Serving Abroad

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“I felt very bad. I was upset because when you leave the States and you don’t know when you are coming back or not. It gives you a funny feeling.”

“Well you see, they are all in civilian clothes. And I’m the only one in uniform, and you assign them uniforms and they have to fill out papers about where they lived, where they are born, whether they are qualified — but you meet the busses when they come in. And that’s me.”

“I’m processing people who come in and it’s top secret. And if you notice you don’t see nothing with the print showing. We would just turn our papers over in when we was talking to somebody. So nobody could read their papers.”

“Oh yes, it was bad. You can walk across the street and it would be two- or three-story building and part of it would be gone. You would see inside where the wall had been and I guess — something had just tore the building up. And they was some people, older people who hadn’t been down on the street for several years. The staircase was just bombed out.”

Editor’s Note: In 1947, Faye Edwards traveled to Europe to process new soldier arrivals in Bremerhaven, Germany; Frankfurt, Germany; and La Havre, France. During her time in Europe, Edwards recalls the destruction she witnessed in Germany.