“Noemfoor.  In September (date?) a number of the units, including part of the Air Corps squadrons, left Noemfoor and moved further North to the Celebes and other islands on the road back to the Philippines.  With them went many service units, such a Quartermaster Port Battalions. 

 Consequently, the usual people were not available to unload ships bringing supplies to the Air Corps squadrons still operating out of Noemfoor and other units, such as the 503rd.  All of a sudden the 503rd found itself demoted to Service Troops and assigned to Port Battalion duty. 

(Maybe we should have kept the service troops classification, then we could have had a bronze arrowhead for our Southwest Pacific Ribbon)

  Noemfoor was ringed with coral reefs which were covered with shallow water when the tide was high.  The water beyond the reef dropped off sharply to a very great depth.  As a consequence it was not  possible for docks or wharfs to be built for unloading the ships.  Instead they were operated as “lighter ports”, i.e. the larger ships unloaded into smaller, shallow draft boats which could cross the reef at high tide and unlaod on the beach.  Smaller landing craft were sometimes used, but they were mainly LSM’s which were in between LCM’s and LST’s in size.

One time during “E” Co.’s tour of duty we had men working on one of the ships laying off shore.  I had drawn the assignment as Duty Officer for the 503rd men working the ship and the shore.  I rode one of the LC’s out to the shipto see what was going on.  Someone in the States had not known much about the South Pacific.  The ship had five holds, numbered on through five from bow to stern.  One, four and five were loaded with 500 pound bombs.  Number two had nothing but cases of canned fruit juices.  Number three had medical alcohol.  As I climbed up to the deck the men were just mixing up a batch of “joy juice”, they called it.  They had a 30 gallon GI can, which we, normally would be used around the mess hall to wash our mess kits.  They had already poured several gallon of medical alcohol into the concoction as a base and were adding fruit juices.  A couple of men were tasting and calling for different cans of juice to get the right blend.  All the rest of the men were lining up with their canteen cups ready to dig in once the punch was ready.

            I figured the best thing for me to do was to make myself scarce and climbed up to the ships of officers mess, had a couple of cups of coffee and talked with some of the crew.  When I got back down on the deck the men had already been through the line with their canteen cups at least once and were feeling no pain.  They were being instructed by the few black quartermaster troops, who had been left just for that purpose, in the use of the ship’s cranes to unload the bombs.  Each crane’s main line had five separate short lines with hooks on them.  The assembly was lowered into the hold and the hooks fastened onto the toggles of five 500-pound bombs.  The bombs would, then, be hoisted up through the hatch, out over the side of the ship and lowered into the LCM below.  The problem was our men were not experts and the slings swung back and forth as they were lifted with the bombs banging against the hatches.  Then it was not easy to get the sling out over the side without banging the hull.  The worst part, however, was lowering the bombs, GENTLY, into the LCM.  When the tension was slacked on the winch the bombs dropped pretty fast.  Although they didn’t have detonators and could not explode, 2500pounds of bombs dropped from 50 feet, or so, does not do much good to the bottom of a landing craft.  The LCM skipper, finally, moved away from the ships until our men had sobered up a little.  I really caught hell for that little episode.  I didn’t get any punch either.

             Another part of the Port Battalion duty I will never forget.  It must be remembered we had gone through a long experience chasing Japanese all over the island, most of the time with half rations, if we were lucky.  Then after we had set up a “permanent” camp there were periods when all our mess sergeants had nothing to give us but macaroni, period.  Can you imagine macaroni boiled with nothing on it?  We even sent out fishing details to see if they could get anything for us to eat.  There was a problem there because some of the tropical fish were extremely poisonous and we had to be careful and only take the ones we knew were safe to eat.

             Mostly our details used grenades but sometimes we would have explosives out of Japanese bombs left by their airforce.  We had a picric acid base and was not at all stable, so using it for fishing was very dangerous.  One day I was watching from shore as one of our details using a native outrigger canoe was fishing in Kamiri estuary.  An Australian P-40 was returning from a mission with a 500 pound bomb still unused and hanging from his belly.  The Aussie pilot buzzed our boat with his canopy open and motioned the men to get away from the spot where they had been fishing.  When they had moved away a hundred yards, or so, the pilot came back and dropped his bomb.  That night we had lots of fish to go with our macaroni.  As a taxpayer, however, I couldn’t help wondering how much that fish cost us per pound.

             What I started to remind you of when I got off on the fishing expedition was the perk we found went with unloading the ships.  These ships had their freezer lockers filled with sides of beef.  When they returned to the States they would be refilled.  In there was beef left, they would just fill the remaining space and the ship would be left with part of their supply being older stock.  Since the ship would rather have a completely new stock, they were happy to unload the surplus before they went back to the states.  Our S-4 and mess officers were only too happy to help the ships out with their problem.  As a consequence there were times, while we were on Port Battalion duty, we had as

much steak as we could handle.  I remember having steak for breakfast, a mid- morning snack of steak, steak for lunch, a mid-afternoon snack of steak, a big steak for dinner and another snack before we went ot bed.  The mess sergeants were even urging us to come back for more.  Never before or since have I had as many steaks as we had during this period.

             You mentioned Joe Whitson’s platoon having the duty of guarding a radar detachment at Menoekwari.”  This was Menoekwari West.  “This place was, actually, only about 3 miles from our camp at Kamiri, as a crow flies but it was like being on he moon when you tried to get to it by land.  The map showed a road.  What a laugh, it was not even a good trail.

             This must have been about the first of October, 1944.  The 503rd had its first payday in many months.  None of us, really, needed a payday because we had nothing to spend it on.  All we could do was to gamble with it.  The sharks ended up with all of it and the rest of us were back to square one.  But I digress.  As new Company Executive Officer of “E” Co. replacing McCaffery (the green hornet), Sam Smith, the Company Commander, saddled me with the job of paying off on the payroll.  We had tons of money since we were paid in Dutch Guilders with an exchange rate of two Guilders per US dollar.  In other words if you had five hundred dollars coming, you received one thousand guilders.  I remember paying off one Technical Sergeant who had been in the hospital and missed several paydays in Dobodura.  He was, now, getting about six months pay.    He came in late so I’d used up all the larger bills and had, mostly, one, five and ten guilder notes left.  Luckily they were brand new and were in bundles of one hundred with consecutive serial numbers.  Lets say this sergeant had something like three thousand guilders coming.  I reached over, took out some bills from stacks of ten guilders notes, a few from a stack of five guilder notes and several stacks of ones, then riffed through another and took out a few of those.  To the bills I added a bit of change.  I handed the lot to the sergeant in just about the time it takes to tell the story.  He saluted with a puzzled look on his face.  I watched him go over to the corner of the orderly tent and start counting.  He’d wet his thumb, occasionally as he leafed throughthe money.  He finished counting once, tapped the pile of bills back together, and started all over again.  Finally, after about the third time through the pile he came back over and said “I’ll be damned, Lieutenant, I don’t know how you did it but this is exactly right.”  He is dead now but I’ll bet he wondered all his life how I did it.

             Again I am digressing.  I started to tell about Joe Whitson’s platoon at Menoekwari.  Sam said I had to pay them too.  We had already learned that jeeps would not work out the hinderland of Noemfoor.  They would hang up on the rugged coral in nothing flat.  A 2 1/2 ton truck with six wheel drive could get you almost anywhere.  So I drew a six by six and a driver.  Here I was with a lot of cash money, possible groups of straggler Japanese around and I had to get to Menoekwari.  I armed myself with a Thompson Submachine gun and the driver and I started out early in the morning.  It took us almost until noon to make it the three miles to the radar facility.  Several times we got stuck when a fallen tree or a coral head would get caught under the truck.  The driver would rock back and forth as I’d throw rocks or logs under the tires until we would get free.  Finally, we got to Menoekwari.  Joe and his group were, definitely, not glad to see us.  They had a real deal going.  The Air Corps was supplying the outpost by landing craft so they had all the supplies they wanted.  They were set up very comfortably in the old native village and the last thing our men wanted to see was the Company Exec show up with a wad of money for them.  The driver and I fought our way back to the main camp just in time to head out for the nightly movies. 

             By this time about all the Air Corp had left at Noemfoor was B-24 bombers.  Big flights of these bombers would leave every morning about daybreak, before reveile.  We would sometimes, get up to watch the hugh flights of 100 or more of these planes head north. We heard they were bombing up into Mindanao in the Philippines.  They would be gone all day and return about the time the movies would start.   There were times the flights must have been gone 16 to 18 hours.  We always were amazed they could carry enough fuel to be gone that long. Today they would have had in-flight refueling but that was unheard of in those days.”