I like the pic in Owen's post #17. Cpl Durant with his dirty pants and beat up boots. Just a working man having a beer and a smoke after a hard days work. Too bad he's from Wisconsin, though.
Probably Morotai, late May 1945, US Navy photographers and printers, liberty party from USS Rocky Mount AGC3. What's the beer, anybody?
Sometimes troops got beer from home, but often they had to get by on the local product. Here are some GI's (mostly airmen) in West Africa drinking Club Lager, a popular local brew in the Gold Coast. The Gold Coast is now Ghana, and they still make Club Lager there.
Here's a guy with a dream detail: guarding the beer supply. Lucky Lager was a San Francisco beer and Acme Ale was a Los Angeles brand (Wile E. Coyote, brewmaster in chief). Since they were both California beers I figure this photo was taken either in a base on the west coast or somewhere in the Pacific.
Hello...wondered if anyone could identify the beer (or maybe cider) in this photo...pretty sure its North Africa...could it be "home brew"...I think the guys are British RAF servicemen...Any help much appreciated J
My father always said that his favorite posting in the USA was at/near St. Louis. The Anhauser-Busch Co. (Brewers of Budweiser) would let servicemen drink for free at the brewery.
Lone Elk Park, just west of St. Louis on I-44, is famous for two things. It was an ammo proofing and storage ground during the war and I got married there. You can see testing ranges in Google Earth. They look like a three bar X, each "top end" fired across the range to the opposite "bottom end". I used to lead tours at the Endangered Wolf Center, now part of the Washington University Biological Reserve and Research Park. One time I took a tour past a pair of warehouses with train tracks adjacent. An older gentle sudden said loudly "I'll be damned!" He told us he used to ride a blacked-out train from St. Louis to the dump to handle the ammo. (There are dozens of storage bunkers there, basically concrete Quonset huts covered with earth.) He said he had never known where the facility was because the train took a very long path to avoid giving clues as to the distance from the train station downtown. Fifty-five years later he closed the loop. It was a cool connection for me.