Published Jan. 14, 2002
Hendersonville Times-News

http://www.blueridgenow.com/article/20020114/EXTRAS02/201140304/0/search

Vet was a WWII “weather warrior”

By Jennie Jones Giles
It was cold, so cold his breath would freeze and he would have to brush it away in order to breathe.
Harold “Bo” Phillips was serving his country in the Pacific at the end of World War II. He wasn’t on steamy, jungle islands, but in Siberia on Russia’s Far Eastern front supporting “America’s weather warriors,” as the title of a book calls the military personnel who provide meteorological data and forecasts for America’s armed forces.
Phillips, 75, was born in Saluda, not 400 feet from his present home. He joined the Navy three months after his 1944 graduation from the former Saluda High School.
The Navy sent him to boot camp and radio school in Bainbridge, Md. In the summer of 1945, the Allied forces had defeated the Germans and were heading toward the islands of Japan. Phillips was sent to Washington, D.C., where he was to leave for China, he was told. But his orders unexpectedly changed.
“We left Washington on a cargo plane, sitting on the floor,” he said. “We were heading for Khabarovsk, Russia, which is up in Siberia.
“We were over Cincinnati, Ohio, when they announced V-J Day (victory over Japan) and the pilot of the plane put it on the speaker and he flew down over Cincinnati, where we could see the streets full of people cheering.
“Our first thought was as soon as we get to California, they’re going to let us go back home, we’re not going over there,” Phillips said. “But, no, we went on to Washington and Adak, Alaska, and from there on over to Siberia.”

Duty in Russia

Russia, then known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was an American ally in World War II. After the defeat of Germany, the USSR had declared war on Japan and entered China to fight the Japanese.
Khabarovsk, at the confluence of the Amur and Ussuri rivers on the border with China, was established in 1858 to protect the Russian-Chinese border. It is the headquarters of Russia’s Far Eastern Military Command.
Phillips was originally to be a part of Project MOKO, the United States’ effort to establish a Fleet Weather Central at Khabarovsk, which would provide forecasts for expected amphibious landings in Japan in late 1945.
But with the surrender of Japan, what was now the purpose of this weather station?
Phillips, as a radioman, never knew. One reference source states that in September 1945, when Phillips arrived in Siberia, the Navy formed a cooperative meteorological network with the Soviet Union to support mine-sweeping operations.
Phillips only knew he was a Navy radioman serving his country in Siberia. He was one of 40 enlisted men and 20 officers who erected and ran a weather station.
According to Phillips, the last good meal they had for some time was in Alaska.
“The first meal they set before us in Russia,” he said, “was a fish head and rice.”
Barley was a staple. “They cooked barley like we cook rice,” he said. “I’d put a little milk and sugar on that and eat it like cereal.
“Their borscht, beet and cabbage soup, tasted pretty good,” he said.
“One of the most amazing things about Russia,” he said, “was the Russians were always on the move with all their belongings on their back.”
Other than the Russian women and young people who cooked and cleaned at the weather station, the Americans had little contact with the Russian people. A Russian driver would occasionally take them into town.

The weather

Most of all, Phillips remembers the cold.
After the end of September, the temperature remained below zero, he said.
In addition to a face mask with felt on the inside and plastic on the outside, he wore a big parka with a fur-lined hood and a heavy coat under that, along with insulated pants.
Over the top of his gloves, he had thick mitten-type gloves and half-inch thick felt socks that he wore over regular socks.
Phillips said the lined, heavy galoshes made of leather and rubber were more comfortable than his boots.
“We couldn’t hardly walk in the big boots,” he said. “Those boots were high with rubber on the outside and a lining on the inside.”
The barracks and radio station were heated with wood and the men had plenty of blankets, he said. But showers were a luxury.
“If you didn’t get to the shower first or second,” he said, “you didn’t get a shower. They poured one bucket of hot water in a barrel of water sitting on top of a building with a hole in the bottom of the barrel and it poured out on you.”
On Dec. 28, 1945, the Navy dismantled the weather station and the men left by train for Vladivostok – a 400-mile trip.
“When we left it was 60 degrees below zero,” Phillips said, “and that train we rode on was just open cars with a little wood stove in one end and open windows all the way.”

Home and to Europe

It took four days to travel to the port city of Vladivostok. They boarded a ship, crossed the Sea of Japan to pick up some Marines and trucks in Japan, and then traveled across the Pacific to San Diego.
After a trip home and a few more months moth-balling ships in Texas, Phillips returned to Saluda, married Mary Brown and worked at odd jobs.
Then the Korean War began and he was recalled to duty by the Navy.
Phillips didn’t go to Korea. He was assigned as a radioman on the destroyer John W. Weeks that remained in the waters around Europe.
Once, while in the English Channel, his ship went to the rescue of a merchant ship sinking in the channel. The crew members of the sinking ship were placed on the Navy destroyer, but the captain wouldn’t leave, Phillips said.
“He got off just as it was going down,” he said.
Phillips still has the English newspaper describing the event.
When Phillips was recalled to duty his wife was pregnant with their first child.
As a radioman, Phillips’ job was to listen to the Morse code messages being transmitted, copy them down and pass them along to be decoded.
“I was on duty when it came across about my child’s birth,” he said.
Phillips was discharged from the Navy in 1952 and he returned to his family in Saluda.
Phillips and his wife, who recently died, had six children, seven grandchildren, one step-grandchild and two great-grandchildren.
He worked for 33 years at General Electric and served 10 years on the Saluda City Council. Phillips has been a volunteer with the Polk County Transportation Authority since 1989, driving people to doctors and hospitals. He has kept the nursery of 2- to 4-year-olds at Saluda First Baptist Church for 20 years or more. He is a member of the Saluda Lions Club, the Saluda Masonic Lodge, the Hendersonville Shriners and a lifetime member of the Saluda Fire and Rescue Department.