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In October 1943 the 102nd Evacuation Hospital found itself r efocused. Instead of the Pacific, it would head for the Eur opean theater. To at least partially prepare it for duty in a rough European winter—significant foresight—on December 3, 1943,the US Army sent the 102nd to ic y, windblown Goffs, California, some four hundred miles east in the Mohave Desert. It was not the anticipated four months of sim ulated battle and frigid tents that made Ren “hate to leave [the] home” of SLO, as he wrote Mary. Despite its “morale issues” he had bonded with the unit in the liberated, exciting environment of SLO. San Luis Obispo was home. Yet it turned out that“home”just moved with him.If Goffs was “desolate” and “icy with rain,”“no morning shave unless you melt the ice,”“Dan and I”still roomed together, along with three other officers, in a tent that had an oil stove and a wooden floor. Lee Montgomery transferred out of the 102nd,but the newly minted Birmingham anesthesiologist,Capt.Edward Peterson, joined the unit and became another close Alabama friend sharing Ren’s fascination with the S anta Fe trains that were hurtling down the tracks adjacent to Goffs. Ren’s Sunday services continued in the men ’s mess tent, his counseling in a one-man pup tent with a desk and tw o chairs. After just four days at Goffs he wrote Mary, “It’s going to be an interesting experience. I am going to enjoy it.” In fact, two days later, on Thursday, December 9, Ren received notice of his promotion to captain retroactive to November 20. He wrote Mary,“From now on you will please address me as Captain . . . $50a month mor e pay. . . . [Mary now] had $200 a month which is as much [as] or more than all four of us had to live on.”With captain’s bars a joint gift from Dan Laws and Joe Rutenberg, Ren gleefully organized the customary promotion party for the offi cers of the 102nd “in [the] CHAPTER 2 Goffs December 1943 –Febru ary 194 4 22 chap t er 2 recreation tent, 60 bottles of beer, 25 coca colas, 50 cigars,20 candy bars, pretzels, cheese, peanuts, chewing gum.”The event must have been “underwritten ”by Dan Laws’s selectively guarded quartermaster supplies, for the host’s total personal costs—at least what he told his wife—were “$12 or $13, ” and he was “glad to spend it.” Promotion did not dampen Ren’s intensity about the physical aspects ofarmy life.Although most ofhis captain colleagues who were physicians dodged the intensified obstacle courses with live fire whistling overhead and the simulated battle in the sleet,Ren took on these“trying conditions” and told Mary he was “doing ok with it all ” and “enjoying it.” Still, the intentionally rougher training at Goffs significantly expanded his workload . More and more of the “boys,” as well as nonmedical officers from throughout the Goffs operations, were seriously hurt in accidents with grenades and live ammunition. By mid-December, despite theoretically being in training,the tent wards of the 102nd had tw o hundred beds filled with “true battle type cases.”By late December there were three hundred, “more patients than all three hospitals in Selma [Alabama] can handle.” For the first time Ren was consistently doing heavy bedside counseling in the wards.To facilitate these sessions he strategically expanded his knowledge of surgery by “observing”various procedures still under way after he closed his evening office counseling.Likewise,he found the newly arrived nursing component of the 102nd—thirty of them—filled with talented caregivers and good instructors on what patients had what odds for certain recoveries. Most of the nurses he thus met became friends, and they seemed more interested in his Sunday services in the recreation tent than others did,notably “three Jewish nurses”who regularly sat beside his close friends Basil Winstead and Joe Rutenberg, who were also Jewish. In “honor” of Ren’s promotion, CO Goodiel asked Captain Kennedy to supervise the plans for the Christmas celebration. Ren enjoyed the additional assignment of coordinating with the Red Cross, and on Christmas day small gift packages valued at$1.00each—a combination of socks, chewing gum, toothbrushes, shaving cream, or Jergens lotion —went to all of the patients and every member of the 102nd,a labor-intensive...

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