By Keith L. Winchenbach, born in Rockland, Maine on July 13, 1923.
Submitted by Jessica Winchenbach from handwritten notes from her grandfather, Keith L. Winchenbach.
Green Soldier Meets Jungle
We landed in Papua New Guinea on August 16th, and I got my first glimpse of the jungle, and jungle life. The camp that we landed at in New Guinea was very much like Fort Ord. I was assigned details, and eventually we were to be assigned to an outfit. The climate in this region was very hot. I think it was about 110 degrees when we landed. If we wanted to write letters home, we had to place something under our writing hand, or else the letter would become saturated with sweat and disintegrate.
The natives there were, in our Western eyes, uncivilized. These people looked exactly like exotic pictures that I had seen when in school. They wore very few clothes and always carried bamboo knives. The jungle was thick like pea soup and hilly, and there was grass that grew eight feet tall! Luckily, I managed to stay with some of the guys that I had known at Ord. I enjoyed being there at first. Everything was so ripe and new to me. There were so many places and things for me to see. It was incredible. I was astonished by the palm trees, holding their coconuts up high, where I couldn’t reach them!
The days in New Guinea were so very short. Daylight lasted only twelve hours all year long. We had no lights, so if we had detail, during the day, I was unable to write letters home. We got plenty to eat though, all that we wanted, and they ran movies for us every night for free. They fed us a lot of lamb while there, and we called it bully beef. Apparently, most of our food was coming from Australia. I got sick of eating lamb pretty quickly, as we had it so often. I guess that it was better than C rations though.
The water tasted funny to all of us at first, but the oppressive heat makes you thirsty, and soon I began not to care, although, at first I was trying to find Kool Aid powder to defeat the queer taste of the water. We had to use Australian denominations of money in New Guinea, and it took some getting used to. It was also hard for me to get used to seeing cars driving on the left hand side of the street. But of course, with time, I eventually got used to that as well, and didn’t panic when I saw cars on the wrong side.
The movies that they showed were in an open air theater. We sat on trees as seats, and were right out in the open. That was fine by me. The only problem was when it rained, which happened a lot as time went on there, and the monsoon season set in. Then we were out of luck!
Despite the heat when we first arrived, I realized how much it rained in Guinea. Someone told me that it rained over two hundred and twenty inches in a year. You could dig a hole three to four feet deep and find water. Apparently, the big rainy season was in the summer, but we were first there during its winter months. When I arrived, there was only one more month of winter, and I dreaded what the heat would be like in the summer months. I hoped that I could gradually get acclimated to it as the heat really turned on.
Being in New Guinea only a little more than a week, I developed dysentery. They told us that we would probably get it once a month, because of the tropical climate. Many guys had had it already before I got it. It was nasty, and I felt so lousy, and the sun was so hot, that I didn’t want to move. Dysentery, I learned, makes you feel very weak, but there was no room for weakness in the Army, so I kept on trucking. Luckily the bouts of dysentery only lasted for about a week or less, which was a relief.
In my first weeks there, I was put on detail for the Red Cross, hauling merchandise. We worked with a couple of native boys, and had a lot of fun. They could speak English very well, and were very smart. They were small boys, only 12 and 14 years old, but they worked just as hard as we did, if not harder. The two boys wore only small loin cloths, and no shoes. They told us that the average life expectancy in New Guinea was only thirty-five, because of all of the diseases that roam around there. I remember that they would say, “Lets go Joe,” when we weren’t working fast enough to suit them, which was often! Those boys were quick and worked so hard.
Where we were camped in New Guinea had previously been a battle field. I got a pass, and went to a nearby village, where a very fierce battle was fought. I saw parts of demolished planes, fox holes, and where the trees had been torn apart by gun fire. I also saw several Australian soldiers for the first time.
The similarities between the camp that I was first in, in New Guinea, and the camp at Ord were very great. I liked it in New Guinea all right. We worked a lot while we were first there, which was all right, because at least we were doing something meaningful, that could help end the war. Most of the work was loading and unloading ships with supplies for the battle front. This was called passing the ammunition, when we loaded ships for the fronts.
Who would have thought that in all my time in the Army in the States, I never once ran into anyone from near home. In New Guinea, I met a guy from Friendship, Maine. He had worked with a relation of mine in Bedford, Massachusetts. He said that he had been to a couple of dances in South Waldoboro, and had danced with my sisters, Mona and Lois a couple of times. He even said that he had taken Mona out rowing in Friendship a couple of times. Although I didn’t know him while I was at home, I ended up meeting him in New Guinea. How odd, I thought.
There was not much for us to do when we first arrived. We mostly worked, doing all sorts of odd jobs around the camp. If we didn’t work in the day time, we would work at night, so, work was constantly going on 24 hours a day. While in New Guinea, Sundays were like any other day, so we worked then too. In our spare time, we tried to keep busy, because the heat could make you crazy if you just sat and thought about it. One time, we walked quite a ways to the shore and collected little shells off of the coral reefs. These could be sold to the indigenous people, and were made into necklaces and bracelets.
Another entrepreneurial adventure that I had was selling coconuts. In the beginning of September, 1944, another guy and I wandered out into the jungle and filled a barracks bag full of coconuts. With Father in mind, we returned to camp and sold the coconuts to the fellows who had just recently arrived. On this first venture, I made about three dollars. We got a florin for each coconut, which is equivalent to $.32. The second day of our venture, we made two trips to the jungle, and I managed to make fourteen dollars! My partner in the business thought that I was a great salesmen. I never bargained, I just made like those who weren’t buying were missing out, and they would usually buy.
Once my buddy and I went off camp one day to find coconuts. We ran into some natives who were sharpening their knives on rocks. They shook their heads when we asked if there were any coconuts to be found up ahead. However, after giving each of them a cigarette, they informed us that there were all kinds of coconuts ahead, and we proceeded to get some. We had to cross a brook on a downed tree and were collecting coconuts when we heard a very loud noise. It must have been from an animal, but we were frightened and took off in a hurry, leaving most of our precious crop of coconuts behind.
We sold coconuts for about two weeks strong. By that time, all the boys were sort of sick of them, and we had to find a new venture to set out on. I kept selling coconuts occasionally, and made quite a bit from it. We were given ration tickets that were easy to sell. The army gave us beer tickets, and cigarette tickets as well. I didn’t drink or smoke, so I made quite a profit off of selling my rations to other guys. Between this and my coconut business, I raised enough money to buy my first car when I got home!
Another time, I hitchhiked down to Buna, about twenty miles. That was where I met Jack Taite, who now lives in Pensacola, Florida. In Buna, we went for a dip in the ocean, and I got pulled under by the undertow, which was extremely strong. Somehow, I managed to survive. I guess that I just let myself go with it, until I was brought back to the surface. This was the first time that I realized that some higher power was looking after me, because I actually made it back to camp that afternoon.
As the New Guinea summer got under way, the temperature just kept rising. I got used to it pretty quickly though. I became so tan that I was sure that my parents wouldn’t have recognized me. I was so brown that my teeth looked remarkably whiter, even though I only brushed them once a day! I think that everyone there lost weight. It was so hot there, that I didn’t really have an appetite. None of us did. Some of the guys lost over twenty pounds, but I didn’t lose that much. I remember constantly sweating that summer. I even sweat in my sleep.
It became very dry there for the first few weeks of September. It didn’t rain, not one drop. I remember the dust in my tent; a thick layer that lay over everything. If you drove in a truck behind another truck, it was impossible to see through the dust that was kicked up. The earth screamed for moisture, and split under the thick veil of dust. We were told that the monsoon season would start very soon, and it would be raining everyday.
When the rain finally did come, it came on strong. There was a downpour at the end of September. It was the first substantial rain that we had seen for weeks. Some of the fellows were down at the open air theater, and they got soaked. Our tent was leaking everywhere. Two of the cots got soaked. It did make things a little more lively around there though. After the first down pour, it began to rain day and night. We had a leaky tent, and had a hard time keeping it dry. I liked to hear the rain on the roof of the tent at night before I fell asleep, but I didn’t care for it during the day. With all of the rain that fell, I thought that there would be a flood, but the earth just soaked it all right up.
After I had been stationed at this camp for one month, I got more time to myself, without having to do details or K.P. There was a landing field only 50 yards from my tent. We could see the planes taking off right in front of us. Some guys had gotten to go up in the planes for rides at first. Then they stopped letting so many go, because it was making guys go A.W.O.L. One guy from my tent took a ride in one of those planes, and never came back! There was a rumor that he had gotten all the way to Australia, but Army rumors were always exaggerated.
By the end of September, most of the guys that had come all the way from Knox with me, were leaving. There were only three or four of the old gang staying back, and I was one of them. I had been with some of those guys for over eleven months. I would miss them when they left. That was also when we discovered that none of us would be staying in the branches that we trained in. This was disappointing, but everyone told me that I was lucky not to be going into action just yet. There was nothing I could do about it. It didn’t take long to get acquainted with the new fellows, as we were all in the same circumstance. We had all lost our buddies.
At the beginning of October, I was assigned to the Infantry division. Most of the other boys went into Calvary, but I didn’t see too much difference between the two. The outfit that I was joining had been in action for quite a while, between two and three years. These guys had been in battle, and knew what we were up against. I was lucky to get into an outfit like that. It was better than going in with a green bunch. I also thought that I might get back to the States quicker, by being assigned an older outfit.
I was sent to Hollandia, Dutch New Guinea. This was the staging area for the invasion of the Philippines. We were posted right near MacArthurs million dollar mansion. We did not stay there long at all, and were quickly brought to Leyte in the Philippines. We went into Leyte Harbor on D-day, and watched a lot of men land. We only saw one Japanese plane, which was swiftly shot down. There were 768 ships in this convoy, by far one of the largest movements of troops in all of the Pacific War. We were given a grand reception by the Filipinos on the island. They were very glad to see all of us. Apparently, it had been three years since the United States had been there. The Filipinos were very poorly treated by the Japanese, and they tried so hard to drive them out, with no luck. Everyday, they would come down to our camp and help us with work. The Philippines, or at least the parts that I was in, were nicer than New Guinea. It was not shrouded in jungle as Guinea had been, and the Filipinos seemed more civilized.
Published U.S. Legacies June 2004
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