We when we first got there our hospital wasn’t ready. So we’re in tents. They have advanced teams to welcome you with tents for everybody. We had one general purpose tent which will sleep about 12 maybe 18. One general purpose tent for 500 people. So I thought this this isn’t going well.
After we made all these cots up for 500 people and never again will I be doing that. But, we’re finally going to go to sleep. We ate K-rations. We had water. We had mail from home and the sergeant came around and said, “Ladies, you have to dig a trench around this tent.”
If you want to succeed in the army, you do what sergeants say.
Yeah right. Well we’re not doing it tonight. We’ll do it tomorrow.
And of course overnight it rained gushes of water. In came the water of course because we don’t have a trench for it to go into. So in it came into our tent. We were swimming in our tent at two o’clock in the morning.
So if you want to succeed in the army, you do what sergeants say. I learned that very early, because they know things and they’re glad to share it with you. You do what they say and you have to, or you can do it at 2:00 o’clock in the morning.
Ann T.
Army Nurse