The Surgeon General, Gen. Raymond Bliss, assigned me to a "Refresher
Course" in Internal Medicine at George Washington University Hospital.
Lt. Col. Charles Gingles and I were to share cars to travel across town. One day while riding to work with him, I thought he would drop his teeth, when I told him that "Judy is pregnant." He couldn't believe it.
Apr. 8, 47: Dr. Preston Haynes delivered a beautiful baby boy for Judy at Columbia Hospital, and would take no pay; he was "my kind of doctor." We named our healthy son: Eugene Coryell Jacobs, II and called him "Little Bit!"
Fall of 1947: Little Bit was baptized at the Chapel of Walter Reed Medical Center by Chaplain (Col.) Alfred Oliver, who had married Judy and me there ten years previously. Little Bit was frightened by the large collar the chaplain wore for his broken neck. (The Japs hit him with the butt of a rifle in the back of his neck, trying to get him to tell who was operating "the underground mail" in Cabanatuan P.O.W. Camp)
Summer of 1953: While enjoying a very pleasant tour of duty as Area Command Surgeon in Salzburg, Austria, we took a two-week vacation to visit beautiful Copenhagen, Denmark.
While visiting the Royal Copenhagen China Shop about ten one morning, the clerks drew down all the shades in the store windows.
A clerk sidled up to us and whispered, "The King and Queen are in the store, shopping for wedding presents." Gene II, aged six, and having no inhibitions, pointed his finger directly at the fine looking gentleman, dressed in a perfectly proper business suit, and asked in a booming voice, "Is that the king?" There was a long startled silence!
Jul. 1956: Our little family was returning from a very pleasant three-year tour in Austria and Germany on the U.S.S. United States, enjoying first class accommodations, when nine-year-old Gene II came up missing. We searched the ship from bridge to the engine room where we found Gene consulting with the chief engineer as to "whether or not the United States could make forty-five knots."
Apr. 1957: The State of Virginia was celebrating the 350th Anniversary of the landing of Captain John Smith at Jamestown. Governor Winthrop Rockefeller was to host Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip. The U.S. Army at Fort Monroe (Continental Army Command) was assigned to care for all the details.
Being Post Surgeon and Hospital Commander at Fort Monroe, I was to be the Queen's personal physician for twenty-four hours. I was to be in an ambulance at the end of the runway when the Royal party landed at Patrick Henry Field in Williamsburg.