Down the hall from our offices on the East side of the building, we had a large room  with many sinks and tubs (with hot water) and stools which we could use any time.  We also had a stool and lavatory at the rear of our bunk room off the British Major's Office! 

Paul in the grotto near Caserta Palace

   Here we also had our lst-3-graders Mess….No menus, but really good food…And with classical orchestra music – mostly waltzes) playing during the meal!  I can still see the tall, typically Arian, haughty German Prisoner of War who was waiting our table one time in a rather surly attitude.  One of our Sergeants had been to Germany to see the Gas Chambers, etc…He had the big German lean down and just whispered “Dachau” to him, and he snapped to attention immediately!   This was one of the “Gas Chamber” camps! 

Paul and Jimmie Jack on the steps of the Naples Post Office.

 

Another of our Officers in Italy formerly was the German Professor at Arizona State University – Gerhartdt Mundinger – and at the Capitulation (we handled the coding of messages from AFHQ to German General Kesselring so we knew when it would happen, and Capt. Jerry was sent to Salzburg, Austria to secure the German Signal Equipment –Radar and other equipment…He told us he had 80 Germans working for him at the depot there!   He brought back several souvenirs – two $300 Leica cameras, complete dark-room set up, German typewriter (which I finagled from him), German Carbine, etc… 

 

Jimmie McKay from Glasgow Scotland,  Chaplain Spence over his right shoulder.

 

To back up my assertion that I “fought the war with a typewriter”  the only time I had a rifle in my hand was the day before I came home for discharge!  Capt. Mundinger, I think Lt. Coffey and myself were target shooting in a gravel pit with the German carbine!  Nice Little gun it was too.

 

Paul Shooting his Colt Model 1911A1 .45

 

    Also prior to my leaving Italy, I got to go out to the Tyrhennian Sea shore with our Chaplain and a group of G.I.’s and WACs where he conducted a Baptismal Service in the Sea…Strange to me, because he was a Presbyterian Chaplain and I always thought they just sprinkled!??   He took them way out and “dunked” them!    One of the WACs, a wonderful gal from California, who had been saved at the Church of the Open Door in Los Angeles but hadn’t been Baptized, came out of the water, gave us a big hug and said “I thought I was happy before, but never like this!   There must have been 10 or 12 of us in the back of a G.I. 2-1/2 ton truck, singing our hearts out in  songs and choruses on the way back to Caserta!

Paul and an other GI swimming at the seashore

                         

 

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