| Stuttgart, Germany: August 17 to October 12, 1945 |
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| Robert Bosch Krankenhaus | |
| In Stuttgart, the 51st Evac. occupied and operated in the upper floors of the Robert Bosch Krankenhaus on the outskirts of the heavily damaged city. |  |
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Our nurses were housed in a nurses’ residence adjacent to the hospital. |
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| Relatively few patients were admitted to the hospital and not long after our arrival in Stuttgart, Col. Weller was relieved of command and replaced by Col. James Yarborough. |
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| On orders from Seventh Army Headquarters in Heidelberg, an official review of the 51st Evacuation Hospital was held on the hospital grounds. |  |
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Col. Rudolph presented Col. Yarborough and Lt. Col. Cook with the unit’s "Service Award of Merit", citing the 51st’s record of 277 days of operation in the European Theater ("E.T.O."), 21,666 patients admitted during that time, with 9,454 operations performed and 6,143 patients returned to duty. |
| The 51st Evac. was relieved of duty on Oct. 12, 1945 and ordered to return to the U.S. for training and possible redeployment to the Pacific Theater of Operations. However, Art Wallace, Don McNeil, Bill Tucker (from Nashville, TN) and I did not have enough points for "redeployment". We four were reassigned to the 216th General Hospital just across the river from Stuttgart in Bad Canstadt. | |
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| Bill Tucker (my old tentmate of the last year and a half) and I applied for and received a two weeks "delay en route" to the 216th General Hospital. Ken Dufore gave us his old jeep, which we swapped, along with a bottle of Johnny Walker, for a relatively new jeep at the 28th Division Motor Pool. We loaded the jeep with coffee and other supplies from the 51st’s closing mess and drove south through the beautiful, mountainous country of eastern France to the French Riviera. | |
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| Cannes was again ready for visitors and a fine "R. & R." area for us for a week. |  |
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| We returned to Bad Canstadt through Northern Italy, passing through Monaco ... |  |
| ... Lake Garda ... |  |
| ... and over the Brenner Pass on the way. |  |
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Medical work at the 216th General Hospital was really depressing. Part of my assignment was a ward of para- and quadriplegic "G.I.’s", paralyzed as a result of jeep accidents or accidental gunshot wounds. |
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| A 3 day "leave" to Paris was a welcome break, and it was a joy to see how beautiful and untouched Paris ("The City of Lights") was. |  |
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| The end of December 1945, Art Wallace and I (in the front row in this photo) finally received our orders to return home. |  |
| After what seemed like and endless wait at Camp Lucky Strike ... |  |
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... we boarded a "Victory ship" at La Harve for the two weeks winter crossing of the North Atlantic ... |
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| ... debarking at New York’s Port of Embarkation. |  |
| At Christmas, we were still at Camp Kilmer, NJ, but in early Jan. 1946, a C-46 flew us home to California. |
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Art Wallace and I were the last two members of the 51st Evac. Hospital to return home. It had been a great journey, but better yet was to be home again! |
