Joy in Providing A Cigarette

Dysentery was a big thing in the jungle and that’s where you just had the shakes and everything else and you’d light a cigarette for them, they always wanted a cigarette and so what we started doing was on our drops, we had a big bin and we had issue of Woodbines which some didn’t like them as opposed to the Canadian cigarettes, for at that time you could get them for a dollar a carton, people send them to you. So people were encouraged to get cigarettes from their relatives and what have you and they were all put in this big bin and then we tried to make it a practice dropping cigarettes on a lot of the flights and the word afterwards was that they really appreciated everything that we did, particularly the cigarettes, but you’d have to light a cigarette for some of them because they shook so badly and in the back of the aircraft you’d go back and see them and they were there in bad shape.