Memories from Camp Hale

By: Jim Quibodeaux

Donna found this picture in some old photos and I thought it might bring back memories for some of the old A Company guys. The far window in the second floor was the room for SGT Shoemaker, the platoon sergeant. He went to Korea with A Company.

This picture was taken in late summer or early fall of 1949 beside the A Company barracks of the 2nd Engineer Combat Battalion in Ft. Lewis, Washington. The four guys in this picture are from Left to Right. PFC Robertson from Houma, Louisiana. The second guy was called Satch because he was comical (I do not remember his real name). The third guy in back was Robert Egloff from Endicott, NY. He did not go to Korea as he was sent to Germany at the beginning of the Korean War, and the fourth (good lucking guy) is Jim Quibodeaux.

Robertson and Satch were discharged before the Korean Invasion. Egloff and I were transferred to C Company and when we were sent over I was transferred to D Company before we left for Korea. An interesting side note is that sometime before the end of 1949 and the beginning of 1950 we had a number of new replacements in A Company who had been in Korea and to a man they said the army should not have removed the troops from South Korea because the North would invade within months.

I was sent to Ft. Lewis shortly after A Company returned from their annual summer assignment which was fighting a forest fire in Eastern Washington near a town called Yakima.