Prior to Dec. 7, 1941 and soon afterwards, when US troops were building up in the Alaska Territory in anticipation of war breaking out with Japan, The War Department in all its infinite wisdom decided that to fool said “Yellow Peril” about such movements, to inoculate them with anti-malaria vaccines.
According to Dad, some of the vaccine stock was bad and made hundreds of the troops very sick, and a few even died. Unfortunately for Dad, he was one of those who got sick, and suffered a couple of recurring bouts of the disease.
He had never been to the tropics, so we know he had not picked it up there. Luckily the Paris episode was the last recurrence he endured.
Adding more insult to the GI Joes’ injury, the Army had issued them tropical uniforms & clothing...... to fool Tojo’s intelligence agents.
It didn’t take long for the commanders on the ground to rectify that dumbassery, but after the Battle of Attu in 1943, my dad picked up a decent pair of Japanese issue boots before they were buried in the trenches with the enemy dead. He was anticipating how warm those fur-lined boots would feel on his perpetually cold feet. However, he dropped the idea along with the boots when he discovered the previous owner’s feet inside them.
Dad on the right, somewhere in the Aleutians.