He upholstered a plane seat for Chennault’s dog

Here’s another World War II story, untold until now. The writer was China-Burma-India veteran Fred C. Wasem of Jim Thorpe and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

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On March 12, 1943, at age 19, I was inducted into the Army. I went to Atlantic City for basic training in the Army Air Forces and was billeted at the old Hotel Brighton. Our hotel was judged the best marching outfit in Atlantic City. We won the honor of having the Glenn Miller Orchestra play at dinner every evening for a week.

After six weeks, I was sent to South Dakota State College, where I took a course in Army law to become an Adjutant General secretary.

We were up at 5 o’clock in the morning, a half-hour to wash, make your bed and ready the room, exercise for half an hour, one hour for breakfast, a half-hour to one’s self, fall out and march to your respective classes. From 7:30 until noon were classes and lectures. Lunch was from noon until 1 o’clock. Classes then continued until 3:30, with compulsory close-order drill until 4:30. From then until 7 o’clock, you would eat and do what you wanted. Compulsory study began at 7 o’clock and ended at 9. Lights out was 10 o’clock.

This was five-and-a-half days a week. The school lasted three months. I lost a week of schooling by being hospitalized. [Wasem didn’t say whether he was ill or injured.] I had a very difficult time trying to catch up and did not succeed. I completed the course but did not graduate.

I joined the 1066th Quartermaster Company, 12th Air Service Group at Biggs Field in El Paso, Texas. After a two-month stay, we went to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and then to Camp Anza in Riverside, California. This was an embarkation camp for overseas. We stayed for two weeks and did nothing but loaf. Our company had 76 men and five officers; a WAC company had 75 girls and three officers. We had a wiz ding of a beer party.

We then went to our ship, the USS Hermitage, an Italian luxury liner which was scuttled in Cuba and made into a troopship which could accommodate 7,000 troops. We left Los Angeles on November 10, 1943, for Bombay, India.

With nothing to do but loaf, I went to the troop office and inquired about a job with the shipfitters. Being a plumber, I had a sailor as a helper who wanted to learn the trade. We repaired all sorts of leaks in the toilet rooms.

The ship’s engine broke down. While we were in for repair on the island of Bora Bora, my company had to do KP. It was so hot that the steel-plated deck in the kitchen burned your feet. I jumped ship for a swim.

We landed December 11 at Perth, Australia, and at Bombay 15 days later. I was put on detached service to await the arrival of our cargo ship. Our group consisted of 24 men and one officer. We stayed in Bombay about a month, then boarded a passenger train bound for Calcutta. We had only wooden seats to sit and sleep on. I joined my outfit outside Calcutta in a tent camp.

We were caught up in a monkey migration. Thousands of the animals covered everything in their wake. Very noisy and a big nuisance. It lasted about a day. Also, there were red-headed vultures perched in trees. When you would walk in the open area with your mess kit, after going through the food line, they would swoop down and try to steal your kit. You had to bend over and hide under a tree.

We left this camp via a narrow-gauge railroad for somewhere in Assam and experienced many delays. The worst was that the engineer put the train into a siding and went home to his family for about three days. We ran out of our food and had to eat British hard crackers, along with bananas we picked from the trees.

Upon arrival at a railroad yard, we drove two days to an airfield and boarded a C-46 for Kunming, China. Eight of us were put on detached service with the remaining elements of the old Flying Tigers until July 31, 1944. We then were transferred into the 1151st Quartermaster Company, 68th Air Service Group.

In Kunming, we worked in a warehouse very close to the airport. I was the NCO in charge of salvageable material such as clothing, bedding and office furniture.

One day, the major in charge brought a brigadier general into the office. The general was introduced to me. His name was Hood. I had to do a job for him on Major General Claire Chennault‘s private airplane. I had to upholster a fighter pilot’s seat which was being installed in the airplane for the general’s dog. I had the job done with old olive-drab blankets. General Hood was so well-pleased with the work that we became friends. He loafed at my office many times and smoked cigars with he. He brought me beer from India when there wasn’t any to be found.

We had two Chinese orphan boys tending to our barracks. They cleaned and mopped, made our beds, sent our dirty wash to be washed and dried, then picked it up for us. We had a sit-down mess hall, and the house boys acted as waiters. Breakfast always consisted of eggs, hotcakes or french toast, juice and coffee. Lunch and dinner were chicken or water buffalo, boiled vegetables, rice, bread and coffee. I lost about 30 pounds in two years.

We left Kunming for Luliang Airfield. I was put in charge of wholesale PX supplies. It took a lot of paperwork for ordering, inventory and allotting of supplies based on each company’s morning reports for all the outfits we served. This job paid extra, over and above my T/4 rank and overseas pay. It added up to a master sergeant’s base pay of $135.

A volunteer job was added to my regular job. It was a grave registration detail. We were called out all hours of the day and night to recover the bodies of the dead flyers and others. After the bodies were identified, we tagged and boxed them, then transported them by truck to Kunming, where they were placed in above-ground vaults.

We left Luliang in November 1945 via a C-54 for Calcutta and stayed in a camp for about two weeks until a ship came to take us home. The General J.R. Brooke arrived. We went by way of Ceylon [now Sri Lanka], up through the Red Sea, stopped in Egypt, then through the Suez Canal and into the Mediterranean. I saw the Italian boot in the distance, the Rock of Gibraltar. When we arrived in New York on January 3, 1946, the ships in the harbor sounded their foghorns and the fire boats put up a display of water, welcoming us home.

I went by train to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, then to Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania, where I was discharged. The Army gave me $1.50 for bus fare home to Mauch Chunk [now Jim Thorpe].

Two years, nine months and 26 days since I left home.

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Wasem had his own plumbing and heating business in Jim Thorpe and later worked for Bethlehem Steel. He was a Lions Club president, local unit commander of the China-Burma-India Veterans Association and president of the Allentown United Veterans of Wars. He died on his 85th birthday in 2008. You can read his obituary here.

He sent me his story in the late 1990s.