The Howard Hansen Story of WW2

M: That was Boot Camp?

H: That was Boot Camp. It lasted seven weeks. Normally in peace time it lasted 13

weeks - something like that - they had to rush us through fast.

M: You were in the 2nd Division then?

H: Yes. As soon as I got out of Boot Camp I went into the "Three Deuces", 2nd

Battalion, Second Regiment, Second Division. They picked a bunch of us out of

Boot Camp and they picked different ones out of different companies. They took

three of us to George Co., the one I was in, or four of us, and the sergeants and

corporals of the squadron and the platoon leaders picked their squad leaders. The

buck sergeant from Alabama (nice guy), him and Corporal Johnson came down the

line and the sergeant says, pointing at me, "Pick that guy right there." The corporal

(heavy-set Swede) says, "Yeah, just look at those shoulders. They are just right for

a B A R." That's a 21-pound rifle - a machine gun - so that's why I got into the

company and the company was 'Barracks'.

NOTE: I asked Howard earlier if he was a Marine Raider. He said no, that he had volunteered for the Raiders, but you had to be able to swim to be a Raider and he couldn't swim.

M: You were still a private?

H: Oh, yeah. Those days you stayed private for a long time. In fact, the corporal that

was corporal then, months later after the Islands, Guadalcanal, and Tulagi, and I got

to New Zealand, I made three stripes in two months. Anyway, of course I was raised

a hillbilly and I got up early in the morning and that and they had squad sections -

they had upstairs in the barracks and our platoon was upstairs. The bunks were two -

high that we slept in and every morning I'd get up real early before anybody else.

We didn't have to get up till 5, but I'd get up and go in and clean the head for them.

then I'd come in and mop the floor around the bunks. They didn't have to do

nuthin'. They had one guy there, his name was Mott, and he was a motley character;

weighed about 230 - fat - and the corporal was scared of him cause he was big, I

guess. That darned guy, he'd leave his socks and shoes on the floor and wouldn't

pick them up. When I'd come through in the morning and clean, he'd be sound

asleep like the rest of them; but I didn't like to pick his stinking socks up - or shoes.

Now he understood me real clearly, but he didn't know me that well yet. He'd been

there awhile. First morning after I told him that I had to pick them up, if I wanted

to wash it down, which I did, I just sat them up on the foot of his bunk, which he

should have done to begin with, and the second morning they were there I threw

them in the GI can. Gosh! I didn't know I was going to disrupt everybody so bad,

but we were getting ready to go downstairs and outside to assemble - platoon

formation out front - stand out there - and we'd go to chow every morning. We got

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out there and no Motley, so Corporal had to go upstairs to see what was wrong with

Motley. He can't find his shoes or socks, so he came on down, says, "Hansen, what

did you do with Motley's socks and shoes?" I said, "They're in the GI can", and he

looked at me and he couldn't believe it - that I would do that to that big guy. He

goes up and gets Motley and brings him down, and when he came down the steps out

front, I said, "The next time that fat guy leaves them on the floor, I'm going to throw

them out the window." The corporal didn't say a darned word, but Motley never said

a word either.

We hadn't been there too long, our platoon sergeant, he came through - no! the top

sergeant came - hollering through "Anybody want to get on the mess duty?" "Here",

I raised my arm - nobody else would. They don't want mess duty: pots and pans to

wash and all that and so he said, "Come on up here" and I went on over to the

officer and he said, "What's you name?" and he wrote it down and then later on my

platoon sergeant came to me. "Hey, Hansen", he said, "I see you've got your seabag

all packed ready to go down to the mess hall. Unpack it", and he said, "Rowe, you

deadbeat, you go down to the mess hall and you go down there". So that's where we

got our mess cooks for the future. Those guys who fouled off in the line, wasn't a

year or two, they were our mess sergeant; and that's why we didn't have very good

food-cooks.

M: So why were you volunteering?

H: I wanted to get next to that food, by golly! that beats the heck out of being out

there in the hot sun parading around, doing all that field work, brush and all that.

M: But it didn't work.

H: No. In fact, the next thing I volunteered for though I got it, that was bayonet

practice! Nobody likes to practice the bayonet. That's the most boring thing in the

world. You get out there with a bayonet on your rifle and you're poking you know

what. No one volunteered for that, so I ended up down there in that school and the

Major Chamberlain was in charge of it. It wasn't just bayonet practice! We had ten

minutes a day bayonet practice. It was learning judo and hand-to-hand combat:

knife-fighting, pistol disarming, and all that. I wasn't there very long and they had

a buck sergeant, he was a black belt out of Tokyo in judo, and he had a couple of

corporals who were coaches who helped him. Well, this sergeant (there were two

from every company, and we made a ring around this mat and he'd throw people

over and all that. So this sergeant said, "You get up there. We'll make you the

dummy." I said, "Something tells me I'm going to be a dummy". So he threw me

over his shoulder and I landed like you're supposed to and he said, "Hansen, you've

wrestled before." I said, "No, Sir, I didn't." He said, "You're a liar. A damned liar."

I wanted to tell him nobody calls me a liar and gets away with it, but I couldn't argue

with him, and I said there was a chicken-house club out in the country where I was

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