"Happy Australia Day! An soldier at an advanced Allied base, with his pet kangaroo, location unknown, most likely NQ. Pets were something relatively new in WWII, but amazingly common. Although since the beginning of war animals had been used for different proposes it wasn’t until modern times when animals where used as company and not as means of military ends. Several battalions, divisions or armies had their own pets; however, platoons used to find lost animals because of the war itself and took them around. That’s why most of the pets we can find in WWII photos are usually attached to an only individual. Frequently, soldiers came across with those animals, which could be dogs, cats, bears, kangaroos, and even cassowaries -check my very first post-, and trained them, which eventually led to the creation of capable animals that would help in combat, more than simply pets.
10/09/1942, John Earl McNeil"
Hi Jackie. It's me, "Dennis".
Just an FYI, I have no cross-gendered 'progressive' college student children. I merely made a comment on the apparent age of the soldiers in the picture. It's pretty unclear to me why you would make such a comment to me.
Not that it matters, my father, and many of my father's friends, served in combat in WWII. Some survived, some didn't. My father did survive the war in the Pacific. He recently passed away at 96YO.
Again, not that it matters, he attained the rank of Master Sergeant (E-8) in approximately 1 year. I heard many of his and his friends' tales of their war time experiences. Some of the "best" tales my father had from the war, well, he didn't talk about until the year he died. I finally got him to talk about those.
Going through his personal belongings I know with certainty that both his tales and the fact he achieved a rank that typically would take 8 years to achieve were true. He was in his 20s during the war, and neither he nor those in the photos with him during his time in the military looked as young as those in the picture I commented on.