Granddad blogging: Escape from the front

Last week, my grandfather nearly got his million dollar wound. This week he gets off the front, with just a little bit of deception and comments on his time in the catering corps and French hygiene standards.

But our company had gotten so weak and down so low that they pulled us back to the rest area, and I think it was in Nancy, France. I’m not sure where it was. But anyway they pulled us back and fed us and re-outfitted us and did this, that and the other and we were way away from the front.

And the only thing we had to do at night, somebody had to stay on the telephone. And they called on the telephone that night and said the cook up at Battalion headquarters got some kind of disease and they were gonna have to send him back to the States and said we want your company to send a cook up there.

Well I went down to the First Sergeant and said they’d called from Battalion Headquarters and said they wanted me to come up and cook for ‘em. And he said “Cook? Hell, what do you know about cooking?” I said “Well, man I’m a graduate from the Army Cook and Baker’s school.” And he cussed a little more and said “Get yourself up there.” And that was the last of my front activities.

And I was back cooking again, I was cooking for about 20 or 30 men. We had one unit out of a field oven that we carried with us and it was loaded in a jeep every time we moved. And the Assistant Battalion Commander had the last, when you tear a command post down, the assistant battalion commander was the last one to leave and the jeep that held my stove was hooked on to his jeep. So I was as far back as you could possibly get and that worked much better.

****

I went through Hitler’s Eagle Nest. I went up there to it, saw it, didn’t go through it. We went up there ‘cause that was the only place that I knew of in Germany or Austria where they made ice. They had an ice plant. We’d go up there to get ice. The only other ice you got was where in the winter time they cut huge blocks of ice out of the river – and the rivers were polluted something awful, but we’d throw those anti-pollution drugs in that water and make ice tea and then throw those pills in the water. Supposed to kill anything and everything. Drink it right on.

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[What was it polluted with? Sewage?]

Aw, the people were so thick. You’d go in these French farmyards and they would have a concrete pit not quite as big as this room, but nearly, and it sloped toward a hole in the middle and all the straw and everything from the cows and the horses and everything was pitched in that pit and the dad-gum well water wouldn’t be as far from here to the kitchen from that pit where all that water ran in the ground.

And then all the human waste was saved and it pumped out in great big tanks and wagons, they called ‘em honey wagons and they’d take those out and I don’t know if there was enough liquid with it or if they put more liquid with it or not, but they’d spray all the vegetable gardens with that – the lettuce and the carrots, spinach and everything else.

And I guess the sewers, I don’t know, I didn’t see a sewer treatment plant, I guess it went straight in the river. As far as I know it did. We were supposed to have water purification outfits with us to purify the water. I know I was pumping water into a jerry can out of one of these wells close to the manure pit one night and some Lieutenant Colonel came by and wanted to know what I was doing. And I told him I was getting water to cook with or wash dishes or something, I don’t know what.

Oooh, he chewed me out, up one side and down the other. Said I was supposed to be using water from this purification plant. I said “Sir, I never have seen any water from a purification plant.” And he cussed around there for a while and they sent two jerry cans of water that they said was purified, I don’t know whether it was or not. I never did see another one.


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