Franklin F. Snyder
Then I immediately started collecting data and things. I don't know how much lead
time I had, but the request went to Vicksburg for hydrologic data. In some of these
articles, or I don't know whether it's in here or not, but I saw an article in my file,
it was just about all of the work that Vicksburg did for the Rhine River flood
forecasting work. But they did have a lot of records, actual gauge records, and
other things, for different stations on the Rhine.
Q ..
All of its tributaries, too, I imagine.
A ..
Yes, yes. That data all came and I started tabulating, and began plotting gauge
relations right away. I'm a little hazy on how much of if I had done before I left,
but I must have had gotten about all I could out of that data before I left. Cameron
and I went together, went to New York, and then I forget the field there that military
aircraft left from, and we flew into Paris.
When we left, we didn't know whether we were going to London or to Paris because
they said depending on the military situation, we might have to go to London and
not go to Paris. But we ended up by going direct to Paris. The last leg overland,
they flew right close to ground and boy, was it rough. I remember that. That was
really a rough ride after we got across the ocean going into Paris. But everything
commanding officer was Colonel W .G. Lyles. He became a friend and later on, Al
Cochran when he retired, went to work for him down in Columbia, South Carolina.
He was a head of an engineering company in South Carolina.
We had quarters there. The one thing that's outstanding about Paris was the
champagne. These fellows traveled around all over the country on these hospital
projects and as long as they had the empty bottles, they could get all of the
champagne they wanted. It was the bottles that were scarce. So they brought
champagne back by the cases.
They had hired a French ex-patriot, who had moved to South America and married
the daughter of a prominent owner of a large construction company in South
America. He h a d come back for the war as an expert. In fact, they brought him
back the same way, I guess, as they did us because he was knowledgeable about the
bridges. He apparently had worked on a number of the French bridges before he
went to South America. After they got him, they could not figure out what they got
him for so they assigned him to us, to our hydrology project, because he was
French, and he did help us some in collecting more information. Later on, he got
assigned to the correct area.
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