I finally got situated at the station hospital at Camp Kilmer. The entire hospital was confined so everything was convenient. I didn't have to get outside to go from my barracks to the bakery. The part of the building i was in contained the bakery, butcher shop and morgue. What a combination. They were still doing autoposies at that time. They would still bring ship loads of patients from the european theatre of operations. Unfortunately, some never made it from the move back to the US. There were three of us who ran the bakery. We had a dietician who furnished us a list of items weekly that would be on the menu. I don't know how she ever made Lieutenant but i supposed it was her background. Lt Katz probably never came by the bakery more than a dozen times during my stay there. Occassionaly, we would call her if we couldn't bake something she had listed. On one occassion she had marble cake listed for the Saturday meal. We called her and told her we were out of marbles and could she substitute fruit. She said yes so this allowed us to get out of there early on Friday. We had her substituting fruit on many occassions.
Kathleen, came to New Brunswick and we rented another room but this one was larger than the one on Long Island. We had a small hot plate to heat stuff on. We could use their refrigerator in their kithcen as long as we didn't put any pork in it because they were Jewish. During the winter we kept several items between the window and screen that on most days would be colder than the refrig. Their name was Porges and lived on Seaman st. On one of my company trips back to Brunswick, i drove back over to this address. The neighborhood had really gone down in the years since we were there. Kathleen's dad came up to visit with us. We took an El in to N.Y. City and took him up ontop of the Empire State Bldg. He really liked that experience and even said he could feel the building sway. As i recall, the building has a 12 inch sway. We also attended the Manhattan Church of Christ. He knew E.G. Couch who was preaching there at the time. While he was there visiting us, our landlord provided a bed and room for him to sleep. Needless to say, his visit made us feel good since someone from back home was there. Kathleen got a job with J.J. Newberry. This was prior to Christmas and helped a lot with the finances. She enjoyed working there and the management was good to her. On one occassion, i went by and she was crying. When i ask what was wrong she said one of the men working there had insulted her about something and told her they were not running a boarding house for girls. This was also intended for the other person working the counter. I took her back to the Manager and told him she was leaving and would not be back. He told her to take the rest of the day off and be back tomorrow. That person was never seen again. We had no idea if he was fired or not. The manager seemed to reach out to wives of military personnel and furnish work for them. We had explained to him the incident that had happened and had assured us it would not occur again. She continued to work there for the duration of her stay. Sundays we would spend a lot of the afternoon just walking around town. Rutgers University was part of the downtown area and we would visit the campus. My buddy Fridley and another buddy Stayrook would spend some time with us on Sundays as well. Fridley, as i had mentioned was from West Virginia, and Stayrook was from Johnstown Pa. He was from the Bretheren Faith in Pa. but his parents had disowned him when he went into the army. I think his folks were really Quakers. Anyway he enjoyed being with us. He worked in the butcher shop. Next post, i will show a picture of the three Musketeers.