John W. Morris
me who I was, and I told him. He said, "You're in bad shape, Captain," and seemed to say, "Don't
tell me you've come up here to save us." But that was true. I stayed there 14 days in Room 4 of
Hotel.
the
Heavy construction equipment from the Minnesota and North Dakota areas had been told just to
start towards
and Bowbells. As they traveled they opened the major roads. They arrived
in
shortly after I did. By that time we had a game plan of what we were going to do, and
using the radio the people were told when we were going to open Route so-and-so and that they
would have 24 hours to get groceries, et cetera. Plowed roads were like double snow fences, and
snow would soon blow into the cavities. Keeping the roads open was a real problem, so we would
only promise 24 hours on any segment.
one day of Route 25, and we had traveled quite some distance to the far end so
We ran a
we could work back towards Bowbells. As we'd drive along Route 25, little fingers of drifting
snow would get thicker and thicker and thicker until finally our vehicle just couldn't get through
fortunately right in front of a farmhouse. The people were very
any more and we were
to get a crew to
nice, but it was embarrassing, though, because I had to call back to
come and get us. The crew came, and a couple of hours later we were back into town, a bit
smarter.
We were so tired at night it didn't make any difference that there was little activity in Bowbells.
The tractor operators had canvas hood covers over the engines and up around themselves so only
their heads would be in the open. They'd be very warm in there, so they were okay. We never
shut down the tractors if we could avoid it because it was hard to get them started. That was an
interesting job which helped a great deal during later duties, especially in Labrador.
Once Divide County was cleaned up, we were told to go west to Columbus, Burke County, and
so forth. After that we were brought back to Fort Belvoir.
The unfortunate part of this whole event was that nobody told us when we left Fort Belvoir what
was going to happen, and I could not tell my wife anything of significance. I would remember that
later.
Germany, Savannah, and Fort Leavenworth
Q:
Where did you go after your Fort Belvoir assignment?
We received orders to Germany. On the trip over Gerry and I couldn't share a stateroom. Majors
A:
could have a stateroom but captains couldn't. I was still paying a little penalty for my friend's
going off on holiday back in Tokyo, but nevertheless we had a pleasant trip over. She was
upstairs with Susan in a very nice cabin. I stayed in a sort of ward area with the men. We had no
problem. We could see each other during the day. On our trip was Major "Jug" Young, Crawford
Young, a classmate.
Just the day before we landed, Jug got his orders to Hanau. He was very happy. Then my orders
came and we were going to go to Murnau -the Engineer School. Our old Ford had not arrived
when we landed in Bremerhaven, so we went to Murnau on the train. The track was smooth and
we had a good night on the train.
In 1949 Mumau, Germany, was not a big city. We were met by someone from the Engineer
School and taken to the colonel's home, Colonel S. A. Armogida, for our first night. He had a
great house. Our second night was in our assigned house at the end of a dark street with no lights,
on the fringes of Mumau. The house was sitting on a hill looking out over the moors towards the
23
Previous Page
