Ammunition Crisis at Antwerp, 1944

My 84-year-old father told me a story of one of his war experiences as an Army captain with the 278th Medium Maintenance Company, attached to the 99th Air Force Defense Command outside Paris in 1944. My dad’s name is Lloyd Scott, Ted by nickname.

In 1944, he and four other officers were briefed on secret orders from General Eisenhower on the desperate situation for the British in Antwerp. Dad and his colleagues were told that every attempt to get secured ammunition to the British defending Antwerp had failed. Neither truck nor train transport had made it to the British who were so severely low of ammunition that they were only able to deliver three missions a day against heavy, nearly constant Panzer bombardment from across the estuary. The British believed they had a “fourth column” situation going on with a saboteur switching ammunition, hence the SOS call to Eisenhower for help.

Dad was told that no one had returned from any of the attempts to get ammunition to Antwerp, so headquarters planned to send the four of them on different routes to get the job done. Dad and only two GIs commanded the train, that took the route just bordering the edge of what would become the Battle of the Bulge two to three weeks later. Enroute by jeep to board the train, German bombs exploded near the Jeep causing the driver and Dad to crash in a ditch. Both wounded, with shrapnel in Dad’s back, he and his driver managed to get to the train. At one point in Belgium, the train was waylaid to a yard and the locomotives removed, at which point he confronted the yard tower that the locomotives had to be returned — and the train set back on track. Another time a French civilian with his bicycle tried to board the train, but Dad met him between cars at gunpoint telling him he had to get off or be killed. Dad said the guy knew there was ammunition on the train and was not going to leave, but Dad’s threats eventually worked.

Dad delivered that load of ammunition to the British, asking if the other Americans had arrived with their transports. The British said no one except Dad had made it. He remembered some guy taking him to a four-star hotel in bombed out Antwerp and buying him a beer. The British drove him back to his outfit outside Paris wherein he was shipped to England for hospitalization. Dad believes his efforts getting that train to Antwerp under the dire conditions facing the British helped tipped the balance for the allies in that struggle to keep the port.

I would like to talk to anyone on the British side who can match up the story told to me.S

My father received a commendation medal for that action after returning to the States to have one of the first spinal fusion back surgeries at that time.

Thank you for your help!

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