Thanks to a reader of pasttensega.com, I can now share the journey of Abraham (Abe) Koppel during World War II. Koppel wrote down a narrative of his experiences when his granddaughter was working on a school project. The family also shared a photograph of Koppel and the X-ray section he trained with at Lawson General Hospital, along with an image of the back of the photograph with messages from several men.
Koppel was born August 21, 1924, in Brooklyn, New York. Drafted March 29, 1943, he had seven days to prepare to leave. “I was nearly at the end of my first year of college-Brooklyn College,” he recalled. He asked for an extension to finish his semester but was denied.
He began his travel at Pennsylvania Station, going to Fort Dix in New Jersey for 12 days. Next, he went to Camp Grant outside of Rockford, Illinois. There he encountered the challenge of walking as fast as his 6-foot six-inch platoon lieutenant. “I had blisters on my heels for 12 out of 13 weeks and never was able to complete a hike.”
From Camp Grant, Koppel went to Michigan State College and became part of the Army Specialized Training Program. “They tried to push four years of engineering and other courses such as English, Mechanical drawing, foreign language, and math…in one year.”
Abe Koppel, on the second from bottom row- third from the right, trained at Lawson General Hospital in 1944 and later became part of the 204th General Hospital serving in the Pacific Theatre. The X-ray school was part of several medical training divisions in the Medical Department Technicians School.
The back of the X-ray technicians school photo lists some of the men and their home towns. This photograph is from the collection of the Abe Koppel family.
Koppel went back to Camp Grant for two weeks, then to Lawson General Hospital in Chamblee, Georgia for six months of x-ray school. He was part of the X-fay Section, Class 20, Medical Department Technicians School. His training was completed on June 5, 1944, just one day before D Day. Koppel and his classmates were sent to various places following training.
For the third time, Koppel returned to Camp Grant in Rockford, Illinois. This time for six weeks. In September of 1944, he went to Camp Beal near Marysville, California. Peach growers of California were in desperate need of workers. Koppel was put to work cutting peaches in the cannery for seven weeks.
After a two week stay at Fort Lawton in Seattle, he boarded the USS Grant for Hawaii. He volunteered for permanent KP duty. Koppel describes the facilities as still having holes in the walls and roofs, and craters where bombs had been dropped on December 7, 1941.
After seven weeks, he became an X-ray technician with the 204th General Hospital. “This unit was preparing to go into the field. We needed to load massive amounts of equipment onto trucks which then were driven onto a cargo ship and sent off.” There were 640 enlistees, 160 nurses and about 150 doctors. Twenty-one days later they landed in Guam.
Approximately 37,000 injured soldiers came through the 3,000-bed hospital. There were only three fatalities from Iwo Jima and Okinawa campaigns at their hospital.
The X-ray unit often saw around three hundred patients a day. There were four X-ray rooms. According to Koppel, “Some patients needed a lot of time. Some needed to be in special positions for the pictures to be taken and we, not knowing the danger, would stand there and hold them in place.”
The 204th General Hospital staff was measured for winter uniforms, expecting to have to continue through the winter. However, the war ended September 2, 1945. Koppel stayed until March 1946 with a group of about forty staff members, working at the hospital to handle chronically ill patients and POWs returning from Japan.
Koppel saw horrible injuries during his time as an X-ray technician. His work was important as part of a team to save the lives of injured soldiers. As he says, “I did good work, I was a good technician, and was promoted, in a period of seventeen months from private to Technician 4th grade. From no stripes to four.”