09 - Life As It Was
09 - Life As It Was
Water was always a problem. Everyplace was always raining about every fifteen minutes. If you wanted to bathe, take off your clothes get out in the rain, soap up and then rinse off. It was very effective. Not wanting to get caught at night with no shoes, everyone wore them, even when sleeping. Wet feet wet socks tended to give everyone jungle rot on their feet and toes. Aboard ship they gave you salt-water soap for bathing as fresh water was only for drinking.
When I first went overseas in November of 1944 my sister Ethel sent me a package. It had among other things a box of hand made chocolate candy made in Cashmere Washington by the Cashmere Café and Confectionery. To make the story short and to the point when the box was opened the chocolates looked perfect. But the heat and the humidity had done a job on the creams. The chocolate covers look perfect but the cream was gone and they looked like thimbles just shells.
I don’t remember if I told you about the first days on Leyte Philippine Islands we were close to the beach and our kitchen had hot chow for us before we took off across the island. Now there were a lot of horses running loose around the area so we would hop on the horses back and ride to the next hill. These horses were not very big and our feet would just clear the ground. They were not Shetland or Welch pony but miniature horses. I am six feet tall so you can see how big they were. All the kids would hang around to get hand outs of chow whatever we didn’t want to eat. Also they were crazy for gum and chocolate. We didn’t care for it but they loved it. I guess if you haven’t had any for four years it would be a real treat.
In the Philippines we would get the girls to wash clothes for us and they did it by kneeling by a stream with the clothes and a bar of soap that we furnished and pounding the dirty clothes with a rock till they were clean. If your clothes were torn they could mend them. Their sewing machines were Singer Models but not with electric motors. These machines had hand cranks.
The shipping industry invented a prefab troop ship. The general series took 30 days from keel to float.
They were built by the American company, the Kiser Corporation. Each was built in sections and welded together for final assembly on an assembly line rather than the traditional build starting with a keel and building up. They were known as Kiser’s Floating Coffins. They tended to come apart and sink in heavy seas, as some of the seams weren’t welded too secure. On the way back from Japan the ship I was on got caught in a typhoon. We lost two men overboard. Never found either the life rafts or the men. The anchor flopping on the front of the ship caved in about 40 foot of the bow. We could have lost almost as many from friendly ships as unfriendly fire.
The pay in the Army in 1944 was $50.00 per month for a Private. That’s $16.66 per day per man. They took out $32.50 per month for allotment to mother, wife or next of kin. $6.50 for N.S. Life insurance. Till September there was $6.00 for laundry and dry cleaning. $1.00 for a hair cut then they paid me $5.00 for a supplementary pay period so they could show I had received some money in the 1st six months. They expected you to buy razor blades, soap, shampoo, toothpaste and all this stuff. If I hadn’t made Sergeant I would have probably still owed them money when the war was over. At that time Sergeants made $100.00 per month. I used up all the war bonds I bought before I got in and had one nickel in my pocket when I got off the boat in New Caledonia. In November of 1944 and I still owed the Red Cross $20.00 I borrowed to go to Roy Gunard’s funeral before embarkation. They never let me forget I had borrowed it and was at the pay table wanting their money each month. This is why I never give anything to the Red Cross ever.
Ken's World War II Experiences 01-Into The Army 02-California Living 03-Food, Drink & Rations 04-On Patrol 05-Never Volunteer! 06-Jungle Patrols 07-Foxhole Lore 08-God In the Foxhole <Previous 09-Life As It Was Next> 10-Humor 11-Entertainment 12-The End of the War 13-After The War 14-Coming Home 15-On Veterans