Keith Tillotson
The SS Mexico (June 1944 to June 1945)
So I got off that ship, and somehow I ended up in Seattle. I got aboard this troop ship, which was an old passenger ship, the SS Mexico. They'd converted it into a troop ship. I remember we took on some German prisoners aboard, taking them over to Hawaii. They were just walking around the deck, just like everybody else. We gave 'em a lot of apples to eat, and everybody was walking around eatin' apples. Washington's an apple state, you know. I don't know why they were taking them over there, but that's as far as they got. We treated the prisoners pretty good, not like the Japanese treated ours.
So we hauled troops to – let's see, where did we go to first? Well, one of those islands in Guadalcanal, and unloaded the troops there. Then we went to Australia. Brisbane Australia. We picked up Australian troops and headed for the Philippines.
That's the first time we ever got an escort – Navy ships escorting you. All the time before, you were alone. They just had machine guns, you know. That's all they had aboard those ships on the rear deck – fifty-caliber machine guns. On the Atlantic, fifty percent of them got sunk. Had more casualties per capita than any service, the Merchant Marine. We were on the Pacific. Oh, yeah, some of them got sunk. We traveled all alone – we didn't have any escort. Out there like a duck, floatin' all by yourself.