8th Infantry Division

And I went to Mannheim and reported there.

And even though my Army unit, which was the 8th Infantry Division at the time, so me- you know, mechanized infantry, um, did not deploy to Desert Storm or Desert Shield at the time, you know, it became Desert Storm once, uh, kinetic operations started, uh, in January, uh, of 1991.

Uh, even though my unit, the 3rd Brigade of the, uh, 8th ID, uh, did not deploy, uh, they were short of ALOs, air liaison officers, in other units in Germany.

And so they [laughs] they made me go with the 3rd Armor Division, specifically the 3rd Brigade, um, also stationed in Germany, uh, because one of their...

He eventually received an officer's commission.

He became an infantry officer with the 121st Infantry Regiment of the 8th Infantry Division, and went to Europe after D-Day in 1944.

His military career was extraordinary.

He fought in one of the most difficult campaigns of the European war, and eventually commanded Company G during the fighting in the Hürtgen For- Forest.

Then, after an interval, Mother, have you written those stories of Arizona yet? Until finally, with the aid of some old letters written from those very places, the letters having been preserved with other papers of mine by an uncle in New England long since dead, I have been able to give a fairly connected story.

I have not attempted to commemorate my husband's brave career in the Civil War, as I was not married until some years after the close of that war, nor to describe the many Indian campaigns in which he took part, nor to write about the achievements of the old 8th Infantry.

I leave all of that to the historians.

I have given simply the impressions made upon the mind of a young New England woman who left her comfortable home in the early 70s to follow a second lieutenant into the wildest encampments of the American army.

Taken all in all, it is not to be wondered at if I saw not much in those few days besides bright buttons, blue uniforms, and shining swords.

Everything was military and gay and brilliant, and I forgot the very existence of practical things in listening to the dreamy streams of Italian and German music rendered by our excellent and painstaking orchestra.

For the 8th Infantry loved good music and had imported its musicians direct from Italy.

This came to an end, however, after a few days, and I was obliged to descend from those heights to the dead level of domestic economy.