©Rrk ‘62

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Chow Down Easter Morning

Just before Easter of '45 we were on our way to Okinawa─of course, we didn't know it then. We were playing poker over a mountain of ammo and under an LCT chained topside. Though cramped and suffering neck and back pain from being so hunched over for hours at a time in this Charybdis, we claimed territorial right to this sleeping quarter and poker haven as there was no space below deck. The China Sea was kicking up its usual fuss.

"Now hear this, Gyrenes, Mess call, but don't all line up at once!" the P.A. of LST 772 (I think that was the number) resounded off the flat bottom of the LCT. We continued playing a few more hands before we crawled out of our casino─what's the difference whether you stand in line or idle on deck? There's not much one can do on a ship designed for tank transporting and its skeletal command. An LST is not a troop ship but somehow the command horned in half an infantry battalion! The galley was made to accommodate no more than seventy or so men─and on shifts at that─let alone over four hundred. As a result when we got in line─if lucky enough to find the end of it─they would run out of mess after twenty minutes and we would have to wait another fifteen minutes for them to finish cooking another round before the line started to move again.

Nevertheless, it was well worth it because after island-hopping a few years anything barely resembling appetizing chow was a major event. We marines gave the Coast Guard a lot of credit for knocking themselves out to see to it that we got three mess calls a day. Those cooks from Brooklyn worked round the clock to keep us content. They probably figured we'd eat a hole in the tank-deck if they didn't.

Virtually the whole crew of some thirty men came from the Big Apple, and they never pulled any punches complaining to us how unfair it was for the Coast Guard to be out here some fifteen thousand miles from the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Though we never bent a sympathetic ear, most of us agreed that it was a raw deal─after all, we didn't join the marines to pull duty in the states─each to his own trait, and if they were cowards, then, hell, they ought to be accommodated.

Normally the crew ate first, but being cosmopolitan Brooklynites many would join us in the lines and relate to us hicks their escapades with the hot dames from the big city─even though some of us had spent a weekend in New York after boot camp. Most of all, though, they loved to brag about their beloved 'Bums' back home. Soon names like Ducky Medwick, Dixie Walker, Dolph Camilli became household words that we later used as nightly passwords on the foxhole line at Okinawa─that is, the ones with 'r's in them like "Du<l>och<a>, <L>eese and <L>eis<a>. Besides some of the crew didn't feel as though they were making any sacrifices arriving late for mess; they could still break in the line near the scullery to beat their gums with us on how bad the food was. Hell, when they were stateside most of them ate in the automat or grabbed a bite at Nedick's before heading for Forty-second Street, so they weren't exactly connoisseurs.

In contrast, we marines thought we were being served at the Waldorf. The cooks aboard were gourmets to us and made those powdered assortments taste like fresh food─not like the marine cooks who half the times didn't even bother to add water to the powdered potatoes and eggs.

When we card jocks approached the steaming serving counter we got high on the aroma alone, so long had it been since we were treated to the likes of synthetic home cooking─in fact, not since Camp Lejeune or Parris Island where what they lacked in quality they made up for in quantity; there they always had "seconds call". Moreover, the ship's freezers─under double guard─were loaded with fresh meat and every other day we were literally overcome with the savory juices of hamburger, lamb, or pork, and chicken on Sundays. Steaks were stowed away for our last meal aboard when they planned a D-day banquet of steaks and fresh eggs for pre-dawn breakfast. We figured for that occasion the ones first in line would be having morning mess at 2200 hours the night before.

A short redheaded coast guardsman gunner in front of us got indignant when a marine on mess duty was about to ladle a bowl of soup for him. "Na," he growled, "tired of the same old dumpling soup!" I looked at the mess-marine pleadingly, and he tipped it into my bowl then ladled a second dip of the delicious soup. The coast guardsman passed up the kidney beans and rice too and I benefitted again by getting a double portion. Though entitled to two biscuits, he only opted for one reasoning, "Hey, I'm not from the brig! Waddya think, I'm on five days bread and water! Nothin' lately but doughballs comin' out of me as it is." I edged my tray toward the marine on rice and biscuit detail and he sympathetically threw the blue shirt's on my tray in addition to my two. They were the most delicious biscuits─helped by the fresh butter, can you believe it? Butter!─that had ever collected South Pacific mold. My mouth watered when we approached the fried chicken. The marines on mess duty were not permitted to monitor this choice prize. The scullery "maidens" themselves doled out the golden poultry. I couldn't believe my ears when the blue shirt said, "Just one little wing, mate─sick of this damn chicken every Sunday." I promptly nudged him and pleaded, "Shucks, mate, let him pile it on! I'll relieve you of it as soon as we get to a table....And cut out the bat sh...batdrop, jockey,...don't pass up the apple pie!"

Licking my chops at the table, I scraped off a drumstick and breast from his tray, together with his apple pie─I swear, he didn't even want the apple pie because it was made from dried apples! So satisfied was I that I invited my benefactor to our poker circle. He was heating up with excitement that he could be privy to the likes of us. You'd think we had given him tickets to his temple Ebbets Field.

While of one of us flicked out the hand of five card stud, the blue shirt said in a tone like a twelve year old hanging out with teenagers, "I never met anyone suicidal in my life before! Us guys from Brooklyn value our lives, you know. And here we now got a ship-load of yooz maniacs and it grabs me as good as Errol Flynn's Charge of the Light Brigade!"

Well, that little city-slicker won the first pot to our disappointment because of all things he had thrown a Butterfinger into the stakes against our K-ration "dog biscuits". It was my deal next and I was determined to deal from the bottom when I saw that crazy guy throw the Butterfinger back in and keep the K-ration chips! He started eating them! "Cheez, these are delicious!" he cried. We all looked at each other as though we had a nut on our hands─and this New York swab was calling us suicidal!

After the game I tore into my Butter finger. Smacking my lips over this island happy treat, I was ready to unroll my blanket on top the ammo and sack in till the next mess call, when the blue shirt asked me if I could get hold of anymore of those delicious cookies. "Cheez, jockey, you don't mean those K-ration-chips? I mean, they're not fit for consumption except in an emergency. I mean, you have to be suffering from malaria or battle fatigue to hanker for them─even on the front lines we avoid them till the C-rations run out."

"Well, I tole ‘ ya, gyrenes was screwy. They're Kosher, I tell ya." Hell, one good deed jerks another, so I opened my pack and gave him a box. "Holy Abraham, man, they got cheese in here too!" he yelped as his eyes popped.

"Aye," I said, "that's one thing you can say for them, though it's so chemicalized it doesn't taste like cheese─sort of like eating boot tongue with moss."

I saw him again in the chow line for the evening mess and he and his mates were all champing on the dog biscuits. Apparently it was a great thing to them─sort of a novelty. I suspected they were bored with the ship's baker.

That night we relieved the midnight watch down in the tank-deck and the Corporal of the Guard warned us to be on the alert─five cases of K-rations had disappeared.

The way I figured it those Brooklyn jockeys earned those cases of K-rations. They fed us a great D-Day meal of steak and eggs! This "breakfast" had to begin at 2300 in order to feed all the troops before they climbed in to the amphibious tractors. Moreover, the "cowards" saved our lives on Easter morning, which was D-Day, when their gun crew shot down a kamikaze aimed at the LCT topside and the plateau of ammunition underneath.