Friday, July 31, 2015

Don Kearns: WAR YEARS

           
                 On December 7, 1941,  halfway through my senior year in
            high school, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor .  There had
            been fighting in Europe for some time prior to this date,
            but I and, I believe, other high school students had not
            been seriously affected by the conflict.  Our everyday lives
            had not changed--we continued to be concerned with the usual
            teen-age life and only vaguely did we realize the impact the
            Japanese attack would have on that life.
           
                 As a matter of fact, on that Sunday afternoon in
            December, I was at home listening to the symphony concert
            broadcasted on radio each week.  The announcement of the
            bombings in Hawaii interrupted the program and I immediately
            felt shock by the news.  There were not many details known
            at the time and the radio continued the concert from New
            York.  But the same interruption continued many times during
            the remainder of the afternoon and I remember being annoyed
            by the breaks in the music.  After all, enough was enough!
            Let's get on with the business at hand--music.
           
                  The realization of what the war was to mean to me and
            my friends developed only slowly. After some flirtation with
            the notion of declaring myself a conscientious objector, I
            registered with the Selective Service System and went off to
            college to wait the call to the service.  As a scholarship
            student I spent the first year at Boston University living
            in a house on Beacon street occupied by graduate philosophy
            students --my girl friend spent that same time at a liberal
            college in the midwest.   Our awareness of the war was only
            superficial. The first impact during the following summer--
            my girl friend met a soldier and announced that they were to
            marry!  Well, my pride suffered some--maybe for about two
            days.
           
                 Somewhere near the beginning of my sophomore year, I
            received a notice to appear for a physical examination to be
            held in what was an automobile garage on the Boston end of
            the BU bridge.  I reported, was directed to undress, walked
            naked through the cold ramps of this concrete structure from
            one examination station to the next. At each stop, some area
            of my body was examined with varying degrees of
            thoroughness.  They looked at the broken toe on my left
            foot--"Does it bother you?" "No", I answered.  "Well, it
            will", he said while making a note on the papers I carried.
            (It hasn't bothered me during the 52 years which followed).
            Much ado was made over the lack of mobility in my shoulders.
            My myopia made my examiners shake their head.  A
            psychiatrist asked if I went out with girls--"Yes", I said.
            "Sex?", he asked.  "No", I replied.  With a look of
            astonishment distorting his face, he managed to stammer out,
            "We...we...we...well,  Wha..wha..wha...what the
            He...he...hell do you do with your excess energy?"  I do not
            remember  how that interview ended.
           
                 It came as no surprise that at the last examination
            station, the papers and notes were examined, and were
            stamped "REJECTED"! When I asked why the reply was something
            like, "Hell, boy, didn't anyone tell you?  You've got German
            measles,  You'll hear from us again in a month or so."
           
           
                 I was able then to finish my sophomore year.  When I
            was called for an examination again, no one paid any
            attention to my broken toe, to my lack of shoulder mobility,
            nor to my eyes. No one asked me whether or not I went out
            with or had sex with girls. No one made notes on my clip
            board and no one stamped "Rejected" on my papers.  On May
            13, 1943, I was inducted into the army at Fort Devens,
            Massachusetts, and finally realized that there was a war on
            --and I was to be in it.
           
                 After a few days at Fort Devens (about which I remember
            nothing), I was shipped to a small Signal Corps camp in or
            near Red Bank, New Jersey, to begin learning Morse code.  We
            spend hours at a table, earphones on, trying to translate
            sound into letters.  Since messages were encoded, "words"
            consisted of exactly five letters (a fact which later caused
            me difficulty in receiving plain English messages). There
            was some, not unreasonable, daily pressure to increase the
            speed at which we could receive "messages" and transcribe
            them onto paper.  One effective device used to urge us on,
            was to call our attention to a collection of telephone poles
            just outside the window and to those training to string
            telephone wires--"If you can't learn code, you'll have to
            learn that.  Those guys make pretty good targets, don't
            they?"  There was some physical exercise at this camp, but
            as I remember it, nothing equivalent to "basic training".
            We did have to take daily hikes, often through mud which
            stained our clothes and gave meaning to the name Red Bank.
            There was some free time on weekends during which we went to
            a local USO club, etc.  After a time, we were transferred to
            Fort Monmouth which was apparently a major training
            installation for the Signal Corps.  Our training in code
            continued but the physical basic training received more
            emphasis.
           
                 Of course, we had to become acquainted with the rifle--
            in retrospect, it seems as if we spent hours on the firing
            range, either shooting at targets or sitting behind a hill
            to the top of which the targets were hoisted.  In this
            second job, we had to bring the used targets down and
            replace them with a new ones; occasionally, a bullet
            penetrated the top of the hill in such a way that its
            velocity would decrease nearly to zero and the hot lead
            would fall into the pit where we sat.
           
                 I was not really a good shot with any firearm.  I
            couldn't hit a barn door with a 45 pistol.  A rifle was
            better until we were required to use the arm sling.  Then
            the lack of mobility in my shoulders made it almost
            impossible to get into the correct prone position.  It was
            necessary to hit the target a certain number of times in
            order to obtain the marksmanship medal which the sergeant in
            charge insisted upon.  He was not going to allow any of his
            men too fail, so as I lay on my stomach, left arm almost out
            of joint, he kept feeding bullets into my rifle until I had
            scored the require number of hits--even though I probably
            used as much as triple the number of rounds allowed.  My
            marksman medal is still pinned on my dress jacket!
           
                 At any rate, I graduated from basic training and almost
            immediately all of our summer clothes were taken away from
            some of us and we were left only with the heavier woolen
            trousers, jackets, etc.  We concluded that the next day we
            would be shipped to some cold part of the world--maybe
            Alaska.  However, instead we ended up at Miami beach and
            housed in what was once a very fancy hotel!
           
                 For a few days we had a fair amount of free time.  We
            did have to wash the glass walls of the large dining room
            daily, and had to pick up coconuts that had fallen in the
            driveways overnight.  But we also were able to walk around
            town some and attracted considerable attention.  After all,
            here we were at Miami beach dressed in warm brown,
            insignialess uniforms while the rest of the world wore
            lighter khaki decorated with emblems of rank, medals and
            branch of service.  People, of course, were curious and
            asked, "Where are you from...To what outfit do you
            belong?...Where are you going?...How come you you have no
            insignia?"  We were able to give them cleverly constructed,
            if not consistent, answers which really answered nothing.
            After all how could we do otherwise?  We didn't know the
            answers to any of these questions.  Apparently a consensus
            developed among the questioners to the effect that we must
            be intelligence agents on a secret mission....Well, the
            mission was secret alright--even to us!
            
                 Soon (on October 9. 1943) we found ourselves
            passengers, along with a few officers and miscellaneous
            airplane equipment, on a two engine plane heading south.
            (It was immediately clear that the heavy clothing we were
            wearing was to be our salvation flying in an unheated plane
            at fairly high altitudes.)  Our first stop was Puerto Rico
            as I remember, and then Belem, Brazil.  The intention was to
            stay there over night and to proceed to the Ascension
            Islands in the morning.  But as we were about to take off
            the next day, the right engine of the plane failed and the
            trip was postponed twenty four hours.  On the next morning
            the flight was aborted due to a fire in the same right
            engine. Uneasily, we took off the following day for the tiny
            islands in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.  An over night
            stay there was followed by a series of day trips across
            Africa.
           
                 Only one of this sequence of stopovers made any real
            impression and I do not remember the name of country where
            it occurred. It was dark as we walked from the plane to the
            reception building but we were aware that we were walking on
            something which was being crunched by our boots. When we
            arrived at the lighted building it was clear that the entire
            tarmac was covered with large insects (locusts ?)! We slept
            that night in a room filled with these beasts and was
            entertained by a kind of lizard attacking and devouring
            them.
           
                 In this way we traversed Africa arriving at our final
            landing in Karachi, India (now Pakistan).  We were housed in
            barracks in the desert outside the city where working camels
            were a common sight and where we were at last given lighter
            khaki cloths.  Apparently, however, our arrival was not
            expected by the army headquarters there who seemed not to
            have any orders concerning our group.  We were there for a
            considerable length of time (my unreliable memory says six
            weeks) during which there was talk of making our unit a
            temporary MP company.  I don't think that was ever
            formalized, but I do remember wandering through the streets
            of Karachi and getting my first glimpse of the poverty and
            disease so common in sections of the cities of India--
            hundreds of people sleeping in railroad stations, on the
            side walks; thousands of beggers every where.
           
                 Eventually, we were given orders to travel to Calcuta
            by train. The time given us to make this trip seemed
            unreasonably lengthy but we didn't complain since we were
            also give a per diem which seemed generous.  At any rate we
            traveled first class, stopping at Lahore (where we spent an
            evening in a night club),  New Dehli (with a visit to the
            old city of Dehli and from which some of the group traveled
            to Agra for a glimpse of the Taj Mahal).  Eventually we
            arrived at Calcutta.
           
                 Once again however there was a delay.  The captain to
            whom we reported had never heard of us, didn't know what we
            were doing there nor where we were supposed to go.  We spent
            a few days exploring the city but, since I had leave later
            on in Calcuta, what I did during the wait is confused with
            this later rest and recreation visit.
           
                 One of my roommates during my freshman year at Boston
            University was a philosophy student who was brought up in
            Calcuta and whose father was headmaster of a missionary
            school for boys there.  I called this man and was invited to
            tea  one afternoon.  It turned out that the school was in an
            out-of-bounds region of the city, but I paid no attention to
            that and arrived on a bicycle a little late while a group of
            people, including my former roommate's parents, were
            enjoying their very formal tea.  Nevertheless, I was greeted
            warmly and was quizzed by questions about my old roommate--
            questions I could not answer because it had been well over a
            year since  I had had any contact with him.  The warmth with
            which I was greeted seemed to cool considerably and I began
            to wonder how I could reasonably leave the group.
            Fortunately, there was a knock on the door which was opened
            to reveal a boy in his early teens.  He saluted the
            headmaster in the stiff, almost robot-like manner, of the
            English military.  It turned out that the boy was the
            captain of the football [soccer] team which was to play a
            game with a neighboring school.  The head master returned
            the salute and dismissed the lad with. "Good luck, old
            chap."  It became clear that the whole group was about to
            leave to watch the game.  Thankfully, I was not invited and
            after handshakes all around, rode my bike back to the city
            proper.
           
                 We were able to see a lot of the richer parts of the
            city--the government buildings, the homes of the English
            residents (into one of which three or four of us were
            invited by an elderly Scotch couple), horse races (from
            outside the fence enclosing the track), a lengthy and
            unintelligible classic Indian play including strange sounds
            of the music and of a  language we didn't understand, a
            rather posh restaurant serving food which none of us had
            ever tasted and were not anxious to taste again. But these
            exposures to a rather affluent part of the city in which we
            were barracked, did not prepare us for the sights we were to
            see in other parts of the city and in the regions outside
            its boundaries.
           
                 Not too long after our arrival in Calcutta, we were
            finally ordered to join the unit to which we were assigned,
            the 993 Signal Service Company (later to be enlarged to a
            battalion).  We were to travel by train to Ledo in the
            province of Assam (now Bangladesh??) in the northeast
            section of India near the border with Burma.  Our ride
            through the city to the railroad station gave us the first
            look at another aspect of the city--streets crowded with
            trucks, rickshaws, cows, people carrying tremendous loads
            balanced on their head (I remember seeing four men walking
            with a grand piano carried on padded heads.), many beggers,
            barbers cutting the hair of men squatting on sidewalks,
            people sleeping huddled in any indentation which would
            prevent their being walked on.  The odors, both unpleasant
            and exotically delightful, were strange to us Americans. The
            noisy congestion made movement almost impossible, but we
            finally arrived at the station and picked our way through
            sleeping figures and necessarily avoiding hundreds of
            obviously near starved beggers.
           
                 We were loaded on a troop train (with none of the first
            class features we had on our trip from Karachi!) with its
            cars already filled with Indian and African troops.  I do
            not remember whether there were English nor Americans other
            than our small contingent of maybe 30 men.  As the train
            slowly left Calcutta and the surrounding area, we looked out
            on the most disturbing scene I have ever witnessed--beside
            the railroad tracks were hundreds of living skeletons
            begging for food, some already dead, and a baby sucking at
            the breast of its dead mother.  It was an experience that
            haunted my dreams for many years during and after the war.
           
                 Although the trip north to Assam did not have the
            luxurious features of that from Karachi, it was leisurely
            and more or less uneventful.  Only a few incidents are still
            vivid in my memory.  At one point the train stopped for an
            entire night in the middle of large clearing on the far edge
            of which was a weak light shining from some sort of
            dwelling. The engineer disappeared from his post; in reply
            to our questions about this we were told that the house
            belonged to the engineer's girl friend and he was visiting
            her.
           
                 On another occasion the train stopped to replenish its
            water supply and a good number of us decided it was a good
            time for a shower.  We lined up and one by one subjected
            ourselves to brief (and not altogether painless) drenchings
            from the torrent issuing from the tower which supplied water
            to the engine.  When I had had all that I could stand, I
            turned to the man next in line and found my self face to
            face with a group of what seemed to be very large, very
            black Africans whose naked bodies were covered with tribal
            scares and whose mouths were parted in wide grins.  (Later
            on, while briefly attached to an English force, I met more
            of these serving as guards of the compound and who snapped
            to attention and saluted even the lowly technician grade
            whites temporarily serving in the same unit.)
           
           
                 The food we ate on this trip north was not memorable; I
            suspect that it was mostly C or K rations.  Except for what
            past as a feast on one never-to-be-forgotten night. One
            other night, we stopped in large railroad yard and were free
            to roam around while freight cars were added to our train.
            An Indian soldier a couple of us had befriended obtained one
            or two chickens (he said he had bought them), cooked them
            between the tracks of an unused spur and provided us with a
            magnificent meal.
           
                 Finally we arrived at the headquarters of 993 Signal
            Service Company in Ledo, Assam and were greeted by a Captain
            with the words, "Where the hell have you guys been?".  I
            suppose we received some sort of orientation but I remember
            only hiking in the hills and having to cross deep chasms on
            bridges which swung precariously with each step on the two
            board wide walkways.  On one occasion, an old man stepped
            out of the bush with a big smile on his face carrying a blow
            gun.  He admired our carbines and asked if he could fire one
            promising us that he would let us try his blow gun.  After
            some negotiation and careful precaution, we allowed him to
            fire a rifle once.  He then tried to teach us how to shoot a
            dart with his weapon (which none of us succeeded in doing).
            Only later did we learn that the natives of this part of
            Assam had been, until recently, head hunters.
           
            .........................................................
           
                 It surprises me as I write that I recall only few of
            what  must have been many events. How was our 993rd Signal
            Service Company divided into radio teams?  How often and how
            did we prepare for the job to which we were assigned?  What
            did we do during the short time we spent in our headquarters
            camp not far from town?  I do remember riding in the back of
            trucks over a dirt road dug into the side of mountains and
            looking nervously down into chasms the edges of which seemed
            to be only a few inches from the rear wheels.  At any rate,
            some how the several teams were distributed among various
            units of the Chinese infantry.  In charge of these teams
            were what, in retrospect, seems to have been relatively
            young infantry officers--none of which, probably much older
            that 30. We were told that our job was to communicate with
            Americans in Assam who were to supply the Chinese with food,
            ammunition, and  with whatever else was needed to enable
            these troops to drive the remaining Japanese out of northern
            Burma.
           
                 From then on we would walk through the jungles always
            close to the headquarters of the particular Chinese company,
            battalion or division we happened to be attached at the
            moment.  Apparently there were not many Japanese in the most
            northern portion of Burma for we climbed hills and forded
            streams for weeks before we met the enemy.  There were
            everywhere signs that he had been there, and as we hiked
            further south we began to become involved with fairly small
            artillery barrages and occasional skirmishes with infantry.
            Our radio team was however always within the perimeter of
            the Chinese headquarters and I never heard of  any of our
            radio teams that found it necessary to fire a single bullet
            from our carbines.  But these attacks increased in intensity
            as we moved further south.
           
                 The radio equipment we used was housed in a large metal
            box weighing perhaps about sixty pounds.  There was also a
            generator mounted on kind of tripod with a seat upon which a
            member of the team would sit, turn bicycle-pedal-like cranks
            by hand in order to produce the electricity necessary to
            power the radio.  Luckily (although our personal gear was
            always carried on our own backs) we did not have to carry
            this heavy and bulky equipment ourselves.  Rather it was
            usually transported (along with the unit's kitchen
            equipment) by Chinese soldiers acting as coolies. There were
            times when there were small horses or mules which did this
            job. [There were at least two occasions on which this method
            was not followed. (1) There was the time I was transported
            across a swiftly flowing river in a narrow dugout canoe
            poled by a naked, scar-decorated aborigine with the radio on
            my lap and holding my breath for the entire trip. (2) In
            another adventure, I sat in the seat of a Piper Cub--usually
            used as an ambulance to transport wounded--with out doors,
            without seat belts, with the radio again on my lap and again
            holding my breath.  The crazy American pilot of this vehicle
            felt that he should take an active part in the war and flew
            low over a small Japanese camp firing down at it until the
            clip in is pistol was empty!]
           
                 Once our radio malfunctioned and some how (probably by
            means of the reliable telephone wires which the Chinese laid
            in the jungle as we moved from place to place) news of this
            disaster got back to Assam.  At the time we were camped in
            an abandoned village situated on the edge of a large rice
            paddy. Across the field ran a narrow road, fairly straight
            except for a curve of about 45 degrees in the middle. [ An
            English biplane with open cockpits and looking like a world
            war 1 relic once landed (and took off!)
            on this bent road]. Although we were still without radio
            communications, we somehow learned that we would receive
            replacement for our broken one.  Sure enough a C47 cargo
            plane flew over dropped, by parachute, two new radios and
            several cases of beer!  Both of the radios worked well but
            we were only able to take one of them, and when we asked
            what to do with the extra one, we received our orders, "BLOW
            IT   UP".
           
                 As the fighting heated up a little, these radios became
            useless since every time we operated them there would be a
            few rounds artillery landing in our vicinity. (Once we
            received a voice message from the Japanese telling us our
            precise position and promising all sorts of nice things!)
            Because of this, our value to the Chinese diminished greatly
            and we were directed not to operate for a while.  Anyway,
            they had much better communications via telephone!  For some
            time after we simply went along performing no useful
            service.
           
                 Compared to other places in the world, where we were
            the fighting was sporadic and on a relatively small scale.
            I was always thankful that I had not ended up in the battle
            of the bulge, in the Pacific islands, in Africa or Italy as
            so many of my age had.  Nevertheless, for us there were
            times when we would have rather been elsewhere.  A few
            memories are sufficient to document the justification for
            that desire.  Being strafed by an American plane while we
            took cover in a small, abandoned concrete jail house;
            sitting in a fox hole all night during the most intense of
            the battles with the Japanese and trying (unsuccessfully) to
            follow the frequent admonishment to "keep a tight a-hole"
            and finding the next morning that my backpack had several
            holes and tears which had not been there previously; seeing
            Chinese soldiers being marched across an open field and shot
            in the back of their head by their own countrymen while they
            walked; listening to the screams of a Japanese prisoner
            being tortured during the night; watching wounded Chinese
            soldiers being operated on by American doctors while lying
            on bamboo tables roofed only by canvas tarps; the maggot
            ridden corpses of Japanese on the side of jungle trails;
            even after the surrender of Japan, on one occasion using the
            bed of a creek as a fox hole while two rival Chinese units
            fought a battle over a gambling game and on another, being
            between the troops of a local war lord and those of the
            nationalist Chinese army fight it out;---these are some of
            the more vivid memories.  But as bad as these seemed they
            were nothing compared to the Anzio beach landing, the
            landing in France, the battle of the bulge , the German
            invasion of Russia, and the many, many battles in the South
            Pacific and in Europe.
           
                 Eventually, we left Burma and traveled by truck over
            the famous Burma Road into China and were told that we were
            headed to Hanoi.  We had motor vehicles for this trek and
            our team had access to a jeep.  We traveled over the
            mountains by truck, over the hills of China by jeep. Passing
            through small settlements for the first time we were able to
            come into direct contact with Chinese civilians.  Our trip
            took us through rural areas and over mountainous terrain,
            but almost always we were surrounded by curious people.
            They gathered around our vehicles, silently observing our
            every motion, staring at our equipment and only now and then
            making comments among themselves about the behavior of these
            strangers.  If we were in a building, the windows would be
            filled with faces watching us--they seemed not to be
            unfriendly, but unabashedly curious.
           
                  [This curiosity had also been evident among the
            Chinese soldiers while we were in Burma.  There we
            frequently slept in jungle hammocks--hammocks with a plastic
            roof and mosquito netting which provided dry and bug free
            sleeping quarters--and it was not unusual to wake in the
            morning with two or three faces peering at me through the
            netting.  Sometimes curiosity gave way to attempts to steal
            cigarettes which we tried to thwart by tying our backpacks
            to the hammock with our metal mess kits hanging so that any
            motion would set the pieces knocking against one another and
            waking us up.  One night such a device did wake me.  I
            unzipped my netting and reached for my carbine hanging under
            the hammock only to have my hand seized and a voice
            whispered, "Cigaleet, cigaleet....".  My expletives were not
            deleted but uttered in a voice loud enough to send the
            perpetrator scurrying away.]
           
                 The journey continued toward Hanoi until we came to a
            large river and were prevented from crossing for some time.
            (It was here that we found ourselves caught in the cross
            fire of the angry gamblers from two different armies which
            has already been mentioned.) There was a fairly large barge
            available to transport the large number of troops camped
            there across this river.  But one of the army units had
            brought with them an elephant to help carry equipment and it
            was this beast which was to be one of the first passengers.
            Unfortunately, he was not positioned in the center of the
            barge (which, if I remember correctly, was like a very large
            swimming raft powered with an outboard motor) and it tipped
            up plunging the elephant into the water and apparently
            breaking up enough to need extensive repair. We were forced
            to camp at that spot in tents in crowded but not
            uncomfortable conditions.
           
                 We never did cross that river!  It was at this camp
            that we heard by radio of the existence of an atomic bomb
            and of the bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki (According to the
            encyclopedia, on Aug 6 and Aug 9, 1945 respectively).  The
            import of this news was important we knew but we did not
            know the extent of the power of these bombs nor of the
            damage they had done.  Early one morning I was roused by the
            radio (usually muted by earphones) loudly transmitting code
            to the occupants of the tent:  ditdadada ditda ditdadadit
            ditda dadit   ditditdit ditditda ditdadit ditdadit dit dadit
            daditdit dit ditdadit ditditdit...  JAPAN SURRENDERS!  (The
            cease fire was ordered on Aug. 15, 1945 ).
           
                 What happened after that remains vague.  We ended up
            some how in Kunming at a permanent radio installation just
            outside the city and took our turn at sending and receiving
            Morse Code message.  But this was different than what we
            were accustomed to--the code came at blazing speed and, to
            make matters worse, it was in English.  From the very
            beginning we had learned to send and receive in five letter
            blocks and I found it difficult to handle these blocks of
            random length. Further more, in the field the speed was much
            slower and we copied using pen or pencil.  Operators on the
            other end would occasionally swear at us or at least make
            disparaging remarks about our lack of competence--remarks
            that, given the circumstances, we had no difficulty in
            ignoring.  (It was at this station that the battle between
            government troops on hills around the city and the local
            "warlord's" troops fired at each other with their missals
            passing over the compound.  The only casualty of occupants
            of the compound was a stray dog......It was here too that we
            received messages from some Americans who were in near
            Tibet.  They had been sent there to buy horses, they said,
            and were apparently forgotten.  I assume that they finally
            received orders to return!)
           
                 Again I am not clear how it was that we were
            transported from Kunming to Calcutta.  I think I would
            remember more clearly if we had returned to India again
            over the Burma Road...so I think we probably flew.  At any
            rate In Calcutta, we boarded a troop ship and my discharge
            paper said we departed on 8 Dec, 1945 for home.  We  sailed
            around the tip of India,  across the Arabian Sea, into the
            Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, through the Suez Canal, the
            Mediterranean Sea, and the Strait of Gibraltar.  Up to this
            point the voyage had not been unpleasant.  Our outfit again
            had been designated as  Military Police whose sole job was
            to keep people off the deck at night....not exciting nor
            demanding.
           
                 Neither exciting nor demanding was our trip until our
            ship entered the Atlantic Ocean in the winter of '45 and
            soon were hit by one of the storms for which that sea is
            noted.  As an MP, I stood at my post in the shelter of a
            hatch way while the ship was tossed about by the storm--
            there was no need to shoo any one off the decks....most were
            below deck lying in their tiered bunks, sea sick.   It was
            said that the anchor had broken loose and cut a 6 foot slice
            into the bow (fortunately, well above the water line).  From
            the deck, all that could be seen was a wall of sea towering
            above the ship.  Since almost all of my time was spent on
            deck during the storm, I somehow avoided seasickness. But on
            one occasion (I think, Christmas Day) I went below, ate a
            good and tasty dinner, and as I stood over the garbage
            barrel cleaning off my tray, deposited all that I had eaten
            ( and perhaps a little more) into the barrel!
           
             Well the ship arrived in New York on 3 Jan, 1946 and we all
            went separate ways--I to Fort Devens in Massachusetts--and
            within a few days were again civilians.  My discharge paper
            has the following data:
           
            Serial Number:31356475
            Date of Induction into the Army: 13 May 1943
            Date of entry into active service; 20 May 1943
            Military Occupational Specialty and No.
                      Radio Operator Intermediate Speed, 740
            Battles and Campaigns:
                 India Burma China Offensive, Central Burma
            Date of Departure (from USA): 9 Oct 1943
            Date of Arrival: 27 Oct 1943
            Date of Departure (from overseas): 8 Dec 1945
            Date of Arrival (in USA): 3 Jun 1946 [sic-date is 3 Jan 46]
            Continental Service: 0 yrs, 4 months, 25 days
            Foreign Service: 2 yrs, 2 months, 25 days
            Highest Grade Held: T/3




Donald Kearns
March 1995



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