After reading about the guys who mowed the grass at Great Lakes Naval Base in December 1945, I could not believe it.
I graduated from Company 1176 on Dec. 7, 1945. When I went home, the weather was unseasonably warm. On the 17th there was a foot of snow on the ground and it was minus 8 degrees. A short time later, we were on a troop train headed for the receiving station of Shoemaker; it may have been on Treasure Island.
New Year’s Eve we were taken to Stockton, Calif. and became part of the crew of the USS Valencia AKA81 and then we were off to the Pacific. When the Korean War started, I was called up as a reserve to spend the next two years as a watertender on the USS New Jersey BB62.