Royce Flandro, Salt Lake City, Utah: an interview by Winston P. Erickson, March 21, 2000: Saving the legacy tape no. 2 & 3

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ROYCEFLANDRO March 21, 2000 that's the way it was with us. That's one point. Another point is, I remember sometimes we would go back to the rear. And the kitchen guys would come up, and they would give us two slices of bread. And they took orange marmalade and peanut butter--opened number ten cans of each one--and mixed them all together. We would go through the line, and one guy would give you two slices ofbread. The next guy would dip down in that concoction, tum the spoon upside down, and empty it on your bread. And that would be your meal. Then they would give you a cup of coffee, or lemonade, as you went around, and that was your meal. I remember that. I have lots of memories because a lot of our meals were that. The wasps would come around that jam, and they would get in the jam, and sometimes you would have to pick the wasps out before you could eat it. I don't know whether these kinds of details are significant. WINN: It is. ROYCE: At any rate, that is another memory. Even today, I love marmalade. I still do. And I think of that every time I eat marmalade. Another thing that brings memories today is the smell of the chemical they had on the camouflage nets. When we went in at Anzio, and I first started seeing dead bodies and all of that, that's when they issued these new camouflage nets. And they had that smell. That smell is something that always reminds me of going into Anzio at that time, anytime I smell that chemical. It's so funny the things bring back the memories. Anyway, at Christmastime of 1944 I was pulled off the line because I had hepatitis. They put me in a field hospital; then they took me to Livorno and put me on a hospital ship. That's when the Red Cross had some stuff. And they brought me a little package of goodies like shaving stuff, and a tooth brush--a few things like that. And that was my Christmas that year. Then they took us down to Naples. And I went into the hospital number eight hundred, or something, there inN aples. And I recovered from that. Then they sent me to a reconditioning camp where we were to get built back up again, and then they sent me back up to the unit. When I got back to the unit it was in exactly the same position it had been in when I left. 29