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what's that fuzz you've got on your face?" A lot of those kids did just have fuzz on their face because they were just that age. They would put you underneath the cot you were sleeping in and give you a razor and now they would say, "Shave." No nothing, just dry shave. That was pretty miserable. Then another thing they had and the word may not be appropriate they used to have fellows that wanted to get out of the Marines. They thought they could do it by wetting the bed. But all they got for themselves was this: they would wet the bed and when they got up in the morning they would take that small mattress, the thin mattress that they had they would have to go out on the parade ground and hold that thing up in the air above their head until it dried. Then if that didn't cure them they would give them what was known as a 'piss call' every half hour all night long. That was my duty one time, one week while I was on guard duty. We had to go around and hit these guys on the feet and make sure they went down to the toilet. I'm trying to think of some other things. One of the things I hated was boxing. They would pick out one of the biggest guys in the company to go against a little one. I'm only 5' 8" and the other guy might be 6' 2" or something. We came out there and he would punch the hell out of me. Fortunately I never got hurt; I don't know why I didn't, but I didn't. We had to march to Camp Matthews, that was the rifle range. You had to qualify on the rifle range or they called you a 'shit bird' and they ridiculed you. There were different positions and there
was a standing position and prone position and sitting position and squatting position. I had the devil of a time qualifying with the M-1. Being from Montana everybody thought, oh boy, there's a good shot; he can really knock a gnat off somebody's eyebrow without hurting the guy. Hell with the M-1 I couldn't do anything. I had never shot one of those. My uncle gave my cousin and me a .22 to go out and shoot jack rabbits. So the day they
The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Albert Finley. Finley joined the Marine Corps around December of 1943. He provides vivid details of his boot camp experiences. He served with Headquarters Company, 4th Marines, as a radar mechanic on Corsairs, repairing radio and radar gear. Beginning in September of 1944 they traveled to Guam, Kwajalein, Pearl Harbor and Majuro in the Marshall Islands. Finley shares a number of anecdotal stories, including working with POWs. He was discharged in the fall of 1946.
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