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on there; a lot of sex taking place. I had a fiance back in the States and I didn't mess around. I didn't want to do that anyway. One thing I forgot to tell you about boot camp was they used to have nice shoes. I think they gave us Florsheim shoes; I had never had as nice a shoe in my life. But they wanted them kept nice so we had to spit polish them. One time when I was overseas I got my shoes all shined up really nice. I'll be damned if three of my friends, I guess they were people I knew anyway, came along and urinated all over them. That ticked me off to no end so what was I going to do to get even with those guys? They slept around with just their shorts on. They maybe had a sheet. You would take these sheets and get water on them and put them over on you to get cooler. So I waited around until they were all asleep and I got a friend to come along and he pulled the sheet off. I knew where they made ice and this ice was made for the mess hall to cool drinks and stuff. So I got three pans of ice and just dropped that and strung it right over their bare chest down to their shorts. They jumped out of there and were running around like mad. I told them, "I don't want any more of those shenanigans. We're even." "Okay." That wasn't too bad but now to tell you, to get back to this business of ice. I don't recall exactly but we were issued a case of beer every so often; maybe once a month, maybe twice a month. The beer was called green beer and the reason it was called green beer was because it was in beer cans painted green. Then when you drank it, it had
not been cured, left to age. Some of the guys really liked it so we would sell that to them or trade it for something. Then the same with coke. With the coke, we would get a case of coke and we didn't get as much coke as I think we did beer. The coke sold better anyway, but I kept all of my coke and got rid of the beer. I found the ice making machine for the cafeteria, for the crew, for the mess hall. It was placed up in the air maybe six or seven
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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