Caroline Garrett and Emily Morrison

00:04 My name is Emily Morrison. I'm 29 years old today is October 27th, 2016 at the San Francisco Public Library in San Francisco, California, and I'm here with my great aunt Carol. So I think I'm her grandniece.

00:24 My name is Caroline Morrison Garrett. I'm 95 years old today is October 27th, 1916 where the San Francisco Public Library and I'm with my niece. I'm going to leave out all day in between Emily Morris.

00:44 So I'm Carol. I know you've lived in California for a long time, but you're not really a Californian. Can you tell me why I always feel like a likely enter is passing through because I am Connecticut Yankees through and through and what does that mean to you being A, Connecticut Yankee?

01:05 Well, it means um

01:09 Being a having a sense of independence of them.

01:14 Putting up with whatever happens to you always seeing the best side of what's going on. And I think I might ideas come from my grandfather who is one of the last real Connecticut Yankees. He remarried at the age of 79 and when he had his new wife who is in her sixties didn't get along too. Well, you said to me? Well, I made a bad bargain. So I've got to live with it and I thought of that many times through the years when things weren't going quite the way I wanted them to and I tell my son even though he's always been a Californian that that Yankee grit is in him somewhere and when the going gets tough just reach down and find that Yankee grit to keep him going.

02:02 What was your relationship like with your grandfather?

02:05 Oh, I had a wonderful relationship with him. Our grandparents were ants and uncle's family was so important in the days when I was growing up and we spend so much time with and at one of my earliest remembrances of my grandfather was when I had to have my eyes checked in a town about 30 miles away and we went on the bus and I was just so excited to be riding on a bus with my grandfather and then we saw an organ grinder with a monkey and as a little child that I always connect grandpa with that day the monkeys and he was he never owned a car never owned a horse a most of his life only went within 30 miles of the town where he was born where you could walk and he conducted he come back. He collected many many Indian arrowheads and identified the fields where he found them.

03:06 So that now that that collection is just invaluable. So I grew up with my grandfather's stories about the Indians and the pilgrims in the early days and felt very close to the earlier part of our country.

03:22 Thank you.

03:24 I'm curious about, you know, your your dad served in World War 1 was a history of military service and your family. Can you talk about that history? And then how you ended up playing a part in that history? Will my father was going to be drafted in 1917. And so he volunteered to go into the army thinking that it was going to get him a commission because he just received his degree is a civil engineer and the only thing that ever got him was several months of washing dishes and and marching and he felt it was a terrible waste of time.

04:03 But I certainly had no intentions of following in his footsteps. But when I was a junior in college, one of my professors said everybody's going to have to take a civil service exam during this war. So I'm sending the whole class down to the post office to take a civil service exam. So 1 gloomy Saturday December Saturday morning. We all Treach down to the basement of the post office in Saturn to the dripping steam pipes for 3 hours and took this test and it was all multiple choice and the only way I could ever explain it was I wanted to go shopping with my college roommate. So I didn't take it very seriously. It was just a class assignment. So I just went Zip Zip Zip Zip to all these true and false questions and six months later. I got a official letter from the war department saying that I had passed the civil service exam.

05:03 And that I was being offered of years training and dietetics at Walter Reed Army hospital the Army Medical Center after which I would be commissioned to second lieutenant in the Army. And this was in the early 1944 and there was great talk that women were going to be drafted. And so everyone said will if you could go in this an officer it was the thing to do but the real reason then I went in was that the fellow I have been going with had been killed it and enlisted in the Army and then killed in the plane crash up in Pine Camp New York the year before and I felt that it was up to me to fulfil Ernie's Duty and do my part.

05:50 What did you feel when you got that letter will just just just astonishment I even the postmark when I saw war department, you know, I just couldn't I just couldn't some couldn't fathom such a thing. And it on my first thought was a lie. I don't want to go into the army. I'm not going to do that. But there were only 24 of us in the class from throughout the United States. So I was at the women's college of the University of North Carolina. And of course they put pressure on me to accept because that was going to be great for them. But I say underneath and all I knew right from the beginning that because of her niece death that it was up to me to go on and fulfil his dream. And so that was what really propelled me to go ahead and take it but it turned out to be an amazing amazing experience.

06:45 So I love that you served at Walter Reed in Washington DC because I've made my home there for the past 12 years. And can you tell me a little bit about your time at Walter Reed? Well, it was it was it was not only Walter Reed but Washington DC it was a most I think it was the most exciting place in the world to be and 1944 with all that was going on with the war and the city was exciting. Although we had no idea that first week that we would be so busy and so tired but went on outside the grounds of Walter Reed, we hardly knew but we quartered and the nurses squatters in the basement and what have been the beauty shop before the war and they turn out the Stalls to the beauty shop. So we had a bed and a wash basin on the bed in the wash basin all the way down the room tile floor tile walls noises.

07:45 All the lights on one switch, but after the first week if it was your day off, you just slept through the commotion when somebody was brushing their teeth right in your ear. We were so exhausted and that first six months we were assigned a different parts of the hospital to work. And of course I had never had any experience being with really ill people and that it was a terrible jolt in the beginning. The first war that I was assigned to was all young men about my own age and they'd all been diagnosed with Hodgkin's Disease which was a fatal disease and they all knew they were never going to get out of that Warren. So they're way to cope with it was take advantage of anybody that came to the door. I'm in the comments and remarks at all and there but, you know, we we learn to to go to give it back to the Manchester. We knew how much they

08:45 They needed our attention and our health and one of the most trying experiences I had was that first week. There was a there were three private rooms across the hall from by the ward kitchen and there was a lieutenant in the cross the hall whom I had mad and his mother was with him and she was so distraught because he was so ill and so every morning I would take her a cup of coffee. So I took some other cup of coffee and she said well her son wasn't doing very well in the afternoon. We had classes very intense classes and all the different diseases and sanitation all kinds of things and the hospital was so crowded that we met in the morgue. So we walked into the morgue in the afternoon to fry class and I looked at the jar sitting on a shelf and there was his name and it's a young person would never been through.

09:45 Anything like this that was just an example of a kind of things that we met up with all the time. And that your everybody said it was so glamorous and such a great place to be and it was but we were dealing with very very serious illnesses of hundreds and hundreds of young men most of them far from home. So it was very very difficult in that we live strictly by Army rules. Although we were classified as student and then Apprentice dietitians later. They changed it and gave the commission's first because they found that for our class. It was very difficult to go into the kitchen with a mess Sergeant who been in the Army 30 years and maybe tell him maybe he was could do a little better at saving the vitamins in the vegetables that just didn't it just didn't go over so they found it was better to commission them first and then they had the authority that they they needed so we had to just

10:45 Be very careful how we did in that tread on too many toes after class in the afternoon. Then we went back to the ward where we were working and serve supper then we had a few minutes for supper ourselves. And then we went to the library and studying until we dropped and in the reference library, we could use the books, but we could not sit down because we were not officers. We were only potential officers. So after you've been on your feet since 6 in the morning and at all, these other experiences, it wasn't always too easy to stand there and you're on your feet and heels right. Oh, no, not me. It was we were we were when we wore what what nurses Warren civilian days. We wore white uniforms of the White Cap starch calves and them sensible shoes, which we had to polish every night because I had to be as white as white as our uniformed.

11:42 But I'm a lighter side. This is Roosevelt came once a week to see her boys and you could always tell where she was because she was so tall that you would see your little hat bobbing up and the boys just loved her. She was she was very very popular. We had wonderful entertainment for the soldier so that some it's the second six months. We were not quite is burdened with his studies and then we often went to hear all the the leading entertainers of the day. I think of all the experiences I have in the Army the one that stood with stayed with me the most was the day that Helen Keller came with her.

12:31 Companion to the blind unit and ask the boys to put their fingers on her face and she couldn't tell what they were, you know for she could get the vibrations and know what was going on. And I think that was probably the most moving experience that that I ever had one night. We the when I was at the Convalescent Center, the entertainment was in the Ballroom in the staff sat up in the balcony and we are on a level with a huge crystal chandelier because this has been the National Cathedral School for Girls before the war and Roy Rogers came tearing into the ballroom on trigger and they did have felt shoes on the horse. But when he reared up that chandelier sway back and forth we were sure it was going to crash that much.

13:31 Send a report in the next day. They reinforce the wire that held up the chandelier.

13:38 So it was it was a very intense time but very very interesting at the end of the year. We were commissioned second lieutenant in the Army are we were given thirty days leave and told to report to San Antonio Texas so friend of mine who's in my class came to Bethel Connecticut of where I lived and we were going to travel together to San Antonio and I remember we went out and walked around Bethel trying to find someone we could salute so that we could practice saluting cuz all I said was show up in 30 days, but we couldn't find any can't we couldn't find any service men in Bethel so we had to practice saluting each other. How is that? Well, you know, we was it was all a new experience of the Christ. We just get going to have a lot of fun of that but we hadn't been on the train, but an hour went to Sergeant stopped us and told us we were out of uniform and of course we were scared to death.

14:38 And he said that our neckties did not match our skirts, and I look him in the eye and I said our outfits came from the best military Outfitter in Washington DC. We are not out of uniform and we passed by this you were always being challenged always being challenged. So I took basic training in San Antonio, Texas and part of it was

15:10 Out in a field supposed to be conditions battle conditions. So we were way out in the desert and they set up a tent and they had a whole range in the 10 and for a whole week. We cooked on that studying nothing but dehydrated foods and unfortunately one day we study dehydrated onions and the next day dehydrated something else and it would have been a whole lot easier if they had had them, you know giving us a little variety so that we could have made something the last day we finally had enough we had

15:47 We have enough things that we could make a dish, but that that lives there, but I remember the first day when someone wanted to know where is a latrine was in the tough old sergeant was conducting the class. Of course didn't want to be teaching young ladies said, we'll watch it out there cuz her a lot of rattlesnakes so that everyone was afraid to go outside the tent. So everything was a challenge. It was always a challenge. I'm so curious on Carol. So you grew up in Connecticut you go to North Carolina for school and you spend a year in Washington DC and then you end up in Texas in Texas. What did you think of, Texas?

16:25 Well, I loved it. It was Biggie. It was open it was it was interesting and of course that way as soon as we finished after I 6 weeks we finished our basic training and then I was sent to Rome Georgia and everybody else in the class were sent out two by two but for some reason I was sent all by myself to go from Texas to Rome Georgia. And of course now your generation is so used to traveling all the time, but this was something very new to us and but I am the Army and made the reservations and I had a Pullman berth and it turned out that the young man sharing my compartment was a lieutenant and he was trying to design a kitchen for his wife. So when he found out that I was a dietitian, we had a wonderful time and we worked our way into the night. I'm designing the kitchen that he was going to build for his

17:25 Funny got home. And so we landed in New Orleans and then he took me around for a wonderful meal and New Orleans style and So eventually I got to Rome Georgia, and that was some.

17:42 Fury looking Place tell me about it. And well, you don't read read soil everywhere and poor poor, you know back before World War II and those those towns in the South very few of the houses were painted and now everything is painted, but then they were you don't allow them. We're just really breaking down. It was poor poor country and I got to the base and they said well, we don't know why they sent you here. We're going to close in the month. So the first morning of the dietitian was taking me around to show me what was going on. And of course, this was my first real experience being there is on the staff and the colonel came through was the commanding officer and she gave him a Snappy salute and she said good morning sir, and he just turned and smiled Ebenezer. I'll decide for myself when the mornings Godin when it's not

18:36 So from there, I was sent to Kennedy General Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. And that was a very interesting experience because it was the first time that they had tried to rehabilitate paraplegic patients. And so all of our patients were paralyzed ballerina. I still remember his name. The only thing you can move his hat. He was paralyzed from the neck cap. Some of them could move their arms some of them their legs some of them almost nothing and they knew that it was very important that they have good food because they were so prone to getting infections. So every morning the lab sent me the results and I knew which ones were in the greatest danger that day and so you'd make a special effort to see those patients.

19:36 And we really ran kind of a short-order kitchen cuz I go see some of that say well, how about a milkshake if I spike it or would you like this? Would you like that? And we had the very best of food that the Army had to offer for these patients, but in my ward kitchen, I had three German prisoners of War.

19:57 How do you spell don't German they spoke very little English, but we had to communicate as best we could and they turned out to be wonderful wonderful help but it was very difficult for the patients because some of the patients who were lying there paralyzed who been struck by a bullet when they were in Germany and here was the enemy perfectly safe and no none of Harm's Way. It was very difficult for them to adjust but these Germans were so efficient and said she could help the gradually. I think most people came around and they would watch me do something once I might come into the kitchen and fry an egg or something next time the pan in the egg in this bachelor would all be there already for me to use they were wonderful wonderful help. They studied English at the compound where they lived at night.

20:57 One of them had been a college professor a one of them was a little man and he said to me Lieutenant. I know I don't know anything about War II Czechoslovakian. I've been at Prince prisoner of the Germans are prisoner of the Russians. Now, I'm a prisoner the Americans don't know within my wife still alive. Don't know what's going on at home. And when they were finally sent back to Germany, he asked for my address and I was hesitant to give it to him cuz I wasn't sure that that was something I should do but a year after he went back to Germany. I had a letter from him saying that he'd found his wife with a life was very very hard and they were so hungry and he would never forget the dietitian who closed her eyes so that he could eat because he's paraplegic patients weren't hungry. It was very difficult to get them to eat. And so when the trays would come back there would be beautiful steak.

21:57 Kinds of things but the Germans knew that we both be in trouble if they got caught but they would put some food on plates and put it in the oven and they take me maybe they got hungry later and it y'all or y'all and I always made sure to tell them when I was leaving because then between them and the next time we served a meal they would somehow find a place to eat but came back on the trays and they wait about 10 lbs more than the than the prisoners will work out on the grounds cuz they were supposed to be eating different kind of food will all they got out at the compound was was being some black bread. And so will you know, it was said it was very tempting to them to have to have the food Christmas was was interesting week. I spent hours putting up decorations in the halls and salt we had these beautiful beautiful decorations for our patients for Christmas and the fire marshal came along.

22:57 And told us they weren't fireproofing. He may just take them all down. So all we could do was get construction paper and we had the the patient's make rings just the way didn't kindergarten. So we had miles and miles and miles and we believe that we made that are decoration for Christmas and then the commanding officer issued and off an order that every patient was to be served in a recreation room not in there not in their private rooms and that they were to be given anything to eat if they want it. Well that was the most horrible idea in this world all these patients who run very specific special diets and they have them eating whatever they wanted. It was not a good idea. And so we tried to set up the tables in the Rec Hall, but they wheelchairs wouldn't go under the tables. So we had to get blocks and and fix the table, so it was a big deal.

23:57 Job, and the German prisoners took poster paint and they painted all the glasses with scenes of reminded them of home of the Alps in the mountains in Europe beautiful. So every patient had one of those in the corner by the fireplace, we had a stuffed Santa Claus.

24:29 With a tube between his legs going to wear to a gallon jug because they were practically all on catheter. So this was their idea of a fun. So it kind of a kind of what kind of hard on some of the guess who came in my legs are it's not to come on but that was the kind of humor. They kept every everybody everybody going.

24:52 I'm the man you would said they would have cigarettes and cigars these elaborate elaborate than usual. Thought we were 5-star hotel with a beautiful etching of Walter Reed on the front gold cords around a note kinds of things and this very elaborate menu for for Christmas, but I gave them the cigarettes but I wouldn't let them have the cigars until they were leaving. No way. We weren't going to have to get that smoke in the in the rec room. They would have to wait and have their cigars when they were leaving and much to my distress. It took us so long to feed the patients that the German prisoners and I all missed our dinner and it was the one day of the year of the German prisoners were going to be given a complete meal and I was so I went back to the kitchen. I always just alright, it's alright, you stay right there. They reach them behind them and they came up with a bottle.

25:50 With I have no idea what kind of liquor it was. Someone told me that they made it with the orange and lemon rinds to start but somehow they had come up with something to drink so we each had one of these decorated glasses and they poured a little visit this in the in the bottom and we all want glasses and I thought you know, we were all caught in a war. They were just is home sick and just as far away from home as I was, you know, and I took one Sip and my goodness I had to hold on the railing and walked up and it was the strongest Christmas present anybody ever gave me you served in the military. How many years altogether on Carol? Well, I always felt as though that you're at Walter Reed. I was it seemed as though I was in the service because it's the rules were much more strict because it was the Army Medical Center and everything had to be just right and so I always thought that that

26:50 Was really that's the biggest part how late is in two years. I was officially in 2 years and was a first lieutenant when I got out then one of the interesting things when I was at Walter Reed General Pershing had lived in a penthouse on the top floor ever since he came back from World War 1 and every day at 10 his sister met with me to petplan the generals meals for the day. I worked with many many officers many of them. Well known people and never had any trouble with any of them, but their relatives could drive you crazy relatives and the wives of second lieutenants were the hardest people to work with and Miss Pershing when she was sitting down with the very very Regal when she stood up she was so kind of bold in the knees that she wasn't quite so impressive. Somebody said it was because you didn't so many horses, but she was very very to

27:50 And we had sugar shakers someone that had red plastic tops and some of them add black and she insisted on their noon trays hers be red and the generals be black and a dinner. It would be reversed. Well when the tray carriers caught on to that when they were taking the trays they would reverse them. And then the next one. I just can't understand you people just can't understand. You can't even get the right color sugar Shaker some days and one morning she came in and I just don't know what I'm going to do. I don't know what I'm going to do. She said that the bullion is much too dark and the tomato juice is much too pale.

28:35 And I said to the generals carrier when he came to get the trays George. I don't know what I'm going to do. She wants me to change the color of the tomato juice in the bullion and he started laughing. He said don't let it throw your he said we're all getting it. It's turned out that General Pershing had a friend named Fifi would come back from Paris with in the 1919 FIFA lived in the Shoreham Hotel and Miss Pershing came in the morning. She had lunch with a general and then promptly at 1. She left to go back to her quarters for a rest and at 1:15. That's great big staff car pulled up to the side entrance and out stepped Fifi and she was wearing the Styles 1918 Sochi out of these long flowing chiffon grounds and great big ass, and she was questioned when elevator and up to the General's quarters, and she stayed until

29:35 Order of four and she left a quarter for it at 4 a.m. Aspersion came back. And so George said well, he said Miss Pershing told the general that she thought he was getting too tired that he shouldn't have FeFe there so much. He was you was getting too tired and it made him. So angry that he hasn't spoken to her for three days. So he said she's taking out on all of us. So he said you weren't around much. So you aren't getting it as badly as the rest of us are so when the war ended it was protocol when the when the generals came back from Europe that they go to the White House.

30:17 And talk to the president and then they come to Walter Reed and pay respects to General Pershing from World War 1. And so when Eisenhower can everyone was out in the hall, so everybody just went down the hall shaking everybody's hands a few days later. General Patton was coming and there was official orders that no one was to be in the Halls. No one was to see the general. No one was to pay any attention to his visit. Will it happened that is son-in-law Colonel Waters was in the room next to my ward kitchen and Colonel Waters have been in a German concentration camp and our prisoner of war camp and Time Magazine said that General Patton push so hard in the Battle of the Bulge to get to the prison camp to release his son-in-law and I doubt if that was the whole reason but he did do that and in the process Colonel Waters was

31:17 In the leg and he weighed. Oh, maybe a hundred pounds when he came in. He had nothing to eat in such a long long time and those with the patients we had to work very hard with because we had to just start some unjust of teaspoonful of food until their system could adjust to it. And so that day I said to the three colored girls and the One Pilots who work in the ward kitchen, I'm not supposed to tell you this, but I know you'll hear the commotion and I thought you'd like to know that General Patton is coming today and he will probably stopping by Crystal Waters room, but remember no one's supposed to know this so don't pay any attention to it and I went down the hall to see a patient and I came back best friend. What is ROM and a little fellow about 4 years old open the door and he had on an overseas cap with four stars shining. I thought you knew that Grandpa was in the room and he said,

32:17 Bing bang I got you and somebody close that damn door. I went to my office, which I sure do. Wish I shared with the nurse and down the whole came General Pat.

32:31 I'm just knew by the sound of the boots. That was General Patton when he came and he came right up to me and he said I want to see General meetings in the recovery room while he said, I'm sorry, sir. I'm not the owner. See he looked at the Insignia you would have known I wasn't I said Lieutenant so I'm so over here will help you. And so he said the same thing to her and she said well, he just came from surgery and I have orders that no one can see him and he said well, I want to see him got permission. So she called the surgeon and the surgeon of a loud voice so we could only hear it's in 5 minutes. He may have 5 minutes and that's all but he wasn't wearing his his ivory handled. They always a paper always call them pearl-handled, but he said they were ivory handled revolvers because it wasn't protocol for his wear those to the White House. So we had a riding crop in his hat and while he was waiting just pacing back and forth for this permission. He could taking the riding crop and just hitting the corner of the desk and all our papers were.

33:31 I got everything else. So finally he got the permission and he went down the hall in about that time. We could hear someone running up the stairs three steps at a time and inverse the search for the nurse. Did you call me about General Patton? And she said yes, sir. And that was a very brave thing you did. Everyone was her, you know, he just was afraid of it. So about three years ago. I had a call from a woman's who said you don't know me but I am the second wife of Pat Waters who is General Patton's Branson and he often gives talks about his grandfather and I was trying to find something for his birthday and on the internet. I saw a passage from your book where you mention this little boy sticking his head out the door and say was going to shoot you and she said, I wonder if that wasn't my husband so we compare dates and all and we figure

34:31 I'll bet it was so she said what would you give him permission to use that story when he talks about his grandfather and I said Wilshire so a couple of days later the phone rang in this man said, this is Pat Waters and my wife is going to kill me for calling you when she isn't home, but I just wanted to apologize for trying to shoot you in the back when I was 4 years old and it turned into the most wonderful relationship and they sent me a picture of Colonel Waters who went on it became a general so they sent me a picture of General water say sent me a beautiful family photograph of General Patton sitting by the fireplace with his legs extended out in his boot shining in the fire and his dog by his side and two little boys looking over his shoulder and one of them was Pat Waters and then they sent me a picture of themselves. And so that was an interest.

35:31 Way to have the experience and so many years later. So I wanted to ask you when you left the Army you ended up still working in these carrying field. You were working on a floating hospital and it needed more time. So it can you tell me just with our our time left a little bit about the floating. I will and that was a summer job the floating. It was a floating Hospital of St. John's Guild which have been started 130 years before by the Episcopal church. With whom it was no longer Affiliated to get the baby some New York City Auto the tenements in the summer months when the mortality rate was so high and it was before they knew about pasteurized milk and then we'll maybe if they got them out of the water and got them away from the fumes in the city that more of them would survive and so through the years and it become unestablished I'm saying,

36:31 And every day we took a thousand children from three days a week from New York 3 from Brooklyn, please social agencies had given out the tickets to any child who needed Dental or medical care when they sell an any children in the family under the age of 12 and the mother for a day on the floating hospital. We had an all-volunteer staff of doctors and nurses and dentist who took care of them I lived on that was the the it was the Floyd Seaman was the name of the ship, but it was actually a barge and we were pulled by a tugboat and we would go out if it was a calm day. We went out past the Statue of Liberty. It was rough. We went up the Hudson River as far as spuyten duyvil and turned around and all day. There were games for children babies baths mother's bass crafts all kinds of things going on.

37:31 And if anyone needed to come back the mother and the children were given another pass to come back for another day. It was an amazing amazing operation and one of the hardest things I ever did because I had to run up and down flights of stairs to four decks from morning till night. We fed the staff very well. We thought we had $0.15 a meal for the children and it was seven and a half cents for the milk. So we made sandwiches out on Deck as soon as we left the pier and if we sometimes we use peanut butter, which wasn't homogenize in those days in this is a long time ago and it took to semen with a stout stick going round and round and round for 30 minutes to get the that peanut butter all mixed up so that we could use it some days we had cottage cheese and and

38:28 Prune concoction which wasn't as good with the children didn't care. It was such a treat for them to be there that they were content with whatever we had.

38:38 Thank you so much Aunt Carol.

38:47 It sounds like there's so much so much work that you did in hospitals and all these places. He's on people you met what are some things that you learned about yourself through all of that work when I was stationed in

39:03 Texas I came down with infectious hepatitis. Thanks to a to an army colonel. I came down with infectious hepatitis due to an army colonel who took out the truth and he didn't come I remember him taking the hypodermic needle setting it down on the table. I don't think the man that worked on a patient before and years. He was just sitting around waiting to retire and Jim he pulled his tooth and a broken a thousand pieces and every with every tuggie give a need sworn a little harder and when the tooth just broke he said we'll follow me and I had to follow him down a long hallway and up a flight of stairs and we went down a hole where there's a patient every room in the last roommate said that the patient get off. He didn't even speak to the doctor and he said to me sit down and they called for the oral surgeon to come take care of my mouth and I think that's when I got Hep a

40:03 Titus because three weeks later, I was sent it to Texas and within 3 weeks. I was in the hospital with infectious hepatitis and I was there for 5 months and the beat 2000 miles away from home without a soul that I knew cuz I'd only been there three weeks and I was the only bed patient in a ward with 24 beds. So I lay there all day In the Heat of the Texas desert just dumb I'm going to be a hundred and ten a hundred and twenty in that room in the afternoon and I'm just unable to eat hardly anything and that's what made me the person I am today my Yankee grit had to come through then it took me three days to write a letter home. I was so weak. And so those five months really taught me how much you can withstand and how you got to make the best of a little things that happened along the way and so will I

41:03 Anything that's happened to me since I'm there big lots of things but it's always will it's never as bad as it was those five months that I was so isolated from everyone. I knew and everything that was going on. It was the war that ended all my friends are getting married. Everybody was having all these exciting things happen, and I was lying in bed in Texas. So that was some

41:27 But you ain't hear it pulled me through.