The training at the bakery was going real well and we had a good working relationship. The German pow's were picked up each morning from the stockade and brought to work. We had some problem communicating but our instructor did a good job of translating. One of the fellows was very personable and we kidded each other a lot mostly by some type of hand motions. His name was Augustine Mueller and was one of Hitler's storm troopers. I would tell him Hitler no good but he would just grin. The Germans would take stuff like metal banding etc from boxes back to the stockade at night and make bracelets. They were always bringing me something to take to Kathleen. We had found a one room place in Patchogue after she came up to stay with me. It was on the third level of a large home and consisted of a bed and chest of drawers and closet. We had a bathroom in the hallway. The lady who owned the home was a widow lady. She was very good to us and was always bringing up to us clam chowder. Since we had no way to prepare meals this was very thoughtful of her. I did not like clam chowder and would always flush mine down the toilet but always told her how good it was. Kathleen got a job working at Ben Franklin's five and dime store. When our landlord found out she was going to work in the mornings without eating, she bigin to give her toast and coffee. Occasionally i would bring her a pie from the bakery at camp. I recall she liked pineapple pie. I had to ride the bus back and forth to the base so i left rather early in the mornings for the 15 mile trip. She became good friends with some of the ladies at the store. We had a young married couple who owned a car and they would take us places on Sundays so we could see a lot of intresting places. There were a lot of millionaires living on Long Island and we enjoyed just seeing some of the mansions
I think i had already mentioned in earlier post about some of the events of my time at Camp Upton. We were able to take some trips into New York city and see some of the musicals. We stayed busy and the time passed by quickly. This was not the typical army base and i was not under a lot of pressure for my whereabouts since i was living off the base. I had a good friend at the base who was from West Virginia. We went everywhere together prior to Kathleen coming up. His name was Virgil P Fridley. I always called him V Pee Freely. My daughter Cindy did some research recently trying to locate him in West Virginia. There was one reference that showed someone there with the same name who had died in 1981. Anyway i wished i had kept up with some of these fellows after we got out of the army. Patchogue was a neat little town. Everything was kept clean and was a good place to live. We were just a couple of blocks from the sound. On one occasion we went down to the dock and took a small boat over to fire island. Fire Island was a large sand dune that protected the Island from the ocean. I will never forget how scared she was of the water and the small boat we were in. I liked Fire Island and was supprised how many houses were there at the time. I could never get her to go again. Later on after she went back home due to the base closing down, we could go to Port Jeffersonand take the ferry boat over to Bridgeport, Conn. and back just to have something to do on the weekend.