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saddlebum66 said:
Miz K, this isnt aimed at you in any sense....just an old cowboy rambling along.....
.....The outfit willy is rocking is blue denim, which was the then-current fatigue duty uniform....I have photos of my Dad, my Uncles and the rest of the 21 Brooklyn kids who all enlisted on the same day, to stay together.The little boonie hat and all. This was what was known later as "The Brown Shoe Army". Not such a much, is it? BUT in January of 1942, Our First Response, task force 6184, left the Brooklyn Navy Yard for Australia. Still not much, eh?
Then for your delectation, understand this. Those blue uniforms were dyed green for what they knew would be jungle work. The problems began with that dye. It reacted to salty sweat and caused VICIOUS rashes which wouldnt heal in the presence of the damned colorant. Heat and humidity caused a lot of problems with rations in cans, especially those stored since WWI
( YES...The USArmy NEVER throws anything away). So Willy's blue jean fatigues actually caused more early casualties than the Japanese did. Add in the food problems, and it was a 3 ring circle jerk. Daddio always said their best days out there were when they'd overrun a jap ration Dump...the Japanese had ten years of learning curve on us....and so their rations were dry rice, dried fish and sometimes pork or beef, dried veg....The jungle troops on that side in New Guinea ate far better than we did....and were uniformed for the heat and wet. We outlasted them early on...But as a kid, 20 years later, I remember being told not to bite off a green thread, if I had to stitch a seam, because the green was toxic


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This is all very interesting stuff, SB. You're a wealth of information, and I appreciate your time writing this!
 
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