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Veteran:
Interviewer:
Veteran:
Interviewer:
Veteran:
Interviewer:
Veteran:
No, no-only after that seventeen weeks in basic training. The wife and another
lady from Anahuac came up and worked in a laundry and had an apartment. Her
husband and me would come out on Saturday at noon, and we'd have to go back
on Sunday night. Well, one weekend we would use the apartment; the next
weekend, they would.
Well, that worked out good.
Yeah. Then when I came home and went back for the last time, we shipped out
from Camp Stoneman-I like to tell this-and got almost to Hawaii, and they
told us the boiler blew up, but the real word got out that the Japs blowed a hole on
the side of the ship. They torpedoed us. They'd just bombed Santa Barbara,
California with submarines, but we figured they told us a boiler blew up to keep
us from panicking. Blew the whole side of the ship out, and we hobbled back to
California. While we were there, one of guys got sick and got quarantined, so we
were there for awhile. Me and this other boy went to a telephone booth-you
weren't supposed to call or nothing-but I called Mama and them, and they came
out there. We couldn't tell them where we were. I told her to come to Camp
Stoneman to the main Hospitality House. One of the guys that was sick, his wife
was upstairs, and I said, "Go there and describe yourself," and they did. Me and
that old boy went AWOL every night. We'd go down there and crawl over the
fence and over the road, and went to that apartment where they were, and then
come in the next morning in the daylight and get to bed, and fall out for Reveille.
You never got caught doing that?
No, and there was a whole bunch of boys out there in the stockade, and they were
still in there when we marched out of there headed for overseas. They said,
"You'll be sorry!" I left out of there on our first wedding anniversary. When I
looked up, there was Mama standing there on a hill. Of course, all of us looked
just alike, so she didn't know which one was me.
That's pretty neat that you got to be with her. That would have been more
difficult.
Yeah.
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