My life as a soldier: 1939-1945

Chapter III - Becoming Soldiers

As a National Guard unit, the 41st Infantry Division had been a "square division" composed of four infantry regiments (the 161st, the 162nd, the 163rd and the 186th) plus artillery, quartermaster and several other supportive units. Two of the infantry regiments and supportive units composed the 82nd Brigade. Shortly after the mobilization of the National Guard in 1940, the 41st was "streamlined" into what was called a triangular division and one of the infantry regiments (161st) became a part of another division. The various of the 41st Division units drew their personnel from Washington, Oregon, Northern California, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. (We had an Indian from the 163rd Infantry report to B Company 162, because he couldn't make it to the mobilization in his home on time. His name was Adam Bear Claw. As a result of the complications in his routines this caused him, I remember hearing our company commander, Lt. Dow Lovell, refer to this man as "A damn Bear Claw!")

The typical work week in the army in those days was five and a half days, even though it "owned" us body and soul twenty-four hours a day, every day for the duration. Mondays through Saturday, we awoke to the reveille bugle at 6:00 A.M. We immediately got up and stood a flag raising ceremony and roll-call formation. At seven o'clock there was mess call for breakfast. At eight another formation told off daily work details and those who weren't so assigned went in formation for the daily drills, typically close and extended order. This lasted until noon with the exception that there was typically a ten minute break each hour to allow one to catch his breath and have a smoke. If we were close to the company housing area the noon meal was served in the company dining area. It was during the noon break that we had mail call. If we were "in the field" trucks usually delivered sandwiches to us. In the afternoon, we worked until four-thirty and at five we stood the retreat formation which included the lowering of the flag. Immediately following that formation the evening meal was served.

Saturday morning brought a change in the routine with the Saturday inspection. After morning chow, each tent and later on, barracks went into a frenzy of activity to prepare the living quarters for the inspection. Things had to be just right, because if they weren't ones weekend pass was placed in jeopardy! The floors were scrubbed, the beds were made JUST SO with the blankets stretched so tightly the inspecting officer could bounce a quarter on them! Our personal gear was displayed according to a prearranged plan in our footlockers at the foot of each bed. I used to think it was a paradox that I had to have a razor on display even though I hadn't needed to shave yet! There was always a scramble to find clean (or better still, new and unused) components, like sox and underwear, for the display. If the mess gear had been used in the field during the week, it had to be shined with steel wool. Shoes had to be shined to mirror finish and that included the extra pairs that had been used in the wet and mud during the week. Our uniforms would not pass inspection if they were not clean and pressed and had all of the pockets buttoned.

IF---, If all went well during the Saturday inspection, a certain percentage of the company's personnel could have so called weekend passes (Noon Saturday to reveille Monday morning) to do whatever ones heart desired assuming, of course, he had the money for it, including wear civilian clothing! Very few of those eligible didn't take advantage of either opportunity. An additional incentive to leave the base came on Sunday, when the cooks served only two meals.

The Fall/Winter of 1940 was wet, cold and miserable. After the first rains the company street was a big pond. To solve the problem we dug huge holes (12' X 12' X 12') in the street and then filled them with boulders, near the top the size of the rocks was smaller and then the whole thing was finished off with gravel. That took care of the standing water problem, but getting to that point was a lot of hard dirty work for those of us who were privates. All of the rest of the guys were bosses (corporals and sergeants) who supervised the work! Digging through the glacial till which underlies all of the Puget Sound area with picks and shovels was no easy task.

It was a cold, wet and miserable fall/winter in 1940, even so, in spite of the weather, we did close order drill and extended order field exercises every day, slogging through and flopping down on our bellies into the small lakes and ponds that had formed on the drill field as a result of all of the rain. It seemed to those of us in the ranks that the drill instructors took great delight in giving the order to "Hit the dirt!" just as the formation had arrived in the center of one of those small lakes. Much of the time we were wet to the skin, even though we wore rain gear. Even it would repel only so much water and some of the exercises such as preparing to fire our rifles on the range (called "triangulation") required that we lie prone on the soggy ground. After the evening "Retreat" formation we cleaned up as best we could and trooped to the mess hall for chow. That over the time was our own, but woe betide the soldier who didn't clean his gear and get it ready for the next day's activities. At that time we had been issued 30-06 Springfield rifles. These were bolt action pieces with a five round magazine and had seen long years of heavy duty "garrison" usage. As a consequence the blacking had pretty well worn off all of the metal parts leaving them particularly susceptible to rusting if there was any hint of moisture on them. So besides cleaning all of our canvas "web" gear there was always a rifle that needed to be stripped, cleaned and oiled. Since each one of us had gotten about as dirty as the other, the cleanup took all of us about the same amount of time. That meant that we were all ready for the showers at about the same time, so there was usually a lot of waiting for the crowd at the showers to thin out before one could get bathed. In the winter it was dark by chow time, so all of the cleanup activity took place after dark, though there was a power line to each tent that was intended to support one light bulb; none of the outside areas of the company street were lighted.

Under the best conditions, we could get cleaned up early enough to go to the post theater to watch a movie or to the post exchange (P.X.) to drink beer. For several months the latter didn't interest me too much, but the movies did. Now there was one small problem for most of us---, money!. The army had over the years responded to this perennial problem of the soldier by an institution known as "canteen checks". Canteen checks were little booklets of coupons of varying cent denominations which totaled one, five or ten dollars which the individual could draw against his monthly pay (if a private, as I was, of twenty-one dollars). This script could be exchanged for face value only at the "company store", the P.X., a post barbershop or the post theaters or if a non-commissioned officer, at the N.C.O. club. I never had to worry about the latter!

I remember that on payday I was always chagrined to learn that my pay (minus canteen check withdrawals) seldom amounted to more than a handful of change. (We were always paid in cash, once a month.) That certainly took all of the glamour out of PAYDAY for the youngster that I was. We'd go along during the month talking about what we were going to do when payday arrived---, things like: a hotel room and soaking in a tub full of hot water, meals in a restaurant, the like of which one could only imagine. The handful of change at the end of the pay line seldom was enough to bring those kinds of dreams to fruition. Well, there was always next month!

For the first few weeks we were at Camp Murray, I was assigned as Lt. Dow Lovell's "dog robber". The position is something like a personal valet. I made his bed each morning and kept his tent clean, being sure that I got rid of all of the empty bourbon bottles. His boots shoes and puttees (polished leather leggings) were polished. None of those activities took too long, so I also waited table for the company officers. I remember that one of the very difficult adjustments I had to make was learning to address the officer to whom I was speaking in the third person. ("Would the lieutenant like to have more potatoes?" when I was looking him directly in the eye.) Oh well, the job didn't last too long, probably not more than several weeks, because I screwed up some way and the head cook fired me. I was probably taking breaks that were too long.

I returned to the field with the rest of the guys and did close order drill, practiced the manual of arms, extended order drill and field exercises the same as they did. We went on marches with combat packs and at other times with full field packs. Some of the marches were just for several hours and some of them lasted for several days, so the cooks had to load their kitchens onto trucks and trailers and follow us into the field. Some of the marches were called "forced" marches where we had to cover a given distance in less time than regulations said a body of soldiers could reasonably be expected to take. To my way of thinking all marches were "forced"! We listened to lectures about weapons we never saw and perhaps the lecturer had never seen. We had gas drills and went through gas chambers charged with chlorocetephenone (Tear gas) just for the experience and to find out if our gas masks leaked. Sometimes we were required to remove the gas masks while we were inside the chamber. We never did learn what that was supposed to do for our well-being! Sometimes we had bayonet training and went through a course of dummies, parrying their dummy bayonets and then sticking them in the guts or under the chin depending what part of the course we were on. We all hoped that when the day on the battlefield came for the use of bayonets that the enemy soldiers would be lined up in the same sequence we learned on that course. It would have been a shame to have stuck the wrong one under his chin instead of in the guts as we were taught!

Several times per year we would all go out to the rifle ranges to have some practice firing our weapons. It turns out that it wasn't really practice. Everyone was deadly serious about it. We would fire for record. That meant that the results of every shot fired was recorded and went into the records. A missed or bad shot could never be made up. Those poor shots were always there to haunt you!

Ultimately all of this training was aimed at making us efficient battlefield killers and implicit in this was the ability to stay alive and reasonably comfortable under adverse conditions. Much of what we learned turned out to be either obsolete or inappropriate to the exigencies of the part of the war to which we were later committed in the jungles of New Guinea, but we didn't learn that until later and, giving credit where it is due, nobody could have known!

It is interesting that the privates in the Army did all of these things for the magnificent sum of $21.00 each month. Of course, I have to hastily add that we also got board and "room", as well as clothing and medical/dental attention. That was in 1939 dollars and is probably the equivalent of more than $300.00 in 1991 dollars as this is being written! In those days at the Post Exchange we could buy a carton of cigarettes for less than a dollar, gasoline was only a few cents per gallon and other things were similarly priced. It seems to me that the admission to a Post theater was fifteen cents and they frequently had two full length feature films, a Short Subjects film, a cartoon and a newsreel! It wasn't a bad life for a youngster, if he could manage to keep out of trouble and keep his shoes shined!

At Christmas time of 1940, I was lucky enough to get a furlough, so I was at home with the family and Helen, my only sister, was also there, home from Marylhurst College in Oswego, Oregon, where she was training to be a teacher.

Chapter IV - California Maneuvers

In 1941, our days at Camp Murray were so much alike that one blended into another, but finally summer rolled around and the entire Division shipped out to the Hunter-Liggett reservation, near King City, California, for maneuvers. Some of the outfits made the trek to California in truck convoys and others, like the one I was in, traveled by train from Fort Lewis. This was to be a big deal, because there were several divisions involved. Our particular bivouac was close to Jolon. The countryside was anything but flat, being all broken up with washes, gullies and ravines. The hills and ridges between were in some places full-grown mountains. All of this dusty terrain was covered with manzanita, poison oak, greasewood and live oaks. There was some grass in sparse tufts here and there. The countryside abounded with deer, wild boar, rabbits and ground squirrels, not to mention a bounteous supply of lizards and several species of snakes, including rattlers.

We camped on the ground, living two by two in pup tents. The only place for bathing was in some of the deeper holes in the Jolon river nearby. Typically that river was so shallow one wouldn't get his feet wet if he waded it in tennis shoes! Most of the time our food was supplied by the company's mess crew from field kitchens that they'd set up in the bivouac area. Looking back one can be surprised at the relatively high quality of the food under those circumstances. One problem that was nearly universal while we were training at Hunter/Ligget was the high incidence of diarrhea. I remember going on sick call once to ask the doctor if he could do anything about my case of the "screaming shits". He got a good laugh out of that and gave me some medication that solved the problem.

We continued the training at a more intensified pace than we had been doing for the eleven months getting ready for this up-coming mock war. When the time arrived for us to get serious about the reason we'd been brought to California, I was detached to the umpire’s team. That meant that for the duration of the "conflict", I would not be required to crawl on the ground eye-to-eye with the rattlesnakes, but rather rode in a jeep at the beck and call of an officer designated as an umpire. Fortunately for me he wasn't a gung-ho, dedicated sort of person, so we spent the best part of the two week maneuvers finding out just what lay beyond the next ridge or hill, riding in the jeep to which we were assigned.

Chapter V - New Barracks

Maneuvers completed, we returned to Fort Lewis and continued the interminable training. By this time we'd moved from Camp Murray into the new cantonment area on the west side of the highway that bisects Fort Lewis and were living in wooden barracks that had been constructed in the late winter and spring of the year. The barracks were comfortable, a far cry from living in the framed tents in which we'd spent the worst of the winter, but the whole area had that raw look of new construction. The grounds were not landscaped and planted, so didn't yet have the institutional look of a peace-time garrison. And, all of our training was still in the mud, which is so prevalent in a typical spring in Washington State especially where the parade and training grounds had just been freshly graded out of the countryside.

Shortly after moving into the cantonment area, we turned the old bolt action Springfield 30-06 rifles in and in return were issued M-1's, then commonly known as Garrands after their inventor. These new rifles were semi-automatic and accommodated an eight round clip, which meant that all eight rounds could be fired with no more effort than depressing the trigger. They were right out of the packing cases and completely covered with a heavy coating of cosmoline. I saw some of the guys who had gotten their rifles several hours before I'd gotten mine, up to their elbows in grease trying to get their new rifles ready for inspection.

Being a little on the lazy side, I decided that there had to be a better way than that to degrease that piece. I stripped and went to the shower with the new M-1. I removed the shower head and turned the shower on to the hottest water that I could get. I'm sure the water was around 150 degrees. With all of the pressure and that hot water it was relatively simple to get all of the cosmoline off the new rifle. Of course, with all of that heat the metal of the rifle was dry just minutes after taking it out of the water. Even so, that wasn't the "Army Way" of ridding a new rifle of its protective grease and my ass would have been in a sling if I'd been caught, but that time the Gods were with me and word didn't get to our First Sergeant Viesko that Crary had screwed up again, so I was able to go to a movie that night while most of the guys were cleaning up cosmoline that had gotten on everything in the barracks in the process of getting it off their rifles!

In late October 1941 I got up one morning with a terrible bellyache. I reported to the orderly room (First Sergeant Earl Viesko's domain) to ask to be put on sick call. He hassled me for a while, but put me on the list, because there was no legitimate reason he could come up with for not doing so. The doctor who examined me said he'd like to send me to the Ft. Lewis station hospital for a more definitive diagnosis. There they decided that I had appendicitis, but that it wasn't acute, so there was no hurry to take care of it.

On Halloween they took my appendix out. The events leading up to the surgery were pretty harrowing for this kid who'd just turned 18 less than a month earlier. The nurses "prepped" me (dry shaved my belly and pubic area) and put me on a gurney with a sheet over me.

The gurney was positioned against a wall outside of the surgery. It was cold in that corridor so I pulled the sheet over my head in an attempt to keep the drafts out. There wasn't much traffic in that corridor, but occasionally a person would go by. One of those people came up to the gurney and said, "Oh oh!" He lifted the sheet from my face and I gave him a wink! I guess I'd given him a scare. All the while there was a doctor pacing up and down the corridor with a hemostat in each hand locking and unlocking (clicking) them as he walked. I can't say that this was good for my morale, since I was kind of scared anyway.

After the surgery the first thing I remember (foggily) was going down the corridor with a suitcase in one hand. A nurse stopped me and took me back to my room and put me to bed. I was still coming out of the anesthetic and had hallucinated my need to "Get the hell out of there". The suitcase turned out to be the pillow off my bed! Restraints took care of the problem. The next day I went into an open ward with 10 or so soldiers that were recovering from surgical this and thats.

After several days there I was sent to an annex ward for full recovery. In the army if you aren't fit for full duty, you're in the hospital. The idea of this whole thing was to spend a stint in the recovery ward and then get a 30-day recuperation furlough before returning to full duty.

I'd been in that recovery ward about two weeks and was doing just fine, when one day one of my fellow patients came down with the mumps. Well that put the ward under quarantine. If, after three weeks no one came down with the mumps we would be released. Well, two and a half weeks went by, then another guy came down with the mumps, so we went into another three week quarantine. I finally got out of that ward by writing to my family doctor in Salem and getting his verification that I'd had the mumps.

Chapter VI - Pearl Harbor

My return to the company was on Saturday the 6th of December. On Monday, in spite of Viesko's protests he was forced by regulations to prepare a 30-day furlough for me. It was to start on Monday, the 8th of December. Sunday morning right after breakfast the guys who'd stayed in camp for the weekend returned to the barracks to kick back, read, listen to the radio, do laundry and other things that soldiers do in their barracks on their days off. It wasn't too long before we began hearing about the Japs bombing Pearl Harbor. For the most part we didn't know where Pearl Harbor was, but one of the guys, "Tiny" Larkin, had served at Scholfield Barracks on Oahu, so it wasn't too long before we began to piece the story together in a way that was meaningful to us.

Of course, it was with glee that Viesko tore up the furlough that he'd so reluctantly prepared for me. Within just a few days we were trucked to Boeing Field, just south of Seattle, and went on guard duty. Our company commander told the 1st Sergeant that he didn't want Pvt Crary to be assigned any heavy duty for a while, so I wasn't put on a sentry post, but Viesko assigned me to the garbage detail. All of the time we were at Boeing Field, that was my job. I rode on a garbage truck where we made pick-ups and hauled the stuff to the dump where we unloaded the truck. His revenge was sweet to him!

Even today, I ponder his negative treatment of me and cannot come up with a reason for it. But then I suppose every life has at least one ogre in it and he was mine!

It was at Boeing that we spent that Christmas in tents in the rain. It was one of the most bleak Christmases I've ever had and it was my first one away from home. It rained and we worked as though there had never been a Christmas.

Right after the first of the year we were sent to Bellingham, Washington to go on coastal patrol. We were quartered in the armory a few blocks from the center of town and the college. My platoon was bunked on the balcony above the drill floor. Other platoons were sent to Anacortes and Mount Vernon. It seems that we had rather frequent dances; the drill floor was just perfect for that and since so many of the young men from the town were in the service, there was no shortage of women for partners.

Just as I was getting settled in to this much nicer duty than I'd had at Boeing, two guys from my company and I were sent to Birch Bay, close to Bellingham, to walk a post along the edge of Puget Sound. We were quartered in a summer cabin that the army had requisitioned where we lived when we weren't walking a post. Since there were just the three of us we did our own cooking. That was a disaster, so we ended up eating mostly C-rations.

The post we walked was about a mile and a half or two miles long beside the top of a bluff that overlooked Birch Bay. Our mission was to repel Japanese invaders and let the rest of the army know the when and the where of their arrival. There was no telephone link with the rest of the company. I think that was a detail that was forgotten in the first confusion of the war. Each of us walked the post for eight hours and then had the next sixteen hours off. I walked the post on the graveyard shift, from midnight to 8:00 A.M.!

One overcast morning I was walking the post along the top of the bluff. Just as it was getting lighter with the first light of day I noticed a flock of ducks feeding close in to the shore. At that particular place along the bluff there was a wooden stairway down to the base of the bluff. Since I like to eat duck and since we were doing our own cooking I thought that it would be a good thing to shoot one of these ducks and have it for supper. So when the ducks would dive to feed, I'd run down the stairs a ways and then freeze just before they surfaced. That way I was able to get quite close to the ducks before I risked a shot at them. When I was about seventy feet from them, I loosed a round and got one. Retrieval was no problem. It was so early that there was no one up and about so I took off my boots slacks and shorts, thinking that after I'd gotten the duck I could put on nice dry clothing and quickly be dry and warm again (Remember this was in January!). What I hadn't realized was that the bottom dropped off rather quickly, so by the time I was just one step from the dead bird the water was already up to my armpits -- so much for dry clothing! But that last step was the step to end them all, there was no bottom! I did get the duck but as it turns out I hadn't hit the duck in the eye as I'd planned, but rather the shot almost tore the bird in half from a hit in its side.

How could it be discarded after all that effort? No way! It was duly plucked and prepared for the oven -- with an assist from a couple neighbors. One said that since they had been feeding on crustaceans (we found little crabs in its craw), perhaps it should be stuffed with apple to minimize any fishy taste, another recommended potatoes! I compromised and used both! Into the oven it went with high expectancy and great impatience on my part. We'd been doing our own cooking and hadn't really had a GOOD meal since being on the outpost. This would be it. The best French chefs wouldn't be able to top this one!

I really didn't fudge on the bird's time in the oven, because it was to be just right. When it came out and was on the table there was a strange odor that permeated the whole place. Well, that was dismissed as the sometimes strange odor that accompanies the cooking of meat. After all the proof of the pudding was in the taste. So the two of us that weren't walking the post sat down and dived in. That duck was so bad that it ended up in the garbage can! Never again will I try to eat a duck, regardless of the species -- for all I knew about ducks this one could have been a merganser -- that has fed in salt water!

One afternoon I was off duty and having had my sleep out. I was wandering along the bluff just looking for something to do. I met a man who had a cabin there at Birch Bay. He'd come out to do some skeet shooting off the bluffs. Well, it wasn't too long before he'd enlisted my aid to operate his skeet trap so he could do some shooting. My memory of the incident is that I was a terrible operator, so the poor guy didn't get many good shots. It must have been in disgust that he handed me the shotgun and flew clay pigeons for me to shoot. I had a great time and did hit most of the birds! He must have given me all easy shots.

When we were pulled back to the armory and another trio of soldiers sent out to man that out-post, it was like being on vacation. There weren't the endless days of drill, marches and polishing equipment as there had been at Fort Lewis. For some reason the powers that were even forgot about the Saturday morning inspections that have been de rigueur and the bane of soldiers since the beginning of time. We were free to roam the town at will, even stop in a tavern to have a beer or do what ever we wished at any time of the day.

Sometimes I would go up to the indoor swimming pool at Western Washington State College -- where all of the facilities had been thrown open to us -- and take a swim. In fact my first encounter with swim fins was there. I marveled at how rapidly they propelled me through the water. For the first time I was able to swim the length of the pool under water with breath to spare.

Some way I learned that there was a coal mine in Bellingham. I was very curious having never been in a mine before was able to organize a tour. About ten or so of the guys were interested also, so we all went out to the mine one morning. They gave us helmets with head lamps on them, made us leave all our tobacco, pipes, matches and lighters in lockers and then herded us into mine cars pulled by a small, low electric locomotive.

The entrance to the mine was not by means of a vertical shaft, but rather via an inclined tunnel that was about thirty degrees, or maybe even steeper, below the horizontal. One of the interesting things was that this took us under Puget Sound! After we had descended what seemed like forever, the tunnel leveled off and we came to a stop. We all got out of the cars. There were two miners that were guiding the group. One had taken up a position at the head of the column and was explaining things as the group came to them. The other positioned himself at the rear of the group and was keeping an eye peeled for stragglers. I found myself with the latter, simply because the pace was more leisurely and he was answering all of my questions with out all of the competition for attention the other man was having to deal with. We hadn't progressed very far when the man took out a pouch of Peerless Tobacco and stuffed a wad of it into his mouth. He offered me a chew and to "be one of the boys", I took some. Now that was the blackest, vilest all purpose (smoke or chew) tobacco I've ever encountered. Immediately the "water works" went into hyper-overtime mode. I spit and spit and there was more. The taste was terrible, but I didn't want to spit the chew out right in front of its donor, so I persevered for about fifteen minutes, then when the guy was preoccupied with some one else, I disposed of that noisome cud! That's the last time I've taken tobacco in my mouth.

At one of the dances we held at the armory in Bellingham I met Betty McAnn. She was a really nice girl about my age. She had access to her parents car, which was a neat little under-powered Ford. Unfortunately, I don't really remember too much about her except that we went together the remainder of the company's stay in Bellingham, and that for several years while I was overseas I corresponded with her. Somehow the letters got farther and farther apart and we lost track of each other.

Chapter VII - To Ft. Dix & Overseas

Sometime in late January or early February of 1942, we were called back to Fort Lewis. Most of the guys families came up to bid us goodbye. It was then that I gave my Model-A Sport Coupé to my sister, Helen. We were there only a few days before we were loaded onto a train made up of old dilapidated coaches and sent across the country to Fort Dix in New Jersey as the first leg of our trip overseas. We were on an unscheduled train, so we spent a lot of time sitting on sidetracks waiting for the regular passenger and freight trains to go through. As I remember, the trip took more than a week. All during the time we were crossing the country we were under orders to stay on the train regardless of the amount of time we were sidetracked and motionless. It was a very restless crew that finally detrained at Fort Dix.

Again we were restricted in our movements, confined to the post. That order didn't bother some of the guys and they made it into New York city for a night on the town.

At the time I had a nice, rather expensive 828 camera. One day the order came down that we had only until we boarded the ships to go overseas to get rid of our cameras. If we didn't dispose of them they would be confiscated! Well, being a "good boy", I took the order seriously and sold the camera at a pawn shop for pennies. I've regretted obeying that order ever since. There never was an inspection and confiscation of cameras. As soon as we were on board cameras appeared everywhere with their owners snapping pictures!

We were only at Fort Dix about a week, in which time there was a game going on to try to fool us or any foreign spies as to our ultimate destination. We were never told where we were going, but one day we were issued tropical uniforms and other gear. We speculated that meant we would end up in North Africa. Then about time we had gotten used to the tropical stuff it was called in and we'd get winter and arctic gear, so we guessed our destination was to be Iceland or Greenland! After all of these years I've forgotten which gear we shipped out with, but I do remember that we were all thoroughly confused. I just hoped that the Axis intelligence services were as mixed up as we were!

One day laden with full field packs, rifles, an "A" bag and a "B" bag, which amounted to well over a hundred pounds of equipment and personal belongings (there were no Redcaps in this operation), we entrained at Fort Dix and were taken to the Brooklyn Naval Yard where after many "hurry-up and waits" we were loaded aboard the Santa Paula, a Grace Lines ship that had been in the South American cruise trade and recently converted for carrying troops. At the foot of the gangplank the First Sergeant (Viesko), clipboard in hand, called out our last names and then the first four numbers of our army serial numbers. Our reply was the to give the last four numbers of the serial number. "Crary! 2093". I replied, "2033!" This scheme was devised so no foreign spies could sneak on board as substitutes for the real person! We all thought it was kind of stupid, because we'd all been together for over a year and knew each other quite well. The possibility of an imposter slipping in, in the middle of any of the companies was nil.

Loaded down as we were, negotiating that gangplank was somewhat of a feat and some of the guys didn't make it. One of my compatriots stumbled at the top of the gangplank and dropped his "B" bag (The fact that he was about "six sheets to the wind" may have had some bearing on his agility). There was a resounding crash, the sound of breaking glass, and immediately a torrent of amber fluid poured down the gangplank wetting the shoes of the guys behind the miscreant and forming a puddle on the dockside.

It was apparent that the person in question had discarded that part of his possessions that should have been in the "B" bag and substituted a supply of booze for it to sustain him on the cruise we were about to undertake! Bad luck!!! In the middle of the Pacific Ocean that whiskey would have been worth its weight in gold.

A cruise ship has plenty of cabins. To them all of the officers were assigned. The enlisted men found themselves consigned to the cargo holds! In each hold, on each deck level, there were 24" x 72" bunks fashioned from galvanized pipe frames with canvas laced to the pipe with ¾" rope, which added nothing to their comfort. These bunks were five tiers high arranged head to toe except for the area of the cargo hatches. In the tropics the hatches were removed for greater air circulation.

Each man was assigned to a bunk that would just hold his rifle, "A" bag and "B" bag as well as the full field pack. The idea was that at night the equipment of the ten men assigned to the bunks on either side of the two foot aisle would deposit their stuff in the aisle so that they could use the bunks! Picture it. It just couldn't happen! I happen to be 75" tall and found that by lying full length I encroached on the bunk space fore and aft of my bunk. One could not lie on his side, because the vertical space between bunks was too narrow to accommodate ones hips, so that eliminated lying curled up on ones side! A good many of the guys slept on deck regardless of the weather, because of this lack of room. But there was an even more compelling reason for this. Some of the guys became afflicted with mal de mer before the lines were cast off and we were headed for the inner harbor! It didn't take very long before the odor of vomitus in the holds made one have to have a very compelling reason for going there.

There had to be a better arrangement and before the first night on board arrived I'd found it. As soon as my gear was stowed I gave the ship a tour of inspection. In the forward section of the ship just under the bows I found the seamen's fo'c'sls (Forecastle = living quarters) In one of them there was an unoccupied bunk. After having gotten somewhat acquainted with the seamen who lived there, I proposed to them that in exchange for the bunk I'd do their housekeeping: make the beds, keep the place clean etc. That was fine by them and as time went on I even drew fresh water in the bathtub, so there was always a supply for cleaning up after work even if the ship's water was turned off because of rationing. It wasn't too long before I was accepted as a sort of a crew's mascot and was even wearing seaman's dungarees and eating in their galley. There were never any questions asked or if there were the seamen fielded them satisfactorily to the powers that they answered to.

Regarding the chain of command in my company. Apparently, I was seen around just enough that they knew I hadn't jumped ship or fallen overboard. And, there were no assigned duties nor did we stand any formations. There wasn't even a daily roll call. It seems the assumption was that when we left New York there were X number of people on board and when we arrived at our destination there still had to be X number when we debarked. Besides, there wasn't enough room on a troopship crammed to the gunnels with bodies to carry out many of the maneuvers that went under the title "Training". The little imagination for inventing a new kind of busywork that soldiers do have, seemed to have been squeezed aside by the crush of bodies and the personal misery of many.

Besides all of our people had the same kind of problem with the situation that I had and each of them sought his own means of lessening the misery. The contractors that victualed the ship for the feeding of the troops must really have made a killing! The food they served the troops was terrible and it came in two issues per day instead of the three we were accustomed to getting. On the contrary the crews' galley served food of a very high quality and almost on demand, to accommodate for the various watches they served on. I remember that the morning meal was handled like a short order house and one could get his bacon and eggs cooked just to his satisfaction or dig into a pot of oatmeal or a bowl of cornflakes if that was what he wanted. In this onboard arrangement that I'd made, Dad was right, I followed my stomach's lead! But it was very satisfactory (The food was good, the bunk in the crew's fo'c'sl was comfortable and long enough, but the voyage was extremely long -- taking forty days and forty nights, New York to Melbourne).

There were five troopships in our convoy. Some of the names I've forgotten, but I was on the Santa Paula. There was also the Uruguay and the Santa Maria. The names of the other two troopships ships have long since slipped from my memory, but I do remember that the weather as we left New York was gray and overcast and that the water was a deeper gray than the skies. Outside the harbor there was a heavy swell running as though a storm had just passed and the seas had not become calm again. It seems this was typical in the North Atlantic in February.

Our escort consisted of a couple cruisers and a whole flotilla of destroyers. On occasion we saw submarines on the surface and assumed they were part of the escort. Because of the nearly constant air cover, and the fact that on a couple occasions we saw an aircraft carrier, we guessed that they were a part of our flotilla.

The troopships changed course every few minutes, now a few degrees to the starboard and then several degrees to the port. The destroyers cut in and out among the troopships like a dog harassing a flock of sheep, while the cruisers herded us all along in a much more dignified manner from the fringes of the formation. The troopships were arraigned in the convoy in two rows of two and three and as the convoy went through its course changes each of the ships seemed to keep its relative station in the formation.

The farther south we got, the better the weather became. By the time we were standing off Colon, Panama, the weather was much warmer and there were scattered clouds in the sky.

Someplace near the entrance to the Panama Canal, there was an anti-submarine net stretched from shore to shore. Two small tugboats in the center of the net opened it so that we could pass through. To my knowledge only the five troopships entered the canal and all of the escort vessels remained in the Atlantic, presumably to take up other assignments there.

Our passage through the canal was fascinating to me and, as I remember took most of one day. Essentially each ship was on its own in the areas of the canal where there are no locks. However each ship took on a Pilot to do the navigating in the canal. However on entering a lock a pair of electric "mules", fore and aft -- four in all -- provided the ships with motive power through the cables that were run in to the ship from each "mule". The "mules" ran on tracks along the edge of the locks and by maintaining a constant pressure on their cables to the ship kept it centered in the lock as they towed it along. On the Atlantic end of the canal there were pauses as the locks were filled to lift the ship to the next level. At the other end of the canal the process was reversed and the pauses ensued as the water was released from the lock, lowering the ship to the level of the next lock or Gatun Lake.

Aft on one of upper decks a bank of showers had been rigged for the troops. Because fresh water was in finite supply while we were at sea and not enough was available for the troops' showers; these showers took their water from the ocean. Of course, we used a noisome stuff called "salt water soap" with which to bathe, but it didn't suds and disintegrated into a greasy curd. Anyway we did bathe in the saltwater and we did rinse in the saltwater and, we did feel sticky and not clean when the operation was over.