Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Lee Remembers the "Class of '34".






Kathy: My book ”You Knew Me As Buddy” is more or less dedicated to my Hamilton grade school Classmates of 1934; considered by at least two of us to be the “greatest” class in the schools history. And probably by many others because on at least two occasions the class was given the responsibility of enforcing school rules on a large, older group.

















When we were third graders the powers that be set up a “kangaroo” court system to enforce playground rules. Charged violators were assembled in a classroom/courtroom where they were tried and sentenced before a judge, who as I remember was a fifth grade teacher. The third graders were to maintain order in the courtroom. This activity lasted about three weeks.















When the "Class of '34" was in eighth grade North Sanpete High School joined the Traffic Patrol bandwagon and started a traffic control program. The "Class of '34" were to be the Enforcers. One of the big goals of the program was to stop the high school students from cutting across State Street at the bridge to the candy store corner. At noon of the first day a squad of us eighth graders with our new flags walked over to the bridge and the NE corner of Main and State to begin this new operation.



I was with two others at the bridge and here comes the noonday stampede of students headed for downtown. Remember, we had one hour for lunch. The Enforcers at the corner never saw a student. The Enforcers at the bridge never stopped one. I don’t know that any of them even asked us what our flags were for, and they never saw them again. The Program lasted just the one day.   .......Lee R. Christensen

Monday, September 13, 2010

Washington Maneuver Includes 100,000 Men







Lee writes:


 This news article is describing the war maneuvers of Aug 1941. For these war games Mt Pleasant’s Btry D 222nd FA Regt motored north to Western Washington from San Luis Obispo. A year earlier, summer of 1940 while still a National Guard unit, the Btry went by rail from Mt Pleasant to a tent camp near Centralia Washington for a similar exercise.


A story to go with the maneuver article. In August 1941 of the four Btry D gun Sgts I was the junior Sgt. The Btry had just been issued three big 4 ton Diamond T’s to pull our 155mm howitzers . As the jr sgt, my section got a small 2 ½ ton 6x6. As we were getting ready to move out on this 2000 mile road march the Division Commander called me over and asked if our small truck was up to the job. I told him that with DelRay Sorenson as our driver it would be no problem. It wasn’t. The commanding general was Maj Gen Ernest J Dawley who went on to command the American VI Corp in the invasion of Italy. A photo of the gun section, with DelRay, was posted earlier on this site and well after we had a Diamond T truck.