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HIGHLIGHTS OF MY FOREIGN SERVICE

    We left Hampton Roads on 23 May 44, not being al-
lowed on deck until we were out at sea.  I didn't mind
leaving so much because we did it so quick.  I didn't
go top side because I knew it would make me very lonely
to take a last look at the USA.  We almost ran right on
the ship when we got to the dock and no one had a chance
to get scared, but I suppose every man that went up that
gang plank realized that he was stepping off the land
he loved for a long time.

    We had a very good ship.  It was a new "Invasion
Ferry" type troop ship, this being it's first trip.  It
was very clean and fast.  We were very crowded down in
the holds, but the ventilating system helped a little.
The ship, The USS General George M. Randall, was 600
feet long, equipped with Radar, four 5 inch guns and
a lot of 20 mm AA guns along with four sets of Pom Poms.
It was designed for speed, (about 25 to 30 knots) but
on one occasion when the radar picked up an unidentified
ship, it made 35 knots at forced draft.  Our trip from
HR to Panama was quite uneventful, and we were just out
of sight of land.  The water was smooth and I was having
a very interesting time, going all over the ship, and
marveling at it's size and grace.  We saw flying fish and
porpise.  Smitty was quite sick all the way to Panama.
I was lucky; and didn't get sick during the entire trip.
When we got into the Pacific, however, there were several
days when the water was so rough that the ship almost
seemed to stand on end.  We stood on deck several days
and watched the water break over the bow, which I would
judge to be 30 feet out of the water.  The ship's captain
was Captain C. C. VonPaulson, a member of the German
Navy in the last war and in charge of a task force that
cleaned out a German Weather Station on Iceland in the
early days of this war.

    There were 40 Red Cross workers, 30 Army Nurses,
400 officers, and over 5,000 enlisted men on board.
We were only allowed to go top side two hours a day
most of the time, so we made the most of it and played
cards or read when we were down in the holds.  The
food was pretty good, but we just had two meals a day,
and Smitty and I used to pride ourselves on the sand-
witches we mad.  They organized an orchestra which was
pretty good, and a couple of the Red Cross woman were
good singers.  The entertained each afternoon.
 

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    We entered the Panama canal shortly after noon on
the 27th of May.  This was very interesting, and there
was a lot of activity around there.  The canal, in
places, was just barely wide enough for the ship to
go through.  We saw a lot of GI's while going through
there as well as a lot of ships and airplanes.  We
also saw a crocodile and a monkey.

    We tied up at Balboa after going through the canal.
We were there for a couple of days having the engines
worked on and the cooling system repaired.  (They didn't
do the cooling system much good though).  We were
entertained the night of the 28th by a USO group of
three American girls and a woman.  The girls danced,
sang, etc.

    We left Balboa 29 May and headed out into the Paci-
fic.  We crossed the Equator 31 May.  Everyone got
smeared with grease and paint, had their hair whacked
off, and then dumped into a big wooden tank of salt
water.  We didn't run into any trouble going across the
Pacific except rough water.  It lasted for days on end.
We were stopped all day one day right in the middle of
it because of engine trouble, and I guess if there had
been any enemy ships around we would have been done for.
We crossed the International Date Line 12 June, skipping
June 13, 1944.

    We sighted New Zealand 14 June, and we stayed
out on deck all day.  All we could see was rocks and
mountains, but they certainly looked wonderful to us
after seeing nothing except water for more than two
weeks.  We passed between the North and South Islands,
and could see towering, snow capped mountains on the
North Island.

    We sighted Australia 16 June, although we didn't
follow the coast line.  We skirted around the south
side.  I saw a British Beaufighter that day, my first
British Airplane.  Smitty remarked, "It's a good
feeling to know that whoever is up there in that plane,
though he has never seen any of us, would not hesitate
a moment to attack any enemy who might try to molest
us no matter what the odds might be.

    We saw more porpise now, and the weather was very
cool as we were pretty far south.  We would bundle up
in our sweatshirts and field jackets whenever we went
top side.
 

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    One of our buddies died of some incurable disease
I don't remember the name of, on the 17th of June.
Funeral services were held at sea the next day, Sunday.
I didn't know him, but I'm sure many a prayer was of-
fered in sympathy with his loved ones at home.

    We docked at Perth, Australia, 22 June.  We got
shore leave the next day, and we rally had swell
time.  Tucker, Smitty, Pat, Theodore, and a couple of
other fellows and myself went together.  We ran all
over town, ate three meals, costing about 8¢ our
money, and were sure worn out when night came and we had
to return to our boat.  It was a beautiful place, and
the people were every friendly.  One old Englishman I talk-
ed to said, "We have America to thank that there is an
Australia today".  It did our hearts good to hear such
remarks, and they really think the "Yanks" are a tough
bunch of fighting me.  The old fellow also said that
England and US were both great countries, but he guessed
if the US ever told the British to close down that they
would have to do it.

    We left Perth at 0700, 24 June 44, escorted by a
British Cruiser.  I saw a Whale in the Indian Ocean
one evening not more than sixty yards away from the
boat.  The cruiser escorted us about half way and then
two destroyers took the job over for the rest of the
trip to Bombay.

    We arrived in Bombay 5 July, but didn't get off
the boat until the next day.  We then walked most of
the way to a camp at Worli Point, Bombay.  It is a
British camp, and the food was almost unbearable.  Every-
one had the GI's, and felt pretty weak.  It was located
right on the beach, but the breakers came in on the
rocks so that it was impossible to swim there.  It
rained almost every day we were there, and most of the
day too.

    We got on the train in Bombay on the 14th of July
and arrived at Camp Kanchrapara, near Calcutta on the
17th.

    Smitty, Walker, Tibbedo and I went into Bombay
several times while we were there.  We enjoyed it for
the simple reason that everything was strange;  Bom-
bay and Calcutta are both more more modern than one
would expect, and it was possible to get a pretty good
meal there.  Beggars are everywhere though, and if

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the beggars don't get you, the peddlers will.  I just
went into Calcutta once, because all my pals were split
up there and I was the last one to leave.  Another fel-
low was going in, so I went along just for the experience.
I met an intelligent Indian boy, Kazi A. Rafique, would could
speak very good English as well as most of the eight
Indian Languages.  He stayed with us the whole afternoon.
We went to the Red Cross center and there was a party at
a Lady Ezra's house which we also took in.  It was a
magnificent place, with large gardens in the back an
all kinds of wild animals and birds.  They served us a
delicious lunch and entertained us graciously.
 
    On July 17, we left Camp Kanchrapara by rail, head-
ed for our final destination.  We traveled overnight
by rail, and then boarded a river boat together with a
group of Chinese soldiers and some Indian Soldiers.  We
rode that boat for a day and then transferred to another
for two more days.  Then we boarded a train to Tinsuki,
Assam.  The river voyage was quite an experience, as we
could see the surrounding country and villages.  This
was the Brammaputra river.

    We arrived in Sookerating by truck on the 27th of
July.  It isn't a bad place at all.  We live in tents,
but they have floors in them, and we keep the grass cut
so that it makes a nice lawn.  The day after we got
here I was walking down the road and who should holler
at me but Smitty.  He had flown up and arrived here
several days before me.  I was sure glad to see him and
we had quite a chat.  We certainly didn't expect to
end up together on the opposite side of the world when
we got on that train together at Grand Island.

    August 27th, found me with a day off, and what did
I do but make arrangements to fly the "Hump".  We went
to Chentung, China, a trip of about four hours each way
from Sookerating.  Captain Taylor was the pilot, and
a very good one.  He was very efficient and a swell guy.
Our C-46, No. 594 was quite an old ship, but it ran
perfect.  The weather going over was very smooth, but
there were a lot of clouds below us.  We were flying
at 14,500 feet.  There were some breaks in the clouds
though and I got to see some of the mountains, the
Burma Road and the Ledo Road.  We had a generator burn
out on one of the electric propellers while at the China
base and had to wait about two hours to have it fixed.
We took off after dark coming back, and climbed to
18,000 feet.  We were at 6,900 at the China base.  At

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first the weather was beautiful and we were above the
clouds in bright moonlight.  It was really a thrill
to see all those white clouds below you, and you could
emagine you were floating along on piles of fluffy
cotton.  We ran into a bad thunder storm before we
got back, however, somewhere around the Ft Hertz valley,
and it really tossed that big plane around like a fea-
ther.  I was scared for a few minutes, but decided that
wasn't doing any good, and I was very confident in the
pilot.  Then to top matters off, ice formed on the
carburetors and the manifold pressure dropped way down.
We came through okay though, thanks to the skill of the
pilot, and landed at Sookerating about 10:30.

    28 October 44.  Nothing of importance has happened
since the ride over the Hump.  Life goes on the same,
day after day.  We play a lot of softball now, and
any other sport that we can and have time to participate
in.  the show tonight is "Pin-UP-girl", with Betty Grable,
etc.  Recently I have been getting a nice lot of mail
which has boosted my morale considerably.  Letter mean
so much to us over here.  One day shortly after we arrived
here we had an air raid alert.  They were over, but didn't
bother this base at all.  Since that time we have see
nothing but our own planes, and there are a lot of them.

    November 15, and I have a lot of work to catch up
on as well as letters from home.  I returned to camp
November 11 after a week's stay at the Kobo Rest Camp,
about thirty miles north of Sookerating.  The camp is
located on the edge of a jungle, right on the bank of
a beautiful, small river.  The climate there was wonder-
ful.  The air was cold and fresh, with no mosquitoes to
bother.  The natives there are of Mongolian descent and
are much cleaner and better looking than the average In-
dians we see around here.  We had a wonderful time hunt-
ing in the jungle, and out on the grass plains at night
with the truck and a spot light.  I succeeded in shoot-
ing my first deer in the jungle when we were out the
first time.  It was quite a small deer, however, there
was enough to go around and everyone at fresh meat that
night for supper.  One day while we were there, we all
piled on the truck and trailer and took a trip some
twenty miles through the jungle to a little village
named Possygot which is located at the foot of the
Himalayas.  It was a beautiful scene, and we took some
pictures.  One day, four of us climbed on a rubber life
raft and started floating down stream thought the jungle to
a place about 20 miles away called Mercanselec, where

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there was a crossing and the boys from the camp could
pick us up in the truck and bring us back.  I had a
Garand rifle and the rest of the fellows were just going
for the trip.  I might just as well have left the rifle
at camp however, because there was so much noise and
splashing that we didn't see anything except some monkeys.
It was a very pleasant and interesting trip, and there
were several rapids which we went over that were exciting,
especially two we crossed after dark with no light.  We
floated for six and a half hours before we finally got to
our destination.  We were sure cold an hungry before we
got back to camp that night.  We had a lot of fun in a
native dugout canoe while we were there and took many a
spill from it until we made an outrigger.  We pooled and
paddled it upstream and then floated back down, fishing
along the way.  The fish, by the way, would not bite al-
though we saw hundreds of them in the clear water.  ONe
of the natives made me a bow and arrows out of bamboo,
at my request, and I tried to shoot fish with that.  I
did get one, but missed hundreds of other.  We came back
to Sookerating on the 11th more in need of rest than when
we went up the week before.  We went up there  by truck and
river boat, crossing the Bramaputra river in dugout canoes
which were loaded down almost to the water line with more
than a dozen people in each one.  When we were ready to
come back to Sookerating they came after us in a C-47.  It
took a little of three hours to go up and about 15 min-
utes coming back by plane.

    I worked in Personnel from the time we arrived at
Sookerating until the 3rd of January 1945, and was in
charge of Officer's promotions and rotation, also helping
out on Citations and Awards.  On the 3rd of January I
was chosen to be the CO's stenographer.  The title was
"Administrative NCO Assistant to the Commanding Officer
and Executive Officer".  I liked my new job fine and
Lt Col George S. Cassady and Major Herbert J Smith were
both swell fellows to work for.  Col Cassady is from
Texas and Major Smith is from Kansas.  On March 1st I was
promoted to Technical Sergeant.

    On February 24, 1945, our base shattered all records
by making 120 trips across the hump to China.  The pre-
vious record was 91 trips, set by Chabua.  I helped load
several loads of pipe, wire, ammunition, etc., and
driving the trucks.

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    On the 5th, 6th, and 7th of March, Lady Louis Mount-
batten was visiting on and near the post here.  On the
sixth I had to run a couple of errands for her.  One was
to take a secret operational priority message to her
and get the answer and the other was to take her overcoat
the colonel's overcoat and a bottle of gin out to them.
I enjoyed it very much as I was driving Major Smith's
car, a new Plymouth and it was nice to get out of the
office for a change too.

    On 7 April Charlie, Quinn, Joe Miller and I went to
Kobo again.  We spent a very enjoyable week there doing
the same things I had done several months before.  We
didn't get any game except a few jungle chickens which
look like the pigeons back home except they are about
three times as large.  One afternoon the Indian boys there
took me down the river in the dugout canoe hunting them
and I sure enjoyed it but I couldn't hit a thing that day a
and as a result I got two out of about eight shots.

    On the evening of May 7th, at 10:12 we were glued
the radio waiting when the announcement of the surrend-
er of the Germans came over.  We proceed to celebrate!!!

    I was lucky enough to fly the L-5 a couple of times
in May and felt that I was sitting on top of the world.
I made two landings though that took my ego down quite a
bit as they were both plenty sloppy.  I can fly it again
when I feel that I should ask,  but I don't want to crowd
a good thing.  I also learned to ride a motorcycle and
took several pleasant excursions on that.

    On the 5th of June we had a Squadron dance.  Joe
Miller and I worked a deal whereby we went after the Red
Cross girls (I borrowed the Col's car).  We had a swell
party even though there were only about eight women there
and fifty men.

    Now it's June 12, and it's hot as H___.  We hope and
look for rain as it brings us some relief from the heat.
Prickly heat is breaking out on a lot of us and it is sure
uncomfortable and there is nothing you can do about it.