Frank Allen Ramsey - Office of Medical History - U.S. Army

Frank Allen Ramseyspoke no French; and having been stationed in France, I had a rudimentarycapability in French. So I would go with the surgeon and his wife, and theFrench surgeon and his wife, to many of the affairs that otherwise as alieutenant I would never have been able to attend.Donuts in BerlinWe inspected all sorts of food establishments in Berlin. We bought a lot offood there on the local economy because it was so difficult to ship it from theUnited States to Berlin. I got in a habit of stopping by the officers club early inthe morning to have coffee and doughnuts before I would go to work. Onemorning my friends and I were enjoying these beautiful large glazeddoughnuts, and one of them said, “These are the best doughnuts I’ve evereaten. Where did they come from?” I did not know, so I asked my NCOICwhen I got to the office, and he did not know. So we asked the procurementofficer at the officers club at the Harnach House where he was getting hisdoughnuts, and he was very reluctant to tell us.Finally he gave us the name of the company, and sometime later my sergeantwas by there and saw a truck pull out with a name on the side of it. So hefollowed the truck and that afternoon he got me in the office and said, “Youbetter come with me. We’ll go look at something.” So we rode out down onthe Unter den Linden, which was the main embassy row in pre-World War IIBerlin which led to the Brandenburg Gate, and at that time when I was there,both sides of the street were rubble still from the Russian artillerybombardment and the bombing.We drove up Unter den Linden, and he turned off on one of the side streets.About half a city block off the main Unter den Linden there was a road goingback in the rubble, and he drove back there. We stopped and got out, and therewas a tripod with a metal ring on top of it, and sitting on the ring there was ahuge iron kettle. It had a door on top of it, and there was a bottle of butane gasoff to one side with a hose leading to a burner under this kettle. Then on twosawhorses beside the kettle there was another door, and there was also a long17