TOLLIE WISE

By Yvonne Enzweiler

Tollie Wise was born in the 1920s in LaCrosse, Washington.  He went to school there and finished High School in 1938.  After High School, Tollie joined the Army.  His first experience in the military started off with Basic Training at the Flying School at Marana Army Air Base near Tucson, Arizona.  Different Army Air Force units were stationed there including the unit he was attached to, the 758^th Basic Training Squadron.  There were about seven hundred and fifty BT 13s on the field and Tollie "chased parts" for about one hundred and twenty-five of those planes.  The Army would ship in guys by the trainload, guys who were learning to fly.  They needed things done to keep them flying and Tollie was one of the men who kept them in the air.

While the planes were in the air, Tollie went through ground crew basic training.  He marched, drilling up and down as a unit to teach all those men from different places to work as a team and take orders.  They also did calisthenics to build up physical endurance.

Tollie Wise was transferred to Air Transport Command (ATC) which was a center in New Mexico to accumulate and disburse men into training programs.  From there he went to Airplane Mechanic's School for sixteen weeks in San Bernardino.  When he finished there he was told he was going overseas.  His wife, Opal, had been with him, and he wanted to take her back to LaCrosse, so he scrounged around to get gas ration stamps.  He was transferred to Palm Springs for about six weeks, so she stayed with him.  He found himself with a whole lot of gas stamps he couldn't use up before they expired, so he took them to a gas station in Cathedral City, near Palm Springs.  The owner of the station said, "Here, give them to me.  When you need gas as long as you are here, just come on in." 

After that six weeks Tollie got orders to report to Miami Beach with a two week delay enroute to take his wife and son home.  Miami Beach was a shipping out center where soldiers from all over the country were dispersed.  They were put up in a hotel and given orders what to do.  Many men waited there a long time before shipping out.  What would happen is, when it came time to go they were given orders to go up to the fifth floor.  That meant it was time to go.  Once they been marched up to the fifth floor with their barracks bag, they couldn't write home or talk to anyone else in the hotel.

Tollie was ordered up one morning.  He tossed his stuff on a bunk and joined a crap game going on in a corner of the room.  Suddenly he heard someone say, "Wise, get your stuff together, take your barracks bag, go get early chow, then you are going to India."  Tollie and fourteen other soldiers were shipped on a cargo ship to Bermuda, The Azores, and finally through the Suez canal into the India Ocean.  They landed in Karachi, Pakistan, then went up to Lalmanerhat, India.

Tollie found himself in the China-Burma-India Theater of Operations where, according to the Army, he was to be a mechanic.  They reported to an air base in the middle of a jungle in India.   He couldn't do too much because he didn't have two or three stripes on his uniform.  So he stayed behind the scenes, and got told what to do.  Because he had a problem with one eye, he never got a chance to do what he wanted, which was to fly.

After awhile he got involved with generators.  The base was set up with revetments around the perimeter, with three planes in each one, spread out to keep the Japanese from hitting them all at once.  There was no electricity at the revetments, but Field Maintenance had generators they could carry out to the planes.  Tollie kept the generators running.

But soon the airplanes started to have problems with their reconditioned spark plugs.  They would have to change all twenty-four plugs and then when they would get done, the spark plugs would skip.  So Tollie set up a spark plug shop.  He had a big machine with an air compressor on the back of it that would pump four hundred and fifty pounds of pressure.  He would then put a spark plug in the machine and pump electricity and air pressure to it to see if the spark plug could handle the pressure.  He was the only person around who knew how to check the plugs, so Tollie was busy.  If someone needed spark plugs in the middle of the night, he would have to get up and help them. 

During the monsoon season the cold and moisture made spark plugs malfunction.  Tollie built a box about 2x2x4 feet with two shelves and doors and a light bulb in it, and trays that could hold twenty-four plugs.  He would put plugs in that cabinet to keep them dry.  The shop where he worked was by the generator shop, so they had electricity.

He saw many interesting things, like a time when three ship loads of Chinese Cadets left China to go to the USA for flying instruction, but due to a storm while going around the horn only one shipload got to America.  The other two ships sank in a storm. 

Tollie was in India until the war was over.  He was then shipped back home on a troop ship with maybe fifteen hundred other men.  The bunks were three deep, not exactly a luxury liner.  They sailed from Karachi along the China coast, past Japan, and into the North Pacific.  The water was smooth as glass for most of the trip, then they hit a storm, which abated, then they were hit by a worse storm. 

"Everyone was sick as dogs," Tollie said, "except me.  It didn't bother me at all."

He was overseas for about a year, yet never had to see combat because of the location where he was.  World War II was a horrible war and many of the great men who fought for our country died.  Although many of the men who are recognized were the ones who did fight, there were many people, both men and women, behind the scenes and if it weren't for them, many things would not have been possible.  Tollie was such a man.  Without his services there would have been many problems.  Tollie helped keep the planes fighting.  So I am hoping that with Tollie's story out, more people will recognize the many people behind the scenes during the war.