Another Fire

One night we got another notice to go to another fire. I at once said to myself: another few days of hell. We were told to bring our blankets and working clothes and axes and shovels. We started out on trucks. After an hour of truck riding we arrived at the lower base camp of the fire. We were fed and given food and started hiking up the mountain. It was starting to get dark and we were walking through woods and jumping over ditches and mud holes. Finally it got dark and we couldn't see a thing. We only had one lantern and the guides on the horse had it. We couldn't keep up with him and we didn't have no light. We were struggling over everything. We couldn't even see trees in front of us. Everybody was hollering for the guy to slow down. He did but we always lost him after a few minutes. Everybody was full of mud and water. I fell in a mud hole and had to get help to get out. It was real torture but I got a great kick out of it.  Watching everybody swearing and falling down every foot of the way. Some of the boys wanted to stop for the night and camp, but the guide said we had a few more miles to go so we kept going. We finally arrived at the fire base. It was another site to see the whole mountain all lit up by fire. It was after 1 o'clock so we were told to lay down and sleep until 5 o'clock to start fighting. That day plenty of food came up there thank God. And we ate plenty and we had good food for all the time we were there. We were there for five days and nights. We had the fire under control but we had to stay and see that it did not start again. We found out that there was nine different fires in the park at this time and all the camps were taking part in the fires.