Rod's military service-June 1944-June1946

In the fall of 1943 I was a senior at St Mary's High School in Portsmouth, Ohio. Our country was engaged in a total war effort against Japan, Germany, and Italy. There were 130,000,000 citizens and 10,000,000 of them, between the ages of 18 and 35, were in uniforms of one of the military services. As soon as a male youth reached 18 he had to register for the draft, and if he was physically fit, he would be called to serve. My brother Bill was in air cadet training at that time and I was crazy to fly. I was enthralled by all the air combat aces and followed their exploits daily, one of whom was Joe Foss (more about him later) who shot down 27 Japanese Zeros. With my academic test scores I could have signed up in the Army Specialized Training, or the Navy's V-12 program and gone to college upon graduation. However, I wanted to fly. In December of 1943, when I was still 17, I enlisted in the Army Air Corps Reserves (there was no Air Force Branch of the military at that time). The deal was that they would then let me finish high school before calling me to active duty.

In June of 1944 I received orders to report to Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis to proceed to Sheppard Field, Texas for air combat training (quotes from my orders). When our train with 178 of us on board backed into the field there was a marching band there playing. We thought "there must be somebody important on this train". To our surprise, they were there to meet us! We were quickly deflated as we marched onto the base and received catcalls from the barracks "that you will be sorry", probably from troops who had arrived the previous week or two.

At the time of my enlistment I had passed all the physical, psycho motor, and academic tests. In fact, the WAC (Women's Auxiliary Corps) who gave me my academic test results complimented me for achieving the highest test scores to date in Scioto County. I thought this was real testimony to the quality of education I received at St Mary's High School. Anyway, they retested us at Sheppard Field and belatedly discovered my eye muscular unbalance, and to my bitter disappointment grounded me.

After completing basic training I was put on a train and sent to Champaign, Illinois, to be trained as a cryptographic technician. While waiting to be trained I pulled KP for about 6 weeks. After completing the training I was given a delay in route to go home for two weeks back to Portsmouth. I then boarded a civilian train headed for McClellan Field in Sacramento, California, an overseas replacement depot. My Mom packed my musset bag full of fried chicken which I survived on for three days and nights in route. In Chicago, I actually rode to Des Moines on a gas lite day coach from World War I! All public transportation at that time was packed. Gasoline was rationed (4 gallons per week unless you were in a war critical occupation), and there were no tires. All the automobile plants were making military vehicles, trucks, tanks, whatever. There were no new cars being made!

Guess what? At McClellan Field I again had the pleasure of pulling KP for several weeks while waiting to ship out. However, I became good friends with a Jewish guy from New York (he was a poor Jew, not a rich one). We discovered that no one wanted to clean the latrines. That only took about two hours a day and then you got to goof off the rest of the day. I had cleaned the toilets at the Ideal Milk Co. while in high school, so it was no BIG DEAL for me. So my buddy and I went to the orderly room and volunteered for latrine duty! Oh! They hooped and hollered at these two stupid jerks volunteering for latrine duty. We just snickered to ourselves.

Then the Air Corp in their infinite wisdom sent us back to Sheppard Field, Texas. It was just as cold in the winter as it was hot in the previous summer (110 degrees at dress parade on a black oiled drill field). Guess what? More KP. Then, back on the train to Greensboro, North Carolina, another overseas replacement depot. Surely, we were going to Europe. More latrine duty, only this time we were really veterans of the ways of the Army. We did not go near the latrines for several days until a Captain, with smoke coming out of his ears, came down on us. In cases like that we learned to really play dumb. We jumped up, saluted very smartly, looked as stupid as possible, and told him we were wondering when someone would tell us what to do. He knew he had been had and told us those latrines better be bright and shiny real quick or we were facing a court martial. We said, yes sir! Yes Sir! Boy, when we got down there, they really were a mess.

No Europe. Back on the troop train to California to a port of embarkation where I boarded the USS General Mann. I heard there were eight thousand of us, but we did not yet know where we going. They never told you anything. Orders were always secret. We were packed in there like sardines. Down to the berthing compartments at dusk. "Now hear this, all troops, lay below to your berthing compartments, the smoking lamp is out on all weather decks". At daybreak you were back on deck to breath some fresh salt air and stand in line for your spam and beans. Loaf around all day on the steel deck...no chairs...no lunch...then chow and back down at dusk. This for thirty three days south of Australia, south of the Philippines to Bombay, unescorted, sailing a zig zag course in case of a stray Japanese sub finding us.

As you may have gathered by now, I was a replacement. Not assigned to any unit. In Bombay, as a casual, I was privileged to serve on a detail for several days to clean up the ship. After looking out at Bombay, I thought this wasn't too bad. I would just stay on the ship for the remainder of the war. No such luck. Down the gangplank with my seventy some pounds of gear and on to a narrow gage rail car to travel very slowly across India to Calcutta. It was nightfall and the car was full of flying cockroaches. After a titanic battle killing the roaches, we laid down on the wooden benches, covered ourselves with mosquito repellent and tried to sleep. The latrine was a hole in the floor in a corner closet of the car where you could squat and watch the bombs fall unto the tracks below. Actually, it was quite comfortable. The trip took about 5 or more days.

In Bombay, about a dozen of us were transferred to a commercial river steamer to travel upstream to what is now East Pakistan, then known as Assam Province, to a big base call Kurmitola-Tezgon. On the steamer we were cordoned off in a small space about 15 x 15 behind chicken wire to separate us from the crowds of native passengers. The cardinal rule of the military is to keep your troops healthy. Although we were full of shots and vaccines, they did not want us mixing with the natives. This lasted about three days and we survived on K Rations and our canteens and slept on the deck. The packet would stop about every 15 miles and unload and load freight and passengers. Each time, the passengers, mostly the youths, would come and hang on the chicken wire and stare at us G.I.'s who they had never seen before.

Finally, in Tezgon, another guy and I were loaded on a C-47 cargo plane, along with a load of cargo, and flown to Myitkyina, Burma, where I was assigned to one of the four airfields we had recently captured from the Japanese. There was only one other cryptographer, and he had not been there very long because the field was captured in January 1945 and I arrived in March. Between us, we had to operate the message center 7 days a week from 6:00 a.m. to midnight. At last, I felt that I was really contributing to the war effort, and my service was valuable. When I first arrived the 3rd Air Combat Cargo Group was flying drop missions to our troops to the east and south, but Myitkyina was strategic, and after the Japanese lost it and were unable to recapture it, they pulled out. The 3rd Combat Cargo was sent to China (We got to buy all their beer!) and 80 C-46 cargo planes came to our field. They could carry 26 drums of high octane gasoline and flew round the clock to China supplying the Flying Tigers. We lost a plane a week either due to mechanical problems or the weather. I handled all those sad messages. All this time we lived in tents and ate lousy chow. I lost about 20 pounds.

The war ended suddenly in August after Hiroshima, but they could not immediately send us home. There was a point system based on length of service, overseas time, and battle awards. The ones with the most points got to go home first. In the fall I went back to Kurmitola Tezgon, worked 8 hours on and 104 off, played cards, football, and whatever, until, you guessed it, they sent me to Agra, India to be a cook! However, after a week of cooking on the midnight shift, I visited the message center, found out they were short handed, and got transferred back to my old job. Then, for some unknown reason I was transferred and flew to Calcutta. When I arrived there I met some of my buddies, moved into their basha, and a small matter, I did not report in, but played sports and cards and whatever. When I went to HQ to see if I had mail the Master Sergeant, who I had gone overseas with, collared me, and we tangled over me not reporting in. It seems he had intended to send me south down the Malay Peninsula to dismantle a radio station and ride the flat car back, but had to send someone else because I was....hmm...unavailable. It seems they did give some deference to those of us who served in the forward areas as opposed to those in the rear who got the stripes, good chow, and easy duty.
Anyway, a happy ending. The next day I was posted on the list to go home, and the day following I boarded the ship, and after 28 days landed in San Francisco. Then, the train again to Fort Benjamin Harrison where I first reported, got my honorable discharge and rode the bus to Portsmouth and home. What a wonderful day!

Yours truly

Sergeant Charles R. Kinskey

P.S. I attended a cocktail party on Gainey Ranch in the late 1990's and was introduced to a big old guy named Joe Foss. I stepped away and while crossing the room I said to myself "Joe Foss, Joe Foss". I went back and said are you THE JOE FOSS? Yes, he was. My high school hero. So, in a little bit he was recounting with his hands demonstrating Jap Zeros on his tail and all that good stuff. He was shot down twice, awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, elected governor of South Dakota, and was the first president of the American Football League! Quite a remarkable man. He died about three years ago. He lived two doors from us on Gainey Ranch.