With the Old Breed_ At Peleliu and Okinawa - E. B. Sledge [19]
We moved along the cafeteria-style line and indicated to sweating navy messmen what foods we wanted served onto shining compartmentalized steel trays. The messmen wore Skivvy shirts and were tattooed profusely on their arms. They all mopped the sweat from their faces constantly. Amid the roar of ventilators, we ate standing at long folding tables. Everything was hot to the touch but quite clean. A sailor told me that the tables had been used as operating tables for Marine casualties that the ship took on during one of the earlier Pacific campaigns. That gave me a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach every time I went to chow on the President Polk.
The heat was intense—at least 100 degrees—but I gulped down a cup of hot “joe” (black coffee), the stuff that replaced bread as the staff of life for Marines and sailors. I grimaced as the dehydrated potatoes battered my taste buds with an unsavory aftertaste characteristic of all World War II-vintage dehydrated foods. The bread was a shock—heavy, and with a flavor that was a combination of bitterness, sweetness, and uncooked flour. No wonder hot joe had replaced it as the staff of life!
After chow in the steaming galley, we went topside to cool off. Everyone was soaked with sweat. It would have been a relief to eat on deck, but we were forbidden to take chow out of the galley.
One day, as we moved along some nameless companion-way in a chow line, I passed a porthole that gave me a view into the officers’ mess. There I saw Navy and Marine officers clad neatly in starched khakis sitting at tables in a well-ventilated room. White-coated waiters served them pie and ice cream. As we inched along the hot companionway to our steaming joe and dehydrated fare, I wondered if my haste to leave the V-12 college life hadn't been a mistake. After all, it would have been nice to have been declared a gentleman by Congress and to have lived like a human being aboard ship. To my immense satisfaction, however, I discovered later that such niceties and privileges of rank were few on the front lines.
During the morning of 17 March we looked out across the bow and saw a line of white breakers on the horizon. The Great Barrier Reef extends for thousands of miles, and we were to pass through it to New Caledonia. As we neared the reef, we saw several hulks of wooden ships stranded high and dry, apparently blown there years ago by some storm.
As we closed on the harbor of Noumea, we saw a small motor launch head our way. The Polk signaled with flags and blinker lights to this pilot boat, which soon pulled alongside. The pilot climbed a ladder and boarded the ship. All sorts of nautical protocol and mutual greetings between him and the ship's officers ensued as he went to the bridge to guide us in. This man was a middle-aged, pleasant-looking civilian dressed in a neat white Panama suit, straw hat, and black tie. Surrounded by sailors in blue denim and ship's officers in khaki, he looked like a fictional character out of some long-forgotten era.
The blue water of the Pacific turned to green as we passed into the channel leading into the harbor of Noumea. There was a pretty white lighthouse near the harbor. White houses with tile roofs nestled around it and up the base of slopes of high mountains. The scene reminded me of a photo of some picturesque little Mediterranean seaport.
The President Polk moved slowly through the harbor as the speaker system ordered a special sea detail to stand by. We tied up to a dock with long warehouses where United States military personnel were moving crates and equipment. Most of the shipping I saw was U.S. Navy, but there also were some American and foreign merchant freighters along with a few quaint-looking civilian fishing boats.
The first Pacific native I saw wasn't dressed in a hula skirt or waving a spear but nonchalantly driving a freight-moving