At Fort Polk, La

Curtis was drafted late in WWII and as noted in his post, ended up in the Pacific (on Saipan maybe) guarding Japanese prisoners of war.

When he was still in the US going through training,Brenda and her mother rode the train from Shelby to Ft. Polk - probably to nearby Alexandria La. (I am pretty sure that this trip was separate from the car trip that Isabel took with another Shelby woman to visit her husband.)

Both trips were adventures - the train trip maybe even more so because it was just Isabel and Brenda (and even if Curtis had been on leave and accompanied them going from Shelby to Ft. Polk, there was still the trip back).

Brenda's memories of the trip were fragmentary. She remembered seeing a lot of soldiers. Once she saw a group - probably MPs - beating a drunk soldier bloody. She remembered not havingf anything to eat until her father scrounged an apple which she said was the best thing she ever had.

Brenda and Isabel stayed in a rooming house (in Alexandria?). Apparently not every place would keep children and they had trouble finding a room. Brenda remembered that an officer's wife stayed there too and that she was nice. (And there was another story Brenda told - I think about rooming house - involving an adventure in a communal bathroom. A man was bent over naked cleaning the tub after his bath. A woman came up from behind and thinking that the man was her husband grabbed his private member which was dangling between his legs and announced "Ding dong, supper's on." It wasn't her husband.)

I don't know if Curtis spent every night in the room with Isabel and Brenda or just when he could get leave. Brenda remembered seeing him hop off a military bus which did not come to a complete stop.

And she remembered stepping in a mud puddle and getting her clothes dirty.

(Aside. I was also stationed in Ft. Polk from Sept to Dec in 1962, completing my six months reserves training. I don't think I knew then that Brenda and Isabel and Curtis had been there before me.)