Murray bennett story part 4

byJoezout

1.2K followers

4 years ago

AN EXCITING LEAVE THEN BACK TO THE ARMY

While Murray was home on leave one day, he was sitting in his car having a soda pop and a burger at a popular hamburger drive-in joint named Hi-de-ho, in his 1952 ford. 2 Mexican kids were arguing in cars parked next to him, one car parked on the left side of his car the other car parked on the right side of him. These kids were arguing back and forth through Murray’s car in Spanish which Murray did not understand a bit of. Before Murray knew it the kid on his left jumped out of his car leaned across Murray’s hood and shot the other kid in the other car.

The interesting part of the story is that approximately 50 years later Murray met the district Attorney for Potter County at a restaurant, Potter County was the county in which the shooting had occurred. Just by chance in a conversation they happened to talk about that incident during lunch, the district attorney mentioned to Murray they knew there was an eyewitness and looked for that individual but never found him.

Well what occurred was that as soon as that incident happened Murray had hightailed it out of that area, he wanted nothing to do with it, after all who would. Murray had no idea the man was killed he just did not want to get shot himself or get involved with anything further at that time.

After basic training Murray was in Amarillo Texas, he left Amarillo Texas when his orders sent him to Washington DC where he would be stationed at Fort Meyer South post, which at that time was directly across the street from the Pentagon. At one time that post held 25,000 enlisted Army and Air Force personnel, which at present is now the grounds of the Arlington national Cemetery. The entire facility was removed to expand our grand national Cemetery such has been the demand.

Murray learned his way around Washington DC by being assigned to a courier that went to all the foreign embassies. He was trained within about a month’s time, he was a quick study. Much like Murray many of us in WA when we joined we went at our lessons quickly, while we paid close attention to every lesson and went at them insistently for at least eight hours a day, and in that way we finished them within a month's time. Some of us had our WA websites up and running within the 5th week, quick studies just like Murray was.

He would drive from a garage within the Pentagon, he would enter the garage by waking into the Pentagon through the mall entrance and then walk down the stairs, the entire walk inside the Pentagon was approximately 400 yards to the garage.

The garage entrance Murray would drive in and out of was called the river entrance. The garage was on the second floor underneath the river entrance and it was approximately 400 yards long and 200 yards wide. He had duty rosters both there and at Fort Meyer, he would check the duty roster once a week at Fort Meyer to see if he was either on fireguard or KP, otherwise he would go to the Pentagon and check his duty roster there to see which car he was driving that day.

He drove 56 or 57 Chevrolet’s they were four-door sedans; olive drab was the color; he was just a driver and he never opened the door for anybody. Murray’s car would have a specific number and each car of course had a different number, when Murray started his day, he would wait in his car to be called to the dispatch office. Once Murray heard his number announced over the loudspeaker he would pull his car up to the dispatch office and they would walk out with a small card and a sheet of paper with a number on it which was Murray’s car number.

They would tell Murray were to go and give him the card with the address and the name of the individual he was to pick up that trip, and the sheet of paper with his car number on it. He would stick this sheet of paper in the front window of the car so that that individual he was to pick up could readily see that number.

That is how his rider could identify his car. There could be as many as 20 cars waiting in line to pick up passengers, so it was mandatory to have that number in your window. There were in total about 200 drivers on three shifts, there was a constant need of transportation to be fulfilled.

Everyone please continue to pray for Florentino and his daughter, no one has received any word about her condition and we can only hope for the best. Our combined prayers I am sure will certainly help her heal, the power of prayer is renowned for healing.

Once again I request your constructive criticism on my writing, I have shortened my paragraphs as many have suggested and have continued to improve my writing is much as possible, thank you everyone for helping me.

Joe