tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-328611812011-12-14T18:35:17.403-08:00The Unusual Tour Of An Infantry Lieutenant In The Western Pacific 1945 – 1946 <p> Word War II - era reminiscences by Al Jensen, formerly of Penn Yan, at Keuka Lake in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York.n2informationhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09743723370623592986noreply@blogger.comBlogger121100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32861181.post-1155780400728755382006-08-16T19:06:00.000-07:002006-08-16T19:06:40.730-07:00

As I wrote segments of this memoir and shared them with my men’s writing group, I was surprised to find how few of these writers, many of them in their sixties, knew about the places, things and events which are so rich in my own only slightly longer memories.Victory versus Liberty Ships, types and identification of landing craft, names and locations of places in the western Pacific were as much

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Hving polished off forgettable details in Manila, I shortly received my homeward marching order — sailing orders, really. I’d be just a name on a passenger manifest again, but for a first class cruise through the Southern Seas, I thought to myself. The ship’s name was the Marine Dragon.The Marine Dragon was a C-4B military hospital/troop transport, the longest class of cargo vessel built during

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When I reported in at Manila headquarters I hoped I’d be assigned to some other transportation duty; perhaps a safari someplace. Reality prevailed. In a weird way. I was “promoted” again. I’d been assigned as troop commander on a Liberty Ship. It would shuttle around the Philippines carrying people. On these short inter-island runs, all passengers would essentially be deck cargo; families,

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My every return to AFWESPAC headquarters in Manila brought me a new job. This next one emerged quickly and soon proved “a wild and crazy thing.” I left the personnel office with the Military Specialty Number of Troop Transport Commander, my designation now long lost by my memory as well as the official army file system. (You may recall that the War Department’s depository in St. Louis burned

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The Herman S. Snavely lay out in the Manila Harbor sun, basking in the airs of a light northerly breeze and cleansed of all signs of the 2,400 steerage passengers. It was good to think of so many uprooted people replanted in their communities, and I wondered what some might be doing. For several days I too basked and loafed as we awaited orders, expecting another full load of returnees to the

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Shortly after landing from the FS boat at Manila, I requested a transfer to some other, non-flying, assignment. Perhaps in part because of the rawness in my voice, and the lingering fumes of aircraft fuel whenever I exhaled or had a coughing attack, personnel officers found a new and very different line of work for me.“Okay, Jensen, you’re going to sea. You’re transferred immediately to the troop

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Just a few days after my return to Manila Base from Hollandia, I stood waiting at foggy daylight to once again board a flight with Safe Hand Air Courier bags. Even at sea level and near the Equator, I felt chilled and damp in Manila. Puffing on a smoke, I considered the positive, which had been assignment to fly as a courier, and the negative, that I would not fly on a U.S. Air Force plane today.

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“People pay thousands of dollars for a vacation trip like this” was a popular army saying whenever we were going into a new assignment. The fitting response was a laconic “Yeah!” This isolated Safe Hand courier station outside Hollandia, though, did prove to be an exception for me. Of course, there were a few spots….My first afternoon at Sentenai Air Strip, after the daily hour of rain had

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When the jeep’s driver deposited me outside Manila’s temporary HQ AFWESPAC, evidenced by an office prefab building, I could only wonder where I would start my new staff assignment. A clerk had me dump my bags, and then pointed me down one of the long hallways. An open doorway at the end was labeled “Safe Hand Air Courier Service.” Inside, a high counter separated me from a small room crowded by

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When I landed there in the late days of summer 1945, Manila was just springing back to vigorous free life after a half-decade of war. As the first and largest American city to fall in the Japanese invasion, it had suffered under continuous and brutal occupation, then another battle as the Philippines were freed by waves of Allied attack. My memories of this time are scattered vignettes, for I was

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hen we climbed down the nets into the bobbing landing craft, we infantry officer replacements were still pretty much at sea. We knew we were in Manila Bay, near the north shore. We still had no idea where we were going, why, or what for after 35 days en route from San Francisco. Our C-5 troopship, the Cape Mendocino, looked smaller as we were marched over to the narrow-gauge railroad near the

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When I boarded the troopship in San Francisco Bay as an infantry replacement officer, I was one of the thousands being shipped into the Pacific Theater to help end the war with Japan.I had spent the months since graduating from the basic Officer Candidate Course at Fort Benning, Georgia in the cadre of the independent 144th Infantry Regiment. Our mission was advanced infantry training of

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