| Camp San Luis Obispo: Dec. 1943 to Jan. 1944 |
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Camp San Luis Obispo was a real treat for us, now housed in tar-paper huts with no dust storms, "Class A Rations"—fresh eggs, milk, fresh meat, and fresh fruit and veggies. |
| Our nurses were marched off to work in the Camp Station Hospital (photo), while the officers and enlisted men took 5 mile training hikes. |  |
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| I managed to avoid these hikes by convincing Col. Weller that we should have simulated aerial attacks on the hiking troops, as at Carlisle Barracks. With paper bags filled with flour, one of the artillery spotting planes from the 81st Division (also stationed at the Camp) flew me on these missions. On the way back to the Camp, we often detoured to San Simeon to marvel at the opulence of W. R. Hearst’s "Castle". |  |
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| All members of the 51st also received "psychological conditioning", which involved crawling under barbed-wire barriers with machine-gun bullets zipping just overhead, or hugging the ground out on the artillery range while 105 and 155 m.m. canons fired overhead. | |
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Some of us were ordered to take a course on "Mines, Booby Traps and Demolition" ... |
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... and all received training in map-reading and terrain navigation. Here are Andy Henderson and Jim Yant during an exercise. |
| Historical Note: | |
| At Camp San Luis Obispo the medical officers of the 51st were interviewed by a colonel from the Inspector General’s Department to learn our impression of Col. Weller’s command ability. There were serious consequences from these interviews, for, as we learned later, they were set-up by our "C.O." [Col. Weller] himself to identify and eliminate all officers who expressed any dissatisfaction with his command. | |
| After the unit moved to Camp Cooke, CA, Col. Weller sent Lt. Col’s McNeil and Cook to the Mayo Clinic for a training program, and in their absence, he had orders "cut" transferring out to other units all medical officers the Inspector General Colonel had identified as undesirable. Before leaving Camp Cooke for my new hospital unit, I was able to contact Lt. Col. Cook in Rochester, MN and notified him of the ordered transfers. Lt. Col. Cook immediately telephoned Col. Shamborra in Washington, D.C., and Col. Shamborra promptly rescinded Col. Weller’s orders. With the help of the California Highway Patrol, the officers en route to their new assignments were intercepted and returned to Camp Cooke. | |
