[beachn4fun]

Because of no other ship being in the next column, we tended to wander about a bit. One of our escorts came alongside and told us by blinker "to get back in column and stay there". Since our ship had made two trips into Naples Harbor and had shot down 5 German planes they really didn't care and proceeded to tell the escort to "bug off and leave us alone". The escort ran back up to the Commodore of the convoy and told the boss what we said. We were told off and all the officers on the Bridge did was laugh about it.

LOL. I can just imagine.

[Kathy in Alaska]

We were flown from Dum Dum Airfield (now Calcutta International) to Chabua Air Base (Upper Assam, India), via C-47. We flew from Chabua to Kunming, China, Yunnan Province via a C-46 named "Double Trouble". When we took off from Chabua I noticed fuel pouring off of the right wing. After dragging the Flight Engineer down to look at the problem we returned to Chabua. They filled up the tanks and we tried again. This time we found an engine not acting right and another return to base. This time they put a new set of sparkplugs in both engines and we tried again and made it. From Chabua to Kunming was approximately a five hour flight over the infamous "Hump", without oxygen and you sleep well as the crew goes on oxygen at about 12,000 feet. This put us into Kunming on 15 July '44.

Upon arrival in China, we were put in an Operations Center to await transportation, when a sergeant came in and asked for "two more coolies" to help unload the plane. Why? Because they just shot the last two for stealing. One stole a pair of socks, the other stole a pack of cigarettes. Simple (No more Stealing). This was done by the Chinese Army MP's. We ended up being housed at a former girls' school, now the HQ of Y Force, China. After meeting our compatriots of the 993rd Signal Company we started some training. We spent many days in the field with a Radio Operator practicing our radio and code work. On one occasion we were set up under some trees with our radio station, which consisted of a radio powered with a Hand Crank Generator, usually cranked by a Chinese soldier, a radio operator and a cryptographer. This day a brilliant Chinese soldier decided to knock a wasp's nest out of the tree above us. Panic city! The radio op split and also the coolie cranking the generator. I finally got another one to crank in the power and I ran the radio. I kept being told to slow down, which was funny as my Morse Code dated from my Boy Scout days.