George S. Oliver
Colonel, U.S. Army
(Retired)

A six year old boy, in a tent, on a moonlit night looks out over the Columbia Gorge and sees a train moving along the other side of the river. He had never seen a train before. He knew where his family came from and how they got to where they were. He knew their names and their stories, some had become heroes, but to this child they were all heroes. That night he wondered what other things he would see in his lifetime.

His younger years were spent during our Great Depression. His parents and three siblings loaded all they had into their car and moved to the primitive area in northern Idaho - where you didn't need money to live and their neighbors were 'a-ways away.' They pitched their tents on the bank of a river and had a small cabin built before winter set in. They did anything they could to survive, even the young ones. All was for the family. Gold-mining, cutting and hauling logs to the sawmill, or repairing roads for the county. Anything to put beans in the pot! With their help the small communities of Orogrande and Yellow Dog grew into 'home' for a handful of people who had nothing, and nowhere else to go. He remembers their names, where they were from and how they helped and comforted each other during one of the darkest periods this nation has ever seen. They worked hard and they played hard, never forgetting to dance and play music on Saturday nights. The family lived in the Elk City area until this boy graduated from high school. He worked on the railroad in Montana for a while before joining the Army. For much of WWII he was a young Lt. in the deep south, in a unit patrolling the coast of the Atlantic Ocean to prevent landings by enemy subs. His career took him to Japan right after the bombs were dropped, and there he was in command of an all-Negro truck company at the port of Yokohama for 2 1/2 years. He was in Korea twice, once during the war. He was at the Pentagon twice, once with the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was in Italy on a tour with NATO during the worst storm the Mediterranean had seen for 100 years. He did prep work for the Viet Nam War before he even knew where Southeast Asia was. Along the way he acquired a college degree and retired as a full colonel at the age of 52.

My name is Marilyn Smith and since I was a small child my father would tell me stories, all true, all history and often his own. I asked him if he would tell me his whole story and he has happily obliged me. My father, George S. Oliver, writes as he speaks and he has much experience as a speaker. He is very descriptive and has a remarkable memory for details. He interjects supportive explanations such as how the Chinese used mercury to adhere to the gold in the creeks in the Elk City area at the turn of the century and how to separate the gold and mercury with a potato. During the entire manuscript he tells what is going on in the world and how it applied to him.THE TENTS has photos and maps of interest. His story is fast-paced, full of humor, a lot of adventure and interesting trivia, with no mundane family dynamics along the way that would be of no interest to the reader. It does include however, a beautiful love story. While a young Lt. he met a fiery little eighteen-year old in northern Idaho that would leave all she knew and all she had, during a war, to follow the man she loved on a lifetime full of adventure. Together they faced, and charmed the world.

It has taken us thirteen years to make this story into THE TENTS and I hope that you enjoy reading it as much as my father, my husband Wendell, and I have enjoyed working on it.