I entered service at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas on February 27, 1945. I had three months basic training at Camp Hood, Texas followed by 30 days leave. I then reported to Camp Rucker, Alabama for advanced training. After about two or three weeks, we shipped out on a train made up of all Pullman cars. We were not told where we were going, but went to Oregon�I don't know just where we were. A short time later we took a ferry to some camp or fort in California. Soon we shipped out again, bound for the Philippine Islands. As I remember, the ship's name was U.S.S. Fayett, a converted liberty ship�I think it had been a cargo ship. The ship's crew were Merchant Marine, not Navy. After about thirty days we landed on Luzon. We rode a landing craft in, we had room for our duffle bag and ourselves�stacked in tight! I think we landed at Subic Bay. We were housed 18 men in a 12 man tent. It rained a lot that first night! We lived in several different locations for a few months. I spent a lot of time walking guard duty at abandoned compounds�no firearms. I finally was assigned to a port company. We delivered food supplies to ships out in the harbor. I lived on fourth floor of the tallest building in Manila (it was seven stories tall). The engineers had removed all the rubble and installed showers and restrooms. We could go up on the roof and look out over the city�all roofs were rusty looking galvanized tin. An interesting sight was a walled city, I believe it may have been a religious group, maybe Buddhism, the walls were about twenty feet high, made of huge stone slabs. The trees and light poles, which were made of oval hollow steel, had 3' diameter holes in them from shells. After working at the port company I was reassigned to Clark Field, 313th Bomb Wing, night C.Q. at Headquarters. Eventually I returned to the U.S. The ship was much faster�taking only 17 days to Camp Beale, California, where I was separated. My actual discharge was December 25, 1946, on Christmas Day!