Joe Dubois

(Errol J. Dubois)

As I remember Steve Wright and I were left in Iowa City for a couple of weeks because of lost records. Then we were sent to the 1480th Engineer Maintenance Co. at Camp Van Dorn, Mississippi, then Camp Swift, Texas, to be trained as diesel mechanics. Then we went to Fort Dix. Before we shipped out I remember a great trip around New York with Steve; having dinner with his folks and then trying to drink our way around Manhattan!

We landed at LeHavre April 13, 1945, the day after FDR died. We went to Camp Twenty Grand near Rouen and lived the good life, with hundreds of German prisoners doing our work, all of whom knew more about heavy equipment than we did. Then we toured France through Dijon & Lyons to Marseille, from where we sailed for 30 days to Manila. We weren't overworked in the Phillipines either, with a Filipino Engineer company working with us. I guess we were very lucky during the war; our lives weren't in danger until VJ day, when everybody was shooting off all the ammo they could get hold of in celebration.

After the war I went into business with my father-in-law, which failed after about three years. By then we had two kids and another on the way so it was too tough to go back to school so I just kept on working. I made a big mistake by not going back right after I got out but that's the way it goes.

I did take a course in programming in the early fifties but it didn't lead anywhere. I became an excise tax auditor for the state and stayed with that pretty much until I retired.

My wife, Evie and I had 4 children, two boys and two girls, all good kids. Evie and I both have serious health problems.

I bought a computer a couple of years ago and was going along fine until my server got sold to someone else and it was a disaster. So I am off the Internet for now, but I hope to see the website on my daughter's computer.