"
Sept. 17, 45: We started east in our bedroom aboard the Union Pacific,
through the gorgeous Rocky Mountains. When the train stopped at
stations, I was amazed to see husky young women, balancing themselves
along the tops of freight cars, brake persons, no less. It had taken
many dedicated people, doing many strange and often hazardous jobs, to
bring the war to an end. I felt grateful to each and every one of
them.
We spent a couple of happy days with Judy's family in Lincoln and two
more in River Forest, before proceeding on to Washington, where I
became a patient on Wards 1 and 4 at Walter Reed General Hospital.
Judy lived in an efficiency apartment at 906 at 2000 Connecticut Ave.,
near Holton Arms School, where she taught during the war.
About the second week we were in Washington, one of Judy's teacher
friends, Peggy Snow, arranged for us to get invitations
to her father's cocktail party for the top brass in Washington.
General Snow, the Chief of Engineers in the Army, sat me in the center
of the party, where I was a curiosity and subject to much questioning.
Many important persons came to look me over and ask, "Are you having
any difficulty adjusting?" My answer was always the same, "If somebody
gave you a Lincoln car, would you have trouble adjusting?"
General Leslie Groves, the "Father of the Atomic Bomb," asked me,
"What did you think of the, Atomic bombs we dropped on Japan?" I
answered, "General, by dropping the bombs, you saved thousands of
American lives that would have been lost if the U.
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