Kilroy was here Page 1

It was the night before Thanksgiving and three other Marines and I were asleep in our four-man tent. All of a sudden, an object came flying through our tent flap. Of course, in the dark, we could not see what it was. We all jumped out of our sacks, and scrambled to find and light our Zippo cigarette lighters, so we could what had awakened us. The object turned out to be a baked turkey, wrapped in a white cook's apron. We decided to not question our good fortune, and took our
K Bar Knives and began eating our prized find. Suddenly there were flashlights in our faces and a lot of shouting from the Officer of the Day and two Military Policemen. Someone had stolen the turkey from the Mess Tent where it was being prepared for our Thanksgiving Day dinner. Needless to say, they would not believe our story and were going to arrest all four of us and take us to the brig. After some discussion, they realized that we were all in our skivvies and the Marine who had stolen the turkey was fully dressed and had not had time to undress. Apparently, a Marine from our outfit, in the tent next to ours, had gotten off guard duty and decided to sneak into the Mess Tent and help himself to the turkey. He was seen, and in the ensuing chase, to get rid of the evidence, he threw the bird into our tent, perhaps thinking it was his tent. Keep in mind that it was dark and difficult to see. The guilty Marine was caught, charged and given a deck court martial. Our entire platoon was ordered in formation to observe these proceedings. This was the guilty party's second offense of stealing "fowl." He had previously been charged with stealing chickens from the Natives on Bougainville Island. I guess he just liked chicken!

Victory in Europe, or VE Day as it is normally referred to was May 8, 1945. I have to assume that our base commander was alerted ahead of time that VE Day would be announced, because we saw preparations being undertaken to lock down the base about twenty-four hours ahead of the actual announcement. No passes to travel off the base were allowed. All of the vehicles from the motor pool were parked very tightly bumper to bumper and the ignition systems were disabled by removing the rotors from the distributors. The only vehicles in commission were the ambulances from the base hospital, a few jeeps used by the Military Police, and the fire engines. Also all aircraft were grounded. The celebration started early and never stopped. Many of the men had brought whiskey from the states that they hoarded and planned to open only when the war ended. Now was the time. Everyone was excited and there was lots of talk about going home. Many of the ground crew had been in England ever since the 91st Bomb Group had arrived in September of 1942.
A few of us stayed sober enough to be observers of the boisterous goings-on all around us. We could see the NCO club from our barracks, and as we watched, we saw an ambulance from the base hospital arrive. Two medics jumped out, pulled a stretcher from the back of the ambulance and went inside the club. We were curious as to what might have happened that required an ambulance, so we started walking toward the club to get a better view of who might be carried out on the stretcher. Imagine our surprise when the two medics came out carrying the stretcher with a keg of beer on it. They loaded it into the ambulance and drove back to the base hospital. Even the patients to ill to be released from hospital got to participate in the celebration of VE Day due to the ingenuity of the medics.

I must relate one humorous incident that occurred while I was stationed at Maxwell Field. This incident took place probably no more than two weeks prior to my separation from the service. I had made friends with another Sergeant, who worked in the communications room at Base Headquarters. He had shown me how the outdoor communications system worked. Each day an automatic system played reveille at 6:00 AM and taps at 10:00 PM. Each day, prior to his departure from the communication room, it was his duty to cue-up the seventy-eight RPM record so that the proper bugle calls were played automatically. There were speakers mounted on utility poles around the parade ground and it was also possible to play martial music during parades or other functions held on the parade grounds. My friend showed me how to disconnect the record player from the outdoor speakers that would then allow me to play records, of which there was a very generous supply on hand. Recordings by Glenn Miller's Orchestra and many other top-ranked big bands were available. In the evenings, when I wanted to write letters to my girlfriend or to my family, I would play records while writing. The only thing I had to do was to cue-up the recording to play taps at 10:00 PM and turn the outdoor speakers back on before I left the communication room. On one occasion, I had not been paying very close attention to the time and I looked up at the clock and saw that it was just a few minutes before 10:00 PM. I very hurriedly went thru the set-up procedure and turned out the lights and left the building. As I walked to my barracks, imagine my surprise and amazement when, instead of hearing taps, I heard reveille played. In my haste, I had cued up the record in the wrong spot. I went back and cued-up the record to play reveille the next morning. But the funny thing was that I never heard from my friend that he got in trouble over the incident and no one ever mentioned having heard the wrong bugle call being played that night.

I do recall Dad telling us a story about being sent to Alaska aboard an old ship fitted out as a troop transport. To allay the fears of some of the boys about being on the ocean for the first time, an old sergeant assured them that they'd never be more than a mile from land. The ship headed out of Seattle on a bit

of a foggy night bound for Alaska. The next morning the lads looked around and there was no land anywhere in sight. Naturally, they immediately turned on the old sergeant and demanded an explanation. He stared at them with his best D.I. glare and pointed straight down at the water and said, "It's right down there - ONE MILE!"

Hi, Mike here. I'm going to tell you a little story my Dad told me about his time in the Philippines.
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As the story goes, my Dad built a still so he and his buddies could have some "jungle juice" from time to time. He somehow got word that an MP found out about his still, so he periodically relocated the still. By this careful maneuver, the MP never found the still.

Some years later, he was at an oil convention and he struck up a conversation with another guest. Turns out the guest was an MP in the Phillipines! Not only that, this was the very same MP that had been trying to find my Dad's still!

Well, the rest of the story was that he wasn't trying to arrest my Dad, he just wanted to find him so he could buy some booze!

These two men became good friends and our families had many, many good times together as we all grew up.

I lived in the small town of Cary, Illinois, about 45 miles northwest of Chicago. In 1946 I decided to join the Marine Corps. The deal was, I could ride the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad from Gary to the old Post Office Building in downtown Chicago and I could then go back home for thirty days before heading to boot camp. It seemed like a good deal to me. So, I put on my favorite cream-colored sport coat and black slacks and rode the train into downtown Chicago.

Things didn�t go quite like I expected. As I recall there were seven of us to be sworn in at the time. We all raised our right hand, and no sooner than we had said �I do�, when all hell broke loose. A door behind us opened and three people with buckets, brooms and mops rushed into the room. One of them yelled out, �You�re in the corps now and your heart might belong to Mother, but your Ass belongs to us. So grab these brooms and mops and clean this mess up.�

A water pipe had broken on an upper floor and the old plaster with a hundred years of dirt mixed in was pouring down on us. After about an hour things settled down, but by this time my clothes were a mess. Just thinking about riding the train home was pretty embarrassing. As you can imagine, from that day forward my thoughts about the Marine Corps were always tainted by that sorry beginning.

This Memory submitted by Charles Homola who now resides in San Antonio