I have no idea how they heated the water, but it
was always hot. I was in the same shack as Ullo and Bruce so we all
suffered that place together. While we were overseas we asked Lettie
and Ullo's girl friend Dolores, who lived in Oakland to get together
and they became friends.
After a couple of weeks we moved to Riverhall, near Colchester. Here
we lived in metal nissan huts and conditions were a little better. We
still didn't know what kinds of planes we would get, P-51 or P-47s and
were very happy when we got the P-51s. it was January, still cold and
we had one small stove in the center of the metal building and we were
still trying to burn green wood. The mess building used soft coal to
cook and it came in big blocks some chunks over a foot square. We
would go down there and steal a chunk when the cooks were not looking
and run like hell. We broke it up for burning, and would keep warm for
awhile. I had about ten Army blankets on my cot. First I covered the
cot with a thick layer of newspapers and then put all the blankets on,
tied a rope around to hold everything on and never made my bed the
entire time I was there. I crawled in Just like it was a sleeping bag.
You had to watch out lest someone from another hut come in and put a
hand full of shells from our 45 caliber revolvers into the stove when
no one was looking. They made quite a noise, but would Just rattle the
stove and not really hurt anyone.
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