My mother wrapping me in a small quilt, pulling a corner of it across my face and carrying me up across the yard from Grandpa Bolch's house to ours.

Standing at the chest-high window sill of our bedroom looking out on my first snow, a strange, never-before-seen expanse of white.

Damp, cold winter evenings drawn up on a chair before a coal fired stove with legs aching with rheumatism.

Dad hurriedly putting on his cloths in the middle of the night and returning with Dr. Frye to attend to my two-month old brother Glenn who had died during the night. Dr. Frye working with Glenn, attempting to revive him by the 15 or 25 watt incandescent light of those days, a hopeless task. During the next few days mounting a small foot-stool to look at Glenn in his casket by the front door.

Filling the coal hod with coal from the storage house....carrying it in the house as it pulled me over to one side, off balance....moving between heated rooms in the house through unheated ones....Sunday evenings at 6:30 pulling a chair up in front of the radio for three or four hours of entertainment....Joe Penner, Jack Benny, The Chase & Sanborne Hour with Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy,the Major Bowes Amateur Hour....sandwiches served on a card table in the warm and cozy den to avoid eating in a cold kitchen.

Holding a "long-handled" cotton union suit up to the stove to get it warm....running up stairs through a cold house to a cold bedroom....hopping into bed....pulling a lot of heavy blankets and quilts over my head and breathing heavily underneath them until warm....then gradually moving my head from under the covers.

The luxury of lying in bed on a cold winter morning, listening to Dad moving about below, building a fire in the kitchen stove....knowing the kitchen will be warm soon and I can hop out of bed and run down to a hot breakfast.

Visiting my Grandma next door....kitchen and dining room on the bottom floor of a split-level house....floor a concrete slab....glass-jarred canned vegetables and fruit stored behind a curtain at floor level concealing the bare ground on which they sat....Grandma diabetic (although I was too young to know it at the time)....sugar muffins always on the dining room table under the tablecloth....Grandma, her gray hair pulled back, twisted and coiled in a bun on the back of her head, wearing gold-rimmed glasses always kindly and ready to share her muffins....Grandpa coming back from fishing with his friend Mr. Ingold, wearing his usual vest and having on knee-high rubber boots he always wore fishing....unloading the cane poles and minnow bucket from Mr. Ingold's car (Grandpa never owned one)....no memory of Grandma's death....two of her daughters said to have found two hundred dollars in a money belt around her waist when they were dressing her for burial....Grandpa told them to keep the money....Grandpa dying a year or two later....aunts and uncles staying at the house and doing what they could while he was dying....he did not recover after a prostate operation....he was said to have operated a tombstone business and due to heavy lifting had to wear a truss for ruptures.... myself sitting on his metal strap bench in the yard on the day of the funeral.... strangers(to me) coming to the house to view the body....riding with my parents in someone else's car to the cemetery.

The fresh coolness of the Spring air when the sun came out after a night's rain....looking for puddles of water in which to sail imaginary boats consisting of twigs....finding a deep puddle between the roots of a large black oak....the damp, dank smell of the water between the roots....hollowing out black-oak acorns, making a hole in the more pointed end, sticking a wooden match or twig in it and pretending it a pipe for smoking....pulling small green berries off a bush to put in the mouth and with puffs of breath through a short piece of bamboo cane shoot them at other kids....playing cowboys and Indians using long-barreled wooden pistols with wide rubber bands cut from old automobile inner tubes as ammunition.

Warm summer days lying in the grass in the shade, or seated in the saddle of a silver maple tree, reading in pulp magazines the adventures of the "Shadow","Moonman",and of the "Red Baron" and other World War I flying aces.

Bright, sunny summer days catching "June bugs"....tying a string to one leg and letting them fly on the tether.

Bird hunting, Spring and Summer....after an egg and cereal breakfast, roaming around the yard and neighborhood watching where flying birds landed....walking cautiously and quietly as close as possible and shooting with sling-shot....largest number killed in one day 11....all kinds: sparrows, wrens,blue jays, thrushes, cardinals, robins, blue, yellow and green finches, baltimore orioles....at a later age, sitting under the back yard cherry tree with a single-shot 22 caliber rifle with bird shot, firing at robins, thrushes, and others that came to plunder, but few kills.

Wash days....stirring the clothes in a large black cast-iron pot, using a sawed-off broomstick....the wood fire under the pot crackling....the skim-milk color of the wash water filled with lye soap....cranking the handle of the mostly wooden wringer fastened with screws to the side of the house....scrubbing the clothes on the corrugated iron zinc-plated wash board.... an all- day once-a-week job. Dad building a small wood-frame tin covered building to use as a "wash house" during rainy weather, placing the cast iron pot on a brick frame to raise it off the ground enough to build a fire under it. At times Lye soap being prepared in the iron pot over the fire.

Other wash days....semi-automatic washing machine,three zinc coated wash tubs arranged around it with the wringer support post in the center of all....two of the tubs filled with rinse water, the first containing a bleaching agent called "bluing".

Summer weeks spent on my maternal grandparents farm....sleeping on a straw-filled mattress....the smell of fresh, strong coffee, frying sausage and eggs, newly made biscuits baking in the wood range oven....the clink of chains and wood in the early-morning darkness as Grandpa harnessed the mules for day's work and, me on top of one, walked them to a wooden water filled tub for a long drink before starting to plow....walking through the woods behind the house to the cotton-field beyond....picking cotton all day into a burlap sack tied around the waist....carrying the sack when filled to the end of the field near the woods to empty it into a larger sack....the delicious taste of cool well-water carried from the house mid- morning, and drunk from a tin cup....the back-ache from bending over the cotton plants and carrying the filling sack fastened around the waist....sweat rolling off the face, soaking through the shirt....can't stop until four o'clock....other days thinning out and hoeing corn, or later in the year cutting corn stalk tops and pulling fodder....threshing day....a dozen or more strangers coming with a threshing machine and straw baler....the auger pushing the grains of wheat out into the wooden bushel tub....the dinner table surrounded by ravenous men....having to eat in two shifts....other days using a pitch-fork to toss hay from the wagon up into the barn loft....helping clean the straw and manure out of the horse-stalls....watching Grandpa toss hay down from the loft and put it into the horse and cow feed boxes, together with several ears of corn for the horses, and sometimes some oats....spending one day catching crayfish from and playing in a creek while Grandpa worked on a drainage system for one of his terraced fields....playing blind man's bluff with some of my aunts in the kitchen after supper....running around the table and making so much noise we had to be told several times to quieten down....taking a broom out in the back yard about dusk when the bats began flying after insects in the air from the corn crib....swinging at the bats when they flew low, knocking them to the ground and killing them.

Acting as interpreter of sister Audrey's language for the parents. They couldn't understand what she was saying so they would ask me until she was older and they could understand. For instance "Harl Hay hit me in the side-ditch(Charles Ray hit me in the side)". Arguing with her at bed-time over which of us had more than their share of the bed until mama came in and settled the matter for us.

Being left, together with Audrey at our maternal grandparents' farm while our parents went to the Chicago World's Fair for a week. Audrey complaining one morning at breakfast when given some fresh milk and refusing to drink it that she "didn't like cow's milk", that she "liked milkman's milk". Her marrying Royce Robeson after he joined the air force and them traveling and being stationed in Japan and Germany during a number of tours of duty.

Fourth of July....warm sunny days in the front yard....receiving a limited supply of firecrackers from Dad....warned to move a good distance from them after lighting them....most of them small one-eighth inch diameter, which exploded with a high, sharp crack, a smaller number of one- quarter inch diameter, which exploded with a heavier report....lighting and throwing some from the porch....embedding others in dirt before lighting them.

First day of grammar school....walking to Kenworth school with Mama....confusion in the classroom....one fellow sitting on top of a desk....walking home again after school....later days, the smell of paste, modeling clay, the pleasant smell of the oil or whatever was used to maintain the floors....recess, shooting marbles for "keeps"....syrup can full of won marbles....the drive to keep school open for nine months a year rather than eight....summer trips to the health department to get free vaccine shots....second-grade spelling contests with new pencils as prizes....purchase of textbooks second-hand or through the local bookstore supplanted by state rental of books to all students....at different times feeling left out while lying in bed at home with measles or chicken-pox....the damp, dark boys' toilet in the basement, with the long iron urinal on the wall and the sour odor....carrying lunch in brown bags most of the time when eating at school....but mostly running home the three blocks, eating and rushing back to play marbles....playgrounds opened for summer use with supervision....tennis fun on the lower court with friends....bicycle for Christmas when twelve years old....riding on the streets around the school and down the steep hills on the playground....graduation night at grammar school, as salutatorian forgetting my memorized speech two-thirds through and being prompted from the back of the auditorium by a seventh grade teacher who had written or secured for me a speech to be delivered....embarrassing....no more public speaking except once the first year of college, a practically forced condition of passing English (professor was chief driving force of a yearly declamation contest).

Before the birth of each of my two brothers, Donald and Thomas, being apprised of their impending births, and being consulted about the acceptability of their proposed names.

First year of High School....elected president of freshman class for some reason, possibly through the efforts of my closest friend, J.W. Freed our preacher's son....registering for various courses, some of which were required and others elected....a welcome novelty when compared to the rigid requirements of grammar school....second year joining the band....out of town trips with the band, marching contests, parades, music competitions....performing at local football games....practicing with small groups trying to form local dance bands....several small jobs with one group last year in high school....trying to learn to dance so I could dance at the Junior-Senior prom....very little co-ordination but managed to squeeze by with the two- step....Junior year a Junior Marshall attending and ushering the graduating seniors....Senior year participating in the Senior play....graduation....Lenoir-Rhyne College representative calling in person to drum up students due to war shortage of young men....deciding to attend with the object of studying medicine....no medical background, no idea what it was all about....it sounded good and got attention.

Saturdays, and week-days of three-month summer vacations, during later grades of grammar school....Dad changing set up of B5 knitting machines and starting them up producing socks....standing and watching a machine as it went through each sock cycle and dropped a sock into its reception can....about 15 minutes per sock cycle....the boredom of standing there all morning inspecting socks for flaws after they had dropped....a little more walking and stooping as the number of machines in production increased....the cotton lint flying around in the air as it separated from the rest of the yarn on its way through the yarn guides and feed fingers into the knitting needles....later Saturday mornings spent cleaning the accumulated lint from the machines....the sweltering heat in the tin-roofed building in the summertime....the mixed odors of warm lubricating oil and the processed cotton on the cardboard cones.

Many a summer day about 6:30 AM driving out with Dad to the mill in the country....starting the machines up....Dad oiling the machines and checking sock sizes, then returning home to do work there while I spent the day knitting....straddling a shallow box turned on its side and fitted with rollers and a double sole clipper....riding it back and forth up and down the aisle between the windows and knitting machines....pulling socks out of the cans....clipping the double sole yarn floated across from one side of the sock to the middle of the other side....inspecting and turning them inside out before hanging them on lines of looper clips tied together and strung between the machines....pulling a bunch of socks off the lines and counting them and tying them in a bundle of twelve pairs....watching cones of yarn as they neared empty....shutting off the machine....sitting the old cone on top of a fresh cone....tying the tail of the old cone to the beginning of the new....going around to the other side of the line shaft driving the machines and gathering cones of yarn to place on the yarn guide racks on top of the machines where cones were about used up.

The frustration of having to stop a machine and let it sit idle until Dad came back, when all that was wrong was broken yarn....soon beginning to raise the latch rings and letting the machines run through their cycle until they reached the beginning, lowering the rings and starting the machines again....Dad caught me at this later and showed me how to replace a broken needle and reset the machine, after first making a support to hold the latch ring up and continue to let the machine cycle through to the beginning as I had been doing.

On Saturdays, after cleaning the lint off the machines and sweeping up, counting dozens of socks into bags, by sizes, or packing them in cardboard boxes, loading into Dad's car....driving them to Claremont NC where Dad sold them to C. D. Jessup....talking first with Mr. Jessup....then going with his finishing supervisor to unload and count the goods....then going back to Jessup's office, where he made out a check and gave it to Dad....other sales at other times to C.V. Cline in Hildebran, NC and E.P. Rhyne in Hickory.

Brother Don getting a newspaper route with the Hickory Daily Record and carrying for several years before selling it to brother Tom, who also carried for several years. Don graduating from Lenoir Rhyne College and being given a teaching fellowship at UNC one year. Him joining the air force as a flying cadet and deciding after soloing that he didn't want to continue and resigned. His teaching in a Chicago Lutheran high school a number of years and marrying one of his students.

Tom starting a lawn mower service while in high school, and mowing lawns several summers, buying his own mower and earning his own money for entertainment and incidentals. Working as a reporter with UPI and earning his way through UNC Chapel Hill and law school. Having his own law practice for several years and later working for the NC State government.

Going hunting with Dad in winter....tossing and turning in bed the night before in anticipation....getting up before daylight and dressing in layers of clothing against the cold....driving to the farm of Jass Chapman in Lincoln county....warming up in front of the great fireplace in the small farmhouse....friendly greetings from Jass and his wife....Jass joining in the hunt for rabbits....walking through the frosty woods and fields slowly on the lookout for rabbits jumping up from their beds....sometimes Dad seeing one sitting on his bed and trying to point it out to me....only the rabbit's eye visible through the leaves....when I couldn't see him Dad telling me where to aim the 22 caliber Remington bolt action rifle....firing....the rabbit jumping up and rolling over....dead....other times and other places....sometimes with Beagle hounds baying nearby or farther away, hot on the trail of game....shouts of encouragement in the cold crisp air from the hunters....the rabbit racing diagonally across the field toward us....the blasts of the shot-guns....the rabbit somersaulting when hit. Dad storing the rabbit in his hunting coat, which had an inside pocket running all the way around the small of his back, and in which probably a half-dozen could be stored.

Dressing the rabbits for cooking....holding the rabbit, head down, by his rear legs....Dad cutting the fur around each rear leg at the ankle joint, pulling it down each leg to the hip,cutting it from one leg across the hip-front through the other, then pulling the fur, front and back all the way down to the head, cutting it off at the neck and disposing of it with the fur....then cutting into the abdomen and slitting up to the sternum....cutting on one side of the anus then the other, pulling the large intestine loose and out, reaching up and behind into the chest cavity and pulling all the other internal organs out....cutting off the feet at the ankles, cutting on each hip almost to the backbone and breaking it at that point so the carcass would fit in a pot, where it was soaked overnight in salt water to take the wild taste out of it before cooking. The dressing of the occasional squirrel being similar, except not so easily skinned. The hide was cut completely around the body about the lower part of the ribs, and both persons skinning it tugged against each other, one toward the head and the other toward the back feet until the hide reached the neck and the back feet respectively Then all four feet were cut off, and the head cut off at the neck and the evisceration proceeded as with the rabbit..

Summer vacation at Myrtle Beach....living in a small two to four room house on the beach side-by-side with another....no other buildings within several hundred feet on either side....lots of sand dunes between....heavy rain....car not starting due to rain getting under hood and standing in the spark plug wells and shorting them out...Dad driving on the beach and car getting stuck in the sand....having to get someone with a horse or another vehicle to pull us out.

World War II beginning....representations of the numbers and types of ships in the British navy shown in LIFE magazine....making extremely miniaturized models of ships for a naval warfare game....searching through my paternal grandpa's pine slab wood pile for white pine slabs to carve the models from....carving larger white pine models entirely by hand using a picture of the battleship USS TEXAS....and, later small blueprints from POPULAR SCIENCE magazine to carve a ten-inch long two-stack destroyer....using pictures as a guide to carving a model of the Garand rifle used by the US Army....news of U.S. efforts to aid the British via Lend Lease....U. S. destroyers damaged by German U-boats while on Atlantic Patrol....the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor....older students in high school joining or being drafted into one armed service or another shortly after graduating....high school band director joining the Civil Air Patrol and flying Piper cub aircraft off the N.C. coast on anti-submarine patrol, returning on furlough after crashing into the Atlantic following an attack....the increasing pressure on everyone as more and more people joined the services or went off to work in war industries....Dad becoming an Air Raid Warden....the blackout drills....high school Victory Corps being formed....close order drill and military courtesy.

First year of college at Lenoir Rhyne....naval aviator primary training program being carried out at college....Stearman biplane primary trainers at the Hickory airport....shortage of older men students at college....wanting to join the Army Air Corps....taking the written examination....getting letters of recommendation from preacher and others....going to Charlotte to take the physical examination....flunking out immediately on the colorblindness test....shock of having no previous idea of this problem....walking out of the base dispensary in a kind of daze while the examiner was out of the room and walking out to the base gate....a call from the examiner to the guard at the gate to find out if I was there....waiting for the next bus to town and then the bus back to Hickory....deciding then to wait for the draft to get me rather than join any particular service....getting my draft notice and getting a deferment until my first year of college was finished.

A form letter from the President of the U.S. beginning "Greetings", the draft notice....taking a small bag containing toilet articles and a change of underwear on the bus to Fort Bragg N.C., along with a dozen or more others from town....walking from room to room naked with others in line waiting to get the various examinations and shots....being sworn in....being formed up and marched to a supply warehouse where clothing was issued....taking the Army General Classification test....a group of us being told we were going to get a good deal, not the infantry....boarding a special train and traveling south at a snail's pace....no idea where we're heading....arrival in Atlanta, GA where we are allowed off the train for a few minutes in the station....travelling north from Atlanta....near the end of the journey passing close to an air base on which we see B25 medium bombers....good!, we're getting the Air Force....not so! when we finally get off we find we are in the ARTC, the Armored Replacement Training Center at Fort Knox, Kentucky.

Seventeen weeks of basic training....classroom drills on small arms (M1 rifle, M1 carbine, submachine gun), 30 caliber machine gun 50 caliber machine gun....disassembling, cleaning and reassembling them all....two weeks of tank gunnery training, each of us in turn acting as tank commander and then gunner without actually firing the gun....actual tank gun firing at a cloth target mounted on a moving small rail car, one round allowed for each man...my chance to fire another round later because I had hit the moving target... not seeing where second round hit because by the time I had the other shot the target had been destroyed except one of the support posts, and I didn't know what to fire at... later using a 45 caliber Thomson sub-machine gun fastened by a bracket to the side of the 75mm gun, set to single fire and fired by hand on the commander's orders, to simulate firing the big gun....spent 45 caliber brass being used as targets and placed in sand on the ground about ten to fifteen feet in front of the tank....amazing that you could peer through the big gun's telescopic sight, aim the gun through the sighting reticule, sense the actual strike of the sub-machine gun bullet in the sand, make sighting adjustments and wind up hitting the relatively minute targets just as if you were firing the 75mm cannon....really excellent training at a mere fraction of the cost of using the big gun.

Marching over to the firing range for small arms on a number of days over several weeks to qualify on the rifle, carbine, and sub-machine gun....on the rifle range taking turns on the firing line and in the target pits, hauling the targets up and down, pasting patches over the bullet holes, holding a circular marker mounted on a pole over the spot where the hole had been so the man on the firing line could tell where his round had gone....the firing line a strip of sand divided into slots marked by numbers which corresponded to the target numbers....each man taking a turn on the line in relays, watched over by non-coms spread out behind them and controlled by the firing range officer, who ordered firing to commence or cease....care being taken to keep all weapons pointed down-range and a clip of ammunition being handed out only when everyone was in proper position for firing....each circle of the target represented points and a certain number of points were required to qualify with each weapon.

The final week of basic....the competition of companies in the battalion in various skills and endurance....a fifteen mile hike which was done at a combination fast walk and trot....being almost worn out before returning to the start point, thinking I hadn't done so well, but then realizing I had done better than probably half the company....firing rifle grenades after fixing an adapter on the end of the M1 rifle barrel.

The last morning at Fort Knox....all the formal discipline relaxed, the members of the company having been assigned their next station....a small group of us assigned to go to Fort Ord California for shipment to the Pacific theater were invited into the mess kitchen, where the mess sergeant had bacon and eggs and we could specify how we wanted them prepared....normally we had reconstituted dried eggs in a scrambled form.

Arriving home with a duffel bag of clothes for a two-week furlough before going on to Fort Ord....visiting friends and relatives, using the fifteen-gallon gasoline ration stamps allowed for those on leave....having a gall stone attack (not recognized as such)....I had had a severe one of these while on bivouac in the field at Fort Knox, so severe it brought me to my knees on the way to the latrine....fortunately it ended quickly then, but at home I had to use paregoric to kill the pain.

Boarding the train at the Hickory station with Glenn Corpening from Granite Falls, also a recent graduate of Fort Knox, same company....sitting in seats side by side on a day coach, our arms and hands on the arm rests, and wondering which of those hands might return....he didn't....he was killed while with the Third Armored Division as it took Cologne, Germany, I heard after the war....riding day coaches all the way to California....leaving Hickory to cross the Appalachians....crossing the long bridge leading into New Orleans....waiting several hours there for the next train west....walking the streets near the station in stifling heat and humidity....crossing the dry flat land of Texas, Arizona and New Mexico....arriving in California with its inland palm trees, low hills and valleys....getting off the train briefly in the Los Angeles station....continuing on to Monterey and Fort Ord....Glenn and I, so tired from the four or five day and night trip from Carolina trying to sleep sitting up when we arrived in Monterey about 2AM deciding to go on into camp, while some of the others who had joined us en route decided to stay in the hotel at Monterey....immediately on arrival in camp being taken to the doctor on duty, sleeping on a canvas cot, for a "short arm" inspection, then being taken to barracks and issued sheets and blankets....being awakened at 5AM for KP duty....working on the serving line when our compadres who stayed overnight in Monterey showed up in the chow line all fresh and rested and laughing at our misfortune.

Being at Fort Ord a week, getting shots, being issued our tropical clothing and generally getting ready to ship out to the Pacific....the Battle of the Bulge occurring in Germany....a long slow trip on a packed train back across the states all the way to Fort Meade Maryland....being issued olive drabs and winter clothing....people shipping home everything they couldn't take with them....poker games going on all the time in the barracks....being transferred to Camp Kilmer....old barracks from another era....a short stay and then a long slow trip on a packed train from Camp Kilmer to the dock in New York....unloading from the train....long lines of soldiers shuffling in line, with duffel bags through a warehouse where the Red Cross served coffee and doughnuts....a further walk to the end of the dock....looking up at the stern of the ship alongside the pier....the excitement of seeing the name "Queen Mary", the much publicized Cunard luxury liner....boarding her as our names were checked off a roster....being led to our assigned cabin on a lower deck, a tiny one where twelve men were to sleep on three- tiered bunks reaching to the low ceiling, with barely enough room between to turn on one's side....learning the sleeping arrangements were: every other night in the cabin and alternate nights on the floor of the open sided promenade deck...thirteen thousand troops aboard for this voyage.

The next morning, a Monday, watching the tugs warp the ship away from the dock, going downstream to the ocean,seemingly sailing south (weather seemed to get warmer) and then east....watching the wake of the ship from the stern....going to the head, which was five open air stalls on each side of the bow, so small you could only get about half way into one....trying to sleep in the cold night air on the promenade deck, sticking feet, boots and all, in the end of my open duffel bag to try to get them warm....the first meal at sea, served on the bottom of the former swimming pool(less water, of course)....couldn't eat it because the warmth of the ship below and its motion, plus several hours of waiting in line and the nauseous odors caused me to walk on by the serving area and rush back to the promenade deck for some fresh air.

Waking one morning on the promenade deck....rising....large numbers of men on deck....cool clear morning....the ship barely making headway....off the side of the ship one could see rolling hills of beautiful green pastures divided by stone fences....some containing sheep....off the other side of the ship can be seen a number of anchored ships in the distance....some appear to be destroyers....in the far distance ahead what seems to be a submarine....the ship continues slow ahead for over an hour....anchors....we prepare to unload, carrying our duffel bags....we step off a stair projecting down the side of the ship into a low-lying craft I learn later is a lighter....sit down in a packed cabin....as the lighter moves away from the ship I try to get a good look at her but can only make out a small portion of her including one funnel as we turn toward shore....we land on a small quay and walk to a train station in Greenock, Scotland.

We board a train....after a while we are under way....we travel the rest of the day, all night and part of the next day, passing through a number of cities whose names I recognized but cannot now recall....arriving at Southhampton, where we leave the train carrying our duffel bags and march down a cobblestone ramp to a waiting LST....we go aboard through open bow doors and look for bunk space on the lower deck, stepping over and around others already aboard....bunks were steel frame stretchers with canvas....the deck so full there was hardly room to turn around....a sailor notices and takes a half dozen of us up to the crew's quarters where we get steel frame canvas bunks fastened to a bulkhead.

Waking to a damp misty morning....getting under way shortly afterward....skirting to the left of what appears to be a large island and starting across the Channel....as we leave the shelter of the land the water becoming very rough....the ship beginning to roll right and left to what seems to me to be about a forty- five degree angle....beginning to feel seasick from the motion of the ship and the warmth of the crew's quarters....going out on deck and remaining there breathing in the cool crisp air for a considerable length of time....finally feeling well enough to return to quarters....in the late evening seeing the low-lying coast of France in the distance....drawing near and entering a harbor completely flattened by bombs....Le Havre....unloading and marching with our duffel bags inland for over an hour.... finally coming to a stop among some trees and it beginning to rain....passing through a chow line where we receive hot cakes covered with orange marmalade syrup and a cup of hot coffee....strange, eating with rain dripping from trees and falling on your hotcakes as you cut and eat them....delicious after a strenuous day....being taken then to a small tent camp in the dark, as the light failed while we were eating....being assigned to a pyramidal tent, twelve men to each....laying out our blankets on a canvas floor and immediately falling asleep.

The following morning being marched to a railroad track where we were loaded aboard small boxcars called 40 and 8 (capacity forty men or eight horses)....making ourselves as comfortable as possible, sitting on the floor and leaning against the walls or our duffel bags....some men making coffee by building a fire in a can and heating water in their canteen cup....beginning to move south slowly and the weather turning colder....snow beginning, and wrapping our blankets around us, getting up occasionally to open the door a little wider to see if we can determine where we are....traveling all day, stopping and restarting, the boxcar bumpers jolting when we slowed down, stopped or restarted, and so on throughout the night.

The following morning moving slowly through what appear to be the suburbs of a large city which we presumed was Paris....continuing on south out of the city to Fontainbleau....here being issued our personal weapons, in the case of tank crewmen such as I, the 45 caliber sub-machine gun called a "grease gun", brand new weapons still coated with cosmoline which we had to remove to clean and oil the weapon....then being marched out to a firing range where we tested our weapons....after a few days being taken by truck to a replacement depot at Metz, France....being assigned wooden bunks in large barracks without heat....no fuel available we were told....remaining here several days, answering roll call and awaiting assignment to a line organization.

I and three or four others singled out one day at roll call....it had been snowing again....being loaded on six by six trucks with our weapons and duffel bags....having been assigned as replacements to a medium tank company now located in Wiltz, Luxembourg....recognizing only one face in the group, a man I had seen in Fort Knox in a nearby training company, but whose name I didn't know....riding several hours in the back of the six-by over snowy roads and mostly open country....not realizing it yet, but most of Europe I would be seeing didn't have any suburbs, there being only small villages and large cities with few or no houses in the areas between....arriving in Wiltz and being unloaded at the headquarters of Company A, 735th Tank Battalion, where the executive officer, Lt. H.B. Smith briefed us that quite a few men had been disabled by frostbite and that we were to take care to avoid this, even if it meant cutting up wool blankets (a court martial offense to destroy army property) to wrap our feet in....waiting in the CP for the company commander, who would assign us a position in the company....he arrives after dark, asks each of us what tank crew job we preferred as we all sit huddled on the floor on our duffel bags in a room blacked out with blankets and lit by one small candle....I asked for gunner and was assigned loader, which leads to gunner when a gunner position opens....Buckman, the man I recognized from Fort Knox asks for driver and gets assistant driver....we were assigned to the same tank.

Being led in the dark through the streets to another house and introduced to members of the second platoon (to which we were assigned), among them a tall red-headed Polack from Aberdeen Washington, named Julian "Red" Zembal a catholic who was cooking beans of some sort on a small stove fired by charcoal briquettes....he offered us some but I refused with thanks.

Being shaken by the sight of a Seventh Armored Division tank with a blackened shell hole in its rear sitting in one of the streets of Wiltz, pulled over close to a building and on the sidewalk....evidence of what had heretofore had been only a theoretical possibility....long weeks of riding the rough-sprung tanks slowly over the country in freezing weather, turret hatches open and the engine cooling system sucking frigid air through the turret....arriving at destinations after dark with no idea where we were, with no idea of what we were doing there or were going to do....getting out of the tank in pitch darkness and holding on to the belt of others as someone leads the way, slipping and sliding through the mud, into a house where we will spend the night....seemingly retracing our route a number of times.

Being on the move late one evening, I was tired and laid on the turret floor and went to sleep... didn’t wake until the next morning, and when I did there was no one in the tank, and it had been backed into a depression beside an old wooden hut... to the right rear was a fairly large house, so I went looking for the rest of the crew... they were there behind the house, and shortly artillery shells began falling intermittently in front of and beside the house... staying there most of the day, watching at one time some infantry advance up a hill in the distance beyond the front of the house... the artillery fire continuing most of the day... late in the afternoon Creed Warden, a member of Zembal’s crew, and I being told to walk along a dirt lane over to a nearby village to tell another tank crew we were all to withdraw at a certain time... Warden and I starting out, and not progressing much farther than where our tank was parked than we heard a musical hum off to our right, sounding somewhat like a child’s spinning metal toy top... Warden being a little ahead and me glancing toward where the sound, getting louder and louder, came from... suddenly looking ahead, I didn’t see Warden... glancing down to my left, seeing him almost prone in the left ditch, I quickly followed him there, and almost immediately there was an explosion just across the road... my first and only experience of a German Nebelwefer rocket. And if Warden hadn’t been with me, might have been my last experience of anything. We did get our mission accomplished, and shortly after our return mounted our tanks and left for another location.

The jolt and blast of a mine not pulled completely off the road by engineers and which our driver did not see in the dusk... one of our tracks being blown off and waiting several days for battalion maintenance to come up and replace some track blocks and remount the track....waiting with the morale killing sight of a dead GI infantryman lying stiff as he fell while running in a field just beside the road....against basic training drinking water from a spigot in a local house without using Halozone tablets supplied for disinfecting drinking water...the spigot a single one before a window in the kitchen of a German farm-house with a manure pile just outside the window and the animal living quarters in a room just through another kitchen door....getting a severely upset intestine and after several trips outside in the freezing cold beginning to use my steel helmet as a chamber pot, filling it time after time with watery feces, taking it outside to dump it, lying back down only to have to rise again almost immediately....very weak next day but manage to recover without having to report to the medics, and we were soon repaired and rejoined our platoon.

Always riding with a 76MM round lying in the breach of the gun....holding on to the back end of the brass to steady it and be sure it could not hit anything and accidentally explode....ready to shove it the rest of the way into the gun with the heel of my hand....the breech-block would be automatically closed by the protruding rim of the loading round, and the firing pin within the block cocked....carrying armor piercing and high explosive rounds, mostly HE, which had a nose assembly allowing a setting for instant or delayed explosion upon impact.

A ready rack for shells on the floor of the turret directly under the breech of the gun, containing 6 shells,4 HE and 2 AP....the remainder of the ammunition under the turret floor, where it could be reached by lifting a hinged floor plate under my feet....the ammunition inserted in slots, brass first, on a slant, so the shell rested mostly on its rim rather than squarely on its base, to prevent accidental firing due to jolts received during movement of the tank....a spare 30 caliber machine gun for the coaxial mount secured vertically at the back of the turret....a handy arrangement proved at least once when the coaxially mounted gun ruptured a brass and the tool provided for such emergency would not remove it quickly....pulling the gun out of the mount and replacing it with the spare, reloading the ammo belt, and notifying the gunner he could resume firing.

When the 76 was fired the tank rocking back on her tracks as the gun recoiled and then returning to its previous position as it ejected the spent brass and a strong ammonia-smelling gas....the brass clanging on the steel floor of the turret and immediately inserting the nose of another round into the breech and shoving it home with the heel of my hand....fortunately never having to fire more than 6 or 8 rounds at one time, so disposing of the brass was not a problem....opening a small hatch on the side of the turret, putting on an asbestos glove, picking up the hot brass and shoving it through the hatch where it bounced off the left sponson onto the ground.

A cold hostile environment....no place to withdraw, except temporarily for warmth or shelter....taking turns of two hours on guard throughout the nights....the occasional distant thud of artillery firing and the eerie sighing of the shell as it passed high overhead in the cold clear sky .... the occasional unexpected tac..tac..tac of a 50 caliber machine gun, or the hurried brrrrrrp of the German submachine gun called a burp-gun, the fast, sharp whistle and sudden POW of the German 20 mm antiaircraft gun. ...in case of rain pulling the turret tarpaulin over the hatches to keep dry....sleeping on the floor of the turret between its side and the ammo ready-rack, where there was just enough room to fit when lying flat, but not enough to completely stretch out....the driver, Ralph Eby, the assistant driver, Alfred Buckman, and the gunner, James Brown sleeping as best they could sitting in their seats and leaning against the sponsons or turret sides....the tank commander, Manuel Cassilas doing so as well, although normally he did not use a seat but had to stand in order to maintain watch out the commander's hatch....most of us wearing woolen long johns, woolen olive drab pants and shirts, wool lined jumpers, wool sweater, wool lined jacket, wool knit cap under steel helmet, two pairs of wool socks in combat boots, and never taking any of it off except the steel helmet when we slept, unless we could get out of the tank and sleep on the floor of a house,where we sometimes removed our boots when we got in our sleeping bag, which was a wool lined nylon shell in which we inserted our wool blanket....going for days and weeks without being able to shave or even wash our faces....eating K rations or, as I did once, D-Bars, which were a kind of enriched chocolate candy bar, which I ate for several consecutive days at one time.

All the above sheer luxury, however, when we considered the plight of the infantrymen....parking beside a two-man foxhole late one evening when it was drizzling steadily....the two men having gotten some pine boughs off nearby trees and placed them on the bottom of the hole to keep from having to stand or sleep in the mud and water on the bottom....they had nothing except their rifles and ammo, mess kits, K rations and one blanket each....we had our steel "house", and after pulling our tarp over the hatches were relatively warm and dry, with a small gas fueled stove we could cook and make coffee on.

Another time being parked off the road in an open field in the night....the field covered with probably a foot of snow, a full moon shining giving the sky a kind of cold bluish glow....in the not so far distance a column of men came trudging slowly over the horizon as if they could hardly put one foot before the other ....all that could be heard was the slight mushy sound of feet sinking in new snow, an occasional clink of equipment as they moved closer and then across our front several hundred feet away, continuing on their way....where were they coming from?....where were they going?....how long had they been walking and how long yet to go?....in the middle of the night....no shelter for miles around....no warmth except from their clothing and the exertions of walking....when would they be able to stop and rest....would they have to dig foxholes in the cold wet ground when they arrived where they were headed?....a miserable life from anyone's standpoint. Infantrymen were exposed to fire from small arms and shrapnel from exploding shells, both of which did not particularly bother us, but we were exposed to armor piercing shells, which could be just as frightening, if not more so....once as we passed along a road cut on the side of a hill we heard the sharp whine of a shell which bounced on the road behind us and thudded into the side of the hill....tanks generally move rather slowly and gear changing was difficult, but Eby, our driver had ours in forth gear and moving 25 MPH in practically no time downhill toward a nearby town....Cas yelled to him to slow down but he didn't pay any attention until I was able to kick his steel helmet (on his head) and tell him....we never found out who or what fired at us, but thought it may have been our own third platoon, although they claimed not.

Another time, as our platoon approached a town, we turned off the road , spread out in the field and continued toward town....as we approached we saw a German half-track leave town on a road passing out to the left....we went on, bypassing the town....as we neared the road a German soldier rose from a ditch beside the road in front of us and fired a panzerfaust, which struck the ground immediately in front of our tank and to the right of our platoon leader's tank....fortunately for us the platoon leader's assistant driver was on his toes and cut the German down with his 30 caliber machine gun just as he had risen to fire....we came to a stop as we could see the half-track stopped ahead and several farm wagons pulled off the road into the field....our driver, assistant driver and tank commander left the tank to take prisoners and/or whatever loot they could find....the gunner and I were sitting there waiting for them to come back when there were a couple of nearby explosions....our gunner wanted me to crawl down in the driver's seat and move the tank away from a nearby wagon, but I didn't want to do it, so he did....I preferred remaining in the turret and firing the gun if necessary....it turned out the wagons were filled with panzerfausts and that a couple of them had fallen off and exploded, but luckily no one was hurt.

Once we were approaching a village along a road with woods on our right and an open field to our left, across which we could see the village....we were getting some shelling from in or beyond the village, the shells falling behind us....suddenly the tank in front of us veered off the road into the field and traversed his gun to the right toward the woods....we and the other 3 tanks followed and we all began firing into the woods where the leader said some movement had been seen....after we had all fired several rounds some civilians came out, waving articles of clothing, crying and begging us to stop and claiming there were no soldiers in the woods and several non-combatants had been wounded....we stopped firing and started on across the field toward town and found trenches dug for defense....as we approached we fired machine guns and Cass stood up in the commander's hatch firing an M1 rifle I had picked up in a field some weeks earlier....we came upon a fence before the town, saw some movement on the other side and fired our machine gun at it....the next morning I and a fellow crewman went to the spot and found an old man in a gray uniform, stiff and dead on the ground, evidently a member of the local Home Guard....as we left town on the road out the other side that morning we came upon a small German tank tilted into a ditch beside the road....we supposed this was what had been trying to shell us the previous day.

To me, a PFC, the war was a matter of going where my tank went, without having any idea where we were going or why we were going there....we sat for hours and days in woods, in fields, in snow and/or mud, sometimes with a platoon of four tank destroyers nearby....if we were fired upon we fired back and continued or withdrew....we usually ate cold K rations with instant coffee heated on a small cylindrical Coleman gasoline fueled stove....relieved ourselves on the ground outside the tank (we were supposed to dig ourselves a cat hole and refill it with dirt when through, but never did).

Later on, near the end of the war we traveled in task forces of a tank company with infantry riding on the back of each tank....when we neared a town or suspected strong point the infantry would jump off and deploy in line abreast with the tanks and advance together....on one occasion, our tank and one other from our platoon entered a town with infantry preceding us down a street, led by the task force commander, a Captain....there were some stubborn German soldiers in town and a sniper killed the Captain and bounced several bullets off the front slope of our tank, causing Eby to drop his seat down, pull his head inside the hatch and close it....we backed out of town and returned to the field outside town where the rest of the platoon had been refilling with gas and ammo....on the orders of the task group commander, a good friend of the dead Captain, the company lined up its tanks and tank destroyer company lined up its units in line abreast across the field in front of town and proceeded to shell the town until its inhabitants came from behind a hill on the edge of town waving white flags and surrendered....we were not able to participate in the shelling as we were filling up with gas and ammo while this was going on.

We sat for several weeks in the early spring in an orchard near the Mozelle river....I slept in the tank, but the others slept under the tarp, which they had tied to one side of the tank and the other side of the tarp propped up on short pieces of tree limbs and held there by ropes tied to stakes....we heated our K rations and coffee on wood fires, and were able to shave and wash up using our steel helmets as wash basins....we roamed the nearby areas in pairs carrying our personal weapons....I was amazed at seeing farming terraces built up on some of the steep slopes along the river....they were about 8 to 10 feet wide and followed the contour of the hillside for about 40 to 50 feet....they were about 6 feet high and in the center had stone steps leading down to the next level....the sides were of large stones joined by cement and it seemed ridiculous so much effort had been expended to build such relatively small cultivation areas, but I suppose this was because land was otherwise scarce....from this area we moved to the Rhine at Coblentz and crossed it on a pontoon bridge built by some engineer outfit....it consisted of a sort of bridge of boats across which had been secured two treadways of steel wide enough and wide enough apart to handle any army vehicle....we crossed at intervals of about 50 feet with never more than two or three tanks on the bridge at one time.

Later on, as we neared the Czechoslovakian border we parked our tanks in a field across the road from some houses, which we stored some our gear in and slept in at night....I picked a room on the second floor as near the middle of the house as I could, reasoning that if any artillery or other fire came in I wouldn't be hit unless it was high angle howitzer fire....this choice turned out to be fortunate the following night....the second day we were there I was in my room on the second floor when I heard small arms fire....I rushed out of the room and down the stairway to the between-floors landing where there was a window looking out the back of the house, and where I had leaned my M1 rifle in a corner....I picked up the rifle and looking out the window saw a man in civilian clothes running at about a thirty degree angle away across the field, and several of our men firing at him without effect....I pushed the safety lever on the M1 out of the trigger guard and fired twice, aiming for the runner's legs, and he fell....I started to fire again, but glancing below from the side of my eye saw one of our company officers motion me to hold it....I went out to where the man was lying and found I had hit him in the upper left hip, the rounds passing through his pelvis and scrotum and exiting through his right leg....a battalion medic came on the scene and there was some discussion about what to do with the wounded man....I heard the medic comment he didn't think the man would want to live without his scrotum and penis intact, and I left.... that evening Red Zembal and I were pulling first shift guard and we were not particularly alert, as everything seemed quiet enough....we completed our shift, called our relief and went to bed in our bedrolls on the floor.... later I woke to the sound of an explosion on the floor below and the sound of small arms fire....I hastily put on my boots and felt my way downstairs in the dark....there was a lot of noise and confusion and men shouting....a number of crews had gone on out across the road to their tanks and others had stayed inside.... I felt safer inside as there was still some machine gun fire going on and I didn't want to get shot by some trigger happy crewman....soon the hubbub quieted down, and everyone came back in....one of our second platoon men had been sleeping under a window at the front of the house when a panzerfaust hit the edge of the window opening just above the sill....he got some brick dust and splinters in his back and was in the hospital for a week.

The next morning we moved to the other side of town and took up residence in other houses....that night we were attacked again....our tank received a hole the size of a quarter in the front slope where the drive mechanism was located in an oil bath, and had to be towed back to battalion maintenance, where they flushed out the oil, welded the hole shut, refilled with oil and returned it to us.... while the attack was going on, no one left the house this time, and our platoon sergeant had me get my M1 and follow him up to the attic where a dormer window overlooked the field in front and left me there to look for a target... I didn't see one and things quieted down again.... we left that town for another the next day.

Eby driving us at a fairly good clip along a narrow dirt lane... me standing halfway out the commander's hatch, both Cass and Brown standing on the rear deck... ahead beside the right side of the road is a medium size tree with a branch projecting over the road... is it low enough to strike the turret when we go by? ... will Eby swing left far enough to miss it if it is?... if he doesn't, should I lock the turret hatch cover open or leave it unlocked?... If unlocked the hatch cover may flip over and smash me, or if my hands or arms are above the hatch rim they might be amputated... decision time... I opt to crouch below the rim of the turret hatch holding on to the breech-block guard and the inside side of the turret...the branch strikes slightly below the hinge of the hatchcover, jerks the turret to the right as far as it will go before the turret gear teeth stop it, sways the whole 30-ton tank slightly to the left, flips the hatch cover over and closed, and my head was still high enough to feel the hatch cover hit the top of my head, but not enough to cause me any damage... wrong decision ... should have closed and locked the hatch cover and the branch would have rode up over it, probably... when I re-open the hatch Cass asks if I am okay...

The approaching end of the war found us camping in a sea of mud....when it rained our low-lying two-man pup tents would let water pour through if you happened to touch them inside while it was soaked outside, so we made every effort to keep from doing so....we would open the fly and sit down with our feet outside until we got our boots off....we would clean the mud off the boots as much as possible and lift them inside, placing them as near the outer edge of the tent as possible....we heated with a blow-torch I had picked up in a building used by the Luftwaffe....and I griped that I couldn't understand why we were camping in the mud when there were perfectly good houses nearby, empty, where we could have been fairly comfortable.

Sometime about a month before the war ended in Europe, I saw, very high, a German jet aircraft, but didn't know what it was....all I did know was that it was flying extraordinarily fast and high, and I could see no evidence of a propeller although I had no idea one could fly without one....its wings were somewhat sharply swept back, an unusual configuration for that time, and I am sure it was an ME262....its engine sounded different, but since our side had none flying and I had not even heard of jet aircraft, I could only wonder how it flew so much faster than other aircraft I had seen.

With the winding down of the war came a gradual relaxation of tensions and a chance to get a shower....we rode, a truckload at a time to a shower unit set up in the field....a large tent about the size of six pyramidal tents placed side by side and heated by several small stoves....we entered at one end where we were told to discard our clothes and throw them on an existing pile of dirty ones....there were piles of clean clothing at the other end of the tent, where we were to pick out what fit us when we were through showering....the tent was in a low-lying area near a stream, from which water was being pumped, and the ground was wet inside, so duck-boards were placed throughout so we didn't have to walk on the ground....the shower heads were located at intervals around the circumference of the tent, and it was a real pleasure to bask in the warm water, dry off near a stove and put on clean clothes picked from the pile....afterward we loaded back up on the company truck and returned to the company area....this only happened once and it had been three months or more since I had had a complete shower or bath.

As it had been getting used to being without lights at night, so it was getting used to having them on everywhere again....in fact, it seemed stranger to have them on after so many months when you dared not show a light of any kind, not even the burning ash on the end of a cigarette.

There are so many things about war that point out the stupidity, ingenuity, and viciousness of man....the Germans strung steel cable across roads at a height calculated to strike a peep driver's neck and decapitate him, so all peeps had a piece of angle iron welded vertically in the middle of the front bumper sufficiently high to cut such a cable....peeps were used as ambulances on the front lines....they could be driven off road through woods and two stretchers could be laid across the hood and strapped down to carry wounded away....leaving aside the fact that so many men, women and children were being hurt or killed, the destruction of property and buildings was terrible.... I thought of all the work that had been done and passed on to the present by people who had lived in the past, and how the evidence of a large part of those people's lives had been wiped out by bombing or shell fire and of all the waste of having to produce arms and ammunition which has no benefit or use after the war except perhaps politically.

After the Germans surrendered on May 8, 1945 there began a rapid redeployment of troops from the European theater of operations....I don't know where our independent tank battalion stood in the scheme of things....but with the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japanese cities we were informed that they had surrendered....I and a number of other younger men were transferred to the 778th Tank Battalion to stay in Germany as part of the army of occupation, while the older men went back home....this was based on a system of "points" awarded based on marital status, number of children, number of campaigns participated in, length of time in the service and other things....Buckman, who went through basic training at the same time I did and came to Europe at the same time, went home immediately....I remained in Europe a full year longer and was discharged "at the convenience of the Government".

Shortly after I went to the 778th I became a company clerk, I think because I had been in college a year. The company became guards over a prisoner of war camp near the Czech border, where I observed a huge pile (and I'm talking HUGE, HUGE, HUGE) of abandoned shoes of every type taken from (I presume) political prisoners and/or Jews....there was a crematorium within the prison....it had three ovens with iron rails about stomach high on which traveled iron stretchers upon which bodies were place to push them into the ovens. I learned later that the German admiral Canaris, head of one branch of German intelligence had been imprisoned and executed here after the July 20th 1944 attempt on Hitler's life.

We were guarding German POW's at the camp, a number of which were SS troops....they were supposed to be tough characters and we were supposed to take no chances of any sort with them....they were confined to barracks after curfew, which was about 7 PM....they evidently intended to test us, for they violated the curfew one night and one of the guards opened fire with a 30 caliber machine gun, hitting one of them in the leg....the guard was commended and there were no further incidents of the kind.

Later, we moved to Wildflecken, Germany, where we guarded a Displaced Persons camp consisting of Polish citizens waiting to be returned to Poland....the camp administrators provided them 1100 calories a day, which was not a great deal of food, but sufficient for subsistence....they were not happy with their incarceration and caused various troubles....including complaints that they were filthy in their personal habits, not using the latrines provided, but urinating and defecating on the floors of their living quarters.

Two young Polish lads looking down and out wanting to do my laundry... agreeing to let them try it... they return it a few days later clean and folded... paying them with two packs of "Lucky Strike" cigarettes and setting up a weekly schedule for them to pick up and deliver... before long they look quite prosperous and are always in a good mood.... being told by someone that two packs of "Luckies" is too much to be paying them... thinking these guys are probably getting some woman to do the laundry for them, paying her a few cigarettes and trading or selling the rest to buy whatever they need or want...didn't bother me... I got plenty of cigarettes through the PX at 50 cents a carton, more than I could smoke, anyway... and not having to be concerned with getting my clothes cleaned was worth it... whoever cleaned them did a good job...

Following the above we reverted to regular garrison duty, carrying out various training activities.... long days in the company CP....typing correspondence...making up guard roster....answering phone....bunking in the same building as the CP was in with the First Sergeant....walking down the hill and along the street to the mess building where two of my former platoon members, now cooks, worked....their pride in Thanksgiving meal provided (really very simple, as they had very little control of food supplies)....First Sergeant's Polish girl friend washing and ironing his clothes....him getting drunk on bootleg alcohol and going temporarily uncontrollable....one company first lieutenant calling on me to try to control him, but he wouldn't pay any attention to me....he had the broken neck of a bottle in his hand, coming down some stairs threatening to stab us with it....I tried to get the guy to settle down, but it was obvious he wouldn't, so I told the lieutenant he wouldn't listen to me and left....later heard it took four men from battalion headquarters to get him aboard a peep and to headquarters lock- up....he was busted to private and transferred to another company.

Notification I was due for discharge....getting things together for shipping out....two pistols hanging on my web belt as I went around bidding friends and acquaintances goodbye (pistols had to be kept in company supply rooms after the war and were not generally available.... I had also had to turn my M1 rifle and ammo over to the supply sergeant)....traveling across Germany on a slow train....stopping occasionally to get off and stretch our legs....stopping in Weisbaden, then on to Wiliamshaven.... the former German luxury liner EUROPA docked there and deserted....boarding the SS General MCAndrews....traveling through the English Channel and catching only a faint glimpse of the chalk cliffs of Dover on our right in the fog as we passed by....two weeks on the Atlantic....landing in NewYork....passing back through Camp Kilmer, where we boarded a train to Fort Bragg....not having to carry our duffel bag everywhere this trip....discharge at Fort Bragg....riding Carolina Trailways bus to Hickory....catching a cab home, where it seemed everything had shrunk since I left....wearing the uniform around home several days and gradually getting back to wearing civilian clothes....going around visiting friends and relatives....the difficulty of slowing down to the civilian pace as the emphasis became once more placed on what one could do under one's changed economic status.