[Tallguy]

If it wasn't for the Japanese food that was captured the Marines would have starved to death and they had no equipment to work the airfield except the captured Japanese equipment, another shining example of the ineptitude of the US Navy in the early days of WWII, and I include Pearl Harbor in that assessment.

In reading "An Army at Dawn" about the US Army operations in North Africa & Sicily I was also struck by the inadequacies of USN operations. Had there been serious naval opposition that would have been very messy. Even so, the Luftwaffe took out a lot of ships around Sicily while the Navy's jumpy AAA gunners were responsible for whacking the 82nd ABN drop there. Patton took a lot of heat for the failure to pass the word adequately, something that I hadn't known about prior to reading that book.

[PJ-Comix]

Sicily. Lets see...The U.S. Army made Sicily’s boss of the mafia an honorary colonel for ensuring that the roads on that island were protected from German snipers following the Allied invasion. And, no, his name was NOT Corleone.

[where's_the_Outrage?]

Throughout it all American troops never lost their sense of humor.

Eating captured Jap food that a lot of times was less than clean. A lot of captured rice had maggots, troops reminded the Catholics when eating it that “No meat on Fridays.”

Upon reading a book on Guadalcanal it was hard to reach the conclusion that the USA took the Island not because our Navy was better than theirs, but because their Navy was more screwed up than ours.

Recommend reading “The Corps” series by W.E.B. Griffin.