FIRST TRIP

While we were at Ft. Grant my brother George Arthur (G.A.) was born. He was born in October 1930. In August mother and Wyeth, Avon and me went to Phoenix so mother could be with her doctor, Dr. Shupe. Mother stayed with her sister, my Aunt Mureal. Wyeth and Avon stayed with mother and I was sent back to Mesa to stay with Grandpa and Grandma Lamoreaux.

This was a different experience for me as I had never before been away from my mother and dad. At age ten I sure got very lonesome and homesick for my family. I went to school but didn't learn very much because of no friends or family. Transportation was not the same then as now. From the time I left Phoenix to go stay in Mesa I didn't see mother or my new baby brother until G.A. was almost one month old.

When we left Ft. Grant to go to Phoenix in August, Dad took us in the car to Willcox and we went from Willcox to Phoenix on the train. This was my first ride on a train and I enjoyed it. The one thing I didn't like about the trip was I had to wear knickerbockers. I can't remember wearing them before or since. It was sometime in late November when Dad came over in the car and we went back to Ft. Grant.

While at Ft. Grant dad let me go with him hunting and fishing. I learned to love both sports and it has stayed with me all of my life.

THE DEPRESSION

January 1933 we moved from Ft. Grant back to Thatcher. This was the beginning of the Depression, which affected all of the world. Dad had no work, no income, things were bad for us, yet we had it much better than most families.

We lived on a twenty acre farm. Dad and Mother purchased the farm from Grandpa and Grandma Lamoreaux in 1926. Because we were on the farm Dad planted wheat, corn, and alfalfa hay. These were the crops we could feed to chickens, turkeys, rabbits, pigs, cows and horses. Also, we took wheat and corn to a grist mill in Pima and had flour and corn meal made, paying for it with a share of the wheat and corn. We had an average of about fifty laying hens and we could trade eggs for salt, pepper, sugar and other things we couldn't raise or furnish from the farm. We could kill a calf and pig about Thanksgiving time, make salt pork, bacon and cured ham. The beef we would hang under the eaves on the north side of the house at night and take down in the early morning and wrap in blankets. This let us have beef and pork in the winter. In the summer we ate chicken and rabbits for meat.

NEW HOME

The house we bought with the farm was lumber. But not 2 x 4 walls covered outside and inside, but 1 x 12 standing on end with narrow slats nailed over the edges where the lumber came together. The floor was lumber and resting on the ground in many places. The moisture and cold came through the walls and floor. We seemed to have a lot of sickness, colds, and croup. G.A. had diphtheria. Dr. Platt and Uncle Glen thought we should get out of the house.

The summer of 1934 Dad started building a new house. He arranged to have adobes made. They dug the basement and used the dirt to make the adobes. I was old enough to help a lot. We were able to get the walls up and the roof on before winter. Almost all of the material came from the old house. Dad would trade his work for things needed for things we didn't have. He worked for Ben Berrnitt and in return Ben plastered the house inside and out.

DEPRESSION CHRISTMAS

It is interesting for me to think back how we accepted things then. One Christmas all the presents we got were clothes made over or made from feed sacks, nothing else. But we were happy because we had each other, plenty of food and we were warm.

By 1936 the government started a lot of plans which gave people jobs so they could buy some of the things they needed. I applied for a job at the school. I got the job cleaning several classrooms. The pay was $20 per month. This job didn't last but a few months.

DRUG STORE JOB

Uncle Glen came to me and asked me to work in the Drug Store after school and all day Saturday for $5 per week. I worked in the Drug Store for a total of a little over six years, thirty to forty hours a week for the same $5 per week, and I saved some of it. When I stopped working, September 1940 to fill a mission in the Southern States I had about $50 saved. This isn't much by our standards now, but then it was pretty good.

MY MISSION

My mission was for two years. The first two weeks we were instructed by the General Authorities in Salt Lake. Our mission headquarters were at Atlanta, Georgia. I went by train from Salt Lake to Atlanta, arriving in Atlanta on Sunday. We were met at the station, taken to the mission home where lunch was ready for us to eat.

After lunch they took us to a park and we held an outdoor meeting. There were about six or eight of us, we sang a song, had opening prayer, then each one of us was called to speak. I can't remember what I talked about. I do remember that I bore my testimony and the only audiences were some ducks and swans on a pond. We had a closing song and closing prayer.

After staying in Atlanta that night I was assigned and left for Florida Monday morning. I enjoyed my time in Florida. I was there for one and one-half years working most of the time in only three places, Gainesville, St. Augustine and Jacksonville.

All of my companions were good men and good missionaries. The one I enjoyed the most was Elder Ralph Jones. His home town was Duncan, Arizona. Our background was much the same, so we thought a lot alike. Also, he was my companion when my brother Avon died and was a great comfort to me.

The last six months of my mission was in Mississippi. My companion and I were assigned to the south-east quarter of the state to be traveling missionaries. Our job was to contact all of the members in these parts and hold meetings with them. We would drive for three or four hours to a family's house and ask them if we could hold a meeting that evening. Then ask them to go contact their friends and neighbors and invite them to the meeting. Sometimes they came, but most of the time it was just the member family present. This was a different type of missionary work and I enjoyed it. I have always enjoyed being out in the open country and hills, so this was a pleasant way to end my mission.

I had many wonderful experiences on my mission. One that stands out and I remember so well was when I was asked to marry a non-member couple we were teaching.

I came home about the middle of September and made my report at my ward and then we had to report our missions in Quarterly Conference.

ARMY CAREER

First thing I had to do was sign up or register for the draft. I was exempt as long as I was an ordained minister, but as soon as I got home I had to register. The first part of November I was drafted into the Army. They gave me leave until the day after Thanksgiving when I went by train to Ft. McArthur, California and started my three year Army career. From Ft. McArthur, California, I was sent to Camp Maxie, Texas for infantry basic training. It was winter and the weather was terrible, rain and snow, mud up to our shoe tops all the time. They really gave us the whole works teaching us how to kill people with our rifles, bayonets, hand to hand knives, or any other way necessary. But we were taught how to be effective in killing people.

As you can see, it was a real different world for me just returning from a two year mission. I worked hard at being a good soldier, got all the sharpshooter medals, good conduct medal and no write-ups at all.

After about three months I was asked to be the communication officer, which I accepted and did for about six weeks or about two months. My job was to be in control of the base radio and keep in contact with the officers that were on their separate assignments. This meant that I was with the company commander on all of our field trips.

One day the commander asked me to help him pick three men for transfers. I asked him where they were being transferred to. He told me to a combat engineer battalion. This sort of appealed to me, I thought anything would be better than the infantry. So I asked the Captain to consider me for one to be transferred, which he did.

Next thing I knew I was sent to Camp Polk, Louisiana. The combat engineer battalion was just completing their maneuvers and ready to be shipped overseas. We stayed in Louisiana for five or six weeks, then got on a train and went north into Canada. Then circled and stopped back in the U.S. at Boston, Mass. Camp Miles Standish was a staging area to get us ready for overseas duty. We left Camp Miles Standish after about three or four weeks. Went by train to New York City and went right to the port and boarded our assigned ship.

SHIP LIFE

We hardly got on board the ship when it left the harbor. It was late afternoon and I can remember the empty, bad feeling I had when I realized where I was going, the reason I was going and that there was a good possibility that I would never return to see my family again. I stood up and watched the Statue of Liberty as long as it was in sight.

The ship had twice the number of passengers on it that was intended for, so we were assigned twelve hours deck and twelve hours in the hole, where our bunks were. The trip lasted three weeks. We were escorted and took a zig-zagging course. During these three weeks we were attacked by German submarines.

But worst of all, every body was sick, diarrhea, sea sick and every thing else. We were so crowded it was impossible to use the restrooms besides there was no sewer water and the floor were about six inches deep. The men with diarrhea and sick to their stomach would use their steel helmets and try to throw it overboard. Most of the time the wind blew it right back on us.

Anyway, we were sure glad to see Oran, North Africa. From May until the last of August or first of September we had combat training in North Africa. When we left Africa we went in convoy for the invasion of Italy.

D DAY

On D Day, invasion day, the first troops were scheduled to hit the beach at 4:00 am, but the Germans were expecting us and started to shell us with heavy artillery and sent wave after wave of airplanes after us that we were not able to get troops on land until the middle of the morning. Our battalion was put on the landing boats about 1:00 pm and landed on the beach about 2:30 or 3:00 pm. On the way in we saw our own landing boats hit by shell fire and all thirty men killed. The shells landed close enough to our boat to splash water on us. The boats were made to let the front end down and when we got to the beach the end went down and we ran on the beach looking for anything in the way of protection from the German fire.

I dove into a trench on the beach and found I was on top of a dead man. I took protection behind one our disabled tanks and dug my own trench. We were so disorganized that afternoon and night. I really don't understand how any of us survived.

One of the Generals came around personally from man to man explaining that we were probably going to be pushed back into the ocean. He said that our only hope was to form lines and pass ammunition from hand to hand to the infantry and artillery and we did this all night.

By the next morning we had a small foothold on the beach. I was so busy all night I didn't think about the seriousness, but the next morning when I got into my hole I couldn't sleep or rest thinking that I probably never would get home again.On about the fourth or fifth day on the beach our Company was hit directly by a bomb from an airplane. Out of 48 men I was in charge of as a medic, 27 were killed and several more were seriously wounded. I have never before, nor since, worked so hard and so long trying to take care of wounded men. There was no doctor nor way of evacuating the men. The first two weeks were a living hell on the Salerno beach, always the feeling that you would not leave Italy alive.

OCCUPATION OF ITALY

We were able to advance only to Naples before the rains and cold weather came. Very little happened during the winter. The roads were muddy and hard to move equipment on them.

When spring came we moved up through Rome and to the Arno River in Florence. It was our Engineering Battalion's job to build a bridge across the river. The Germans, as they retreated, destroyed all of the bridges except Ponte Vecchio (the "old bridge" across the Arno in the middle of the City of Florence), which is not wide enough for four wheel motor vehicles to drive across.

Winter came again, so we were at a stand still, again. Our job during this second winter was just to keep the road open so the ammunition could be taken to the front lines. We dug a hole in the ground about six feet by eight feet, about four or five feet deep. We covered the top with railroad ties and put all the dirt from the hole on top of the ties. The Germans would fire shells into our camp on a regular basis. We learned to eat and sleep in those holes and the shell fire didn't bother us.

When spring came we started to move again. During this time we stayed in tents and only in one place for a few days. Half of the men worked twelve hours at night, the other half worked twelve hours in the day. I was working nights and came in at 7:00 am, would eat breakfast and go to my tent and go to bed.

MINE FIELD

One morning after breakfast I decided to shave and take a sponge bath before going to bed. I had my shirt off when there was a land mine explosion just one hundred feet or so from my tent. Several holes were made in the tent from the explosion. I dropped everything and rushed out to see what had happened.

All the mine fields were marked so even though they were where we camped, we stayed away from them. But out in the middle of a marked mine field were two older people, a man standing and a woman down on the ground.

The men were running to get a mine detector, but when they returned with it it wouldn't work. I grabbed my first aid bags and walked out to the people. The woman's foot was gone above the ankle and was bleeding bad. I used a roll of bandage and wrapped the stub and then picked her up and asked her husband to follow me out.

I stepped in the same tracks that I made going in. I knew I was lucky I had not stepped on a mine and didn't want to take a chance of coming back. So when I got out of the field I looked back and found the man had not moved. We talked to him and tried to get him to move, but he refused, acted like he didn't hear us. So I went back, again stepping in my tracks. I picked him up in my arms and carried him out.

My Company Commander reported this to the Division Headquarters and I was awarded a citation for my efforts.

GERMAN SURRENDER

We advanced to the Po Valley on our drive and the Germans started to surrender to us, not as an army but by squads, companies and battalions. We had a battalion surrender to us. When their commanding officer asked ours what to do our commanding officer said the men were to disarm themselves, all of the rifles pistols knives, etc., were tossed away. Later, when we looked at the rifles and pistols we found them fully loaded with the safeties off, ready to fire.

Soon the war in Europe was over but I received word that because I didn't have enough points to come home I would be going to the Philippines and from there to Japan. Our ship was just outside the port when the news came over the ship's radio that the Japanese had surrendered. We all celebrated the day and most of the night.

AROUND THE WORLD

After crossing the ocean and arriving in the Philippines, we were taken by truck to an area about fifty or so miles from Manila, where we stayed until we left in September to go to Japan and be occupation troops.

By the time I got to Japan I had seen so much of the world all I was looking forward to was getting home. I hardly left the building I stayed in. I had no interest in the cities or the people. I stayed in Japan for about five or six weeks went home by ship and landed at Seattle, Washington. It was only a few days and then we went by train to Ft. McArthur, California where I was discharged from the Army. I was in the Army for three years and a few days.

HOME AND MARRIAGE

On the Thanksgiving eve before going into the Army three years earlier I went on a blind date with a girl named Elaine Russell. We went to a dance. I asked her to see me off for the Army on Friday night, but she didn't make it.

I told my mother about her and it wasn't long before Elaine and I were writing to each other. She sent me a wallet-size picture of her, which I carried all the time I was in the Army.

The same day I arrived home after being discharged my mother went with me to go to see Elaine. We made a date for that night and in about three weeks, December 5 1945, we were married.

Our first child, John, was born in Safford while we were living in an apartment that belonged to Elaine's dad.

My dad and mother gave us a wedding present of a half acre of land in Thatcher if we would build a home and live on it. So Elaine's dad and mother gave us a wedding present of free rent in the apartment while we built our home.

FIRST JOBS

My first job after I got married was with Arizona Commission of Agriculture. The pay was $175 per month and it was shift work. I was able to do a lot of work on the house while working two and one half years for the state.

My mother died July 4, 1947. John was born November 20, 1946, just barely seven months old, yet he could walk by July 4.

When mother died dad didn't want to live alone, so we moved in with him. Jean, our oldest daughter, was born December 31, 1947 while we were staying with dad.

During July of 1948 I left state employment and went to work for Brooks Lumber Company. I had to work from 7:00 am to 5:30 pm, but the pay was twice as much as state paid. Brooks paid me $350 per month. I was hired to be their bookkeeper. I worked for them for fourteen years.

I finished the house, at least enough to move in, before winter of 1948. We had two more children, a daughter Jan and a son Fred.

FAMILY LIFE

I think we had a fairly normal life. All four of the children attended the Thatcher Schools. All four of them worked from the time they were in high school and bought most of their own things.

In 1962 I left Brooks Lumber Company and went into business for myself selling Farm Bureau Insurance. It didn't work out too good because there was a lot of night work and the job required being out of town to attend schools and meetings.

So after about three years I went to work for the City of Thatcher as a policeman. Part of my salary was paid by Thatcher and the other half was paid by Eastern Arizona College. So all winter I did part of the police work for Thatcher and part for the College.

In 1969 I started working for the state again. The same department as in 1945, Arizona Commission of Agriculture and Horticulture.

In April 1965 I had my cardiovascular surgery and was quite sick for a couple of months and really didn't get my strength back for almost a year.

In 1975 my dad died. I was very close to my dad and we had hunted and fished and done many other things together all of our lives. I still miss him very much.

While working for the state since 1969, I have worked as a quarantine inspector, assistant to the station chief, as station chief and as District Director. My district included all of Graham and Greenlee Counties. The inspectors inspect all plants, flowers, seeds, trees, produce, etc. that comes into the district from outside of Arizona. We regulate the native plant laws and we inspect over 10,000 colonies of honey bees each year and many other things.