Arthur E. Hoffman

Arthur served proudly in the U.S. Navy during WWII as a medic. Arthur enlisted when he was 18.  He was assigned to the Navy, and was sent to medical corp training at the hospital corp school located on the grounds of the Old Coronado Expedition in San Diego, where there was not enough room to house everyone so they set up tents on the grounds with triple deck bunks which slept 12 people to a tent.  His was the top bunk.

He graduated at the top of his class from medical corp school, so he got to pick which hospital to be located at.  He chose Queens, NY because it was close to home.  But the last weekend in San Diego, he had a hole in the bottom of his shoe.  He had a choice - go out on liberty and enjoy the last weekend in San Diego, or stay and get the shoe mended.  He chose to go out and ended up with a big blister and got cellulitis, so on VJ Day, he ended up in the hospital with blood poisoning.  When he got out of the hospital, they had already filled the slot for the hospital in New York, so he got a choice of the hospitals that were left.  He chose Chelsea Naval Hospital in Boston because that was the closest choice to home.  

His first assignment was a medic on a VD ward.  He said it was a great experience - he was the only medical care for everyone - they didn't assign doctors or nurses because they felt misbehavior did not deserve them.  He also had to take many types of samples for testing.  

At one point, Arthur had to collect information for the Public Health Service to know how patients got VD.  One of the hardship cases he took a record of was about a  Navy soldier who went home on leave to visit wife and kids and when he got back to the ship he came down with Syphilis.  He went AWOL and went home to get his kids to take to his mother to take custody.  When he got home, he found his wife had been living with another AWOL soldier who had VD.  The MPs found him right away, but let him finish getting his affairs in order and the kids to his mother, then took him back for court martial.  The court martial gave him the same number of weeks he spent in the hospital getting cured as time served and nothing listed on his record.  

Then they put Arthur on midnight shift caring for the ulcer and pneumonia patients.  One night a guy just discharged from the ward with bleeding ulcers got drunk and his ulcer began bleeding again.  He was brought in drunk and put in a bed.  He woke up in the middle of the night and threatened Arthur if he didn't give him a drink.  Apparently the hospital kept ethanol, but also another drug that looked like ethanol but was a knock out liquid.  Arthur poured him a shot glass of this other drug and gave it to him.  The guy swallowed it all at once and then realized it wasn't liquor. He started to go after Arthur, took a few steps, and  passed out.  Arthur called the officer of the day on duty who sent MPs to collect the guy and take him to the psychiatric ward.  

Arthur was transferred to a marine corp - the 1st Special Marine Brigade at Quantico, which was set up as experimental.  The idea was a small unit capable of quickly mobilizing and getting to the action within days.  Arthur became proficient in machine guns.   Then transferred to Camp Lejeune.  

He was sent on maneuvers to Puerto Rico. There was 1 paratroop battalion and 2 infantry battalions.  The object was to take the air base, so they had to walk from the beach to the airfield 17 miles away within 3 hours, carrying pack, knapsack with tent, his medical bag, and take turns carrying ammunition box, tripod and machine gun.  After the 17 miles, everyone rested except Arthur because as the only medic in the platoon of about 20 guys, he had to take care of everyone's blistered feet.  There was also a guy bit on the eye by a centipede that night.  Arthur was told half the centipedes were poisonous and half weren't, so Arthur stayed up with the guy all night to make sure he was ok.  

Food on the ship consisted of powdered eggs, all kinds of beans, and nothing else.  When they left Puerto Rico, they were supposed to have a big dinner before getting to port.  They watched a supply ship transfer many sides of beef and crates of vegetables and other wonderful foods to their ship.  But they got to the NY City port one day early.  The law was that produce could not be brought into port.  So they all watched as all the sides of beef and crates of vegetables were heaved over the side of the ship.

At Camp Lejeune, they were discharging medics.  Arthur was scheduled for discharge on a Tuesday in July.  On Monday afternoon, orders came down that all Navy medics were frozen because of all the wounded troops coming back.  The Marine Corp didn't know what to do with the group scheduled to discharge the next day and finally decided that night that because their orders had already been sent to the separation center, they would still be discharged.  The groups that were scheduled to be discharged after Arthur's group were all frozen for another 9 months.  Arthur said that changed his life because he was discharged in July, was able to enroll in college in September, and graduate in 1950 - which was when he got hired at Jack Frost National Sugar Refinery and met his wife, Carol-Jean.  Had his group been frozen too, none of that would have happened.  Arthur and Carol-Jean married in 1951.