The last chance

This year marks the 75th Anniversary of the end of World War II. Most events about the war have been chronicled by historians and Hollywood alike. However, secrets of the war are still emerging. The latest secrets revolve around the British transport ship HMT Rohna.
The Rohna transported troops and supplies across the Indian Ocean from present day Sri Lanka and Bombay, India. It was also used in the Allied invasion of Sicily and then headed for Algeria where 2,000 U.S. troops went on board. On Thanksgiving Day in 1943, it joined a ship convoy bound for India. But, it never reached its destination as it was sunk by one of Germany’s secret weapons. Perishing in the incident were about half of the troops on board including two from Evangeline Parish.
Many of the details of what happened to the Rohna remained veiled in secrecy, until filmmaker Jack Ballo found some old letters while rummaging through the attic of his home in New Jersey.
“My wife and I live in a house that her family owned for over 100 years,” he said. “I was up in the attic trying to make some space, and I came across these letters that were from a soldier in World War II. Come to find out, it was my wife’s great-uncle. His name was Joseph Pisinski.”
Pisinski was a 23-year-old soldier who sent letters home to his mother describing how his training was going.
“I’m reading all these letters and was very interested because I never heard about this great-uncle,” Ballo said. “Nobody ever talked about him.”
Ballo then began some online research and came across a book by Michael Walsh called Rohna Memories which included a list of every casualty on board the ship.
After reading the book, Ballo learned a reunion of Rohna survivors was approaching in Memphis. He and his wife attended the reunion, and that is where he met Walsh.
Ballo said, “I told him I was a documentary filmmaker. We ended up coming to an agreement to work together.”
Through his research for the documentary, Bello learned more of the story of the attack.
“What’s interesting about this story is most of the guys just got out of training,” he said. “They were going into war for the first time on Thanksgiving 1943. They were getting on the Rohna, and they got attacked. The attack started around 5 in the evening, and it was the first radio guided missile ever used in war.”
Ballo continued, “The missile went right into the side of the Rohna, and, at that point, the ship went down. Everybody went into the water. Three hundred soldiers got killed on impact, and the rest of them had to jump off the ship. One thousand fifteen were killed.”
As Ballo explained, the attack was classified which was standard practice. “After an attack, the War Department wanted to make sure, for security reasons, the enemy was not aware of the success of the attack, especially this one because it was a new weapon. The problem was, after the war was over, they didn’t declassify it. It was kept classified indefinitely.”
This meant the families of the victims did not know what happened to their loved ones.
Ballo said, “The guys sent Christmas cards out to their families before they got on the ship so they would get to their homes by Christmas. The families received these Christmas cards, and everybody at home thought everything was fine. But, the soldiers were killed on November 26.”
“The War Department sent telegrams right around the last week of December and the first week of January to the families stating their soldiers were missing in action,” he continued. “The families didn’t hear another thing from the War Department until the end of May when they received another telegram saying the soldier died and there was no information available.”
According to Ballo’s research, eight families from Louisiana received telegrams saying their loved ones were killed. They were Lester Hester from Georgetown, Wilbert Landry from Jennings, John Donahue from New Orleans, Christopher McFaull from New Orleans, Dallas Comeaux from Queue Tortue, Livingston Collins from Golden Meadow, Dennis Guidry from Basile, and Murphy Fontenot from Ville Platte.
Not much is known about either Guidry or Fontenot. According to local genealogist Carla Deville, who is related to Fontenot, he was born on January 24, 1918, and is related to the founder of Belaire Cove. His father was Prosper B. Fontenot, and his mother was Dorzina Fontenot. He worked at G. Ardoin Co. and married Earline Tremie on November 26, 1938, at the age of 19.
Lafayette native Phena Guidry is married to a nephew of Livingston Collins. Phena and her husband, Buddy, reside in Lake Charles and shared information on their family member.
“Basically,” Phena said, “what we know is that he was 16-years-old and heard about the war. He wanted to enlist and tried to enlist by going to the recruiting office. One of the officers saw him there and called his dad. His dad stopped him at the time and told him he would let him enlist when he turned 17.”
Phena went on to say not much is known about Collins’ time at was because of a lack of communication. “The family didn’t know anything about where he was at all until they got a telegram that said he was lost in the war. His parents were from down the bayou, and communication wasn’t what it is today.”
One of Collins’ sisters, who is the mother of Buddy, was working as an LPN in Cut Off at the time and sent a letter to the War Department. Pheana said, “They sent her back a letter saying they couldn’t tell her anything about it.”
Buddy said, “His mother and father ended up passing away without knowing whatever happened to Livingston. For 50 years, all the survivors never talked about it because they were sworn to secrecy. Eventually, the stories came out that they were all on some kind of ship in a convoy that got torpedoed.”
Phena went on to say, “Buddy and I got married in 1992, and it was a little after that when she and her husband, Buddy’s dad, were reading a story in the Times Picayune about a ship that sunk on the same day that was on the telegram that said he was missing in action. That prompted her to try to find out what happened.”
As the story goes, Buddy’s mother made contact with the author of a book about the Rohna. “They made contact, and it ended up that they stayed in contact until they passed away,” Phena said.
Buddy’s mother and her sisters, over the years, attended reunions and memorials for the Rohna. At one of these reunions, they met a survivor who knew Livingston and said he was killed in the first shot. “The family never knew that,” Phena said.
Phena thinks it is important to share the story “because most of the families couldn’t get any information for all these years. My mother-in-law never knew anything other than her brother was missing in action.”
For Ballo, it is important to get the story out now because, as he said, “it’s the last chance.” He concluded, “The survivors are getting older, and their children know less and less. A lot of these families stopped talking about it because it was very hard for them, and they didn’t carry these World War II stories to their families and never realized their loved ones were killed in a historic attack. It was the largest loss of life at sea in the history of war and the first radio guided missile attack. There’s a great story here, and I think these families need to know their next of kin were part of an important story.”