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 My name is Ed Moorhead. I graduated from high school
in 1940. I heard about the bombing at Pearl Harbor while I was still in high
school. It was a Sunday night, and I had been at the movie theater. When I came
outside afterwards I saw a newspaper that said that the Japanese had bombed us. I
didn’t even know where Pearl Harbor was until that day. I knew at that moment
we would be going to war.I lived in Detroit, Michigan and worked at the Detroit News after high school when I decided to join the armed services. I enlisted feeling that it was my responsibility as a citizen to protect my country. It was my patriotic duty. I was an only child. Though my parents did not want me to go they also felt it had to be done. I tried to enlist in the Navy but was told I was underweight. In fact, I was so thin they thought if I turned sideways they would think I was A.W.O.L.(Absent With Out Leave)! So I joined the Army instead. I left my home in Detroit, thinking I knew all the answers. I was a young man with the rank of Private First Class in the Army on October 31, 1942. I didn’t realize how much there was to learn. My life changed drastically. I grew up a lot in time that I was in the Army.
We left from California to travel the Pacific Ocean by ship around
the world to Australia, India and then on to our final destination in the Persian Gulf,
Kohrmashar, Iran near Basra, Iraq. We went west from the United States to travel to
the Middle East even though it would have been a shorter distance to travel east to get
there. The waters were more dangerous in the Atlantic Ocean than they were in the
Pacific Ocean. We were assigned to a port battalion. This was the only port
the Russians had open all year long. When we arrived we learned that our job would
be to unload military cargo support ships and load the cargo onto Russian convoys that
were to travel north near the Shat-al-Arab River to supply the Russian Army. I did not see any battle in World War Two, but I felt my job was an important part of winning the war. We kept informed about what was happening with the war both through radio and an Army newspaper. I had no doubt the Allies would win. We were right as might. We had the best leaders, best abilities and by far the best cause. Iran was a very hot place to be stationed. It was 120 degrees almost every day in the summer. We had metal belt buckles that would burn you if they touched your skin. I was there for three years. It hardly ever rained in the desert. But when it did rain the sand turned to a sticky mud. The adhesive mud would pull the heels right off your shoes. We lived in British Army tents. The tents had two layers so there was more ventilation. We put leaves and twigs in a wooden trough and put it next to a tent window. Then we would run a tube of water from the roof of the tent down to drip in the trough. The leaves would get wet and help cool the inside of the tent when the wind would blow over them. We had to adjust our work schedule to the heat. We would work early in the morning and then again in the evening. We would try to sleep between these times. But it was just about impossible to sleep in the heat. I really felt sorry for the U.S. military men in Desert Storm as I could remember the conditions they were dealing with.
I developed other values as a result of my experience in World War Two. The Iranian children begging U.S. soldiers for food affected me. Unlike the United States children in many other countries don’t have necessities such as food. When you see children looking for food in garbage cans that sticks with you. I am still bothered seeing someone waste food. Letters from home were important to the soldiers. We had regular correspondence through V-mail (victory mail). Letters were put on microfilm so they would be much smaller and take up less room to ship. Then they were then reproduced to be read. It would really boost our morale when mail would come. One of the first letters I received was a "Dear John" letter from my girlfriend back home. She not only wanted to break off our relationship, she was marrying someone else! I had other friends that set me up with other women who said they would write to me. One girl sent me a fruitcake at Christmas. So many soldiers received fruitcakes and shared them I decided to wait a while to open mine. But I wrote her back telling her I enjoyed the delicious cake. When she wrote back again she said: "Never mind about the fruitcake, did you enjoy the "giggle juice" I hid inside the fruitcake?" I then opened the fruitcake to find she had cut a hole in the bottom of the cake and put a bottle of alcohol inside. I saw different countries and people during my four years in the Army. During a winter leave several of us traveled to the mountains near the Caspian Sea. That was the first and only time I've snow skied. In 1943 or 1944 I was able to travel to Tehran. Some American families lived on the compound at the American Embassy in Tehran. Their children sang Christmas carols for us that Christmas. I learned later we were in Tehran at the time of the secret Tehran Conference in which Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill, and Franklin Roosevelt met to plan what might happen to the world if Germany took over.
I learned to appreciate our country. The United States is the only country with a middle-class. Other countries have very rich and very poor people. Middle-class people may not have the finest things in life but we always have food on the table and the things we really need. I felt like it was an accomplishment just to come home alive because we traveled around the world unescorted by warships. We could have had confrontations with the enemy anywhere. When I returned to the U.S. I rode the train all night and then the bus. I telegrammed my parents that I would be coming but not to come to the bus station. I didn’t want them using their scarce, rationed gasoline. I wanted them to save their gas for something more important. I remember feeling such relief upon my return home. Back in the United States, I heard about the Hiroshima bombing on the radio. As was common then, I just thought this was another war bombing being reported. I didn’t realize its magnitude until later. I was supposed to go back overseas when we heard about V-E (Victory over Europe) Day on the radio. All overseas orders were canceled.
Being in the Army I learned about other parts of the world and how good we have it in the United States. We should appreciate all that we have. We have so much more than most people around the world.
When my daughter was old enough she served in the Navy for six years. I think being in the military is good when you are not quite an adult yet, but not a child either. It helps you develop self-discipline. Permission granted for use by Ed Moorhead © 2001
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Ed
Moorhead
The military personnel told me I would not be able to tell anyone where I was
stationed. So, I came up with a code to use in my letters home so my parents to know where
I was. I listed all the countries I could think of around the world and gave each one a
number. I told my parents the numeric code of the country I was stationed in.
When I knew where I would be stationed I wrote a letter home asking my mom how Charlie was
on his 18th birthday. My mom said I was crazy for saying Charlie was 18, but
later she realized that eighteen was part of my code and that meant I was in Iran.
The
cargo included tanks, artillery, rations and many crates of automobile parts to be
assembled in Russia. Russia was our ally and we were there to support them because Allies
fought against Germany. The Russians were nice people. We were friends with Russia and
Iran back then. 
The
military was good to us. We were rationed six cans of beer and a carton of
cigarettes a week. I didn’t smoke so I traded my cigarettes for someone
else’s beer rations. We had to think of ways to keep the beer cold in the hot
Iranian climate. American ingenuity took over. I would dip my can of beer in a
bucket of gasoline several times. As I lifted the can back out of the gasoline, the
gasoline would evaporate and the beer would cool. I learned to appreciate
refrigeration. It was difficult to refrigerate any food. I never waste ice
even today. 
En
route to the Persian Gulf we stopped in Sri Lanka and Bombay, India. I remember kids
in the jungle area selling us coconuts and pineapples. They didn’t want dimes
for the coconuts. They wanted our nickels because the nickels are larger! We
had great tea to drink in India. I discovered most tea comes from this area. 
After the war I went to Washington University in Lexington, Virginia.
My college and finance school at Fort Benjamin Harris was paid for as a result of my
military service. I stayed in the service for seventeen more years in the Navy
Reserves. This meant I served one night a week and had a two-week training once a
year. Of the seventeen Supply Officers in the St. Louis, Missouri Reserve Unit I was
the only one not called to active duty. The others went to the Korean War.
Most of my reserve time was spent in St. Louis or Olathe, Kansas. I spent many
vacations from work on my two-week training for the Navy Reserves. I retired after
twenty-one years of military service. I liked the military life. I met a lot
of nice people.
There were many
things better about our country in the 1940s. Our country was safer then, more
patriotic. We didn’t have drug problems. We could walk freely in a city park;
now you can’t do this. We would go out for a Coke and only spend a
nickel. Gasoline was fifteen cents a gallon. The general attitude then was
that we had to do what we were called for and not necessarily what we wanted to do.
We don’t have control over everything in our lives. Sometimes what our leaders
ask us to do for our country dictates what happens, not what we want to do at the
moment. I don’t think most Americans feel that way now.