My Tribute to the.......

WWII Troop Train Wreck of July 6, 1944

The following are some reports I've accumulated on this incident.

(I cannot guarantee the accuracy of their content.)

SHE JUMPED THE TRACKS BOOK FOR SALE

The book: SHE JUMPED THE TRACKS
It is Out Of Print, but I have a few left to support this website.
$50 + S&H

Click  HERE   to see Emails & Letters from  Soldiers who were in the Troop Train Wreck,  their families and others.

The Louisville & Nashville Railroad train had picked up speed through the mountains but wasn't running as smoothly as it had in flatter country. The men, sleeping or preparing for bed, knew the train was behind schedule. But they still thought it was going too fast. That's when they heard the crack.

And seconds later, the train was ripped in half. The engine, tender and four cars plunged 50 feet below. Twelve died instantly.

Many more died in the next few days.

It was the troop train wreck of July 6, 1944, the nation's second worse train disaster during World War II.

Think of the absolute worst place in the world for a train wreck, and you'll have a picture of the Jellico Narrows in Campbell County, Tenn.

It looks like something out of a model train layout.

The gorge cuts down 50 feet to the Clear Fork River, a rocky and shallow current capped in white. Limestone, peppered with trees and scrub and mud, line the descent. A road follows the gorge up above on one side, with the train tracks on the other side. The tracks occasionally dart through tunnels or veer off away from the gorge.

But where the wreck occurred, the tracks are right on top of the gorge.

It is reported that 1,006 fresh recruits were on the train headed to "points South" the destination was classified because of the war.

The recruits, having finished basic training, were on their way to their first assignment to an Army unit at Fort Benning in Georgia. The train stopped in Corbin, Ky. before starting through the mountains at Jellico, near the Kentucky-Tennessee border.

The relief engineer was supposed to take over at Corbin, but he never showed up.

The first engineer was reportedly angry about having to continue with the train.

"He was very mad and possibly under the influence of alcohol," a rescuer said. In addition to the engineer's condition, a steep grade before the Narrows gave trains a boost of speed. Thanks to the engineer and the grade, the train was speeding by the time it reached the Narrows first sharp curve.

Dave Harkness, then principal of Jellico High School, recalled that a soldier told him, "One of the fellows on the train said we could never make it, then we just went off and the cars piled up."

The river was a jumble of twisted metal, smoke, flames, steam and bodies.

When the locomotive plunged over the side of the gorge, it took with it its tender and four cars. The kitchen and baggage cars burned, and two coach cars turned over and burned at the gorges brink.

The engineer and others died pinned underwater. Others burned to death from the steam. Some bodies were trapped under the cars, other bodies splayed out over the flat rocks. Some survivors had to cross the river barefoot and stood there shivering. Those pinned were screaming.

"When we got there it was just an awful mess," a local resident recalled years later. Leo Lobertini was one of the first on the scene. He and his brother took their truck to the wreck, picking up as many miners as would fit in the truck.

Dr. Ned C. Watts didn't know the wreck had occurred until "a young man wearing only underwear briefs who was shouting" flagged him down. Watts hospital had only one phone, so staff went to neighboring houses to call other doctors only to discover that Watts was the only doctor available. He spent several hours as the lone doctor at the wreck.

The rescue effort was a shoestring affair. Hundreds of Campbell County residents flocked to the scene to help. They made the first rescues, using block and tackle slings to hoist the wounded up the side of the gorge to the road. It often took up to ten men to hoist a body up to the road. Some brought welding torches to free the trapped soldiers.

A trucker who was passing through stopped to take a load of injured soldiers to the hospital. He came back and took several more loads. Volunteers continued to comb the river for dead and wounded.

Later in the night, doctors from nearby towns Corbin, Lafollette, Middlesboro and Williamsburg joined Watts. They went from car to car giving morphine injections to the trapped men. One soldier received plasma transfusions. Many soldiers, their faces bleeding and dirty, waited for their more seriously injured comrades to be taken away before they received care themselves.

The ambulances joined the rescue effort two hours after the train derailed. They waited at the road for the injured and took them to hospitals in five nearby towns.

Early the next morning, an Army major arrived to take over leading the rescue effort. But the county's work was just beginning. Most of the injured had been rescued by midnight, but there were still dead to be recovered and wounded to look after.

That morning, more organized efforts were put in place. Boy Scouts went door to door collecting shoes, clothes and sheets for the soldiers. Red Cross units served food on the Jellico hospitals lawn. A local restaurant closed in order to assist in preparing the food. Assembly lines were set up to make sandwiches, and local volunteers transported the food to the rescue site. Local groceries were emptied of bread.

Some help was not as organized. Many residents took in soldiers for the night, giving them food, a place to bathe and a place to sleep.

The volunteers who had worked all night carrying the bodies out of the gorge eventually built a makeshift dam to lower the water level to retrieve bodies. They continued to work through the next three days.

In all, 34 men died in the wreck and 75 were injured (some survivors went on to fight in North Africa, according to Watts). The wreck received scant national press at the time (the New York Times, for instance, ran three short stories). There used to be a historical marker at the wreck's site, but that has been stolen. In 1993, Jellico area residents paid for a monument in downtown Corbin. The unobtrusive granite block lists the names of all those who died in the wreck, along with Jellico's other losses from war.

But the people who really remember the wreck are those who saw it and heard it.

Jim Tidwell, chairman of the organization that built the monument and a participant in the rescue effort, wrote a letter to the editor of the Jellico newspaper in which he described what he would remember when he thinks of the wreck:

"I will see the troop train casualties stretched out on the rocks in the Clear Fork River and hear the ambulances once again as they wailed out screams, carrying the injured to the Jellico Hospital. I will see the engineer who was pinned under water with his hair waving at the surface. I will see a soldier who was finally freed from the wreck after several hours, sit down on a rock in the river, ask for a cigarette and then die. I will see the doctors working from coach to coach injecting morphine to ease the pain of those trapped."

(Tidwell has since passed away.)

Others who were personally involved in the wreck are dying, their memories dying with them.

KNOXVILLE JOURNAL    SUNDAY, JULY 9, 1944

Army Releases Jellico Casualty List

Jellico Troop Train Accident

July 6, 1944

NAME                         HOME OF RECORD                    WAR DEPT. FILES INFO

ALQUIST, Russell J. Paducah, Kentucky - ID: 35844994, Branch of Service: U.S. Army, Status: DNB 
BAIRD, Robert H. Canton, Ohio - ID: 35845004, U.S. Army, Hometown: Stark County, OH, Status: DNB
BETTAG, Leonard J. Evansville, Indiana - ID: 35814845, U.S. Army, Vanderburgh County, IN, Status: DNB 
BOSWELL, Charles B. Paducah, Kentucky - ID: 35844993, U.S. Army, McCracken County, KY, Status: DNB
BRITZKE, Charles La Porte, Indiana - ID: 35903820, U.S. Army, La Porte County, IN, Status: DNB
BROWN, Jack C. Louisville, Ohio - ID: 35845014, U.S. Army,  Stark County, OH, Status: DNB
BUCHANAN, James W. Buttonsville, West Virginia - ID: 35845033,  Randolph County, WV, Status: DNB
CA THEY, William R. Paducah, Kentucky - ID: 35844988, US. Army, McCracken County, KY, Status: DNB
CLAPP, Charles T. Paducah, Kentucky -
CLARK, Donald J. North Canton, Ohio
CLARK, James N. Paducah, Kentucky
CLEMMENS, Wayne E. Warren, Ohio
CLINGERMAN, Robert C. Elkins, West Virginia
COLE, Raymond Brazil, Indiana
EAVES, George E. Orwell, Ohio
GOREY, William N. Pataskala, Ohio
HILL, Donald E. Canton, Ohio
HILTON, Eugene L. Menett, Missouri
KIESLING, Raymond B. Canton, Ohio
LILLIE, Raymond b. Warren, Ohio
MASLINE, Don P. N. Canton, Ohio
MATTIX, Dale Jr. Akron, Ohio
McCHESNEY, William E. Akron, Ohio
MILLER, Richard W. Toledo, Ohio
PARKER, Ray W. Trenton, Ohio
PAUMIER, Austin E. Louisville, Ohio
REICHLE, Herbert Bedford, Ohio
SHIPBAUGH, Joseph E. Canton, Ohio
 [PVT Joseph G. Shipbaugh, ID: 35845027 , U.S. Army , Hometown: Stark County, OH , Status: DNB]
WICKLINE, John R. Orient, Ohio
WISBERGER, John R. Akron, Ohio
WOOD, Ray Jr. Kevin, Kentucky
WRIGHT, Clarence M. Minerva, Ohio
YAPP , Raymond W. Paducah, Kentucky

Engineer, John C. (Lyle) Rollins

Brakeman, John Wm. Tummins
(who spoke the words: "She Jumped the Tracks" and died)

[NOTE: Are there any pics of any of these brave, young men out there??????]
 

World War II Memorial Website: http://www.wwiimemorial.com 
 

My dad, Edward (H.E.) Lea, was station agent/operator for the L&N at a nearby depot and walked down to the wreck site. (He has the "She Jumped the Tracks" book.)

My dad, H. E. Lea / aka: Edward Lea

(The plaque above reads:)

Monument in Jellico Tennessee to those who died in the Troop Train Wreck.

This article is transcribed from the Christian Journal-Leader, Vol 3, Issue 9, Friday August 26, 2005, Jellico, TN

Survivor returns to Jellico 61 years later, by Jake Bennett, Jellico Tourism Director 

Survivor: 
Clarence L. Eckstein 

After a 61 year absence, Clarence L. Eckstein of Celina, Ohio returned to Jellico. July 6, 1944 just after 9 p.m. Eckstein was one of many soldiers on his way to South Carolina before being shipped to Germany. Just after Eckstein had just bedded down in the Pullman car directly behind the dining car, tragedy struck as the troop train left the tracks and plummeted into the black depth of the Clearfork River Gorge known as the “Narrows.” The sound must have been deafening as the Pullmans and other cars began piling into the river on top of each other. The rear of the sleeping car came to rest at the same level as the rail tracks, but was being held upright over the river gorge by a car that was standing on its end in the river bed. Eckstein’s head nearly broke through the wall in front of his bed. He was so dazed that he hardly remembers being escorted out the rear of the car by other survivors of the tragedy. The twisted and burning cars, nearly 100 feet below in the river bed, claimed 44 lives and injured hundreds more. This is the United States single most deadly non-combat military tragedy. Eckstein returned to the scene recently and from about 100 feet away at a memorial plaque across from the site on Highway 25W, he again thanked God for stopping the car he was riding from the disasters of the other cars below him. Eckstein was sent on to South Carolina and was shipped to Germany and was involved in a number of major battles in that country.

Eckstein is a true hero and is carrying on the tradition of an annual reunion with his old comrades. This year the reunion is in Louisville, KY. Eckstein now 81 years old, came to Jellico with his wife, daughter and son in law and visited the site of the tragedy. He also visited the memorial in Jellico’s Veterans Park. As he stood there looking at the names of his departed comrades that are engraved in the marble, one could see the loss that he feels in his heart. Eckstein says he would like to return to Jellico again someday to reminisce the tragedy and again thank God for looking down on him that fateful night 61 years ago. 

Survivor: 
Bob Baynes
7517 Quail Vista Lane
Citrus Heights, CA 95610
916 723 8001

Click HERE to read his 09-13-2005 email to me.

Survivor: 
Richard J. (Dick) Murtz

Click HERE to read his 02-24-2005 email to me.
 

Click 
HERE
 to see a copy of a I.C.C. Report on the wreck
at http://www.drwebman.com/trooptrainwreck/icc_report 

Click  HERE   to see Emails & Letters from people who were in the wreck, their families and others.

Webmaster................

Phil Lea
1109 Christianburg Lane
Sweetwater TN 37874
(423) 745-6962
phil@drtrain.com
 

Want your own FREE Website?
Want your own www.YOURNAME.com Domain name?
No Skills? * No Idea of How? * NO PROBLEM !!!

Click HERE to visit: www.DRWEBMAN.com
Email: info@drwebman.com