Distinctly Montana Magazine

29 w w w . d i s t i n c t l y m o n t a n a . c o m "They was eating a lot better than I was at the time I was working there," former guard Lyle Slade told UM student Julie Kenfield in a 1979 interview. Guards like Slade held to wartime meat and sugar rationing, he said, while Italians ate the luxury liners' food. "Some of these guys is eating big round steaks, and I can't even get a hamburger." Slade commended their capacity to entertain. "They'd put on stage plays, and some of them would be dressed up like women, and you couldn't tell they weren't wom- en, either. And they'd make all their own costumes, you know, and they had a lot of good musicians." On the Bitterroot River, guards supervised detainees fishing from camp-made boats they named the Venezia and Trieste. Guards took trucks of them to Blue Moun- tain for hiking. Guards might take them downtown, where they could buy goods. Guard John Moe entitled the only startling incident he observed the "Olive Oil Rebellion." He believed certain Italians to be unsatisfied with the cooking oil provided, but no border patrolman spoke the language. One afternoon, Moe slept after working the graveyard shift. A fellow guard awoke Moe, who the Missoulian quoted in 2001: "He comes over to my house with a siren blowing and a Border Patrol car loaded with Thompson submachine guns and tear gas. He said, 'Get in, John, we've got a riot going.' Behind the main gate were some 500 Italians, waving their arms. We didn't understand what they were talking about." In the bedlam, Moe's co-worker set off tear gas in their car before a lookout tower guard shot himself in the foot. That diffused the situation. Initially, authorities prohibited locals from gathering near the fort to gawk. But by the summer of '41, securi- ty relaxed. Missoulians could flock to the fort's rec hall for concerts. One featured Verdi and Brahms pieces per- GUARD JOHN MOE ENTITLED THE ONLY STARTLING INCIDENT HE OBSERVED THE 'OLIVE OIL REBELLION.'

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