We have been here since Monday PM and I'm not sure when we're leaving. Perhaps on Saturday. This is going to be a short blog, as the Internet service here is just a notch above none! It is SLOW! But we do get our email and I'm able to read the online news, so we're not totally in the dark.
Yesterday, we visited a cousin of Sandy's. Sandy and Vivian had a running dialog on family history and I listened to Joe tell me about his WWII activities. As he said, the Lord took good care of him. He tried to enlist in the Army Air Force, but they wouldn't guarantee him a slot as a diesel mechanic. So he waited a little while and was drafted. During basic, he took the aptitude tests and they wanted to send him to electronics school. He told them that he had been working in a garage and he really wanted to be a diesel mechanic. So they said, you're in diesel school.
School was about to start, so there was no leave after basic. He spent a few weeks in diesel school and was then shipped out to the south pacific by way of Hawaii, and several of those islands before settling in. He was on a contested island and they told him to dig his own fox hole in case of an air raid. (He was stationed away from the main base at the transmitter site.) His fox hole was kind of shallow until one night there was a Jap air raid. After that, his fox hole became much deeper!
He was on several islands, following the forces as they took one island after another. He ended up on Okinawa when the war was over. After the surrender was signed, he was sent to Japan to inventory the power generation equipment at a big site. When he returned, he learned that with 42 months of service time and no leave taken, he was nearly at the top of the list for rotation back to the states. He made it home in good time and was married two weeks later. Needless to say, he feels very blessed!
Now we'll see if we can post this! (Have a great day.)
Gene
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