Historical society seeks details on Camp Higgins

For many years, Debi Murray, the archivist at the Historical Society of Palm Beach County, has been an invaluable source. Recently she asked us to ask you for more about Camp Higgins.

It was one of many federal installations that sprang up in South Florida during World War II.

They include Morrison Field (now Palm Beach International Airport), Camp Murphy (now Jonathan Dickinson State Park near Hobe Sound) and Boca Raton Army Air Field (now the Boca Raton airport and Florida Atlantic University).

“Camp Higgins operated from early 1942 or earlier, at the undeveloped northern tip of Palm Beach, bordered by North Ocean Boulevard, Indian Road, the ocean, and Lake Worth Inlet,” the historical society’s website says.

“The camp accommodated about 200 men, sent for rest and recuperation. They lived in wooden-sided canvas tents, and kept a few tanks and sandbagged gun positions on the dunes. In 1943 the commanding officer of Camp Higgins was Lt. C.B. Hindman.”

The society quoted Philip H. Reid Jr., who lived nearby as a boy and recalled in 1981, “There were eight or ten North End boys who could often be found wandering through the camp, climbing on the tanks, visiting the tents, and talking to the soldiers. We often accompanied the soldiers when they hunted for sea turtle eggs, which they unearthed and cooked.”

Debi writes the camp had been deactivated by September 1942, when its recreation hall was loaded onto a truck and moved to Morrison Field.

Readers: Can you help?

American soldiers parade down Worth Avenue in this World War II-era photo. During the war, Palm Beach was a hotbed of patriotism, support for Allied troops, and even warlike action as German U-boats sank U.S. ships off the South Florida coast and prompted officials to mandate countless blackouts on the island. As Florida airfields and other facilities became home to military bases, uniformed personnel were everywhere, including marching in parades along the avenue. While not pictured, one can assume Palm Beach’s hundreds of Volunteers for Victory were marching, too. Volunteers for Victory operated several war-effort endeavors, ranging from a bathhouse at the beach to a soldier’s canteen. (Photo courtesy of the Historical Society of Palm Beach County)

Update: Palm Beach State College dean Ginger Pedersen, who runs her own local history Web page, wrote about the mystery behind the name of Congress Avenue: “I think the origin is more tied to the Westgate subdivision, which was started in the land boom. I too have found the newspaper referenced back to 1933. The best solution is that the road was a connector between Okeechobee and Belvedere. I think “Congress” in this case means a “connector.” Later when Palm Acres was platted, they took the name and extended it first south across the airport, then later north. Congress was not extended south to Boca (Raton) until the 1960s.

Tags: Palm Beach, place names, World War II, WWII

The war off our shore

In 1992 the Palm Beach Post published a 50th anniversary commemorative special section about the U-Boat sinkings that brought World War II right to the shores of Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast. The Post also asked readers “Where were you in ‘42?” and printed some of their remembrances of the war years.

The war off our shore: World War II, 50 years later

Tags: World War II, WWII

Gulf Bell and Gulfland collided off the Jupiter Inlet in WWII

Walter Dutch of suburban West Palm Beach called in May about a historical event that involved his dad, the longtime real estate executive and one-time Palm Beach County School Board chairman of the same name.

He said Dutch, while in the service in the region that later would be his home, made an executive decision that perhaps saved lives but nearly led to his court-martial.

World War II was a world away for most Americans, but from February to May in 1942, German U-boats sank 16 ships from Cocoa Beach to Boca Raton.

Ironically, the deadliest local disaster didn’t come under fire.

Two ships under wartime orders to travel without lights collided off Jupiter Inlet, just before 11 p.m. on Oct. 20, 1943.

The empty Gulf Bell, torpedoed once before and salvaged, rammed the Gulfland, which was full of gasoline and caught fire.

Dutch — the son of an Austrian immigrant, he then was known as Walter Deutsch — was a Long Islander stationed at the U.S. Coast Guard base in West Palm Beach. “We approached the empty tanker from windward,” he said in an Associated Press story, that, as was common during the war, doesn’t identify the ships by name. “Only one man could be seen on deck. He refused to jump until we shouted we were going to leave. There was a lot of screaming.”

Dutch in 1970

The junior Dutch says his dad’s boat “was the first one out. As soon as they got the call, they just took off. When he came back, they wrote him up, (saying) he took the boat without permission.”

Dutch said supervisors demanded his dad admit to wrongdoing . He refused.

“They threatened to court-martial him,” the son said. “But they dropped it.”

In all, of 116 seamen on the Gulf Bell and Gulfland, 88 died.

The Gulf Bell ran aground. Rescuers later found a dog aboard, singed but alive.

The Gulfland burned off Hobe Sound for more than seven weeks.

Later, workers poked holes in the Gulfland, and it sank in 30 feet. A year after the accident, salvagers made a grim discovery on it: The bones of 15 men who had sought refuge in a shower.

The stern was moved off but the bow remains at the bottom, where it is a popular diving spot.

Special thanks to Post staff researcher Niels Heimeriks.

The tanker Gulfland is seen burning off Hobe Sound in 1942 after it was struck by another tanker, the Gulf Bell. Both were traveling without lights to avoid German submarines that hunted ships along the Florida coast during 1942. The Gulfland burned for more than seven weeks. Later, workers poked holes in the Gulfland, and it sank in 30 feet of water. (Photo courtesy of Florida Photographic Collection)

Tags: World War II, WWII

Camp Murphy Message spotlighted local female wrestlers

Last week we told you about the collection of the Camp Murphy Message from the World War II base, now Jonathan Dickinson State Park. We’ve made the issues of the newspaper available online here at HistoricPalmBeach.com.

The papers had been saved by Robert Maertz of West End, Wis., near Milwaukee, who’d done radar training at the camp.

The family recently came across them in a box as Maertz prepared to move, daughter Sally Wise said this month.

Sally said her dad, who later ran a family clothing and general store, also had taken many photographs and “kept really detailed information. All the names are on the back.” She said he sent the pictures to his childhood sweetheart, whom he’d later marry.

It was Sally, a retired schoolteacher, who contacted the Post after deciding the public should have access to these treasures.

In a Nov. 5, 1943 photo (below), a lady flexes her muscles. A caption reads: “Carmelita Mullis, ‘Amazon Bone Crusher,’ will wrestle here in the Camp Murphy Ring on November 16. This female flounderer of feminine pulchritude will appear in an exhibition match with another of her fair sex.”

Carmelita, an Oct. 29, 1943 story says, was 18 and “a commercial artist during working hours.” It said she wasn’t a pro but had wrestled in exhibitions at area military bases. It said she was willing to wrestle any soldier between 120 and 130 pounds, including officers. By the Nov. 5, 1943, story, that offer had been rescinded.

The Nov. 12, 1943 article identified her opponent as “Annette Henderson, also of West Palm Beach.”

Sadly, we don’t have the Nov. 19 issue, and the Nov. 26 edition makes no mention of the epic match. But we weren’t nearly as intrigued as 58-year-old Danny Waters of Lake Park, son of Carmelita, “My goodness. I never had a clue. I never heard of any of this growing up,” he said this month.

He said his mom died young, in 1957, when he was 3, and his dad in 1972, when he was a teen.

Records show Bonnie Carmelita Mullis married Charles Eddie Waters. Son James, who lives in Palm Beach Gardens, was born in 1950.

“I hardly knew my mom,” older son James said. “Fond memories, from what I can remember.”

Special thanks to Post staff researcher Michelle Quigley.

The sports page of the Nov. 5, 1943, edition of the Camp Murphy Message featured an upcoming wrestling match featuring ‘Amazon Bone Crusher’ Carmelita Mullis.

Photos courtesy of Robert Maertz

The note on the back of this photo from Robert Maertz lists, left to right, Geiger, Major, Mandarish, Dunn, Cook, Sgt. Schefts, Ney, Rynders, Lee, Eklund, Hanfland, Kurtz, Owen, Kissin, Maertz, Malek, Blumquist, Cohen, Henry, Polkowski (a few men are not identified).

Left to right, Hanson, Mainwaring, Cook (one of the men is not identified)

Robert Maertz at Camp Murphy

Mass at Lummus Park

Jay Walker on Ocean Drive in Miami Beach

Urinals at Camp Murphy

Tents set during 13 mile trek

Ione Jensch, Robert Maertz’s fiancee

Ione Jensch on the road to Jackson Beach near Stuart

Tags: Camp Murphy, Martin County, newspapers, World War II, WWII

Old newspapers key to region’s bygone days

History often is about coincidences. After director Sidney Lumet died April 9, our May 5 column mentioned the play he produced at Camp Murphy, now Jonathan Dickinson State Park in southern Martin County. It got a rave review in the base’s Camp Murphy Message.

As we were writing the column, Post staff researcher Michelle Quigley got a thick package from, coincidentally, her native Wisconsin.

Inside: 12 issues of the Message, from Oct. 1 to Dec. 24 of 1943.

The Murphy newspapers are rife with news about promotions, transfers, marriages and babies; the usual inside jokes about the dreariness of camp life, and “cheesecake” — publicity photos of long-forgotten bit actresses — as well as not-so-nice comments about Germany and Japan that would be politically incorrect today but were allowed during war.

You’ll recall that last year we got several copies of the newspaper at Morrison Field, later Palm Beach International Airport.

These periodicals serve not only as snapshots of a long-gone era in South Florida, but give insight to the everyday life of GIs training in what was for most of them a strange and beautiful but blasted-hot place.

Many, of course, liked it so much they came back. Florida’s population in 1940 to 3 million in 1950 and 7 million in 1970.

Quigley has painstakingly scanned every page and posted them on our here for you to enjoy.

One person who’s viewing the pages — and who read last week’s column with interest — is Irwin Wiesenthal of suburban Boynton Beach. He was in the show!

Wiesenthal, 1943

Wiesenthal, 2011

“We sang. We danced,” Wiesenthal, now 88, recalled last week. “It was a farce on the Army. About basic training.”

The show had only one performance. Not because it bombed. But because the cast was shipped out and scattered to other bases. Wiesenthal said he briefly saw the director after the war, when Lumet was struggling to break into Broadway, but never again after that.

Wiesenthal was in the Pacific but saw no combat. He later spent decades in sales and marketing in fabrics in the New York area and retired to South Florida in 1992.

Next week: “The Amazon Bone Crusher.”

Front page of first edition of Camp Murphy Message, Oct. 1, 1943.

Tags: Camp Murphy, Martin County, newspapers, World War II, WWII