could not urge him to try. A staff sergeant started yelling at Allen and soon a lieutenant jumped in to do the same.
“I did something I shouldn’t have, but I had done lost my temper. Because some guy wouldn’t do something, they blamed me. One thing led to another, and that lieutenant got on me. Me and that lieutenant got into an argument about it, and I told him, ‘Why don’t you come down here and see if you can get him to do something?’ He said, ‘That’s not my job. My job is to see that you do yours.’
“My temper got away with me. I threw everything down and said, ‘Y’all take care of this. I don’t need this.’ I walked out. That was a mistake, yes. I walked out and went back to the barracks and laid down in the bed.”
In 20 minutes, he was picked up and taken to a colonel’s office. Following a 30-minute tongue-lashing, he was sent back to the barracks and ordered not to leave. The next morning, he was told that he would be shipped out.
After 10 days at home, the colonel had Allen transported to Germany, taking part in battle on the front lines.
“When I got over there, we were living in foxholes. It wasn’t comfortable at all,” he explained. “It was wintertime. The Germans were just as good of shots as we were. They were good soldiers and they had good weapons. I could be as close as (a few feet) with bullets shooting everywhere when we were raiding the Germans, and guys were getting hit and killed and wounded. A bullet never touched me. Now, explain that. Another guy or two had the same luck, but (the Germans) were shooting machine guns.
“We fought the Germans and we whipped them, but our unit was assigned up in the top of a mountain. This is in the wintertime, and it is 30 and 40 below zero. We had one overcoat, a pair of wool underdrawers, and two pair of socks. We were holding ground. There were two guys to a hole. We spent, I believe, 11 days doing that.
“We had the foxholes with logs and brush over them, so that when the artillery came in from the Germans, it had a cover over them that wouldn’t hurt you. We were in there and the Germans started shelling us.”
A hole next to his had soldiers who would not return home.
“One of their artillery shells went in that square door you could crawl into and went off in that bunker. It killed every guy in there. A part of them were up in the trees and everywhere. I saw that, because that was right next to the one that we were in. When that thing went off in there, that ground just shook.”
When they were finally relieved, it took six hours to walk down the mountain after surviving on K-rations with very little rest. Allen said he spent some nights sitting on his helmet to avoid standing water in the foxholes. He also had folded his overcoat to sit on it just as he did the helmet.
After shaking it out and sticking it in the snow, the coat stood frozen. He was taken to a hospital for five weeks after being frozen from the waist down.
“I saw boys lose their face, ears, nose, hand, feet, legs and I saw them die right there,” he said of his time in the hospital. “If you don’t get blood circulating in a certain length of time, blood poisoning starts. When that hits your heart, you are dead.
“That’s the war. That is the reason I say let’s not have any more war. It is nothing but misery. There are going to be some more wars, but I say let’s not have them. Let’s do something to stop them. Let those guys negotiate with each other.”
Spending two and a half years overseas, one of them was during occupation. Allen was transferred out of the infantry and into special services. He was assigned to a kitchen as a cook.
“We had the Bob Hope Show over there for three weeks. Me and another boy would have to carry him up and put him to bed when he would get drunk. Our unit — we had a bar. Every month, any soldier that wanted a fifth of whiskey got it for free. It made a drunk out of half of them.”
Allen said he was never a drinker. He tried alcohol once, calling it the worst-tasting stuff he ever put in his mouth.
“Bob Hope would sit down at our bar; we had it down in the basement. We had a real bar down there — I mean first class. We were living in a fancy hotel, a top-rated hotel that Germany had and high-up officials used. Bob Hope would sit there, and the drunker he got, the more jokes he could tell. We had stools that you would sit on there, and then we had booths and we had tables. It was a pretty good-sized room. Not one time, but several times, Bob Hope would sit up there and get drunk and fall off of that stool.”
Not only would Allen meet one of the kings of show business, but he also spent time with England’s royalty.
“I met Queen Elizabeth when I was in England. I was taking rehab. A couple of evenings a week, they would let us go to town. They had these donut places you could go in and eat donuts. There were three of us boys. One of them was from Beaumont and I can’t think of his name. We were sitting there and talking to one of the women that would give you donuts and soda water, and I saw that girl standing over there. I had seen a picture of her, but I had never seen her. I asked the woman, ‘That young lady over there, is that Princess Elizabeth?’”
The woman introduced them, and the future Queen Elizabeth II spent a half hour with them.
“She was more interested in Texas. She was working in the evenings. She was in the English military as a truck driver. She would work two nights a week. She delivered goods for the military.”
In one of more than a dozen interactions, the then-princess told the men she would be visiting the Lone Star State following the war.
“She wanted to know where I lived in Texas, and I told her. I told her, ‘If you come to Texas, I’ll show you around.’ She got elected queen and she did come to Texas. She told me she was going to look me up. I gave her my name and everything, and two or three areas she could follow to find me. She never did. She used to have a racehorse deal down in the valley, raising racehorses. I saw her one time here but didn’t get a chance to talk to her. I waved at her and she waved back, and that’s all there was to it.”
Allen has survived sickness, injury and evaded the bullets in war. It was a long way from the bomber mechanic dreams he had of the Air Force. There are still 167,000 living veterans from World War II, but there aren’t too many with the memory for detail that Allen possesses.
He has plenty of stories — more than can fit in a lengthy article. There are more narratives of Camp Fannin, the war, Bob Hope and Queen Elizabeth II — some perhaps too detailed for here. But if you’re ever in Holly Grove, he has a front porch that is good for storytelling.
