Sergeant First Class Rowe W. “Whit” Kimball / United States Army

“Our family is deeply rooted in New Hampshire,” said George Kimball, son of Sergeant First Class Rowe Kimball, as the unofficial family historian. “The original Kimball ancestor, Richard, came to the New World in 1634 and settled in Ipswich, MA. Around 1775, our line of the Kimball family arrived in NH from the Ipswich area and resided in Hooksett. They were farmers. My great-grandparents came to Nashua in the 1870s to work in the mills.”

Rowe Kimball came into this world on August 16, 1914, in Dunstable, MA, moving to Nashua in 1920 where the family settled on 30 Elm St., not far from what would later be the Nashua City Hall. Kimball’s father died when he was very young so he was raised primarily by his mother and grandparents. His grandparents supported themselves by providing wood and coal to heat Nashua homes.

In 1922 his mother remarried. Kimball then split his time between living with his mother and living with his grandparents. His mother then gave birth to four additional children further alienating young Kimball.

From letters exchanged with his son, George, in the 1990s, Rowe Kimball remembered Nashua winters during the depression, “When I went to school the city had no money to plow. When I delivered newspapers, I just had to tramp through the snow and make my path. And kids going to school had no bus to ride. We walked.”

He attended kindergarten in Nashua, first and second grade in Dunstable, then third grade at the Mulberry St. School in Nashua. Again, from his letters, one of his most vivid memories was of the old steamer fire engines of the Nashua Fire Department – pulled by horses. Kimball wrote, “And now I must tell you the most wonderful thing I saw as a kid. And it still stays in my memory till today. The horses pulling the steamer fire wagon. The horses on the run and smoke coming out of the boiler on the wagon. Did you know horses pulled the fire wagons until 1928 in Nashua? Last one was on Lake Street.”

Kimball enjoyed high school. Of his time there, he wrote the following, “High school to me was one of the greatest parts of my life. I had to work hard to be able to even go. My grades were not great because I wasn’t the smartest SOB. But I always passed. I know I could have done better. Even got expelled one time for walking out of study class when Mrs. Coffee fell asleep. But the next day which was the first day of being expelled, I was back in the office asking the principal to get back in. All the teachers knew me for sure. When something happened, Bowman, my friend, and me would pop up as the likely suspects into their heads.”

Kimball was a football player in high school, beginning in his freshman year in 1930. He earned the nickname “Whit”, probably because of his middle name; Wilson. He played left tackle under the watchful eye of Coach Degasis, Kimball could be an aggressive player. In a 1994 interview with Nashua Telegraph reporter, Mike Shaloup, Kimbell remembered, “One time in 1931, in a game against Portsmouth, I ran after a passer about 20 yards into the end zone. On the next play, the teams got into a fight and would you believe, the officials ejected me and the Portsmouth captain.” Kimball remembered other hardships of playing high school football during that tough period in American history, “Before a home game, we would change into our uniforms at the school on Spring St. From there, in our cleats, we had to walk up to the North Common where we would play the game. We always hoped to catch a ride in the back of a truck so we wouldn’t have to walk so far. If we played out-of-town games, we were each given 50 cents so we could buy dinner after the game.” (Author’s Note: Holman Stadium, built on the site of the North Common, would not be built until 1936.)

Kimball graduated from Nashua High School in 1934. At that time, Nashua High was in what most people today know as the now-defunct, Spring St. Junior High. (Author’s Note: Nashua High on Elm St. wouldn’t be built until 1939. Until then, the building on Spring St. was NHS.)

According to a Nashua Telegraph story, Kimball always wanted to be a U.S. Army officer. After high school, Kimball spent a year at Tilton Prep School in Tilton, NH, and then attended a civilian-military training camp for boys at Fort McKinley at Portland Harbor in Maine. He was quoted as saying, this was “one of the best experiences of my life.”

Kimball then joined the NH National Guard and was made part of the medical detachment. His job was driving a WWI Army ambulance. It was motorized, but it had non-pneumatic, hard rubber tires.

Kimball’s first real job was in the shoe shop on Lake St. in Nashua. For a 40-hour work week, Kimball made $14.50. From there he moved on to the “Card Shop”; Nashua Corporation. Kimball wanted to join the military during WWII. But… he was an only son and also worked on a farm which was essential work so he was exempt.

At the outbreak of WWII, Kimball received a draft card but was never called up. In addition to the circumstances stated above, Kimball was just too old. In December 1941, Kimball was already 27 years old. Most men who enlisted were in their late teens and early 20’s. In military parlance, 27 was an “old man.”

Kimball remembered Pearl Harbor. In the 1990’s he wrote, “I remember that day as if it was yesterday. Allen (half-brother) and I had been cutting wood. About 1 o’clock/1300 hours we had just sat down to eat dinner on Bush Hill. (Bush Hill would later be the site of Benson’s Wild Animal Farm) And on the Montgomery Ward small radio, paid $5.00 for it, came the report that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. The world was to change all over. Never the same again.”

Finally, in 1946, at the age of 32, and the end of WWII, Kimball became a full-time soldier. The Army made him an MP, part of the 503rd MP’s. His first duty station was for one year in Livorno, Italy; a seacoast city on Italy’s western shore.

Kimball later wrote about his trip across the Atlantic to Italy. “The boat I went to Italy on was the Wilson Victory. We were packed in like fish in a can for about 12 days. Bunks about seven high. Water slopping about six inches deep at times in the head.” Kimball continues, “One night I was put on guard in the bow of the ship as low as one could, get to guard the brig. One sailor was in the brig on bread and water rations. What a ride that was. The ship would jump it seemed and then flop down with a bang. I only was there for about two hours. The sailor was there for the whole trip I was told.”

Duty in Italy, directly after the war, was not easy. War and internal strife had left the country in economic turmoil causing widespread poverty and food shortages. The fall of Mussolini’s fascist régime in April of 1945 led to a power vacuum with socialist movements creating a lot of political uncertainty. The American occupation, and the Marshall Plan, played a significant role in restoring the country’s infrastructure and economy. In a letter to his son George in the 1990’s Kimball wrote, “… Italy around Leghorn (Livorno) was all communist at the end of WW2. The red flag and hammer and cycle was every place and we saw riots all the time – mobs in the streets fighting police, setting fires to cars and tipping over vehicles.”

Finally, Kimball arrived in Livorno, aka Leghorn. He wrote, “We went in the harbor of Leghorn, Italy. Couldn’t get unloaded so we were on the Wilson for Christmas. And the mess hall fed us beans. But the next day when we unloaded, we were fed well at an Army mess hall. Even had a German band playing in the mess hall. And we were taken up the beach from Leghorn and Pisa to a sea area hotel that was a wreck. No windows, doors or heat. Pick yourself a bed and wait. G.I.’s used gas on the beach mixed with wood in holes to build fires to keep warm. I stayed there 10 days or so. But we had a great mess hall that was open all the time. So, we made out good. But so many G.I.’s there; the line going into the mess hall was always long. Some used to say when you eat your meal might as well line up for another because it would take a few hours. Ha, ha! My bed I piled high with G.I. comforters. Wasn’t too bad if it didn’t rain or snow. We had a big Red Cross building there with heat and coffee and donuts too at times. Also, remember the harbor of Leghorn was full of sunken ships and the dock area. To get off the ship, planks were laid on rubble to dock.” The job of the 503rd was to guard soldiers who had gone AWOL and apparently captured.

Civil strife in Livorno was an everyday occurrence. The MPs never knew what would happen. Kimball remembered one particular instance; he was riding in a troop truck full of armed GI’s. They came across a civilian mob who was attacking a young woman, her crime, apparently was talking to a GI. The crowd ripped her clothes off and began to cut her hair. One of the GI’s asked Kimball, then in command of the detail, if they should go break it up. It just so happened that a car carrying a number of Italian police was behind the troop truck. Rather than have the GI’s engage with the maddening civilian crowd, together the troop truck and Italian police rammed through the crowd. Police grabbed the young woman, and then the police vehicle and troop truck backed out. The woman was brought to the police station a short distance away and provided with some clothing. Other than that, she was unharmed. Kimball wrote, “Never did find out what happened to the GI. We didn’t get him. Just another day in Leghorn.”

Kimball mentioned that the MPs of 503rd were very busy; “lots of standing guard in different places.” He noted, “Heavy guard at P.X. warehouse. Weapons on the roof. Always lots of shooting and break-ins there. Lights would be cut off. Never knew what was going to happen. And the jeep patrols, lots of them riding all over town.”

His son George remembers, “A large portion of his life was spent in the Army. He loved to travel and was at his best meeting new and culturally different people. He made friends easily. I say this but I’m not sure he really had close friends. Despite that, he was a great story teller. He could make you laugh at the silliest things.”

Still an MP, Kimball was then transferred to Fort Jackson in South Carolina, and then to Sandia Base near Albuquerque, New Mexico. According to Wikipedia, Sandia Base was the principal nuclear weapons installation of the United States Department of Defense from 1946 to 1971. It was located on the southeastern edge of Albuquerque, New Mexico. For 25 years, the top-secret Sandia Base and its subsidiary installation, Manzano Base, carried on the atomic weapons research, development, design, testing, and training commenced by the Manhattan Project during World War II. Fabrication, assembly, and storage of nuclear weapons were also done at Sandia Base. The base played a key role in the United States’ nuclear deterrence capability during the Cold War. In 1971 it was later merged into Kirtland Air Force Base. Kimball’s son George noted, “The Manzano Mountains were close by and they were full of tunnels. Nuclear weapons were stored in these tunnels.”

Sandia Base was also a convalescent center for wounded airmen in 1944 and was used as a dismantlement center for surplus aircraft immediately after the war. Z-Division was created at Los Alamos in July of 1945 to perform ordnance engineering and assembly activities.

In 1953, Kimball was shipped off to his next duty station, a POW camp called Koje-Do on an island just off the coast of Korea. (Now called Geojedo.) He arrived in July, 1953. The camp, at one time, had as many as 160,000 Korean and Chinese prisoners. Before Kimball’s assignment, in 1952, the prisoners rebelled and took over the camp, capturing the camp’s commander, Brigadier General Francis Dodd. He was trying to “relate” to the prisoners, so he and a few members of his staff walked into the compound amongst the prisoners. They quickly surrounded the General and his men, holding them inside the compound. President Truman found out and was furious. He ordered the acting commander to get the General released immediately. Reportedly, U.S. military tanks were lined up around the compound with the muzzles of their cannons pointing in towards the center of the camp. The POWs were ordered to immediately produce the General and his men or they would be wiped out. The General was released, docked in rank and forced out of the military for allowing himself to be caught in that predicament.

Kimball had just boarded the ship to take him to Korea when a busload of GI’s pulled up. MP’s greeted the busses and “manhandled” the GI’s forcing them onto the ship. It seems these were AWOL soldiers who had refused to go to Korea. They were assigned to work the mess hall on the ship. Later, Kimball was in the mess hall when one of the AWOL’s walked up to a captain and pasted him in the face. Kimball immediately grabbed the errant soldier and was ready to return the favor. The soldier stepped back saying he wasn’t there to mess with any NCO’s, just the officers. Kimball later wrote, “Another nice day.”

After Korea, Kimball was sent stateside again to Governor’s Island in New York, this time to be a guard at a military prison. Near the end of the 1950’s, Kimball was sent to Fort Monroe in Virginia. There, the military gave Kimball helicopter flying lessons, which he never used, and cross-trained him for the Army Corps of Engineers, which he never used.

Somewhere in this period, Kimball spent some time in Germany. In a letter written in the 1990’s he wrote, “The airfield where I was stationed in 1959/60 – during WW2 was a German fighter base. About 10 miles from Nuremberg. Never was bombed during the war, the Allies didn’t see it. The runway was narrow – looked like a road with trees. But the trees were not real. The artificial trees were moved back as fighters took off.”

In 1962, Kimball was sent to Japan for a three-year assignment. Son George had no idea what his father did during that time except that they lived off-base. Rowe Kimball remembered his time in Japan, “Japs never plowed the roads in winter. And (I remember) how the snow would get under the fender wells of cars so that the tires run in a groove. And the sidewalks (in Chitose, Japan) were never cleared of snow or ice and you would slide into stores and the electric cars (trolleys) in Sapporo running in a trench. Cars on each side 3 feet or higher (from the accumulation of snow). And then (there was) that city about 30 miles away on the seaside that never saw any snow.”

At the end of that tour, in 1965, Kimball was sent to Thailand. At that time, the U.S. was motivated to get more involved in the growing Vietnam War based on the theory that if one country falls to the Communists, more will follow. In 1965, President Johnson committed the first ground troops to Vietnam.

In Thailand, Kimball became a part of the ASA, Army Security Agency. His son George remembers that time, “All I know is, whatever he was doing was top secret. He never wore a uniform, just plain civilian clothes. He didn’t live on the base – he stayed at a hotel in Bangkok. During that time, he was awarded a number of medals, and at least one unit citation and I have no idea why. He even got one from the country of Vietnam. I have no clue.”

Kimball was transferred to Aberdeen Proving Grounds at the end of his Thailand tour and then retired from the Army on December 1, 1968. After retiring Kimball returned to Nashua where he performed maintenance work for the Nashua Telegraph for about a year, then headed to Santa Fe, New Mexico. He died, alone, on July 19, 1996 at the age of 82. He was buried at Santa Fe National Cemetery.

Of his father, son George Kimball wrote, “No man is perfect. No man starts out trying to be bad. Life makes for contradictions, compromises and the loss of naiveté. It makes us human. That is exactly what my father was, human.”

Finally, there is this from son George, “If there is anything to learn from his life it is to be more accepting and gain an enlightened understanding of what our role is in our interactions with others. Let’s hope the future is brighter than our past.”.

US Service Personnel Profiles
By Gary Ledoux January 6, 2025