Dick Paul

We had completed our studies, taken our finals and I don't think the Army knew what to do with us. Well the next best thing was to ship us off to Camp Crowder, whence most of us came. So 20 some of us got a delay in route, and reported there and were assigned to various training courses. After about 2 months of signal training, the Battle of the Bulge was going badly; the Army needed more infantrymen instead of more signalmen. Probably, 12 to 15 of us were sent to Camp Gordon for Basic Infantry training. Upon completion of this training we were given a delay in route to the Eastern point of embarkation.

Behold the luxury liner The Queen Mary awaited us. By this time we had all become separated from our ASTP buddies. By the time that they loaded on 20K troops it was not luxury any more. She crossed the Atlantic in just 5 days, and it took 14 more days to disembark, since everyone had to be tendered off, because of the lack of piers, etc. After a train ride through England, we were loaded on a British ship to cross The Channel. The bloody ship had hammocks, no bunks of any sort. What a way not to sleep. The next morning they tried to make up for it by giving us liver and onions for breakfast. I didn't even have to get sick from the motion of the boat. The breakfast will do it all by itself. Once we disembarked at LeHavre it seems that all we were doing was riding in a 6x6 Truck toward Germany We were scheduled to become replacements for the 84th Infantry Div. A nice signal officer awakened me at 3 am and said that he wanted me to be a switchboard operator in his company. What a break. I helped to move the switchboard and wire in new lines. That mostly is what I did for the next 14 months until I had enough points go home. During our trek eastward, it seems that we had gone too far beyond the Elbe river that was to be the Russian occupied part of Germany, so we had to make movement westward to get out of Ivan's territory.

Once back home, I had to decide if we wanted to raise a family, go back and finish college, or go back to work with the Telephone Co. We made the right decision and went back to SUI to finish and get a BSEE. SUI gave us very generous credits for the work that we had done in ASTP. After graduation in may of 1947, I went back to Pacific Tel. Co. I had a 41 year experience with them mostly with radio and broadband for long haul applications. 1984 with the divestiture of the Bell System was a good time for me to retire, so I did with some remuneration, of course. But the story doesn't end here for there was life after The Bell System.

I had an opportunity to do some marketing work for Rockwell Int'l Transmission Div. So, I started a second career. This was a part of acquisition of Collins Radio. Basically we sold Microwave Radios and Fiber Optic equipment to the Telephone Cos and other Communication companies.

In 1992 Alcatel bought out the unit of Rockwell that I was working in. This was really a good time to retire., so I did.. .