Bradley beam., 1943-10-30
History in the Making:

the latter part of 1941, and was assigned a small supply building as it's headquarters. Lieut.. William E. Aksomitas, a native of Hartford, and graduate of M1.T. was the one upon whose shoulders fell the responsibility of starting the Lab on the right road. During those early days the Lieutenant was very ably aided by S/Sgt. Joseph Woods, the ranking non-com at that time. But hisory was being made at an alarming rate in those days, and Sgt. Woods was not to remain long at Bradley Field. In a very short time Woodie had left to help Gen. Chennault, who was in China, and needed a few of the boys back home to help him in the tremendous mission that lay ahad of him. Since then, the haze of wartime censor ship has obscured the Sgt's where abouts; but he is still in there mak- ing photos.
 The original complement con sisted of five c. Is and one Off, cer. We have already told you about Lieut. Aksomitas and SSgt. Woods, so there are four more G.I.'s that should be known to you.
 Pfc. Specialist 3rd Class Sam uel Levy, Pfc. Specialist 3rd Class Newton D. Lewis, Pfc. Specialist 4th Class Lewis W. Sloan, and Pfc. Specialist 4th Class Richard Ernst were the poor G.I.'s that did all the work.
 As far is this writer knows, these men are at present located at these places: Lieut.. Aksomitas is at Westover Field with the En- gineers. S/Sgt. Woods is still mak- ing photos, but his whereabouts is unknown. T/Sgt. Levy is the pres ent Lab Chief. Pfc. Lewis was last heard from at Westover Field. Pfc. Sloan was in England when last heard from. Pfc. Ernst is now a W.O. JIG. and stationed in Africa.
 Of course, there have been many more men in the Photo Lab since that time, but they were unforu- nae in not being among the orig inal complement so we won't men, tion them. We will say this, though, they have carried on the excellent work that was started for them, without a failure.
 That covers the personnel quite completely; so we will now see what these intrepid five had in the line of equipment. We must re- member he year 1941; with all of it's rushing to catch up with the nations that we were surely to be at war with soon. There was just too little equipment to go around, so things had to be made with what was on hand. Complicated photo graphic machines were made up of pieces of wood, nails, bolts, hay wire, and plenty of the proverbial sweat of the brow" The prints and negatives were washed in a wash basin in the latrine. Copy work was done on an ingenious affair. It consisted of an 8 10 view camera and the wall of the building or the door of a neigh boring garage for support of the work to be copied. Contact print ing was done on a homemade printer made up of wooden box, a couple of sockets from an old floor lamp, and some glass that happened to "stray" into the Lab. The good old system of counting 1O01, 1902, 1903 was used to ex- pose the paper to be printed. But despite their make-shift equipment these hard-working "pioneers" set an enviable record. Finally, as in history, the Lab outgrew it's build ing and was assigned to it's pres ent quarters.
 By this time Lieut.. Aksomitas was needed at another station, and Lieut.. c. W. Garber had become the Photo Officer. It fell to his lot to move the Lab without disturbing