The Odyssey of Colonel Claterbos

One year ago last week, big, amiable Major Louis J. Claterbos closed his desk in the Office of the Chief of Engineers in Washington and prepared to set out for his new assignment in North Africa. Last week Colonel Louis J. Claterbos was out of Walter Reed hospital, starting a new assignment on the Engineer faculty at Fort Belvoir, Va. He had not only been to Africa, but during the year many things happened to Louis J. Claterbos.

Early last December, on his way to his post, he flew to Honolulu, but there his plane was delayed two days. On the morning of Dec. 7, early-rising Lou Claterbos sat in his Moana Hotel room writing his wife a last letter before taking off on the next leg of his trip to Africa.

"Come out and see the show the Navy is putting on!" somebody yelled. Claterbos went downstairs, watched the smoke and heard the gunfire of Pearl Harbor for 15 minutes. Then he went up to finish his letter. What he had seen and heard reminded him of his son at Annapolis. "Tell Hank his Navy put on a beautiful show for me in Honolulu," he wrote. Then he ambled downstairs again to mail the letter.

A few minutes later the Honolulu District Engineer telephoned: "Put on your uniform and report for duty at once."

"What for? I'm going to Africa," said Claterbos.

"Africa, hell!" said the District Engineer.

When Major Claterbos noticed officers dashing about in uniforms and wearing .45s, the implications of the Navy show dawned on him. He spent the next two weeks as Engineer Supply Officer, rationing gasoline, ordering seeds and fertilizer from the mainland, setting pineapple growers to planting vegetables. Only when he was ordered back to the U.S. did Lou Claterbos learn that the War Department had taken the Pan American Airways schedule for granted and reported him a prisoner in Guam.

In January he left again for Africa, via Atlantic Clipper this time. In Cairo he started planning big U.S. engineering projects. He went to Eritrea to supervise some of these projects, working in temperatures as high as 120DEG. After six months Lou Claterbos' health cracked and he was ordered back to the U.S. "Go by boat," said the doctor. "Planes are too exciting and you do not get any rest."

Down the east coast of Africa and across the Atlantic sailed Colonel Claterbos, finally reaching the Caribbean. "It is odd," Colonel Claterbos later wrote to friends, "but on my birthday we listened to a short-wave broadcast from Boston, and the announcer quoted a long statement by Major George Fielding Eliot, the military expert, saying that the submarine menace in the west Atlantic and Caribbean had been licked. I turned to the captain and said: 'I'll bet ten dollars a submarine gets us.' At 2:38 the following morning we were torpedoed. . . ."

Safe in lifeboats, Colonel Claterbos and 51 of the 52 others on board heard the submarine commander yell in broken English: "Come alongside!" Colonel Claterbos hastily tossed his officer's cap overboard. Subs had been capturing ships' captains and they might also fancy an Army colonel. But the German only wanted information. Then he said: "I wish you a pleasant voyage." The lifeboats headed toward Trinidad. Two days later a Navy vessel picked them up. "I feel that I have been traveling around under a lucky star so far in this war," said Colonel Claterbos last week. "I hope that I continue to do so."

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