Just another nice day over the Mojave

On Sun, 10 Oct 2004 21:53:16 GMT, "Casey Wilson"
wrote in gbiad.270$MY.110@trnddc03::

Patton is one of my WWII heros. Yep, I've been out there a few times.
It's one of the places to take relatives who come to visit.
For me, it's easy to close my eyes and hear the rumble, creaking, and
groaning of the tanks churning over the terrain, and hear the gunfire from
machine guns and cannon.

Out west of Blythe near Wiley's Well (IIRC) there are a lot of tank
tracks still evident. I share your ability to envision the DTC in
operation.

Sometimes even hear Patton growling at his junior officers.

Ummm... That wouldn't be Gen. George S. Patton, Jr.; he actually had
a rather high pitched voice. But he did establish a radio station so
he could broadcast throughout the DTC. He knew how to get things
done. Once, when tank parts were slow to arrive through Army
procurement, he sent a sergeant to Sears to get them, and paid for it
out of his own pocket. Patton was also a pilot who flew his own
Stenson 'flying jeep' to scout the land for the DTC.

But , what the heck..., I've got an active imagination..., even if
the ghosts are real.

Casey


What's really eerie is walking the grounds of the campsites out in the
lonely desert and seeing the beer bottle caps still on the ground, and
imagining how the recruits must have enjoyed a 'cold one' after
marching from Yuma to Blythe in an evening. I spoke to one of the
owners of the Budwiser distributorship in Palm Springs about his
memories of the DTC (he was just a child at that time). He indicated
that that was how his father got started in the beer business; he
trucked beer out to the campsites during the war. ...