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would take care of the mildew so to speak. I don't know if it did; I never had any mildew. But it was warm and moist over there. That was one of the things I forgot to tell you. I wore green underwear for quite a while. That was sort of different. Mr. Misenhimer When did you come back from overseas? Mr. Finley I came back from overseas, it must have been; I got back and I had three months that I stayed in down at El Centro, probably it had to be in 1946. That's when I came back from overseas. I don't remember the exact time. That was another thing I was going to talk about a little bit. The waste of these guys. We all had sea bags full of stuff. They would let you bring that stuff home. Boy when we hit San Diego harbor, I'll be you 90% of the guys threw all that stuff overboard. It was floating around there in the harbor. Nobody could get down to it; nobody could use it. Another couple of things that bothered me. Coming back from overseas there were some guys on there that had Purple Hearts, Bronze Stars and I'll be damned if somebody didn't reach their hand down inside sea bags and steal those things. I couldn't believe it. To this day, that anybody would do that to somebody that put out that much, and to steal those things. There was one guy aboard ship that after we got into this bad weather situation, the birds, I don't know where these
stupid birds came from, we must have been near land or something. But they would get up and they would land on the railing and the cables. They would be almost dead they were so tired. A character, one of the Marines, he got up there and started hitting at them with his jacket. So I grabbed his jacket and threw it. We almost got into a big fight over that. I couldn't see those birds being treated that way at all.
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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