But before the 38th moved from Telegrma, Captain Pickens in letters written late in March and during April, told in considerable detail of the stay here -- the routine of battlefield hospital administration, the characters, both natives and invading military, encountered there and in nearby communities, visited, the day by day happenings that had interested him. Continue reading chapter 9...
As the year 1943 began, the 38th was still encamped at St. Cloud, though letters home from members of the unit still carried the less identifying address of Northwest Africa. Many of these letters, along with snatches of diaries kept, usually with little regularity, by personnel of the 38th, provide interesting close looks at the routine daily life of an Army field hospital that none of the offical records can reveal.
More details of the 38th's day-to-day existence in the St. Cloud area as seen through the eyes of its mess officer are revealed in the letter begun on December 13, 1942, described by Captain Pickens as "the second of my more lengthy letters to the folks." Continue reading chapter 6...
On November 16, 1942, four days after the 38th left Arzew and arrived at St. Cloud, Captain Pickens wrote the folk at home a long letter in which he sought to tell of his feelings in leaving England three weeks before and of the subsequent experiences of the unit as it began its tour of duty in northwest Africa. Continue reading chapter 5...
On October 23, 1942, six months and a week after the 38th began training at Fort Bragg, the unit went aboard H.M.S. Malta in the harbor at Bristol, at the head of Bristol Channel on England's western coast about a hundred miles from London. Continue reading chapter 4...
When the sun rose Saturday morning, August 1, 1942, the 38th Evacuation Hospital unit's members were nearing Philadelphia, and soon they were doing what they and countless others of the nation's military forces would do throughout the duration of the war, calling for coffee. Fortunately, the railway's representative on the train had wired ahead and when the train reached Philadelphia several large milk cans of steaming coffee were awaiting its arrival.
Foreword by: Martha P. Mitchell 1st Lt., U. S. Army 1942-1945