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just a short way down the road there was a quarter master thing there. We all
took off, and that short way was twenty miles, but sure enough when we got there
they had these K-rations, and within thirty minutes I think we'd eaten everything
they had. You've heard about army ants eating up everything, that's what we did.
At a landing field there where they were dropping off supplies to the quarter
master-it was just a farm field-this C-47 would take us back about ten of us
back at a time. We flew from there to outside of Le Havre, France, and we were
there for a few days. We got de-loused, and the way they did that was to spray
you with DDT-I mean they covered you with DDT. Some of them got clothes,
and some of them didn't. There was just too many of us, so I didn't get any
clothes. I wore the soles out of those shoes I'd gotten. Finally, we went down to
the harbor at Le Havre, and they put about ten of us in the hole of a liberty ship.
When we docked, they put a board down from the deck, and I had to back down
it, and the people on the dock were laughing because I was backing down. I
didn't want to fall. The harbor master that was in charge of unloading people
wanted to know who in the hell we were, and when we told him, he called a truck
up and they took us out to an army base, and man, they give me some clothes.
The harbor master had commented on how raggedy we were, and I told him we'd
been wearing these clothes for thirteen or fourteen months. The first place we
went was San Antonio, and when we got there we were wearing heavy wool
clothes in June. It took me about four or five months to get out of the service. I
didn't have any records, and they wouldn't even let me into Lackland Air Force
Base, because all I had was some orders to report there. They just told me to go
home, and they'd call me. I guess it was in November when I got out, and I still
wasn't getting paid either. I finally got to see the commanding office-a Col.
Johnson-and he said, "Son, you don't have any papers. There's no proof." I
said, "Man, you can look at me. If you've got somebody that can type, I've got a
good memory, and we'll make out a discharge," and said, "Do it." So I made out
my own service record, and down at the bottom of that thing-which killed me
it said, "Based on enlisted man's statement." When I went down to get paid, I
had about $3,000 coming, and the guy that was in charge wouldn't pay me. He
said there wasn't any G.I. that ever had that much money, so they finally got Col.
Johnson down there, and he had to sign for me to get paid. And to top it off, I
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