Dad's Stories - Part 3

Insert my usual disclaimer here.

Dad was a Marine during and after World War II. He was stationed on the island of Peleliu in the South Pacific. From there he went to Japan, and from there to China. Here are a couple stories from his time there.

The Marines on Peleliu were given, among other things, a fishing spear head to be used to occupy themselves. The head had three prongs (picture King Neptune's spear). They had to supply the handle themselves. Someone noticed that the threads in the spear head matched the threads on the radio antennas on the jeep-mounted radios, which caused some consternation when the radio needed to be used. Being a civic minded guy (ha!) as well as being handy, Dad set up shop making handles for the spears out of scraps of pipe or whatever he could scrounge. He'd also add barps to the prongs by flattening the metal out a bit then filing it to a point and barb. His fee was either a six-pack or a bottle of scotch. The brass was happy because the radio attennas stayed where they belonged, the other Marines were happy because they had fishing spears and the barbs kept the fish from being lost, and Dad was happy because he had a supply of beer or scotch. Capitalism at work!

My Dad also had no fear of heights at all, I can recall that about him. Well it seemed the airfield on Peleliu had some sort of mast, for radio or radar or whatever I don't recall. The mast had a ladder going up the side of it, and it had a light bulb on top. Since Murphy was definitely in the military, the bulb burned out. As I recall it wasn't the Marine's reponsibility to replace the bulb (I don't recall who "owned" the mast though), but no one who's responsibility it was would climb the ladder to replace it because it was too high. His Colonel (for whom Dad was orderly), always looking for a way to stick it to another branch of service, said he knew someone who'd climb up there for a price. The Colonel told my Dad that he'd get a bottle of scotch for doing this. Negotiations ensued, and the final price was a case of scotch.

The Japanese interpreter for my Dad's unit was a guy from someplace in the deep South, Dad swore that he spoke Japanese with a Southern accent. One day a Marine had been out scrounging on the island and found a cave full of bottles with Japanese labels. He brought the bottle to the interpreter, hoping it was saki or something similar. Upon reading the label the interpreter asked the scrounger where he found it, and HOW he found it. He replied that he was searching a cave using his cigarette lighter for light and found several cases of these bottles. It turned out that the bottles contained something very similar to napalm.

Later on after the war my Dad was stationed in China. He was with the communications unit, he was a lineman. He and his buddies got the job of removing some old phone lines, and he drew a line that was attached to a pole in the middle of a rice paddy. As he climbed the pole (using gaffs and a belt) he noticed that the pole was wobbly. When he got to the top and started detaching wires he realized that the lines were the only thing holding the pole up. Realizing that he was headed for a splash-down, he removed the belt so that when the pole fell he could get away from it, and as he detached the last wire the pole fell and he landed in the rice paddy. If you've never seen a rice paddy or pictures of one, it looks like a swamp with one notable difference, it's fertilized. It's fertilized with human waste. His buddies made him ride back to base on the bumper of the jeep.

While in China the Marines were paid in American money, and the exchange rate was incredible. I recall him telling me it was something like 20,000 Chinese dollars to one American dollar. A lot of the Marines got tatoos, but my Dad never liked needles so instead he had an eagle embroidered on the back of one of his jackets by one of the old men in the area. Upon asking the price he was told ten dollars, he asked if that was ten dollars American or Chinese, and the price was ten dollars Chinese. He gave the man a couple American dollars which made him extremely happy.