Ready
for Italy
In November
we received orders to transfer our remaining patients
to other hospitals and to "tear down" the hospital.
Once again, we had no idea where we were headed. We
would miss Tlemcen, but the anticipation of the unknown
took over. Supplies had to be crated and sent by train
to Oran. When we moved from Tlemcen, Algeria, on our
way to Naples, Italy, we were bivouacked near Oran
getting ready to board a British ship.
This "staging area" was nothing but a sea of cold
mud with lots of rain. Everything we owned was
wet. This was about the most miserable spot
we were ever in, but looking back it seems just
a small part of our experiences. I am with our
M/Sgt. Rudolph Tupala. That chair he is sitting
on had to be burned for heat the last night we were
there. With "Tup" and me, we had S/Sgt.
Williamson, T/Sgt. Polzak, Sgt. Christiano, and S/Sgt
Metcalf. Each one of us had two Army blankets,
a rain coat, "low cut" oxfords with lace up leggings
(at this time there were no combat boots in the military
inventory), and a shelter half (a shelter half was
half of a tent designed for two soldiers for shelter).
Two of us would share our blankets and snuggle together
to keep each other warm. We took a number 10
tin can, filled it half full with dirt, poured gasoline
into it (which we siphoned from vehicles) and lit
it for warming the tent. This burning caused
a lot of smoke, and our faces and clothing became
almost black from the soot.
Relaxation Before
Embarkation
ITALY
AND SICILY
NAPLES, ITALY
NAPLES HARBOR
Our troop ship tied up next
to an overturned ship in Naples harbor, where we docked
and walked off the side of this ship; this was in
the last week of December, 1943. Our voyage
on the British ship was typically British. We had
to sleep on hammocks in the dining room where we were
served mutton and little else. Our sleeping
area was hot, and you could not get away from that
mutton smell. Breakfast was ground up grain
with water, no milk, no coffee, just some awful tasting
stuff they called tea. The Germans were still
bombing this harbor day and night, and we were lucky
to get in there and on our way before we were hit.
Local People Asking
for Food in Naples
This is
the first place we stayed in Italy near Naples harbor.
We ate along a high fence; the man in a (along the
right near the top of this picture) was looking down
at a lot of people who gathered at meal time begging
for food with their tin cans. They would put
their cans on long poles and lift them up to us.
It was right on this wall where we ate our Christmas
dinner, 1943. The Italian people at this time
were having a very hard time because there was little
food anywhere. Before the Germans left this
harbor they torched the two remaining spaghetti factories
in Naples. The Germans also mined the local post office
with a time bomb which did not explode until almost
7 days after our troops arrived.
-
