At this time I was making $26 a week, renting a room, making car payments, and had enough left to run around with on weekends. It was in March or April that I received my draft notice. The day I left Rochester it snowed two feet and I had to shovel snow for hours to get my car out. I drove to Canandaigua and left all of my things with my father. I left the car with a friend who worked at a gas station down by the lake and he stored it in his barn. I owed some on it but they couldn't collect from you while you were in the service. After I was in the army about a year, I wrote to him and told him to let it go back to the finance company. I don't know why I didn't keep it or at least let someone in the family finish the payments. It was a very good Pontiac and I didn't owe more than a couple hundred dollars on it. In the service you soon got the feeling that your chances of living through the war were pretty slim.
I entered the service on April 15, 1942. We left early in the morning from the railroad depot in Canandaigua for Rochester where we went through the induction center on State Street. From there we left for Ft. Niagara near Buffalo. It was still cold weather and they drilled us on the parade grounds in heavy army overcoats. One day I had a terrible headache and every step I took marching made it hurt more. They asked for volunteers to take a test for the Air Corps so I volunteered just to got out of marching. I had such a headache that I didn't think I did very well on the test. If I hadn't had that headache my war years would have been entirely different.
The first three or four days I wondered what I had gotten myself into and would have given anything to have been able to have gotten out. That soon passed and the rest of the time I wouldn't have missed the experience for anything. We were only at Ft. Niagara for about a week before being sent by train to Fort Bragg in North Carolina. This is where we were to take a 13 week training in field artillery. We trained for the 105 gun which was medium size, the shell being about five inches in diameter and about eighteen inches long. We would haul it around on a truck and set it up at a gun emplacement. The first time we shot it there were several officers there and the target was on a hillside about a quarter mile away. We fired the gun and watched for the hit. Nothing happened and we just stood waiting. We never did find out where it went. After the officers left we had a good laugh!