I was on one ship, The S.S. Illinois, a States Lines freighter, where we were given staterooms that would normally be used for paying passengers. This ship was new, 1st or 2nd cruise I believe. It even had a swimming pool, but they hadn’t filled it for this trip. On that ship we ate with the ships officers; white linens, silver service and a steward to take our order at the table.

   On another ship, a steward brought a metal trash can filled with iced San Miguel beer, which we kept in the shower. He kept it full the whole time we were at the docks.

   Another ship had phones in the cabins and the stewards took our guard schedule and would phone us with a wake up call to make sure we were up in time not to miss breakfast. They even took our order and the food would be ready when we got to the galley. Sometimes an MP’s life could be very tough.

   On the other hand I was once on a LST with a Japanese crew who had very limited English skills and none of us had any Japanese language skills at all. We managed to communicate with hand gestures and charades. Again we were welcomed, although I think it had a lot to do with the fact that the ship was loaded with a cargo of ammunition and they weren’t very excited about going up the river without some sort of protection. We ate with the crew, but every meal literally involved a bowl of rice with a fish head on top, cold. Breakfast was the fish head rice with the addition of a sunny side up egg, cold. The only heat came from bowls of very spicy hot sauce. We dipped deeply into out stash of C-Rations on that trip.

SP/4 Lawrence D. Brown, 188th & 560th MP Company, 92nd MP Battalion, January 1966 to June 1967.