Yank Weekly: Army Camp News - 1945-04-27
From Those Who Know
AAF Redistribution Station No. 1, Atlantic City, N. J. — In a bomber over Germany six bombs failed to release. The bombardier swore and Said, “If I ever get a chance, I’ll show them how to fix that system so it never fails.”
In a fighter plane escorting the same missibn a fighter pilot looked at his instrument panel and then at the enemy fighters. “If I ever get a chance,” he said. “I’ll tell ’em how to regroup these instruments so they can be read at a glance.” Back at the base, a mechanic stuck his head from inside an engine. "“Two hours to change that blankety-blank generator,” he said to the crew chief. “If they’d just make me a simple little tool like I got in mind I could do it in half the time.” Home after months of combat duty, these boys are getting their chances. There’s a set-up for collecting just such information at this and all other redistribution stations run by the AAF Personnel Distribution Command.
Called the Air Intelligence Contact Unit, it is headed by Maj. Gordon S. Torode, for two years a combat intelligence officer with a heavy bombardment group. “Our chief purpose is to find out what men don’t like about the equipment they have used overseas,” Maj. Torode says.
Suggestions come from all ranks and range all the way from a simple little tool a mechanic has devised to a complex report on how better air- support tactics can be used. A colonel developed a dive-bombing technique which became standard procedure. A sergeant who had been in one came up with an innovation to lessen the shock of belly landings.
ELIMINATING THE EXPLETIVE
AGF and SF Redistribution Station, Asheville, N. C.—CpI. Pa* Piccione of Brooklyn, N. Y., who has been in the Army for six years and won the Bronze Star in Italy, and Pfc. Val Dobrychlop of Erie, Pa., who served as a paratrooper with the 82d Airborne Division, became friends after arriving here and agreed on a campaign to eliminate Army expletives from their vocabularies.
"Some day we'll be civilians again," CpI. Piccione said, "and we don't want our talk to embarrass us. So we decided that whichever one used a word he wouldn't want to use in front of a lady would pay the other a penny."
"He owes me $4.06," said Pfc. Dobrychlop.
"But I'm improving," said CpI. Piccione.
TONY KENNELS. Starky, mascot of the 403d ASF WAC Band, Charleston, S. C., hides out in a sousaphone wielded by T-5 Geraldine Scott.
AROUND THE CAMPS
Camp Croft, S. C.—T-4 Peter Moshenko is legally Peter Timoshenko. He has gone by the abbreviation ever since coming to this country from the Ukraine many years ago, but now he’s changing back to the original. When he is asked whether he’s making the change because of the Russian marshal of the same name he only smiles and says he does not know whether they are related. Both families came from the Ukraine.
Camp Maxey, Tex.—A psychology-wise dental surgeon in the Area 7 Clinic had his receptionist, Ruth Grant, hold the hand of a jittery doughboy, Pvt. Jack Tucker of the 99th Infantry Division, while his wisdom tooth was being extracted. That was last May, and the tooth became the first of a collection of 23 Miss Grant now has stitched into a bracelet. Her plans now call for a wisdom- tooth necklace and earrings.
Camp Haan, Calif.—The roster of K Company, SCU 1999, recently deactivated here, read like a private’s lament. Nine top kicks were on the rolls —Judge W. Marion, Stanley A. Bojanek, Joe W. Carter, Leslie W. Engle, William A. Neidbreder, Paul F. Nell, Herbert A. Pratt, Leonard Valek and Roy W. Hewe.
Red River Ordnance Depot, Texarkana, Tex.—After she passed the physical at Fort Oglethorpe, Ga., that admitted her to the WAC, Pvt. Mary Ryker called the Ordnance Unit Training Center here to tell her father, Provost Sgt. G. L. Ryker, that she was in the Army, too.
Gl Turns Bomber Turret Into Fiddle and Bow
Fort Sam Houston, Tex. — A sheet of plexiglas, once part of a bomber turret, is now a perfect replica of a standard-make violin and bow, built by T-5 Jasper E. Flaming of the arts and crafts shop at the Army Ground and Service Forces Redistribution Station at Fort Sam Houston. Unlike the great violin makers of old, who toiled months on their instruments, Flaming fashioned his in a week. And unlike the delicate products of the old masters, Flaming’s fiddle, being a former bomber turret, can take a lot of punishment.
The son of a violinist, Flaming inherited his father’s violin and used it as the model for his plexiglas instrument. He is also making a ukelele, a guitar and a pair of dice of plexiglas.
Flaming took his plexiglas violin and called on Jascha Heifetz when the famous violinist gave a concert in San Antonio, Tex., recently. Holding his own $100,000-insured Guarnerious, Heifetz posed with Flaming and the plexiglas job. Then, after drawing several measures of the Beethoven violin concerto on Flaming’s instrument, he pronounced it excellent for practice purposes.
“I use an aluminum fiddle for practicing,” Heifetz told Flaming. “When it breaks down I don’t call in a violin maker. I call in a plumber.”
-Pfc. JOE DEITCH
Blonds Not Preferred
Camp Cooke, Calif.—Two bottles, one of hydrogen peroxide and the other of household ammonia, inspired four GIs to seek a little glamor. Pvts. Davis, Sauter, Bailey and Morrissey dashed and sloshed the liquids on their respective crani- ums and then retired for the night, expecting to awake in the morning with platinum hair enhancing their tanned features.
Came the dawn and a rush for the mirror. Their hair looked like straw—tired, mildewed straw. They didn’t like it, their friends didn’t like it, the colonel didn’t like it. “And by tomorrow.” the colonel said as he concluded his remarks, “have your own hair on your heads, and I don’t mean heads of skin. No shaving it off.”
It took a long session at the camp beauty parlor and the contents of some more bottles to restore the natural shades of their hair.
