Copper Commando – vol. 3, no. 24

Sec. 562. P. 1.,& R.U. S, POSTAGE

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Ceneral Joseph W. Stilwell, newly ~appointedcommander of the United States 10th Army, ~s.hown with carbine in hand, as he led a party on

a visit to advance elements of Chinese forces inBurma. Ceneral Stilwell moved up after t.he lapshad been ousted out of a position.

*On January 25 when the Ledo-BurmaRoad was opened to traffic, Generalis'·simo Chiang Ka,i-Shek renamed it the Stil-well Road in honor of the man who took abeating fro m the Japanese in 1942.pJanned th, Ledo-Burma Road throughtropical jungles and ,high mountains; over-came almost insurmountable obstaclesand returned to thrash the Japs in 1944.Recently General Joseph W. Stilwell wasappointed the new commander of theUnited States 10th Army by GeneralMacArthur. He succeeded LieutenantGeneral Buckner, who was killed in ae-'tion on Okinawa. General Stilwell in themessage below tells of the obstacles over-come and gives credit to the men whofought for-and built-the Stilwell Road .

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Gen~ral Stilwell SpeaksAll of us have heard of Burma Road, now known as the Stilwell Road,shown on our front cover. Over this amazing highway Montana eop-per rolls today in the form of war equipment that some day will. -smash the Japs completely. Here is Ceneral Stilwell's tribute:

,1T is gratifying, after three years of unremitting effort, to hearthat the overland route from India to China is at last a reality.I want to pay my respects and give due credit to the men whofought for it and built it - men who never saw the Taj Mahalor the pageantry of the Maharajahs; men who saw only theso=gy, steaming, infested jungles through which they had tocut their way foot by foot, under conditions which are unbe-lievable until you see them - jungle, mountainous terrain, cli-mate, insects, diseases. mud. rain, dust - but: are happy indoing their job knowing that this road will carry the necessarylife giving supplies into China - at last - to drive out anddestroy the japs. The Allied Nations can feel proud of thehard work done by their representatives; Chinese, English,South Africans, Kachins, Gurkhas, Nagas, Burmese, Indians,and Americans.

The terrain in itself was bad enough but the Japs addedmore problems - they had to be blasted from the jungles oneby one. When you look at a map of the world the drive fromledo to Myitkina to the Salween seems short. To the soldiersit is the longest road in the world.

You who have members of your family over there on theRoad have no doubt wondered how the American soldiers wereable to stand up to the hardships which were found at every

COPPER COMMANDO is the official newspaper of the Vi.etory Labor-Ma.n~ementProduction Committees of the Anaconda Copper Min~ Companr and its Union Rep-resentatives at Butte, Anaconda, Great Falls and East Helena, Montana. It is issuedevery two weeks • • • OOPPER COMMANDO is headed by a joint eommiUee fromLabor and Mana.~Dt; Us poUcies are shaped by both sides and are dictated by.either ••• COPPER COMMANDO " .. es&ablished at the recommendation of the WarDepartment with the CODC1UTeDCleef the Wu ProdUCUOD Boud. Itll editors are Bob

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turn. They had a job to do and they stuck to it. The tougherthe job - the tougher the men became. It was a matter ofcutting the pattern to fit the cloth. General Pick and his Com-bat Engineers kept up with the combat troops all the way,working 24 hours a day in spite of the tough going. hi fact, itwas hard to keep ahead of his men, who are Combat Engineersin every sense of the word. There is no individual star on theteam - every branch of the armed services is contributingto the final score. The Troop Carrier Squadrons flew suppliesto the forward areas regardless of weather conditions. TheMedics cared for wounded and sick of all troops. The Quarter-master truck outfits pushed trucks through while the Bomberand Fighter Squadrons of the Tenth Air Force, under GeneralDavidson, kept the sky clear of laps. The rescue squads andpilots of the small liaison planes did a job few men will everforget. The Chinese soldier proved to the world that given'proper equipment, training, and leadership he can hold his ownwith any troops in the world. The. American Infantry combatteams marched hundreds of miles through the stinking junglesand outfought the [aps every time they met them. They carriedthe fight to the enemy in spite of aching muscles, sore feet andendless trails.

They had a job to do and they wouldn't give up.

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Newcomb and Margo Sammons; Its safety editor Is John L. Boanbnan; Its staff pbo-tographer is Les Bishop ••. Its Editorial Board consists of: Denis McCarthy, CIO:John F. Bird, AFL; Ed Renouard, ACM, from Butte: Dan Byrne, CIO; Joe Mariok, AFL;C. A. Lemmon, ACM, from Anaconda; Jack Clark, CIO; 1Jerb Donaldson, AFL, andE. S. Bardwel1, ACM. from Great FaJls ••• COPPER COMMANDO Is mailed, to thehome 0' every employe of ACM in the four locatio_if you are not reeeivi~( YOllroopy advise COPPER COMMANDO at 112 Hamilton Street, Butte. This Is Vel. 3. No. 24.

•JULY 20t 1945

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Here's a scene along the India-China Road.Through the rice paddies of the Keo Yuan dis-

trid as well as through the more rugged moun-tains of Burma, American troops of Burma Road

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engineers, together with thousands of Chineselaborers. prepared the China-India supply route,

The Burma RoadTwo years and three months of com-bat and construction have peopled- theInelia-to-China route with ghosts-anda truck road which the men who built itcall simply the Road.

The ghosts are hundreds of miles ofcombat trace hewn out of the Assam andnorth Burma jungle to supply the mortar-men and riflemen of Stilwell's command.Abandoned again to the jungle as thefighting moved forward. these rutted jeepand pack-mule trails are marked now onlyby the graves of those who died besidethem.

The ghosts are "relocated" sectionsof the original truck and bulldozer route.sight-surveyed in the days when nothingmattered except to get dozers and sup-plies forward where Army engineers couldattack the tough spots. The Road has beenre-surveyed, relocated, rebuilt. and re-maintained so often now that few peoplecan remember the original dozer trace.

JULY 20, 1945

*..The first convoy of trucks started over theLedo-Burma Road when the road' wasopened to traffic on January 25, ·1945.The Ledo and Burma roads were linked to-gether by a cutoff across the mountains.Thi; truck route of two roads, running

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Ledo, India, to Kunming, China, is ableto carry many times the tonnage formerlyconveyed into China by airplane over theHump. It was built through tropical jun-gles and high mountains. Says MajorCeneral E. R. Covell, Comma..,ding Cen-era], Army Service Forces in the Burma-India theater: "American equipment, andAmerican, ,Indian and Chinese labor havehacked out the Leclo and Burma -:_oadsagainst almost unbelievable obstacles:'

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The ghosts are stream-crossing sites,hundreds upon hundreds of t.hem-Iow-water fords, abandoned bridge sites, cross-ings where men, horses and equipmehtpiled across before the next monsoon. Sec-tions of cable. wreckage of timber bents,portions of planking, parts of pontoonbarges. dot the valleys deep into the north-ern hills of Burma from th~ places whereAmerican and Chinese engineers foughtthei r way across. The well-anchored, steel-truss bridges which now carry the truckroad over these streams inherit the ex-periences of one temporary crossing afteranother. Each bridge can say, "I am butthe latest."

The ghosts are construction camp~tes. built first as rude hospitals or tentcamps for staging the combat forces push-ing down the Hukawng valley, then usedas workshops for the road construction "machinery. then as servicing stops for thesupply trucks. Clearing. camp, hospital,

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Chinese coolie laborers are shown filling in a deep ravine on the Ledo-Burma Road.

Here Chinese coolies are doing work that one of ou r .bulldoll:el'$cou·ld do it in half the time.

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~A bulldozer moved in and speeded the work of moving rock and leveling the Ledo-Burma Road..4.

garage for wrecks, or supply depot-eachphase marked a chapter in the progressof the Road.

The ghosts are the skeletons of ma-chinery. Begin with what's left of thetrucks abandoned in the summer of 1942.when the American handful of troops re-treated with Stilwell along this route.Chassis lie half-buried in the sand washalong a river bank Add to them the ex-hausted tractors, the cracked-up lialsonplanes - the one-hess shays who gavetheir lives to the building and the rebuild-ing of the roads that are now the truckroute. A D-8 tractor bulldozer comes offa railroad. flat car at Ledo. Its objectivemight be the head of the road 175 miles. to the southeast. But it works its waydown that 175 miles, relocating here,making a sidehill cut there, adding its ownmark to each mile of road it covers. Noone can anticipate the spare parts it willneed at the end of that 175 miles. Whenparts are unavailable, bulldozers eat bull-dozers, cannibalizing them for workingparts. The Road cannot wait.

The ghosts are memorjes of the rec-ords set and then broken, the unbeliev-abies like pushing the roadhead forward54 miles in 57 days to keep the combatforces supplied in the Hukawng valleydrives; like building a pile-supportedwooden cause-way one and eight-tenthsmiles long and 9 feet high in spots, build-ing it out of a million board feet of timbercut on the spot, just to lift the road aboveone overflow stretch; like moving three-quarters of a million cubic yards of rockand earth to cut one mile of the road ;'Iikeflying in a complete set of heavy earth-moving equipment for one Engineer bat-talion to finish an air strip at Myitkyina,cutting the road scrapers apart to loadthem in the planes, then welding them to-'gether again on the ground three hun-dred miles. away; like the bridge acrossthe Irawaddy, or rather, the bridges. Thefirst one the Engineers threw across was1,200 feet, the longest pontoon bridge theArmy ever built. The new one, made inthe United States of a special design, is abarge-supported bridge whose deck wi IIrise and fall with the river itself. Counter-weights hung on steel cables strung overtowers on either bank will hold the bargesin line though the height- of the rivershould vary half a hundred feet.

The ghosts are the mislaid hopes ofJapan's Asiatic strategy. "-

The two hundred-odd miles of thegraveled truck road reaching from Ledointo Mogaung make a "road back" in agrimmer sense even than Stilwell couldhave foreseen. The first truck convoythrough Mogaung, through Myitkyina,through Lungling, and on toward Kun-ming on the old Burma Road is a groundswell of the 1945 storm of retribution dueto fall on Japan in Asia. For joined to theold, and now improved. Burma Road fromthe Chinese border to Kunming. the Roadhas ruined Japan's hope of isolating Chinafrom her western allies. Japan's desperate

JULY 20, 1945

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To the right is shown a survey party on elephantspassing a bulldozer somewhere on the Burma-Ledo Road in the jungles of north Burma •

•efforts to seal off the China coast from aseaborne invasion have come to naught. A

. stream of 6x6 heavy cargo trucks, rathertha~ a convoy of LST~, now menace theJap holdings in China. The Japs are beinginvaded byland.

The ghosts are those who died flyingthe Hump until the sweating Engineerscould hole the road and pipeline through. ,For two years, the only· gasoline, bombs,medical supplies, and small-caliber am-munition reaching China had to be liftedtwenty thousand feet over the ridges sep-arating China from India'. Such air trans-port was about as economical as a mantrying to jump a six-foot hurdle with thepackages he could carry while making thejump. But the planes made it, ten thou-sand tons a month, twenty thousand tonsa month, thirty thousand tons a month-highest priority items, just as the planescarried the highest priority technicians.No one went into China who couldn't payhis way with work, because each Ameri-can soldier on the other side of the Humphad to be maintained and each soldier'smaintenance cut into the hand-countedtons. Each gallon of aviation gas in Chinawas worth four in India, ten in the UnitedStates. But the Hump fli,ghts kept Chinaalive, kept the Fourteenth Air Force'splanes supporting the Chinese foot troops.

The ghosts are the fears that our warin the Pacific would be a stalemate, thatwe could never hope to bring our strengthto bear effectively on such a distant andso well-protected an enemy, that workersin America would build trucks and bull-dozers and field artillery pieces and heavyshells which could never reach an areawhere they would fulfill their mission ofkilling Japs. These ghosts, once tangible,may now find the Stilwell route a bit toocrowded for them to stick around even asspirits. The machinery for killing Japs isgetting to some eager and soon-to-be-sat-isfied customers. The road is open.

Two years of combat and construc-tion, two years of building the Road overthe scars and ruts of hundreds of tempo-rary trails, two years of assault throughtwo hundred miles of natural hill-and-jun-gle fortifications, two years to cut that air-lift high jump of twenty thousand feetdown to ground-level, means to the RoadEngineers, to the people of China, and tothe people of America, that the road tofull-scale action in Asia is completed.

The dike is broken. The flood ofAmerican combat power is beginning topour through. Now, American trucks anddozers and heavy artillery are free andready to fight.

•Here's the assembly of the first truck convoy inLedo, Assam. Shown are heavy trucks, ambu-lances and jeeps. In addition to carrying a widevariety of supplies and ammunition, the vehiclespulled anti-tank guns and field artillery pieces.Destination is Kunming, ·China, via the BurmaRoad, approximately 1,000 '!Iifes •

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As Ceneral Stilwell said: "They had a job to do and they wouldn't give up. tt The menwho worked on the l.edo-Burma Road kept at it. Roadbuilding went on regardless ofconditions. If Japanese artillery started coming over on one section, the bulldozerswould· just move a mile or so down the way and continue operation. When the shellingstopped, they'd go back and finish up where they'd left off.

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•Here is a close-up of the ~usy Drafting Room at Creat Falls. 'The office is on the main floor of the,eneral office building. And w'e took this group shot so that you might see all the folks as we saw themourselves. That is James W. (Jim> Porter at the left talking with Clenn Eiber, electrical engineer whorecently left the Company. In the background you can see Ernest Bergren going over a drawing withBetty Rusht6n, power clerk. Here in the foreground, studying a drawing is S. F. Neill. Next in orderis Clarence Kathary. At the table at the right are Cerald Shepherd and Carl Etterer. In the picture be-,,low we catch Carl Etterer and Sam Neill discu$sin~ a point at Carl's board.

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DRAF.TSUPPOSE a superintendent of a depart-ment wants to have a piece of construc-tion added to a building. Let's say, forexample. an electrical control panel in-stalled at a certain place in the building.The superintendent feels that this wouldincrease efficiency' and thereby aid pro-duction. ....

You might think that all the super-intendent would have to do would be towrite out a slip and send it along, andthen by some magic the panel would beinstalled.

It doesn't work that way anywhere.and it doesn't work that way at GreatFalls either. For here, in the Great FallsReduction Works, such matters fall with-in the province of the Drafting Room.It is the job of the Drafting Room to cre-ate all designs for new construction andfor alterations. In other words, the jobhas to be planned and studied; maybe itwon't be practical to install such a con-

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Here are Betty Rushton, power clerk, and Ernest. Bergren at Ernest's table. He is a draftsman and ateacher of mechanic ..1 drawing in the Great Fallshigh school. Betty came to the office in March,

trol board. On the· other hand, perhapsa bigger one would do a better job, or asmaller one would do it just as well. It isup to the Drafting Room to decide.

Most requests to the Drafti ng Roomcome from the superintendents of operat-ing departments-occasionally employeesthemselves come through with sugges-tions which are turned in. In most cases,the superintendent merely says in effect,"Look fellows, I think we would get moreefficiency in my department if we hadthis particular gadget. I don't know whatit should look like, but I'll give you myidea of it and you can go on from there."So the Drafting Room sends out its mento talk to the superintendent, to look overthe building, and to consider the installa-tion. ~The whole matter is talked overwith Jim Porter and frequently with R. J.

1944, to help out when the manpower shortagebecame acute. A Creat Falls girl, she had had noprevious training, but she has caught on fast andlikes it a lot. And at the right we caught chief

Kennard. who is the head of this depart-ment. The pros and cons are weighedand if it looks like something that oughtto be done, the job is turned over to thedraftsmen who get busy on the drawing.As the drawings proceed, the estimaterskeep a watchful eye on the project andwhen the job is finished they are ableto submit cost figures.

The day we were there, the placewas a beehive of activity. Some of theboys were working on plans for equip-ment to clean scale from rods in the wiremill. Jerry Shepherd. the civil engineer,was checking land descriptions. GlenEiber was working over !t wiring diagramfor the copper sub-station. When com-pleted, all plans are checked with JimPorter and L. D. Raddon (he was on vaca-tion the day we were there, so we missed

draftsman, Jim Porter, in serious discussion of aprobelm withCerald (Cerry) Shepherd, civil en-gineer. They have before them a drawing wheresome problems are involved,

getting a picture of Jim Porter's right-hand man). The proposals are finallycheckedwith Mr. Kennard.

Probably the biggest job the Draft-ing Room has tackled recently was theextension of the plant which took placetwo years ago. This resulted in a twenty ..five per cent increase in the Zinc Plantcapacity for war production. It involvedthe building of the new Zinc Sub-Station,additions to the Leaching Plant, ZincElectrolytic Plant and Casting Plant. Itwas done in record time.

The Drafting Room is one of thosebehind-the-scenes operations that fewpeople ever hear about, but lots of peo-ple are influenced by. Next time you'rein the General Office at Great Falls stick)(our head in the door and say hel 10. Tel Ithem we told you to.

Below is a good close-up shot of CIEjnn Eiber andClarence K~thary. That is Clenn at the drawingtable and Clarence, estimater, is on the other side.These two men are .tudyin, an electrical wiring

project-Clenn had mapped out the plans and itwas up to Clarence to develop the estimate ofcosts. When the job was done, it went to JimPorter who studied the entire project and then re-

terred the matter to the proper department. It'sup to the Drafting Room to plan and study a neWproject and then figure out the most practicalmethod of installation.

Labor Sees the ShowOUR fighting men in the Pacific, whileCleeply grateful for the outstanding pro-Cluction job done on the home front toClat~, are counting on uninterrupted pro-Cluction of vital war materials in orderthat victory over Japan may be won ata minimum cost of American lives. Thisis the viewpoint expressed by a group often leaders of organized labor, includingboth CIO and AFL, who have recently re-turned from a month's tour of.strategicbases and combat areas in the Asi~tic.theater.

These labor representatives tra~eledover thousands of miles linking our re-mote Pacific bases, at the invitation ofthe Navy, and they gained vivid impres-sions of the Armed Forces at work, fromtop ranking officers to the sailors man-ning their guns and the soldiers ,in thefront line trenches. They saw Pearl Har-bor, Cuam, Iwo Jima (they called it "thebloodiest piece of real estate in theworld's history"), the Philippines, theMarianas and Guadalcanal.

They all came back with the de-termined statement that there is still awar to be completed.

Here's an official Pacific primer forthe guidance of all of us everywhere.~hey are estabiished facts. They aren'tparticularly pleasant to read but they arestill facts:

1. Jap air power is still a highly im-portant factor in the war.

2. We are destroying about a_thous-and Jap planes a month. But the enemyis replacing them at the rate of between.1 ,200 and 1,500 a month.

. 3. The 'aps are producing severalplanes of over 400 miles per hour speed.The latest of these our flyers recently metover the Ryukyus and they may be theworld's fastest.

4. Jap planes today are better ar-mored and carry heavier firepower thanever before. Their pilots are again show-ing the high calibre of those who dom-inated the skies following Pearl Harbor.

5. Everything indicates that the Japshave been hoarding their best planes and~ost experienced pi~ts for the defenseof the homeland. They are just startingto put their first team into the air--now.

These heads of organized labor haveseen the show from the front row. Theyhave come back with • message not onlyto American worken but to American.everywhere.

People (;' Places'AT an editorial board meeting in GreatFalls we were discussing future storiesto be used in Copper Commando. HerbDonaldson spoke up and suggested thatwe do a story on the Cashier's Office.Herb said: "They've done a grand job

, handling the bonds for the entire Plant.They keep a card for each person buyingbonds. which shows the serial number ofthe bonds purchased, and if the bondsare lost all we have to do is report theloss and another bond will be issued.That's a fine thing and I'd like to seethem get some recognition." The nextday we hurried over to see Timothy Cor-coran, ca~hier since 1917. and LeilaBeagles. Tim has been at the plant forforty-five years and was in the Time Of-fice before he took over the cashier as-signment. Mrs. Beagles' husband. at thetime of his death, was general foremanof the roasters.

There are over fourteen hundred em-ployees at the Reduction Plant at GreatFalls and practically all of them are buy-ing bonds at the rate of one a monththrough the Company, and that meansthey are purchased through the Cashier'sOffice. With all the additional work in-volved in keeping the records straight forthe purchase of the bonds, Mrs. Beagleswas employed to handle the bonds. She'sdone a splendid job according to all thefolks at Great Falls. Pete Fontana, as wellas Herb. was high in his praise. Pete andHerb should know for they've really got-ten in and pitched on the bond drives atGreat Falls.

Around $40.000 a month is investedeach and every month by the employees.In addition to their regular purchases.during the drives. there is usually an ad-

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ditional $45,000 or more invested. As ofJuly 1, bonds totalling over $149.000 hadbeen purchased by the Great Falls folksduring the Seventh War loan Drive. Theapplications for the bonds are made outby Mrs. Beagles. They are taken to thePost Office and the bonds are issued andthe card records: about which Herb toldus, are then made and kept by the Cash-ier's Office.

Payroll checks are made on the 1. B.M. machines. Formerly Tim had to signall the payroll checks but today a plateon the Addressograph machine takes careof it. No cash is paid out of the Cashier'sOffice. Three copies are made of draftsgiven in payment of e~penses for thePlant--one stays in the Cashier's Office.one copy goes to the General Office Ac-counting Department, and the. originalgoes to 'the creditor. Tim says he hassigned checks representing millions ofdollars since he's been Cashier and wisheshe had a smal I percentage of the moneyrepresented by them-then he could havereti red many years ago•A FEW weeks ago, after some of us hada picnic at Columbia Gardens. one of thegroup asked us why we didn't do a picturestory on the Gardens and Washoe Park atAnaconda. It was pointed out that wewould be able to show many youngstersat play and that the issue 'might be inter-esting to a lot of people, not only to theparents of the children but to others aswell.

We checked the idea with our board'(everybody seemed to like it) so westarted off wi th AI Gusdorf, our photog-rapher. In our next issue. to be called"Let Us Play," we'll show you the results.

Mrs. Leila Beael .. and Timothy Corcor_

QUESTION: Matt, you weren't in servicevery long but you certainly saw a lot ofactivity in a short time. Isn·'t that right?

ANSWER: I sure did. I went into the.. service in January of '44, in the Infantry.

We went overseas in September. last yearand a month later we were sent into com-bat, with the First Army. You folks backhere know about the German counter-attack, but I don't think you know howtough it really was. Five of us were cap-tured on th'e eighteenth of December. •We had hidden in a German farm houseafter our unit was broken up and the'Nazis told us to come out or they wouldblow the place up. That Was thirty milesbelow Aachea.

QUESTION : What did they do then?

ANSWER: Well, they marched us twen-ty-five miles on only a half pint of soupper man. They took us to what is calleda transit camp at Limburg. They take yeuthere so that you can' be assi gned to reg-ular prison camps. We were there oneweek.

QUESTION: And then you were movedinto a regular prison camp?-ANSWER: That's right. I'll never forgetit -we were transferred from Limburgto the" Luchenwalde prison camp. Don'tget that mixed up with Buchenwald,which is the horror internment campwhere thousands were killed. We wereherded into box cars in the dead of win-ter and we rode five days and five nights.In all that time each man had one-thirdof a loaf of dirty black bread to eat. Therewas nothing to drink, no heat and nosanitation .. Several American boys diedand several had feet and hands frozen.

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QUESTION: How did they treat you a~Luchenwalde?

ANSWER: Plenty rough. They started usright off on the starvation diet. Duringmy confinement I lost fifty pounds -( Igot most of it back since), and J wouldhave died, as a lot of my buddies did, ifI had not learned the ropes and foundout how to raid' food supplies. We didn't·have enough to eat to keep a ch iId alive.The only bright spot was the-. fact that,on our arrival, the "..British shared theirfew supplies with us. We got .along finewith the British. And you can put thisdown too. The Russians, whi Ie they areplenty tough, are very fine soldiers andgood people.

QUESTION: What did they give you toeat?

ANSWER: Nearly all the time it was asort of thin turnip soup. They put any-thu,g in it they wanted. We also had de-hydrated rutabagas. They really gave usa spread, though, at Christmas. At thattime they gave us a bowl of soup madeout of grass and three crackers apiece.

QUESTION: How long did you stay atLuchenwalde?

JULY 20, 1945

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Private Matt Casick with his mother.

When the great German offensivewas unleashed last December andthe Allied armies were rolled 'back, a Butte boy, a former miner,a wearer of the Presidential Cita-tion and the Purple Heart, wasone of those .eaught in the Nazinet. He is back home now afterfive and one-half months in a Ger-, -man prison camp. He saw theatrocities at first hand and hisstory is grim and, terrible. YourCopper Commando editors ob-tained an interview with this boy;he is Private Matt Casick and hewas a star athlete at Butte HighSchool, released from a Germanprison camp' when the armies ofGeneral Eisenhower rolled intoGermany. Here are our questionsand here are his answers. We thinkevery American will want to readthis interview with Private MattCasick who, in the short period o~twenty years, has lived a wholelifetime.

ANSWER: Only about two weeks, whichwas two weeks too long. We were the.first Americans there and then we wereassigned to what the Krauts call "WorkKommand." They are just work camps,• Ours had only about. two hundred menand we were put out to do slave labor. Atnight they used to give us a slice of blackbread for dinner. You knew that youweren't going to get anything the follow-ing morning, so you had to decide wheth-er to eat your bread that night or keepit for breakfast. They expected you to doa full day's work on no food at all.

'QUESTION: Did they beat the Americansoldiers as reports say?

ANSWER: The reports don't tell the peo- •ple the half of it. The folks back homehave no idea how terri ble this war inEurope was. I personally got off prettylight but a whole lot of the men aroundme didn't, particularly the Russians. In-cidentalty, the German soldiers werevery much afraid of the Russians. Theywere afraid that they would get into Ger-many first and have the final say in whathappened to the Nazis. I was able tolearn enough from some of the Russianprisoners, through-using a few words theyunderstood, to' know that the mass mur-ders of innocent people in Poland andRussia were just beyond description.

I know Copper Commando reachesa lot of homes of servicemen and I don'twant to talk too rough and upset people,but I surely want the folks back -hometo know that we mustn't have any mercyof any kind. There were no cruelties aman can think of that the Nazis have notpracticed on Allied soldiers.

QUESTION: Then these atrocities stories~nd the wholesale burning and slaughterof people in Cerman prison camps aretrue?

ANSWER: They sure are. I saw too muchof it with my own eyes. The whole objectof the Nazi was to starve the enemy sol-diers to death and to butcher politicalp,risoners and innocent citizens of con-quered dountries. I don't think the truestory of these massacres wi II ever be toldbecause 'it will be too sickening to read

QUESTION: Matt, what does the averageCI think about us civilians?

ANSWER: Well, he thinks most of them,having relatives in the service, have doneand are doing their best. The thing that,makes him maddest is reports of strikesand work stoppages. He hears aboutthem when he is sweating it out on ,thefiring line and it sure makes him sore.

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QUESTION: What do the boys thinkabout the war with Japan?

ANSWER: We all think it is going to bea tougher scrap than in Europe. The Japis a 'dirty fighter all the way through,cruel and ruthless. We will have to hithim with everything we've got .

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GoodFello~s Get TogetherA social high spot at the Anaconda Smelt er is the annual banquet of the Electricians,on which occasion the old-timers are given a warm and friendly tribute. A shorttime ago we visited the Electricians and came away with this picture story of the party.

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Anaconda electricians are shown here swapping.tories in the Montana Hotel lobby. L. to r. are;

Voin Vucasovich, James McCeever, M. L. P.Sweeney, Vince Barry, Jim Munro and Rudy fink.

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ONE of the outstanding social affairsat Anaconda is the annual dinner of themembers of ,Anaconda's Electrical Union,Local -200. This local union not only in-cludes men from Smelter Hill but alsofrom the community itself.

This year the boys assembled fortheir second annual dinner at the Mon-tana Hotel and M. L. (Mickey) McDer-mott, "for fourteen years president of thelocal union, invited your editors to be onhand to take pictures and join in the fun.On these pages you see the ~sults of ourvisit. The boys assembled in the Mon-tana hotel lobby shortly before seven0'clock to say hello to each other andswap stories, following which they ad-journed to the dining hall. Mickey Mc-Dermott presided over the interestingprogram which followed. The programstarted off with the singing of God BlessAmerica, led by E. A. Hamper and ac-companied by Rufus Davidson. After thebanquet was finished, Mickey turnedover the program to Toastmaster CharlesO'Neill. Charlie is one of the electricianson the B. A. & P. and has been active inunion affairs for a good many years. Aftera few remarks by Charlie, the orchestraof Brother Hayes, which consists of him-self, his wife and Miss Marjorie Blood-neck, enlivened the proceedings withwith a f.ew old-time songs. Mayor BarneyMcGreevey responded to an introduction

JULY 20, 1945

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Shown on the opposite page top picture are partof the group who aHended the annual dinner ofAnaconda'. Electrical Union, Local 200. Frontrow, I. to r.: Ben Middleton. Pat Dunne, MiltonJohnson. 'ames Lyon, Emmett Corrigan and Wil-bur Johnson. Second row: David PlaH. 'amesMunro, M: E. Buck. Michael Gallagher. AndyMcVicars, Denny Connors and Charles Callan.'Third row: Jim Manion, Fulton Gale, H. Hether-ington: Clem Davison, Lloyd Mahet', E. W. Wil-liams, Carl Undstrom, John Phillips, Sid McCul-lough, Steve Stanich, James McGeever and PatMcCarthy. Back row: Voin Vucasovich, RudyFink. W. M:Smith, C. E. Howard and Ed Ridley.

*with a few cordial remarks.As evidence that the electricians are

interested in improving their own craft.Clem Davison, fin~ncial secretary of theunion, reviewed the advances of electric-ity over a period of many years. At thispoint President McDermott introducedthe retired members, after which an ap-propriate song dedicated to Mother's Daywas sung by Eddie Hamper, who is headof the Music Department of the Ana·conda High School.

The Anaconda Company officialswere invited to attend, and Ed McGlone,general manager in charge of mining andmetallurgical operations in Montana andIdaho, accompanied by Bill McMahon,labor commissioner in Butte, made thetrip down for the festivities. They werejoined by M. E. Buck, also of Butte. whois general manager of the Montana PowerCompany. Among the guests called uponfor remarks were Fulton Gale, superin-tendent of schools at Anaconda, CharlieLemmon, George Hackett and ~. E. Lar-son from Smelter Hill, Ed McGlone, BillMcMahon, E. W. Williams.and M. E.Buck from Butte. Two other interestingtalks on subjects of interest to electri-cians were given by W H. Blankmeyer,electrical engineer with the MontanaPower Company in Butte, who reviewedbriefly the topic of electronics; he wasfollowed by Harold Perttu, instructor onelectronics.

A high spot of the evening was theawarding of the twenty-five-year pin toJim Galliland, old-time Butte electricianwho is now retired.

Chairman of the Banquet committeewas Bill Smith, who turned in a fine show.He was assisted by George Crandall, JimLyons, Joe Holt, Mike Hayes and P. J.Hagan.

Two of the veterans missing fromthe scene were John Holmberg, who senthis regrets from Seattle, and S. J. Solo-mon, who wrote from Minnesota. BobBrooks of the B. A. & P. sent regrets andsent along a box of cigars.

The vice president of the local unionis M. J. Mee; Clem Davison, as we havealready told you, is financial secretary.and Herb Miller is recording secretary.

What broke the photographer'Sheart, and ours along with it, was that'the wet weather damaged the camera andthe second group picture accordingly didnot come out •

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Here are some of Anaconda's old-timer electri-cians with Mickey McDermoH. Front row. I. to r.

are: Andrew McVicars, Mike Callagher, AlexJones. Standing with Mickey is Dave P'att,

Mic~ey McDermoH, president, Local 200, wel-comes Bill McMahon, BuHe Labor Commissioner,

Ed McClone, Gener~1 Manager, George Hacltett. >

CoHrell Department Foreman, and M. E. BHck.

Anaconda Smelter electricians gathered in gro'upsbefore the' dinner. Here's Steve Stanich, James

Lyons, William Keig, Ed Haverman, Pat McCar-thy and Ed Ridley shown talking things over,

Jack Weber, electrician at Galen and WarmSprines, is here thown discu .. in, his problem.

with B A & P electricians, Ceorge Crandall, CarlReuber, Ted Thoma. and Charles O'Neill.

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Here are some of the boys at the Emma Mine. Inthe picture to the left, I. to r.: Bat Leary, JamesJMuD Mulholland, John (Curley) McLeod,

~ HE faces shown on this page are probablyfamiliar to most of our readers but here are afew facts about these folks which you may notknow. The two upper pictures were taken atthe Emma Mine while we were waiting to go un-~erground. Bat Leary is a watchman and is thefather of Jim Leary, the Secretary-Treasurer ofthe IUMM&SW. James (Mul) Mulholland isa machinist. John (Curley) McLeod, formerRecording Secretary of the Butte Miners' Union,works on the fan bags. Frank (Spud) Murphyhas a reputation of having been one of the bestmule skinners on the Hill. John (Mugs) .Blewett,another old-timer, works on surface. Louisi{Keene) Young is a shift boss; Peter Troglia astation tender; Jimmie Clark a pipeman; ArchieCoutts an old-time Emma miner, and Pete Smith,a shaftman. These fellows and their co-workersat the Emma get out the manganese ore forUncle Sam.

Frank (Spud) Murphy, John (Mugs) Blewett. Inthe picture to the right, front row, I. to r.: Louis(Keene) Young, Steve Smith, Bob' Newcomb,

In the center pictures, Joseph Boyle, en-gineer in the Compressor Room at the Travonia,has been with the Anaconda Company for fifty-eight years. iJe started as a miner but for thelast forty-eight years has been working as anengineer at various Butte mines. We got thepicture of [ohn Dunn, foreman at the High Ore,on March 6, which marked the anniversary of hisforty-third year with the Company.

That's Joe Fenna, oiler at the Anselmo Hoist,and Homer Hunt, safety engineer at the Anselmo,in the bottom picture to the left. loft was on hisvacation but like a postman taking a walk hecouldn't stay away from the Anselmo. Joestarted at the Anselmo in 1935 when the hoistwas installed. He says that he's worked at otherhoists allover the Hill .(he's been an engineerfor thirty-six years and is a member of the En-gineer's Union) but the Anselmo is his favorite

editor of Copper Commando; second row, I. to r.:Peter Troglia, James Clark, Archie Coutts, MargSammons, co-editor, and John (Mugs) Blewett.

spot. The boys take great pride in the fernshown in the picture, which Ira Steck sent to theAnselmo Hoist Room in 1936 right after the en-.gine was installed. Homer Hunt has been safetyengineer at the Anselmo for the last six months,but he's been wi~h the Company since 1923.

We got the picture of William Hoskin atthe rectifiers in the Butte Hoist Compressor Plantwhen he came over to make one of his daily in-spections. The rectifiers shown take the placeof a motor generator set and furnish the powerfor charging the batteries for hard hat lamps andmine locomotives. As foreman of the AnacondaElectric S~op. Bill has charge of the Butte HoistCompressor Plant, the High Ore Pump Station(he installed th~ High Ore pumps), the AnacondaElectric Shop and the wiring ·of the down townoffices. He's been at the electric shop since.1 916 off and on

Joseph Boyle, engineer in the Travonia Compressor Room. John Dunn, foreman at the High Ore Mine.

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Joe Fennah and Homer Hunt at the Anselmo Mine. William Hoskin. foreman, AnacOI!da Electric Shop.