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Officers Training School down at Fort Benning. I never liked to take orders and it was pretty obvious that I didn't want to give any and so I didn't want to get myself in a position like that and besides I wasn't any dummy. I knew that if you went and got Officer's Training then you owed the Marines some years and when it was over with I wanted to be out and away from there and go back to college. So I never did go do that although it was wonderful that they gave me the opportunity to do so. Mr. Misenhimer Tell me about boot camp, what was that like? Mr. Finley Oh ho, let me go to boot camp, by golly. In boot camp we had a lot of types of things that we called busy work. For instance let me tell you some of these things. I went down to San Diego and I went to the boot camp there and it was in November. I told you about going swimming. That was the first thing that I had to do. Another thing about that swimming and then I'll tell you about that boot camp. The only time that I really got scared about not knowing how to swim was one time I don't know where we were going to, but we were going from one island to another aboard this big troop ship. I was sitting along the deck on a cable and it was at night. I was half asleep. It was so hot downstairs you couldn't sleep. So I was up there and I looked out and my God, we're being
torpedoed. Right out of there, off to the side, here came this streak of phosphorescence right towards me and I jumped up and finally I woke up and it was a bunch of fish moving right straight towards us. Thank God because I knew we were going to be torpedoed. They also told us when we were on those boats that they didn't want anybody messing around smoking because you could see a lighted cigarette for half a mile; I think
The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Albert Finley. Finley joined the Marine Corps around December of 1943. He provides vivid details of his boot camp experiences. He served with Headquarters Company, 4th Marines, as a radar mechanic on Corsairs, repairing radio and radar gear. Beginning in September of 1944 they traveled to Guam, Kwajalein, Pearl Harbor and Majuro in the Marshall Islands. Finley shares a number of anecdotal stories, including working with POWs. He was discharged in the fall of 1946.
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