Promotion to
Street Cleaner
Living
in our "private quarters" was, to me, fantastic. We had an unbelievable larder of food and
drink in a storage chest, all the fancy canned meats as well as the standard
canned vegetables and fruit, cases of quart bottles of potent Australian beer,
always the best steaks, hams, and bacon on the Island. We did all our own cooking, except for lunch
or when we went out for dinner. If we
weren't too far away at lunch time, we'd go home for a sandwich and beer and a
quick game of cribbage. As he trounced
me in cribbage, I can still almost hear Bronko sing, "It's still the same
old story, a fight for love and glory, a case of RUPERT'S BEER". I was in HOG HEAVEN; I'd never had it so
good. I was the "Kid" and they
seemed to enjoy making me an equal member of the group and I responded with
restrained, but I'm sure realized, heartfelt appreciation.
After
a short time in the rat business, I was summoned to the Surgeon General's
Office. I immediately assumed it had
been discovered that I had been AWOL from my sleeping quarters since shortly
after being assigned them. I was going
to protect my benefactors at all costs, so I began concocting explanations in
my mind to explain my AWOL status. The
most appealing to me was that I was living with a French woman who had taken me
in at first sight, but I wasn't confident I could sell that to a full Colonel
who probably wasn't doing all that well himself.
After
I reported, with all the correct military protocol, the Island Surgeon said,
"Sparks, I've been hearing good things about you (that was a surprise; I
would have bet he didn't know I existed), especially about how quickly you are
learning French and the way you get along with the French civilians. I have a job involving French civilians that
I think you can handle".
"Admiral Halsey likes to walk to work every morning and he has brought
it to my attention that the streets of Noumea are filthy.” I've arranged for three 6X6's to be assigned
to the Island Surgeons Office, and my office has hired three French civilian
truck drivers and 18 Kanaka’s (Melanesian natives) as street sweepers. I'd like you to take charge of this
operation; find out the route Admiral Halsey walks to work and clean that
first, but I want all streets in downtown Noumea swept before 8:00 AM. If you want the job, you'll have a jeep
permanently assigned to you and full authority and no additional
responsibilities after you clean the streets except taking care of your
workers. Do you want the job?" I could hardly restrain myself from saying
"Hell yes, Sir", but I answered in a more respectful affirmative.
WOW,
less than 21 years old and I was City Street Commissioner of the City of
Noumea. It was a sweet deal; I got up at
4:00 AM, drove to the compound where the sweepers slept to make sure they were
up, had coffee with them, and watched them climb into the trucks for their
morning street sweeping. Of course, I
had to check on each crew several times each morning to be absolutely certain
that Admiral Halsey could neither soil his shoes or have his sensibilities
offended by the sight of trash. I kept those streets so immaculate you could
have eaten off them.
When we were finished and the trash
had been deposited at the city dump, I met briefly with the crews to record
time and attendance, solve any problems and then I was free until the next
morning. For a while it was luxurious to
have the whole day free to sleep, read, study French or be a tourist; but it
soon became not only boring but lonely.
All my friends were working and I was too committed to the marriage vows
to enter into the world of French marital intrigue and much too inexperienced
to know how to go about it if it had occurred to me.
On
one of my excursions outside the city, I discovered that the American Armed
Forces were buying fresh vegetables from the resident farmers. Many of the truck farmers like the couple
with whom we shared the shower and toilet, were former indentured servants from
what was then French Indochina, later Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. They had come to New Caledonia under contract
as indentured servants, house or field; they were provided food and lodging and
a small amount of cash. However, most of
their wages went into an account to be paid when they returned to Indochina at
the conclusion of their contract.
It
was an arrangement eagerly sought by upwardly mobile Indochinese because they
could return after seven years with, by local standards, a large amount of cash
for investment. The capture of the
entire region by the Japanese early in the war created a problem. They could not be sent back to Indochina;
some continued to work for their former masters, much like many of the former
slaves in the South after the Civil War, others struck out on their own on
truck farms or other endeavors. I never
knew if the French Government gave them their accumulated indentured pay, but I
doubt it because none I met appeared affluent.
Totally
bored with the City Street Commissioner job (only a short time after I was
flailing to escape going into combat and now I was wheeling and dealing-C'est la Guerre), I requested another
appointment with the Island Surgeon. I
reminded him that sewage disposal in Noumea was by "Honey Bucket"
pickup. There was no municipal sewage system; instead all human waste was
accumulated in buckets that were picked up periodically by truck and taken to
the city waste treatment facility (if you think being stuck behind a garbage
pick up truck is
unpleasant,
you should have experienced the rich olfactory experience of following a
"Honey Bucket" truck down the street).
I
didn't know the ultimate fate of the contents, but I reminded the Colonel that
it was traditional in some oriental countries to use "night soil" for
fertilizer and suggested that the Surgeons Office should initiate an inspection
program to insure that American troops were not exposed to parasitic diseases
by eating food contaminated by such practices.
The
colonel smiled and said, "Sparks, I agree and I'll bet you have someone in
mind to do the inspecting". A
Sanitary Corps (later part of the Medical Service Corps) Captain, along with an
enlisted assistant, replaced me as "City Street Commissioner" and I
was off to protect the health of American GI's from the dangers of contaminated
vegetables.
That
was an even better deal. I could, and
did, under orders from the Island Surgeon, drive all over New Caledonia
inspecting farming practices and fresh vegetables. Along with soil samples, I, of course, had to
take large samples of fresh vegetables (and fruit, too, if it was ripe) back to
Noumea for analysis. The hospital
laboratory that performed the tests never found any evidence of sanitation
malpractice, but I began contributing to the sweet life at our private
quarters. now we had all the fresh fruit and vegetables we could use to go
along with the steaks and Australian beer.
It really was the sweet life. After a short while George was transferred
back to the States; how he arranged that in 1944 when all troopships returned
to the US empty I don't know, but I'll bet it cost him a couple of sides of
"condemned beef". I “inherited” all his clothes, including at least a
dozen suits of khakis, that he couldn't take home and we were down to three.
Bronko was promoted to Sgt. before George left and Staff Sgt. On his
departure.
Then things began to slowly disintegrate. Ralph became involved with a French woman who
lived across the street. She was the wife of an American Air Force Captain who
was stationed at the Tontouta Air Base, several hours by car up the Island, and
was able to get to Noumea only on weekends.
In a moment of contrition, she confessed her adulterous relationship
with Ralph to her husband, swore by the Blessed Virgin to never be unfaithful
again and, to cement her resolve, told Ralph what she had done. He was not pleased; there were all kinds of
unpleasant things that could happen to us if the Captain wanted to get nasty.
The lady’s contrition lasted about a week before her
hormones regained control. She knocked
on our door one afternoon and asked Ralph to come to her place that night. He informed her that he was not about to get
caught in her bedroom by her husband sneaking in from Tontouta. Sometime after dark there was a knock on the
door, and the whispered words "Ces't moi". Ralph went to the door and she stuck a 45
Cal. Automatic in his navel, cocked it and said "come with me". My bed was directly across the room from the
door, putting me in the line of fire, so I hit the deck when I heard the hammer
click on the Colt 45. Ralph said
"you don't have the guts to pull the trigger" and took the weapon
away from her. After the adrenalin stopped flowing I thought, "he must be
one hell of a lover for a woman to pull a gun on him to get him into bed with
her."
Bronko became the target of a demure young wife of a French
soldier. They lived a couple of houses
down the street and the husband, probably at his wife's suggestion, asked
Bronko over for dinner a few times. She
didn't speak a word of English and Bronko's French was even worse, but somehow
they managed to end up in one or the other's bed when the husband had night
duty. He soon became suspicious and
eventually filed for divorce.
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