I was in Nyack this morning on assignment for a local publication. After my interview, I headed south on Broadway, onto Route 9W and down into Piermont. The village holds a special place in my heart: One of my dearest friends in college – we attended St. Thomas Aquinas in Sparkill, a short hop from Piermont – recommended me for a job at the Clausland Bookshop while we were in school. To be in a riverside village, surrounded by books? Yes, ma’am. I loved that job and fell in love with the village. So, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to visit my old stomping grounds today. The bookshop is long gone, but the downtown maintains its charm. I hooked a left onto Paradise Avenue and parked near the marsh. Birdsong and a slight whiff of brackish water drew me onto the pier.
As I walked along the beautifully flat path, I realized the significance of the day. It was Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day. And two years after that “day that will live in infamy,” troops made their way down that same pier onto ships that took them overseas to fight World War II.
The troops were assembled at Camp Shanks in Orangetown, a 2,040-acre city-unto-itself that stretched from Tappan to Blauvelt. From there they would march to Piermont Pier and into the unknown.
David Levine recounted the history of Camp Shanks in a beautifully written account 10 years ago for Hudson Valley magazine: “From 1943 until the end of World War II, Camp Shanks was the largest Army port of embarkation in the United States. It comprised 2,040 acres in Orangetown, Rockland County, and served as the staging grounds for about 1.3 million troops, including 75 percent of those who took part in the invasion of Normandy. The GIs knew they were headed overseas from there, which is why they nicknamed the camp ‘Last Stop, USA.’”
After the war ended, the camp’s barracks became housing for returning GIs and their families. “Shanks Village,” as it was called, was auctioned off in 1954 and the barracks slowly were sold off as private homes, although many still housed Army National Guard members into the 1990s.
Thirty years ago, I was interviewing one of those Guard families who were being forced to leave their home. As part of my job as staff writer for the then-Journal-News, I visited Orangetown Town Hall nearly every day and became friendly with the staff as a result. One of the secretaries in the Town Clerk’s office was just a teenager at the start of WWII. She recalled sitting on her front lawn and watching the soldiers marching past, on their way from Camp Shanks to Piermont Pier.
Have you seen the HBO miniseries “Band of Brothers”? I urge you to watch it. You’ll gain a new empathy for those soldiers – some much, much younger than my two oldest children – who suited up, swallowed their fear, and marched off. In fact, the main protagonists of that series, the members of Easy Company of the 101st Airborne, did embark from the Piermont Pier.
As I walked the blacktopped pier today, I realized I was walking in the footsteps of heroes. The sun shone, downy woodpeckers and red-winged blackbirds frolicked among the reeds, and the mighty Hudson River lapped musically against its banks. The interview I’d had earlier in the day was a tour of a house that has a history of rumored hauntings. But the entire time I was in that home, I never once felt the presence of a ghost or anything.
But on that pier? My God. I truly felt the spirit of everyone who marched – boldly or, more likely, pretending to be bold – down that lonely pier and fought for a nation that was worth fighting for.
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