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It was at the quarters behind the hospital that I would wait on laundry day along side the parade ground for the laundry wagon. It was a buckboard with mules in harness and the soldier driving them would stop, put me up on the seat and hand me the reins. I always felt ten feet tall when he did that, even though the mules knew the route and did the driving themselves. My father said that the driver was the only mule skinner on post who could harness up that team of mules. He said he did it by earing them down. That was to jump up throwing his legs around the mule's neck, biting an ear, and twisting it's neck until it laid down. Then he could put on the harness. Everyone else always managed to get kicked out of the barn. The last place we lived on Fort Logan was in a house on Rucker Farm. Our house was next to a rifle range that the WPA was building, and after it was built and had been used, my father would take me to the embankment and help me find slugs. Also, in back of our of our house and over the hill was Rucker Lake where we went fishing with the Nelson's, and where I one time watched the engineers practicing building pontoon bridges. I got in trouble over that caper as I went there unescorted against direct orders to not go there without an adult. My father could be extremely fearsome when I had a serious problem with safety directives. Prior to the second world war we left there for Fort Benning, Ga.. I remember all the tanks running down the street in Benning. This was General Patton's domain, and these were his troops. We thought we were headed for Puerto Rico, but as is the case many times in the military my father's orders were changed and we went to Boston Army Base instead. It was here that my father became a Warrant Officer Junior Grade. It was here that the second world war started after Pearl Harbor. My dad was transferred to the War Department in Washington, D. C.. Before leaving he had me sign a contract to be the man of the house in his absence. A tough chore but one I took seriously. While he was getting ready to move us to D. C. he stayed with Granville (Granny) Martz in Greenbelt, Md. Granny was now in the Army Air Corps. I remember one trek with my dad and Granny in the Colorado mountains, I had gone with them down a steep hill to get some water from a spring. On the way back up the hill, at the half way mark, my dad said to me, "Oh, Oh, we forgot to turn off the spring, would you go do it?". I took off like a flash down the hill, but when I got to the spring, I couldn't find a way to shut it off. I trudged back up the hill to where they were waiting, and when I said I couldn't see where to shut it off, they burst out laughing. My father was trying to teach me to look before I leapt. It was a lesson that is a tough one to learn. It is difficult to keep from springing into action before you have all the facts, especially when you are eager to please. We finally moved from North Quincy, a suburb of Boston, to Greenbelt, Md.. Greenbelt was an experimental cooperative community. It was interlaced throughout the entire community with grassy open spaces and sidewalks, just like the new innovations of greenways in subdivisions. There was no competition for the merchants, there was only one of each type of store allowed in the community. The lake provided was a man-made lake called Greenbelt Lake. In the summer you could rent row boats if you were 12 or older, and in the winter it was the skating rink. We lived in one of the new hastily built war time apartments on Southway out by Greenbelt Airport. Southway was the front road into Greenbelt, and half way in from the high school was a plot devoted to 'victory gardens'. We lived there while my father was promoted from WOJG to CWO to Captain, but when he was promoted to Major we had to move. He made too much money, and no longer qualified for residence at Greenbelt. Greenbelt is still there, but now it houses NASA. We bought a house on Shepherd St. in Landover Hills Md.. We stayed there through the balance of the war and until my father retired in 1946. He was awarded the Army Commendation Ribbon, and would have retired as a Lieutenant Colonel, except for an incident he had with a Russian. He was Chief of Operations Branch, International Division, Corps of Engineers (lend lease). His job was to balance the needs of all our allies for loaned equipment from the Corps of Engineers. I believe the Russian's name was Andrei Visinsky and he was asking my father to give his country another Caterpillar tractor above their allotment. My Dad's reply was no, you've got your quota for this month. The Russian -19-