Pictures Taken by Sgt. Albert Arnold

Some time ago I was contacted through the excellent forums over at World War Two Forums, if you have any interest in WWII history you should really check them out, and was offered some great information and pictures by someone who's father was an Air operations Specialist while the 341st was on New Guinea from 23 June 1943 until he was wounded and sent home on 3 February 1945.

This gentleman's name was Sgt. Albert V. Arnold, and he took some excellent photos of his time overseas. His daughter was kind enough to send me some copies to me, and I am proud to share them with you.

The first is Sgt. Arnold himself. His daughter said that he is posing with some model airplanes that he crafted out of spent shell casings. She also let me know that her family still has these (very cool)

This photo is from the inside of the operations building. Sgt. Arnold is third from the left.

Here are two excellent examples of the pin-up art work on the noses of the fighters.

Here is a group shot of several men outside the 341st Operations / Intelligence building.

A wide shot of the camp.

What appears, to my eyes at least, to be a damaged American plane.

A gentleman, unidentified, in a foxhole or trench under what seems to be barracks.

A downed Japanese Zero

This one came to me labelled, "Al's Buddy"

Finally, we have a shot of pilot Lt. J.M. Nixon

I would like to thank Sgt. Arnold's daughter, Katherine, greatly for her generosity in providing me these pictures. I would also like to offer a sheepish apology for taking so long to put them up. Two small kids keep me away from the computer more often than not.

Thank you, also, to everyone over at World War Two Forums for the great information.

Long Time, No Post

I am rethinking my approach to this project. What I am trying to do now is to go through all of my grandfather's letters and get then in chronological order. Then I will start to post them, so that some sense may be made of his experience. Snapshots of life during the war are fine, but I believe that doing it in order will provide a much better view of his experiences.

Thanks for visiting.

It hopefully won't take me too long to get back to regular posts.

Letter Home 06-22-1944

Thursday 1900
6-22-44

Hi Honey:

I started to go to the show tonight, but while we were sitting out there waiting for the show to start it commenced to rain. Not very hard. In fact it was not even a good shower. I kind of thought that it would soon be raining harder though, so I came back. I can enjoy talking to you much better. The rest of the boys are still out there, so it looks as if they think it won’t rain harder.
I was supposed to fly this morning, but when we got ready to go the weather was bad, so it was called off. The weather was good this afternoon, but no one said anything about flying. I believe they wanted to give the ground crews the afternoon to work on the planes.
A few of us took our laundry over to a spot we found today. With good weather it gets done in one day. If it rains we simply have to wait till the sun comes out to dry the clothes. It beats doing it ourselves, even if it is not a good job. It couldn’t be worse than we could do.
Some of the older boys were telling me about a time when they had some of the local natives doing their laundry. They pounded it on the rocks, and stomped on it, ect. and usually it came back dirtier than it was when they sent it. Some fun eh?
While we were seeing about our laundry we stopped to get any mail we might have. I did not get any myself, but a few of the boys did. What I wanted to tell you though was what the guy told us about packages. He said we might get them in 5 or 6 months if we were lucky. Especially since we only have this temporary APO#, and are moving from one outfit to another.
I thought of that the other night when you told me in one of your letters to send you requests for things, so you could send me a package. Perhaps it would be better to wait till we are permanently assigned and I would have a better chance of getting them. Also the man said to tell the folks back home to wrap packages especially well, and sturdily. Most of them arrive over here in terrible shape otherwise. Anyway I better wait a while to start asking for things.
I had a couple of V mail letters from Mary (my sister) yesterday. One could not photographed for some reason, so it was sent regular air mail. The other one was written quite a bit later but they both arrived together.
That is most of all the news of the day darling. Except the big news flash – I love you. That is real headline I mean! O love you – but definitely.

Love George.

Site Update

I am glad to say that my moving hiatus is over and I am now settled (mostly) into my new home. I transcribed several new letters today and will have them up sometime tomorrow evening. I am hoping to get enough of them done to maintain posts for the next week or so on a daily basis.

Thanks to all for remaining patient during this hectic time.