tgbcvr Wrote:
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> We’re wandering off topic, but I’m finding
> this interesting. America was the industrial
> might and it would seem to make sense, especially
> early on, that it was quicker and more efficient
> to recycle metals for munitions and equipment than
> to produce it raw. No doubt that scrap drives and
> other activities, like buying victory bonds and
> etc, had the additional merit of getting everyone
> involved. Hearing about the waste would have
> appalled my parents however, who went without a
> lot of things to be sure the troops were well
> supplied.
>
> Cheers,
> Ralph
I've seen it said elsewhere that having the ability to be wasteful was essentially the military's goal--it wanted to be able to want for nothing, regardless of the state of the folks at home, so as to be sure that it had everything it needed for the battlefield. Soldiers who can toss out butter or beef are soldiers who aren't fighting hungry.
Disposing surplus equipment after the war ended was even worse for waste since in many cases it would've cost more to ship stuff home than it was worth. My old man ended up stationed on Guam just after the war ended as part of a USN Construction Battalion and described the construction of a long "pier" that used filler ranging from jeeps and trucks to unopened crates full of who-knows-what to radios and even some intact aircraft. Broken, working, brand new--it all went in. I'm sure they as ~18-20 year olds had a grand time driving that stuff off the end into the ocean. Presumably there's still equipment entombed there. Dad also described the entire base as a giant racket, full of graft and corruption*, in between making fun of the Marines with their awful tent city that blew down any time a tropical storm came through (the Navy guys lived in quonset huts).
*Dad characteristically never regarded that as a problem but rather as an opportunity to make extra cash on the side. He was quite adamant that just about the entire base could've been tossed in the clink and it probably would've been fair but the Navy didn't much care anymore because the war was over by then.
