INFERNAL MACHINES

by Rory Morgan

INFERNAL MACHINES

‘Infernal machines” was a phrase widely used in newspapers to describe bombs that were hidden or disguised, so as to explode unexpectedly, much like today’s IEDs. It wasn’t a new term; it dated back to the 16th Century. In late 1931, infernal machines came to Easton.

Turmoil in Italy lay behind the events. Anti-Fascists, Socialists, anarchists and Communists fought in the streets against the “Black Shirt” squads of aspiring dictator Benito Mussolini. Thousands upon thousands of Italians sought to escape the tumult in their country by coming to America; among them were radicals who were willing to use violence for their causes.

Easton’s encounter with infernal machines began at about 8:30 in the morning of December 30, 1931. An olive-green coupe pulled up in front of the Post Office on Ferry Street. Witnesses said that one man stayed in the car. Two men got out of the car and carried a box into the building. They went to a counter, removed six (or seven, depending on the source) packages from the box, stood at the counter to address them, and then carried them to the clerk for mailing. There was a discussion between them and the clerk about the postage rate and insurance value. (In light of the events that followed, the reason for insuring the packages is difficult to determine.) The two men left the building and got into the car where the driver was waiting.

The clerk who handled the transaction was Edward Werkheiser, age 28. He, his wife Beatrice, and their three young children lived with his mother on North Delaware Drive. He was a graduate of Easton High School, had worked at the Post Office for eight years, and was active in Masonic organizations. Decades later, his daughter Mabel remembered him as a “happy and friendly man” who enjoyed playing music.

Werkheiser noticed that the packages were all the same size – 5” x 10” x 5” – and all weighed the same – six pounds. Yet, they all had different descriptions of the contents. They were mostly addressed to various prominent Italian publishers and diplomats. All carried the same return address, in Dover, NJ.

The situation seemed suspicious to Werkheiser. Prohibition was still in effect; perhaps the packages contained illicit liquor. He opened one of them. There was an immediate explosion. Although he was still alive, he was very badly injured; among other things, he had lost an arm. He was taken to the Betts Hospital and died there an hour or two later - but before then, he was able to provide some description of the events and the two men; he described them as “foreigners”.

Werkheiser was not alone in the Post Office. When the bomb exploded, his colleague, 56-year-old John B. House, was standing nearby. He also suffered very severe injuries, including a fractured skull, and died that afternoon at Easton Hospital. He left a wife and a grown son. Two other clerks, Clarence Keller and Arlington Albert, were injured, but not fatally.

Meanwhile, the remaining packages sitting in the damaged building presented a problem. Fortunately, there was an explosives expert in Easton, Charles V. Weaver, of McCartney Street, who was employed by the DuPont Powder Company. He supervised the careful removal of the packages, and the transportation of them to an old quarry down Delaware Drive. He recognized that opening the lid triggered the explosion of the bombs, so with the assistance of County Detective George Ryan, Weaver used a long pole, with a knife attached to the end, and opened the lid of one of them. It exploded harmlessly, just as he had planned. He opened the second one; it  initially didn’t explode. Weaver began to walk toward it and then it did explode. He suffered grievous injuries and died the next day at Easton Hospital; Detective Ryan was seriously injured, but survived.

The infernal machines had now claimed three lives in Easton. Other cities were alerted; bombs were found in several, although no other fatal incidents occurred. It was difficult, in some cases, to determine whether a particular bomb was part of a conspiracy or whether someone used the opportunity to settle local political or personal disputes. Investigators focused on various Italian Socialists, Communists and anti-Fascists, but failed to produce any viable leads.

Not surprisingly, the return address in New Jersey was phony. Fingerprints from the packages did not match any others on file. The explosive used had apparently been stolen. Eyewitnesses could not identify any of the suspects brought in by law enforcement, including the 21 “underworld characters” who were "rounded up" and held in Easton’s City Hall.

The Italian government denied any involvement; its consul in Philadelphia attended two of the Easton funerals, visited the third family and donated money to all three families. The anti-Mussolini groups also denied participation. They pointed out that misspellings in the packages’ addresses should cast some doubt on whether the two men were even Italian. A monetary donation to the victims’ families also came from wealthy New York business owner and newspaper publisher Generosa Pope, who was one of the intended recipients. Two of the planned recipients had no obvious involvement in the disputes between the Fascists and anti-Fascists.

Werkheiser, House and Weaver were all buried in Easton Cemetery. In 1932, on the one-year anniversary of the incident, a newspaper published a short article recalling the events of that day and noted that the case was not yet solved.  That still remains true today. We are no closer to learning who mailed those packages than we were 88 years ago.

HIS MEMORY DOTH LIVE - MEMORIAL DAY 2020

by Rory Morgan   2020  

“Although he sleeps, his memory doth live.”            

On June 18, 1917, a twenty-six year-old Easton schoolteacher named Herbert Henry Eichlin and his wife, Helen, became the parents of twins. They named the girl Dorothy; and the boy Herbert Henry Eichlin, Jr., after his father. The family was then living at 123 North 13^th Street; by 1920 they had relocated to 1317 Butler Street. The 1930 Census listed the family’s home at 2 South 11^th Street.

By 1934, when young Herbert and his sister graduated from Easton High School, they had acquired the nicknames Bud and Dot. The yearbook for 1934 lists Bud as a member of the Hi-Y organization and the Swim Team, with a future plan of attending Lafayette College. His picture shows pleasant features and conveys an air of maturity across the decades. He is described as having the qualities of “congeniality” and “intelligence” and is praised as being the “ideal boy.”

He did become a member of Lafayette’s Class of 1938. His time there was short; after one year, he secured a spot at the United States Military Academy at West Point, NY, in the Class of 1939. In a memorial article written by one of his Academy roommates, Bud is described as a “fine man to live with.” He is further described as a “soldier and a man all the way through.”

After graduating from the Academy in 1939, Bud selected the 31^st Infantry Regiment for his first assignment. The 31^st,  although stationed in the tropical Philippines, carried the nickname of the “Polar Bears”, reflecting an obscure assignment in Siberia twenty years before. The regiment was posted in the vicinity of Manila, capital city of the country. Like Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, pre-war Manila was a desirable place to be stationed, offering the young officers and enlisted men of the US military an exotic experience. Sadly, December of 1941 would transform the lush tropical life of both Pearl Harbor and Manila into places of death and destruction.

Within hours of the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, Japanese planes appeared over the Philippines, followed over the next several weeks by significant ground forces. The 31^st Infantry, along with the other US and Philippine forces, moved from the Manila area to the Bataan Peninsula. During this time, Bud was assigned to the regiment’s headquarters, despite his desire to be part of a line unit. Eventually, he got his wish; he was promoted to the rank of Captain and was assigned to command a combat company in March, 1942. It was not a good situation for the young officer; grave supply problems, serious illnesses and combat had left the company badly equipped and undermanned. By April the entire regiment was a wreck. The surviving men were starving and sick; surrender was inevitable.

The surrender brought no relief to Bud and his fellow soldiers. What followed for them was the infamous “Bataan Death March,” when the Japanese sent thousands of prisoners, primarily American and Filipino, on a sixty-mile journey to a former Philippine Army facility known as Camp O’Donnell. The conditions on the march were cruel. Some of those who could not keep up were simply killed. Some soldiers were beheaded; a few were buried alive. There was virtually no food or water available in the 100-degree heat.

Camp O’Donnell itself was not any improvement. There was little or no clean water or medicine; malaria and dysentery were rampant. Estimates of deaths vary, but approximately fifteen hundred to two thousand Americans died there in the course of a few months. The deaths among the Filipino prisoners were in the tens of thousands. In the early summer of 1942, the Japanese began to scale down Camp O’Donnell and send the prisoners to other facilities. Bud was moved to a prisoner camp at Cabanatuan; by then he had been infected with both dysentery and malaria, and had lost seventy pounds.

In late 1944, American forces were clearly headed toward the Philippines as they fought their way across the Pacific, one island at a time. The Japanese began to ship the prisoners from Cabanatuan and the other camps to Japan. Bud’s turn came on December 12, 1944, when he and other prisoners were herded onto the Oryoku Maru, a cargo vessel that would become known to history as one of the Japanese “hell ships.” Survivors’ descriptions made it clear that conditions there were as bad as anything that they had experienced previously. Their situation became markedly worse on December 14-15, when the ship was attacked and sunk near the Philippine coast by American planes; the pilots saw only a Japanese ship that they assumed to be hauling cargo, not Allied prisoners.

The survivors of the Oryoku Maru were split between two other vessels: the Enoura Maru and the Brazil Maru. Bud was aboard the Enoura. Before it left the harbor to start for Japan, it too was attacked by American planes. A number of the prisoners were killed. The survivors, including Bud, were transferred to the Brazil Maru. On January 29, 1945, the Brazil Maru reached Moji, Japan - but not Bud Eichlin. Sometime around January 27, his persistent dysentery and the lack of food and water on the ship brought his death. The body of Easton High School’s “ideal boy” of 1934 was committed to the China Sea. Of the 1600+ prisoners who had originally boarded the Onyoku Maru, only about 250 reached Japan.

There were survivors of these horrible events; thanks to their efforts to preserve history, we know the fates of Bud and many others. Most of the people who actually laid eyes on Bud Eichlin during his life have passed on, and soon the rest will be gone.  But he will not be forgotten as long as people wander the grounds of Easton Cemetery.

In 1946, Herbert Eichlin, Sr., in one of the saddest duties that a father can perform, handled the estate of his son. He took care to ensure that Bud would be remembered; he bought a plot in Easton Cemetery that no shovel will disturb, located along the stone wall heading toward the Mausoleum. He bought a fine marker – an attractive stone bench - for $949. It’s inscribed with some details of Bud’s life and death, and with the traditional phrase, “Although he sleeps, his memory doth live.”  If you pass by it, stop for a moment and remember that Bud and so many other soldiers, sailors, fliers and Marines found the cost of freedom – and paid the bill for us.