Blood Brothers by Eugene C. Jacobs (i can read book club TXT) 📕
Before either could answer, bombs were falling on all sides of thehospital. "There they are!" I exclaimed. Not yet realizing howdangerous the bombs could be, we casually walked to the windows andwatched the tremendous explosions moving across the camp-towardheadquarters-raising clouds of dust to the rooftops. The war arrivedat Camp John Hay at 0809 hours, Dec. 8, 1941. Between twenty andtwenty-five twin-engine bombers were overhead in a diamond formation.Soon some 150 bombs of various sizes were bringing disability anddeath to many of our soldiers-drilling on the parade ground-and totheir families in their small homes. It seemed unreal that Camp Haycould be the first target of the Japanese bombers, actually startingWorld War II in the Philippines.
Where were our American planes? We probably did just what the Japaneseplanned that we would. We called Clark Air Field-about one-hundredmiles to the southwest, and told them, "Camp John Hay is being bombed!Get some fighters up here, and keep tho
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The Army took us to the Saint Francis Hotel, where they had made reservations. The room, 1123, was beautiful, considering the price - $6.50. Mr. London, the manager, brought fresh flowers frequently.
Each day I had to return to Letterman Hospital for my survey. Wt. 140 lbs.
Judy came to the hospital each afternoon to take me to dinner. We tried a different restaurant every evening: Lamps of China; Sam’s Fish House; Julian’s Steak House; the Manger Upstairs; the Blue Fox; and Alfred & Segunda.
Many wives were coming to see me to get any possible information about their husbands, sons and brothers. A few I knew: Illa Gillespie, Tempie Williams, Jean Manning, and Crystal White. ‘
Sept. 13, ‘45: I spent the day in a telephone booth at the
Hospital sending some two hundred messages to families of prisoners, courtesy of the American Red Cross and the American Telephone Co.
About a dozen generals arrived at the hospital from Manchuria; immediately they wanted to know how I got Judy to the West Coast, when they couldn’t even get commercial travel. I had to let them guess.
Actually, Vivian’s sister, Vera, was the girl friend of Col. Dudley Fay, the Chief of Army Air Transportation, and he had a son who had been a prisoner of the Germans. He was sympathetic and repeatedly told Vivian and Judy, “When your husbands, John and Gene, are liberated, I’m going to see that you girls get a ride to the West Coast.” So Vivian and Judy arrived at Hamilton Field on time, but actually without any official orders. Of course, I couldn’t tell the generals that; they would have court-martialed me.
Sept. 15, 45: “Pappy Boynton” and his men arrived at the St. Francis. I thanked God for that fearless aviator who had been awarded the Medal of Honor.
We were now getting daily calls from Colonels Dudley Fay and Larry Smith in Washington, wanting to make arrangements to fly us to Walter Reed Army Hospital. Our answers were always “NO!” Now we were in no hurry! “We’ll come by slow train with stops in Lincoln, Nebraska, and River Forest, Illinois, to see our families.”
Sept. 17, 45: We started east in our bedroom aboard the Union Pacific, through the gorgeous Rocky Mountains. When the train stopped at stations, I was amazed to see husky young women, balancing themselves along the tops of freight cars, brake persons, no less. It had taken many dedicated people, doing many strange and often hazardous jobs, to bring the war to an end. I felt grateful to each and every one of them.
We spent a couple of happy days with Judy’s family in Lincoln and two more in River Forest, before proceeding on to Washington, where I became a patient on Wards 1 and 4 at Walter Reed General Hospital.
Judy lived in an efficiency apartment at 906 at 2000 Connecticut Ave., near Holton Arms School, where she taught during the war.
About the second week we were in Washington, one of Judy’s teacher friends, Peggy Snow, arranged for us to get invitations
to her father’s cocktail party for the top brass in Washington. General Snow, the Chief of Engineers in the Army, sat me in the center of the party, where I was a curiosity and subject to much questioning. Many important persons came to look me over and ask, “Are you having any difficulty adjusting?” My answer was always the same, “If somebody gave you a Lincoln car, would you have trouble adjusting?”
General Leslie Groves, the “Father of the Atomic Bomb,” asked me, “What did you think of the, Atomic bombs we dropped on Japan?” I answered, “General, by dropping the bombs, you saved thousands of American lives that would have been lost if the U.S. had been forced to invade Japan. Also, you saved thousands of P.O.W.s lives; we could not have endured many more months of captivity. Actually I’m sorry you didn’t drop more bombs on Japan!”
“Colonel, we only had two bombs and we dropped them both!”
“Thank you, sir! You saved my life! I am very grateful to you and the brave crews that dropped the bombs!” The general look relieved.
“Colonel, I’m happy you are back; this country owes you and your friends a great debt. You gave us what we needed most, TIME.”
Washington was overrun with military personnel. To me the amazing thing was the youth of the officers; generals in their forties and thirties; colonels in their thirties and twenties. I wasn’t jealous! I thanked God for each of them. They had done a bang-up job.
Two months passed at Walter Reed. I wasn’t dying as predicted in Manchuria. In fact I was getting better, gaining strength and weight each week. I was able to walk several city blocks at a time.
Mar. 17, 46: The Chief of Medicine, Col. Charles Mueller, decided that I was ready to try active duty; he found a job for me on the Medical Service. How great it was to be a halfway normal person again!
I moved in with Judy in her cozy little efficiency apartment; it was actually all that we needed; it had a nice view of Rock Creek Park and the Shoreham Hotel.
Visiting patients in the many scattered wards at WRGH was difficult; I often felt that the patient I was treating was healthier than I was, but I thanked my lucky stars just to be alive and perking. I really had all in this world that I had ever hoped to have.
The Surgeon General, Gen. Raymond Bliss, assigned me to a “Refresher Course” in Internal Medicine at George Washington University Hospital.
Lt. Col. Charles Gingles and I were to share cars to travel across town. One day while riding to work with him, I thought he would drop his teeth, when I told him that “Judy is pregnant.” He couldn’t believe it.
Apr. 8, 47: Dr. Preston Haynes delivered a beautiful baby boy for Judy at Columbia Hospital, and would take no pay; he was “my kind of doctor.” We named our healthy son: Eugene Coryell Jacobs, II and called him “Little Bit!”
Fall of 1947: Little Bit was baptized at the Chapel of Walter Reed Medical Center by Chaplain (Col.) Alfred Oliver, who had married Judy and me there ten years previously. Little Bit was frightened by the large collar the chaplain wore for his broken neck. (The Japs hit him with the butt of a rifle in the back of his neck, trying to get him to tell who was operating “the underground mail” in Cabanatuan P.O.W. Camp)
Summer of 1953: While enjoying a very pleasant tour of duty as Area Command Surgeon in Salzburg, Austria, we took a two-week vacation to visit beautiful Copenhagen, Denmark.
While visiting the Royal Copenhagen China Shop about ten one morning, the clerks drew down all the shades in the store windows.
A clerk sidled up to us and whispered, “The King and Queen are in the store, shopping for wedding presents.” Gene II, aged six, and having no inhibitions, pointed his finger directly at the fine looking gentleman, dressed in a perfectly proper business suit, and asked in a booming voice, “Is that the king?” There was a long startled silence!
Jul. 1956: Our little family was returning from a very pleasant three-year tour in Austria and Germany on the U.S.S. United States, enjoying first class accommodations, when nine-year-old Gene II came up missing. We searched the ship from bridge to the engine room where we found Gene consulting with the chief engineer as to “whether or not the United States could make forty-five knots.”
Apr. 1957: The State of Virginia was celebrating the 350th Anniversary of the landing of Captain John Smith at Jamestown. Governor Winthrop Rockefeller was to host Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip. The U.S. Army at Fort Monroe (Continental Army Command) was assigned to care for all the details.
Being Post Surgeon and Hospital Commander at Fort Monroe, I was to be the Queen’s personal physician for twenty-four hours. I was to be in an ambulance at the end of the runway when the Royal party landed at Patrick Henry Field in Williamsburg.
I asked Gene II if he would like to ride in the ambulance with me. “Sure!” he said.
Plane time was getting close, and no Gene. He was located in the tower, helping to direct the royal plane to a safe landing. He wanted me to come up in the tower to meet his new friends, but I had to remain in calling distance of the queen.
1960-65: Secretary of the Army’s Office: As President of the Army’s Disability Review Board became a pioneer in determining that tobacco “IS HAZARDOUS TO THE HEALTH.” Had difficulty in convincing the Surgeon General of the U.S. Public Health Service (a smoker).
May 31, ‘65: Gene II graduated from Valley Forge Military Academy in Wayne, Pennsylvania. It also happened that I had reached the age of sixty and this was my last day in the Army.
Gen. Milton Baker, the Academy Superintendent, invited me to review the graduating parade in his box.
I was retired as physically fit since I hadn’t missed a day due to illness since returning to duty in March of 1946.
Jun. 30, ‘70: Finished my very pleasant five-year contract at the Student Health Service of the University of Maryland in College Park. We retired to Florida.
This found Lt. Eugene C. Jacobs II on duty with the Armor Corps of the U.S. Army at Fort Ord, California, where he met and married Mary Frances Kanne, a dietician.
Christmas, 1982: Judy and I drove to St. Louis to spend a white Christmas with Capt. Gene II and Mary and their two beautiful children, Alexander Coryell Jacobs (four) and Lindsay Jaudon Jacobs (two).
One night Gene II asked me to attend a lodge meeting with him. Imagine my surprise and thrill to help raise my own son to be a Master Mason. Also while in St. Louis, Gene II borrowed a uniform for me to wear (first time in sixteen years) to swear
Mary into the Army as a Captain in the Women’s Medical Specialist Corps as a dietician.
Aug. 9, 84; Major Gene II and Captain Mary from Headquarters in St. Louis arrived at the summer home of Colonel Jacobs on Coryell Island (Cedarville) in Northern Michigan to present Colonel Jacobs with his fourth Bronze Star Medal - promised to the members of MacArthur’s First Guerrilla Regiment by General MacArthur in June, 1942. See photo!
The Jacobs family remains a very proud Army family, having had a representative in every war since the American Revolution. Even little Alex is a proud G.I. Joe with a complete field uniform.
(Lindsay is a Smurf.) The Jacobs family thinks we have a great country that is worth fighting for, a great U.S. Army that can fight with the best when they have proper intelligence and equipment. May our Army always be strong, and our country, free! “‘Peace is our profession.”
What greater satisfaction is there for grandparents than to see their children and grandchildren turning out right? Thank you, Lord, for all of our blessings!
THE PILOT*
by Gen. William Brougher
in the Long Dark Road
“What did you do in the war, Grand Dad?”
His little grand son said.
A pilot bold was I, my lad,”
The old man hung his head,
A pilot for a plane, my lad,”
(The old P. W. lied)
“Was yours a P-thirty-eight, Granddad?”
He hears the old man sob:
“The lowest plane of all, my lad,
A tough ‘P.W.’ job.”
“And did you shoot some Nips, Grand Dad?
And chase them from the air?”
“My specialty was ‘transport,’ lad;
I’d pile
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