Iowa cornfields
They came late to the ballgame by British standards, but they came to play. They were crude, crass and lacking in military finesse according to Montgomery and other Allied leaders, but they won many more times than they lost.
They were a curious mixture of fervent volunteer kids and caustic older draftees. They were soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines from Iowa cornfields and Detroit assembly lines. They sweated through eight abbreviated weeks of basic training, and shipped out to help throw back the tidal wave of Axis aggression in Europe and the Pacific.
'They were crude, crass and lacking in military finesse...'
Life at war for the American GI was essentially long hours of hard physical labour, painful slogging under heavy weights and tedious boredom - interspersed with moments of sheer gut-wrenching terror.
It was a hard way to live, more like a hobo than a human being, and creature comforts of any kind were hard to find. They were always hungry and usually moving too fast for field kitchens and hot chow to catch up with the advance.
Stomachs shrank and often rebelled at the weeks of steady D and K rations, crammed with calories and carbohydrates, but tasting just a cut above cat food.
No matter what the weather, dehydration was always a concern. Marching made them sweat, and combat left them cotton-mouthed and croaking. Water was often what they could dip out of a shell-hole. Treated with iodine or halezone tablets to kill the bugs. It tasted...well, it tasted like nectar if you were parched and shaking after a firefight.
Of course, there was always French wine or Dutch beer to be liberated if a GI was storming through Europe. If he was island-hopping in the Pacific, a little Japanese sake was said to help kill the intestinal worms that infiltrated through cuts, jungle sores or shrapnel wounds.
Published: 2001-08-01
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