Wet Conditions

We had a little stove set up from ammunition boxes, they were steel boxes that the ammunition come in. We had the mechanics make a little gas stove out of them. Maybe I shouldn’t be saying this, but then you had the pipe running into there and we had the gas fires there to keep the command post warm because your fingers had to be, you know, cool to work in the command post and on the artillery board and that. And it was damp and cool, I mean at night but we really didn’t have winter clothes there either see we just had our ordinary battle, but it wasn’t that cold that long. But you know some nights, you know, it was probably maybe a month or so it would be cool but in the summertime there when you’d hit those monsoon rains, you really used to get the wet then. Pretty muddy, the trucks and guns we used to pull them out of position there, they just bogged down, aw jeez, I tell yah. I got it one day, I went out to fix one of our lines to the OP observation broke down when it was along this road and this other guy and myself went out at night kind of dark from the command post and then you generally meet the guy coming in from the OP and see if we could meet in the middle and find out where this line is broken, a telephone line down. Were walking along there and I told the guy, “Where the heck are we? ” I said, “I can’t even see the line”, I had it in my hand. Walking along the road and we’re in the water up our knees. I said “Where the heck’s the road? ” he said, “You’re on it.” That was a monsoon rain storm there, used to water like that on the road, you know, if there’s got a dip in the road, oh jeez. But the mud oh it was just muck.