Creative Ingenuity

[connie]

You have to grin over the spirit of ingenuity that came through sometimes. Where there was a need there were some clever inventions or creative use of what was at hand. There is probably an endless supply of stories that involve this type of creativity. Do you have any that come to mind?

[connie]

There were countless every day ways that this ingenuity was exhibited. But, I'll start it off with something large scale relayed to me by a medic friend who was imbedded in a field artillery unit. Maybe someone else out there witnessed this and can give more details. (Or maybe you have a smaller scale example of creative use of materials at hand.)

This one happened during an LST landing (after the channel crossing), I believe in Rouen, France. Upon landing, one of the elevators in the LST stopped working. I don't know anything about how equipment was stowed on the LST, but evidently there were vehicles on the top deck that could not now be moved off the vessel. What to do? According to the account I heard, the LST with the disabled elevator was positioned beside another LST and a ramp between the two was improvised. The stranded vehicles moved to the second LST and used its elevator.

[floydragsdale]

When you had to Go!

For the past several years, I have given WWII talks to school kids; Jr. High School & H.S. I wear my Ike Jacket (Ribbons & all) also, trousers to match while engaged in those talks.

"The kids really want to hear from someone who was there, a Teacher said to me". She continued to say, I’m just a teacher, what do I know about the War but they’ll listen to you,

My messages are twenty minutes long; that leaves about twenty plus minutes for questions and answers. Some students can be rude and will ask questions that an adult wouldn’t think of asking, such as "How many men did you kill? My response is, "I don’t know and I don’t want to know!"

One Jr. High School Student, in the back of the room, had his hand up for quite a while before I finally acknowledged him.

He was very serious as he wrinkled up his forehead and said’ I want to know, when you were in combat, standing in a foxhole and you had to do # one, what did you do?

To say the least, that question stunned me! There was plenty of laughter and chatter in the class room after that query.

When the room quieted down, I had a reply for the young lad. "That’s one reason we had a steel helmet", was my reply.

I went on to tell the students that the "steel pot" we wore had many uses besides protection for our heads.

We shaved in it, washed our socks in it, used it to cook in, just to mention a few things; we also used it to sit on; to keep our bottoms dry; sometimes it was used as a step-stool.

Consequently, that young mans query led into a session on field sanitation that produced more questions.


The moral of this story is, don’t duck a students’ question; face it and tell the truth. Otherwise they can get a person "cornered" very fast.

When about three years old, my Dad caught me in a lie; he properly lectured me for telling a fib. He ended the rebuke by saying, "Son, tell the truth; it so easy to remember." I never forgot that lesson.

Floyd

2nd Btn., 424th Regiment

[connie]

Floyd,

Good story! I was told many years ago that a question along this line was one of the first things that kids asked astronauts. They do get right down to basics! Actually, it answers questions I hadn't thought of asking. I did know some of the other uses of the helmet, but had missed even pondering this one.

You are doing great stuff with the younger generation! Thanks.

Connie

[connie]

If you're looking for a chuckle, you might hit Floyd's post (#3) in Alphabet Soup under Random Military questions. My search for the meaning of the letters BAR led to Carl's description of the Browning Automatic Rifle. This was followed by more detail by Floyd as to the assignment of these rifles. Then came some reflections on some post VE day hunting:
106thdivision.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=questions&action=display&thread=364