It was late May and we were
looking forward to being home by Memorial Day.
Chapter 13 Home Again
When we arrived at Camp Dix the first thing we did was go single file
through a room for a medical checkup. A doctor was standing there and
asked "how do you feel?" I said 'Okay' and he said "Next". That was
the extent of the medical checkup we got and of course no one
complained about anything because all they wanted to do was to get
home again. We were afraid that if we told of any problems they would
put us in the hospital and keep us for weeks. We didn't want that to
happen......even John Brady with the ruptured appendix went through
the line quickly.
The next step was to go into a room where a sergeant made out our
income tax and gave us some of our back pay so we had money to get
home. They took out 188.00 to pay the income tax on my salary for the
year I was in prison camp. I don't know how they had the nerve to do
that after what we had been through. They talk about how badly the
Vietnam veterans were treated when they came back, but I think what
happened to us was just as bad. We didn't have any crowds to meet our
ship or parades to welcome us back either. We later discovered that
we should have insisted on more medical help and reported our health
problems so they would have been in our medical records. A few years
later when I needed treatment for my back, there was no way to prove
that it was service connected.
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