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Interviewer:
Veteran:
Interviewer:
Veteran:
"Yeah." He said, "Well, how about five cases for a house?" I'd say, "O.K." So,
that way we were able to get some things to upgrade our base. We were just on
our own. Later on, by doing that same thing, we were able to trade around, and
we got some plywood and some bathroom fixtures, and we traded beer for that.
We even found a guy that had a refrigerator, and after we got that, we were later
able to build this little house right here. It was just an 8x8 or 10x10-here it is
right here. Guess is was 10x10. We had three officers from Texas that lived
here, and we flew a Texas flag up on top of this little building that we built. Here
again, see that corrugated iron? I'd send my trucks out, and the boys would bring
back that and the plywood that we could trade the Navy for. Wemanaged to put
together some stuff like that to live in.
Did the Air Force send you anything to help with the base?
No. They didn't have anything. We were just on our own. As I look back on it,
it was kind of funny. The Seabees-do you know what they are? C-B means
Construction Battalion. They were Navy people, and they had all paving
equipment, like bulldozers, tractors, and so forth, and they liked beer. So, we
would say, "Hey, you know what? We sure need a road up to the house." "Aw
sure you need anything else, Captain?" {Laughter} So, we became
'scroungers.' That was a word in our vocabulary. We were going out to
'scrounge,' and that meant we would trade what we had for what we needed.
Were you scared during in of those times?
When we got there in New Guinea in that jungle, I'm telling you, it was
forbidding, in the sense that we didn't know what was in that jungle. I didn't
know if there was lions and tigers or what back there, but they told us there
wasn't anything like that. We worried about malaria. They had the Anopheles
mosquito, and we took a tablet that turned us all yellow, because it was a yellow
dye. We worried about our water, about our sanitary conditions, but if we didn't
bathe, we'd get what they called 'jungle rot,' and it was a bad fungus on your
feet. It became an officer's duty to inspect feet. I'd walk down to where the men
were walking, and I'd say, "Fellas, I need to look at your feet. Take your shoes
and socks off." Some of them were in need of having attention, and we'd get
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