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The 594th EB & SR

Tall Tales | USAT SEAWITCH | Milne Bay | B Company | The 287th Signal Company, 2nd E.S.B.

MILNE BAY

Milne Bay is located at the very tail end of the bird shaped island of New Guinea. It is, in fact, the bird's anus, complete with three small islands (Ferguson, Goodenough and Trobriand) lying just outside of the entrance, representing what one would expect from such an organ. Milne Bay is one big swamp with an annual rainfall of over 350 inches per year. It literally rains every day, even when the sun is shining. It is one of the wettest spots on earth.

There was an old coconut grove near where we disembarked, and everyone was soon eating all that they could. Too much coconut especially green coconut, is a powerful physic. The results were predictable. We were assigned a camp area and told to scrounge material for floors for our tents where ever we could find suitable material. We got some old steel landing mat as was then used at makeshift airports, lumber from dunnage and crate parts near the docks, and some raided an old abandoned sawmill and got some huge planks of rough mahogany wood, worth a fortune in the states. These, and other material, went to provide floors for our double tents.

The carpenters, Foth and Fowler, soon made a twenty-holer latrine on the hillside, with only an awning cover to shed the rain.

Our job at Milne Bay was to reassemble some LCMs, 56 foot steel landing craft we were to use later. A small shipyard had been previously built by an earlier regiment. The LCMs had been cut into several pieces, crated, and shipped over as deck cargo. The various crates were all numbered and stored in the outer yard. The assembly plant consisted of three bays under one roof, with rails laid in each bay. The parts of each LCM was transported to the bay and placed on a cradle, or carriage, on the tracks. Our job was to align the correct parts and weld them together. There was room for three LCMs on cradles in each of the three bays, to be worked on at the same time. We worked twentyfour hours a day, three shifts, to assemble the parts. When finally assembled, an inclined railway track led down to the water and the completed craft was floated and tested. Wedding the parts was an especially hot job as the welder had to crawl into the wing tanks and double-bottom tanks to weld from the inside, with little ventilation. Even with air being pumped in to the welder, it was a terrible job - but we got it done.

One day, out behind the shipyard, some of the boys wanted to climb a coconut tree for some of the fruit. They made a pair of pole climbing hooks and First Sgt Stanton went up the tree like a monkey. As he was busy knocking down fresh coconuts, a battalion major came by on a safety inspection. I was the only one present who was wearing a shirt with stripes on the sleeve so he ordered me to "get your man out of that tree. It would look like hell to have to fill out a report that a man fell out of a coconut tree." Stanton far outranked me but I took great pleasure in ordering him to come down right now. The major never knew the difference.

Milne Bay was our first encounter with aborigine natives of New Guinea. They were a dirty, uncivilized lot. Few women were allowed to run around, and those that did were certainly NOT appealing in their grass skirts - and scabs. They could speak "Pidgin English" which is an old lingo taught them by traders and has little resemblance to modern English, but could be partly understood. Of course they all knew a wide variety of swear words taught to them by the Americans. Meat is scarce in their country and they would trade nearly anything for canned meat, or "bully beef". A favorite trading object with our troops was "Cat Eyes" a type of sea shell. Gl canned food did not have paper labels but had painted on names of the contents so the guys traded all sorts of canned goods to them, saying it was "bully beef". They were quite irritated when they opened a can of fruit cocktail instead of meat. They had plenty of fruit on their own. We used to walk the beaches looking in the crystal clear water for sea shells. The natives had some log and palm leaf structures built out over the water that had a lot of shells under tbem. We quickly learned that these structures were their toilets, where the tides cleaned them every day. The Australians had some native men organized into armed police in blue and red tunics. They were as fierce looking as the women were ugly.

All native women were called Mary in pidgin english. We noted a small child with distinctive Japanese features so we asked a man, "Japanese man he pom-pom Mary ?". He replied, "Japanee man he pom-pom Mary three time. He pom-pom me two time". Natives were not allowed in our camp area as they would take anything not nailed down.

On the trail up the hill past the latrine was a clear stream which was the source of our water. There was a waterfall that had washed out a deep hole beside a tall rock. This became our swimming hole, until one Gl dived off the rock and hit his head on the bottom, killing him. The hole was thereafter off limits.

The Australians had been at Milne Bay for a long time and with nothing better to do, they spent their free time making rings and other jewelry out of silver coins. To make a ring, they took a silver florin, about the size of a half-dollar, and by continually tapping on it side as they rotated it, the side flattened out. When it reached the desired size, the center was reamed out. It took hours of tapping to make one ring - but what is time to a Gl? We soon learned to make rings ourselves. You could hear tap tap tap tap far into the night. Tom Smith got tired of the noise so he hung an old brake drum in his tent and when the tapping continued after lights out, he would hit the drum with a hammer for every tap he heard. It put an end to night ring making as the whole camp then complained about the noise.

The sides of our tents were turned up to catch the rain water. This provided fresh, clean water for our personal shaving etc. Just behind Company C's camp area was a big mud hole. A USO show featuring Jack Benny, Carol Landis and others was coming to Milne Bay so we built a stage in that area, filled it in and made seats out of coconut logs. We could see the show from our cots.

At this point in the war Gen MacArthur would not allow cargo space to be taken up with beer or other hard liquor. Gls have a method to meet every requirement. Earl Mantooth, of our company, had previous experience in making a still. He made one back in the brush. Supplies for the mash was pilfered from the mess hall. They turned out a pretty good grade of white lightening. Everybody more or less knew about the still but it was allowed to operate - until a tough character from Baltimore, Joe Conlon, drank too much and decided to kill the mess sgt, the company officers and steal an LCM and go back to the states one night. Again, I was on CO and heard him stumbling up the walk. I was sitting in a dark corner of the orderly room tent. He looked in and said, "It's a god-damned good thing nobody is in there or I would shoot the s-o-b." He turned the other way to go to the mess tent and fired a shot into it, swearing at the same time that he would kill Sgt. Gottlieb, our mess sgt. I quickly took an exit out the back way to wake up the First Sgt. only to find him and several others already up and peeking around their tent watching the proceedings. The MPs were called but by the time they arrived, Conlon's platoon sgt, Joe Moore, had talked him out of his gun. Sgt Gottlieb never slept in the company area after that and was soon transferred out and replaced by Joe Burnetti, a great improvement. The still was demolished by the authorities.

After we launched our newly reassembled LCM's they were assigned to various crews. We tried them out in the bay and soon left Milne Bay for new quarters at Buna up the coast.

Another tale from Archie Anderberg (Company C 594th, First Platoon): We were at Finchaven, New Guinea, just the first platoon. We thought we were to go in on Leyte and our small group was anchored at the entrance of a small lagoon. Another group (Perhaps Company B) had an anchorage inside the lagoon. This group would constantly run their boats past us "wide open", making large wakes which caused our boats to slam together, breaking all our tie-up lines and causing general discomfort. Hollering and shouting at them did no good, they couldn't hear us above the roar of their engines. To put an end to it we all got our boats in a line and entered their anchorage area going "wide open", around and around the lagoon. We put up a huge wake that snapped all their lines. I remember seeing one guy with a foot on each of two boats, using the space between the boats as a latrine. Remember our boats did not have heads (toilets) on board. With our wake causing the boats to bob up and down, he was holding on for dear life with one hand and shaking the other fist at our boats. This ended their going past our anchorage at full speed!

Walter Schroeck (Company B) here, I read the Tall Tales about the C Company and Sullivan. That was pretty good, but they could learn from B Company. On New Britain, while on-loading Aussie ships we came to where we were unloading officers liquor. The (Company B) boat went from ship to shore and when they got on shore the Aussie officers were two cases shy. The Aussies were then arguing with each other about the count. The boat went back for another load and the same thing happened... Still two cases short. The Aussies then decided to put an MP aboard, which for B Company was like throwing down the glove. Next load from ship to shore was still short of liquor. Again, the Aussies argued among themselves and put another MP aboard. Again, the glove went down, and B Company picked it up. Last load of booze, three cases short. The Aussies were baffled and B Company had won.