My late father-in-law, Sgt. Jack Wong, volunteered to serve in the U.S. Army. He was assigned to the 203rd General Hospital, which was formed in Ft. Lewis, Washington state, deployed to England to treat D-Day casualties, then sent to Garches, France, outside Paris, to run what became the largest medical facility in the European theater.
Detailed history of the 203rd G.H.
Wikipedia entry on the 203rd G.H.
He loved to tell the story of being ordered by his C.O. to cook a small mountain of Thanksgiving turkeys (probably in 1944). Time was short and the C.O. added that he doubted they could be finished in time.
Sgt. Wong took the challenge and used his kitchen ingenuity to pre-cook the turkeys in the large steam pressure kettles, then finish them in the ovens, so they were indeed done in time.
In 1982, on a family trip to Europe, he was able to revisit the hospital (now Raymond Poincaré University Hospital) and even tour the kitchen where he pulled off his turkey triumph.
Russell Yee 