Please Note: This blog post is an account of World War II, including violence, illness, death, and other themes that may not be suitable for younger readers. While these stories are an integral part of history, some of the following content may be slightly graphic in nature.
The following is an excerpt from “Never Forgotten: Stories by Scott County, Minnesota, WWII Veterans” by Tom Melchior. This is the story of Navy veteran Gerald Anderson, who earned a Baker Third Class ranking. As part of the Commissary Branch, bakers were responsible for all kinds of baking, operating ovens and other baking equipment, and setting up field ovens when ashore.
Gerald shipped out to the South Pacific, namely the Solomon Islands and what is now Papua New Guinea, aboard the USS Perida.
Bougainville
After the Marines had secured the beach head on Bougainville, we moved up there on LSTs during the night. I sat on one of three bulldozers. When we got to the bay, the front of the LST dropped down, and we were hit by artillery shells from the hills and we lost many men. I lost all my belongings. I followed the bulldozer in waist deep water going ashore. The LSTs were all sunk. As soon as we hit land, we dug fox holes. I found out I could dig with my fingernails. This bay was named Empress Augusta Bay. The area on the island was called Torokina. We had to restock by taking supplies off the men who had been killed coming ashore.
Shortly after this, I was reassigned to a new unit, Casu 12. My old unit, Acorn 15, lost about 600 men, who were either killed or wounded. Out of 800, fewer than 200 of us were left. We were not combat trained. We were issued rifles, but we had no gun training. Some of the men had never even fired a gun. We had been trained to serve on board a ship, but not in the ways of jungle combat. We had not been taught how to dig a foxhole or given any tools
This bay, which would be home for 18 months, was shaped like a crescent. It was about two miles deep (into the jungle) by 10 miles of shore. It was coral and very swampy. We could not dig very deep, or we would be in water. We always dug our foxholes right next to our beds because we never knew when shelling would start or when the Japanese planes would strafe the bay. We had to bury the dead men at night because we could not use light of any kind. The odor of death was so powerful. A body began to decompose within hours after death. After the attacks that killed so many, we had to pile the bodies, both American and Japanese, and cover them with airplane fuel and burn them. I was 19 years old. I lived with this for the entire 18 months I was there (and also for the next 50-plus years.)
We could see the Japanese bomber planes coming way up high. We got to understand that when our anti-aircraft guns would fire at them, the Japanese fighter planes would come in low to strafe the ground. They were trying to hit our planes. We had to hit the ground and we always covered our heads with our arms. The strafing was so frightening. The planes dropped incendiary bombs, and the shells that came out of the hills whistled or screamed. The bombing and shelling lasted for hours. To this day, anyone whistling makes me tense and hurts my head.
The largest Japanese stronghold was Rabaul on the island of New Britain. Our planes would fly over Rabaul with bombs to try and knock out this camp. We never took Rabaul, which is also where the Japanese planes came from when we were bombed and strafed. The incendiary bombs would explode into fire, but unless it was a direct hit, nothing around it would burn. The ground was like a bog and the jungle growth was so green and thick, nothing would burn.
It rained every afternoon. The plants grew overnight. Every day we all had to cut plants that kept growing up in our tents. The plants looked like bamboo. I am sure that after all Americans had left the island, the jungle would have grown over everything we had built in just two to three weeks.
It surprised the Japanese when we came into the bay. They were well fortified on the mountain side. It must have been that the water in the bay was deep enough for ships. They expected us on the other side, the high side. There were two active volcanoes on Bougainville and they would bubble over. We could see the hot lava run down the sides. These volcanoes would kill our radar, so that we did not know when the Japanese planes were coming in to shell us. One night there was very heavy shelling, and we had to spend all night in the foxholes. When morning came, all the jungle trees had been mowed in half. We also had our own ships shooting into the hills from the bay.
It was our job to feed the men, but under heavy shelling we could not bake. Frank Waliser and I took K-rations and ran through the camp, putting one (or two, three, and sometimes four) into each foxhole. All the while shells were bursting around us.
We used field ovens and a field galley. All the equipment was out in the open. The ovens were about a foot off the ground and made of heavy cast iron. We had a table to knead the bread on. The ovens held ten loaves at a time. I think we had five ovens. We put the dough in a 55 gallon barrel that we had cut in half to rise. The flour came in square tin containers. They held only enough flour for one batch of bread. The flour would mold when exposed to the air. The yeast came dry. The sugar also came in tins. Vanilla at first came in liquid, but the men drank it, so then it came in a pill form. We baked bread and cookies daily. Everything we baked was always eaten. There was no refrigeration. There were never any tables or chairs to sit at, so everybody ate standing up. Everyone ate off their own mess kit plate and was responsible for cleaning it. It was issued at the time you got your clothes.
There was never any fighting among the men that I was aware of. There was segregation though. The blacks were in one area, and whites in another, except for when I worked in the pilots’ galley. There the men were all black, except for AP Sprinkle, Ed Hawney, and myself. I was transferred to the pilot galley when I got a Baking II class rating. That’s when I met AP and Ed and from then on I lived with them.
At about this time the Japanese started infiltrating the camp and would kill one at a time by strangulation with wire. One morning after Frank and I had gone to work, the other two men in our tents were strangled. The Japanese used copper wire and would sneak into the tent in the dark and hold the wire tight. That way there was never any sound. Many men lost their lives this way. To this day, I sleep with my arms up by my head.
Once a pilot brought in some fresh apples from Australia. I made apple pies, one pie at a time, with my mother’s recipe. They ate them as fast as I made them. Another time, they brought in what we thought was hamburger. It turned out to be ground goat meat. It was terrible! They also brought in horse meat. It was like ham, only stringy.
Sometimes we threw hand grenades into the ocean. It killed small sharks and then we had a feast of fresh fish. That feast required a lot of bread baking because the enlisted men were invited. One of the cooks, who was good with preparing fish, was from the Philippines. After the war, he sent me an invitation to a restaurant he opened in Los Angeles. His family had all been killed by the Japanese. He had a real hatred for all of them, killing as many as he could. He threw hand grenades into the prisoner compound at night.
Drinking water was a big premium item. You were issued one canteen per day for all your personal needs. Food was dehydrated, so there was water to prepare it. We also got orange marmalade in gallon containers. There were potatoes, rice, cabbage, eggs, dried beef, milk – all dehydrated foods. We also had canned SPAM and lots of beans. The beans were dried also, and just cooked with salt and pepper. I remember adding sugar to mine and that tasted a little bit better.