The Santa Maria, was a luxury passenger ship that I sailed on to North Africa. ‘It did not have a gun on it.’ Over 6,000 soldiers were aboard.
I was a mess Sgt and on duty every 3 days. Before we sailed, I was aboard two weeks to get familiar with the kitchen. It had steam jackets to cook, and was very well equipt. There were 8 cooks on each shift.
We had 4 or 5 men pealing potatoes, they pealed three bags a meal. Each
bag weighed a hundred pounds. There was a machine to whip the potatoes. Almost every day the men had hot rolls, it took 3 or 4 pounds of yeast, to make them. They had plenty of good food.
A storm come up and most everybody got sick, I did. The sailors told me to not let my stomach get empty. I forced myself to drink tomato juice and I never got sea sick again.
NORTH AFRICA
We sailed through the Straight of Gibraltar. Spain was on one side and off in the distance was the Africa coast. We went on a long ways into the Mediterranean Sea and landed at Algiers in North Africa. The fighting moved fast in the desert of North Africa. Some of the country looked just like around here, some timber and some farm land. They grew lots of produce. Riding on a slow troop train, our soldiers would jump off and run out and unload a farmers cart. They would jump back on the train with his cantilopes and watermelons. It didn’t hurt the farmer, he would go to the Allied Military Government and they would pay him.
We could see war damage, and the country was so poor. Most of the time, the natives were kept back, but if they could get through, they were begging for food. At first it was a temptation to scrape the food off my plate and give it to them, every meal. The longer I was over there, like the other
soldiers, I got hardened to the sight of hungry people.
Part of the people that I saw were black, some like the American Indians and some were white. People always wore something wrapped around them. I never did see anyone, even the children, completely naked.
I saw some wearing a tow (gunny) sack, with slits in it, for their head and their arms. It really must have itched.
Women were covered, they always wore something white wrapped around them, they just had a peep hole, to see out of. Most of the time they carried something in both arms, and sometimes something balanced on their head, at the same time. I couldn’t see how they could do it. Usually a man going along, sometimes just watching.
One American soldier, a‘G I’ (government issue- a general name for any military man) was walking and come up behind a woman, covered in her white cloth. He thought he would be smart, he was going to jerk it off and see what she looked like. He grabbed her covering. As he jerked, an Arab man who was walking behind her--he whipped out a thin dagger and threw it. It stuck between the G I’s shoulder blades. He had been warned. We all were told to leave the women alone.
I saw President Roosevelt. He was over there for a conference and he visited the troops in North Africa. We stayed in a replacement depot. We had a smart Captain that grabbed me and ordered me to be in a bunch to ‘scrub the barracks’. I was a Staff Sgt with a permanent rating and knew that I couldn’t be busted easily. There was plenty of others that were lower grade than me. The Corporals respected our rating. Me and the same Sgt that hid at Fort George Meade, Maryland--we went off into the woods and hid, again, to keep from scrubbing the barracks. ( Louise still has the letter that I wrote her about hiding in Maryland) The fighting went rather quickly across the deserts in North Africa, it was about over when I got there.
We just set there in that camp in North Africa, until we were sent to on to Italy. Before we left North Africa, we were warned that if we did not go to church on Sunday---we were not to stick our head out. The Italians were a lot more serious about church. We were not to be on the streets unless it was to go to church. Italy is mostly Catholic. Most all the G I’s soon got a chain to go around their neck and a little cross on it.
They learned that it helped them get acquainted with Italian girls better.
MUSSOLINI was 39 in 1930 when he became Prime Minister of Italy. He started a program for boys 4 years old, 8 years old, 14 and 18. When they were 21, they became ‘Black Shirt Fascists’. Forced doses of castor oil were sometimes used to intimidate groups into becoming Fascists. Ethiopia was invaded in 1935, using poison gas. Other North African nations soon fell. Italy soon needed money to keep its war going.
Mussolini was winning battles and very popular.
In 1935 there was the ‘Rite of the Wedding Rings’. All the important women lined up and donated their wedding rings and gold jewelry. The women of the country gave 73,000 pounds of gold for the war effort. They were given steel rings when they gave their gold rings.