Uncle Pete's War story

 Tracks Across Continents

The  story of my Uncle Pete’s time in World War 2.

Written by Tishia Bell Turbyfill 

Introduction

Some stories are almost lost.

Not because they weren’t important—but because, over time, there is no one left to carry them forward.

My uncle, Pete Charles Chory, lived an amazingly full life. He served in World War II, came home, and married my aunt, Alameda Loyce Grimes, on March 30, 1946, in Newport News, Virginia.

They built a life together- after the war. All because of letters. 

They welcomed two children—Joseph “Joe” Chory, born November 4, 1948, and Shirley, born February 12, 1951.

But that branch of the family ended there. There are no grandchildren to pass his story down, no next generation who grew up hearing what he lived through. My cousin Joe has passed away and Shirley is still alive. However, I don’t have contact with her. She lives in Canton, Ohio somewhere. 

I believe what my uncle Pete lived through mattered. His story deserves to be told and not be forgotten. So…Pete was born in Franklin, Ohio to Mary Jane Madak and Metro Chory, a refugee from the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Before the war, he was a railroad mechanic. During the war, he became part of the system that kept the Allied advance moving—operating trains across North Africa and Europe under dangerous and often unseen conditions.

What I know about him comes from fragile documents, handwritten notes, and records I carefully copied by hand from archives that could not be photographed. Some of it comes from official military records. Some from firsthand accounts of the men who served beside him. Some of it comes from memory. I remember that my uncle Pete gestured to me that he ate ice cream from a gasoline generator. At the time, it sounded almost unbelievable.

Now I know it was real.

There are still things I don’t know.

I don’t know how Alameda first got Pete’s name and began writing to him during the war—only that she did, and that those letters led her to Newport News, where she met him and married him when he returned home. Whether her brother Lowell, who served in the Air Force and was based there, played a role in that connection, I cannot say. But it’s a fun coincidence that Alameda ended up in the same town that her brother Lowell did. 

Anyways… I want to tell the story of a man who helped carry a war on steel rails—through darkness, danger, and constant movement—so that others could move forward. When Pete enlisted, he had no idea where those tracks would take him. 

This is his story. 

Across Continents 

Peter Charles Chory was born on April 12, 1923 to a brickmaker, Metro Chory and his wife Mary Chory in Franklin, Ohio. Metro worked for Franklin Crown Bricks, a brand for Kentucky Fire Brick Works. His father came to America in 1912 as a refugee from the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He came to America to build a life of stability, burdened with the memory of a broken homeland. Metro loved his new homeland so much that Metro registered for the draft himself in the old man’s draft. The military decided Metro is much more valuable working at the brick factory, making bricks… but he did register to serve alongside his four sons. Pete and his brothers all were drafted to serve in different ways. I had to force myself to focus on only Pete and not all of the brothers. His brothers had children who will be able to trace their history.

 

Pete had expertise with railroads and trains. The military sent him to serve using that skillset to keep the railways up and running in the war zones. So they sent his dad back home to continue to make bricks. Nobody could have known that would be the first causality of the family in the wartime. Metro Chory died on June 12, 1942. Metro was a member of the Brick and Clay workers Local 712. There were protestors frustrated with the resources, the war, everything. On May 25, 1942, protestors came to set the plant on fire. Metro witnessed it and testified to identify the people who set the factory on fire. About two weeks after that, a mob angry that they were held accountable for setting the factory on fire shot in the picketers crowd. The union Metro was a member of was charged with willful contempt for not taking steps to protect their members. The union ignored the picketers and the mob, permitting willful violence they allowed the tensions between the nonunion and union employees to escalate into violence. The plant management was charged in Metro Chory’s death, a battle of which the picketer mob shot 71 times and threw the very bricks that they were making at the coworkers who joined the union.  The full responsibility for Metro Chory’s death was contested, but the outcome was clear. Pete’s father was gone.  So before Pete even finished training to head across the ocean, he already lost his dad. Pete had to go on without his father.  The war had not yet taken Pete across continents, but the war had already taken things from him at home. 

Every new place, he had to start over again learning new language, new culture, new customs, new terrain, new destruction.

Pete Charles Chory, serial number 35839167, enlisted in FT Benjamin, Harrison Indiana on May 16 1941, promising to serve the entire war plus six additional months. When he enlisted, uncle Pete was already a skilled railroad mechanic. This information came from reel number 5, box 0999, of the WWII enlistment records at the National archives. His brothers and dad enlisted the same day. The army built on what Pete already knew… training him in military railway operations, including how to run trains under blackout conditions, how to operate in damaged and unstable rail systems, and how to keep locomotives moving through war zones. Can you imagine how scary that was?

Training was at Camp Millard in Bucyrus, Ohio. Camp Millard was not a typical military camp.  It was built around the railroad.

There, Pete trained for the kind of work the war would demand—operating locomotives under dangerous conditions, running trains without lights, and keeping rail systems moving when everything around them was damaged or uncertain.

This was not classroom learning. It was hands-on, practical, and urgent.  The Army was taking men who already knew railroads and turning them into something else entirely: Then the orders came. Pete was sent to Casablanca which was just now under allied control after Operation Torch. Pete was there to clean up the mess and make everything functional for trains. 

North Africa 

When Pete arrived in Casablanca, the war was already moving along, but they weren’t yet. The railways were destroyed. Pete found that he could not communicate with any of the local workers, so they all created a rudimentary sign language. They came up with gestures. Clanging fists meant bumpers, jumping meant springs, and so on. The locals called Pete and his men “cheminots”. That means railroad workers. 

Pete and his men were flummoxed by the cultural differences. They were frustrated by the midday breaks all of the workers took to go take a siesta. That was so different from America, it was an adjustment. Even the work rhythm of the workday was different. He needed to adjust to the customs and expectations. They came to start over with no supplies coming in. They were the supplier. They had to come up with ways to supply the troops they were serving. Pete’s railway crews were a self-contained lifeline for the troops. They were the external support… they had no external support. 

The Germans had this giant hook that tore up tracks. The Germans took care to leave nothing for the infrastructure. Before Pete could move supplies to the troops, they had to wait for the 713th Battalion. That was led by Sgt Fred Tomer. He named himself the rip track foreman and they all worked nearly 24/7 filling craters, rebuilding bridges, and laying down tracks. Pete couldn’t move until Sgt Fred Tomer and his men laid down new tracks for the trains Pete’s crews were in charge of. 

February 1943, the retreating forces demolished Gafsa and Sened. US Army air force bombed Gafsa to get the Axis powers out of Northr Africa where they were mining for supplies. Sgt Fred Tomer and his men trepaired those railways. The railways were vital because North Africa was  horrible for roads. The 753rd specialized in modular separate tank battalions. They were in six campaigns. They were nicknamed the Ironhorsemen. 

The Axis powers were on high alert, so Pete and his crew had to run blackout conditions. They didn’t know if the railway ahead of them were intact. They had to run at max speed in pitch black, it somehow was safer to go really really fast than go slower. They had to rely on other battalion to get the lines back up, and the troops relied on Pete and his men to operate the trains to get them to where they needed to be. When they had derailments, the army had to send donkeys and camels with wagons to where they were. The terrain was no good for the 1940s automobiles and tanks. So they relied on animals to get them back up.

They had pets. Monkeys, dogs, and a giant lizard. I found some pictures of the first two but no pictures proving they had a giant lizard too. However, I believe the stories. After they got through Morocco, they went on to Algeria, under command of Carl R Gray Jr.  They went to Gafsa, Sened, Maknassy, and Moulares to recover locomotives and bringing them back to Casablanca so they could be restored, retrofitted, and strengthened to be sent back out. While they worked on the locomotives, they were safely behind walls. None of them were in active danger at this time.  

Like after the Kasserine Pass Battle, a different battalion went there to bring back the locomotives to be fixed back up. After this, Pete faced action. He had so many times that they’ve had to hold their breaths. He was fully aware of the danger he was in. 

So it was in the middle of the night, they were going at max speed. They were hauling tankers of oil and gasoline. This was near Algiers, in Maison Carree. So on Pete’s part, he had teammates, wait, crewmates? Troopmates? I forgot what it is that you call your battalion members that you’re also a member of… anyways, Pete was on the car along with Forrest Edwards Elesmere, Theodore Terpin, john Quinlan. The Axis powers managed to strike the oil tanker. It burnt slow, but they were also hauling gasoline, which would explode instantly. You see, the tankers need gas and oil and there aren’t exactly gas stations around in the WW2. So when the oil tanker was burning, Pete shot at the people shooting at the train while Elesmere worked on uncoupling the cars, severely burning his hands in the process and Quinlan had to pry his melted flesh off the coupling mechanism to pull Elesmere off. I have no idea how Elesmere didn’t jerk his hands away when it was that hot, and let his hands melt fusing to the metal. Anyways, after they got the car uncoupled, they were going full speed, in pitch dark, remember? Maybe light from the burning oil tanker they were hauling. Pete got the Soldier’s Medal for keeping alert with his gun for more people shooting at the train, and the others got the Purple Heart. 

This story is of Pete’s time in Morocco and Algeria. Next, he was in Tunisia. 

Tunisia

  Pete was headquartered near the border in Tunisia, in a place called Tebessa. The war closed in all around them, they were no longer behind the front. Tebessa was harsh, dry, sparse, unforgiving. People used camels rather than vehicles. That’s why the railways was the lifeline. Their goal was a thrust to the coast. Push the Axis powers out while holding their troops together amidst the chaos. Both sides kidnapped soldiers as prisoners of wars. 

February 1943, everything pretty much hit the fan. The Germans had almost succeeded  in capturing all of their supplies. Tankers filled with fuel, tankers filled with oil, munitions, and all kinds of supplies that the front line soldiers needed. If the Germans had succeeded in taking all of those supplies away, the war would’ve been changed. Pete and his fellow railway men were caught up in the middle of the chaos. They had to go, go, go…. 

Imagine the pressure, seeing the Germans nearly take away everything, imagine the uncertainty because they didn’t know if the tracks ahead were still intact and they were going at maximum speed, knowing they had the possibility of losing it all. Somehow, at the last moment, they succeeded. They got the supplies to the frontlines. It wasn’t easy. There was constant recovery work, which Pete’s unit did not specialize in. They went to Gafsa, Sened, Maknassy, and Moulares. The other units got the other locomotives onto beds and Pete’s unit hauled them back to headquarters to be repaired. They had to show no regard for one’s own personal safety to be able to succeed in their tasks. Under the command of Carl R. Gray Jr, the railway men pushed forward, now there was movement where previously there was none. 

Sometimes the war affected innocent lives. A civilian was severely injured by a landmine left behind by retreating forces. The railway crew had almost nothing to work with. Their medic used morphine and an old hacksaw to amputate the man’s arm in an open field in the middle of the desert. It was messy, brutal, and necessary. It saved his life and when they went back through five days later, they stopped the train to check on that civilian. He was recovering remarkably well. 

May 1943, the war in North Africa was wrapping up. Near Sfax, Pete’s unit were near where Axis forces were collapsing. The front line captured Axis soldiers as prisoners of war. On May 13, 1943, Pete’s train carried a different kind of cargo. Not fuel or supplies. People. Prisoners. Axis Soldiers, men who fought to control North Africa were now being transported in Pete’s train, carried away from the front lines to their headquarters in Tebessa. 

This was a turning point, the same railways they had cobbled together hastily under chaotic pressure were now giving results, giving us victories. From Tunisia, the war did not slow down. It moved faster, and took Pete across the sea into Sicily. The desert was behind hijm but the war was not. 

Sicily 

  Pete crossed the sea into Sicily= he had to get on a transport ship, which included cramming the trains onto them. I am a bit confused about why they didn’t just sail around Sicily to Italy so that they deal with getting the trains on and off ships only once, not that whole… ordeal while being under fire. Sicily is just an island. I guess I just don’t understand why they bothered to go through Sicily, but they did. So, Pete got on a transport ship and left behind the desert that he had gotten to know. But when he got to the island, it was familiar. Broken railways, destroyed infrastructure, and nothing ready to move from the ship. 

Keep in mind Pete and his people are moving supplies, oil, gasoline, munitions,equipment…  like crucial things. That made him a target. Sicily had just been captured, called Operation Husky. Pete and his fellow railway men kept the supplies moving to keep the war moving, at full speed into darkness, never knowing if the track ahead even existed. Blackout runs, they had to keep all the lights off so that they wouldn’t reveal their location to planes overhead lookin for them to blow them up. I wonder if they could see the stars. Still they were ordered to trust the men ahead of them who rebuilt the tracks, they had to trust each other. 

I don’t fully understand why they went through Sicily. I looked it up. It’s an island that’s about the size of West Virginia, and as rugged. 170 miles by 120 miles, so they needed to capture Sicily to make it so that the Germans couldn’t attack the Americans from the behind. I don’t fully understand it but they had to go through Sicily to be able to successfully get to Italy. 

Naples 

  Italy is where everything hit the fan and splattered everyone. Everything went to poo… and then some. Hold onto your socks and hats, this will be a crazy story. So when uncle Pete reached Naples, it wasn’t just the railways. Naples was war-torn. The roundhouses was destroyed and they had no rail yards anymore. Equipment was all over the place, nothing was in the right place. Not even the people who live there.  They needed to get rail lines stretching out to Nocera Inferiore, Cancello, and Aversa. 

The railways are lifelines and crucial for getting the war moving forward. Pete was on the trains, but no railways to go forward on, so while waiting on the other troops to rebuild the railways, Pete helped get the place cleaned up.  Now, keep this in mind that it’s all a mess, war torn and many people dead already. 

It got worse. Much worse. Mount Vesuvius erupted, and billowing clouds of ash spread out all over, like grey snow. Over a foot of ash was everywhere, with some spots having even more ash than others. Now Uncle Pete had to deal with ash on top of the rubble. They couldn’t focus on getting the railways in place anymore, they had to halt that and turn their attention to the civilians.  

Pete saw families losing everything, homes buried, their possessions wiped away, people scrambling to save what they could. Pete and his crew helped these civilians carry out what they could. They helped move families and the possessions important to them to safety. They were helping these people survive, and the hits kept coming. War. Destruction. Now a freaking volcano?!!!! 

Oh I really erally really wish I could read that letter to Aunt Alameda from Uncle Pete about this event. It was unbelievable, but it really happened. I wonder what Aunt Alameda thought when she found out about the volcano, knowing her fiance was nearby. Oh the worries. I wonder how military spouses do it. 

So to resummarize… trains exploded, they were shot at, they had to uncouple trains just in the nick of time, and now they’re dealing with nature too? The blows kept coming. Literally. They were supposed to be the general store andnow everything is under ash. Broken overhead lines just dangled there, bridges gone, tunnels collapsed. 

I’m setting this up to show their logic for something horrible that happened. They made children work for them. They made the children shovel bucketful after bucketful of ash. They weren’t given a choice, if you get my drift. Refusal meant death. So these children were forced to clean up the ash. Pete saw this happening, he understood this was wrong, and he tried to help in his own way. When the ash was finally cleared away enough to start moving trains, they attempted to help the children. 

So they loaded the children onto the trains, as many as they could. The goal was to get them away from the war torn area to a safer area. They were successful in getting the children loaded on and they were underway. They really thought they were successfully giving these children a fresh start. But… war. 

The Germans realized the Americans were moving the Italian children taht they were using as forced labor. Big breath and deep sigh.. This is hard. The germans threw grenades into the train cars. Kaboom. Tiny limbs all over the place. Pete had already witnessed destruction, but… this…..   I found a direct quote of one of Pete’s platoon members. “This horror made the explosion from Vesuvius seem like a puny effort.”  Yeah… This sentence sums it all up. We need to choose to remember these children. We need to choose to remember and acknowledge the trauma of these soldiers.  Remember, neither of Uncle Pete’s children had children. We need to remember for him. 

That was an horrible thing to happen. It made me cry when I was researching it and documenting it it. Gosh. I was dreading writing about this and now I need to take a break. But this needed to be remembered. 

Tomb 

Not too long after witnessing the children they were trying to rescue get blown up inside their own train cars, they had to hunker down again. Survival came first, after all. Movements couldn’t happen if they all died, right?  So as they got closer to Rome, they came under attack. SERIOUS ATTACK. You have to understand that the Germans and Italians were shooting at anything that moved, even livestock. So… they couldn’t hunker down in their heavily fortified train cars because they had witnessed firsthand how it became a tomb to children. Ironically, they found safety inside a tomb. They had to hide in this tomb for four days. They must have been eating their rations in the darkness, surrounded by stone and silence .No… wait… not silence. They must’ve felt vibrations from explosions. 

Now, the information about what happened inside the tomb comes from one of Pete’s men. Charles “Bully” DeMao. He was interviewed, no wait, I mean debriefed? That big exit interview afterwards? I feel ADHD starting to kick in so forgive me as I remind myself how I came across this firsthand account. So, I like to build pictures of who’s who in my brain. I found Pete’s unit and read the names, then did a quick search of each name in fold.com, the military records website, Nara.gov, LOC.gov, and the military archives in STLouis to see if any extra information pops up attached to another person in the same unit. So.. that’s how  I found Charles “Bully” DeMao. He was not in the same railcar as Pete when the explosion happened, he was closer to where they were driving, uh, train conducting? He had the radio so they needed him, anyways, I’m getting sidetracked. Back to the tomb. I was just adding in how I came across this information for what happened inside the tomb. 

So they were pinned down, but they had radio. They had to wait until night to carefully open the tomb just a crack to let the radiowaves get a better signal. They communicated then sealed themselves back in when the sky became light. They knew the infantrymen were slowly crawling towards their position. They were not sitting there in the dark tomb without knowing if they’ll be rescued. But they had to stay put as the infantrymen literally crawled on their bellies, elbows, under the wires, slowly towards Rome. 

I am imagining them whispering to each other in the dark. Were they next to bones or next to bodies? It didn’t say. Did they talk about the children that they witnessed being massacred? Or did they purposefully talk about everything except that? On day 4, they heard tanks firing. That meant the infantry unit were getting close and that gave away the fact they were searching for men. I wonder how the Germans knew they were a rescue mission instead of… well, a mission. I am showing how military illiterate I am, aren’t I? So they waited until the night of day 4. 

At dark, the infantrymen drew fire away from the tomb and returned to the train to fool the Germans into thinking this was a train recovery mission. It is a very very good t hing they did… they did not plan on being able to get the train upright, but they did. Oh… wow, okay, cool, cool, guys everyone get on the train!  I wonder if that included the railcar that had the bodies of the children or if that railcar itself was completely oblierated. I don’t know, I don’t have this information. This is going to forever be stuck in my brain. These poor children. 

Ice cream story 

Not every moment in the war was fear. Not every moment was destruction. There were also times of ice cream. Yes, ice cream! I thought my uncle Pete was pulling my leg telling me that story,  but he wasn’t. I found documents to back his story up. 

One of the men of the the 719th Railway Battalion managed to do something unbelievable. Dan Lawyer, of the 719th Railway Battalion used a worn out gasoline generator, scrap airplane parts, and an old milk can to build an ice cream machine. Like… what? 

An ACTUAL ICE CREAM MACHINE?!!! In the middle of the war? It became a traveling ice cream plant sorta. Thanks to Dan Lawyer, they had ice cream in the middle of all that muggy destruction. When uncle Pete told me that story, it didn’t make sense. I thought it was the communicttion barrier- me deaf, him hearing, him writing all this down in his tiny janky cursive, oh, how I wish I still had all the papers we wrote back and forth on. Anyways, back to the story, he told me they got ice cream from a gasoline generator. He was pantomining how it worked, trying to help me understand. I really thought this was me being dumb and just another thing of being deaf. Pete… he knew I can’t lipread, so he never tried to make me lipread. I remember that. Hence the writing back and forth. Now I do. Now I understand. 

My uncle Pete told me a war story and I did not know it at the time. I was maybe 12 when he wrote that story out to me. Just think about it. Somewhere between all the explosions, the blackout runs, just… the fear, the exhaustion, all of that… there was a time they had something cold. Something sweet. Something normal. Ice cream. From an old gasoline generator. I wish I could find this Dan Lawyer person or his kids, to tell them what he did impacted my uncle so much that he was taking the time to write it down so his deaf grandniece could also know this story. It changed how the war felt for everyone. 

And this gives me a dopamine high. To have actually found evidence my uncle was telling me a true story. My uncle tried so hard to include me, he saw me. Really saw me sitting there, trying to not be left out, but often unnoticed as I sat in the back of the room. He had me come sit at the table as he wrote back and forth. When I found the story about Dan Lawyer, I jumped up so quickly that my laptop fell off of my lap, I was that excited and that dumbfounded that a story I grew up treasuring from my uncle Pete turned out to be a real event. How amazing is that? 

Carrying the wounded 

They had ice cream. And now they had the wounded. They were no longer carrying supplies, munitions, and children. They are now transporting the wounded to Marsielle, stopping at many points to pick up more and more of the soldiers that had bravely fought, got hurt but survived. I am sure the ice cream was a huge morale boost for these men. These men needed to be moved quickly, carefully, and safely away from the muddy trenches. The supply lines became evacuation. 

Now it wasn’t blackout runs anymore. They could run the train during broad daylight. They set up hospitals in Marsielle to stablize them before putting them onto ships to sail home to America. On April 8, 1945, Pete and his men carried these wounded soldiers towards these hospitals, and getting closer to being able to go home. It isn’t recorded where and when the men got hurt, just that they were transported. You could dig into the records to trace the routes of all these soldiers to the trains, but I am focused on Pete right now. 

So Pete’s work became different. It was human. They weren’t hurling at full speed in pitch blackness not knowing if the railways ahead were intact. Now it was a slower and careful pace. In daylight. These men survived the frontlines. Now they depended on Pete and his team to get them to Marsielles so they could get fixed up and sent home. 

Pete was sent to Casabalnca, across Morocco, through Algeria, and Tunisia, across the sea into Sicily, and then all heck broke loose in Italy including a volcano, and finally in the south of France. Each place was different, taking different things from Pete and his men. Having to run the trains in darkness. Watching someone’s hands get melted while decoupling a burning railcar from their railcar while going at full speed through mountainous terrain. Seeing children killed because he tried to help them escape. Having to hide in a tomb to survive. He brought the supplies to the frontline to keep the army alive. Now he is bringing the wounded away from the frontlines. 

And there were moments that seemed like it didn’t belong in this story. Ice cream, for one. Then one day in 1945, it was over. 

Pete returned home to the country that his father had chosen to be his children’s homeland. Back to a life… He got back home and went to Virginia, he spent six months in the barracks as part of the agreement he signed at enlistment. When he was able to leave, he married Alameda Loyce Grimes, the woman who he had written to him during the war and he wrote back to her. He didn’t waste time getting married to her, after he was discharged. 

Alameda Loyce Grimes became Mrs. Pete Chory on March 30, 1946 in Newport News, Virginia, with her brother Lowell Grimes in attendance. Lowell also lived in Newport News at the time. So Lowell was the first of Alameda’s siblings he got to know. They were really good together, they were solid brothers in law and I remember them being goofy together. Pete and Alameda raised two children together. Joe and Shirley.  

I didn’t want Pete’s story to quietly end and be slowly forgotten. I searched hard for the fragments in archives, in handwritten notess, in memories taht didn’t quite make sense until I found more information to make it clang into place just lke the trains clanging together. 

There. I told his story. I posted it. I won’t let him be forgotten in my lifetime. He was one of many men who helped move a war along on steel rails. Then he came back home to his job on American rails, minus the war. During the war, he kept things moving where things needed to go when everything was breaking and going to poo… He kept going. And back in America, he kept commerce moving, that’s how America runs… 

Now… my uncle Pete is remembered by you guys too. Thank you for reading my posts.