My wife's grandfather Jim served with the 25th ID in the Pacific. He got wounded at Guadalcanal and sent to New Zealand for treatment and recovery. The most lengthy part of Jim's treatment was for battlefield fatigue. He spent months at that hospital and was given a part time job working in the alcohol warehouse at the local exchange. While the enlisted and officers were allocated certain amount of beer and liquor, the amounts being distributed varied by the number of casualties. He would receive a certain amount which was almost always more than the actual amount of able bodied men still fighting. Enlisted men were often accompanied by an officer when they would come in for their monthly allocations and the officers had a by-name roster of the men still able to fight and receive alcohol. Jim would separate the excess alcohol and put it all in one corner of the warehouse thinking that sooner or later he would receive orders to leave and it would be someone else's problem to deal with. Well there was one officer that would repeatedly ask him what he planned to do with the excess. Jim always told the officer that he was under strict orders to keep it separate and not to give away any of it. One day the same officer came back in and Jim knew his days working in the warehouse were nearing an end. He told the officer to come back in a few days with a larger vehicle. Days later Jim helped them fill up the larger truck with most of the excess alcohol that was in the separate corner of the warehouse.
A year later the war was over and Jim was out of the Army and moved back to his hometown of Ottawa, IL. He was married and running out of the money he had saved during the war. While serving he had gained alot of experience working with communications equipment like radios and such. He went to his local Illinois Bell Company and inquired about employment. They told him the manager was on vacation and that he would need to talk to the district manager in Rockford. So Jim called to that office and was told to come in on Monday (he called on Friday) for an interview. He arrived promptly the next Monday morning dressed in a pressed suit and was anxious as all get out about the interview when the district manager's door swung open and lo and behold, it was the same officer he unloaded that bunch of alcohol onto back in NZ. The man said, "Jim, as soon as I received the message about today's interview I thought that was you!". "Not only are you hired, but your pay started last Friday." Jim went on to work for IL Bell for nearly 40 years. It was his career and livelihood that supported him, his wife, and three children.
He shared that story and a few others with me after my first tour in Iraq. While the stories were shared in the living room with his son, a daughter, daughter-in-law, and his grand daughter present, they had never heard him share any stories about the war. He even pulled an old scrapbook out that he had assembled 30 years earlier that contained pictures from during the war that none of them had ever seen before. The best we could surmise is that he felt more comfortable sharing with someone who also had experienced foreign combat and could relate. After that story there wasn't a dry eye in the house. Jim passed in 2012 just a few days after I returned from Afghanistan. We still think he was holding on until I returned home safe.
Thanks,Dinny
Last edited by Dinny; 06/15/20.
