Bill T. Brooke, Bountiful, Utah: an interview by Becky B. Lloyd, January 8, 2003: Saving the Legacy tape no. 558

Page 31

BILL T. BROOKE J R 200 gethimtodrinkwine?'(laughs) o wehadalotoffun. Th r wasl t ffun. Y u had to do something or you'd go nuts. You'd absolutely go nuts. I wasn't a very good writer. About every fifth day or sixth day or som thing like that, Colonel Brown would sit me down and say,' You're going to write to your mother. I said, "I just wrote to her." He said, "You did not write to her." I said, "Well you write to her and tell her, 'I'm busy'." Sometimes he did. I didn't know what he wrote. I read the letters when I got home. But he said, "You're going to write to her. She worries about you." I used to talk to him every Christmas for forty years. BEC: Is that right? BIL: He'd call me or I'd call him every Christmas. BEC: Where did he live? BIL: Bangor, Maine BEC: Did you ever see him? Did you ever get together again? BIL: No, his daughter and son come out to visit me when we lived in Phoenix, but he never did. I used to try to get him to come out in winter, because it would get cold in Bangor. But he never did come. BEC: Oh. BIL: Yes, his daughter called me one night. She said, "You better say hello to Dad, because he's not going to make it until morning." She was a nurse and he was in the hospital. So I talked to him. Then he died that night. BEC: Is that right? BIL: Yes. So, there's a lot of history. I know a lot of guys that would like to tell you about shooting Germans and so on, but that's not my cup of tea. 31