Attached is an Army Air Corp picture of a man who gave up his dental practice and cushy, safe living in Jasper, AL, and volunteered to risk his life to fight in WW II because he felt it was the right thing to do. The picture is of Dr. Fred M. Haston. He was stationed at a post near New Orleans for several months before being locked down one day with orders for no outside communication. That night his outfit was loaded on a train and taken to Mobile, AL where they boarded a ship and were shipped out. They had not a clue where they were going but since the U.S. was engaged in heavy fighting in North Africa at the time they assumed there was a good possibility that was where they were headed. Instead, they were spared that assignment and taken to the Island of Trinidad where he was stationed for a year or so, — a lucky and safe assignment compared to North Africa. 

Why Trinidad? — In the 1940s airplanes were not capable of taking off from Atlanta or New York and flying direct to Europe where both bombers and fighters were needed. The most common way to get there was to fly the Southern Route — down through Mexico, Central America, and Trinidad on down to the eastern edge of Brazil, South America to a little town called Recife. There the planes would load up with fuel and take off headed across the Atlantic toward Africa and looking for a tiny island in the middle of the Atlantic called Ascension Island where they had to refuel to make it to Europe. My mother’s brother — Ed Cain flew his B-26 Bomber on that route to get to Ireland.