Albert Giroux was born Jan 10, 1913 while the family was living on Nash St. in Waterville, Maine.  Like most of Napoleon Giroux's sons, he took a turn in the barbershop and tried to learn the barbering trade from his father.    Al remembers practicing to sharpen the straight razor used in the shop on a bottle.   The bottle was also used to practice his shaving strokes.   The boys would tease that it was time to shave the bottle.   Albert hated the barbershop and found other work and interests.   At one time he worked as a caddy at the Waterville Country Club.   He remembers wanting to go to a special caddies tournament in Portland, Me. and having his mother give him the money to go, from her own savings.   He also remembers that it was his brother Dan, who started his first interest in radios by giving him his first battery powered radio to work on and take apart to see how it worked and how to repair it.

       After he completed high school, Al worked in the W.P.A  (Work Progress Administration) funded projects. He worked  “pick and shovel” on the road crew that improved College Ave.  from old Colby College towards Fairfield.   It was a dirt road at that time and became concrete.   He stayed for a summer in Haverhill, Mass. with his brother Earnest.  Then he returned to Waterville to work in a textile mill in the inspection room. During a strike he decided to enter the service and went to boot camp at Ft. Slocum, N.Y. in 1936.  Afterwards he went to Ft.  Monmouth, NJ to “radio school”.  Then he was stationed in Panama for two years.   While he was there he had to take quinine (which came in tablet form) but he was unable to swallow pills (to this day) and was forced to dissolve them in his coffee.

     When he returned to the states Al went to Fort Monroe, Virginia where he took an advanced course in radio.   Then he returned A- Ft. Monmouth, NJ to study “radar”.   This was before the word “radar” was known. They had a classified station at Ft. Hancock, NJ, not far from Ft. Monmouth, where the first radar school was held.  Al was in the first class to graduate from there. About this time, after he first left Ft, Monroe, he began to correspond with Marie-Anna Godbout, his cousin Betty’s best friend.  While at Ft. Hancock he went to see Marie-Anna in Canada after they had been writing for about six months.   When his father died in June of 1939, he got a leave of absence to go to the funeral and he also went to Canada to see Marie-Anna (I think he was getting serious).   Later that year just before Christmas he again visited her and planned to propose.   He even brought a ring with him.   But Marie-Anna's mother died the night of their engagement.  But they went ahead with their marriage plans and were to be married in April the next year.  But when Al returned to Ft.  Hancock he was reassigned to Panama.   While he was there the war broke out in Pearl Harbor.  Now it seamed as if there would be no way he could return to get married.   But he found that if he were to apply to officer's candidate school he would be able to return to the states.   Since the artillery officer's school had the most available openings he signed up for that, which sent him to Ft. Monroe again.  But on route from Panama his convoy was attacked by enemy subs and his ship was disabled.  The fire aboard ship was brought under control and the ship limped home and arrived in Portsmouth Virginia on 14 Sept. 1942. He was granted a 2 week authorized a delay in route before arriving at Ft. Monroe.
During which he went to Canada to get married. It was short notice so the priest that married them called St. Francois Parish in Waterville to get and ok.   They went on a honeymoon to Montreal for 3 or 4 days.  When Al left for officer's school, Marie-Anna stayed in Canada with her family. He graduated December 16, 1942.
 
 

      Eventually Al wrote to Gabe’s wife Lorrette and asked her to go to Magog and bring Marie-Anna back to live with her and his brother in Waterville.   Lorrette didn't know Marie-Anna but arranged for Gus Veilleux (a funeral director, friend, and Gabe’s employer) to drive her to Portland so she could take the Grand Trunk Railroad to Canada.   Lorrette told Marie-Anna in a letter how she would be dressed so they would be able to find each other when she arrived.  Once she arrived in Sherbrook on the train she took the bus to Magog and Marie-Anna was waiting right there when Lorrette got off the bus and they somehow knew each other immediately.   Lorrette stayed the night at Bernadette’s  (Al and Gabe’s cousin) house but there was a storm that night. Lorrette was so scared being in a strange place with branches scrapping on the windows, and the wind and rain, that she insisted that they return to Maine as soon as possible.  They packed Marie-Anna's things and left shortly after on the train.  Marie-Anna  lived with Lorrette and Gabe until Christmas when Al came and brought her to North Carolina, where Al was attending Officer Candidate School.  She stayed until May and then expecting their first child, she returned to visit her family in Canada, then to live again with Gabe and Lorrette.  Just before Jackie’s birth Al was assigned overseas in Africa.  On the way his convoy was attacked by German airplanes near Gibraltar. He arrived safely in Algiers and was assigned to the 267th Headquarters Company in the French Training section. He was in Africa from Nov 1943 till October 1944 before being sent to Italy. While there Al was a translator for the Algerian troops enroute to the Russian POW camp. During that time he received the European African Millde Eastern Service Medal.  He stayed in Italy for the remainder of the war, returning home just before Jackie’s 2nd birthday in Oct. 1945. 

Al was assigned to Ft. Devans Mass until Jan of 1946 when he was released from active duty and commissioned as a first lieutenant in the Signal Corps Reserves. Later that year Kathleen (Kitty) was born in Waterville. By December that same year of 1946 Al re-enlisted at Ft. Monmouth N.J. as a sergeant. By April the following year he was promoted to tec/3rd class and in August the same year he was promoted to technical sergeant in Fort Monmouth.  A year later in October of 1948 Al was discharged from enlisted status and recalled for active duty with the rank of 1st lieutenant and assigned to signal school at Ft. Monmouth.

Chapter 2
     Now is where his history becomes more hazy. There is no written journal so I am going to piece together what I can from oral history and Army records. I April 1949 he was working in Ft. Monmouth N.J. before being assigned to the European Command and sent to Germany. On his way there he had a layover in the Azores, arriving at Reine-Main, Germany on April 12 on his way to Nuremberg, Germany. He was then assigned to the Signal Corps Research Unit at Herzo Base.

     We know at that time Marie moved to Germany with 2 girls, Jackie and Kitty, in tow and she was pregnant with me, Lorraine. She was spotting while she was preparing to board a ship and the doctors gave her something to prevent a miscarriage.

     I guess all went well and she and the 2 girls arrived in Germany and the lived in a home near where dad was stationed in Herzogenaurach, a few miles from Nuremberg. I was born Nov. 5, 1949 at the American Hospital in Nuremberg.

Marie and Al were able to take a trip to Austria and Italy in March 1950. And by the end of that year Al was promoted to Captain on 30 Dec. 1950. In Feb 1951 Al was transferred from Herzo Base, Germany to the "Block House" in Paris France.

When Marie and the children arrived in France a week later than Al the lived for a time in Versaille on the Boulevard de la Porte Verre. In April they all moved to St. Germain en Laye where Shape Command(allied forces in Europe) are stationed.

Norman to 1st and only son born to Al and Marie was born in July 1951 at the American Hospital in Neuilley, Paris, France. He was later baptized at Notre Dame Cathedral.

In Aug. 1951 Al was transferred from the Blockhouse in Paris to the 7th Signal Battalion in Versailles as a Liaison officer to the French Government. Dad always told us he worked for DeGaul on something that had to do with translation as he spoke both French and English.

Later that same year the whole family returned home to the states via ship departing Bremahaven, Germany to the Brooklyn Army Base in the US. and in Dec. 1951 the family bought a house in Fairhaven, N.J. near Ft. Monmouth. Al was at the same time given command of the 9489 TSU at White Sands Ionosphere Station, New Mexico
 

White sands New Mexico - Ajax Missiles were fully operational by the early 1950's. Designed to destroy high-flying aircraft, the first test-launch occurred at White Sands Proving Ground, NM in 1946.

Six months later the 9489 was deactivated ad Al was reassigned to the White Sands Signal Agency in Los Cruses, New Mexico until he was sent all over  -from Los Alamos NM to Travis AF Base in Calif. to the Marshall Islands. Both going and coming from the Marshall Islands he stopped over in Hawaii where he stayed a couple of days before returning to the States in late November and was again stationed at Ft. Monmouth, NJ. Late the following year in Dec. 1953 Al again went to Travis AFB in California on he way to Okinawa, Japan for duty in Joint Task Force Seven. He was there for 6 months and then left for Guam in May, en-route to the USA.

It is during that time we think he went to Bikini Island. He never spoke about what happened there or what he did but the following information gives a synopsis of what occurred on Bikini during that time.

Bikini Island _ Early in the morning on March 1, 1954, the hydrogen bomb, code named Bravo, was detonated on the surface of the reef in the northwestern corner of Bikini Atoll. The area was illuminated by a huge and expanding flash of blinding light. A raging fireball of intense heat that measured into the millions of degrees shot skyward at a rate of 300 miles an hour. Within minutes the monstrous cloud, filled with nuclear debris, shot up more than 20 miles and generated winds hundreds of miles per hour. These fiery gusts blasted the surrounding islands and stripped the branches and coconuts from the trees.
Joint Task Force ships, which were stationed about 40 miles east and south of Bikini in positions enabling them to monitor the test, detected the eastward movement of the radioactive cloud from the 15 megaton blast. They recorded a steady increase in radiation levels that became so high that all men were ordered below decks and all hatches and watertight doors were sealed.

It is very possible that Al was aboard one of those ships and witnessed the explosion.

In July 1955 Al was assigned to the Thule Ionosphere Station in Greenland were he stayed for a year. He then returned to Ft. Monmouth Ionosphere Station until his retirement in Jan 1957.