Where did they send you at first? We were sent to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio and processed from there out. Some went to different states for basic training. I went to Fort Hood up at Killeen and took seventeen weeks of basic training, and then shipped out to Manila to the replacement depot. From there we would be called out to whatever division needed replacements. There was divisions all over the different islands, because there was fighting going on. Some of the companies would get short or lose men that day, and they'd always come to the replacement depot. It was just like a warehouse. I was picked up from there and sent to the 25th Division, 35th Regiment, and they were at Tarlack-Luzon at the time. They'd already beachheaded when I got with the company. Our area of responsibility was to go to Balete Pass, which was the gateway from the Tregara Valley to the ocean. It was very mountainous country. Our objective was to meet at the Tregara Valley some other division coming from other directions, and when we met there that would declare that the campaign was over, and we'd all go back the way we come from. We'd already got our orders that we were going to go to Japan and beachhead the homeland. We were setting up a little tent camp getting ready to take amphibious training, and they had already scouted out where we were gonna land. We knew exactly where we were going to land. While we there getting ready to take our amphibious training, we'd been up in the hills about eight weeks and eating K-rations. It was so rugged that trucks couldn't get up there to bring us something to eat. So what did ya'll eat? K-rations, and they dropped them from a helicopter. K-rations is just like the dried stuff we eat now. In World War II, they dry-powdered stuff. It didn't taste very good? Oh, yeah. It might have been because we were hungry, but take for instance the cereal. It was a round patty that looked like a can of Skoal. There was about three or four of them in a can. It was about a half inch thick, and you'd heat your water with canned heat. You'd light it, and it would just burn a blue flame. You'd put water in your canteen cup and hold it over that flame until the water
Interview with A. B. Rawlinson, a machine gunner in the US Army during WWII. He answers questions about his life during the war and his experience abroad.
Relationship to this item: (Is Transcription of)
Tools / Downloads
Get a copy of this page or view the extracted text.