I
was so excited on the trip from Camp Roberts to St. George that I could hardly
restrain myself. What a glorious reunion we had at St. George. Helen, Dad,
Mother, and many other family members were there to meet me. I must say that
had to be my most memorable and exciting Christmas. I had about ten days leave
to get reacquainted with my family and then was stationed at Camp Roberts,
California.
At
Camp Roberts, I was assigned as a supply sergeant over a unit that played the
role of the adversary or aggressor in the training maneuvers at Camp Roberts.
It was the most undisciplined unit I have ever had anything to do with. Half of
the time they didn’t even wear uniforms. In the days that followed, I began to
have chills and fever until one day I nearly passed out at work. My C.O. had no
sympathy whatever for my condition and just told me to go to the medical
center. While waiting out in the cold to catch a bus, I nearly passed out
again. I was so sick that I could hardly hold my head up by the time I got to
the medical center. They checked my temperature and found it to be 107 degrees.
So they put me to bed. They kept taking blood for samples as they suspected I
may have malaria. They would not give me anything for my fever since they said
they must catch the blood at the right time to determine if I had the malaria
bug. I about died with chills and fever for four or five days before they
finally determined that I had malaria. They then gave me quinine and other
medication which immediately brought my fever down. In the days that followed,
my hair grew out about one-half inch pure white. I suppose that was due to the
high fever they allowed me to have for so long. I have always believed that my
memory was greatly affected by that week of high fever.
When
I finally got back to the unit, they had changed it to a training unit to
receive returning veterans from Korea. We would receive about two or three
hundred men at a time and for two weeks we would put them through a
concentrated basic training course. They would go to the firing range every
day, and I had to estimate how much ammunition they would use and requisition
enough for each day. It would take a truck or two loaded every day to keep them
supplied.
I
finally found time to go looking for a place to bring Helen and Morris down to
be with me. The closest place I could find was a motel room at King City 50
miles away, and it was very expensive. I got a Saturday and Sunday off and
drove to LaVerkin and brought Helen and Morris back to King City. I had to get
up at about 5:00 a.m. to be on time at Camp Roberts, and I seldom got home
before dark, and so my time with Helen and Morris was still very limited. After
about one month, we decided that for the time I was able to be with them it
wasn’t worth the high cost of room, food, and gas and so I took them back home
on a weekend pass.
After
about six months’ time at Camp Roberts, I was able to get an honorable
discharge. I returned to LaVerkin and went to see E. J. Graff. He gave me my
old job back as a mechanic at Hurricane Motor Co. They started me out at the
same pay I was getting before I was called up with the National Guard. I found
it very difficult to live on about $16 per day and so began to look for another
job. Thell offered me a job driving his diesel truck on long hauls from
Dubuque, Iowa, to various places on the west coast.
I
began driving for Thell, even though it meant being away from my family for
10-13 day stretches. We would drive to Dubuque, Iowa, and pick up a load of
hams and deliver them to San Francisco or Los Angeles. Then we would
go somewhere in California and pick up a load of produce and deliver it back in
various cities in Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Missouri, Wisconsin, or Minnesota.
This is hardly what I had dreamed of doing while stationed in Korea. In fact,
while I was in Korea, I wrote Helen and said that I would never leave my family
in LaVerkin if it meant digging ditches for the rest of my life.
Soon
after I began driving truck, Helen gave birth to a beautiful daughter on August
29, 1952. We gave her the name of Krystal.
It
was soon apparent that Krystal had the same congenital diarrhea problem that
took the life of Kirk. It seemed that everything we tried was to no avail in
stopping her diarrhea. Again, we were heartsick as we witnessed our sweet,
little, delicate, angel daughter suffer.
We
vowed that we would not put her through the pain and suffering which Kirk was
subjected to at the hands of the university doctors in Salt Lake. We kept
Krystal at home and under the supervision of the doctors in St. George and
Cedar City. Krystal only lived for about two and one-half months. She died
November 16, 1952.
We
were very sad, but we were reconciled that it was the Lord’s will that Krystal
not tarry long in this life. We had so many friends and family members
supporting us that we didn’t suffer to the extent we did with Kirk’s passing
on.
We
held grave side services and laid Krystal to rest by her brother, Kirk, in the
LaVerkin Cemetery.
 |
| Kirk & Krystal's Graves |
After
a year of driving, I had made arrangements to purchase a truck with my brother,
DeLance, as a financial partner. About the time I became serious about buying a
truck, I began to have trouble with my right knee. The socket would go dry and
the vibration of holding my foot on the throttle would nearly drive me crazy
with pain. I would go to a doctor in Dubuque each time I got back there, and
they would give me shots of cortisone and heat treatments, but my knee seemed
to get worse each trip.
 |
| Dubuque, Iowa 1952 Thell, DuWayne, and dispatcher, Hank Pratch |
I
finally decided that the Lord was trying to tell me something, and so I had a
talk with DeLance to see if he would feel too badly if I decided not to
purchase the truck. He assured me that it was all right with him if I forgot
the truck. I told him that I was impressed to go back to school. He suggested
that I come up to Brigham Young University and get a degree in accounting.
Another
aspect that helped me decide to give up trucking was that I could no longer
sleep properly on the truck, and so I wasn’t able to stay awake to drive my
share of the time. My inability to sleep on the truck seemed to be related to
the fact that John Segler had flipped the truck on its side just North of
Holden while I was in the sleeper and then, about a month later, Thell hit his
brakes hard just before running into the rear end of another truck while
passing through Pomona (City of Industry), California. After being plummeted
out of the sleeper twice, I found it hard to get to sleep in the sleeper, and
then, when anyone hit the brakes for any reason, I would have to stick my head
out the window to see what was going on.
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