We were drilling one hot summer day in late August of 1949
on our drill field in front of our barracks.
We were in small columns, going through all the commands. We were doing just fine until 3 young Caucasian
ladies dressed in tight t-shirts and short shorts riding bicycles right past
us. Those giving the commands were
watching the girls, forgetting their columns.
So we just kept marching; of course were looking at the girls too. There were columns all over the field –
colliding into one another, rifles dropping, helmets falling off, men banging
into one another; complete chaos! It
wasn’t just a few columns, it was all of them.
It was so funny, that even our officers were bending over laughing. It looked like the Keystone Cops in the old
silent movies. Real togetherness!
This is part of our history.
I wish it never happened, but it did.
Five of us would eat out nearly every night. We would go about five towns in the opposite
direction of Tokyo, because all the other GI’s went there. It would be nice and quiet and gave us a
chance to sit back and talk. We always
left camp around 4:30. This particular
day I didn’t go because I was on prison chaser at our camp stockade and didn’t
get off duty until 6:00 that evening.
The next morning I got a terrible shock.
The four men, Frank Camper, Jessie Mereman, Clarence Peters, and Sgt.
Taylor had just walked through the gate into our camp. They were in the curve of the road and being
foggy, an MP jeep plowed into them. The
jeep was going too fast for conditions and was on the wrong side of the
road. It killed Frank Camper and killed
Jessie Mereman. Sgt. Taylor and Clarence
Peters both got knocked down and bruised.
The army court marshaled the MP and he was sent away. The next 2 weeks were terrible. No matter where our Co. marched; every time
we saw an MP jeep, we broke ranks and ran to the side of the road yelling, look
out it’s the MP’s. They’ll run you
down! No matter how many we saw in a
day, we did the same dumb thing. After
about 2 weeks of this Col. Clainos came to our mess hall and took off his
silver leaf from his collar and said he wanted to talk man to man. He told us he had real good MP’s, but they
were putting transfers to other outfits and he didn’t want to loose them because
of one man’s mistake. We all stood up
and applauded him, and never again did we do it! It did show our Co. was willing to stick
together even when we were wrong.
On maneuvers at Mount Fuji, we were called out for
formation. Our Co. CO. chewed us out for
not having haircuts. He gave us 2 hrs.
to get it done and have another formation to be checked out. Back in our 9 men tents we got busy clipping
hair. Someone came up with the idea of a
mohawk, so we did, all of us. Our
Captain had us uncover at the next formation.
Boy, was he made. We had to wear
steel helmets the rest of the time we were there.
We were pre-warned that by no means can anyone leave camp
while on maneuvers. If we got caught it would
be 6 months at the Big Eight Stockade.
Eight weeks was the most we could handle – we still had 2 weeks to go, so
we all snuck out of camp... – 5 miles to town.
The MP’s brought us back into camp by the truckload. The next day we got chewed out for not taking
the Co. flag. Again it was 100%
participation!
There was no doubt in my mind that B troop would fulfill all
the duties that would be expected of them in Korea.
to be continued...
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