It was just plain luck that got
me there all the way from Nebraska.
I called Lettie and she agreed to marry me so I went to San Francisco
and we were married the next day, the 23rd of November, 1943. I had
to get special permission to 1eave the base to get married because we
were now on alert to be shipped overseas. We were married by a judge
in the Court House and stayed the night in the St. Frances Hotel.
Early the next morning I had to get back to the base. Our orders had
come through and I could not leave the base again. We were going to
England and I was glad of that because it meant we would not be
flying over water all the time. This was the way the Army did things:
the ones trained on the West coast went to England and the ones on
the East coast probably went to the Pacific.
We were shipped by train across the country to Camp Kilmer in New
Jersey. We were crowded in the train and it was a long hard trip due
to all the stops we had to make to wait for trains going the other
way. Most of the guys played poker in California and on the train.
Al Johnson was always borrowing money from me to play poker. He
would always pay me back at payday and a week later he would start
borrowing again. I didn't play poker so always had money and didn't
mind lending it to him as he never failed to pay me back. We arrived
in Camp Kilmer the first part of December and it was very cold there
with a damp ocean wind blowing.
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