We “formed up” on shore and moved inland. I knew that my medical detachment was behind me, because Sergeant Pezzula had called out their names. I decided to move on, knowing that my men were behind me. Actually, I figured that if I didn't stick with the men in front of us, whose officer seemed to know where he was going, my little detachment and I would be lost. It seemed that no more than fifteen minutes later, the buzz went down the column that we were settling down here for the night.

We were standing in an open field. One could see what appeared to be the dim lights of a city in the distance. It was very dark. Almost immediately the air was filled with “Where the #%@ are we?”

		Men of the 15th Air Force – The first night.

I obtained this print of “The First Night” from the 15th Air Force's Photo Unit about 6 months later. They came in on the Empress of Australia and were ordered to settle down in that same open field. Like us, they had no equipment, so they set up their pup tents and waited for daylight.

We did the same. During that night men looking for an outhouse would fall over the pup tents.

This would elicit screaming voices “Are you #@% blind?”

Well, as an officer I did not have a pup tent, I just stood around slapping my arms around me and jumping up and down to stay warm. I figured that I really must have sinned badly to deserve this, and I muttered a good number of choice epithets. The following morning we returned to the docks to pick up our equipment and vehicles, which were unloaded during the night. The ships were gone. They had no intention of being a target for the Luftwaffe.

We joined up with Headquarters Company and marched off to eventually hunker down in an ancient walled-off collection of farmhouses. We were several kilometers outside of the city of Oran.

		The First-Tent-Aid Station in North Africa. Office hours were 24/7. Sick call: first light. Payment: “Thanks, Doc.”

The colonel suggested that I consider an old stone barn for my aid station. But the inextinguishable odor was hardly compatible with an allegedly “surgically” clean first aid station. I thought it should smell from antisepsis rather than horse manure. I decided to set up my first tent aid station. Notice the outdoor waiting room...bench

The bench, door system, and bottle shelves were constructed from odds and ends we found around the farm. We carried them intact in our 3/4-ton truck that was assigned to us for the rest of the war. We could set up our tent first-aid station, shelves and bottles in about twenty minutes thereafter.