"Connie Mack came into our dressing room and he congratulated us on what a good team we had and how much he enjoyed watching the game. He said he wished he could have 2 or 3 of our ball players playing on his team, because probably at that time his team lost a lot of ball players to the service, too."
Clayton Lathrop was raised in Franklin and Lebanon Connecticut. He was drafted in January, 1941 almost a year before Pearl Harbor. He was an artillery sergeant in the 242nd Coast Artillery whose main purpose was to defend Long Island Sound. He was stationed at Fort Terry and later Fort Mitchie. In 1944 he was transferred to Aberdeen, Maryland. Clayton describes life at Fort Terry and Mitchie and also tells of his pastime activities, especially his experiences playing baseball for the Army. After the war, Clayton played baseball for the local Willimantic Ridges and later worked at Brand Rex for 35 years. In this segment, he describes the huge WWI era gun that was used to guard the Sound and also tells of playing at Fenway Park.
Eventually, we were put on this old World War I 16 inch disappearing carriage gun that was supposed to fire accurately at 21 miles but it would fire up to 24 miles . . . I had four members who were with me. They were called an artillery crew and they would work with me. . . The barrel was 69 feet long and the projectile weighed 2400 pounds. The powder was 1100 pounds and what you would do is you would load it when it was in the pit and then it would be tripped and it would come out of the pit. You could traverse it 360 degrees in any direction and then when it was fired it would come back down into the pit to be loaded again . . . It took a good couple of months to get it in shape to fire . . . We fired, I think it was 1941 , and there were probably oh maybe 300 dignitaries and generals who were there and officers of all kinds to watch that gun fire . . .We fired 16 rounds out of it and last 4 rounds we fired, the gun barrel was coming down and it was weaving a little bit from side to side. It was not tracking right so shortly after that the gun was declared obsolete . . . The kind of war they were having, they would have to do something better than that.
We had 3 alerts where there were submarines in the area and they evidently got into the Sound somehow or other and we were up all night and had the gun ready to fire. It was loaded and all the other guns were ready to fire too. . . They were pretty sure it was a German sub . . . All the battalion was on alert. That was one time. Other times we got notices that there were submarines in the area but it didnt last that long . . . The others we were not sure whether they were subs or what they were because the Major in charge never did say much. This was after Pearl Harbor that they were in the area . . .
On Plum Island I would say off and on I was probably there 2½ years out of the four years. The big gun was on Fort Michie. Its a small island but there was a lot of firing power placed there. I would be out there, I would say, from November right through to April then they put me on detached service and I would be back to [Fort] Terry [on Plum Island] playing baseball because the Captain in charge thought I was a good ball player. They wanted to do that for the troops. Give them something to cheer about . . . It was a morale builder because Im telling you all the servicemen would come to watch and boy did they yell and holler if you made an error. You would hear about it. (laughs) It was good though, for everyone.
Every Spring I would get transferred back to Fort Terry on special duty playing ball. We would play all the service teams, Army, Navy, Air Force that were around New England. Some of the time if we were near non-service teams, they might make arrangements for you to play them. In fact, Southbridge was one of the places we played four or five times a year because they had a stadium . . . and they had a real good team. They were real baseball fans they loved it they loved our team. They came out with big crowds to watch us . . .In 1942, I think it was, we won the Southern division of the New England Service Championship. We were to play the winner of the Northern division, Fort Devons, at Fenway Park. They had all big league ball players and they beat us 6 to 2 on a lucky hit. One of the pitchers for us was John Caulfield from Norwich. He was an excellent player. The only league ball player we had was a minor leaguer. His name was Tom Siok and he was a catcher. He helped all of us out a lot. He was a hitter. He was an excellent hitter. He would have made the big leagues for sure if he didnt have to be in the service for 4 or 5 years. When we finished the game at Fenway Park, the Philadelphia Athletics were playing the Red Sox. Connie Mack came into our dressing room and he congratulated us on what a good team we had and how much he enjoyed watching the game. He said he wished he could have 2 or 3 of our ball players playing on his team, because probably at that time his team lost a lot of ball players to the service, too . . .
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