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As mentioned already, my father is in a Army light bomber squadron in the Pacific theater serving as the senior sergeant in charge of its armorer section. Those guys that prepped and load the bombs as well as the machine guns on their planes.

One day, back in the 80's, I'm driving home from another state where I'm been on business. My route to my home took me near where my mother and father lived, so I stopped at their house for a short visit.

Some more background first. Dad had met my Mom before he joined the Army Air force. She was the manager of a bus station cafe in the small Arkansas town she lived. Before joining the Army Air Corp, Dad worked for a beer distributor, living about 50 miles to the west of where my mother lived. Anyway, she will take a train to where Dad was stationed in Georgia and they will marry a couple of months before his squadron was shipped to the Pacific. Dad's in the Pacific and my older brother is born.

So, I'm visiting with my father and mom is in another part of their house. I'll ask Dad a question about being in the Pacific. "Dad, what did you and your guys do for fun in the pacific....play baseball, volleyball, football or something?" He smiled and quickly said, "We played poker." Mind you, I could remember a fair number of times growing up when Dad got together with his buddies to play poker, but his answer of Poker for fun in the Pacific kinda surprised me. Dad will explain, "son most of the time we were on some island with no where to spend the money we were paid." What money we got each month was useless. So, most of the guys in our squadron and the guys in the other squadrons on our airfield, began a poker game on the day we were paid. Which for you none military guys, was the first of each month and you were paid in cash too.

Dad told me the poker games could last for quiet a few days. They only ended when one or two guys had won everyone else's money. Mindful of my Dad's love of playing poker, I'll ask him if he'd ever been a big winner in the Pacific poker games. Keep in mind my mother had been absence from much of our conversation, but had walked into our room and overheard enough of our conversation to realize what it was about. She was standing behind my Dad and he did not know she was in the room with us.

Dad replied to my question about winning one of the Squadron's monthly Poker games by telling me of winning big for two or three straight days in the games, winning about $1500. But his luck turned on cards drawn and lost almost all of his prior winnings. With these words, my mother made her presence known to Dad and unloaded on Dad. Won't repeat my mother's words, they were quite colorful, so to speak. Basically, Mom yelled, there I was living with my mother in Arkansas with our baby Larry (my older brother) trying to live on your army pay and you didn't think to send us any money before you lost it....more yelling I can't repeat, before she stormed out of the room.

Kinda felt sorry for Dad, but asked him, well why didn't you send her any of the money? Dad just shook his head and tells me. "Son, even while I was a senior sergeant, I was an enlisted man and we could only send home the amount of money I was paid in cash...your mother already got most of my pay check, I received very little of what I was paid. Besides that, in the pacific we were paid in paper money of whoever owned the island in the Pacific before the Japs captured it. In other words, if he was on a Dutch owned island before the Japanese captured it and we'd taken it back, he was paid with Dutch paper money made by the U.S. treasury department during the war. So, it was worthless in the U.S. "Your mother couldn't have spent any of it if I'd been an officer and sent it to her." Yep, officer's could send more money home than they were actually paid.


Last edited by huffmanite; 03/22/17.
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Thanks for posting, I enjoy those stories.


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Good story. Hope the dust has settled!


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Cool story...got more?

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Thanks for posting. My step grandfather would agree with the poker and black jack games. Since he only made $50 a month he could only send home $50. He claimed that when they were taking some Marines into Iwo Jima he had $10,000 in his foot locker. Taken mostly from the Marines who were going to be hitting the beaches in just a few weeks or days. He claimed he lost most of it before getting back to the States as there was no where to spend it. That guy loved playing black jack. So did the old Sheriff, who was also in the Navy on a destroyer shelling Iwo while my grand father was unloading Marines. Between the 2 of them, you could go broke real quick and they laughed about it the whole time.

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I wish I had written down all the stories from WWII vets I heard. My hunting and fishing mentor was a Marine bomber pilot from Guadalcanal on. He served two tours of duty, the first on Guadalcanal flying a Douglas Dauntless, the second tour on an escort carrier flying an Avenger. He got drunk with Pappy Boyington on Guadalcanal, was courtmartialed for attacking an American sub (he was cleared), and had lots of other adventures.
My neighbor and friend was a B-17 pilot over Germany. He later flew in the Berlin airlift, worked directly for Jimmy Doolittle, and knew all the big names personally. When he worked for Boeing, he would call Chuck Yaeger to help sell a new airplane to congress. He had lots of stories. My father was a Seabee in the South Pacific. He had two ships torpedoed out from under him and his shipmates thought he was a "Jonah" - bad luck. I never knew that story until after his death. So many stories, now lost.


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Nice post!

My father apparently learned the poker playing thing in the Army as well during WWII..I know he shot craps for money. At any rate he was good at it, when he got home after the war he went to college and poker was his sole source of income....paid his whole way through college and had enough left over to buy a new car and marry my mother, whereupon he promised her never to gamble again for real money.
( little did she know some of the risks he took in later years in the stock market....but he did well at that too...)


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My wife's Grandfather served in the 26th ID (The Yankee Division) in WW-I and on the troopship home made enough money playing craps he was able to put a down payment on his first house in Providence RI.

It's a tradition ! grin


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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

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I also remember a story a former coworker Charlie shared of his time during the Korean War as a crewmember in a bomber aircraft (the designation escapes my memory). He told me before every mission he had to report to the arms room where he was issued a M1911 45ACP pistol, 2 loaded magazines, and a leather shoulder holster rig. Upon returning from each mission he would turn it all back in to the arms room. He always turned in the same amount of ammunition. One evening after returning after dark, he was walking back to return his weapon and ammo when a Jeep drove by and the headlight's beams caught something in his immediate path. The Jeep passed and he walked up to the item and found it was a rusted M1911 that had been dropped some time ago and had been in the moon dust-like path the vehicles took through their camp. He picked it up and slid it inside his flightsuit out of sight. Once back at his tent he inspected it more closely and found it was rusted pretty badly and he couldn't rack the slide. He oiled and polished the outside in secrecy for the next several weeks of his tour. Each mission thereafter he wouldn't bring back any ammo. The armorer would always ask what he's suddenly doing with his ammo while other crewmembers were still returning with all their ammo. He always told him not to worry about it (pulling rank likely) until one day the armorer reported him to the CO. When called onto the carpet and asked about the ammo, he told the CO everytime the bombay doors opened he would open fire with his M1911 in hopes the bullets would come down onto the heads of the enemy. His CO scolded him and he was ordered to stop immediately. After his final mission he returned to his tent and swapped the M1911 he was issued for the one he found and polished clean. He returned the M1911 inside the holster and boarded a Freedom Flight shortly thereafter with a fully functional M1911 and close to 300 rounds of ammo. He returned home to Kentucky weeks later and presented that M1911 to his father who fired it a few times and later traded it for a fifth of Jack Daniels. To say Charlie was disappointed would be an understatement.

Thanks, Dinny


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My dad fought the Japs in WW2 in New Guinea. I served in the Marines and Navy until my retirement in 1998. I was discussing how homosexuals on board ships were a problem, and that as a det oic on a frigate, in the early 1990s during the Clinton administration, my men complained about a Negro homo who would hang out in the head and shower rooms in the morning, ogling his naked shipmates. I informed the XO of the ship of the problem, but nothing was ever done about it. My dad then informed me that during his deployments on the troop carrier ships in WW2, that it was not uncommon for homosexuals to be thrown overboard during the hours of darkness. My how things have changed since then.


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this happened back in the 80`s when i was on a antelope hunt in Wyoming and staying with friends at Owen Heins wild game processing place that i also help skin,cape and cut up plenty wild game too. one night after working in the butcher shop with his brothers ,nephews and the ladies ,after supper and few beers with Owen`s brothers and nephews who were all Marines either in World War 2 or Viet Nam Vets they talked about what they did and seen in the war. now some of these brothers told of the jobs they did in the war except one brother he just sat there listening to them,the rest all said how hard they had it. then all of a sudden the quiet brother Jed spoke and said none of you guys seen hard times, Jed was 1st wave, the marines that were 1st to hit the island at Iwo Jima . i asked Jed this : did you get to see them raise the flag ? Jed said yes i did i was there 3 feet away doing the shooting to protect them . the other brothers of Jed were quiet about the war after that they knew what Jed had been through . nephews David and Doug who also were Marines and seen hard times in Viet Nam one was with Carlos Hathcock many times the other brother David a Marine was with the rock soldiers in the front lines they were quiet the whole time that night, these 2 Viet Nam Vets seen some horrible times also. after seeing the movie about the flag of honor i wished i could have talked to Jed some more about Iwo Jima and the raising the flag too but he had passed away already as have all these great World War 2 soldiers i knew have. Bless All the soldiers in America !

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Originally Posted by OrangeOkie
My dad fought the Japs in WW2 in New Guinea. I served in the Marines and Navy until my retirement in 1998. I was discussing how homosexuals on board ships were a problem, and that as a det oic on a frigate, in the early 1990s during the Clinton administration, my men complained about a Negro homo who would hang out in the head and shower rooms in the morning, ogling his naked shipmates. I informed the XO of the ship of the problem, but nothing was ever done about it. My dad then informed me that during his deployments on the troop carrier ships in WW2, that it was not uncommon for homosexuals to be thrown overboard during the hours of darkness. My how things have changed since then.

My grandfather talked about the homo's on 2 different ships during WWII. Most were stewards. One was pretty obvious but when going into Iwo Jima he manned a machine gun and did his share shooting at Jap airplanes. He said for the most part the crew ignored them and they pretty much stayed to themselves.

kwg


For liberals and anarchists, power and control is opium, selling envy is the fastest and easiest way to get it. TRR. American conservative. Never trust a white liberal. Malcom X Current NRA member.
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When it comes down to it men and women in uniform will fight for themselves and those around them, no matter their sexual preference. I have served around all types of people and find they each bring unique traits to the table. I'm thankful for diversity and quite possible only alive today because of it.

Thanks, Dinny


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Wish I would have had more time to talk to my grandfather about his time in the Pacific. Pap didn’t talk about it at all when I was a kid, and by the time I was old enough to ask questions and appreciate the answers, he was fine.

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Great stories. Thanks. A great generation of warriors and all that I have known are gone now.


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