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Show W RRENMAW PRI 6 2 1 n1others and dads and all the weeping and wailing and they put u n th truck and t k us up to Fort Douglas, you know, at least two blocks away. Here we were training t b officers and, of course, you're automatically just privates immediately. o they shipped up off to Camp Roberts as privates. And, oh, in the interim they had decided they didn't want to field horse-drawn field artillery anymore. They'd decided there was not much use for that. So we got down there and we were just in basic training. One day I got called into the captain's office and he says, "Pack your bags." And they gave me orders to go back to Annapolis and take the tests. He said, "If you pass them you join the Navy, if you don't pass them you come back." So I went back there and passed the tests and joined the Navy and that was in June of '43. BBL: Before we go on, let me back up a little bit and ask you about the Depression. How did the Depression affect your family? WAR: Well, not too bad because Dad was, like I say, a teacher. So he had a salary, or he had income. We didn't have a lot. Mother was very austere with regard to clothing and eating. We didn't have any trappings or anything special. It was a modest home down there on Sixth East and Seventh South. She was used to poverty because her parents had come over from Switzerland, because of the Church, and ended up in Manti and lived in a dirt dugout for years. Eleven children in a dirt dugout, can you imagine that? And so, she was very austere. And Dad's parents really got hurt during the Depression. His dad was running a small grocery story and people would come to them, people they'd known all along and say, "I don't have any money but I need to feed my family," and he would feed them, give them the food they needed. And he kept piling up these debts with the wholesalers and as folks started becoming more affluent, getting a 8 |
