Alice Chapman

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United States Army Nurses Corps

Personal narrative of Alice Chapman
From: Alice Chapman (ac)
Medium: Audio Tape
Date: Friday, April 23, 1999
Place: Home of Alice Chapman, 904 Estate St. Marion, Indiana 46952
Collected by: Annie Wright (aw)

00:00 aw: I am Annie Wright. This is April 23rd, 1999. This is being recorded at 904 Estate Street. I am speaking with Alice Chapman. And. . . uh. . . could you please state your name?

ac: My name is Alice Chapman.

aw: Okay. Do I have your permission to interview you?

ac: Surely.

aw: Okay. Do I have your permission to submit this interview to Marion High School?

ac: Yes.

Oral History of Alice Chapman



aw: Do I have your permission to submit this interview to the Marion Public Library?

ac: Yes.

Early days and nurses training

00:37 aw: Okay. And then at this point we will begin the questions. (pause) Okay. Alice Chapman could you please tell me about your life?

ac: Well, it’s been a long one. I’m seventy-eight years old, as of last week so it’s been a long life and basically a good one, I think (giggle) anyway. Uhm…I was born in New York City. So…my move, much later than that, to Marion Indiana, was kind of a shocker. Moving from the big city to a little one. But I liked it. I’ve lived here for a long, long time now. From the late forties, in fact, so that’s a long time. And, uh, where shall I begin? I had a very ordinary life, went to grade school, like we all do, through eight years of that and then onto a high school that was about 6000 girls, had all girls, no fellows. Big, big loss. Uhh, from there I wanted to go on to college. And I chose the University of Vermont in beautiful, beautiful Burlington, Vermont. And I spent four very fine, very educational, very pleasant years there. (waved hand for me to stop) (I stopped the tape) 01:47 ac: My major was dietetics and that took all of the four years in school. Uh, most of the students in my class with one exception were all female. And, uh, not all of us went on to be dietitians at all, uh, that was rather different, but a lot of them wanted to go into teaching, which they did too.

02:10 When I graduated in 1942, that’s really showing how old I am now, uh, graduated and, at the time, people who wanted to be dietitians needed to take an internship usually consisting of a full year. However, since this was war-time they had cut that internship to a nine month period. I was very fortunate getting an internship they were kinda hard to come by at the time and mine was in northern New Jersey. It was Beth Israel hospital, which was a large general hospital in Newark, New Jersey, uh…Hackensack General, which was a small hospital in, obviously, Hackensack. I need to tell you, I don’t know why, while at Hackensack, my roommate, Romona, insisted that we go and watch a birth, which we did do. Uh…the woman who was giving birth, it was her third child and, as I understood, a very easy…delivery. However, that was enough for me, I swore I would never have children, however, I have three, huh…so…you can change your mind. Uh the third institution of my internship was at a place called Overbrook, which was a large mental asyn…asylum also in New Jersey. And it was kinda scary, in a way, I hadn’t been uh used to patients of this type and all, the way to get from one building to another was an underground passage, so we…as girls never wanted to go through these underground passages alone, but usually did.

03:44 At the end of this nine month period I…uh…was hired by…Beth Israel Hospital, in New York and had a very fine learning period at that point and learning to get along with all kinds of patients, all kinds of necessary diets and very good companions. There were eight or nine of us, I don’t quite remember, girls in this internship, really from all over the country. My favorite was a girl from North Dakota, actually, and how she got from North Dakota to Northern New Jersey I don’t know but she did. (At this point Mrs. Chapman waves her hand, indicating that she wants the tape to be stopped.)

04:19 aw: Okay we’re stopping the tape at this time.

ac: Yep. (I stop the tape.) My mentor of the program was a Sophia Morris. She was a big, older, lady, who needed to lose some weight, just as I do now, but anyway and the…uhhh…chief of the cooking end of it was called Sammy and I don’t remember Sammy’s last name, but he was a little feller and uh very good. He had some sort of an accent, I don’t know what it was, but, uh, the department functioned very nicely. At the end of the nine-month period I was hired on as the cafeteria manager at Beth Israel and I really didn’t want to especially do that, I wanted to get into the service. Uh we were in the World War II by now. Now I’d like to back track a little bit here if I may. (Mrs. Chapman waves her hand, indicating to stop the tape.)

05:09 aw: We’re gonna stop the tape, again.

ac: Please. (I stop the tape.) I had really wanted, very badly, uh to go into the service at that point. We in my senior year of college we had had sorority sisters from Magill University in Montreal come down for a, a very pleasant weekend, I don’t remember what the big occasion was but they were there. And this was the weekend of December sixth and seventh of 1941, and we, probably anyone listening will remember what December seventh 1941 was, that was the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Well, at the end of the day, late afternoon, we had to put the gals from Montreal back on their train headed home and we felt very, very close by then because, here, the United States was going to be in the war and Canada already was, so they went back. (Mrs. Chapman waves her hand, indicating to stop the tape.)

06:00 aw: Stopping the tape. (I stop the tape.)

Joining the service

ac: As I had already mentioned I wanted very badly to get into the service. Uh, my mother and father didn’t think that was too hot an idea, but, I did it anyway, uh. And just three weeks from the time I applied, I was in. And now I was Second Lieutenant Alice Reichman. How ‘bout that? Uh, my first station then was at Haleren General Hospital on Staten Island, and one gets to Staten Island on a ferryboat, from New York City, and the ride back and forth was a lot of fun.

06:33 Uh, at Haleren there were several of us who were dietitians, and my first assignment there was a necessary one but to me it was rather boring. At the time, this is now 1942, Penicillin was a very experimental do drug and they wanted to find out uh, which nutrient component were most beneficial for people who were on Penicillin. So what I did, all day long, well no that’s not true, just for the noon meal, which was a big meal, was weigh the food that was going into the patient and then what came back we had to weigh all the left-overs, thus seeing how much of whatever they had consumed and looking up all these charts. Umm what nutrients were in them and getting all the figures on that, as I said it was kind of a boring job, but I guess necessary. We did at the end of the experiment, uh, decide that a diet rather high in protein, that would be your meat, cheeses, eggs, milk, etcetera, uh would help the benefits of the Penicillin, which I found rather interesting.

07:37 So we spent some time at Haleren, uh I had a roommate named Doris and Doris and I, these many, many years later still correspond. She lives down in Memphis now, and I’m here in good, old, Marion anyway. Uh she’s the only one who I still keep in touch with of all the people I had known there. (Pause.) Umm, (pause), after that, umm, I became part of the ninetieth General Hospital, still on Staten Island, at that point, but then after a bit we moved.

08:16 We went down to Fort Dix in New Jersey and I told my dad that I would like to volunteer for overseas duty, and as any good father should he objected strenuously. He wanted me back in the states where I belong, but…uh…anyway. Fort Dix was kind of quite a place. Uh, first we were assigned to a Cooks and Bakers schools, remember I am a dietitian now, and that was fun more than anything else, I don’t think I learned much, but the class was full of nice looking young men so I enjoyed it, after all I’m twenty-one years old wan’t I? Uh, that was over, finally. But we had some nasty stuff to do, down in Fort Dix, too. One was a gas mask drill. Where we had to put a gas mask over our face and uh, just carry on with that on. And the second thing was infiltration du-drill, where we had to crawl on hands and knees and they supposedly were shooting over our heads. I don’t imagine they were, that it was live ammunition, but I don’t know. We weren’t about to take a chance, I assure you. So that’s what we did there.

Shipping out

09:22 And after a while we found that our ninetieth General Hospital was bound overseas. And, uh, a lot of us were pleased, a lot of us were displeased with that thought. But, uh, we got on a train and loaded up to New York Court of Authority, and having gotten there, I don’t recall how long the trip from uh, Trenton, New Jersey was, up there, anyway. We got there just to find out that our ship had been sabotaged. It wasn’t going anywhere. Now what the result of the sabotage was, I really can’t say. I do remember so distinctly, though, we got back on a train, turned around, went back to Trenton, New Jersey. You could not use that ship. Well, uh, not too much after that we went up to New York harbor again and this time we were all loaded aboard the Queen Elizabeth two, uh which had just been commissioned out in the east somewhere, I think in China, but I don’t swear to that either. So, off we go.

10:22 Uh the ship must have been very beautiful, except it was all padded, all the walls, the stair ways, everything it was brand new, and very luxurious, so, you know the type of padding that they use if your moving and all your furniture’s covered in the moving van? That’s the kind of padding that was on the walls. Uh, but finally we did get moving and it was New Years Eve, of all things, 1943, we pulled out of New York Harbor. None of us were too thrilled about that part but away we went. Uh nothing much happened on board ship there were six of us, I believe, in a room, stateroom that was meant for two, so we were rather crowded, as you can imagine. Uh, but we were companionful, and we took turns doing this, that, and the other thing. Now when my turn came to have a shower, which was not as often as we would like, we found out that the water in the shower was salt water. Oh golly! You came out feeling just as sticky as when you first got in. So that was the only shower I had in all the days we took going over seas. Didn’t want any more. Easier to wash.

Stationed in the UK

12:27 Uh, we landed eventually going up the Firth of Clyde, in Scotland. And we got off there. And, uh, we were told we were going down to a place called Beaston Castle. ‘Castle, oh!’ all the girls got excited. Very foolishly we had brought evening clothes with us, which was utterly ridiculous, which we had. So, uh, Beaston Castle was on the outskirts of Chester, England. And this was January, February of 1944 by now. Well, uh, we landed in a combat engineer camp and we lived in metal glistened huts with one potbellied stove for heat, which was very, very ins, insa, insufficient. However, some of the enlisted men did bring us wood and some coal for the stove so that did help. They were very nice to us.

13:19 It was kind of interesting, I think from all the time I was in the service you never, ever walked anywhere you always marched. Well, at this Combat Engineers camp, January, February, ‘44, oh it was so cold. But at six o’clock in the morning you would here reveille all the time. Out we would go, and I that field must have been the size of a football field. And round, and round, and round we would march to the tune of the ‘Colonel Boogie March’ which you’ve probably never heard of, but what, an’ I’m no singer but it goes something like this: Da da duh duh da dum dum dum, de de, de de de dum dum dumm and ‘round and ‘round we’d go. And I don’t know how long we’d march. It seemed like forever and ever. It wasn’t that long I’m sure.

14:03 Uh, Chester itself was an interesting city. We did find out that Beast Beaston Castle, which we had expected to see, was on the Western Slopes, but it was a ruins. So we never did see it. I was told it was a, a wonderful example of Medieval architecture at one time, we didn’t see it. Chester is a walled city. There’s a wall completely around it. Uh, about two miles around, as I understand it and had been built by the Romans before the fifth century. So, uh, as an example of medieval architecture, we were disappointed not to see it. Instead we got (inaudible). The population of Chester, as I understand it, was about a hundred and fifteen thousand. (Mrs. Chapman waves her hand, indicating to stop the tape.)

14:47 aw: We’re stopping the tape. (I stopped the tape.)

ac: Understand that Liverpool has taken over much of Chester’s industry and trade now. Well, in the early spring of 1944 we, uh, trained to a place called Great Mulvern. Great Mulvern’s in the Midlands of England, uh, and just very, very beautiful. We had few patients at this time because we were not really engaged in the war at this point. So a lot of the girls in the outfit bought bicycles as I did too, English bikes are wonderful. And we had, uh, a lovely time just riding our bicycles around, that’s Britain.

15:24 The buildings at the hospital were very nice. They were quite modern. The area was just beautiful, uh, full of low hills, mineral springs, and apple horch, orchards, huh, which were in bloom. I understand that now, the Mulverns are an education and a cultural center, with a population of over 87,000. Both Elizabeth Barrette Browning and John Macefield had lived there as children. (Mrs. Chapman waves her hand, indicating to stop the tape.)

15:51 aw: Stopping the tape. (I stop the tape.)

ac: [From] Great Mulvern we were sent up to Lland Dudnoe in Wales. Lland Dudnoe, as you might surmise, is spelled with two ls, (inaudible) Lland Dudnoe. This is May of 1944. And Llan, Lland Dudnoe, in Wales, is on the Irish Sea. And it’s a summer resort, or it was, I don’t know what it’s like now. It had a beach, boardwalks, swimming pools, and so forth. And it was surrounded by a greater and lesser ormes, o-r-m-e-s. And I’m not sure if ormes were supposed to be low mountains or high hills, but anyway that’s what they were like. That’s probably a Welsh name for them, so, I don’t really know. But we enjoyed being there. We had, once again, lot of leisure time. N’ I do have a picture of myself in uniform, standing next to the statue of Alice in Wonderland, which was there on the shore line. Uh, after a while, we hated to leavin, uh, leaving Lland Dudnoe, we were having fun. This doesn’t sound like the army does it? It gets worse though later.

16:56 I was sent on detached service to a field hospital in southern England. And one morning we were awakened by a awful sound outside. It sounded like a bunch of trains getting together. What we were hearing though was, uh, the sound of planes rendezvousing over head. It is D-Day and they are rendezvousing and getting ready to go across the English Channel to France. That is a noise or sound that I will e-never-ever forget.

Off to France

17:26 Well from this place in Southern England I rejoined my outfit and we were finally off to France on a very crowded ship. And just to cross the English Channel we were on that ship for a day and a half, I can’t imagine why now. We landed, uh, in France, this is about twenty-two days after D-Day by now, or twenty-five, I’m not really sure, right in that time period, anyway. We were stationed in a field in Normandy, and we had a very large tent in which there were eighteen of us ladies, who had been assigned. And we were told by the chief nurse who was uh, over the dietitians and red-cross girls, uh, the nurses, etcetera that we were not to leave, not to leave that field without transportation and an escort. Well it’d get pretty old had after a while. There’s no where to go and not much to do they showed old movies at night and that was about the entertainment, except that the fellows with cheerleaders among the women would play softball every afternoon. That’s about all we did.

Meeting a tall handsome captain

18:30 So, uh, my two friends, special friends, Kitty and Cynthia and I, we sneaked out. We had just got out on the road and wanted to hitchhike. Well, along came a Jeep with a driver and a nice, tall, handsome captain sitting in it. This is how I meet my husband, you’ll soon find out. Anyway, uh, Bob, Bob Chapman was my husband and, uh, some older, older, older people will remember Bob from being on the 1926 Marion Basketball team, along with a name even more famous Stretch Murphy. He was six foot five, I think, Stretch was and Bob was a mere six foot two, so, anyway. Uh, we cut a deal, the three girls, Cynthia, Kitty, and myself at the fact that Bob took us all around that end of Normandy all the time, and we’d get back in our own quarters and we’d kinda giggle and say, “Oh, that man’s gotta settle on one of us sometime,” and I was the lucky one. He settled on me, and I was happy about that.

19:34 Well, we’re still not much involved with anything and waiting for permanent stations at that point. So Bob and I really got very, very well acquainted. We had the afternoons, we’d go sit under a tree and just talk, or we’d go out to, uh, the edge of the ocean, where it really wasn’t the ocean, it was the channel, and sit on a rock and talk some more. They were sand dunes then. Uh, we met or I met, through Bob, a man, we never knew his name, we just called him Papa. He was older gentleman, and he lived a rather decent house that had tobacco hanging from the eves all over the drive. But we’d go there most evenings and Papa would feed us some of his cider and we’d sit there and talk some more. Papa did not have a wife at that point; he did have one daughter that, that a grown daughter was there with us. Well, he and I, Bob and I got to know each other quite well and he showed me, one day, his home. His home was the fuselage of a German plane that had been shot down. And that’s where he lived. Uh, his idea, Bob’s idea of his treat was to make potato soup. It was really awful potato, (laugh) soup. It consisted nothing but pataters, and onions, and some milk. I’m not sure where they got that milk. We never had it except powdered milk, anyway, but no seasonings. Uh, if you make potato soup, you usually want a little fat in it, bacon fries, or whatever. Oh, (Mrs. Chapman waves her hand, indicating to stop the tape.)

21:05 aw: We’re stopping the tape. (I stop the tape.)

ac: Are we stopped?

aw: No we’re going.

ac: Okay. Uh, that’s how I met Bob, anyhow, by getting picked up and taking all around the other girls. His home that, that uhh, plane’s fuselage of the Germans, was kind of comfortable, really. So, uh, we got to know each other better and better. And of course you couldn’t go to the store and buy a box of chocolates for your girlfriend at that point, uh, or a rose or whatever the usual, courting, courting, that’s an old fashioned word isn’t it? But he did pick a canteen cup and that holds I believe about a pint, he picked that full of blueberries and that was his gift to me. And I ate it all, every single last one. Uh, oh boy! That was bad, very bad on the intestines (giggle). We decided after long enough, we’d known each other, oh month and a half or so, that we wanted to be engaged. And so we did consider ourselves. (Mrs. Chapman waves her hand, indicating to stop the tape.)

22:07 aw: We’re stopping the tape. (I stop the tape.)

War time duty in France and Belgium

ac: After we’d been there, in Normandy place quite a while, uh we got our orders, my outfit, the Ninetieth General Hospital, was off to a place called Bar le Duc, that’s B-a-r- small-l-e capitol D-u-c, Bar le Duc, which was about as close the German front lines as you can get at that point. In fact we found out, after a few days at the hospital, we were moved into, had just been vacated by Germans, uh, three days before. They had been there since they had pushed the inmates of this institution out. This was a an insane asylum, actually, for the French. It was very nice, very nice modern buildings, uh, but, it was the filthiest place you’d ever want to see. So everyone from the colonel of our outfit, who was the chief, on down to the lowliest, a private, spent all our time cleaning. Cleaning and scrubbing, scrubbing and cleaning, oh dear, it was awful. And the first night we’d been there Kitty and I were room mates. In this nice house, in a very lovely home but the beds were appalling. And so, at the time, TDT was the thing that you used as insecticide. I believe it’s been outlawed now, in 1999. Then it was pretty much in use, so. Before we dared get into bed we sprayed the mattresses on top and, we finally got rid of all the varmints. Turn them over and low and behold the bottom of the mattress was just as bad so we took, took them right out, anyhow. Umm, we didn’t get any patients for a while there cause we were still being established and, where I had gone, I was still in France, at the Bar le Duc. Uh, Bob had been sent up for Antworth, Belgium. He was, uh, oh dear now I’ve lost my thought. (She waves her hand, indicating for me to stop the tape.)

24:05 aw: Stopping the tape. (I stop the tape.)

ac: He was a part of an anti-aircraft artillery, then. And what they were doing was shooting down bus bombs and water, I’m sure, for German planes as they came over. So they were a rather busy outfit too. He was, as I mentioned, I believe in Antworth, Belgium. Umm, (pause), I told you already how dirty that place was but it was nice, huh, huh, huh, in a way. We were, I mentioned this too, the closest hospital to the German lines, at this point. Uh, things were really quite unexciting there.

24:43 We started getting some patients back from the front so that kept us a little bit busy, but the thing that got us the most, I think, was Christmas Eve of 1944. Kitty and I had been up in our office making little snowmen out of basically cotton, and I’m not sure what we used for eyes and mouth and that type of thing, but these were to be, uh, little things to put on the trays on Christmas day. Uh, this was the time of the Battle of the Bulge too. Well the only really exciting thing that happened there, Kitty and I were coming back to our quarters at Christmas Eve of forty-four and this plane came roaring down the roadway between our quarters and the main building; shooting all the way. Well, I kind of tackled Kitty. We both hit the shrubs so we were safe. It was sort of interesting to learn, uh, a little bit later, that this German plane had been piloted by a female pilot and had been shot down, not too many miles ahead of us.

Getting married

25:43 Well, then much to my pleasant surprise Bob showed up, despite the Battle of the Bulge going on. And as usual, with Corporal Smith, the driver of the Jeep, and Bobs own Jeep as a passenger. So he came up and we really felt we’d like very much to get married. Well there’s quite a waiting period, I forget, it’s about fifteen months as I recall, all kinds of red tape for two American citizens to get married. And one of the things we had to swear to was the fact that neither of us were (huh) married, which we weren’t. And finally we did get permission and we did leave and we were mari-married by the mayor of Bar le Duc, February the seventh, 1945. We had a nice wedding, the only problem was that the mayor who did all the talking was all in very, very rapid French, which we didn’t understand. I’d had some French in both high school and college but I still couldn’t follow that at all. But we were lucky in that it was translated for us. I still do have that in a scrapbook that I own.

26:52 Uh, while I was still in Bar le Duc we were sent off, we had to leave, I had five days of leave and Bob had seven, and we had strict orders, after we were married, that we were to stay out of Paris. That was strictly off limits for us. And I think if you’ve heard enough of me by now that’s where we headed. But whoever went on a honeymoon with the driver, Corporal Smith, and the Jeep and the two of us passengers in the back? Awful load. And we landed in the outskirts of Paris, we didn’t know exactly where we were going. So we stopped a very nice looking gentleman wearing a top hat and a cut away coat, and in very poor French, Bob really didn’t know French at all, he yelled at us, “Where is the Champs Ellyses?” he would yell at him. So the man, in perfect English, told us just exactly where we were going, which had helped. Umm, (Mrs. Chapman waves her hand, indicating to stop the tape.)

27:50 aw: We’re stopping the tape. (I stop the tape.)

ac: So finally on our honeymoon, and thanks to the Red Cross, at the time, we were portered in the Penthouse suite at the Hilt-Hotel Claret on the Champs Ellyses. And you looked out little balcony that was there to the right and you could see the Arc de Triumph right there, very visibly. And, uh, it was a beautiful, beautiful suite rooms. The only problem was, uh, there was practically no hot water, we had about no food. The only thing they would supply us was were omelets. I guess eggs were plentiful, but nothing else much was. But, uh, this was honeymoon so we were very happy. Paris was pretty well blacked out, even still, uh, not very much do so at the part of sounding like a smarty it was nine months and seven days later, we had our first child. I don’t know, we did quite a lot in Paris. That’s a good one. I always hate to say that cause people sit back and look at me, however, it’s true so.

Going home

28:54 Uh, anyway, I was pregnant about three months I guess, and was shipped home by plane. And that plane was flewing other women, mostly male as I recall now and a lot of them were pregnant. Whether they were officially married or not, I don’t know. But a lot of them were kite sick, quite sick. And so good old Alice took her helmet off walked up and down the isle of the plane, I was healthy as a horse, I guess, and, uh, allowed the gals to do what they had to do in that helmet. That wasn’t very nice huh, huh, huh. Anyhow, uh, about half way, two thirds of the way, I believe, across the ocean, one of the engines, these were old war engine planes, at the time, stalled and so we limped in and we landed in Nova Scotia. And, uh, there we did change planes and I finally got home, to New York. And believe me, uh, milk, fresh milk, and green salads and things like that have never, ever tasted so good we simply hadn’t had them, when we were overseas, at all.

Settles in Marion

30:00 Um, I had my first child. And, uh, Bob never got home ‘till about few months later. What he had done with in the mean time, his outfit was stationed on the, uh, the coast of Normandy and they were guarding German prisoners there. And one of the German prisoners was quite an artist, in his own right. And they spent, or he spent his time, uh, doing oil paintings of the some of the officers in the outfit. An interestingly enough, I think, uh, this wonderful portrait he did of my husband was done with packing cases for the frame and potato sacking as canvas. And I still have that portrait that’s quite large and it sits on my living room wall. And it’s one of my very best possessions I do believe.

30:52 Well, Bob got home, as I said. Chuck was just about three months old. And I met him at Grand Central Station. Took him up to my house. And he, of course, didn’t know my parents and I did not know his at all, so. Uh, Bob was still wearing his combat clothes and ankle high boots. So I told him, very apologetically, after he picked up his baby and didn’t quite know how to hold him, he was very awkward, uh, that, very apologetically, I said, “You know, I never told you but that baby isn’t really perfect.” “What do you mean?” says he. So I took of the babies little knit booties and he has one drop toe on his right foot. So Bob looked at me and he grinned and sat down, took off his combat boots and sure enough he had a drop toe, same place on his foot. So he said, “Boy, I’ll never be able to deny that this is my baby.” So that’s the truth. So, uh, that was that.

31:50 We all got along very well indeed. And, uh, after that Bob insisted that we come back to Marion, Indiana to live because he was an only child. We really had no relatives and I had lots of relatives on the East Coast. And I was most reluctant to go. But we finally had to concede that I would go. Meantime Bob went home to his parents, of course, and he found a house for us and that was fun. On North F Street in Marion. And it was an older home and, uh, it was nothing I particularly desired I didn’t think but at the time with all these GI’s getting home from the war housing was very much in demand as I think you could understand, so. Uh, we had a very happy time in that house. Except the one time, this I imagine is several years later, we had a Cherry tree in the back yard and an old, very dilapidated garage and we wanted to build a new one. But if we had a two-car garage, which is what Bob, wanted we’d have had to cut down the Cherry tree. Now neither one of wanted to do that so we left the cherry tree, uh, build the one car garage and do you know what happened? We had a terrible storm right after that, uh, the garage was finished and down went the Cherry tree. So we could have had the two-car garage after all. Well, this is really about the end of my experience in the army and what happened to me. A lot of people came home with wounds. Uh, they came home with happy or unhappy memories. My memory, of course, my best memory was a very happy one because this is how I, uh, met my husband and we lived very happily together for many, many years later. That’s the end.

33:37 aw: Okay, we’re stopping the tape. Uh, the interview is now over.