Army Story - WW II Part 1
The Modest Editor will be the guest blogger this month. Bill is not by any means a shy person--if you've ever met an editor you'll know what I mean. I used to write book reviews for Bill's publication and am still considered a low man on the totem pole. A professional will not stoop to the level of an amateur blogger. If he wishes to identify himself, all he has to do is send a comment to Smokytown.
As a combat veteran of WW II, Bill is a special commodity these days, since the ones still living are dying off at the rate of a thousand per day. Their war stories should be saved for posterity by being ensconced in the Library of Congress before it's too late. Bill experienced some very violent action in Italy, and in this story, he tells how he left Oran, North Africa, and took an interesting cruise to a beachhead in Italy.
War Story - Part One
Steaming slowly away from Oran, Koroa was an antiquated, stubby freighter seemingly bent on spoiling any scene it happened upon. Reputedly the oldest ship on the cattle run between India and England before the war, Koroa stood in sharp contrast to the other vessels in the convoy heading northeast across the Mediterranean to the beachhead south of Salerno. Judging from its bulky lines and lumbering speed, Koroa predated the First World War by a decade or more.
Its hull, cabins and fittings all were painted black. British officers in starched white uniforms commanded a Hindu crew. The deck hands, slender, nimble fellows who swung among the rigging in the manner of acrobats, wore baggy garments of blue cotton cinched at the waist by a rope. Their dark skin and long black mustaches set off glistening white teeth. Packs of rats scurried below desks. The British officer staff occupied forward cabins, and the Hindus curled up for sleeping on mats on the open deck.
There the Indians tended a pen of goats which, according to the dictates of their religion, the crewmen butchered as needed for meals of fresh mutton, and chapitas made of corn that they milled by hand on the deck planking and baked with the meat in smoky braziers.
As cargo, our platoon of American soldiers unrolled our sleeping bags in the cattle stalls below, creating a stir among the rats. Somehow we slept the first night, although fitfully, with the awful creatures running over and among us. On the second day at sea the British gave us sailors’ hammocks to string over the cattle stalls. The hammocks kept us out of reach of the hungry rodents -- a godsend.
The British officers of course had their own mess. We hadn’t the vaguest notion of what was on their dinner plates. While the Hindus ate mutton and corn cakes, most of us in the hold were driven by hunger to tear open our “K” rations. Each soldier had been told he would need to save the “K” rations for his first days on the beachhead.
None of our company’s officers were aboard Koroa. All six were parceled out to the three Liberty ships that carried our tanks and trucks and the rest of the other enlisted men -- so who could we ask where to find food? None of the American soldiers on Koroa were told of the arrangements for their transport. We learned we were headed for the western coast of Italy only a day or so before landing there.
Each “K” ration pasteboard carton held a small flat can of cooked, ground pork, another tin of bland processed cheese, a package of three virtually tasteless biscuits, a small fruit bar and a drink _ alternately instant coffee grounds, cocoa powder, or lemon flavored crystals to be mixed with water. The “K” ration meal seemed designed to intensify one’s hunger; that was its effect on the U.S. Army troops on board Koroa.
We weren’t quite hungry enough to approach the fiercely visaged Indians to barter for food. But the British, on the second day after our departure from North Africa, came to our aid as we were tearing into the last of the “K” rations. Presumably, the British officers took it upon themselves to save us from starvation. Who was to know? Maybe they had agreed to provide food for us from the onset of the voyage. At any rate, not one of us about criticize the steps taken for our salvation, however nominal they proved to be.
So each of our six-man squads delegated a soldier to climb twice a day to the main deck where he stood in line to be handed a tin dishpan containing cold bully beef, chunks of slightly maggoty bread, and a spouted tin pitcher full of lukewarm tea. Each dishpan and “teapot” was shoved through a square opening in the deckhouse to the American at the head of the line on the open deck; none of us were allowed in the galley.
A day or two later, a corporal in our platoon broke through a flimsy bulkhead in the hold and stole a few pasteboard boxes of dried apple slices apparently stowed there for the Englishmen’s mess. These supplemental rations, although minimal in flavor, helped stave off hunger pangs for the rest of the five-day voyage to Malta and thence to a rendezvous point where the invasion flotilla grouped close to the Italian mainland.
(to be continued)
In the next blog, readers will find out if the wreck of the Koroa will get close enough to the beachhead to disgorge Bill and his fellow soldiers. At least by now, if you've ever wondered, you know what enticing ingredients were in the famous "K" rations, not exactly an early Lean Cuisine, by any means.
Until next month, I hope this wartime adventure of the Modest Editor will serve as welcome relief from an overdose of poisonous politics, but I'll give in enough to select a Running Mate for John McCain.This Dream Team will knock your socks off and change the direction of the election. Would you like to take a guess at my selection? Send it along to me.
Until then, ship ahoy!
A terrible tragedy: a single-engine aircraft carrying New York Yankees pitcher Cory lidle and his flight instructor slammed into a 40-story apartment building on Wednesday (Oct. 11, 2006). Both men were killed in the crash that rained flaming debris onto the sidewalks.
