15th Emergency Rescue Boat Squadron (ERBS)

[Camp_Kearny]

My Grandfather served with the 31st Infantry Division until 1944 when he went to OCS in Australia and was reassigned to the US Army Air Force. He was not a pilot, but served as an intelligence officer with the above unit that was assigned to the 13th Air Force. He served in the unit in late 1944 and early 1945 before returning home in the summer of 1945 to visit his ill father.

 

My Grandfather spoke a lot about his time with the 31st Infantry Division where he was with the Headquarters and Headquarters Battery of the Divisional Artillery. He spoke less frequently about his time with the 15th ERBS. The one story he told was about the boredom of serving in Morotai and the Philippines at a time when his unit was not that active.

 

One of the boat commanders was a bit of a scammer and realized that he had made a ton of money selling Japanese junk to Sailors and the Merchant Marines. The problem was that they ran out of the popular stuff like flags. The boat commander made a few trades and got his hands on hospital bedsheets and paid the natives on Morotai to sew flags out of the bedsheets. He then had the meatball silkscreened onto the flags. The unit had a Chinese-American soldier assigned and he painted charactars on the flags to make them look more authentic. The flags were aged and then sold to unsuspecting sailers passing through. My Grandfather would always laugh while telling the story and then joke that the guy was the original Sgt Bilko. I sometimes wonder if any of those flags are in collections.

[TLHSS]

I heard a similar story from a 6th Division Marine stationed in China after the war. They had crates full of meatball flags. They determined, however, that they could get more value from the flags if they were "signed". So ... they had one of the Chinese kids fill the flags with chinese characters.

 

I've often wondered as well the number of these flags in collections today. The writing was total jibberish. After hearing this story, I had my flag translated, just to make sure it was a "real" one

 

Thanks for the story ...

 

Tim