SHORELINES

8 Shor e l i n e S | 2015 Vol :2 Hanks was just 14, forcing him to go to work in a tavern and taking all sorts of odd jobs to help the family. A friend helped him get a job working at a machine shop at the age of 16 only because Hanks lied about his age and said he was 18. There, he learned to weld and operate machinery. "That's why I believe I ended up in the Corps of Engineers, because I knew how to work different types of equipment," Hanks says. Opportunity seized. From South Carolina, it was off to Camp Ellis, Ill., where Hanks was told his unit would be heading to Europe to fight Hitler and the Germans. "I will never forget, that is where I was on D-Day," Hanks says. After D-Day, the Army leadership pulled the officers and non-commissioned officers out of the battalion and sent them to Camp Shelby, Miss., to train another battalion that they would lead into the Pacific theater. When training was complete at Camp Shelby, the battalion traveled to California and Staff Sgt. Hanks was among the 10,000 men who boarded troop transport USS General A.E. Anderson bound for New Guinea. After a few days in New Guinea, it was clear the Marines preferred the Army guys find something else to do. "They didn't need us or didn't want us, I don't know which," Hanks says. Fortunately for Hanks and the rest of the battalion, Gen. Douglas McArthur had just invaded Leyte in the Philippines and he did want and need the engineers. So Hanks and company were back on a boat for several more days, bound for Leyte Bay in the Philippines. "All that was there was mud," Hanks says. "It was the rainy season, the monsoon season." Above: Photo by k ariM shaMsi-Basha — Photos and memorabilia from Louis Hanks' time serving in World War II in southeast Asia.

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