Robert E. Irion, Sandy, Utah: an interview by Benjamin Bahlmann, September 20, 2002: Saving the legacy tape no. 537, 538, and 539

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Robert . Irion ept mb r 20'h 20 2 proc s you kn w and you d go over and they d tell you Pack your bag and b r ady to leave at 6:00 tonight' and so on. So people are leaving, and finally they got up to about the if I remember right about the 151h or so of July and they called us all together one day and said, "Okay that s all the shipments for this month. We've filled all the requirements and we've been told there' ll be no more." Oh, I've got to back up a little here. "There' ll be no more guys leaving to go overseas. But you're not going to get leave- there won't be any time for that, and we' ll pick up again later on." Well, the very next night, they called us all out again, and they said, "We need two volunteers to go to the Port of Debarkation and go overseas." The guy said, "I won't kid you now, this is a good assignment. If you take this, if you volunteer for it, you're going to like it, cause it' s a good place to go and you'll like it. But I can't tell you where it is." I didn't move forward. Two guys stepped out. Right away, they were gone. They were heading to the Port. They had to catch up to the group where somebody had gotten sick. Okay, about two days after that, they call us all out again and said, "Big change in plans. Go sign up for ten day leave. You're all going home." So the rest of us went home for ten days. We had a great time at home, then back. The day after we got back, processed and we're on the train heading for New York. And I was the first one, when we saw which way the train was going out of Jacksonville, that we thought, "Maybe we are going to go to Europe instead of the Pacific, cause the train wasn't heading for the Pacific Coast." 44