Preserving The Oral HistorIES of Combat Veterans

COMBAT STORIES FROM World War II

Curt Beckham | USS Shangri-La - Navy

5:34   |   The chief commissary steward would give you some tough jobs, says mess cook Curt Beckham. It could be hundreds of individually wrapped sandwiches or a breakfast cream sauce, but it was always too much work. There was a screwball in the outfit, though, and he had a joke backfire that involved one of the sandwiches.

More From Curt Beckham

Videos ( 4 )
WWII
  • Curt Beckham  |  WWII  |  USS Shangri-La  |  5:35

    You didn't see many sailors in Atlanta but Curt Beckham and his friends joined the Navy regardless. After a rather disjointed training experience and after serving with a couple of radar units, he was assigned to the USS Shangri-La as a cook.

  • Curt Beckham  |  WWII  |  USS Shangri-La  |  4:01

    The brand new carrier USS Shangri-La carried out an attack on Tokyo, then participated in the Okinawa invasion, and then returned to attack Tokyo again. Curt Beckham was a mess cook on the ship and he had a battle station as well, down in the ammunition room.

  • Curt Beckham  |  WWII  |  USS Shangri-La  |  3:36

    Although he didn't choose to become a mess cook, Curt Beckham learned that, in the Navy, a cook is godlike. He recalls the great leave policy they had while in port and he remembers some bad things, like having to wake up other cooks and not seeing land for three months.

  • Curt Beckham  |  WWII  |  USS Shangri-La  |  4:08

    Curt Beckham tells what it's like to ride out a typhoon with a Navy fleet. Besides that ordeal, he also was sunburned to a crisp on R&R and, because it would have gone on his record, was unwilling to report it and get treatment. Another time, he and his buddy had a bright idea about a cooler place to sleep up on the flight deck.

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