On the first night out, we had a great poker game going down in the hold of the ship. Boy, did I toss my cookie. I heaved and felt so sick that I couldn't return to the game.

We didn't know where we were going. Someone had a radio and Little Morino said we must be going to Panama because all the music was coming from Mexico. We believed him because a few days later the music was coming from Nicaragua, and then Costa Rica. Before we landed, a big crap game was being held on deck. When I got the dice, I couldn't lose. At one point, I had just made 45 dollars, shooting two or three dollars at a time, when Julian whispered to me that I should get out of the game, which I did. The two guys next to me were covering every bet laid down. The other guy would pick up the dice and would hand me "loaded" dice. I couldn't ever roll a seven to crap out. Later the following day, the two of them got the hell beat out of them and all their money taken away.

We landed near Panama City about January 10, 1942. We were trucked out twenty miles into the jungle to Camp Chorreah. We learned later that we were being sent down there for six months of jungle training.

Hot, humid and rain every afternoon, but we played soldier through thick and thin. On one of our little exercises, I accidentally fell into a little ravine. The vines and undergrowth were so thick that it took my buddies ten minutes to hack me out of there with their machetes.

Three months later, we moved to a location near the Mira Flores Locks on the Panama Canal. We finally got to sleep in a barracks. Big deal; we still had to man observation posts out in the jungle, or along Lake Gatun.

Word came down from Division Headquarters that we could apply for Officers Candidate School in the States if we had any college experience. Going through that school would turn us into "Ninety Day Wonders." About twelve of us applied and all were accepted. The others applied for the Infantry, but I applied for Finance. All of us were put on Temporary Duty while awaiting transportation back to the States.

A Major came down and assigned me to audit the books in the five PX's on the Atlantic side of the canal. That was fine because it would beat hanging around the barracks, and I would have a jeep to move around in.

On Saturdays or Sundays, I'd pick up my two best buddies, Abel and Julian and head for Panama City. We never bothered going to the nightclubs that hired Blue Moon Queens. Oh, they were real beauties from Spain, Columbia or Mexico, but when you sat down with them, you had to buy them a Blue Moon Drink, which was colored water, for a dollar.

We always headed for the University. I always brought them along because they spoke spanish and could find out where the coeds hung out. We had great chit-chat with the girls, but to get a date, we'd have to be formally introduced by someone they knew and had to go to their homes to meet their parents for final approval. That was too much, so we'd find out where the next party was being held and meet them there.

When they had the "Running of the Bulls" down the narrow streets to the bull ring, I was invited to join a small group on a veranda overlooking the fools that ran ahead of the bulls. Every one up there was a brother, cousin or had some other relationship with the President of Panama. It was a very corrupt country.

They were sure glad to see all the army personnel from the United States. They were scared of attack by the Japanese. And so were we.

 

We had only two P-40 fighter aircraft there at the time. They ended up strapping machine guns on the wings and firing them by pulling a wire. All of the other aircraft were outmoded. They put up a bunch of small blimps around each lock, two locks on the Atlantic side and one on the Pacific side. The blimps were attached with long steel cables to discourage low-level bombing. Our ammunition dumps were literally unusable because the humidity caused so much rust and corrosion. Even our communication system was outmoded. If the canal was knocked out by the Japanese, it meant another month of sailing around the tip of South America to move war material and people between the Atlantic and Pacific.

When the 45th Division got their orders to board a transport, they also knew that they were going to Australia. General Douglas McArthur was already there. Since they had to leave those of us awaiting word from OCS (Officer Candidate School) behind, I dressed up in a white suit, put on my Panama hat, and went down to see them off. I made sure that damn Captain saw me. I should have given him the finger.

The Major from headquarters came by later and told me that since I was physically fit, I couldn't apply for Finance School, but that I could enroll in the Infantry School. No way! Second lieutenants who don't know their stuff, get shot in the back by their own men. So he asked me if I'd like to go to the Radar School at Fort Amador. Fine with me. Six weeks on a post with beautiful palm trees and a golf course sounded great, and only a couple of miles out of Panama City.

The school really turned out to be a challenge. While I had flunked algebra in high school and college, I ended up passing trigonometry, logarithms and calculus. I had to apply myself if I wanted to stay. They were training us to be troubleshooters on their new radar sets. When it was certain that I'd finish the school, I was promoted to corporal again.

At the close of the school, they were going to send me into the jungle again, sitting atop a mountain thirty miles inland. No thanks. So the Colonel sent me to the Coast Artillery at the Gatun Locks over on the Pacific side of the canal. I knew that anything would be better than being out in the jungle where these wild and crazy natives kill one another. At every little celebration, they'd inevitably end up with a killing. Out there in the jungle, they didn't know there was a war going on and couldn't have cared less. Even the police would wait a week before going out to investigate a killing.

I crossed the Isthmus by rail and reported to a small company that had four 40 mm gun revetments in their command. The one I was sent to was about a mile from the lock, but close to the town of Gatun.

The only thing I didn't like about the company was that they were all regular army. They treated us as if we were stupid and lorded it all over us. The third day I was there, I was in the revetment going through dry runs of loading and firing. I must have said something because the Sergeant jumped down into the pit and said that if I couldn't keep my mouth shut, he's shut it for me. I was really embarrassed because whatever I'd said didn't warrant his threatening me with his fists. I wasn't about to foul up the first week I was there so that weekend, I went into Cristobal and bought a pair of boxing gloves. That Saturday afternoon, I encouraged everyone to have some fun and then asked a new recruit (Carrol Cohee) to ask the Sergeant to put them on with me. He outweighed me by twenty pounds, so he readily accepted. I peppered him with so many left jabs, his nose started swelling up. After I landed a couple of good rights to his jaw, he started swinging leather all over the place. I'd sidestep and land a hook to his head when he came charging in. As soon as he got tired, I landed my fist into his gut all the way up to my elbow. He doubled up and fell to the ground trying to breathe. I took off the gloves and helped him up, telling him that I just got lucky. From there on out, he treated all of us with quiet respect. The First Sergeant who witnessed the fight, and who incidentally had two years of Golden Glove experience down there, congratulated me and told me not to worry about any more hazing.

Two of the new arrivals, Carrol Cohee and Frank Gazee became my best friends. We played basketball with and against the Gatun High School kids at their community center. Carrol, who had bad eyesight, would find a spot on the floor near the basket, shoot with his back to the basket and make it. Frank was just a fair player, but he always seemed to have money in his pocket. If necessary, he'd pawn his ring until payday. A real nice guy to have around.

When we went out to the 40 mm firing range, Frank operated the up-and-down part of the gun (elevation), and I operated the lateral movement. We were firing at a sleeve being pulled by an airplane. We blew the hell out of the target the first time. A colonel came over to see why a couple of fresh recruits were so successful. I explained that we both had trigonometry in college and last night we knew that the plane would be doing 140 mph as it came by at a distance of about 2500 feet. We figured out the drop of the trajectory from the time-to-target and used that result in order to bisect the target. He didn't believe it, so he had another target fly by. This time we missed the target a little bit in the lateral direction and cut the tow cable 15 feet ahead of the target. I explained that it was my fault; I had given it too much lead.

I guess the colonel spent an hour talking with us and was really quite friendly. He was a West Point graduate and said he'd contact me about running a recreation program he was thinking about. His name was Colonel Robert Wright.

We had a young kid who used to run errands for us. We'd send him into Cristobal on a Chiva (a little open bus owned by the city) to bring back some fried rice for a late evening snack. I asked him what his name was. He said, "Bud Nall" and told me that he lived just across the street. I then asked him if his dad was "Whitey" Nall. He said yes, and the next evening, I went over to visit.

I had worked with him at Parker and Elephant Butte dams. We had a lot of friends in common. He even worked for Winston and Allen Bacon, my brother in law. He loved to fish, so now I had a fishing buddy who could teach me how to catch snook (a sea bass) and tarpon.

In the fall of 1942, I moved up in the world when the Captain made me a company clerk. I guess I was the only one who could type. I did a good job and a little more. One of my pet projects was to keep the company informed about how the war was going in the South Pacific. I put out a large map and posted it on the bulletin board. Each day, I would pinpoint our movements and victories on the map (thanks to Time and Newsweek magazines). I also rearranged the office so that the Captain had more space (kissing butt).

With my new found freedom, it was no big thing to get a pass since I routinely issued them, and, with his approval, signed the captain's name. Usually it was to do a little socializing in the neighborhood or to head for the Washington Hotel for dinner and dancing. Once again, I was the civilian I'd always wanted to be. When things were really slack, I'd write myself a pass to go fishing with Bud Nall. He knew how to fish. He'd take me over to a swamp to catch "monchola," a fish to be used as bait. If he caught three, we'd hook on to three tarpon. The "monchola" was a small fish, about 4 inches long. It was black as the ace of spades, had a double row of razor sharp teeth, and lived in the swamps. I never did catch a monchola, but my main job was to keep an eye out for any alligators over six feet long. The only one I did spot, I swore was 15 feet long; but when it passed by us, it was only 6 feet long. Bud, who was only 14 at the time, took me to Gatun Lake. We got into an old native dugout that must have weighed 300 pounds. Fifteen minutes later, he hooked into a tarpon that must have weighed over 100 pounds. That baby pulled us around for an hour before he got tangled up in the stumps and broke Bud's 100 pound-test line. I hooked on to a good 60 pounder, but lost him as usual. The whole time that I fished in Panama, I must have had 40 of them on the line, but I landed only three. Boy, are they fighters.

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I was down at the spillway fishing or cut-baiting as we called it. I was using a 3-inch hook loaded with the guts and gills of two snooks that I had caught. A tarpon grabbed it. I let him run with it for about five seconds, then yanked as hard as I could to set the hook. That old tarpon came out of the water, shook his head, and then threw that bait 40 feet into the air. What a thrill when you've got one on the line. The tarpon were the best fighters you've ever seen, but were too bony for eating. So we'd sell our tarpon catch to the locals for 10 cents per pound.

Now I did do other things besides fish down there, but let me tell just one more fish story. Whitey and I were fishing in the Chagres River from a boat with a 15 horsepower engine. I hooked into a nice one using an 8-inch spoon type of lure. I wasted about fifteen minutes trying to bring him in when Whitey said "Let's drown him." So Whitey starting dragging him upstream at about fifteen miles per hour with his mouth wide open on top of the water; so fast that he couldn't get any oxygen with the water passing so quickly through his gills. After five minutes of that, I reeled him in easy as pie. As I reached down to grab him by the gills, he exploded. He scared me so much that if Whitey hadn't grabbed me, I'd have fallen out of the boat and would have been alligator bait.

In late 1943, Colonel Wright, whom I'd hoodwinked into thinking that I was a great statistician, asked me to organize a touch football league. After I finished my morning report for the Captain, I took off to visit all the other command posts spreading the word about the league. I drew up a schedule for eight teams and arranged for referees for the games.

Man, those were tough games. Bloody noses, broken arms and fingers at every game, but the troops loved them. My next project was to set up a schedule for softball. We had sixteen teams including the Air Force.

Every year they held boxing matches. The First Sergeant asked me to represent our battery, but I backed out. Thank heavens I did. A couple of battleships docked and five or six sailors entered the tournament. The guy I probably would have ended up fighting was a human buzz saw. Lord that guy was fast. He'd have annihilated me.

Late in 1943, our Supply Sergeant was transferred, so they made me acting Supply Sergeant. I welcomed the job because it definitely gave me more free time, but I was still responsible to be on-call if an alert was sounded. I held this job for the last six months I was down there. When Colonel Wright came by for an inspection, he asked me about a bullet hole in the floor. I told him that when Lt. Jefferson, who'd been transferred came to turn in his pistol, I double checked it to make sure it wasn't loaded. I cocked it and fired it into the floor. It was loaded. That Lieutenant jumped five feet into the air. When he came down, I really read him off. He didn't know that it scared the shit out of me too.

After two and a half years down there, a lot of us guys were to be sent back to the States for redistribution to another Theater of Operations. So the Captain put me back on a gun until my boat showed up. They placed me right on the Gatun Lock. We worked two hours on-duty, followed by six hours off-duty. The Lieutenant wanted a change of diet, so he asked me to go down to the spillway and bring back some snook, which was very good eating. The spillway was only about a quarter of a mile away. I had caught about thirty of those little goodies on light tackle and was hauling in another one when a tarpon grabbed him. The tarpon took off with such power that the reel began to burn my fingers. So, I stuck the reel in the water and tried to stop him. No way. He ran out the line, and then broke my rod leaving me with half a pole. Anyway, I had enough fish for the whole platoon. It's the important things like this that I still remember.

In early 1944, after about two years down there, the guys were getting rock happy. They were getting so ticked off at the way the captain was running our Company that they'd go into town and foul up. In one instance, a few of the guys were shooting the Blue Moon Queens in the butt with bow and arrows. Others were going AWOL and to hell with showing up for roll call. It got so bad that the Colonel made the troublesome Captain ask everyone what the trouble was, without fear of being reprimanded. He even had to write down all the comments. Boy, did he get an ear full.

When it came to me, I had only one gripe. Why wasn't I promoted sergeant after two or three months as the Acting Supply Sergeant? The Captain, who was from the South said, "Well you told me a 'lahr'." I said, "Do you mean I told you a lie?" He said, "Yes you told me a 'lahr'. When we had an Alert, you said you were down at the Nall's (only about a block away), but the Lieutenant told me the next day that you were really much further away in town at a ball game with a redhead." "Man," I said, "Why in hell didn't you have guts enough to confront me then?" All he said was that I was doing a good job but that he just wasn't going to promote me. I got in the last word by saying "You S.O.B., that sure is a shitty way of disciplining people. No wonder the Colonel is all over you, and you'd better put that in your report." Boy was I mad.

The next afternoon, we learned that our transportation, an LST (Landing Ship Tank) was in the Canal and that we'd be boarding the next day. It was June, 1944. It was hot and humid and I was serving my last duty on that gun. I was sitting on the gunner's seat reading a Reader's Digest Magazine. After an hour, I was tired, kind of sleepy, kind of daydreaming. As I sat there, I removed the safety and was pressing down on the firing pedal very slowly, wondering how far I could push it before it went 'click'. I wasn't even thinking about the gun being loaded, and 'kapow', the damn thing was loaded. Lord, it scared the crap out of me, so just as I jumped off the gun, I flicked the safety back to the "ON" position and climbed out of the revetment.

 

The Sergeant at the time was sitting up on top, asleep, and when it went off, he jumped down into the revetment as I was going out. I watched the tracer go high in the air before it exploded. Then I noticed that soldiers all over the place were running to man their guns. Some, who'd been asleep in their tents, came running outside still in their shorts carrying gas masks, helmets and rifles. Little did I know that I'd alerted the whole Isthmus of Panama.

Five minutes later, here comes the Captain and the Colonel roaring up in a command vehicle, sliding into a 50 caliber machine gun before they could stop. As soon as the Colonel saw me, he said, "God damn it Bingham, I just knew you'd be involved."

I told them I was just sitting there and when I stretched my legs, I must have hit the firing pedal. I checked and the safety was on. The Sergeant verified my story; he said that the first thing he checked was that the safety was on. Talk about luck. I mean my being on Temporary Duty, or they'd have nailed me, but good. The Captain and the Colonel took off immediately to call off the alert. They got the last word though; they deducted $4.35 from my next month's pay check for the shell.

The next day I was on the LST heading for the Pacific Ocean. As it left the Lock, I was fishing off the fantail with my favorite Panama hat on. By gosh, I caught a multicolored dolphin that the cook and I shared for dinner that night.

Frank Gazze, who now lives in Las Vegas, still remembers and often talks about my last few days in Panama, especially about my departing the Canal.

I was going back to the states, hopefully leaving the Army SNAFUs behind me. But first, we had to meet up with a convoy that was also going back to the states. Submarines had sunk ships on both sides of the Canal, so we had to do a lot of zig-zagging. An LST wasn't built for speed so we gradually lost the convoy. To make matters worse, the front ramp of the ship wouldn't close snugly. So there we were, struggling along with four feet of water inside the hull where normally tanks were being carried. We got used to it; in fact we enjoyed it. We all went swimming. It's a wonder we made it back, but we did finally get to Long Beach. There they gave us a one-week furlough and told us to then meet a train in Oakland to go to a camp in Medford Oregon.

I went to Modesto where mom and dad were living. Emily had given them the house on Lee Street when she married Frank G. Lindee. While I was there, I took a bus up to see Max at Shasta Dam and then to Mulford Gardens in San Leandro to visit Kermit and Amy. At that time, Gladys was attending San Francisco State College.

About 1943, Max and Winston had a friend that was being drafted into the army, so they went down and poured him on to the train at Redding. While waiting for the train to leave, a policeman told Max to go home because he'd had too much to drink. Max said "Okay, just as soon as the train leaves." That wasn't the answer the policeman wanted to hear, so he hit Max with his billy club. Winston said "God damn, all you're going to do is get Max mad." When Max got up, he slugged the officer and down he went. In jump two more policemen swinging their billy clubs. Winston tripped the first one and decked the second one. The first officer was on the radio calling for backup; he no sooner got off the radio when Max clobbered him again. Two more officers showed up and the battle royal was on. When the sixth and seventh officers joined in, they finally got the brothers down and handcuffed. They then threw them in jail. That afternoon the Superintendent at the dam went down to bail them out, but the judge said no way; they made a laughing stock out of our police force, they've got seven days.

They were a real mess; lumps as big as an egg covered their heads. Every day though, the guys at the dam would stop by and bring them candy, food and cigarettes. The police force wasn't too popular with the boys in town. The next day, the fight was front page news. Carrol still has the headlines that I gave him. What a battle; what heros!

During my furlough, Margaret Cole, originally from Dallas, came over from San Francisco to my brother Kermit's house in Milford Gardens to see me. I didn't see her because I had left that day for Oregon. It was just as well because she had gotten "knocked up" by some guy in Texas and had a baby. They were living together in San Francisco.

I loved the ride up to Oregon. My first train ride. When we got to Medford, no one was there to meet us, so we hiked the two miles out to the Camp and broke into one of the empty barracks to spend the night. Oh boy, no more SNAFUs, ha ha. I was the senior non-com so next morning, I took everyone's name, rank, and serial number and told them to check in that evening at 6:00 pm. I told them that I was sure they would discover their mistake and send someone up to get us. They did, three weeks later. In the meantime, some of us started working at the cannery for a buck an hour. There was no electricity at the camp; in the evening we'd go to a show or to the library to read. I bought myself a rod and reel and gave the Rogue River a bit of a go. No luck.

Finally a Lieutenant showed up and we were all accounted for. Back on the train all the way down to Santa Barbara. When we got there, I knew this was the place for me. Some of the fellows were sent to Italy, some to France, and some to the South Pacific. I talked myself into being their Athletic and Recreation Director. A man has to have a good life style, and Santa Barbara was fantastic.

The Redistribution Station had control of three hotels in Santa Barbara, the Mira Mar, the Mar Monte and the Biltmore. We put up all the returning soldiers in one of the hotels for a two-week vacation while they were being assigned to another Theater of Operations. In the evening, they were treated to the best entertainment available: Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Mitzie Gaynor, and Miss Legs herself, Betty Grable. The one gal the boys liked the most was Ingrid Bergman, probably because she never wore makeup.

Lloyd Pantages was in our unit. His old man owned about six of the best theaters in the LA and Hollywood area. It was his responsibility to go there and pick out the talent for our entertainment. One time he asked me to go down to the Paramount Studios with him. I was given a tour of the studio while he was booking future stars for Santa Barbara. Later on, I got to use my experience when I was transferred to Santa Monica.

From July to October 1944, I was busy organizing softball teams, volley ball at the beach, baseball teams, a swimming team, and recreational sports such as table tennis, pool, tennis and swimming.

During this time, here comes some of my old buddies from Company I, who had been fighting from New Guinea to the Philippines. They were always picked to lead the attack by General Douglas McArthur. "NO GREATER FIGHTING COMBAT TEAM HAS EVER DEPLOYED FOR BATTLE," said McArthur.

No wonder only 14 of the 75 original kids in Company I returned. They did a lot of island hopping leading the charge. Of the Marino brothers, only Little Marino made it back, but with only one leg. Another one that comes to mind is big Harvey West, who was one of my First Sergeants. He made it back but he was killed "Riding the Rails" when a load of pipes shifted crushing him. One of my buddies that I played football with, Jim Bertoglio, was rumored to have been killed by the Mafia after he returned to the States.

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