South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Woman retraces father’s service as WWII captain
Papers belonging to John E. Mellen fill in history of all-Black 818th Amphibious Truck Company
Leslie Holland remembers her late father, a World War II veteran, as a generous but stoic and humble man who shielded his three daughters from the horrific stories of his time in the war.
Fifteen years after John E. Mellen passed away, Holland, 69, is putting together the pieces of her father’s legacy and connecting the dots of history in the process.
“He was just not one for accolades and so forth. We were nearly teenagers before I knew he was a captain,” she said.
Mellen was at Utah Beach on D-Day while serving as captain of the 818th Amphibious Truck Company, an all-Black company of 173 soldiers, about whom little was known until Holland, an Ocala resident, uncovered a box of her father’s documents.
“We came across a box that said World War II love letters. We read 200 love letters of my parents, with a lot of juicy, wonderful details,” said Holland with a hint of sarcasm. “I flipped through a stack of disciplinary records. Someone went AWOL, someone was caught with illegal cigarettes. Someone had a bit of a skirmish in the bunkhouse … I almost sent them to the garbage, into the burn pile.”
Little did Holland know, these records were the key to filling in gaps of World War II and African American history that had been lost for decades.
A serendipitous sequence of events
In perusing all of those detailed love letters, Holland discovered that her father had trained at Camp Gordon Johnston in the town of Carrabelle, south of Tallahassee in Florida’s panhandle. The coastal environment resembled the beaches of Normandy and helped troops train before D-Day.
Upon a quick Google search, Holland discovered that there’s now a World War II museum — Camp Gordon Johnston Museum — where the camp once stood. Enter Lisa Keith-Lucas, the museum’s archivist and board president.
“I said, ‘I’m the daughter of the captain of the 818th,’ ” Holland said, recalling her first email to Keith-Lucas. “She’s like, ‘Oh my God, my mind is blown. Yes, I want those records.’ ”
“It’s very hard to get the names of the men,” Keith-Lucas said. “We knew they trained here along with the 817th, 816th and 815th. We had almost no names.”
Since that discovery in early 2020, Holland and Keith-Lucas, working in tandem with Everette F. Coppock III, a retired Army command sergeant major, have identified more than 120 of the 173 men in the 818th company.
In World War II, Mellen, his officers and the crew of Black soldiers were responsible for 50 DUKW amphibious vehicles (“ducks”) that transported cargo and passengers.
This rabbit hole search that started with a box of records quickly turned into a quest involving draft cards, gravestones, obituaries and ancestry. In an interesting twist of events, Holland came across a photo of a duck that bore the markings of the 818th company.
“I was looking on the internet, and I found a picture of a duck that was in the 818th. How could that be? This happened 78 years ago,” Holland said.
She contacted museums in France and England before tracing the vehicle’s location to the Orlando Auto Museum at Dezerland Action Park, just over an hour away from her home.
“This one, of all fluke, was in my dad’s company. This is the proof of the 818th. These were used for transportation on D-Day at Utah Beach,” Holland said. “I just about choked when I walked in here. The serendipity of this whole story is amazing to me.”
‘I don’t want to see them lost’
While this project has provided Holland and her older sister, Beth Stoor, a way to connect with their father’s legacy, it’s also given them purpose in helping other families uncover their own past.
“We’re finding 173 people that were lost in history,” Holland said, with Stoor adding: “We’re getting
them their recognition and their due and letting their families know.”
Several previously untold stories of heroism have come to light during this journey into 818th history.
One report from Mellen’s desk details how five of his men earned Bronze Stars for their efforts on June 6, 1944, D-Day, and also tells of the company’s participation in the Red Ball Express truck supply convoy.
Cpl. Denver Blackwell came from a family of six brothers who served in the military, one of whom was a Tuskegee Airman. He also ran reunion groups for African American amphibious truck drivers.
Cpl. Martin McCray served in the 818th and left the name of his wife, Jeanette, on the side of the duck that’s on display at Dezerland.
1st Sgt. Elijah H. Fields Jr. was older than the other enlisted men and had experience as a professional undertaker.
“He was college-educated,” Keith-Lucas said. “Because he was Black, he was an enlisted man and dug latrine trenches and did the dirty work at Camp Gordon Johnston.”
She later found his name on a passenger manifest on an Air Force plane flying back to Boston from Europe with his wife and a 3-year-old son. This led her to believe he worked overseas after the war to exhume bodies, prepare them for burial and send them home.
“He was a pillar of the community in Madison, Alabama. When he died, hundreds attended his funeral,” Keith-Lucas said. “It’s time that the white community understands that there were people like Elijah Fields who gave so much even though he was not appreciated.”
Holland hopes to further her mission by finding living relatives of these World War II heroes and letting them know there’s a piece of
818th history on display in Orlando.
“They can come here and find part of what was an even further buried chapter in the African American existence,” she said. “They got nudged into service and I don’t want to see them lost. It’s not right.”
For more information, visit dezerlandpark.com. For more 818th company history, visit campgordonjohnston.com.