I believe I arrived at Croft in early June of ‘42. My duties here were training of recruits. I was assigned in charge of one of the platoons, but really that was more of housekeeping. The main duty was to give instruction on the M1 rifle, in fact we might have used the Springfield rifle for a while. And starting right from disassembly, assembly, care and cleaning and going on to the sighting and aiming and on to the rifle range and qualification. I taught a lot on the rifles and the mortars, 60 mm mortar particularly. Then I taught a lot on small unit tactics, starting out on the squad in the attack. Show them the formations, walk them through it, and then go on to the platoon and finally to the company. And I did that for a year. Meanwhile, I met Emily Rash and on June 13, 1943 we were married and then soon after that I got orders, my time was up here, to go join my unit to go overseas. So I went to the 98th Infantry Division which was at Fort Rucker, Alabama. We stayed there a month or two to finish our training and then we went to the Hawaiian Islands. Emily always went with me as she could, going right up to the water’s edge and when I would take off across the pond, she would come back here and teach school. She taught in Inman, but during the Korean War she taught in Roebuck. I don’t remember too well meeting Emily. Most of the recruits who were coming down were from Pennsylvania, New England states, Ohio, maybe some out of the Midwest. But I had a cousin, Albert Homan, and a couple of guys from my hometown who came down, were doing their basic training. They had met some girls and so they invited me to come along and Emily was there. That was my first date with her, it really wasn’t a date, it was just we got together and spent a couple hours together, they served us refreshments and we just had a good time. It was a small group, six or eight, and they would usually meet in one of the homes, Dottie Lancaster was one of them. I think I met with that group for a couple of months and then Emily and I stared to go out. We would go mostly to the movies and then go home. It wasn’t until I was here a year or more and then we were married. My father and mother came down by train and we met them at the train station. That was the first they had met Emily. Her family were always Methodists but, for some reason, from day one when we planned the wedding, we decided we wanted a military wedding. So I went to Captain Thomas O. Hall, our chaplain, and told him we wanted to get married and wanted to have it in the chapel. Then we picked the people we wanted in the wedding with us and she did most of the planning. She knew the people as well as I did because we got to mingling with them and going out with them. I don’t recall ever having a question as to whether we wanted to hold it in a church or wanted the military wedding. We were in the Army and we wanted a military wedding. [Looking at a Camp Croft Wedding photo with crossed rifles] See, here they are using rifles with bayonets, where here we are using sabers. We were all set to use these and my wife objected to using rifles because it sounded too much like a shotgun wedding. She was persistent and was able to find the sabers from Wofford College, their ROTC department I believe. She knew how to get at them and borrowed them for the wedding. The attendee list was mostly Emily’s relatives, there were a lot of them. I would say there was thirty of her family there, mostly from the Correll family. There were officers and some enlisted men there and Dave Reid was probably one of them. In fact, I am sure he was because Dave and I were pretty good friends. We had a reception in the officer’s quarters. I had a car, a 1940 Chevy which my father and mother bought for me when I graduated from Penn State, because I worked a year, I had to have a car. So I had my car here. I had a week or two of furlough and we all went back in my car to Pennsylvania. Then Emily and I drove back here. They always treated me great, everybody down her treated me great. I was a Yankee but I got along fine. I never got a razing or anything like that. Same way, when I would take Emily up there, she was a rebel. My father’s family were Mennonites, worn the bonnets and all that stuff, but they loved Emily, she was all right. She fit in well.
Paul Grubb Lt. Colonel, USA, Retired Inman, SC |
