Who knew that a National Guard Summer Field Training trip would turn out to be the first step in a lifetime of entrepreneurship? Twenty Army 6X6 Cargo Trucks filled with soldiers, four Jeeps with officers and radiomen, one food van, one utility van, and six 105 mm howitzer cannons mounted on carriages lined up a mile south of Houlton on the Bangor Road. One hundred and twenty members of Battery B, 152nd Field Artillery Battalion, Maine National Guard, anxiously awaited the command to “Move Out”. Except for Private Bob Fields. He sat on the end of the bench in the truck at the end of the line waiting for his Dad, who promised to bring him fifty dollars’ pocket money for the trip to Camp Edwards in Massachusetts. His Dad never showed. He was at Madigan Memorial Hospital with a broken arm. He shattered the Humerus and the ulna when a rotted rung broke on a ladder used to clean gutters at Mel Jackins’ apartment house on Green Street. At precisely 1000 hours, Lieutenant Phil Jenkins stood tall in his Jeep, turned toward the line of vehicles, waved his arm forward, and yelled: “On the way, Camp Edwards here we come.” Shouts of “On the way” by, happy soldiers passed down the line as each vehicle came alive; launching the two-day trip to Massachusetts.
樂天KOBO
