furniture shipped in and distributed.
And, as you might guess,
in the
midst of all this it became clear that we were going to have an influx
of VIP's and, of course, British housing would not be adequate for such
personnel, so it was necessary to bring in pre-fabricated housing trailers
of higher quality to establish VIP quarters.
This helped the morale of
the island personnel no end.
the main camp.
were used to.
The major difficulty faced was in feeding at
Wee !
The British cooking equipment was somewhat than our people
There was a great shortage of eating utensils, dishes, cups
and, of course, at
least for a while, these received comparatively
priority on air shipment.
It was necessary to feed
low
in shifts very quickly
because the personnel on the island grew faster than the pope tns capability.
The mess hall was cafeteria style, unfortunately, the-emsetwas close to
the entrance and because of
lack of sufficient personnel
it was necessary to
require that the patrons carry their own, utensils, eating trays to the exit
2
process
and dump the garbage there. That made #8 whole sxxkem somewhat unpalatable
for those coming in.
long hours every day.
There were many other problems which Riley Shaw
!
should have mentioned that when we moved
Christmas, Col. Phil Hooper, the oldest col.
again because of his well
commander,
fought
into
in the army, was brought in
known trouble shooting capabilities as island
He along with Riley faced the problems | mentioned above.
The
feeding problem eventually became so serious as to lead to demonstrations in
the mess hall and incipient mutiny.
At this point it became necessary for
Starboard himself to take a hand not only in arranging for higher priority in
the shipping system for material but also to help bolster the morale of the
personnel by visiting the mess hal! and eating there most of the time while
he was on -the island.
iota
Perhaps worthy of note here that, in parallel with the
build-up of the island. a most adequate officers dining room was set up MAdEK
at the suggestion of and under the auspices of the navy deputy who also
2/