We’re put into companies, and bedded dow in old bamboo barracks, full of lice and bugs.
Fed sweet potatoes, and margerine, three times a day. Couldn’t eat mine. Saw the fellows from my outfit, that were left. Many more were dead. Had a couple of bad attacks of malaria. Last one, I went to the hospital. God, it was awful. Men were dying by the fifties and sixties, on our side. Filipinos, by the hundreds.
I was in the hospital three days. The last night I was there, the fellow on my left side, died of dysentery and malaria. The next morning an officer on my right side, died of the same thing. Weak as I was, I got out of there.
Each day was much the same there. Occassionally, I caught a detail, but most of the time, I just laid around.
Met Dale Irvine there. He was from Bay City too, talked to him a lot, about home, and what we’d do after the War. He was in the 17th Bomb Group.