Policeman Enter SeaBee Service
Here are two more Sioux City police officers who now belong to Uncle Sam. Patrolman Earl Schmidt, 1502 Collins Street and Patrolman Roy Montross, 2522 Rebecca Street, will leave Thursday noon for Williamsburg, W.Va., to enter Seabee service. Both went to work on the department in May of 1942. Schmidt’s assignments include the motorcycle division, radio and a brief time as a special raider in liquor law enforcement, Patrolman Montross worked for about six months in the department’s radio division and more recently has been a squad car driver. The police officers are a part of a group of about 20 men from Sioux City and adjacent territory who will leave here Thursday.
Source: The Sioux City Journal, November 2, 1943 (photo included)
IN UNIFORM
Roy O. Montross, machinist’s mate second class, 2522 Rebecca Street, was a member of a naval group of guerrillas, intelligence agents and weather observers behind the Japanese lines in Asia. The group began shortly after Pearl Harbor strictly as a weather reporting unit. The project grew until it was providing the fleet, the 14th air forces and the Chinese and American army headquarters with weather reports and with intelligence on movement of Jap ships, troops and supplies. Finally it became a dangerous fighting outfit, killing Japs, blowing up trains, raiding Jap outposts. Its activities finally extended all the way from Indo-China to the Gobi desert, its experience being one of the most romantic and dangerous episodes of the war against Japan.
Source: The Sioux City Journal, September 22, 1945
Roy Osler Montross was born Sept. 6, 1913 to Fred Louis and Mary Louise Payne Montross. He died Dec. 26, 1999 and is buried in Sloan Cemetery, Sloan, IA.
Source: ancestry.com
