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PDF Text
Text
Zane E. Gray
Transcribed By Lorraine Lightcap
For Midway Village & Museum Center
6799 Guilford Road
www.midwayvillage.com
Rockford, Illinois 61107
815.397.9112
�Zane E. Gray
My name is Phyllis Gordon. I’m a volunteer
with the Midway Village & Museum Center
which is cooperating with the statewide effort to
collect oral histories from Illinois citizens who
participated in the momentous events surrounding World War II. We are at the First Presbyterian Church and we are interviewing Mr. Zane
Gray. Mr. Gray served in a branch of the United
States Armed Forces during World War II. We
are interviewing him about his experiences in
that War. Zane, Would you please start just by
introducing yourself to us? Give us your name
and the place and date of your birth.
GRAY: My name is Zane Gray. What else did
you was?
GORDON: Where were you born?
GRAY: I was born in Rockford, Illinois.
GORDON: And your birth date?
GRAY: I was born on November 8th, 1923.
the War, specifically during 1941?
GRAY: Pretty normal. Graduated from high
school, worked at an early age--such things as
newspaper routes--worked in retail establishments, mostly in sales.
GORDON: What thoughts did you have about
the War before the United States became directly involved?
GRAY: There was a lot of patriotic sentiment in
the early days before the War. It was before the
United States entered the War. I remember war
bond drives such things as the association over
on East State Street where I worked had a war
bond drive, involving people on the street. They
would designate somebody as a spy and everybody was supposed to try to determine who this
spy was. I won a war bond by catching the spy.
GORDON: I’ve never heard of that. What about
Pearl Harbor. How did you hear about the bombing of Pear Harbor by the Japanese?
GRAY: My mother’s name was Frances Gray
and my father’s name was James Atwood Gray.
GRAY: I wasn’t home at the time of the announcement, of course. There were replays on
the radio. We didn’t have television so it was
kind of continuous thing for most of the rest of
that day at least.
GORDON: Did you have any brothers or sisters?
GORDON: What was your reaction and the
response of those around you?
GRAY: None.
GRAY: Amazement. I personally was amazed
that such a thing could happen.
GORDON: We would also like to have the
names of each of your parents.
GORDON: Are there any details about your
parents or your family that you would like to
give at this time?
GORDON: Had you formed any prior opinion
or developed any feeling about what had been
taking place in either Europe or Asia?
GRAY: Pertaining to World War II?
GORDON: Before World War II.
GRAY: My father wasworked in a factory in
Rockford and my mother was a homemaker.
GORDON: What was life like for you before
GRAY: Well, I don’t know that I had any [unintelligible]. All of the songs of the day had to do
with facets of the War. Other than that, words
that got back to the United States about early
activities in Europe. Those are about the things
that I remember.
�GORDON: Do you recall reading any newspaper accounts about the German aggression in
Europe?
GRAY: 1943.
GRAY: Oh, yes. The events leading up to the
War in Europe, and of course, a lot of our men
who volunteered went directly to the European
Theater. A lot of my friends were involved in
one way or another.
GRAY: Nineteen.
GORDON: Did you have any knowledge about
Hitler, his speeches, his ideas, his actions?
GRAY: Well, they were on the news all of the
time. News at that pointwe didn’t get as immediate as we do today. It took a little longer
time but when you went to a movie, the newsreels would show Germans marching or taking
over in Czechoslovakia and places, things that
happened early on in the European Theater.
GORDON: What events led to your entry into
military service? Were you drafted or did you
volunteer?
GRAY: I was what is known as a voluntary inductee. I waited until my draft number came up
before I enlisted. But then I enlisted as opposed
to just being drafted. I waited until my draft
number came up and then I enlisted.
GORDON: Was your response to entering military service influenced by your family and
friends, their attitudes towards the War or was it
the threat to national security or other considerations?
GRAY: I think I was influenced certainly by
everybody around me, including my parents and
friends. Everybody had a more of a patriotic
stance than you find around today.
GORDON: That’s certainly true. All right, now
for the basic, when and where were you inducted?
GORDON: How old were you?
GORDON: Do you have any special memories
of that event?
GRAY: Just the train ride and Farragut, Idaho,
was a very beautiful setting but, of course, we
didn’t appreciate it because we were involved in
what is known as boot camp.
GORDON: So that’s where you took your basic
training, was in Idaho?
GRAY: Yes.
GORDON: What were you trained to do?
GRAY: In boot camp? Boot camp covers many
phases of military life, regimentation being
probably the emphasis. You get a certain amount
of gun training, firearms, airplane recognition
and submarine, boats, ships
GORDON: What did you think of the training
you received?
GRAY: Pretty boring for the most part. There
were many men in each company in boot camp.
So it was crowded. They were in a hurry to get
people trained so that they could go into whatever theater they were destined for.
GORDON: Did anything special happen while
you were there?
GRAY: I got streptococcus, a severe case and
was sent to sick bay. They were experimenting
with sulfa drugs at that time and filled me full of
sulfa. I remember that. Other than that, it was
just a daily routine.
GORDON: And the sulfa helped you recover?
GRAY: I was inducted in Chicago, sent to Farragut, Idaho, where I spent boot camp.
GRAY: Oh, very quickly.
GORDON: Do you remember what year it was
when you were inducted?
GORDON: Tell us about any other training
camps you attended.
�GRAY: After boot camp I was assigned to a
signal school at Farragut, Idaho, and why? I
don’t just know the answer to that. Why they
chose signal school for me, other than the test
that I took probably indicated that that was what
I was best suited for.
GRAY: I was sent to an outgoing unit at Terminal Island in San Pedro, California, which was a
federal prison. We were separated from the prisoners but we stood guard duties while I was
there waiting for an assignment to a ship. It was
a period of about a month, maybe five weeks.
GORDON: I’m sure that’s true. Did you have
any leaves or passes there?
GORDON: When did you leave the United
States?
GRAY: I had a 30 dayno I’m sorryI had a
15 day leave after boot camp then was instructed
to report back to signal school at Faragut, Idaho.
GRAY: I left the United States on a freighter
bound for Honolulu.
GORDON: How did you use that leave?
GORDON: Do you recall what year that was
then?
GRAY: I came home to Rockford and whooped
it up.
GRAY: It would have been the latter part of
1943.
GORDON: What do you recall about your
training camp period? Can you describe anything about the place in Idaho or the friends that
you made or your association with civilians
there?
GORDON: What were you assigned to do after
you arrived in Hawaii?
GRAY: We didn’t have a lot of association with
civilians because we didn’t get that many liberties. We did have liberty on weekends. I believe
it was every other weekend we had 24-hour liberty. At that point we would get on a bus, much
like our school buses today and travel to Spokane, Washington, and did the normal things
that soldiers and sailors did in those days. Got to
amusement parks, dances and things of that type.
GORDON: What was your military unit?
GRAY: Well, I was a signalman after graduation from signal school and eventually was assigned to the USS New Mexico.
GRAY: I was assigned to another outgoing unit
because the ship that I was to be assigned to
hadn’t arrived yet. During that time we did various things such as went on a truck to pick up
pineapple at the Dole pineapple plant and bring
it back to the base.
GORDON: Bet that tasted pretty good?
GRAY: That was very good. (Laughter)
GORDON: What did you thing of our nation’s
War effort up to this point?
GRAY: It was questionable. I don’t know if
there was any basis of formulation. There was a
lot of scuttlebutt about various facets of it but I
hadn’t had a first hand experience so I didn’t
know that much about it.
GORDON: What were your assigned duties?
GRAY: Visual communications is essentially
what we did including semaphore, flag hoists,
Morse code light, anything, individual communication.
GORDON: After Idaho where were you sent
before you went to this ship?
GORDON: But you felt your training had been
?
GRAY: I wondered, I think at that point, what it
all was leading up to.
GORDON: All right. Where did you go before
entering combat or did you then embark into a
combat zone?
�GRAY: Once I was assigned to the USS New
Mexico, which was a battleship, it was just a
matter of getting acclimated to the life aboard
ship. In our division you were assigned a person
who would answer any questions or would help
you with any questions you did have. The routine aboard ship was a little different than what I
had been used to.
GORDON: I’m sure that’s true. Can you tell us
about your experience in entering your first
combat zone?
GRAY: Not until we had been at sea for quite
some time. At one point, the first ship that I ever
saw sunk was the Omni Bay which was sunk off
our port quarter in broad daylight. A Japanese
suicide came out of the sun and headed for our
ship. There was some confusion at that point
whether it was a friendly or an enemy plane. Our
ship opened fire on the plane but then the plane
just veered off and headed for the Omni Bay
which was off of our port quarter and the Kamikaze plane hit the Omni Bay and it eventually
was sunk by our own fleet.
GRAY: Excitement, bewilderment. We were
assigned to bombard, and of course when you’ve
12 or 14-inch guns blasting away simultaneously
and for hours and days at a time you could see
the results by looking through a long glass. You
could see the devastation it was causing on the
beach. I wasn’t involved in any hand-to-hand
combat, or anything of that sort, but in the meantime there was messages that were going between ships and throughout the fleet.
GORDON: Were they able to save any of the
crew?
GORDON: Did you know where you were at
that time in the Pacific?
GORDON: Is there any approximate number of
casualties?
GRAY: Yes. We were in the Mariana Islands,
the Gilberts, the Marshalls. It went on from
there.
GRAY: We had 150 of our own men who were
either killed or wounded at that point.
GRAY: Yes. Some of the survivors, from the
Omni Bay, were picked up by various in our
fleet. We had some aboard our ship. Two days
later, on Mothers’ Day which was May 8th that
year, we were hit by a Kamikaze plane. Some of
those survivors of the Omni Bay were killed at
that point.
GORDON: How were they treated?
GORDON: Were there other ships in the fleet
with you?
GRAY: Oh, many ships. It varied from time to
time but there were… we were a division of the
3rd Fleet. We were the flagship of the 3rd Fleet.
GORDON: Can you list for us any other subsequent combat action in which you were involved?
GRAY: Well, II went on from that point
through the invasions at Saipan, and Tinian and
Guam. All of these places had been occupied by
the Japanese. That’s what we thought we were
fighting.
GORDON: Did you return to Hawaii in between these campaigns?
GRAY: They were treated as best we could. The
dead were buried at sea. The wounded were taken care of in our own sick bay or transferred to a
hospital ship whatever could be done.
GORDON: How did your mental attitude
change as this combat continued?
GRAY: I think, mostly I was scared. I had never
seen [combat] first hand. I had seen pictures, but
they didn’t mean a great deal. At least not as
much as a first-hand observation of this type of
thing.
GORDON: What did you think of the War so
far?
GRAY: I thought we’d better get it over with.
We’d better get the job done. Everybody was
�looking forward to getting back home.
GORDON: Did you receive many letters?
and scrapped after World War II which was accomplished, I believe, in 1946. But this association was begun and I was invited to the meetings
but had never gone to one of them until they
happened to have one in St. Louis. I went to that
with my wife and I’ve gone to every one since.
It was [inaudible].
GRAY: I received more mail than anybody, I
think, in our whole division.
GORDON: Was it a special feeling attending
that reunion?
GORDON: What type of things did you like to
get in the packets?
GRAY: Yes, it was. Some of the men that were
at the meeting were men who had served on the
New Mexico prior to World War II so I didn’t
know them, but there is a bond there that is
greater than you can expect. I personally get a
thrill out of going to each one of these meetings.
It’s like belonging to a Last Man’s Club, doing
something [inaudible] because it’s a dying thing.
Each year it gets smaller and smaller. Because
there’ll never be any more men eligible because
the ship no longer exists.
GORDON: Did you write many letters home?
GRAY: I wasn’t a good letter writer. No.
GRAY: Oh, pictures of pretty girls. (Laughter).
Comic strips, any news of happenings at home
or in my home in Rockford. I had people that I
had worked with that were corresponding with
me. At least it was a one-way street. They would
correspond with me but I didn’t correspond
back.
GORDON: Did most of the other men write or
receive letters?
GRAY: Yes, many of them did. Many of them
were married men. Many of them had either
wives or sweethearts that were very patriotic and
were doing their part to keep up the morale of
our men
GORDON: Did you forge any close bonds of
friendship with some of your combat companions?
GORDON: Right. After your combat duty on
board the ship did you ever have to help retrieve
a wounded body and help them to sick bay or
something like that.
GRAY: After, we experienced another Kamikaze experience in the Philippines. I did have to
help pick up body parts and put them in containers that were thrown overboard. In an emergency you do what you have to do.
GORDON: That’s right.
GRAY: No, I don’t think I was aware of it until
later, but yes, there were many very close bonds.
You can’t help being affected by the friendships
that you build aboard ship. You’re in close quarters. The ship was built to house a compliment
of 850 men and we had 2000 men aboard at the
time that I was on the New Mexico.
GORDON: Have you remained in contact with
any of your World War II companions?
GRAY: Not until many years later. The ship
was scrapped after the War and there was an
association started of any men that had served
on the New Mexico from the time it was commissioned in 1918 until it was decommissioned
GRAY: Or what you’re assigned to do.
GORDON: During your combat duty did you
ever capture any enemy prisoners?
GRAY: We had aboard our ship an admiral that
may have [inaudible] who was the target of one
of the Kamikaze planes that we took. There was
a submarine that was captured, a Japanese submarine, that was captured and one of the Japanese prisoners was aboard our ship for a period
of time. Admiral [inaudible, possibly Nimitz]
and one of the other admirals that was aboard
the New Mexico also interrogated the Japanese
prisoner on board the ship in his interrogation.
�GRAY: From what I could see the Japanese
prisoner was treated very kindly with dignity. I
have pictures of the prisoner and the Admirals
on the deck of the ship. All I could observe were
the things that I could see.
GORDON: Prior to the end of the War were
you aware that there were any civilian concentration camps, especially in Europe?
GRAY: I had heard about concentration camps
and that was about the extent of it. I didn’t have
any personal connection with them but I had
heard the word about concentration camps.
GORDON: What would you say would be the
highlight occurrence of your combat experience?
GRAY: The highlight of it was the signing of
the Peace Treaty in Tokyo Bay.
GORDON: Was your ship there?
GRAY: Yes.
menu. I have some of those menus in my momentoes at home.
GORDON: That should be interesting.
GRAY: It included cranberries and turkey and
the seasonal things. At Easter time it would be
ham and the trimmings. We were always a little
more relaxed, if it was possible.
GORDON: When and how did you return to the
United States after the end of the War?
GRAY: We had to go back to Pearl Harbor and
then, after that, we left and went through the
Panama Canal, which was very interesting. The
reason that we had to go that route was because
of [inaudible] the ship -- in order to be decommissioned [it] had to go back to its home port,
which was Boston. In order to get to Boston,
you had two choices: either go around the Cape
or through the Panama Canal.
GORDON: Can you tell us something about it?
GORDON: The Panama Canal would definitely
be shorter. Then after Boston were you sent
home by train or [inaudible]?
GRAY: Not a great deal, because the signing
was actually [inaudible]… The signing actually
took place on the USS Missouri. We had gone
into Tokyo Bay and then back out to sea, close
by but not actually in the Bay itself at the time of
the signing. But it was a good experience to see
Mount Fujiama and Tokyo. I didn’t get on the
beach but [inaudible]…
GRAY: After, we were given points depending
on our length of service and various other considerations I guess. When you had—I don’t remember exactly how many it was--“X” number
of points, then you were eligible for discharge. I
was discharged at Great Lakes Naval Training
Center. So we traveled by train from Boston to
Great Lakes and were discharged there.
GORDON: What was the reaction of the men
on board the ship to this momentous signing?
GORDON: And that would be in the year?
GRAY: 1946.
GRAY: It was terrific. We had radio contact
with the Missouri and the ships that were involved. It was a tremendous thing. Great feeling
to have the War culminated and [to be] on the
last leg of our journey home.
GORDON: Tell us what you and the other men
did to celebrate America’s traditional family
holidays such as Thanksgiving or Christmas.
GRAY: Well, aboard the larger ships, which the
New Mexico was, you always had a holiday
GORDON: Would you tell us your military
rank and any decorations you had?
GRAY: Seaman 1st Class. I had battle ribbons,
but that’s what they were, battle ribbons.
GORDON: Are those battle ribbons designated
for different battles?
GRAY: Yes.
�GORDON: Do you know what battles those
were?
GRAY: The Gilbert Islands, The Marianas, Saipan, Tinian, Guam, The Philippines, Kwajalein.
It went all over the Pacific.
GORDON: How did you get along with the
men with whom you had the greatest contact?
GRAY: I got along very well.
GORDON: As you said, it was such close quarters.
GRAY: It is close quarters. It’s a daily routine
that you go through and when you’re living in
conditions of that sort, you can’t help but make
real lasting friends with a lot of the men. There
were some that were closer to you than some of
the others but there was a bond with all of the
men of your ship whether they were in your division or not.
GORDON: That bond was a form of trust?
of doing a job and doing it well.
GORDON: That’s right and you did that. How
did you learn about VE Day and what was your
reaction to that?
GRAY: Oh, there was a [inaudible]. When we
received word we were at sea and the word was
passed throughout the ship that victory in Europe was accomplished. We had a big celebration. Men were dancing on the decks, whooping
it up. You would have thought that Queen Elizabeth came aboard.
GORDON: How did you hear about it, from the
radio?
GRAY: Yes, we had contact with the quickest
way we could receive the news.
GORDON: Did the Admiral talk to you at that
time?
GRAY: The captain of the ship was the one that
passed the word. He, of course, was as excited
as the men.
GRAY: By necessity, yes.
GORDON: Were there things you would do
differently if you could do them once again?
GRAY: I don’t think so. I think I would do
things pretty much the same as they happened.
GORDON: What was the most difficult thing
you had to do during this period of military service?
GRAY: Probably the most difficult thing was to
realize that you were taking a period of time out
of you life; out of your civilian life, that is. And
being away from your family and friends but it
was a duty that all men in the service had to
face.
GORDON: Is there any one thing that stands
out as your most successful achievement while
you were in the military?
GRAY: I didn’t have that many achievements. I
wasn’t looking for achievements. It was a matter
GORDON: How did you learn about VJ Day
and what was your reaction to that?
GRAY: Pretty much the same except that on a
little more boisterous level. The only thing they
could do was to gather together. We still had to
stand our watches and that type of thing but we
sure celebrated any way that we could.
GORDON: What was your opinion of the use
of the atomic bomb when it was used against
Japanese in August of 1945?
GRAY: At that point it was awesome, but at the
same time I believe that my feelings were that it
was necessary in order to accomplish the goal
that we were seeking.
GORDON: Has that opinion changed over the
last 50 years?
GRAY: There may have been other alternatives,
although the alternatives, of course, might have
been more risky. I’m not sure. I don’t advocate
�killing but in a case of War that’s [inaudible].
GORDON: When and where were you officially discharged? Was that at Great Lakes?
GRAY: Yes.
GORDON: That was what year?
GORDON: You’ve never gone to a Veterans
Administration Hospital?
GRAY: Never.
GORDON: Would you like to tell us how your
family supported you during your military life?
How much did the letters and caring mean to
you?
GRAY: 1946.
GORDON: Do you have a disability rating or
pension?
GRAY: No. No.
GORDON: Do you have any opinions about our
nation’s military status or its policies today?
GRAY: Well, I hold the military in high esteem.
There have been so many technology advances,
it’s hard to say. I think, probably, our military on
a par with the way above any other military
force in the world.
GORDON: Well, right now we’re closing a lot
of military bases at the same time we seem to be
heading into Somalia, coming out of Somalia
and going into Bosnia. Do you have any feelings
about that?
GRAY: Yes, I would like to see us keep our
nose out of it as much as possible. On the other
hand, somebody has to stand up for the rights of
the people of other lands as well as our own.
And where it is necessary, where we can be useful, I think that we should offer our services. The
question is where do we stand? I’m not quite
sure I know.
GRAY: My family wrote to me religiously.
They--my father--knew the types of [inaudible].
He knew what my sense of humor was. He
clipped out cartoons, comic strips and that type
of thing and he would clip from the newspaper
clippings of any of my friends that had been
killed or wounded or whatever, in the European
Theater. Any news of that type he would forward to me. It meant a great deal to me. There
were other pieces of news that were written in
longhand that didn’t come from clippings, from
clippings in the newspaper. Things of interest
that kept me informed of what was going on at
home.
GORDON: When you returned to Rockford
were there any problems with transition to civilian life?
GRAY: I don’t know that I would say that there
were problems, other than the normal getting
back to the less regimented type of existence
where you could do pretty much as you pleased.
I think that was the thing that we were all looking forward to.
GORDON: Did you enter [interruption]
GRAY: We talked about it a lot aboard ship.
GORDON: Do you have any contact with the
Veterans’ Administration?
GORDON: Did you enter the work force right
away?
GRAY: None. Never did.
GRAY: Oh, yes. Went back to the same job that
I left when I’d gone into the service.
GORDON: What is you opinion of the Veterans’ Administration?
GRAY: It’s all right. I’m not--I have never taken from it and I never subscribed to it.
GORDON: Which was?
GRAY: And they were forced to take you back
at the same pay that you were getting when you
left, which I did. And I stayed at that job for 25
�years.
GORDON: Can you tell us what that was?
GRAY: I was a general flunky at a retail establishment really at that point, but it wasn’t too
long and I was given more responsibility and
more responsibility maybe until I was, without
the title, I was the manager of the store.
GORDON: Better than a general flunky.
GRAY: Well, it was [inaudible] not that whole
lot more pay but it was a job and I enjoyed it.
GORDON: What type of retail establishment
was that?
GRAY: It was--I worked for Mid-City Stationers in Rockford, Illinois, mainly in sales, retail
sales and outside sales.
GORDON: That’s interesting. Is there anything
else you would like to share with us before we
conclude the interview?
GRAY: I suppose after the interview is over I
will think of a million things, but at the moment
I think we’ve covered it well.
GORDON: Thank you, Zane, for this time.
Zane and I were just talking about the Communications Division and how those men had to
stand watch. Would you tell us about that, Zane?
GRAY: And wash your clothes and brush your
teeth, and all the other things that need to be
done in your off time, and catch a few winks
also.
GORDON: Would you have to be careful about
lights at night?
GRAY: Very careful because light is the one
thing that you can see for miles at sea, so you
didn’t dare open a hatch with the light on. You
didn’t dare smoke on deck. You had to smoke
inside always at night. You had to be very careful about any light shining at night. In the daytime also light can be seen for long distances.
That’s why you use flashing lights for ship maneuvers and that type of thing.
GORDON: This has been very interesting.
Thank you, Zane. We were talking about how
Zane spent his liberties and why at Pearl Harbor.
Who did you usually take your liberty with?
GRAY: Some of the closest friends that I had in
the Signal Division. It varied from time to time,
but I can remember going into a market and buying a piece of limburger cheese.
GORDON: Oh, no.
GRAY: And going out and sitting on the curb in
front of the shop and eating it.
GORDON: By yourself, I hope.
GRAY: Right.
GRAY: In the Visual Communications Division
as opposed to radio and so forth, Visual Communications deals with light a great deal. Flashing light using the Morse Code. It is very important to the ships in your own particular task
force or fleet that these go on 24 hours a day,
day and night. We stood watches: four hours on
and four hours off. And that went on--there were
maybe a dozen men in each watch and one
watch would stand watch for four hours and then
another watch would take over.
GORDON: It would be kind of hard wouldn’t
it? Sleep four hours and then get up and be alert?
GORDON: What else did you do when you
were on leave in Pearl Harbor?
GRAY: Another time a couple of friends and I
went on liberty and we went into a restaurant
and ordered a dozen eggs.
GORDON: A dozen?
GRAY: A dozen eggs a piece. We sat and ate
the whole dozen eggs. The waitress wanted to
know if we wanted them fried. One wanted them
fried, one wanted them scrambled and one wanted them poached. I don’t remember but in any
�event we hadn’t seen a fresh egg for so long. All
we had were rubber eggs and they didn’t compare so we wanted eggs.
GORDON: That’s interesting that that would be
what you’d want.
GRAY: The things that you can’t have are the
things that you want the most.
GORDON: Any thing else besides eggs that
you felt [inaudible]?
GRAY: Girls. (Laughter).
GORDON: Anything else about your leave in
Pearl Harbor?
GRAY: Well, they were excellent times. You
could walk on Wakiki Beach and look at Diamond Head, the things that you see in the movies and the pictures of the Islands. The Royal
Hawaiian Hotel was taken over by military personnel, mainly submarine sailors and the likes of
them. But things that would cost you a fortune
we were doing on a daily basis, not daily but
whenever we could. It was a great time.
GORDON: I imagine it was beautiful.
GRAY: It was better than life aboard ship anyhow.
GORDON: I’m sure. Thanks again for these
memories.
Edited December 2018 by Martha Byrnes
Zane Gray died May 24, 2004
Grave at Willwood Burial Park, Rockford, IL
�
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Title
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World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
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Midway Village Museum
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Midway Village Museum
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1993-2001
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Midway Village Museum
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English
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pdf
Type
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Oral History
Oral History
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Interviewer
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Phyllis Gordon
Interviewee
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Zane Grey
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Rockford, Illinois
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Cassette Tape
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Title
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Zane Grey
Date
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circa 1994
Description
An account of the resource
Born November 8, 1923, Zane Grey joined the Navy in 1942. He died May 24, 2004.
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Midway Village Museum
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pdf
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Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War 2
World War II
-
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Text
williamJ. Kunz-Page I
-l
uúrr¡¡ihm d" KUNZ
Army Veteran
- :d Infantry
Division
)
þ
Lorraine Lightcap
Edited by Margaret Lofgren
Mdway Village & Museum Center
6799 GuilfordRoad
Transcribed
Roclford, Illinois 6 I 107
Phone 397 9l 12
{"
�William
ulouu*uJ.
Hello. Today is April 1lü' 1994. My name is Phyllis
Gordon. I'm a volunteer at Mdway Village &
Museum Center which is cooperating with the
statewide effort to collect oral histories ûom lllinois
citizens that participated in the momentous events
II. We a¡e in the Midway
Village and Museum Center and we are interviewing
Mr- William Kunz who served in a branch of the
United States Armed Forces during World War II.
We are interviewing him about his experiences in
sunounding World ÌVar
J.
Kunz---Page 2
KUNZ
York, which was a place about thirty miles south of
West Point on the Hudson River. We had gone to get
our pictures taken or pick up the photographs. I
forget which. Otr the way back on the car radio we
heard about Pearl Harbor.
GORDON¡ What was you reaction? What was the
response of those around you?
that war,
KUNZ: Ob when I got bck to Helen's house, she
had some of her relatives there. They all kind of
looked at me and they all looked pretty serious and
GORDON: William, would you please start by
six months later I found out whY.
introducing yourself to us and give us your frIll name,
where you were born and the date of your birth?
KUNZ: My name is William J. Kunz sounds like
guns only with a "K'. f'm almost .73, born in
Éergenne$ New Jersey, September
28th, 1921.
GORDON: We would also like to have the names of
each ofyour parents.
n¡tme was William Peter Kunz
and my Mother's name was Frances Eldershaw'
KUNZ: My father's
GORDON: Had you formed any prior opinion or
developed any feeling about what was taking place in
Europe or Asia?
KUNZ: Not really. Back then the counbry was
isolationist and we diúr't really-we didn't think too
much about-We knew it was going-We knew
about some sr¡bmarine attiacks for instance off Long
Island that were near the coast. We knew there had
been attacks on the west coast by balloons dropped
from Japan. Hot afu balloons and dropped
from
*?-
in Oregon. that
wasn't published in the papers but as far as the details
are why are we going to ñght as kids at that time of
19 and 20 years old you don't think too much about
some delayed explosion bombs
GORDON: Didyou have any brothers or
sisters?
KIINZ: No.
that.
GORDON: Are there any details about your parents
or your family life that you would like to give at this
time?
KUNZ: None in particular. My father in World War
I was i& I guess, the Air Force in that ho--Just a
second whle I think about this. I don't lnow much
about the details of what he did but he was in those
open cocþit planes they had in World War tr. He
was a rear gunner. That's all I lnow of him.
GORDON: That's right. Do you recall reading
of the German aggression in
newspaper accounts
Europe?
KUNZT Yeah. When they went into Polan{
that was in 1939. I
to get serious then.
guess we could
I guess
tell it was starting
GORDON: Did you have any knowledge of Hitler's
GORDON: So both of you served What w¿s life
like for you before the war, if you can remember, and
specifically during 194 l?
speeches or ideas or events?
KUNZ: Well, 1941, I hadtwo jobs. I was amusician
Played music part time and also had a job in a bank
and soon as Pearl lIaúor came, we knew that we all
were going to be going so we just kind of waited
around for that. I do recall--Everybody recalls where
they were on December f, Ig4I. Helen and I,
girtfriend then and wife now, had gone to Nayals,
New York. We lived in Rutland (?) County, New
GORDON: Wbat events led to your entry into the
nilitary service. Were you drafted or did you
KUNZ: Notreally
volunfeer?
KUNZ: TVell, I went down to New York City and
nied to enlist in the Air Force in the early spring of
1942. Iflunked the depth perception test physical part
of it. Later on I found out ftom fighter pilots I knew
�WilliamJ.
that most of them had ftunked it, too. In any event, I
waited around to be drafted then. I got my notice in
Kütz-Page
3
KUNZ: No.
May I guess it was.
GORDON: Didyou have any leaves or passesi
GORDON: Was your response to entering military
KIINZ: Not many. There was some once or twice.
Tþo times, I thinh during the summer. I
-?-the
$¡Írmer of '42lonly got home twice on weekends.
service influenced by your family and friends and
their attitude towards the war or was it the threat to
national security or otherconsiderations. Ofcourse,
if
you're drafted why ...
I(UNZ: No. Just went. Everybody expected it.
GORDON: Rigþt. Now let's talk a little about your
basic ûaining. When and where were you inórcted?
KUNZ: I was inducted on the 15ü of June in 1942 at
Fort Jay, New Yorlq which was a little island just off
the battery in the lower part of ManhaUan Island. We
went over bV ferrl'boat. From there, I went to Fort
Mea{ Maryland and took bsic training there. I had
basic training in communications, wire code, radio
code, telephone and a lot of, more than I felt at the
time, hand to hand combat. Had a lot of that.
GORITON: How old lvere you when you were
inducted?
KUNZ: Twenty.
(}ORDON: Do you have any special memories of
the event being inducted?
KUNZ: Not really. Just a whole bunch of peopte I
never saw before.
GORDON: What do you recall about this period,
about the places where you were stationed; the
ftiends that you made or your associations with
civilians at that time?
KUNZ: We had hardly any association with civilians
I made, we were all separated later'
but the friends
We atl went into different divisions.
GORDON: What was your military unit?
I served with the United States Thild
Infantry Division which was a regular army ouffìt,
one of three that were activated at the time when
World War II besan. They were famous in World
rtrar I as the Rock of the Marne Division. They had
stationed in China. The captain was
some of it
KUNZ:
-?-
Captain Eisenhower. Later was general. They were
moved to the West Coast just before Pearl Harbor
and were stationed there when Pearl Harbor
happened. They were spread out along the entire
lVest Coast of the United St¿tes with one field
artillery piece every one hundred twenty-five miles'
Since there were twelve of thern, must have been the
entire coast from Mexico to C¿nada. That was our
defense
GORDON: What did you think of the üaining you
of the lVest Coast one gun every
one
hundred twenty five miles.
received?
KUNZ: At the time, I thought it was pretty rugged
then later, it turned out to be a picnic compared to the
real thing.
GORDON: Did anything special h¿ppen while you
were in training?
KUNZ: Other tharr-We had a Major from
the
French Forces of the interior that had gotten out of
France andcame ov€r to train people in hand to hand-
I
remember his name was Major DeAlesque (?).
GORDON: Back to your basic training. What were
you assigned ôrties while you were in basic training?
KUNZ: Just to--mostly learning code
communications. The cornbat part,
gave us that as a force
I thinþ
and
they just
of habit. We really
were
communications people basically.
GORDON: ïVere they any transfers to other units?
KUNZ: No.
When I went to his training session, they always had
an ambulance standing by to take away people with
broken arms, wrists andone thingandanother.
basic military training?
GORDON: It sounds pretty rouglr! Were there any
othertraining camps thæ you attended?
KUNZ: I joined the 3d Division at Camp Picke!
Virginia. They had come across from California by
GORDON: Where did you go after completing your
�WilliamJ.
troop tmin and they were preparing for the invasion
of North Africa. Atthat point I joinedthem.
GORDON:
If you wete not
sent
4
GORDON: Wonderful. Can you list for us in order
ofoccurrence any subaequent combat action in which
you were involved?
overseas
immediately following your basic training when did
you finally leave the United States?
KUNZ: I was sent overseas immediately. We lefr the
United States in October of '42 by troop tnnsport. It
took us two weeks to get over to Africa and tlrcn we
sat around off the Azore Islands tlYo or three days
and then we invaded North Africa November 8,
t942.
GORDON: First of all, how did you get there? Do
you remember ...
tr(UNZ: To CampPickett?
GORDON: No, overseas.
KUNZ: On troop ûtansport.
GORDON: On troop transport. What were you
assignedto do immediately after aniving
KUNZ: We went into combat right a way. Our first
?
w¿s November 8ü and we went over the side
eatty dawn of the 8ü of November. We climbed
down the ropes in what they ca[ed Higgins boats'
We had been heavily hit by air from the Germans
from the air and a bunch of submarines had come up
from Daka¡, the middle part of Africa and torpedoed
some of the transports. I remember thinking basic
training helped a lot because just before we had left
the states, they made what they called a dry n¡n off
the coast of Virginia and there it was I learned to go
down the ropes into the Higgins boats, to slings your
equipment on one shoulder. A lot of people didn't
really do that or didn't l¡row about it. What happened
was in heavy action like that it sliped off and went
under and they had a belt around your waist with
_?_ cartridges on it. Låter I think they called them
Mae \Vests but these were the first ones. People put
it
them on over the equipment and when tlrcy
-?didn't do any good so a lot of them went right to the
bottom. Some of them are still standing in the harbor
yet because the equipment weightedthem down.
i"
Kürz-Page
GORIION: Isn't that something.
KUNZ: That's how I remember most about how the
training hel@ because I shrugged mine all ofrand I
didn't fall in the water. I just dropped mine in the
Higgins boat and I just went down after it.
KUNZ: Okay. Our division all in all went overseas
n 1942 and didn't retum to the States until 1945. In
that time the division was engaged in ten campaigts
and made five amphibious landings and had a total
o{ I believe it was something like five hundred and
forly days or so continuous combat, continuous
contåct with the enemy in that perid. We sustained
the highest rate of casualties of any division in the
American Anny in 'World War II. Starting with
Casablanca which was actually the first campaigl
fromtherewe\ryentto...
GORDON: Tell us something about Casablanca or is
there anything or could you approximate the
casualties, how they occurred or how they were
treated or things ofthat nature? It doesn't have to be
accurate, approximate. How were they treated? We
were talking about how the first campaign or second
campaign being at Casablanca.
KUNZ: Our first campaign was at Casablanca. We
landed at actually Port læaudi(?) which was a few
miles north of it. There \ryas one of our easier
landings. We were inexperienced. We lost a lot more
people in the ocean than we did ashore. I guess,
maybe we had only a few hundred casualties.
Altogether there we ... The battle only lasted three
days. That kind of concludd it. From there we went
into sort of a reserve. Some of us were det¿ched and
went up to Tunisia. Some went with the l*t Division
and some went with the 9ù from observers. I was
attached to the French Foreign Legion for a while to
observe and later on we had liaison with them so the
actual Aftican çampaign for us turned out pretty easy
comparedto the rest.
GORDON: What was the next campaiP?
KUNZ: After the Tunisian Campaigt ended" actually
by the time we got in there the British had pretty well
cleaned that all up. There wasn't really too much for
us to do. We had some minor skirmishes on the way
up to camp(?) but after that we got into the invasion
of Sicily and that w¿ts ollr ñrst real heavy action.
There I was on what they called shore fire conüol.
You had to train for this. To do that, we got aboard a
Navy destroyer, and we cruised the Mediænanean
for three or four days. They put us ashore on a beach
and we'd communicate with them by radio and give
fire di¡ections to the guns. It's a little triclcy because
the strips sfieam in an ellipical circle and in order to
�William
direct the fire, ;you have to get to lcrow the dilêction
their going in. So this was all done by Morse code.
The Navy men, of course, are excellent at that and we
were bd. Our speeds were like five, severL ten words
a minute. These fellows were used to forty, fifty and
sixty. They had to slow down for us. We didn't have
voice communication like we did later on. This was
all by Morse code. One thing I do recall, thougþ is
when we were out on one of the training missions,
they went to battle st¿tioß and had a submarine alert
and this was just off the Gibraltar. Maybe a hundred
miles in from the Rock of Gibraltar. They circled
around and dropped deph charges. Af dar¡n they said
they saw oil but they weren't sure if they had sunk
anything because it was a cotnmon tick back then to
release oil ftom the diesel tanlçs of the submarine to
fool you. So that was a little bit different for us, Navy
action. \Ve liked it because we could sleep in a bunk
and get decent food Most of the time you were on
the ground all the time. Very seldom inside. When
ttre Sicilian campaigr opened up, that was the 10ù of
July of '43. We went ashore with some rangers. We
were in an LCT which was a landing craft tank. That
had a tank on it, our little fonvard observer group
whiclq incidentally, was my ñrnction during most of
the war, was a forward obcerver to direct field
I
J.
Kuz-Page
5
GORDON: Your group certainly saw enough action.
Where didyou go next?
KUNZ: We went tbrougÞ-We took Naples. Thçn
we got up to MonteCassino, where the now famous
Monte Cassino Abey was. We started up-We got
up as far as a town called Minyanou (?) about two or
th¡ee miles from Cassino and this was in October,
November and December of '43. Of course, there are
all kinds of stories around about the mud and the
We had some
mountain conditions andthe air
-?-.
observers with us. One of then¡-I'd like to make a
note of this because it was Jordan Bitüe who came
from a prominent family in Philadelphia. He was an
artist and he was commissioned by the
lryar
departnent to go with us and d¡aw sketches of the
actioL He was, about oh maybe at that time, in his
forties. He had had a small part in World War I, I
believe. He amazed us because he was older than we
were and he and stuck right with us the entire time.
He made sketches some of which were published in
Life Mag;azine that Helen saved for me. I still have it.
GORDON: Interesting
I(UNZ: He w¡ote a book and published it. We're in
heavy storm on the way over there. The waves were
it. In fact, one of our officers who is in charge of our
Forward Observer group is on the front cover of the
book he wroûe. So tlnt pretty much took us
quite high. lVe got separated from the rest of the
through--lry now the casualties are starting to build.
artillery fire mostly for the zuport of the 15ü
Infanûy. In the invasion of Siciþ, there had been a
convoy and this dory came and found us at dark and
broughtusback in so daylight naturally hit the wrong
beach and our LCT got sunk We came in between a
point where they had some farmer up on both sides
The tank got
and they shelled the LCT and sank
off and we got off and we took the Navy corpsrn:rn,
who was running the LCT with us. The poor gry he
didn't have anywhere else to go so we hauled him
around all the way to Palermo.
it
GORDON: So you made the r,vrong landing but got
there anyhow. What campaign was next?
KUNZ Siciþ
took us--That was in July. That was
finished by early August. We went to Palermo and
then we went to Messina. The next campaigrl was the
battle of Salerno. We were lucþ on that one. We
were second wave. They sent in the 36ft Division, I
believe and got badly beat up on them. It was their
first invasion and they hit surprises that they weren't
ready for. We went in right behind them and then we
stårted up the It¿lian boot. By this time it was
September of '43.
GTORDON: How were they treated?
KUNZ: Well, our division had a friad system which
was a method of treaûnent that unofficially worked
like this. If you were lightly wounded and the
possibility of returning you to combat was good you
were trated fißL If you were heavily wounde{ the
possibility was that you would die or not be able to
come in combat, you ìilÊre put last. This isn't the
thing that makes for recruitment now a days.
GORDON: I have heard of that system. Did your
mental a$itude change as this combat continued?
KUNZ¡ It had to. When we first got overseas we
were just a liule homesick. Then we got talking to
people like the British and the Australians. They'd
say, "Horr long have you been over here, Yank?"
We'd say, "Six months. How long have you been
over here". "I've b€en over here going on six years.
I've been gone s€ven years. I've been over nine
years." Pretty soon we learned not to-quit being
babies about all of this.
�william
home, raised a ftmily,
their 60's and 70's.
GORDON: Didyou write manYletters?
I
KUNZ: Yeah. As much as I could- The best letter
writer was my wife, Helen, who wrote a letûer a day,
every day. Not all of them got there but a letter was
written every day and I wote bck in bursts because
there were periods of time you couldn't do it. I tried
to write at least a liule bit. Couldn't write much. All
you could say wÍrs "We're somewhere in ltaly. It's
raining today. I'm feeling ail right. We love you.".
GORDON: Did you get any packages?
KUNZ: Ott,
J.
Kunz-Fage
workd retire{
6
got up into
GORDON: Had some exEa time. Didyou ever have
to help retieve a wounded buddy from the combat
field?
KUNZ: Six, eigþt, ten times maybe.
GORDON: During your combat duty, did you ever
capture any enemy prisoners?
KUNZ: Yeah.
sure.
GORDON: Canyou describe the circumst¿nces?
GORDON: What kinds of things did you like to get
in the packages?
KUNZ: The orders came something like this. We're
going to have to move out of here and you don't
KUNZ: Well, food mostly cookies and that sort of
thing.
really have space or the time or the capability to keep
these people with us. we want them returned to the
rear which was like about ten miles, but be back here
GORDON: Did most of the other men write or
in fifteenminutes,
receive letters?
GORIION: How was that possible?
KUNZ¡ It depended. This outñt was regular army. A
lot of those fellows tryeren't realþ the best of family
KIINZ: Hadtokillthem.
men when tlrey enlisted. I would say about maybe a
third of the outñt tried to write regularly and the rest
didn't. Some of then¡ they'd have to come after
possible.
diúr't hear anything so
they'd get hold of the Red Cross or ask their
Congressman if they had high connections to find
these guys and call the CO to ând told they better
write home, their people were worried about tlpm.
them. People back home
GORDON: Oll I
see.
I wondered how that would be
KUNZ: It's an infantry job but since we were tied
directly to the infantry, we witnessed a lot of this.
GORDON: Rigþt. Maybe we should get back and
if we have traced all of your campaigns before we
go on to some of these other questions.
They hadn't heard from them for a year.
see
GORDON: I can imagine. Did you forge any close
bonds of friendship with some of your companions?
KUNZ: We[ we still have to do Anzio. That's next.
KUNZ: Only the people
I initially
went
overseas
with. As time went on and the casualties went up the
little group that we had to stârt with dwindled and as
replacements came in you learned not to get too
friendly with them.. Some of thenU
I
don't wen
remember the names of the replacements.
GORDON: Have you remained in contact with any
of your World War
II ...
KUNZ: Just the g¡oup that we went overseas with.
The 3'd Division has a society like some of the
organizations do. We have yearly reunions but most
of the fellows only got into this after they had come
GORDON: All rieht. Let's talk about Anzio.
KUNZ: Okay. A good way to give a little idea of
how heavy action is, is to go by the number of
artill€ry rounds th¿t our battalion fired in support of
infantry. This is just one battalion of twelve guns. In
Sicily I have no record of the amount we fired. \Ve
ñred a couple hundred In Sicily we fired 22,518. In
Southern llaly, 57,425. When we got to Anzio, we
ñred 126, 454 by the division records. Anzio was like
World War I. It was trench warfare. We went ashore
and we had an easy landing no opposition. Four or
five divisions were pulled down from other places to
oppose us. There's always been a big argument over
�WilliamJ.
should they have søyed on the beachhead or moved
off of it and tried to t¿ke Rome earlier. People who
were there
in it, the move was correct. We didn't
have the forces to advance any further. We only put
ashore our division, a British Division, and we were
in there with maybe less than forty or fifty thousand-
We would just try anything¡--and not much armol ûr
not a lot of artillery. You can't really forward under
those conditions. So they were righl. That canpaign
was brut¿l. We lost a lot of people. I think the record
is correct by the time we finished the campaign in
Anzio, we already lost 15,000 from our division. Our
division when it went overs€as was only staffed at
twenty.
7
were all strung up in a line across the northem part of
France almost into Germany but not quite by-It
took us until--To get up to the Rhine River, it took
us up until lldarch of '45. That campaign was in
southern France. We fired 93,728 rounds of artillery.
That was down a liüle bit from the Anzio Beach.
GORDON: Still
sounds pretty heavy.
It wâs exFemely. They called the
southern France and up until the Colmar Pocket, one
campaign By that time we'd done nine so lhere was
only one or two left to go, I believe.
GORDON: And so then afrer France.
KUNZ: Yeah.
KUNZ: Then in the spring of '45 we crossed tÏe
GORDON: Very hardhit
KIINZ: Yeah. You get constant replacements. The
people that made it through all ten campaigns are
extremely fortunate and rare to find. I'm happy to be
one of them.
GORDON: I should say so. After Anzio, where did
your division go?
KUNZ: We took Rome on the 5ü of June and on the
6e had D-Day in Normandy so that completely wiped
Rome off the front pages. It was on for twenty'four
hours.
GORIION: Taking Rome and
it
happened
at the
same time as the Normandy invasion.
KUNZ: Within twenty-fout hours. Our part of it took
place on August lstt', 1944. We invaded southem
France near St. Parfait (?). It's east of Marseilles
about fifty of seventy'five miles, I guess. That coast
there is all roclcs and it was only one little speck of
sandy boach that we could get ashore on. One thing
everybody remembers about that invasion was that
Chu¡chill came by in a speed launch and went
through when the invasion fleet departed from Naples
*V
and cruised along with his hand up in the familiar
for Victory" sign. The landing in southern France
was his idea. He promoted that all along. I'm not too
sure everybody on our side was in favor of this but it
was his baby, so he came down to give us sort of a
sendoff, Sowe landed in southern France on the 15û
of August and it was relatively easy going up until
the time we got further norttr into what they called a
Vogue (?). Vogue Mar in Philmare pocket. This was
in October, November af '44. At ttut point we were
all in one-By that time
Kunz-Page
Rhine anddown into Strasbourg, Franldort and down
into Munich. Munich w¿¡s our first major city of any
large size that we had come across and we had house
to house ñghting just like we had in some of the
smaller to\Mns except this was bigger. And as we
went into Germany, the opposition from twelve and
fourteen and fifteen year olds and some of the
seventy year olds got stifrer. The kids were the worst
ones. They were Hitler youth and they were out there
to save the Fatherland and die for the Fuhrer and
that's why they did it. The older people, the,y didn't
really have their hearts in it. So from Munich, we
went on to Salzburg and then we made an end run
down from Salzburg and got into Berchtesgaden and
over Salzburg which was Hitler's hideout, it was
f¿mous known as the Eagle's Nest. We were the first
on the 4ù of May of '45. We took it and
ones into
the war ended on May 8ü.
it
an unbelievable series
GORDON: You were
were
As you -?- going along were you
of campaigns.
aware of any civilian concentration qrmps.
KUNZ: lVell, we were only seven kilometers from
Dachau, the famous one. We didn't se€ it. The fortysecond Division or one of the other divisions actually
went through it or right next to it. But some of the
fellows drove down to look at it. rWe knew they were
there. We were also aware of the fact that they had a
lot of slave labor in the prison camps tlut were forced
to make ammunition. All during the war whenever
we'd get a couple of duds that would come in close
which was not too ofren, another civilian worker üied
helped us out. They'd try to stick material between
the firing pins of the slrells and they'd try to block it
so that when it landed it would be a ú¡d. We had a lot
ofthat.
Patton's people and his
f¡rmor come through from the English Channel. We
GORDON: I never heard of that.
�Williâm
{')
*Well, somebody else in a
KUNZ: We used to say,
prison camp gave us a hând"
GORDON: Is there any highlight occrurence of that
J.
Kunz-Page
8
KUNZ: Samething.
GORDON: lVhen and how did you return to the
United States?
combat experience.
KUNZ: Well, maybe on the Anzio Beach when
Darby's Rangers tried to take Susterna(?Þ{his has
been written up a number of times--We were with
them and we had tried to take Sustema(?) Delatoria.
It was a crossroads about ten miles--+ix or seYen
miles off the beach. They had been unable to do it.
We had armor and artillery and Air Force. C-an't
speak highly enough of the Air Force. They were
over that thing in waves. Hundreds of Sorties. They'd
be blorvn apart right in mid-air and shells hit their
bomb loads. Come down with their parachutes on
fire. They did a lot to help us out all through it. In any
event, Darlry, Colonel Dar{ry Rangers decided to go
in there and try to tåke that town however lightly
armed force. The heaviest they had was BARs,
Bror,r.ning Automatic Rifles and we were shaking our
heads at the time. We couldn't get in with all the stuff
we had" how are they going to do it. But they made
the attems andthey got cut off. They got pretty well
decimated. They hit armor and the hit flak wagons
and they hit the usual stuff-I don't know how the
heck they're going to get around all this. I recall a
little mçeting that had a couple of our Generals in it.
They were all standing around" Audie Murphy was
one of the---at the time was one of the officers. I
think he was still a Sergeant at that time. They were
üying to figure how to get these guys out and it was
decided they couldn't do it. So the following morning
we went up there. There was a railroad spur line and
there must have been four or five hunùed of these
guys l¿id out all across thoæ tracks and they couldn't
even walk on the railroad ties because they were all
laying on them. They had to step on them to get
around them.
I
recall that and the
heavy
bombardment that took place on Anzio plus a number
of otherthings that were maybe a little bit lighterbut
of a similarnature.
GORDON: C-an you tell us what you and the other
men did to celebrate funerica's traditional family
KUNZ: \ühen the war ended they had a-interesting
thing about all of that was that we were actually
slate.d to go to Japan. The thing that saved us was that
the Army had instituted a point system for discharge.
By the time the war ended everybody-he lud so
many points for each campai$ and so many points
and so on The guys that were left had so many points
that they couldn't do anything else but send us
home... Regular Army. You wanted to stay in for a
life time care€r so they decided to make it a
occupation force. Keep it over ând its still there.
Actually that division is the
majoris NATO.
GORDON: I diúr't realize that.
KUNZ: And so some of us they called the "high
flingers" we had enough points went home what they
called the 'ogreon flight." This was kind of nice. They
took us by troop train down to lvfarseilles and we
flew a transport, C54s, to Casablanca. Then we got
on BlTs and flew to the Azores and took on fuel and
then flew into Miami. Stopped at Bermuda and got to
Miami. It took us about a week. Flight time was only
several hours. We got home relatively fast. Some of
the other fellows with lower pointq went to Paris,
went to the coast and got on ¿ troop transport and
came home maybe a little while later.
GORDON: What hapened when you arrived in the
United States?
KUNZ: We got a free phone call anywhere in the
country which was at 2:00 in the morning. I called
Helenup. Woke her up. Iæt her know I was back and
then we got on a troop train to Fort Dix, New Jersey
for discharge.
GORDON: Can you tell us about you military rank
ofyour decorations?
possible. Merrl'Christm¿s to you guys. Made a point
KUNZ: I started out as a Private and ended up as a
Staff Sergeant. I have battle star for each campaign.
That's ten and a little insi$ia that they give you for
amphibious landing which are five. I have a purple
heart; a brorze star, Croix de Guerre, which is a
French decoration I got from DeGar¡lle, and
of it.
presidential unit citations.
GORITON: Was there anything else for
GORDON: Sounds as if they're all well deserved.
holidays such as fhanksgiving or Chrisünas?
KUNZ: At Christnas we always made a point of
pulling a heavy artillery barrage, as heavy as
Thanlagiving?
And you were in ten campaigns in all?
�WilliamJ.
isn't the war over. They said" "YeatL it's been
declared over. You have to go get these people
GORDON: All rieht. Why don't you do that?
I
have a little folder
here that was issued bD' the War Deparbment. Algeria
French Morocco
9
rumor that there was a redoubt---a gtoup of people in
a redoubt area that we'd have to go get and so I said
I(UNZ: Yeah. I can list those.
KUNZ: Under battle credits,
Kunz-Page
is one. Tunisia is two. Siciþ
is
anyhow." So everybody saddled up and staÍted down
the road Then it was all called off. It turned out to be
a false rumor. Whçn the actual announcement was
three. Naples Pogas (?) is four. Anzio is five. RomeArno is six. Southern France, seven. ArdennesAlsace, that's tlre Colmar Pocket. Rhineland and
Central Europe make a total of æn.
made, some artiltery was fired in the hills and that
was the end of it.
I think that's good that we listed them.
you get along with the men with whom you
How did
KUNZ: We were all ready to get out of there and go
home. It didn't turn out that way. We still had a lot of
prisoners that we had captured We had to get them in
behind baúed wire and hold them. Also we had to
transport some of them back to the rear. A lot of them
were die-hard Nazis yet and they tryeren't ready to
grve up. We had them in behind barbed wire and it
kind of looked like and "Stalag." It had been one, I
guess. It had machine gun posts all around it'
Eventually, the higher-ups came along and a lot of
the people wçre taken off for intenogation. Probably
GORDON:
had the greatest contact?
KUNZ: You have to have complete trust more than
anything. You don't necessarily have to like people
but they have to know that ifyou say your going to
do something or going to be there at a certain poiril,
you didn't make it, because you couldn't do it.
if
GORDON: I think that's a very good answer. Were
there things that you'd do differently if you could do
them once again?
KUNZ: I'd get promoted to Major so
I
for war crimes trials here andthere.
GTORDON: How did you learn about VJ Day?
wouldn't
have to go throughall this.
GORDON: What was the most difficult thing you
had to do during your period of military service? It
sounds as if it were all difficult.
I
guess--every once in a while we get
letters from relatives who write to see what happened
to people and üy to get an answer back to that.
Sometimes you had to üeat civilians a little harsher
KUNZ: Ob,
GORDON: What was your reaction to it?
than we should have. Some of the PVfs, too, was kind
of marginal on the sort of thing you had to do.
KUNZ: At that point, I was happy to clirnb the high
tide because I was back in the States and I got
discharged on the 15ft of August. I think that was
prely close to VJ.
GORDON: What was your opinion of the use of the
atomic bomb when it was used aæinst the Japanese
in Augrst of 1945?
KUNZ: I was
l50P/o
for it.
GORDON: Has that opinion changed over the last
fifty years?
GORDON: Is there any one thing that stands as your
most successflrl achievement during that time besides
survival?
KUNZ: No. I don't really. A lot of grys in that ouffit
in terms of accomplishing did a lot more than I did"
Just getting out of it alive, I guess, is the biggest
thing--The real heroes are still over there yet.
They're buried in the cemeteries.
GORDON:
I think you're all heroes.
How did you
leam about VE Day?
?
GORIION: When and where were you officially
discharged from the service?
KUNZ: Onthe 15ü of August, Fort Dix, New
Jersey,
at10:47 a.m.
GORDON: Wow. Reallyexact. Doyou have...
KUNZ: It's the sort of thing you want to remember.
KUNZ: We were gathering kind of groups. We
happened to be right down the
KUNZ: Notabit.
hill a little ways from
where Hitler's chalet there. We had heard a
GORDON: Do you have a disability rating or â
pension?
�william
J.
Kunz-Irage
10
KIINZ: Yeah.
GORDON: You'Il have to forgive her for that.
Anything else about how your family supported you
GORDON: Do you have any opinions about our
nation's milit¿ry status or its policies?
dwing those years?
KUNZ: I'm worried about it. At this point in time, I
think its been taken apart too much. Itr-We're
mother once in a while but not too often.
starting to disarm again and it worries me.
GORDON: Do you have any contact with the
Veterans' Administration?
KUNZ: No. Not much.
KUNZ: I think they do a good job. I think they do
the best they can under the circumstances. I think
they try to do-I think that-{his rnay be a little
selfish here--åut I think that some of the service is
overdone. In other words, I think if you're not in
there for service connected conditions, you shouldn't
go in. If you'te going in because you fell down the
stepß of the USO or something like that, tlrat's one
thing but if you got hit and the effects are still with
you that's another. I think that too much money is
spent on guys to go in and get a physical when they
could just as well pøy for it themselves and go to a
private doctor andnot overloadthe system.
GORDON: Have you ever gone to
a
VA Hospital?
GORDON: Is there anything else you would like to
tell us before we conclude the interview?
KUNZ: Only that I feel that the division I was with
was a stellar attractiorL a stellar division in that
conflict and I like to pay a tribute to all the people in
GORDON:
I
certainly would, too. This concludes
our interview today. We've been siüing here
reminiscing just a little bit before we end this
interview and we're remembering one very special
occurrence. Wouldyou like to tell us ¿bout that?
n
Casablanca, President
KUNZ: Okay. In 1942
Churchill and
Roosevelt came in for a meeting
a few of the others-I'm not too sure if Russia was in
this one or not. In any event, they had a special Guard
of Honor set out. Roosevelt reviewed the troops and I
happened to be part of that at the time. And he drove
along in a Jeep. They tunred out the entire division
for this but we were front rank because as a part of
the Guard of Honor, I guess, we had to hold the flag
and standup in front there.
-?-
GORDON: Was that pictured in Life Magazine?
KUNZ: No.
GORDON: Would you like to tell us how your
family supported you during all your mili@
service?
KUNZ: Mybest support is my wife
with his fedora hat. I think it was well published
she
wouldn't
...
KUNZ: Septemhr 9ù, 1945, 4:25 p.m.
GORIION: I love these exact times. Anything else
about...
I think I've seen that We were also
talking about
at the time?
as soon as
KUNZ: I guess it was Helen says she has seen it and
it's our section which shows Roosevelt in his Jeep
GORDON:
here.
KUNZ: No. I tried to talk he¡ into it but
GORDON: Were you married
step-
it that didn't come home.
GORDON: What is your opinion of the VA?
GORDON: Were you married
KIINZ: Well, I head from my father and my
a
reunion
of...
KUNZ: Well, 1984 some of us from that division
went back overseas for the Fortieth Anniversary of
the action at Anzio and Cassino andvisited the
-?Cemetery and looked up the grave sites of many of
our friends over there. We toured some of the battle
sites andone of the fellows in particular was trying to
find the house on the beach head that he had spent
some time in and it still had the Italian family in it. It
was kind of rare. Most of the people had left when
the shelling stârted. Not only did he locate the house
some of the family was still in it. Not only that his
kind of former girl friend was there, too. So we all
KUNZ:
,.
.Ì
She was late ten minutes or was it twenty.
had a big spaghetti dinner. I guess his wife was
still
�williamJ. Kunz-Page
II
talking to him when he got back to the United St¿tes..
It was quite interesting. They had ceremonies and
later on we went up into France and visited the
division in Burg (?), Gemrany, where it was--*till is
GORDON: Is there anything else that we should
st¿tioned there. They had a ceremony for the Fortieth
remember something When the war ended
of that action. The division sends
of Honor and re,presentatives to these
Anniversary
Guards
occasionally all through France andEurope as part of
the NATO Alliance. It was interesting. We had the
usual speeches
and...
GORDON: Were you on of the ones honored?
KUNZ: Yeah. There was about six of us there as part
ofthe group.
GORDON: Tell me about the time that you met
intlrc same ...
some Germans who hadbeen fighting
KUNZ: Oh it Urns out that during this tour in 1984
some of the Germans who had been in a corps
opposite us in Colmar got together with us. This is a
tittle bit a meticulous situation. This was the first
time they put together Germans and Americans' kind
of together. They weren't sute how it would go.
Some cases it didn't work out well. A couple of the
fellows who were Jewish di&r't really want to meet
with these guys and I can understand it. They just
didn't attend it. One man in particular, a seventeen
year old radio operator at the time---¿ sixteen or
seventeen real young. They were taking anybody as it
got firther along in the war, He operated a radio. He
recalls being in ow area on Chrisünas Eve of 1944 in
Colmar. We had a heavy artillery exchange
point. He remembered the positions. We were
about that. We correspond a liule bit. The
radio amateur--r¿dio operator and he contacts
at that
talking
grys a
people
in the States now and we write back and forth
occasionally. \Vhen we go back over there this
summer for the Fiftieth Anniversary we might get to
see each
remember?
KUNZ: I don't really think there's ... Yeah. I
I
can
came
back home for a discharge. An interesting thing
happened. The more I thing about it, the mors
interesting it is. Just before the final ceremony where
they played some military music and handed us our
discharges, we were all taken in a room and had a
t¿lk by I guess whæ you would call an Army
psychiatrist. It went lcind of like this. "Now I want to
tell you heroes something. When you get back into
civilian life, people will be a little interested in that
you got backbut tlrey don't want to know anything at
all-*they don't care about what you did You get a
*fifty-two
lot of benefits. You get a thing called the
twenty cluu'. You get $20 a wetk to get you started
for fiffy-two weeks I think it was and you get some
education under the GI Bill. My advise to you is to
forget about all of this, get offyour rear end and go to
school and get to working. Never mind what the
civilian attitude is." Andhe was rigþt.
GORDON: I was just going to ask if that was good
advice.
KUNZ: Yeah.
GORDON: That is interesting
KIJNZ: So the Vietnam Vets and Korean
Vets
weren't the only ones that--they got more of a cold
shoulder because of the political circumstances,
World War II Veterans especially the heary combat
ones weren't all thatpopular. Whenever you talked to
somebody and they'd say stuff like "Gee, I'm glad
you're back. Wait 'tit
defense job I had"
I
tell you about the
great
GORDON: I imagine that's the real reaction you got.
other again.
GORDON: You're planning
to go
back this
KUNZ: Sure. Once you get over that than you just
summer?
get back to work and sart getting a life again.
KUNZ: Yeah.
GORDON: Is there anything you want to say about
your return to civilian life?
GORDON: When will you be going?
KUNZ: June. Early June of this year
GORDON: How long will you
KUNZ: Two weeks.
)
be there?
KUNZ: Once I got back into the civilian area I just
stayed away from the military as much as possible. I
was pretty well sick of it and it took me a number of
years before I could even really start to think about it
and t¿lk about it. Most of the other fellows felt the
sarne way Nobody did or said much until they were
�williamJ.
all retired and got together at these reunions and then
the war stories start.
GORDON:
I
can believe that. This concludes our
interview today.
Kutz-Page
12
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
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Midway Village Museum
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Midway Village Museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-2001
Rights
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Midway Village Museum
Language
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English
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Phyllis Gordon
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
William Kunz
Location
The location of the interview
Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
William Kunz
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
April 11, 1994
Description
An account of the resource
Born September 28, 1921, William Kunz was drafted into the Army during World War II. He died July 30, 2014.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
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Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War 2
World War II
-
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PDF Text
Text
William J. Pirages
Transcribed by Lorraine Lightcap
For Midway Village and Museum Center
6799 Guilford Road
Rockford, Illinois
Phone 815 397 9112
�William J. Pirages
My name is Charles Nelson. I am a volunteer
with the Midway Village & Museum Center in
Rockford, Illinois, which is cooperating with a
statewide effort to collect oral histories from
Illinois Citizens that participated in the momentous events surrounding World War II. We are in
the office of Midway Village in Rockford, Illinois, interviewing Mr. William J. Pirages. Mr.
Pirages served in the United States Armed Forces during World War II. We are interviewing
him about his experiences in that war.
NELSON: Bill, would you please start by introducing yourself to us. Please give us your full
name, place and date of birth. We would like
also to have the names of each one of your parents. Did you have and brothers or sisters?
PIRAGES: I was born September 17, 1922, in
Rockford, Illinois. My dad’s name is Joe. My
mother’s name is Pauline. I attended school,
Whig Hill School, for eight years. Lincoln Junior High School and then graduated from old
Rockford Central High in the last class of 1940.
I have a brother named Joel and a sister named
Della. That’s the extent of the family.
NELSON: Are there any details about your parents and/or your family that you would like to
tell?
PIRAGES: Well, my dad was born in Lithuania
and my mother’s folks were both born in Lithuania. That makes me 100% Lithuanians descent.
My dad worked in a machine shop most of his
working life. My mother worked in the knitting
mills for a few years.
NELSON: Okay. This is the part about entering
the military service. What was life like before
the war, specifically during 1941?
down and turned the radio on when we heard
about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
NELSON: What thoughts did you have about
the war before the United States became directly
involved in the conflict?
PIRAGES: Well, we read the Germans had invaded Poland and it wouldn’t be too long before
we’d be in it also.
NELSON: How did you hear of the December
7th, 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese? Where were you and what were you doing
at the time?
PIRAGES: I just answered that.
NELSON: Yes. Okay. You answered the next
question, too. Had you formed any prior opinion, or developed any feeling about what had
been taking place in Europe or Asia?
PIRAGES: In what?
NELSON: Had you formed any prior opinion or
developed any feeling about what had been taking place in Europe or Asia?
PIRAGES: No, but I figured that after World
War I we’d be at it again with the Germans because we were always protecting the British.
NELSON: Do you recall reading newspaper
accounts of German aggression in Europe?
PIRAGES: Oh, yes.
NELSON: Did you have any knowledge of Hitler’s speeches, ideas or actions?
PIRAGES: Oh, yes.
PIRAGES: Well, right after high school I went
to work at Woodward Governor so I was still
employed at Woodward Governor during the
war. I remember that very vividly the morning
of December 7th 1941. We had just gotten home
from church, brought the newspaper in and sat
NELSON: What event led to your entry into
Military service? Were you drafted or did
You volunteer?
�PIRAGES: Well, on December 8th, 1941, I went
down and inquired about the Marine Corps,
passed the preliminary exam but then my folks
wouldn’t sign for me. So I was 19 years old. So
I waited around ’til by April 1st of ’42 they made
boys eligible who wereused to be you had to
have 2 years of college to get into Naval Aviation. I just had high school. Well, they made
high school graduates eligible to enlist in Naval
Aviation, so I went down again, signed up, got
preliminary tests out of the way and came back
for my folks to sign and said, “Well, you know
I’m going to get drafted anyway so if I don’t go
now so why not let me go into something I want
to get into”. So they finally signed for me. I was
accepted.
NELSON: When and where were you inducted?
PIRAGES: When was I inducted?
Then
NELSON: How about other training camps you
attended.
PIRAGES: Then I went to Glenview Naval Air
Station for the first part of rigid flying. I was
there ’til March of ’43,preflight. In March I
went to Corpus Christie, Texas, at the Naval Air
Station. Completed my training, got my wings
on July 17, 1943.
NELSON: Was this single engine training?
PIRAGES: All single engine, I could have, if I
wanted to get involved in larger planes, I could
have, but I wantedI had my eyes and my heart
set on being a fighter pilot.
NELSON: What airplanes were you trained to
fly?
NELSON: When and where?
PIRAGES: In Chicago. It was in April of ’42.
Went to
NELSON: Do you have any special memories?
PIRAGES: Calling me up for civilian pilot
training first before I ever wore a uniform I went
to Milton College for academics and flew out of
Rock County Airport in Janesville for my first
flying in a little Piper Cub or whatever they had
available. Then I went back to work again, a
civilian job, and then they called me up to active
duty in October of ’42. I went to Iowa preflight
school, which is like boot camp where I had
plenty athletics and plenty of academics. I was
there for about 10 weeks.
NELSON: What did you think of the training?
PIRAGES: Rigid. Very rigid training. We had
about 8 hours of athletics every day in addition
to our academic studies.
NELSON: Did anything special happen there?
PIRAGES: It was just a real rigid physical
training. A lot of running, swimming, boxing,
wrestling, basketball, football, you name it. And
soccer especially, run, run, run, run.
PIRAGES: F-4U Corsair. That’s low windspeed job if you remember.
NELSON: I know what they are. Did you have
any leaves or passes?
PIRAGES: Yeah. I had a leave after Glenview
and after Corpus Christie. But when I went to
the West Coast, I didn’t have a leave until I
came back from overseas. That was in
NELSON: What do you recall of this period
about the places that you were stationed, the
friends you made and the associations with civilians?
PIRAGES: Oh we have a reunion every 2 years.
We were in Pensacola, Florida last November.
There were 16 of us there. We all acted like we
were brothers because some of those fellows I
went all the way through primary training, advance training and all the way through operational training out on the West Coast. We got to
be like brothers. When we get together on these
reunions, our wives are like sisters, we’re so
close. I don’t always attend every reunion.
NELSON: How many people get together?
PIRAGES: There were 16 pilots this last time.
�NELSON: Sixteen pilots.
PIRAGES: Well, not all pilots. There were a
couple of guys on the lineenlisted men that
were there too but mostly pilots.
NELSON: Where did you go after completing
your basic military training?
PIRAGES: They shipped us out on a seaplane,
Navy Seaplane Tender. Oh, I forgot to tell you
Naval training after you complete your training
you had your choice of being a Naval pilot or
Marine pilot. But basically both do the same
thing. I selected the Marines. They shipped us
out February of ’44 to the New Hebrides Islands
in the South Pacific. We were on board a seaplane tender. The cargo was our squadron,
which was 40 pilots, about 5 non-pilots or officers, 500 enlisted men and besides that we had a
100-octane gas and loaded depth charges. We
were unescorted. So we stayed in this __?__ for
until June when we went up to Bougainville. We
flew operational training. We got training all the
time when we were in __?__ and we
flewescort B25 was our navigation plane. We
flew up to Bougainville. We went to Green Island for about 2 weeks. They said they didn’t
have room for us there. That was a hell of a hole
of the South Pacific. We had to import fresh water to drink because there were no wells. We
took showers in salt water that wasn’t very good.
They finally sent us back down to Bougainville,
which is not too bad there for combat. Our duties there were mainly the bomber ball. Every
day was like a milk run.
NELSON: What did you think of the nation’s
war efforts up to this point?
PIRAGES: Nation at war?
NELSON: What did you think of the nation’s
war efforts up to this point?
PIRAGES: Oh, they had madeby that time
they had made Jimmy Doolittle had raided Japan
with a B25. We thought we were headed in the
right direction. It was slow but then we had to
rebuild our arsenal after the Japanese sank half
of our Navy at Pearl Harbor. Fortunately we had
aircraft carriers yet. We made roads in the South
Pacific and on the way up to the Philippines,
Okinawa and all the way to Japan. They were
slow in our really in our estimation but we were
making good progress to end the war.
NELSON: Tell us about your experience in entering your first combat zone. I would say--your
first mission or whatever you call it.
PIRAGES: Well, it’sI can’t say we were used
to it. We had practiced for it for so long. It was
just like blowing your nose. It was so easy. We
would hit on target, make your dive-bombing
run and make a couple strafing runs at the enemy and take off and go home. I will say this.
The Japanese had a lot of practice with antiaircraft by the time we got there so they were
pretty accurate. We lost several pilots there.
Think it was 16 we got shot down over Rabaul.
It wasn’t only Rabaul. We bombed New Ireland,
we bombed New Britain and northern and
southern Bougainville. There were still Japs on
Bouganville when we were there. They look at
Bougainville was a small island but there were
30 thousand Japs still stationed there yet when
we were there.
NELSON: Were you involved with casualties
during your combat experience? Can you give
me the approximate number and types of casualties and how they occurred and how they were
treated?
PIRAGES: I didn’t have any casualties. Never
got wounded or anything but several of our pilots, like I say, were shot down. One guy was
shot down twice. He gotboth times landed in
the ocean. Marred up his face on the gun sight.
Evidently didn’t have his shoulder tight and hit
the water. Water landings are not as easy as they
seem to be. He got his face bashed in both times.
He was a handsome guy until then. He is no
longer with us. He died a couple of years ago.
But if there are casualtiesThat’s what I told
my folks. I said, “If you’re in the infantry, you
get all shot up, you get wounded, you get crippled and you live that way for the rest of your
life. If you’re a pilot, you’re either here or
you’re gone.
NELSON: Did your mental attitude change as
combat continued?
�PIRAGES: Oh, yeah. We always heard about
the Japs. The more we heard about them, the
madder we got. We heard on the Armed Forces
radio we’d get the broadcast from Tokyo Rose
every night. She warned us particularly that
those red nosed fighter pilots on Bougainville
will be out looking for you. You’ll see no mercy
if we catch you.
PIRAGES: I might add I had 2 mid air collisions. That’s one way of getting wounded. I
landed one plane, a bush plane. The second mid
air collision I had was over the Sierra Nevada
Mountains in California. I had a guy sideswiped.
We both bailed out of our planes. At 10 thousand feet we bailed out.
NELSON: Was that a Corsair?
NELSON: Did you write many letters home?
PIRAGES: What?
PIRAGES: No that was an F-4F. We called it a
wild cat at that time. That was our first actual
military plane that we were trained in.
NELSON: Did you write many letters home?
PIRAGES: Oh, yeah. I’d write about once a
week to my folks.
NELSON: How about receiving mail. Did you
get letters and packages?
PIRAGES: Oh, yes. Sometimes 6 or 8 weeks
after they were sent but we’d get them.
NELSON: What was the highlight occurrence
of your combat experiences or any other experiences you can remember?
PIRAGES: Well, being out and getting at when
your approach target and you’re about 12 thousand feet high and you see the anti-aircraft shells
exploding in front of you. You know that the
Japs have got your range. You hope that you’re
not hit. (Laughter).
NELSON: What kind of packages did you get?
PIRAGES: Cookies.
NELSON: Did most of the other men write and
receive letters?
PIRAGES: Yeah. We’d wait for mail call everyday.
NELSON: Did you forge close friends, close
bonds of friendship with many or some of your
combat buddies?
PIRAGES: Very close. Most of the pilots were
at one of our reunions either within the last 3 or
4 years or earlier. Some are invalids and could
not make it to this one.
NELSON: You stayed in contact with them
through the years?
NELSON: Tell us what you and the other men
did to celebrate America’s traditional family
holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas.
PIRAGES: I honestly don’t believe that at any
time did we really have a celebration. We may
have, just before we left Bougainville. We landed at Hollandia, New Guinea on the way up to
the Philippines on New Year’s Eve of ’44 and I
think that Christmas before because we knew
that we were going to go into tougher combat we
had a decent Christmas dinner. I don’t recall us
ever doing anything real special for holidays
such as Christmas, Thanksgiving or New Years
or anything like that.
NELSON: How and when did you return to the
United States after the war?
PIRAGES: Oh, yeah.
PIRAGES: I flew back to Honolulu on a R4D
which is a 4 engine Navy plane and Honolulu to
Frisco on a Pan American Flipper.
NELSON: Some of this is more geared for the
infantry so I’ll just kind of skip some of these.
NELSON: What happened when you arrived in
the United States?
�PIRAGES: We checked into the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco and it was April 11th. The
next morning we got up, hailed a cab with a big
black lady driver. She was crying her eyes out. I
said, “What’s the matter lady?” She said, “Haven’t you heard? Roosevelt died.” It was also
my sister’s birthday so I stopped at a florist and
sent her a dozen roses. We proceeded to look the
town over. We were sent down to Miramar, processed out and given a 30-day leave.
NELSON: Please tell us about your military
rank and your decorations especially your campaign decorations.
PIRAGES: Campaign was the Asian, South
Pacific Campaign, the Middle Pacific, Philippine
Campaign, air medals and several clusters.
That’s about it.
NELSON: How many missions were you in?
PIRAGES: Ninety-nine.
NELSON: (Charlie whistles). How did you get
along with the men with whom you had the
greatest contact?
PIRAGES: Beautifully. I would say like brothers?
NELSON: Are there things you would do differently if you could do them again?
PIRAGES: No, not really. One buddy and I, we
had it planned when we got out we were going
to take a trip around the world to see how it
worked from a non-military stand point but we
never got around to it. Instead my youngest boy
went around the world in 1991, solo.
went through our training after they went
through Boot Camp and they said the Boot
Camp was a picnic compared to what we went
through. It was really rough. I was never used to
that real rigid training. We were at it constantly.
I lost 10 pounds the first week I was there and I
gained 10 pounds back and changed it back to
muscle I guess. I was so sore when I got out of
bed, I could hardly walk in the morning.
NELSON: Is there any one thing that stands out
as your most successful achievement in the military service? How about getting your wings
PIRAGES: That was a great day when I got the
wings. It was really a great day when we
shipped out for overseas. We thought we were
really going to get into it. That’s when the Marines, Joe __?__ and Pappy Boyington and I
think you remember the Black Sheep Squadron
on the TV program. That’s when they were having a real ball in the South Pacific shooting
down Japanese planes and I thought, “Boy,
we’re going to get into it.” They sent us to
Bourgainville. We saw a plane one day, a Japanese plane, and we took out after it but we
chased it, chased it, chased it until we were running too low on fuel and didn’t think we would
get back to base so we let it go. That’s the only
plane we say in the air. We saw them on the
ground and shot them up.
NELSON: How did you hear about VE Day and
what was your reaction to it?
NELSON: Solo.
PIRAGES: VE Day I was stationed at Floyd
Bennett Field in New York in the Fairy Command flying brand new planes all the way across
country for use with the fleet during the war.
That was my immediate duty after I came back
from overseas. I heard about when we were in
New York. We celebrated a little bit
PIRAGES: Yeah. He was all by himself.
NELSON: How about VJ Day?
NELSON: What was the most difficult thing
you had to do during your period of military service?
PIRAGES: VJ Day we heard about it coming
back from taking a plane to the West Coast. We
were on board a plane and we just landed in
Philadelphia to discharge passengers, took off
again for New York and the stewardess came
down the aisle and said, “The war is over.” We
landed at Floyd Bennett Field. A lot of them
PIRAGES: The most rigid training I had was at
Iowa Pre-flight School. Guys talk about Navy
and Marine Boot Camp but we had the guys that
�landed at LaGuardia, I guess, at that time. We
immediately got a cab and went down to Times
Square to join the celebration.
military. We still have a lot of equipment, a lot
of planes, a lot of tanks but their letting us get
weak again. We can’t afford it.
NELSON: What was your opinion of the use of
the atomic bomb when it was used against Japanese civilians in August of 1945?
NELSON: Do you have any contact with the
Veterans’ Administration?
PIRAGES: I totally agreed with that. We would
have lost another million men if we had not
made the Japanese surrender with the atomic
bomb.
NELSON: Has your opinion changed over the
last 50 years, if so, how?
PIRAGES: No.
NELSON: When and where were you officially
discharged from the services?
PIRAGES: October of ’45. I never did get a
discharge. I was given a Certificate of Satisfactory Service that may not withstand the Reserve
at their convenience. I was on leave until December when I was officially off duty. I had
plenty “leave” days coming. The Korean War
started, I got a call from the Government asking
how long it would take me to wind up my affairs
and report to active duty. At that time I had a
service station and it would take me 90 days
probably to sell out, straighten out my affairs
and I never heard another thing from them.
PIRAGES: No, only insurance wise. I send in
my payment every year.
NELSON: What is your opinion of the Veterans’ Administration?
PIRAGES: Oh, I guess they do a lot of good for
the veterans if they need assistance or need hospitalization for any reason and they can’t afford
it. Civilian hospital or they can always go to the
Veterans’ Administration (hospital). I never had
any dealings with them myself but I know people that have had and are real satisfied with it.
NELSON: Would you like to tell how your
family supported during your military life?
PIRAGES: Well, there wasn’t much they could
do except to keep the mail coming. Send goodies
once in a while. That’s about all. Of course,
there was a lot of praying done. I know that.
NELSON: Over the subsequent years what has
this support meant to you?
PIRAGES: To have them on your side and especially the prayers, you were thankful for that.
NELSON: That was for the Korean War?
PIRAGES: The Korean War.
NELSON: Is there anything else you would like
to tell me.
NELSON: Did you have a disability rating or
pension?
PIRAGES: Not really. I’m no hero. I’m just
like the rest of the guys, just sweating it out.
PIRAGES: No.
NELSON: Do you have any opinions or feelings about the nation’s military status or its policies?
NELSON: Okay. That’s fine, Bill. Thank you
very much.
PIRAGES: Well, I think Reagan did a good job
of building us up and we had, as anyone could
see, we did a beautiful job in the war against
Iraq. Wiping them out in a couple of days. I
sometimes hesitate to thinkshudder to think
what some of our leaders are doing now to the
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
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Midway Village Museum
Publisher
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Midway Village Museum
Date
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1993-2001
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Midway Village Museum
Language
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English
Format
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pdf
Type
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Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Charles Nelson
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
William J. Pirages
Location
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Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
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Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
William J. Pirages
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
circa 1994
Description
An account of the resource
Born September 17, 1922, William Pirages joined the Navy Air Force in April 1942 as a pilot. He died March 20, 2012.
Rights
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Midway Village Museum
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pdf
Type
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Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War 2
World War II
-
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PDF Text
Text
Warren Carlson
Transcribed by Lorraine Lightcap
Midway Village & Museum Center
6799 Guilford Road
Rockford, Illinois 61107
Phone 397 9112
�Warren Carlson
Navy Pilot
World War II – South Pacific
My name is Charles Nelson. I am a volunteer at the
Midway Village and Museum Center in Rockford,
Illinois, which is cooperating with statewide effort to
collect oral histories from Illinois citizens that
participated in the momentous events that
surrounding World War II. We are in the office of
Midway Village and Museum Center in Rockford,
Illinois, interviewing Mr. Warren Carlson. Mr.
Carlson served in the branch of the United States
Armed Forces during World War II. We are
interviewing him about his experiences in that war.
NELSON: Warren, would you please start by
introducing yourself to us. Please give us your full
name, the place and date of birth. We would also like
to have the names of each of your parents.
CARLSON: I was born in Rockford Illinois,
February 26th, 1916, the son of Axel R. and Sally
Larson Carlson. My sister’s name is Sigrid Carlson
Tenny, Mrs. Robert I. Tenny. She was born January
2nd, 1913. Both of my parents were born in Smöland
though they did not meet until it happened in
Rockford. They were proud to be citizens of the
United States.
NELSON: Are there any details about your parents
or your family that you would like to give besides
that. This goes into entering the military. What was
life like for you before the war especially during
1941.
CARLSON: I was employed by the National Lock
Company from November 1st, 1938, until June 30th,
1942. When National Lock Company began to make
contributions to war preparation in 1941, I was
assigned to priorities and received and record keeping
of all new orders. Since we had so many orders in
process it was next to impossible to accurately
determine what shipments were contributing to
defense. Thus we kept track of all coming orders of
defense and when I left National Lock Company in
June of 1942 our incoming orders were about 80%
defense. I was assigned to a civilian pilot training at
Northwestern University where I took ground school
and then pilot training at Sky Harbor Airport. In
November I was sent to the University of Iowa for
physical training under the V-5 program. The Navy
needed navigators in the South Pacific so many of us
volunteered and after complete training at Iowa, we
were sent to Hollywood, Florida, for navigation,
gunnery, bombing and meteorology.
NELSON: How did you hear of the December 7,
1941, bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese?
What were you doing at the time?
CARLSON: I was at a friend’s house for dinner on
that particular Sunday. So but we weren’t very
much alarmed because we didn’t know a lot about
Japan at the time. We thought that we would have this
war over with in a few months.
NELSON: What was your reaction and response to
those around you?
CARLSON: Well, we were all pretty much the same
being youngsters we just figured that the
Japanese were crazy in starting a war with us that
they’d be defeated very rapidly.
NELSON: Had you formed any prior opinion or
developed any feelings about what had been taking
place in Europe and Asia?
CARLSON: Well, yes. I watched that glad to see
that the United States does participate in some of
those things because then things aren’t going to
happen like they did in World War II. All of a sudden
we’re right in the middle of a war and we were not
ready for it.
NELSON: Do you recall reading any newspaper
accounts of German aggression in Europe?
CARLSON: Yes, I sure did remember that. Hitler
was really spreading his wings and unfortunately I
wasn’t that much interested at the time because I had
a German boy who went to the University of
Mississippi with me who had been involved in a lot of
that.
NELSON: What events led to your entry into
military service? Were you already in the service
draft or did you volunteer?
CARLSON: I had taken a civilian pilot training
course at Machesney Airport in Rockford. In order to
take that course I had to promise that I would enlist in
�the Air Corps if we went to war and then that’s
exactly what I did.
NELSON: Did you have any leaves or passes?
NELSON: When and where were you inducted?
CARLSON: Not until I came back home did I have
any passes of any kind. I couldn’t even attend the
wedding of my best friend.
CARLSON: Officially I was inducted
November 1st, in 1942, in Iowa pre-flight.
about
NELSON: Where was this at?
CARLSON: That was in Iowa City, Iowa.
NELSON: Do you have any special memories of this
event?
CARLSON: Only that I was building up physically
and many times I got quite a kick out of this. They’d
use me as an example when they had visitors on the
base. I’d have to run and do a lot of things to show
them what everybody was doing which of course,
wasn’t true because everybody didn’t have the same
physical qualities.
NELSON: What do you recall of this period about
the places that you were stationed, the friends you
made your association with civilians?
CARLSON: Well, whenever civilians that I came in
contact they were always very cordial and very good.
I have to say that the service men that I came in
contact were the same kind of people that I had hoped
would be friends of mine for life. Some of them I
have stayed close to.
NELSON: What was your military unit?
CARLSON: VMFN 531, which was a marine night
fighter squadron, staging out of Bella, Lavella.
NELSON: What were your assigned duties?
NELSON: How old were you?
CARLSON: The most I remember about that Florida
situation is how bad the mosquitoes got in the
summer.
CARLSON: Well, after we got there with the
airplane the colonel wanted me to help some of his
pilots with celestial navigation so they’d have a little
better idea than what their training had given to them
at that point. It seems like that was a big training
program all the way from the very start of this
squadron out there because when they got there none
of them had had a real lot of practice with the radar
equipment or how close to be to a bogie when they
started to fire. In fact, I think the first one of our guys
that shot down a Jap plane got a little bit too close but
he was lucky. He went right through all that debris
when that Jap plane exploded. They got all of their
training out there in the Pacificnot all of their
training, but they got an awful lot of their training in
the Pacific and they learned a lot of things for the
future. But by the time it was going to be put to use
again, the war was over. They were determined to use
only twin engine airplanes. However-- They felt that
that was the only thing that was big enough to carry
all the equipment that they neededradar and armor.
NELSON: Tell us about any other training camps
you attended.
NELSON: Was that similar to a PBY?
CARLSON: Well, I went from Hollywood, Florida
to MAG 15 at San Diego. There I helped train
enlisted men in navigation. I was called on then to
ferry an airplane from Honolulu to Bella, LaVella.
CARLSON: No, it’s just a twin engine plane with
tear drop tails on the thingtwin tails. It had very
high wing loading on it, too, so it was a hot airplane
when you landed it.
CARLSON: Now I am 78.
NELSON: How old were you at the time?
CARLSON: I was 26 years old when I went into the
service.
NELSON: Where did you take the basic military
training? What were you trained to do?
CARLSON: I guess the basic training was when we
got to Hollywood, Florida, for our navigation
training. There we had we got into gunnery and
bombing with the Nordien bomb sight.
NELSON: Did anything special happen there?
�NELSON: When you were sent overseas, how did
you get there?
CARLSON: I went on a carrier with my plane from
base Coronado to Honolulu.
NELSON: What did you think of the nation’s effort
up to this point?
CARLSON: Well, I was amazed, of course, at all the
things that were being done throughout the whole
country and the various training programs and in
talking with the pilots, what they had gone through.
NELSON: Tell us about your experience when you
entered your first combat zone.
CARLSON: Well, I was one of those people that
never worried unless things got hot. I really never got
into a position that was bad. The colonel used to
caution me about being careful and, of course, and I
was. But I just never worried about anything we had
to do.
NELSON: Can you list for us, in the order of there
occurrence, all subsequent combat actions in which
you were involved?
CARLSON: I actually was not involved in any
combat myself. I flew with the fellows at night on
several occasions but fortunately or unfortunately
didn’t run into and Bogies at that time. There was one
thing about this that I learned, too. Our planes
couldn’t fly over 20,000 feet and fortunately for us
the Japs didn’t fly that high so we were able to chase
them out of there. One of the reasons, of course, that
they were flying an awful lot at night was because on
all of the islands building up to Bougainville, Green
Island, where our radar equipment was stationed, we
had done such a fantastic job of bombing all of their
bases that we kept their air fields torn up. It got to a
point where they didn’t do much during the day at all.
It was all at night at towards that time when we were
at Bougainville.
NELSON: In your experiences overseas, did you get
involved in any casualties of any kind?
CARLSON: I wanted to mention one other thing
there. Our mission over Bougainvillethe big reason
for that was that the Japs were flying over at night and
our guys that had been there for several months
neutralizing who had been there for several months
neutralizing that island had to continually sleep in fox
holes. They were getting pretty worn out with no real
rest period. So we neutralized that thing pretty well
and they got a break by being able to sleep in a decent
place. What was your question?
NELSON: Did you get involved with any casualties
caused by the war?
CARLSON: No, I was just lucky that way. The
colonel asked me to do something back at my base
and I didn’t go out one night. We had three planes
that were flying alternately over Bougainville. When
their night flying was all over with, the three of them
started to fly back to [Lavella]. Here’s some guys that
have gone through primary flight training and the
whole works flying back in formation just like
they did when they were in training. But I think that
early morning flying threw them off of their course
and they just got too close together. Two planes came
together and the planes went into the ocean. We never
recovered any one of them. That was the closest I
came to casualty.
NELSON: Did your mental attitude change as
combat continued?
CARLSON: I guess that if I had really been involved
in severe fighting myself, it would have probably
affected me, but it didn’t. I just never worried about
anything and as it turned out I would have worried
needlessly.
NELSON: What did you think of the war so far?
CARLSON: Well, I was glad to see we were making
progress, of course, because we were moving up after
Guadalcanal and some of those islands in between
there. We got through Bougainville and then it was
on to [Tarawa] and other places east including the
Philippines.
NELSON: Did you write many letters?
CARLSON: Yes, I wrote home at least every other
week.
NELSON: Did you receive many letters and/or
packages and if so how often? What types of things
did you like to get in a package?
CARLSON: Well, when I was on some base in the
United States, I did get packages of cookies from
home. That was the nicest thing to get and it was one
of the few things that you could keep for a while.
�NELSON: Did most of the other men write and/or
receive letters?
CARLSON: Those that I came in contact all seemed
to do a fair amount of corresponding.
NELSON: Did you forge close bonds or friendships
with many or some of your combat companions?
CARLSON: No, we were all from different parts of
the country and it’s only been recently when I finally
got to join the group of VMFN-531 night fighter
pilots group that I have come in contact with them.
Otherwise I’ve gone almost this fifty years without
any contact. My pilot when we went overseas was the
first one to call me. “Boy am I glad to get a hold of
your address.” We had a lot of fun in conversation
and made some plans to get together.
NELSON: What was the highlight occurrence of
your combat experience or any other experience you
remember?
CARLSON: I was a navigator when I went overseas
and I guess the highlight then was when I got my
wings as a pilot in Corpus Christi, Texas, and
fortunately the war was all over. The big thing that
happened down there was that we had a tornado come
in. We beat the tornado. We flew about 150 planes
out of Corpus Christi into some air base close to the
Mexican line.
NELSON: First tell us abut your military rank, your
decorations, especially campaign decorations.
CARLSON: Well, the only campaign decorations I
got are South Pacific. I was made a First Lieutenant
and I was that for about a year and a half before I was
discharged.
NELSON: How did you get along with the men with
whom you had the greatest contact?
CARLSON: I have to say that I enjoyed most of
them. Most of them had a good sense of humor and
were fun to be with.
NELSON: Were there things you would do
differently if you could do those things again?
CARLSON: I don’t think so. I was very fortunate to
come out of the war the way I did. At least I did feel
like I did some good. To make it any tougher I don’t
think I would have cared for that.
NELSON: What was the most difficult thing you had
to do during your period of military service?
CARLSON: Well, it wasn’t getting up in the
morning, but I don’t really think that there was
anything real difficult.
NELSON: How did you learn about VE day and
what was your reaction to it?
NELSON: Tell us what you and the other men did to
celebrate America’s traditional family holidays such
as Thanksgiving and Christmas.
CARLSON: I probably heard about VE Day either
riding to the base or riding in the car home from the
base. Of course, we had a radio in the car.
CARLSON: I was fortunate in being in San Diego
because I had a good friend in Hollywood, California,
who had me up there for the holidays. I was up there
for Thanksgiving and for Christmas. That was Bert
Hassell, the famous Rockford flyer’s brother, that I
went to visit.
NELSON: How did you learn about VJ Day and
what was your reaction?
NELSON: When and how did you return to the U. S.
after the end of the war?
CARLSON: I was in the United States at the end of
the war. The last year and a half or so I was in flight
training which I finished up at Corpus Christi. They
sent me to Hollywood, Florida, to the Naval Air
Station and I was discharged there. That was in
February of ’46.
CARLSON: I guess I was surprised that the Japanese
lasted as long as they did, especially with some of the
pounding that we’d done and after we had dropped
the atomic bomb on Japan.
NELSON: What is your opinion of the use of the
atomic bomb when it was first used against the
Japanese civilians in August of 1945?
CARLSON: I guess that anyone else that had that
bomb would have dropped it on us. It did help bring
the war to an earlier close. So I guess it was the right
thing to have done. I would hate to see it ever used
again.
�NELS0ON: So your opinion has changed over the
last 50 years?
CARLSON: A little bit, yes.
NELSON: When and where were you officially
discharged from the service?
CARLSON: I was discharged from the Naval Air
Station in Miami, Florida.
NELSON: This is in ’45?
CARLSON: That was in ’45. Yes.
NELSON: Do you have a disability rating or
pension?
CARLSON: No.
NELSON: Do you have any opinions or feelings
about the nation’s military status or its policies?
CARLSON: Only that I think that we have to always
remain prepared. I think Reagan did a good job in
getting us up to a point wheremaybe we were overprepared for a while but we’ve got to stay prepared.
NELSON: Do you have any contact with the
Veterans’ Administration?
CARLSON: No, I have none whatsoever.
NELSON: Would you like to tell us about how your
family supported you during your military life and
what this has meant to you?
CARLSON: Well, I had a very close and affectionate
family. They wrote to me more than I wrote to them.
They were very helpful all the way through.
NELSON: Is there anything else that you would like
to add to this, Warren, or a conclusion?
CARLSON: No.
NELSON: Thanks a lot, Warren. It was an excellent
interview and it’s been nice talking to you.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Midway Village Museum
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Midway Village Museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-2001
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Language
A language of the resource
English
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Charles Nelson
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Warren Carlson
Location
The location of the interview
Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Warren Carlson
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
circa 1994
Description
An account of the resource
Born February 26, 1916, Warren Carlson served in the U.S Army Air Corps from 1941 to 1945 as a pilot. He died April 23, 2010.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War II
WW2
-
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PDF Text
Text
V. Stewart Fisher and JEANETTE: Anderson Fisher Page 1
V. Stewart Fisher
JEANETTE: Anderson Fisher
Interview by Lorraine Lightcap
for
Midway Village & Museum Center
6799 Guilford Road
Rockford, Illinois 61107
Phone 397 9112
�V. Stewart Fisher and JEANETTE: Anderson Fisher Page 2
V. Stewart Fisher
JEANETTE: Anderson Fisher
My name is Lorraine Lightcap and I
am a volunteer at Midway Village &
Museum Center in Rockford, Illinois,
along with my co-volunteers. We have
transcribed approximately 50 tapes of
interviews with World War II veterans
of the Rockford area, which was a part
of a project begun by the State of Illinois
on the 50th Anniversary of World War II.
This project is almost completed and I
have wanted to do a few more interviews
of Rockford area citizens for the Research Library at the museum.
Today, October 1, 2001, I am in the
home of V. Stewart Fisher and
JEANETTE: Fisher. They both served
in the Armed Forces in Italy. Stewie, as
he is called by his friends, was in the
62nd Signal Battalion, C Company of the
United States Army while JEANETTE:
served as an Army nurse. Their story is
most interesting as they met while in Italy.
LORRAINE: Stewie and Jeanette, I
would like to begin with asking each of
you to tell us your parents names, your
siblings, your year of birth, schooling
and a few of the years preceding your
services in the Armed Forces.
STEWART: I was born in Rockford in
1918 to Mr. and Mrs. James Fisher. I
had one younger brother, Roger, who
was killed during the Normandy Invasion. Both of my parents were born in
the United States. After graduation from
the high school in Rockford in 1936, I
attended a college in Chicago.
JEANETTE: I was born in Ironwood,
Michigan, in May of 1917. My father
was killed in an accident when I was 14
months old so my mother, Ruth Freberg
Anderson and my only brother moved to
Montreal, Wisconsin, to live with my
grandfather. In 1935 I graduated from
high school in Hurley, Wisconsin and
then entered nurses training at Augustana Hospital in Chicago. I had further
studies at Northwester University.
LORRAINE: I would like to ask each
of you to tell us what life was like before
you entered the service.
STEWART: After graduating from high
school in 1936, I held various jobs being
a salesman at retail furniture stores. Life
seemed to be “promising.” At that time I
was not very aware of the possibility of
war in Europe.
JEANETTE: It seems I always had a
desire to be a nurse. I feel I was greatly
influenced by my grandfather to attend
Augustana Hospital in Chicago to be
trained as a nurse. I felt I had a fulfilling
future. I do remember hearing rumors of
war in Europe.
LORRAINE: Were either of you aware
of the turmoil in England and Europe
because of Hitler’s actions and speeches?
STEWART: I believe I was finally
aware of this problem by listening to the
radio and viewing newsreels at theaters
plus newspaper articles.
�V. Stewart Fisher and JEANETTE: Anderson Fisher Page 3
JEANETTE: Being in Chicago I was
very aware of the turmoil in Europe because of Hitler’s speeches.
LORRAINE: Tell us more about your
lives in the years before 1940 and before
you enlisted.
STEWART: My life was very much
involved with my church association. It
provided me with much stability and
many educational and social opportunities.
JEANETTE: Leaving a small town
such as Hurley and Montreal and then
moving to Chicago to train as a nurse
was quite a change for me. Rules for
nursing trainees were quite strict as to
leeway of other activities but very often
we were taken on field trips to explore
the Chicago area.
LORRAINE: Do you two remember
where you were and what you were doing on December 7th when the Japanese
bombed Pearl Harbor?
STEWART: I was in Chicago with
friends when I heard about the bombing.
By this time I was quite aware of Hitler’s speeches.
JEANETTE: I too was in Chicago
when I heard this unsettling news but at
that time I was not interested in becoming an Army Nurse.
LORRAINE: What influenced either of
you to service with the Armed Forces?
Were you drafted or did you enlist?
STEWART: When I realized the possibility of being drafted, I decided to go to
Chicago and investigate being a part of
the Navy. I could have been taken in
immediately but I still had a commitment in Rockford. They more or less
didn’t pursue the issue. I still preferred
enlisting to being drafted so I enlisted in
the army at Camp Grant along with a
few of my friends. At first, after being
drafted, I was assigned to take change of
approximately 10 men while at Camp
Grant. Unfortunately the first night it
was 19 below zero and we were in unheated barracks. After 2 weeks we were
shipped to Tampa, Florida, where I began training to part of the Army Signal
Corp.
JEANETTE: Four of my friends from
nurses’ training had volunteered for
nursing duties in the army. I too decided
to volunteer. While I signed up in Chicago I was first sent to my home town in
Wisconsin to leave from there. In January of 1943, I was sent to Langley Field
in Virginia. Actually I did not need to
receive any basic training as I was part
of the Nursing Corp which was not officially part of the Army Nursing Corp. I
became a 2nd Lieutenant and ended up
being sent to the east coast to be shipped
to Europe via Casablanca.
LORRAINE: How did your parents,
Stewie, and your mother, Jeanette, feel
about your being a part of the army and
the potential dangers in this major conflict?
STEWART: I believe my parents were
quite proud of my decision to enlist and
overtly did not show their concern.
JEANETTE: My mother and grandfather were quite proud that I would be of
help as a nurse in this war.
LORRAINE: Did you have any doubts
whether our country could be successful
�V. Stewart Fisher and JEANETTE: Anderson Fisher Page 4
in winning this conflict in both Europe
and Asia?
STEWIE AND JEANETTE: Really
didn’t think about this.
LORRAINE: Tell us a bit about your
experiences when you enlisted, where
were you sent for training, what other
camps you attended, when you were sent
overseas and how you got there.
STEWART: After attending training
camps that I previously mentioned I left
the United States on a journey overseas
and to Europe. First stop was in Casablanca in North Africa. From this staging area we traveled by truck to Tunis
and then from Tunis I took 3 crews of
men back to Oran to join the 1st Armored
Division convoy on its way to Naples
Italy. Our mission was to establish
communications from Naples to Rome
and on to Milan, Italy.
JEANETTE: The nurses I was with
were sent to Kilmer, New Jersey to
board a ship to Casablanca. There were
five of us and from there we were deployed to Oran, North Africa, to be replacements for nurses serving in the European Theater. I stayed in Algiers for 6
weeks waiting for the orders and was
alone for a while before I was finally
flown to Naples, Italy to be with the
118th Station Hospital Group. I stayed
there in Italy 2 ½ years and was sent to 4
different hospitals in the area. I was at
the 33rd Field Hospital at the end of the
war in Company C.
LORRAINE: What was your area of
responsibility while in Italy? Did you
think the training you received adequate?
STEWART: My responsibility was to
oversee the building of communication
lines. I did a lot of pole climbing, sometimes with enemy fire close by. I did not
participate in actual combat. While on
this duty, I was promoted to captain.
One time we were in the vicinity of the
leaning tower of Pisa.
JEANETTE: I was in charge of orderlies at the Field Hospital. We were just 6
nurses for the 33rd Field Hospital.
LORRAINE: What was it like to live in
close quarters with so many soldiers?
STEWART: Of course, officers were
housed separately from infantrymen but
we all ate at the same mess hall. One
time I had to take a gun away from an
upset man. I carried a gun but I never
had to use it. I only saw one man killed.
He had stepped on a land mine. I was not
involved with capturing any of the enemy but I did see war prisoners in Milan.
JEANETTE: Being in the Field Hospital I saw many badly wounded men-some we could help recover, some died.
There usually were 100 men in a ward.
We kept so busy that we didn’t have
time to think about how unhappy we
were to see such misery.
LORRAINE: Did you receive any
leaves or passes while in Italy? Did you
have the opportunity to relax at your
quarters?
STEWART: We really didn’t need a
pass. There was not place to go. There
were occasional dances sponsored by the
Red Cross. For rest and relaxation I was
sent twice to Rome for about a week. I
did get yellow jaundice twice, once I had
�V. Stewart Fisher and JEANETTE: Anderson Fisher Page 5
to be sent to sick bay while sailing to
Manila.
JEANETTE: I had rest and relaxation
in Capri, Sorrento, Rome and Florence.
We never had any big shows such as
Bob Hope gave, but there were movies
for us and we often played cards.
LORRAINE: Did you think the Allies
were doing a good job? Any thoughts on
what you wished would have been done
differently?
STEWART: I thought the allies were
doing very well and there was good cooperation. Basically we were all to busy
to think about doing anything differently. While in Italy I was informed that my
brother had been killed during the Normandy invasion.
STEWART: I kept in touch with my
parents and some friends. Also I had an
8mm movie camera with me and was
able to take movies when permissible. I
have about one and a half hours of film.
JEANETTE: I wrote as often as possible and received some packages. Cookies could be quite crumbled when received even if well packed.
LORRAINE: Do both of you keep in
touch with your Army friends? Any reunions?
JEANETTE: Stew and I attended the
62nd Battalion reunion several times. I
have kept a “Christmas Card Reunion”
with my nursing friends.
LORRAINE: Did you have any contact
with any Italians where you served?
LORRAINE: Where did you two meet?
JEANETTE: No.
JEANETTE: We originally met in Livorno [Legtown] Italy. At first we were
just casual acquaintances. Both of us
were sent via a hip to the Philippines.
STEWART: Actually I had enough
points to return home but I was asked to
take a crew to the Philippines. While on
the ship, my jaundice returned and Jeanette insisted I go to the sickbay. Jeanette
was not on duty at the time. We sailed
through the Panama Canal and I would
say we went half way around the world
aboard ship. At one point the ship broke
down at sea and we were delayed 1½
days while it was being repaired.
LORRAINE: Did you correspond frequently with your parents and friends?
Were you able to receive packages of
food or something you might need?
LORRAINE: What about special holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas. Were there any special activities or
did you even feel like celebrating?
STEWART: About the only thing that
was done on Thanksgiving or Christmas
was special food.
JEANETTE: The 118th had special celebrations plus special meals.
LORRAINE: Tell us about you return
to the United States and civilian life.
STEWART: At the end of 1945 I returned to Camp Grant to be discharged.
We came back to Seattle via a ship and
then on to a train back to the Midwest. I
was discharged with the rank of captain
after serving in the Army for four years.
�V. Stewart Fisher and JEANETTE: Anderson Fisher Page 6
JEANETTE: I was sent back to the
United States via a ship to Louisiana.
From there I went to Fort Sheridan and
was discharged as a lieutenant. I had
served three and one half years. After
being discharged I began working at the
Hines Veterans’ Administration Hospital
near Chicago. Stewie and I were married
in my hometown in June of 1946.
LORRAINE: Was it difficult to adjust
to civilian life?
STEWART: Fortunately I had a job
waiting for me when I returned, at a local furniture store in Rockford. My future seemed to be secure. By June of ’46
Jeanette and I were married and began
life together in Rockford.
JEANETTE: I had no difficulty adjusting to civilian life. When I was working
in the Veterans’ Administration Hospital, Stewie would drive to see me as often as possible.
NOTE: Stewie and Jeanette are the parents of three children. Stewie was the
founder in Rockford of the Ethan Allen
Furniture store, is a life member of Bethesda Covenant Church and has served
as church chairman for 2 years as well as
serving on various boards. He was also
president of the Rockford Symphony
Board, president of the Cosmopolitan
Club, president of Hospice in Rockford
and an active Rotarian. Jeanette became
a successful real estate saleswoman after
leaving the nursing field. She, too, is an
active member of Bethesda Covenant
Church.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Midway Village Museum
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Midway Village Museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-2001
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Language
A language of the resource
English
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Lorraine Lightcap
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
V. Stewart & Jeanette Fisher
Location
The location of the interview
Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
V. Stewart & Jeanette Fisher
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1-Oct-01
Description
An account of the resource
V. Stewart Fisher was born in 1918 and enlisted in the Army during World War II. He died October 7, 2005. Jeanette Fisher, born May 1917, volunteered as a nurse in 1943. She died November 21, 2012.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War 2
World War II
-
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4792b71abefa6f36200663cf3740c70e
PDF Text
Text
Thomas B. Harker
Thomas B. Harker
Transcribed by Lorraine Lightcap
Edited by Margaret Lofgren
Midway Village & Museum Center
6799 Guilford Road
Rockford, Illinois 61107
Phone 397 9112
Page 1
�Thomas B. Harker
Page 2
Thomas B. Harker
Pilot in the South Pacific
Today is May 11, 1994. My name is Charles Nelson.
I am a volunteer with Midway Village in Rockford,
Illinois, which is cooperating with a statewide effort
to collect oral histories from Illinois citizens that
participated in the momentous events surrounding
World War II. We are in the office of Midway
Village in Rockford, Illinois, interviewing Mr.
Thomas B. Harker. Mr. Harker served in a branch of
the United States Armed Forces during World War II.
We are interviewing him about his experiences in
that war.
NELSON: Tom, would you please start by
introducing yourself to us. Give us your full name,
place and date of birth. We would also like to have
the names of each one of your parents and did you
have any brothers or sisters?
HARKER: Yes. My name is Thomas Bartelt Harker.
I was born on August 6th, 1919, in Janesville,
Wisconsin. I am a twin, a fraternal twin. My
brother’s name is Charles Bartelt Harker. I have two
brothers. The oldest brother was Frederik Daniel
Harker and the middle brother; his name was Louis
Ernest Harker.
NELSON: Are there any details about your parents
and/or your family that you would like to give?
HARKER: Yes. Okay. My father’s name was Daniel
Clarence Harker. He was born June 29th, 1876 in
Marion, Ohio. He died April 25th, 1963. He was 87
years old. My mother’s name is Ella Caroline Harker.
Her maiden name was Bartelt. Her birth date was
September 28th, 1881 in Farmington, Wisconsin. She
died October 4th, 1959 at the age of 78. Both sides of
the family, both father and mother came from
farming families where they had large families.
Naturally they needed the boys in the family to help
take care of the farm.
NELSON: What was life like before the war,
especially during 1941?
HARKER: Okay. I graduated from high school in
1937. This was after the depression years. My parents
could not afford to send us to college at that time so
both my twin brother, Charles, and myself worked in
factories in the Geneva, Illinois, area. When Charley
and I were a year and a half old, our parents moved
from Janesville, Wisconsin, to Geneva, Illinois. After
working for three years and I’d saved approximately
$500, I decided if I ever were ever going to start
school, now was the time to do it. So I took my $500
and went to Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa. I
was 21 there and had to register for the draft
naturally. I was there at Cornell College on
December 7th, 1941--that’s correct, isn’t it--and was
listening to my radio on a Sunday afternoon when the
announcement came over.
NELSON: What was your reaction response of that
event?
HARKER: I knew that the war was somewhat
imminent but my immediate reaction was I knew I
would be involved in it. I knew that I would be a
willing volunteer for it but I decided I wanted to
decide myself what particular branch of the service I
would prefer to be in. Since I’m only 5 foot 6 tall, I
decided that trenches weren’t for me if I could
qualify for something else. So I virtually made up my
mind at that time, I was going to head for the U. S.
Army Air Corp at that time. It later became the Air
Force.
NELSON: Have you formed any prior opinion or
developed any feeling about what was taking place in
Europe and Asia?
HARKER: Yes. Naturally I was disturbed as much
as anybody else of the brutal attacks of the German
forces under the leadership, dictatorship of Adolph
Hitler. I felt very--a lot of compassion for the people
over in England and wasn’t exactly eager to go to
war but if our country was going to be involved then
I was prepared to go.
NELSON: Do you recall reading newspaper
accounts of German aggression in Europe?
HARKER: Yes.
NELSON: Do you have any knowledge of Hitler’s
speeches, ideas or actions?
HARKER: I had, of course, observed some of these
in the newsreels and concluded that he was pretty
much of a violent person.
NELSON: What events led to your entry into
military service? Were you drafted or did you
volunteer?
�Thomas B. Harker
HARKER: I was registered for the draft. At that
time, if I remember correctly, I think you had to have
a prerequisite of two years of college to enter the Air
Corp so I sought and obtained deferments until I did
get my freshman and sophomore year out of the way.
It so happened then that later on that requirement was
deleted. So I immediately then volunteered for the
Army Air Corp.
NELSON: Was your response in entering military
service influenced by family and friends attitudes
towards the war a threat to national security or any
other consideration.
HARKER: I know that my parents were worried
about it but they never ever spoke against it. They
were obviously concerned about the disaster that was
happening to France and England and I guess that
about sums it up.
NELSON: When and where were you inducted?
HARKER: I was inducted in Chicago, Illinois, in the
fall of 1942.
NELSON: Do you have any special memories of this
event?
HARKER: Yes. There were a large number of us got
on a troop train and headed for San Antonio, Texas,
where I entered the pre-flight training program for
the Army Air Corp.
NELSON: How old were you at the time?
HARKER: 1941 I would be twenty-two years old.
NELSON: What happened after you were inducted?
Where were you sent?
HARKER: Okay. I completed my pre-flight that was
ground schooling requirements for the Army Air
Corp at San Antonio, Texas. I was sent to Hicks
Field, in Fort Worth, Texas, for my primary flight
training. From there I went to Perrin Field in
Sherman, Texas for my basic training. The airplanes
used then were both single engine airplanes. We were
asked what we would prefer later on in combat,
whether it would be fighters or bombers. I chose
bombers so therefore I went to twin engine advanced
flight school at Houston, Texas, Ellington Field,
Houston, Texas, and received my wings there.
NELSON: What did you think of the training?
HARKER: Our training was excellent, I would
judge--I didn’t know in details what kind of training
Page 3
people received in other countries but I was very
much impressed.
NELSON: Tell us about other training camps you
attended if you had more.
HARKER: Okay. After I finished there I was sent to
Sebring, Florida, to go into transition training in the
B17 bombers. When I completed that, my instructor
was impressed with my progress and he had
recommended me as a potential instructor, so I was
sent from there to the Army Air Force School of
Flight Tactics in Orlando, Florida. Their function was
to train new cadres of bomb groups that were formed.
This was getting later on in the war. The European
war, of course, was fully advanced at that time and
we didn’t have very many cadres coming through. I
was able to build up 450 hours of flying time in the
B17 program as first pilot so when the B29 program
came along I was eligible for the left seat in the B29.
NELSON: Did you have any leaves or passes?
HARKER: Yes. Let’s see. I’ve got to think about it.
I think there was a short leave after I finished
advanced flying school before I went into the B17
and also had a short leave in between my completion
of duty at Army Air Force School of Applied Tactics
and going into B29 Training Program.
NELSON: What do your recall in this period about
the places that you were stationed, the friends you
made, your association with civilians.
HARKER: My experiences were all good. Fort
Worth, Texas, was a fairly good-sized city and there
weren’t an awful lot of military bases immediately
around it so, we as aviation cadets, were very well
received by the citizens. We were invited to parties
and invited to their homes for dinner and things like
that.
NELSON: Okay. This is participation in the conflict.
Where did you go after completing your basic
military training?
HARKER: Okay. For a pilot you’re probably
referring to his first overseas in combat.
NELSON: Yes.
HARKER: I might include when I was at Hicks
Field in primary flight training--at that time I was
dating Bernice Everett. She came down to see me and
we became engaged. We said we were going to be
�Thomas B. Harker
sensible and wait until this war was over before we
would consider marriage. When I found out that I
was going into the B29 program, I knew I had nine
months in the United States before I’d go overseas.
We got talking one time on the phone and decided to
get married. So I was married and spent my
honeymoon really in transit from Orlando, Florida,
out to Dalhart, Texas, where I was to start my B29
training.
NELSON: When you were sent overseas, how did
you get there?
HARKER: When I finished the B29 training--started
in Dalhart, Texas, and ended up in Fairmont,
Nebraska, and from there I was sent down to
Harrington, Kansas, and I picked up a B29 and
ferried it overseas. I flew from Harrington, Kansas to
Sacramento, California, from there, overseas. The
reason I did this, I was assigned to a bomb squadron.
We had 16 crews in it and the table of organization
only called for 15. On the legal papers the other 15
crews went overseas in mass. They all flew overseas
and of course that squadron wanted me badly in it so
I was given this ferrying assignment and I joined
them about a week later.
NELSON: What were you assigned to do after
arriving?
HARKER: I was naturally airplane commander of
my crew. We ran a couple of training flights from our
base, which was Tinian in the Marianas and flew a
practice mission down to a little island, Truk Island,
which was south of Guam. I arrived on Tinian on
January 1st of 1945 and probably flew my first
mission in early February--my first mission to Japan.
NELSON: What did you think of the nation’s war
efforts up to this point?
HARKER: I was proud of the fact that we had made
so much progress in the South Pacific. It was a long
haul after our initial defeat immediately after Pearl
Harbor. It was a long haul to establish our bases in
the Pacific and this job wasn’t completed when I
started flying missions. Initially we had to fly nonstop from Tinian to Japan and back. That was a round
trip of 3000 miles. The average mission time was 14
½ to 15 hours. Approximately in March of that year,
our forces took Iwo Jima which then enabled us, if
we ran into a lot of damage over the target or if we
were running low on gasoline, we could come back
and land at Iwo Jima, which was half way between
Tinian and Japan.
Page 4
NELSON: You say your first mission was to Japan.
Can you remember anything special that happened on
that mission?
HARKER: Yes. That first one was to Japan and it
was a night mission. We dropped incendiary bombs
on the target. I believe, on that first mission, that we
burned 16 square miles of Tokyo.
NELSON: Can you list for us in order of occurrence
all subsequent combat action in which you were
involved?
HARKER: It’ll be a long list. I completed 35
missions.
NELSON: Outstanding ones.
HARKER: Outstanding, huh? Well, let’s see.
NELSON: From your memory.
HARKER: I can remember one humorous incident.
We were scheduled for a night bombing mission to
Nagoya, Japan, and the Japanese had a little airplane
that was called the Baka. It was a suicide aircraft. It
had an explosive charge in it. It was carried by the
“Betty” and if they found some B29s, they would try
to drop this thing above the B29s and the fellow
would steer the controls into it and try to ram you and
shoot you down. We were headed on our approach
into Nagoya. These were night missions were all
single __?__ formation and my gunners called up and
said, “We think there’s a Baka following us”
because they saw a big glow in the back. My instant
reaction was to thrust the throttles forward to the firewall to get some speed. I did a little bit of a turn and
looked back and it was kind of cloudy evening and
what I saw back there was the glow from the moon
coming up on the horizon and that’s what it turned
out to be.
NELSON: How about casualties that occurred on
you missions.
HARKER: We would occasionally receive damage
on the airplane from their flak, the firing of their flak,
but when you’re flying and flak is bursting around
you the concussion rattles the aluminum in the
airplane. You really can’t distinguish between a miss
or a hit because of the noise it creates. Sometimes we
wouldn’t find the point of damage until we got back
the next morning and looked the airplane over. On
one mission, I had a member of my crew who was
wounded. We--It was a night mission. I take it back.
It was a daylight mission to Japan and in this mission
�Thomas B. Harker
we changed our routine. Formerly we used to fly in a
loose formation from Tinian at low altitude up to
Japan and then we climbed upI’ve got to take it
back. What I’m describing is the new approach was
to fly a loose formation, low to the water, get up near
Japan and then climb up to bombing altitude. When
we got near Japan and started to climb, we got into a
little bit of a frontal situation. Visibility became so
bad we had to break the formation apart and then go
through a procedure to try to reform up on the top.
When we got up to the announced altitude of 27,000
feet, the visibility was still poor and we saw one
__?__ plane element ahead of us put on some speed
and tried to catch up with it. Just by a stroke of luck a
Japanese fighter came to us on a head on approach
and of course the rate of closure was so great that our
gunners never ever got a shot fired off. The Japanese
aircraft was lucky. They had two shots and we
thought they might be as big as 20 mm. One of them
hit in the nose of the airplane. It went right through
the Plexiglas and would have gone through my
stomach except behind the instrument panel we had a
quarter to three-eighths thick armor plate. Then from
the instrument panel clear to the top of the shape of
the airplane we had a Plexiglas sandwiches about two
inches thick. The bullet exploded off the armor plate,
threw shrapnel. It hit my bombardier in the big vein
in his left arm and blood just shot out of there like a
geyser. The second bullet hit in the right wing and
knocked all the engine instruments off of engines,
number 3 and 4, cut the throttle cable on number 4,
hit the main hydraulic system. All the pressure went
down to zero. My engineer behind me he just
hollered, “We we’ve been hit. We lost two engines.”
I could tell we did because the airplane did go into a
yaw position and I elected under these conditions
with a wounded man and the conditions of those two
engines that I couldn’t go on to the target. I
immediately dove down hoping in this poor visibility
to be hidden but it seemed like everything kind of
cleared up then. We finally got down to a decent
altitude. There was a big enough hole in the Plexiglas
nose, we were losing cabin pressure, so I got down to
the decent altitude and we leveled off and checked
everything out thoroughly on the airplane. Called the
radio operator who was trained in first aid to come up
and take care of Wycoff, the bombardier. Got him
bandaged up and gave him a pint of blood plasma
and headed on back. Now this is before Iwo Jima so
we had to make it all the way back. When we
approached Tinian and got into my final landing
approach. I had to feather #4 because I had no control
over the throttle speed. As far as the loss of the other
engine instruments was concerned, I could trim the
propeller pitch and the speed of the crank-shaft which
is done by adjusting the propeller pitch so I could get
Page 5
all of them pretty much aligned up. We got on the
ground and made a good landing and I used the
emergency brakes which was a pair of handles that
you tugged down on. You only had for pulls on it.
You used all the accumulated pressure but we go out
okay and the bombardier got fixed up.
NELSON: Did you put a tourniquet or something on
his arm to prevent bleeding then or
HARKER: Yes. The radio operator put a tourniquet
on there somewhat and put a bandage on it but of
course you can’t leave a tourniquet on in definitely
but he got the bleeding under control.
NELSON: How was your mental attitude as you got
into more combat? What did you think of the war so
far?
HARKER: The war was
NELSON: I don’t write these questions.
HARKER: The war was tough but we had a very
excellent airplane. The cabin was pressurized. We
could develop all the heat in the world we needed
inside. It was comfortable. We naturally over the
target area wore our oxygen masks in the event you
got big enough flak holes and you decompressed that
you didn’t have to scramble around for an oxygen
mask. You were already prepared. We had flak vests
that we put on which was flexible armor that covered
your chest area and a flak helmet. All these were
designed so you could quickly dispense of them. On
the flak vest you just pulled one string and the whole
thing just popped off. The same thing with the helmet
in case you ever thought you were going to have to
bail out of the airplane.
NELSON: Did you wear heated suits?
HARKER: Our suits were not heated and we didn’t
need it up there. Compared to the B17 aircraft that
had a heating systemI believe it used ethylene
glycol as a heat transfer fluid and they had all kinds
of problems with those failing. When you up to
altitude they were working in temperatures of fifty
below zero. I will honestly admit we didn’t have the
opposition in the flak and guns on the ground in
Japan that they did over in Europe.
NELSON: But you had the water.
HARKER: But if we got in trouble we had an
awfully long swim to get back. Fortunately the water
�Thomas B. Harker
was more reasonable temperature out in the Pacific
than it was over in the English Channel.
Page 6
NELSON: This is prior to the end of the war.
HARKER: Prior to the end of the war.
NELSON: Did you write many letters home?
HARKER: Yes, I did write letters to my wife and to
my parents. Of course I was always upbeat in them. I
never alluded to the dangers we had to face. I ought
to say in this description that my twin brother was a
B17 pilot and he went to England with the 8th Air
Force. After talking to him I realized that they had a
much tougher job in flying against the Germans
because they were virtually in the combat zone after
they got in over the middle of the English Channel.
We flew for 6 ½ hours from Titian before we even
got into the combat zone.
NELSON: In fact we would mount our guns at take
offa lot of times from the bases because the
Germans knew that our guns were not mounted as we
took off. We mounted them after we would fly and
some how they found us out so that was a nice time
to pick off a bomber when he was unarmed.
HARKER: Oh, oh.
NELSON: Did you receive many letters or packages
from home and what type of packets did you get?
HARKER: Yes, we did receive some things at home
and it had to be items that could be shipped at room
temperature in the line of canned things like maybe
olives and, if I remember correctly, maybe be could
have some forms of cheese, too. Occasionally we
would have a little party in the barracks and we’d
have a little beer with cheese and olives and that.
NELSON: Did most of the other men write or
receive letters?
HARKER: Yes.
NELSON: Did you forge close bonds of friendship
with many or some of your combat companions?
HARKER: Yes, I did and I am in contact with some
of them today.
NELSON: Okay, that answers the next question.
Some of these questions are more or less for people
on the ground I think. Prior to the end of the war
were you aware of any civilian concentration camps
existing? If so, please explain how you learned about
them and how much you knew at that time?
HARKER: This is prior to the end of the war?
NELSON: This is about the German concentration
camps unless the Japanese had them. I don’t know if
they did.
HARKER: Yeah. I guess I didn’t know as much
about the details of the German concentration camps
prior to the end of the war as I did after I got home.
As far as the Japanese were concerned, we knew that
they hated our guts. I had made up my mind that my
last resort would be to have to bail out over Japan. If
I had the remotest possibility of safely getting the
airplane down in the sea at some reasonable distance
south of Japan, I would do that because we had
submarine dumbo duty there. We could call them up.
We could give them an accurate position where we
were going down. I would be more willing to gamble
on that than to bail my crew out becausesince then,
after the war is over, we knew that there were quite a
few B29 crews especially the officers, were beheaded
in their camps over there.
NELSON: What was the highlight occurrence of
your combat experience or any other experiences you
remember?
HARKER: Of course, we were all elated when the
war ended. I happened to be on [a] mine laying
mission that night when the surrender was announced
and we completed the mission. When we got home
the camp went nuts. The guys were firing their pistols
up in the air and everything else. We used to joke and
say we were probably safer in the airplane coming
back from the mine-laying mission but naturally we
were all elated about that. Then we flew a “show of
strength” mission up to Japan on the day the
surrender was signed on the deck of the Missouri in
Tokyo Bay. We took a portion of our forces and
made a “race track” circle around Japan so as to make
it look like three times as many airplanes but we were
still wary. We had every gun loaded with a hundred
rounds of ammunition because we flew this in
daylight at about 5000 feet. If eventually any diehards were going to come up and attack us we were
at least going to get a hundred shots per gun at them.
NELSON: Tell us what you and the other men did to
celebrate America’s traditional family holidays such
as Thanksgiving and Christmas.
HARKER: Naturally--Well, let’s see. I got overseas
on January 1st of ’45 and came back about first part
of October in ’45 so I really missed Thanksgiving
�Thomas B. Harker
and Christmas overseas. I can tell you one
experience. When we were scheduled to fly overseas
from Harrington, Kansas, with this airplane we
ferried over on the 24th of December, we would have
left earlier but Sacramento was completely fogged in
so they had delayed our takeoff. The announcement
was made that if it didn’t clear by three or four
o’clock in the afternoon, then we could stay over
Christmas. By golly it cleared so we got on board the
airplane. Of course, you can imagine me being
married that the night before that was disastrous,
trying to comfort my wife and tell her I was a good
enough pilot I was going to come back home even
though I didn’t think so or not.
NELSON: (End of tape. Could not make out what
Nelson said.)
HARKER: We talked about it. We knew ourselves
personally that the immediate arrival of our airplane
over there by Christmas wasn’t necessarily of that
importance since this was a new group going
overseas and they weren’t going to be operational for
about three or four weeks. So we said we’ll get her
out there and when we run out the engine check, I’ll
see if I can get the engines to detonate and we’ll see
if we can--or follow spark plugs--maybe we’ll go the
other way--too rich. Anyway if we get them to foul
out and we don’t check out why maybe this might
delay us and we get Christmas. Didn’t work out.
Everything checked out perfectly so we were on our
way and we got--approaching Albuquerque. We
radioed up ahead. Sacramento was still fogged in so
we let down and landed at Albuquerque and that’s
where we spent Christmas Eve.
NELSON: Did you keep that same airplane?
HARKER: No. That airplane I ferried over and it
was delivered to the 73rd Wing which was up on
Saipan and then they shuttled us from there over to
Tinian. We rejoined our 398
NELSON: Were you assigned an airplane then?
HARKER: I shared an airplane then with Captain
Guest.
NELSON: Do you remember the name of the
airplane?
HARKER: Didn’t have a name on it yet. Then he
was lost in one of the early missions so the
replacement airplane then was assigned to me. My
crew and I didn’t decide on any name or insignia on
Page 7
it. That airplane on its 13th mission was flown by a
replacement crew which got into trouble over the
target, lost an engine and attempted landing in Imo
Jim. For some kind of unknown reason they got off
the runway and hit a bulldozer. They all got out of
the airplane but it burned up. After that I didn’t get
my own airplane. I was assigned various airplanes
available.
NELSON: When and how did you return to the U. S.
after the end of the war?
HARKER: After the end of the war since my crew
had completed thirty-five missions we were put on
shipping status to return to the United States. Now
some of the other crews stayed with the B29
airplanes there and flew supplies up to the prisoner of
war camps after the end of the war. They shipped us,
our crew, out to Saipan awaiting passage on some
kind of a seagoing vessel. We spent about two
weeks--we’d spend four or five days in one camp and
they’d move us over to another one. Pretty soon we
got assigned to a Liberty-Kaiser transport ship. It
took that ship twenty days to get from Saipan to San
Francisco.
NELSON: Please tell us about your military rank
and decorations especially you campaign decorations.
HARKER: My rank was, when I was first assigned
to the B29 program was 1st Lieutenant. In about the
middle of my missions I was promoted to a captaincy
and this occurred when I was flying Dumbo duty
missions on Iwo Jima. My crew and myself were
assigned up there for a week. The purpose of Dumbo
is when there are losses on a mission we fly up at
about fifteen hundred feet. We search along the coast
of Japan where they made land fall and where they
made lands end looking for any potential people who
might be down in rubber rafts and things like that.
NELSON: Did you find any survivors.
HARKER: We did not find any survivors
unfortunately. Oh, the thing I was going to say is
when I was up there, one of the replacement Dumbo
crews coming up had learned from headquarters that
I had been promoted to captaincy. He took off his
captain’s bar off of his collar and pinned them on
mine and we flew back home. Decorations, I received
the Distinguished Flying Cross twice, and the air
Medal four times and there were some battle stars
awarded to us I don’t necessarily
NELSON: Campaign ribbons?
�Thomas B. Harker
HARKER: Campaign ribbons. I don’t necessarily
have all . . .
Page 8
HARKER: Yeah. Emotionally one of the most
difficult things was of course to leave my wife back
home when I was assigned overseas.
NELSON: How many missions were you in?
HARKER: Thirty-five.
NELSON: Is there any one thing that stands out as
your most successful achievement in the military
service?
NELSON: Now this is return to civilian life. How
did you get along with the men with whom you had
the greatest contact?
HARKER: You mean as far as our destruction we
did in the bombing missions or maybe my career
HARKER: Excellent. I had the greatest respect from
my crew and we had a good functioning crew. We
worked together and initially I tried to keep constant
contact with them. There were eleven of us on the
crew. As time went pretty soon on some of them
would drop off on correspondence. Today there are
nine of us that still survive. There are two who have
succumbed. I have since returning home seen all of
them except for one of the gunners.
NELSON: Were there things you would do
differently if you could do them once again?
HARKER: Oh maybe. When I mustered out since I
had subjected my wife to thirty-five combat missions
I debated whether I should attempt to stay in the Air
Force or not. I had two years of college under the belt
and if I was going to continue training, I decided to
become a mechanical engineer. The wife said, “If
you would do that I will work to help put you
through.” That’s the decision I made so I became a
mechanical engineer and have worked ever since in
the electronics military industry. I worked for Bell
Telephone laboratories in Whippany, New Jersey, for
four years; worked on the [Nike] missile system that
was the first anti aircraft missile system program. As
a matter of fact that was a life-saver because I had
been there maybe a year when the Korean War
started up and my wife called me up and I had a
telegram “Be in San Antonio in thirty days.” They
wanted B29 pilots for Korea. I got to go before what
was called a delay board and I was a single officer
and I had a letter from Bell lab stating how important
this Nikki missile system program was. Got off of
that order so I laid real low in the Reserves after that.
NELSON: What was the most difficult thing you had
to do during you period of military service?
HARKER: The most difficult thing.
NELSON: Besides combat.
NELSON: Your career probably.
HARKER: In my career when I was sent to Army
Air Force School of Applied Tactics. Four of us from
my B17 Transition School were sent down there
because we had high ratings and they didn’t
immediately have additional B17s. F-tac had two
training squadrons there as part of their __?__. One
of them was B24s and one of them was B17s. I was
assigned to B17s of course. We had to fly with other
first pilots down there for about the first three or four
weeks. Then they got two brand new B17Gs on the
base. The squadron commander decided to have a fly
off contest and he picked a day where we had a real
good cross wind. We had a single runway at Brooks
Field in [Brooksville], Florida. I just happened to be
lucky and grease the airplane in so I got one of the
new airplanes. That was a good achievement which
kept me in the program long enough so I eventually
became eligible for the B29 otherwise I would have
been overseas with my brother, Charlie, in the 8 th Air
Force with B17s.
NELSON: How did you learn about VE Day and
what was your reaction to it?
HARKER: That was the surrender in Europe. I guess
we learned of it probably via radio news and also I
believe I received a letter from my twin brother,
Charlie. Of course, we were very highly pleased.
NELSON: How about VJ Day?
HARKER: VJ thenOf course I learned that as I
explained previously. I was on a mine laying mission
at night when we got a radio message from base that
the surrender was imminent.
NELSON: What was your opinion of the use of the
atomic bomb when it was first used against Japanese
civilians in August of 1945?
HARKER: I think I’ll back our President Truman up
a hundred per cent. I know it’s a real tragic thing to
do to force the death on so many of their civilians but
�Thomas B. Harker
they were thoroughly beaten. Our B29 raids had
severely reduced their industrial capacity to make
war material but they just weren’t going to give up
unless we committed an invasion which was going to
kill many of our people. It would have been a very
difficult invasion due to the nature of their coast line.
So I’ll back Truman up. He had no choice. It was
either that or we were just going to flog along and
lose a lot of people ourselves.
Page 9
NELSON: Have you ever gone to the VA hospital
for medical services?
HARKER: No.
NELSON: Would you like to tell us how your family
supported during your military life?
HARKER: I was officially discharged from the
service in Denver, Colorado. I had talked to my wife
on the telephone and we elected to meet each other in
Denver. Then we went home together from that
point.
HARKER: Very well. Both familiesmy wife’s
family and my own familymy father-in-law was
very proud of me that I went through flying school.
In fact he was so proud he was a tool and die maker
by trade and then later on he eventually owned his
own business and manufacturing radio speakers.
Before I went overseas, he went into the shop and
made a machete for me out of tool steel, with a
leather handle and the whole works. He says, “Tom I
want you to take that along with you in case you have
to jump out.” In honor of that I actually strapped it
around my legs a couple of times. I think, maybe if I
had to parachute out I might cut it off so it wouldn’t
slop around and cut my leg off. He was especially
proud of me.
NELSON: Did you have a disability rating or
pension?
NELSON: Over subsequent years, what has this
support meant to you?
NELSON: Has that opinion changed over the last
fifty years?
HARKER: I think not.
NELSON: When and where were you officially
distorted from the service?
HARKER: I did not have any disability rating.
NELSON: Do you have any opinions or feelings
about our nation’s military status or its policies?
HARKER: I’m very proud of our military status
during the Persian Gulf War. Thoroughly pleased.
That was a potentially dangerous conflict. We only
lost a hundred people and that was because we went
into it in a prepared fashion. I realized that wasn’t
possible of course during thepartially during the
Korean War and especially during the Vietnam War
because of the fact that we allowed ourselves to
degrade military preparations.
NELSON: Do you have any contact with the
Veterans’ Administration?
HARKER: No. Don’t need to other than I maintain
my insurance.
HARKER: Very much. Very much. Both my wife
and myself were fortunate to have grown up in
families that were close knit. Parents who believed in
you do unto others as you’d like for them to do unto
you. They’re honest. During the depression years, my
dad could have been eligible to receive some of the
welfare type help at that time but he was too proud.
He was a salesman in auto accessories that went
down hill during the war. He sold vacuum cleaners
door to doorextracts and things like that. He was
just too proud to take a hand out as long as he was
capable of working. Same thing would be true of my
father-in-law.
NELSON: It was a real fine interview, Tom. Is there
anything else you’d like to add to that?
HARKER: I was awfully proud of my twin brother,
Charlie, who went with the 8th Air Force over in
England. To be perfectly honest, I’ll admit that he
faced a much tougher challenge than I did. I hand it
to him.
NELSON: Do you have an opinion of the VA?
HARKER: Yes. I think it’s important for the people
who need their services that are available. The people
who need the hospitalization care and the ones that
are eligible I guess for disability help, disability
pensions. I’m sure they need that help.
HARKER: I couldn’t say much because we weren’t
allowed to say much but I tried to give him a little
advice in my letters.
NELSON: Well, thank you fellows. That is really
great.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
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Midway Village Museum
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Midway Village Museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-2001
Rights
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Midway Village Museum
Language
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English
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Charles Nelson
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Thomas Harker
Location
The location of the interview
Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
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Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Thomas Harker
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
May 11, 1994
Description
An account of the resource
Born August 6, 1919, Thomas Harker joined the Army Air Corps as a pilot. He died April 29, 2013.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War 2
World War II
-
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PDF Text
Text
Thomas D. Gilbert——Page 1
Thomas D. Gilbert
645 Francis Avenue
Loves Park, IL 61111
Transcribed by Elaine Carlson
Midway Village & Museum Center
6799 Guilford Road
Rockford, Illinois 61107
Phone 397 9112
�Thomas D. Gilbert——Page 2
Thomas D. Gilbert
___________3, [1994]. My name is Charles Nelson.
I am a volunteer with the Midway Village & Museum
Center which is cooperating in a state-wide effort to
collect oral histories from Illinois citizens that
participated in events surrounding World War II. We
are in the home of Tom Gilbert whose address is. . .
NELSON: Okay. Any special details about your
family or any special event that you would like to tell
about your family? Did they come over—Did your
parents came over from the old country?
GILBERT: My mother came over from the old
country when she was about 18.
GILBERT: 645 Francis Avenue.
NELSON: Which country.
NELSON: 645 Francis Avenue.
GILBERT: Loves Park.
NELSON: Loves Park. Okay. Mr. Gilbert is an
ex-prisoner of war in World War II. We are going to
interview him about his experiences of about 50
years ago. Can I call you Tom?
GILBERT: Mmhm.
NELSON: Okay. Let’s start out with your full name.
GILBERT: Thomas D. Gilbert.
NELSON: D?
GILBERT: Cork, Ireland. She came over and she
was still
NELSON: She met your Dad over here?
GILBERT: Yes. She had the brogue all her life.
NELSON: Okay. What was your life like just before
the war?
GILBERT: It was good. I was talking about getting
married. Going steady and then the war broke out so I
postponed that a little bit and after I went into the
service, I married my wife prior to going overseas
which was only a matter of a week.
GILBERT: D as in dog.
NELSON: Where were you born?
NELSON: Back up a little bit. Did you graduate high
school?
GILBERT: I was born here in Rockford, Illinois.
GILBERT: Yes, St. Thomas High School.
NELSON: What date?
NELSON: And what year?
GILBERT: January 19, 1921.
GILBERT: ’39.
NELSON: Can you give us your parents’ names?
Particularly your mother’s maiden name?
NELSON: Did you have a job before the war?
GILBERT: My father’s name was Louis R. Gilbert
and my mother’s name was Catherine Quirk, her
maiden name.
NELSON: Did you have any brothers or sisters?
GILBERT: I had 3 brothers and 1 sister.
NELSON: And their names?
GILBERT: The oldest was Charlie Gilbert, Louie
Gilbert and Eddie Gilbert. And then I had a sister
Aileen Gilbert.
GILBERT: Yes. I was working as a printer with
Wilson-Hall Printing Company.
NELSON: What thoughts did you have just before
the war? Did you remember news items about Hitler
and what was going on over in Europe? Do you
remember that?
GILBERT: Not too much because it didn’t seem like
there would be a war coming. My wife and I, sitting
in the theater—the lights went out and they notified
us about Pearl Harbor.
NELSON: Oh, that’s where you were on Pearl
Harbor day?
�Thomas D. Gilbert——Page 3
GILBERT: That’s when we first started really being
worried about the war. And when it came to being
drafted, I was one of the first they took.
GILBERT: That’s in Texas. Just across the border
from Juarez and I went through my training there and
then I was sent to Tucson, Arizona.
NELSON: Was this your basic training?
NELSON: Okay. What was your reaction to Pearl
Harbor?
GILBERT: We thought it was terrible, the same as
everybody else. But not really realizing how bad it
was, but still thought it was a terrible thing to happen.
And I felt right away that I would be into it before
long.
NELSON: Your number was coming up, in other
words, for the draft? What events led up to your entry
into the military service? How were you drafted, or
when were you drafted?
GILBERT: I was drafted about August 15th or so
and then they gave me so many days. I went into the
service on September 1, 1942.
NELSON: How about your family? What did they
think about your going into the service?
GILBERT: I hated to go, of course, and everybody
hated to see me go but it was something I had to do.
NELSON: Couldn’t get out of it.
GILBERT: No, I didn’t try to get out of it. I knew it
was something I had to do.
NELSON: When you were drafted, where did you go
for the physical?
GILBERT: I went to Chicago for the physical and
then they sent me down to Camp Grant and gave me
examinations and physicals and everything there and
then they transferred me to Jefferson Barracks in St.
Louis. I was there only a short time and they moved
me over to Scott Field in Belleville, Illinois, and they
put me into radio school there.
NELSON: How old were you at this time?
GILBERT: At that time I was 21 years old. So they
put me into radio school and then moved me out of
there when I went through the full course. I was sent
down to [Biggs] Field for training.
GILBERT: This was my Air Force training. From
there they sent me to Florida, to Buckingham Field,
for gunnery training. I had my 6 or 7 weeks of
gunnery training, maybe 2 months. And from that
point they sent me to Tucson, Arizona, and there I
met the members of the crew. They put all the crew
together and we got all acquainted and started flying
together for practice missions and so forth.
NELSON: When you were drafted, how did you end
up in the Air Force?
GILBERT: Well, after taking all the examinations
they said that was where they would place me.
NELSON: Okay. You didn’t volunteer?
GILBERT: No, I didn’t volunteer. I could have been
in the Infantry or anywhere, but that’s where
NELSON: They didn’t give you a choice.
GILBERT: No they didn’t give me a choice.
NELSON: What were you trained to do?
GILBERT: But that not given a choice, but that’s
still where I would still have wanted to be, in the Air
Corp. Everybody wanted to get in the Air Force.
NELSON: What were you trained to do?
GILBERT: Radio operator.
NELSON: Can you tell us something about your
training?
GILBERT: Well, we had to go to class and learn
everything about the radio, Morse code, and all the
different types of equipment we would have to use on
the plane. And we went through about 6 to 8 week
course in that. And then we had to go from there into
a training period where we flew on the airplane and
made all the different communications with the
ground and other airplanes and so forth so we would
be prepared to go into battle.
NELSON: Where is that at?
NELSON: Was there a unit designation in your
training.
�Thomas D. Gilbert——Page 4
GILBERT: Not a unit. No.
NELSON: Just training? Did you enjoy this training?
Did you think it was adequate?
GILBERT: I enjoyed it, yes. I think they gave us
plenty of education. They gave us plenty of time to
learn. Our training period was pretty short. In fact we
were used as an emergency crew to go overseas
immediately to fill in for a mission over there that
was going to take place August 1st at the Ploesti
airfield.
NELSON: That was ’42?
GILBERT: ’43. August 1st, 1943. It made me leave
quicker. I was actually on my honeymoon at the time
and they came right into the hotel with the MPs and
said I had to go immediately back to camp. They took
me back to camp and told me I was going to leave for
overseas, but not where. I had to go back and get my
wife and put her on a train and send her home and
then I came back with the MPs and they put me on a
plane. They outfitted me for real cold weather, heavy
underwear, heavy clothing.
NELSON: This was in Arizona?
GILBERT: This was in Lincoln, Nebraska, where
we got together for moving out. So we figured we
were going to Alaska or somewhere and we got on
the train and started going East and we went to Maine
and then across to Scotland and they
GILBERT: By ship or by plane?
GILBERT: By plane. They took all our clothing
from us and gave us summer clothing. Then I went to
Africa. They moved me back to London, back to
Africa, back to London and then back to Africa and
then I got to the air base just in time when they called
for—they were going to Polaski [Ploesti] the next
day.
NELSON: What unit was this?
GILBERT: I was in the 93rd Bomb Group. It was
called Feds Flying Circus. It usually started as a
group of 6 performers and they would put an end
toTed Timberlake was the commander. He later
headed the Veterans Administration. He headed the
VA for maybe 10 years—15 years maybe. So the
flight was ready to take off and all of a sudden they
called for Sergeant Gilbert. I went to the headquarters
and they said I was going to fly on that mission with
another group. Somebody on the crew that I was
replacing refused to fly.
NELSON: This was in Africa?
GILBERT: This was in Africa. Libya. Benghazi,
Libya.
NELSON: This was your first mission?
GILBERT: That was my first mission. The toughest
worst mission I ever made and it was a mission
where we took 174 airplanes over 1200 miles in and
1200 miles back and we lost over half of them.
NELSON: Do you remember the date?
GILBERT: August 1st, 1943. We got up at 3 o’clock
in the morning and we took off from Africa and
bombed the target.
NELSON: Were these B24s?
GILBERT: B24 heavy bombers. My airplane hit one
of the cables of the balloons—that held the
balloons—we were flying only 20 feet off the
ground.
NELSON: Were these barrage balloon?
GILBERT: My plane was flying about 20 feet off
the ground.
NELSON: How about anti-aircraft?
GILBERT: There was still anti-aircraft, but we were
too low. They were shooting at us with every kind of
gun you can think of from the ground. We were right
on the ground and stayed there until we left the
target. Then after bombing the entire oil fields we
headed right straight back individually. We never
went with the group. We all took off by ourselves and
headed back. On my airplane we had about 3 dead
and we had to throw out equipment to make the plane
lighter because we didn’t have enough fuel to get all
the way back.
NELSON: Did you prepare to bail out?
GILBERT: No. I didn’t even carry a parachute.
They didn’t want to carry the weight. So we were
flying just off the ground all the way back so the
fighters that were coming at us couldn’t go under us
and shoot. We had over 250 bullet holes in the
airplane so you can imagine how we were shot at.
�Thomas D. Gilbert——Page 5
But we did make it back. We hit our airfield and we
just ran out of fuel as we hit the field. I was injured. I
was shot in the left leg and back and so forth.
NELSON: At that time.
GILBERT: Yes, at that time. So they took me in to
the hospital right away and cut all the flack out of me
and sent me back to my
NELSON: How long were you in the hospital?
GILBERT: I was in the hospital and had the flack
cut out about 2 hours.
NELSON: And then they sent you back where?
GILBERT: Well, we were coming in at different
times. So, as one group went through and dropped
everything, another group came through in the same
area as the bombs were blowing up and they were
only 50-60 feet off the ground, so they got the brunt
of it.
NELSON: So you lost that one?
GILBERT: We lost a lot that way. My group, even
though we were one of the first groups through, we
lost our lead plane with our Commander, Colonel
Baker. He got a Congressional Medal of Honor. And
we also lost, oh maybe, ¾ of our group. We went out
with about 26 airplanes and probably lost 20 or them.
And that was 10 men aboard each plane.
NELSON: Did the Russians attack this field, too?
GILBERT: To my group. But I still had a lot of
flack in me, because it was coming out for years. The
wounds were all flack wounds, not bullet wounds.
But I was just full of it. When I took my boot off, I
turned it upside down and blood poured out like
you’d pour it out of a bucket. We were in the air for
1200 miles and that was bleeding all that time.
NELSON: How about the rest of them? You said
there were 3 dead.
GILBERT: The pilot made it back and the co-pilot. I
was in the back of the plane where we had all the
damage. The whole airplane was shot up. When we
opened the doors to come out of the airplane, blood
just rolled out onto the ground. There was blood all
over.
NELSON: Can you remember the unit for the
record?
GILBERT: I was in the 330th Bomb Squadron of the
93rd Bomb Group. I was in the 2nd air wing.
NELSON: How do you think that raid performed?
And what were the results?
GILBERT: They told me it destroyed the oil wells.
We hit it perfectly as far as knocking out everything,
although there was an error by one group that went
in. One group went through and dropped bombs and
they went through another group’s area. We were set
up with 5 groups going through hitting 5 different
areas.
NELSON: Spread out?
GILBERT: Prior to us going over we were told at
our briefing that the Russians took a group of
airplanes over to bomb it and they lost all their
airplanes. In fact at our briefing, we were taken out in
an area away from the rest of the group—the 93rd
Bomb Group—for those that weren’t flying, so that
we were isolated from them, and they told us when
we go on this mission, Colonel Baker made the
statement that “we may lose every one of you”, he
said. He said, “This is actually—we may none of us
come back, but we’ll accomplish what will end the
war” and so it didn’t make you feel too good.
NELSON: That was my next question. How did you
feel about that?
GILBERT: He himself was killed in that raid and his
whole crew went down. In fact, his crew, as we were
going into the target, he was right in front of me and
he got hit and there was a building there—a big
munitions building and he steered his plain right into
the building and it exploded and took the whole thing
out. We were so low the guys couldn’t parachute out
of an airplane. And all the way back from there to
Libya, I could see these airplanes shot down one at a
time. They were all [trying], burning. I must have
seen two of them hit the ground and blow up and they
were all spread out all over.
NELSON: Did you see anybody bail out?
GILBERT: Nobody could bail out. I have seen guys
bail out and hit the ground. Parachutes wouldn’t
open. When you’re that low you couldn’t bail out. In
our airplane, we didn’t even carry parachutes. So it
wouldn’t do any good to bail out anyway, but there
were some planes that did.
�Thomas D. Gilbert——Page 6
NELSON: After you got back and your leg patched
up, did you ever think you ever wanted to go back?
GILBERT: Yeah, we were going into the target and
got hit by a rocket and knocked an engine out.
NELSON: Do you remember what date it was?
GILBERT: No and that scared the heck out of me. I
was scared to death.
NELSON: Now after you got patched up and got
back to your unit, how soon was it that you went out
on another one.
GILBERT: We went out 8 days later.
NELSON: In the same area?
GILBERT: No, we bombed a field in Bari, Italy. We
hit And 15 days later we were supposed to hit
[Tojo] Italy and on the way to it, we got hit and so we
had to abort and as we were aborting we dropped all
our bombs into the sea. But we went down and we
landed in a Sicilian air field and it was for fighter
planes and a B24—it didn’t seem possible we could
land on it—but we did and we were all bogged down
in the sand and everything. So the war was—the
Americans were coming in and the Germans were
leaving right where we landed. So we left our plane
and got into the fields and hid. Destroyed our bomb
sights and everything. The next day the Americans
were already in, so we went back to the camp where
the plane was. We had the engines repaired. This was
an army group and they put big trucks on our wheels
and pulled us out of the sand and then we lined up
and they were betting we would never make it out of
the field. It was impossible they thought, but we did.
We just barely made it out and got back to our base
the next day. So they were getting ready to send back
that we were missing in action. So we were only
about 2 days before we got back to our base in Libya.
NELSON: How many missions did you fly in all?
GILBERT: Well, actually just the 4.
NELSON: One to Romania, one to 2 to Italy ?
GILBERT: There was one to Tolesti, one to Bari,
another one to [Tojo] and one to England. We were
bombing an airfield and then we were shot down.
After the [Tojo] mission, we were all moved to
England and I flew out of England, one mission,
which made 5 missions. Made one mission and then
we came back and then I made another mission and
got shot down.
NELSON: Your last one, hmm?
GILBERT: It was September 15, 1943 at 8:30 in the
evening.
NELSON: No doubt of it.
GILBERT: What happened was. It was a very
strange thing. Prior to that the Germans used to
capture American B24s, put their own crews in them
and then go into a group and after they got in the
group, shoot the group up. And that happened a few
times. So after we got hit, we were on fire in one
engine. At that time, the bombardier and the
navigator bailed out. We made a turn
NELSON: Were they supposed to bail out?
GILBERT: Yeah, we were on fire. We were going
to go down, the pilot was trying to we were
heading to the channel. You could see the channel
right in front of us. We were setting here and the
channel right here. Our group had hit the target and
were on our way back, but we started [folding] into
our group, which was a “no no.” You were absolutely
not supposed to do it. The pilot
NELSON: So you were on your own after that?
GILBERT: So when we were on fire and it was
8:30—it was dark, or getting dark. They saw us
coming in, so every airplane in our group opened fire
on us and they just shot the dickens out of us thinking
we were an enemy group. Planes coming in we
lost an engine so we didn’t drop our bombs, we had
to make a turn to go back. They went on through, hit
the target and they started back. They were traveling
faster than we were so as they came through here, we
tried to join them and they just shot There was no
way we could have gotten back. We would have went
down anyway, but that had to kill a lot of our guys.
NELSON: Did you have any radio communication
with them?
GILBERT: Yeah, but at the time we lost our
oxygen, we lost out radio
NELSON: This was high altitude flying?
GILBERT: Mmhm, we were at 18,000 feet and they
sent one man back to tell us we had to get on oxygen
bottles because our oxygen was knocked out. We
�Thomas D. Gilbert——Page 7
didn’t know it but you don’t act correct then. So he
didn’t get a chance to tell us until we noticed the bell
went off to tell us to bail out. Well, where we go out,
there’s a door about so big that we keep the gun in,
the radio operator sometimes they go back and use
that gun. Well, the airplane was solid fire. It was on
fire from the front. It was like a blow torch, so I went
back to grab the gun, to take the gun out of the hatch,
so we could lift the hatch up so we could jump out.
Well, what happened is, I had burnt my hands clear
off. In fact from there on down
NELSON: From right above your wrist?
GILBERT: From here on down. It just sizzled when
I grabbed the gun. The gun was red hot. So, anyway,
one of the guys ran to the window and dropped. His
name was Howells. He lives in Florida now.
NELSON: Dropped out?
GILBERT: Dropped on the ground. He couldn’t
quite make the window. So I picked him up and
threw him out the window. Then I got ready to jump
out the window just as the airplane blew up. I was
really half way out the window when the airplane
blew up.
NELSON: So that kind of helped you.
GILBERT: Yeah. We had 6000 pounds of bombs
aboard. They were incendiary bombs.
NELSON: So you were actually blown out of the
plane?
GILBERT: Yeah. I was blown out of the plane.
NELSON: You were knocked unconscious?
GILBERT: I hit something that broke my left leg. I
don’t know if that was when it happened or not. I hit
the ground. But I threw the parachute on one side. I
only had it hooked on one side. You’re supposed to
hook it here and here and it open up from the front.
Well, I hooked it on this side. There was just one
buckle holding it but I went out the airplane and on
the way down there were so many fighters and they
kept firing at me, so then I lay limp in the parachute
so I looked dead. My parachute was on fire. It was
simmering you know. I was going down awfully fast
so when I hit the ground that was probably when I
broke my leg, my foot. So then with my I
managed to cover up the parachute and I started
walking.
NELSON: Did you know where you were?
GILBERT: I was in [Evette] France. And a guy
came out of a farm and asked me something and I
said, “I’m Americanish”. So he took me to a—I was
walking on my broken foot.
NELSON: Was this a Frenchman?
GILBERT: A Frenchman. So he took me down the
street to a house where 2 old ladies were in there and
he told them that I was an American. They prayed
over me and threw holy water and everything on me,
but I didn’t know much that was going on because I
was shot in the back and I had a couple other
wounds. In my head—I had one here.
NELSON: Right beside your forehead?
GILBERT: Can you see it?
NELSON: Oh, yeah.
GILBERT: And I had 2 hip long fragments
NELSON: On your right side.
GILBERT: But they were shells. They were
shooting at me from the airplane. They hit me 3 or 4
times. They couldn’t talk English so they finally got a
little girl about 9 or 10 years old. She could talk
English. She came in. They had me in a rocking chair
all covered up. She said, “We have to turn you over
to the Germans, because you are going to die tonight
and they will bury you where your family can find
you.” That’s what she told me.
NELSON: A little girl.
GILBERT: About 9 or 10 years old. I can remember
that. Then the Germans came and I had a 45 in my
they grabbed that and they grabbed everything they
could on me and threw me into a truck.
NELSON: Back up a little bit. Any of the other crew
members?
GILBERT: I didn’t know what happened to them.
NELSON: Never met them on the ground or saw any
of them?
GILBERT: After they threw me in the truck they
took me down to an ambulance and in the ambulance
there were 3 other guys, now I knew one was
�Thomas D. Gilbert——Page 8
Howells, the guy I threw out. Everybody was
groaning and I didn’t know who the other 2 were. But
we were the only ones shot down that day so they had
to be my crew. So, then they took me into an
interrogation center and in the interrogation center
they asked me who I was and who my co-pilot was
and everything and they kept hitting my hands, you
know. They were slapping my hands because they
were hurting so bad, I’d pass out. I would come to
and pass out.
Tape 1 - Part 2
train depot. I was laying on the floor and I looked
up and people were walking by and guys were around
and I passed out again. The next thing they did, they
picked me up in a gunny sack, took me on a train and
threw me in a corner and I woke up and went out and
woke up and went out and the next thing I knew, I
was in a hospital and they put me in this ____?_____
Hospital in Paris, France, and that’s where I was for 4
months but also ended up in there, one of my crew
members, 2 of them were in there but I didn’t know
one of them was in there for about 3 months. The
first one I knew was in there after I had been there a
month.
NELSON: What was his name?
GILBERT: Walker was one, Joe Walker and the
other fellow was Clarence House. In there I was
totally blind. I couldn’t see. I was all shot up. My
face was slit all the way across came down and
took my nose half off I was torn apart. So they had
a surgeon from Vienna, Austria, who went through
that St. Louis Jesuit Hospital.
NELSON: Oh, here in the States?
GILBERT: They brought him out of Vienna and he
did the plastic surgery on me. My whole face was
rebuilt. My nose was completely rebuilt, but I was
unconscious most of the time but when I came to,
they put me in a bathroom with a tube of water. They
would soak me in it because I was burned all over
and they had sheets over the mirrors. Every time I
went in, they had sheets over the mirrors, but one
time I went in and the sheet fell down and I looked at
myself and I dang near died. I couldn’t believe it.
NELSON: Is that why they had the sheets?
GILBERT: Yeah, so then I—I had no idea what I
looked like.
NELSON: Your feeling after that changed?
GILBERT: So then—well, after I was in there about
3 months, I got gangrene in my hands. It’s all
gangrene—all back there. After 50 years it’s still bad.
They told me they were going to take me up to the
operating room and cut both hands off at this point.
NELSON: Right above the wrist?
GILBERT: Yeah, about 3 inches above the wrist. I
was ready for it.
NELSON: You were ready for it.
GILBERT: So they took me up and laid me on the
table, started running around the table getting ready.
All of a sudden a voice came over—bomb nearby.
NELSON: This was in Paris?
GILBERT: American Air Force.
NELSON: This was in Paris?
GILBERT: Yes, in Paris. And geez I tell you.
Buildings wereglass was broken out of the
windows, tables were moved around and they started
cussing at me and said they were going to work on
their own people first and they took me back down to
the room. Well, when I was in the room, there was an
old (I thought she was old at the time) nun and she
came over and she brought over a pan of water and it
was yellow with herbs, like tin, and she would take
my hands, and she kept this up for 2 days and then
about 4 days later, the doctors came down again and
said they wanted to take my hands off. They looked
and said, “There’s no gangrene.” There wasn’t any.
They said they would watch it and that was the end of
it. From there on, nothing.
NELSON: Your hands recovered.
GILBERT: I am really so fortunate that that air force
hit nearby.
NELSON: Do you remember the name of the nun or
any of the people
GILBERT: No, I don’t remember. She was real
good to us, but guards had to come into the room
when she came in. I was on the 8th floor of the
hospital and each room had bars on the steel doors
and a guard would stand outside of the door looking
in through the opening. He was always there. And
when someone came in to work on us, they would
�Thomas D. Gilbert——Page 9
come in with them, so we were never able to talk to
each other and so when they would take us to the
bathroom or something, they would stay right with
you and bring you back.
NELSON: Did you know any of the other members
were there in the hospital?
GILBERT: Shortly, I knew House was there, but I
didn’t know Walker was there until a couple or 3
months later, and I never did get to see him, but I
knew he was there.
GILBERT: Other fliers. Those who were shot down
and the people just hung them by their feet, or
testicles and I had to see that. And there were 4
guards on us and they marched us on through—so
when we were on the airplane, when we had to go to
the toilet, we did it right there—but they took us to
where there 10 stalls and the maintenance man would
open the door and a person would walk in and do
what they had to do and they would walk out and the
next person would go in, but when they put us in
there, they left the doors open and it was terrible.
NELSON: They had to keep track of you.
NELSON: You were there 4 months you said.
GILBERT: I was actually shot down September
15th. They took me in there about the 17th maybe and
December 20th they moved me out of there.
NELSON: That was in ’43?
GILBERT: Mmhm, ’43. They moved me out of
there and Walker. The other guy was still there. They
took us down to the train depot in Paris and I was still
so weak and bleeding. I was still bleeding from my
hands, bleeding from my head.
NELSON: They didn’t make you walk, did they?
GILBERT: Yeah. They had 4 guards on us—2 of us.
When we got to the train and all of a sudden, the
commander in the train came running up to us.
Hoffman, a captain, and he took a swing and knocked
us both down and stomped on us and kicked us. The
4 guards just standing there watching. He kicked us,
he half killed us.
GILBERT: Yeah. So then they put us back on the
train to go again. Then they put us on another train
and took us to Frankfort on the train and they put us
into an interrogation center. Well, when I got in the
interrogation center, they put me down about 3
floors. Way down. They opened this door up and the
floor was all dirt with a stool in the corner. Couldn’t
see out and mice running all over the floor and I’m
bleeding like everything. So they throw me in this
corner and I’m setting there with my hands like this
and I hear a squeaking and the mice and everything,
all bloody. I just about went crazy. So then they took
me out of there and asked me who my co-pilot was
and I wouldn’t tell them nothing. So they took me
down to the room and put a chain around this wrist
and a chain around this wrist and put me over a hook.
NELSON: Put you over a hook?
GILBERT: Yeah, with my feet that far off the
ground.
NELSON: About a foot off the ground?
NELSON: Just because you were Americans.
GILBERT: Yeah. So the guards put us on the train
and he came walking down the aisle again after we
were in the train, cussing at us like everything and
one of the guards said, “You gotta kind of not feel
bad toward him because last night the American air
force bombed Hamburg and killed his whole family,
and he hates Americans like you wouldn’t.” So we
were really scared of him all the way and I thought he
was going to attack us any time. But they took us
from there through Hamburg and the train had to stop
and we had to get out and be marched through
Hamburg and in Hamburg you could see Americans
were hanging from telephone poles.
NELSON: Other fliers you mean?
GILBERT: Yeah and let me stay there, and I passed
out. And when they took me down, I just laid there. I
was in the most pain you can imagine. So I passed
out again and ended up in this darn cell again. So
they called me up to the major’s office about 5
times—Hoffman—and asked me who my co-pilot
was and I said I wouldn’t tell you so he went over
and said, “I’ll show you how smart you are.” He went
over to a book case where there were a bunch of
bound books. He pulled one out and said, “You were
in the 93rd bomb group. Your crew was this, you went
to school here, a whole history on us. Crews that
hadn’t even been shot down yet, they had the whole
history on them. So then he said they were going to
shoot me the next morning. They were right outside.
They were shooting somebody every morning. So
they took me out there and I was standing there and
they came up again and they said, “We are going to
�Thomas D. Gilbert——Page 10
tell you one more time. Who was your co-pilot?” I
said, “I’m not saying. Just shoot me.” I felt like
that barracks into a hospital barracks, so I was in the
hospital barracks the rest of the time.
NELSON: You were ready to get this over with.
NELSON: Was the hospital barracks in the same
location?
GILBERT: He marched me out of there and put me
on a street car. Took me to the end of town, put me
on a train and there I met with other American
prisoners and _____?_____.
NELSON: Did you ever wonder why they kept
asking who your co-pilot was?
GILBERT: I think what happened was I didn’t know
it at the time, I borrowed a parachute when I—It was
one of the officers who briefed us on everything and
they thought he was with us probably. I found that
out later. They just thought he was with us. So they
put me in a prison camp.
NELSON: Now where was that?
GILBERT: Austria, Stalag 17B.
NELSON: After they put you on a street car? They
shipped you
GILBERT: They put me on a train. I met these other
prisoners. Then we stopped and picked up a few
more prisoners and a few more. They put us in box
cars and when they took us into the camp, they
marched us all the way from _____?_____ Austria up
a winding road to where the prison camp was. It was
about 5 miles.
NELSON: Was it in the Alps, or not?
GILBERT: It was in Stalag 17, Austria. Right where
_____?_____ was. It was on a plateau. And then they
got us outside of the big door and they made us strip
and we could smell gas and we heard about it but we
didn’t know much about it but we figured we were
going into a gas chamber now, so they put us in the
door. Geez, I tell you, they run through a hot shower,
there were about 30 feet of showers into the other
side. Now, this was December 24. And then they
took and shaved our heads and gave us different
clothes and took us to our barracks where we were
assigned. And that was our first day in the prison
camp.
NELSON: The day before Christmas.
GILBERT: So, then I was so bad I couldn’t do
anything with my hands, so then they put me from
GILBERT: Oh yeah, it was a big barracks—16, 17,
18, 19, 20. Ours was instead of a bunch of people in
there, we had probably 40 on each side and the other
ones probably had a 100 and some.
NELSON: Being in the hospital barracks you had
more room.
GILBERT: Well, it was not much different except
that everybody in there had lost legs, or arms, or
broken backs, or broken pelvises. They couldn’t
move around. A lot of broken backs, a lot of broken
pelvises because when they jumped out of the
airplanes, if the straps were too tight they split ya
and we had a lot of broken pelvises. We had a lot of
them missing legs and I was burned and couldn’t
move my hands at all.
NELSON: How did you manage?
GILBERT: Well, usually I had somebody help me.
Help get my clothes on.
NELSON: Did you know any of the other prisoners
by name?
GILBERT: We get together every once in a while
yet.
NELSON: Could you name some of them for the
record?
GILBERT: Yeah. We had a Don Williams who lives
in Arizona now. He used to do the most for me.
Button on my pants, we didn’t have zippers then.
Carried the food and that. And later when I got better,
I had a guy with a broken back and I used to bring his
food to him. [Brass] soup it was mostly. There would
be a big vat about so big and we had tin cups or
whatever you could get. We’d get in line and dip that
out. You’d look into it and there’d be all kinds of
maggots swimming around in it so you’d almost have
to go in a dark corner because it was so full of
maggots.
NELSON: You didn’t want to see what you were
eating.
GILBERT: Once in a while they’d throw in a potato
in this big vat. Otherwise it was just hot water. Kind
�Thomas D. Gilbert——Page 11
of a [brass] soup. Once in a while there’d be a few
rutabagas. You didn’t find any because they were cut
up, but there were always the maggots.
NELSON: Did you have any bread?
GILBERT: Every day they’d give us a slice of black
bread. The bread that was partly sawdust, you know.
Every day we got a slice of that. And for breakfast,
we’d get a little water, and for supper a little soup
and you had to go to the faucet to get water, and you
only had so long.
GILBERT: That movie was made about the same
barracks I was in. That was made from that camp,
except the story was completely different. The
Germans shipped the spy out.
NELSON: So it actually happened?
GILBERT: Not exactly that way. They shipped him
out the last minute.
NELSON: To some other camp, I suppose.
NELSON: At a certain time I suppose?
GILBERT: Mmhm. Everybody would line up and
put their cup under it.
NELSON: How about the latrine?
GILBERT: We had latrines in front of each barracks
with about 4 holes. And then they had another
building with a bunch of them but there were rats in
the bottom and you were scared to sit on them
because there were rats all over the bottom.
NELSON: Did they allow you to go any time, or was
there a specified time?
GILBERT: You could go any time in your barracks
but you couldn’t leave your barracks. There were 4
stools in there but you couldn’t go outside of your
barracks to go to that one after certain times. And
then usually, if there was a big rainstorm or
something, they would have a roll call on us. We had
roll calls every morning and 2 or 3 times during the
day.
NELSON: Was that for checking for missing?
GILBERT: Yeah. And to agitate, and also for
checking your barracks while you were out there.
NELSON: Can you describe the physical layout of
the camp?
GILBERT: Well, probably to German areas,
because he was an American posing as an American,
but he was born in this country.
NELSON: He was a spy? How about receiving mail
or Red Cross parcels. Can you tell me about that?
GILBERT: I was in there one year. I got about 3
letters that were all marked up; blacked out, so you
couldn’t tell what was going on. One parcel post, but
that came after I left. I left word that anything that
came for me was given to this House, a guy in my
group and he said he got it and everything was
punched and he said you couldn’t eat nothing. They
had put a bayonet in it and mixed it all up. He said
they couldn’t get nothing out of it.
NELSON: So really the Red Cross didn’t
GILBERT: We got parcels, but we had to split it and
sometimes the Germans would bayonet everything so
you didn’t get—but everybody was skinny, but
everybody had a fat little belly. We were skinny, but
we had pot bellies.
NELSON: How about doctors?
GILBERT: We had one American doctor that
would—
NELSON: Was he a prisoner, too?
GILBERT: What I do remember was it was all
fenced in and a road down the middle and then we
had about 10 barracks on one side of the road and 10
barracks on the other side of the road. Then on this
side on one side we had [rushes] etc. But the fence
was a double fence between us and the barracks were
all set on down, all numbered 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 up to
39 or 40. So there were probably 30 barracks.
NELSON: You mentioned it started at 17. Did they
name a movie after that?
GILBERT: He was a prisoner, too. His name was
[Mangaster]. He handled everybody. And then we
had some volunteers that worked in hospitals that
helped out. But we didn’t get any equipment or
nothing. We didn’t get any tools or anything. For
instance, we had one guy have an appendicitis and it
was going to break and the Germans wouldn’t do
nothing so we had to lay him on the floor, hold him
down and one of the group cut it open with a pen
knife and took the appendix out and then sewed him
�Thomas D. Gilbert——Page 12
up with a needle and thread. And they didn’t have
anything to give him to put him out or nothing. They
just held him down. He came out of it all right.
NELSON: A couple of other questions here now.
How about laundry facilities?
GILBERT: No. None.
NELSON: There wasn’t any?
GILBERT: No.
NELSON: How about toilet paper?
GILBERT: We didn’t have toilet paper either but
one thing we did get through the Red Cross
was—they used to send cigarettes and we would
use the paper off of that and we would use anything
we could find, but there was no toilet paper.
NELSON: How many men died or were killed in the
camp?
GILBERT: Well, I think there were only a couple
who died in the camp.
NELSON: Were they too badly injured or sick?
GILBERT: They were sick. There was sickness. But
we had one guy when we were being released, come
back under repatriation. He was in the camp. He was
kind of crazy, you know. So he got out of the camp
and went through the gate, because we were going to
be sent back to the United States anyway. That’s
when we had our repatriation. The worst injured were
traded for Germans. Well, on the way out, the guard
yelled for him to stop and he just kept walking and
instead of going down to get him, they shot him. So
he was killed and we had a funeral for him there.
NELSON: Was he buried there?
GILBERT: Buried there, right there.
NELSON: In the camp?
GILBERT: Mmhm. I don’t know what they did with
the body later.
NELSON: Do you remember his name?
GILBERT: No, I don’t. I got pictures of it and
everything.
NELSON: How about clothing and blankets and so
forth.
GILBERT: Well, we shared a blanket. Of course
when I was in the hospital there I had a blanket
myself but the rest shared. For the mattresses, they’d
give you a gunny sack, a big one, a great big one,
then they would have a big pile of hay and you would
fill your own gunny sack _____?_____. And you’d
fill that up and sleep on that, but everybody had lice
and everything and then the beds were just 4 big
stakes with a floor and
NELSON: Double high?
GILBERT: Double high and there were 4 on top and
4 on the bottom. 2 and 2 and 2 and 2.
NELSON: How about clothing? Did they provide?
GILBERT: No. Clothing they gave us when we
went in, but the clothing we got when we left—we
couldn’t use
NELSON: Was that your own?
GILBERT: No. The clothing was what they
captured. And you might be wearing—I wore English
trousers and English shoes and I had an American
shirt and I had an Italian jacket. Everybody was that
way. Some had American stuff, some had this and
that. Some had leather jackets, some didn’t. Just
whatever they gave you from what they took off of
dead soldiers.
NELSON: How about recreation?
GILBERT: Well, behind our camp we had a big
track—one half mile, no not one half a mile, a quarter
of a mile maybe and all we did was walk around that.
NELSON: With guards watching?
GILBERT: Guards were in their towers. They didn’t
bother about us there because we were completely
surrounded by guard towers.
NELSON: That was the only athletic
GILBERT: Some of the guys tried to play baseball
or something, making a ball out of a cap. Not
baseball, but football. Fill a cap up
NELSON: Keep in shape?
�Thomas D. Gilbert——Page 13
GILBERT: Outside of that there was nothing to do.
dates. Really the only thing we had on those days was
special masses or something.
NELSON: Any book to read or anything like that?
Tape 2 - Part 1
GILBERT: They did give us some books. They had
kind of a library with some books, but not too many.
NELSON: How about religious services?
GILBERT: We had Father King. He was from Iowa.
And the Americans built kind of a chapel. And he’d
have Catholic services at certain time, then he’d have
Protestant, then he’d have Jewish. He’d handle it all.
NELSON: You had Jewish prisoners?
GILBERT: Yeah.
NELSON: Did the Germans treat them any
different?
GILBERT: Terrible. They always treated the Jewish
extremely bad. They treated those with a German
name real bad. Like I had one of my crew members, a
tail gunner, name was Walther, Joe Walther and they
made it Walter and that’s a strong German name and
boy! They actually treated them as traitors.
NELSON: Today is March 7, 1996. My name is
Charles Nelson. I am a volunteer with the Midway
Village in Rockford, Illinois. I am interviewing
Thomas Gilbert, 645 Francis Avenue in Loves Park,
Illinois. Mr. Gilbert is an ex-prisoner of war—World
War II. We are going to interview him about his
experiences of 53 years ago. Tom, would you please
start by introducing yourself to us?
GILBERT: My name is Thomas D. Gilbert of 645
Francis Avenue in Loves Park, Illinois. I have been a
resident of the Rockford area all my life.
NELSON: Okay. We would also like to have the
names of each of your parents.
GILBERT: My father was Lewis R. Gilbert. My
mother was Kathleen Quirk Gilbert.
NELSON: Did you have any brothers or sisters?
GILBERT: I have three brothers and one sister. Two
brothers have passed away and I have a brother still
alive and my sister, Aileen.
NELSON: Did you attend any religious services?
GILBERT: Oh yeah, I did every day.
NELSON: How about special holidays, like
Christmas? Not necessarily religious services, but
what did you do on the holidays—like the 4th of July
and Christmas.
GILBERT: Like Easter and all that, we tried to do
things, like at Christmas we put sticks up there and
with gauze, we made decorations.
NELSON: For a Christmas tree?
GILBERT: Yeah and things like that.
NELSON: But it was all things you found around
there, makeshift
GILBERT: Yeah.
NELSON: How about the 4th of July?
GILBERT: No. They would dispense with that.
Nothing. Really Easter went through. None of them
NELSON: Are there any other details about your
parents or your family that you would like to give at
this time?
GILBERT: Well, my parents were residents of the
city of Rockford. Dad was in business for many years
as a salesman selling auto supply parts. He had trucks
on the road delivering these parts in different areas
and he was a very successful salesman.
NELSON: I see. What was life like for you before
the war? Where were you and what were you doing?
In school, or at work?
GILBERT: Before the war, of course, I went
through high school at St. Thomas and then I took my
first job at Wilson-Hall Printing Company which I
was being used as a truck driver delivering different
printing materials and also ran a press for the printing
company.
NELSON: Do you remember about how much
money you made?
GILBERT: I made $27.00 a week.
�Thomas D. Gilbert——Page 14
NELSON: Okay. That was off the cuff. I was just
curious. What thoughts did you have about the war
before the United States became directly involved in
the conflict?
GILBERT: Well, I read all the articles, but I wasn’t
expecting us to get into it and I wasn’t really
concerned. I was more concerned with running
around with my wife at that time. I wasn’t engaged to
her yet but we were close boy and girl friend.
NELSON: Did you hear of the December 7, 1941,
radio announcement about the bombing of Pearl
Harbor by the Japanese? If so, where were you at the
time and what were you doing at the time? And what
was your reaction and response to those around you?
GILBERT: Well, at the time my wife and I and my
brother and his girlfriend went up to Janesville,
Wisconsin. We were watching a movie. They stopped
the movie all of a sudden and made the
announcement that Pearl Harbor had been bombed
and war had been declared. So it shocked everyone in
the theater. It shocked us all. We were dumb founded
to think that it wouldn’t be long before I would be
right in the service.
NELSON: Had you formed any prior opinion or
developed any feeling about what had been taking
place in Europe or Asia?
GILBERT: Just as a kid 19 or 20 years old would.
We weren’t too well informed.
NELSON: All right. Do you recall reading
newspaper accounts or seeing news reels of German
aggression in Europe?
GILBERT: I watched a lot of new reels, yeah, and
so forth. At that time the news was real good as far as
the theaters were concerned.
NELSON: I must apologize for the electrical fade
out at the beginning of this interview, so I will repeat
the first introduction portion of it. Today is May 7,
1996. My name is Charles Nelson. I am a volunteer
with the Midway Museum which is coordinating with
the state-wide effort to collect oral histories from
Illinois citizens who participated in the momentous
events surrounding World War II. We are at the
home of Tom Gilbert who lives at 645 Francis
Avenue, Loves Park, Illinois. Mr. Gilbert is an
ex-prisoner of war of World War II. We are going to
interview him about those experiences of 53 years
ago. Thank you.
GILBERT: We thought we would get near Lincoln,
Nebraska. That was where my base was and believe
it or not, I was planning on a two weeks furlough.
When I got there, I was there 2 days and they came
and told me that I had to immediately get back to
camp. They were going to ship me overseas, so my
wife was sent back to Rockford.
NELSON: A short honeymoon.
GILBERT: A short honeymoon. My wife was sent
home and I went on to England.
NELSON: What were you trained to do?
GILBERT: I was trained to be a radio operator on a
heavy bomber, a B24.
NELSON: And a gunner.
GILBERT: And a gunner.
NELSON: How did you react to this training?
GILBERT: I enjoyed the training. We had a good
training and I thought it was something I would like
to do.
NELSON: Did you have any knowledge of Hitler’s
speeches, ideas or actions?
NELSON: Did you have any special memories of
this time? Any special things?
GILBERT: I didn’t have too much, no.
GILBERT: I don’t remember. It was pretty much all
training. Getting prepared.
NELSON: What events led up to your entry into
military service?
GILBERT: Well, they had a draft. And when they
pulled the names out, I was one of the very first they
pulled, so
NELSON: Which theater of war did you serve and
how did you get there?
GILBERT: Well, I flew from Maine to England and
then I was sent from England to Scotland and we
weren’t quite assigned yet and when I got to Scotland
they decided to send us to Africa. So I went to
Benghazi, Africa, and the day I arrived to Benghazi
�Thomas D. Gilbert——Page 15
(add to page 5 of 1st interview) they put me as a
volunteer on the first mission which went to Trieste.
GILBERT: Well, I never saw the crew after that,
that I was with.
NELSON: That was your first mission?
NELSON: I mean going back while you were in the
airplane. Did they have to take care of you?
GILBERT: That was a tough mission.
NELSON: (Inaudible)
GILBERT: I was shot in the left leg up the side
of my leg and foot and back. I received the Purple
Heart for that and I received the Distinguished Flying
Cross.
NELSON: Do you recall what your emotions or
thoughts were at that time about being involved in
that mission?
GILBERT: My mind was on the mission.
Everything looked good until I saw the plane along
side of me drop into the sea and blow up. And we
were flying about 20 feet off the ground. We had to
go 1200 miles to the target and 1200 miles back. So
we were just over the tree tops all the way in and I
thought it all looked interesting and then I realized all
of a sudden, these guys were shooting at us. We went
into that target and all hell broke loose. It was the
worst experience I ever had in my life. I was hit
several times and we made the trip back and we were
throwing things into the sea so that we wouldn’t have
the weight on the airplane.
NELSON: Did you lose any engines?
GILBERT: We didn’t lose an engine, but we were
low on fuel. We were flying back all by ourselves.
We weren’t in a group coming back. Everybody flew
back by themselves and they were dropping into the
sea. But when we hit our base at Benghazi the one
engine went out as we hit the base and they said we
only had enough gas for another 5 or 10 minutes.
GILBERT: No. We were shot at all the way back
until we got to the coast. We had fighter planes
coming in from every angle, so we were at our guns
at all times.
NELSON: Okay. Can we go into when and where
you were captured? You were on another mission?
What was that?
GILBERT: That was the fifth mission.
NELSON: Was there anything that happened on the
2, 3 or 4 missions?
GILBERT: No.
NELSON: Now we are going into mission #5. Can
you tell me about this mission?
GILBERT: This mission was one when we were
supposed to go in and bomb an airfield near Paris.
We started into the airfield. We got a short distance
from it and a JU88 lopped a bomb at us and knocked
our #3 engine.
NELSON: They got up above you and dropped a
bomb?
GILBERT: Yeah, on that mission.
GILBERT: Yeah, they got above us and lopped a
bomb at us, a rocket on us. So we aborted and started
back. We were doing pretty good and all of a sudden
our group came back from hitting the target. They
were flying to our right. Our pilot decided to fold in
on them so that we could get protection from them
going back, because we did think we could make it
over the channel. The pilot said he was folding in.
The co-pilot told me later he ordered the pilot not to
go in, but the pilot wouldn’t pay any attention to him.
The rule was at that time, that when you’re alone,
don’t fold into your group because they will shoot at
you because they don’t know if you are the enemy or
not in a stolen airplane. So we did fold in and as we
did, our group opened up 100% on us. They just blew
us all apart.
NELSON: And you were injured. How did they treat
you?
NELSON: What about your markings on your tail.
Couldn’t they tell who you were?
NELSON: Well, now, you were injured on
_____?_____. What did your crew do to you? Were
there any other injuries?
GILBERT: Yeah we had about four deaths.
NELSON: On that mission?
�Thomas D. Gilbert——Page 16
GILBERT: Apparently one guy started shooting and
they all started. But we were wrong. Our pilot was
wrong in going back into our own group. We should
have tried to go over the channel by ourselves. The
co-pilot was very upset by it. But the pilot was killed
on that mission.
NELSON: Okay. When they were shooting at you,
what happened after that?
GILBERT: Well, they were shooting at us. Our
bomb bay was full of incendiary bombs and they
blew up. As they blew up, I was just trying to go out
the window. I first tried to pull the gun(?) on the
escape hatch and it was red hot so I was burned
completely. Just sizzled so I couldn’t get out there so
as I headed to the side window. One of our gunners
had fallen in front of the window. I picked him up
and threw him out the window and I went right out
behind him. He was unconscious when I threw him
out, but he did live. I don’t know how he pulled his
chute but it was pulled.
NELSON: Were you injured at all besides burning
your hands?
GILBERT: I had bullet wounds in my head—see,
I’ve got one right here. And I had third degree burns
on my face, my hands. Then I had a bullet through
my ankle and so forth. What happened was, when I
bailed out, going through the air and as you looked
ahead, you could see a fighter plane coming in on me
so as we came in, he opened fire on me and that’s
how I was hit. So then I made off I was dead lying in
the chute. He made a couple more passes and then
took off. So that’s where I received the bullet wound.
NELSON: Tell us about the events that led up to
your capture.
GILBERT: Well, as I was going through the air, my
parachute was all on fire because it was all
simmering, so I was going through the air pretty fast
and I was trying to fold it so I could go faster then let
it open up again, as we were taught we should do, but
my hands were all burned and my skin came off like
a glove, so I couldn’t do it, so when I hit the ground,
I tried to bury the chute as best I could and I finally
walked (with a broken ankle) to a farm house and
they took me to another home with 2 old ladies in it
and they were in the underground. Well, I was so
badly burned and so badly shot up, they called a little
girl over. The little girl was about 8 or 9 years old
and she could talk English. And she told me I was so
badly injured, I was going to die and they would bury
me, I mean the Germans would bury me so my
family could find me so they were going to turn me
over to the Germans. So I laid there and finally the
Germans came in with a truck and they picked me up
and threw me into the bottom of the truck and drove
me to a small hospital. When they got me to the small
hospital, they threw me on a table and started
slapping my hands and face and asked me who my
co-pilot was. I just said my name, rank and serial
number and they continued to slap me around until I
passed out. The next thing I knew they were moving
me to a hospital in Paris. They put me on a train in a
gunny sack and laid me in the aisle. People walking
up and down looking at me and I’m totally burned
and bleeding and everything. When I got to the
hospital they had the doctor come from Vienna to do
plastic surgery on my face, but they didn’t work on
my hands, but I did get to a point in there where they
ordered that my hands would be cut off because they
had gangrene in both of them. Well, when I was
taken up to the operating room in the hospital in
Paris, our air force hit nearby and bombs were
dropping all around so they took me out of the room
and called me all kinds of names and said they
weren’t going to work on me, they were going to
work on their own people. They put me back down
into my room. There was an old nun, she must have
been real old. She came in with a pan of herbs, kind
of yellow beans in hot water. She soaked my hands
for two days, day and night, and when they came
back to get me in about four days later to cut my
hands off, the gangrene was almost all gone so they
didn’t cut my hands off. I was very fortunate there.
NELSON: The Lord was on your side.
GILBERT: That’s right. So then from that point on I
was taken—after being in the hospital three
months—they marched me through to my prison
camp. Not a prison camp
NELSON: How about your ankle? Did that heal up?
GILBERT: Oh, yeah, that healed up.
NELSON: So you could walk?
GILBERT: Oh, yeah, after three months, I could
walk because I was in bed all that time. They took me
into the interrogation camp. Well, on the way to the
interrogation camp they took me through Hamburg.
Hamburg was bombed the night before and we were
surprised because when the other guy and I, my crew
member who was with me when we were put on the
train, the train commander came back and started
beating us up in front of the guards. We had 4 guards.
He just beat the heck out of us. We were finally put
�Thomas D. Gilbert——Page 17
on the train. The guards told us later the reason he
was so mad and beat us up so bad was the fact that
his whole family was wiped out the night before
when our Air Force hit Hamburg. So you could
understand. So as we got to Hamburg the train had to
stop because the tracks were all torn up, so we had to
walk through to get to the other end.
NELSON: What time of year was this?
GILBERT: This was December 20th.
NELSON: So it was cold?
GILBERT: It was cold.
NELSON: Snow?
GILBERT: No, no snow and as far as—we had
diarrhea and everything. They wouldn’t let us go to
the toilet. They just made us go in our clothes. They
wouldn’t feed us. So we were about three days there
where we just stunk.
rank and serial number. So they took me into another
room, tied a chain around this wrist and a chain
around this wrist, hung me up with my feet about a
foot off the ground and left me there for 17 hours.
NELSON: Oh my gosh.
GILBERT: So when they took me down—cut me
down, I just about died I was so bad, but then they
threw me into this room again with the mice and
everything running around. I just about went crazy. I
mean they were squeaking all over and I couldn’t eat
because they would put the pan under the door and
they would crawl into the pan. I tell you, it was a
terrible thing. So finally they threatened that they
were going to shoot me if I didn’t tell them who my
co-pilot was and so I said “shoot me.” I didn’t care. I
said, “Just shoot me.” So they took me on a street car
and put me on a train to Stalag 17.
NELSON: What about your other crew member that
was with you? What happened to him?
NELSON: Just miserable.
GILBERT: He went another direction.
GILBERT: Just stunk. And when they took us into
the—through Hamburg, believe this or not—it was a
hard to thing to see. They had captured some of our
flyers and had nailed them to telephone poles and
hanging from telephone poles and the people were
trying to get to us, the other guy and I, and the guards
were holding them off with their guns and finally we
got onto the train and went on to the next stop, which
then, they took us into a place where they were
interrogating. What they did with me—they put me
into a cell way down the bottom of this place. There
was—some place on the Rhine. It was a city.
NELSON: Did you see him after that?
GILBERT: Later. They had him another time. But
when we got to Stalag 17, we were both in the
same
NELSON: So you were put on a street car and where
did they take you—to Stalag 17?
GILBERT: They took me to a train. They put me on
a train and on that train there were about 30 other
prisoners and we were all together as prisoners—30
or 40 prisoners.
NELSON: Cologne? Lenz?
GILBERT: No. Anyway they took me down in the
basement, threw me into this cell. On the floor was
just a lot of straw and under the door was just a little
thing where they threw the food under. But there was
mice screeching all over the place. I was bleeding
from the head. I was bleeding from the hands. I was
bleeding all over.
NELSON: From the beating you took from that guy?
GILBERT: No, I was still bleeding
NELSON: From your injuries?
GILBERT: Yeah. I was still bleeding. So the first
thing they did was try to question me. I said name,
NELSON: You were probably in worse shape than
the others.
GILBERT: No. there were one legged—and guys
with arms off and broken backs. It was pretty bad. I
was the worst as far as—I couldn’t dress myself. I
couldn’t use my fingers. I couldn’t work my hands. I
couldn’t do anything for myself. So then we went
from there into Stalag and that was [Krems], Austria.
The minute we got to [Krems], Austria, we came up
this long hill to the camp that was on the top of the
hill and all we could smell was gas and some of the
people were yelling, “Gas ’em, gas ’em.” Stuff like
that. When we got up there, we smelled gas. What
they made us do, was take our clothes off and then
run us through the building, but it was hot water
coming down and we had to run through that shower.
�Thomas D. Gilbert——Page 18
Then they took our clothes and run it through a
de-lousing—that was the gas we smelled.
NELSON: What was sanitation like in the POW
camp in which you lived? Did you have a central
latrine?
NELSON: Scared you for a while?
GILBERT: Yeah. Then they made us wait out in a
field and they gave us our clothes and we went in and
was put in the camp. The camp had barracks that
held—each bed carried 16 people.
NELSON: How was the food at that camp?
GILBERT: Well, the food was— well in the
morning, you would have hot water and then at noon
you might get [grass] soup with maybe a bone in it.
You didn’t know if it was a dead horse or what. And
then at night you’d get hot water and [grass] soup
again. And then we would get—every day we would
get one piece of hard bread—sawdust bread. And
then we did get parcels about once a month, but they
would be stood up, and there would be nothing in it
of course and then the camp would use it to have
a—make soup and stuff.
NELSON: Did you get any Red Cross parcels or
anything like that?
GILBERT: That was just what I said. About once a
month. But we had to share them. There wasn’t one
parcel to a person.
NELSON: Well, as you said, they came once a
month. How were they distributed then?
GILBERT: Well, the camp leader would break it up.
Maybe just divide it. The Germans would put their
bayonets through a lot of the stuff.
NELSON: What was the reason for that?
GILBERT: I don’t know. That’s what they did.
NELSON: How were they shared per man?
GILBERT: About once a month. It was about one
for 6 people.
NELSON: And what were the contents of these
packages?
GILBERT: Well, we never really knew because the
camp leader was handling it all. But I knew there had
to be B-bar. We got about one B-bar per month. We
got beans, powdered milk. But they used that
themselves.
GILBERT: In front of each barracks we had about
four seats that just went into the ground and there
were rats and everything down there. And then we
had one for the whole camp with about 20 or 30
seats, but we didn’t have any toilet paper or anything.
We used anything we could get, straw or
NELSON: What type of water supply did they have?
GILBERT: They had water where they would turn it
on a couple of times a day which only gave you a
chance to get a cup of water if you could make it.
NELSON: So you couldn’t take a shower or
anything like that?
GILBERT: No. About once a month—
NELSON: How about your laundry?
GILBERT: We couldn’t do that. About once a
month they’d take you up and shave your head and
run you through that shower.
NELSON: How about hospitals, doctors. Were there
medical facilities available? If so, how were the sick
and wounded cared for? Did men become sick or
injured in camp? Was there any dysentery?
GILBERT: There was a lot of dysentery. But we had
some die from it. But we had one barracks; part of it
was used for the doctor and some guys that
volunteered to assist. We had in thereI was in there
for a time and I had guys with one leg, guys with
broken backs. A lot of them with broken pelvises. A
lot of them got broken pelvises because they went
down in parachutes and that split them. They weren’t
wearing a check chute probably. They were wearing
seat chutes. We had blind and all that.
NELSON: You said that some people died. How
were they buried?
GILBERT: We don’t know.
NELSON: What did they do for clothing or
blankets?
GILBERT: Each one of us was given a blanket and
we were given a mattress that you had to fill up with
straw. It was a gunny sack that you filled up with
straw, but it was full of lice and everything.
�Thomas D. Gilbert——Page 19
NELSON: Were there any recreation facilities
available to you such as books to read, athletic
equipment or rooms for gatherings or plays or
religious services?
GILBERT: The guys themselves did put on plays
and set their own plays up. Also in back of the
barracks we had about a half mile track that we made
ourselves just walking around, which we would walk
around all day long.
Tape 2 - Part 3
GILBERT: Well, we had a Kertenbaum—a guy
named Kertenbaum was the camp commander. He
lived in Iowa. He now lives in Tucson, Arizona. He
was the commander and then we had the escape
group and they had the fellows who would go to the
Germans to fight our causes. Go-betweens. It worked
out pretty good.
NELSON: Were there anybody who collaborated
with the Germans that you knew of?
GILBERT: I don’t really know of anybody that did.
No.
then another fence. So there was no way you could
have any conversation. We could see them.
NELSON: What was a typical day like? What time
did you get up?
GILBERT: We’d get up pretty early in the morning.
They’d wake us up and we had to be outside and
have a roll call. This was day light. Every person had
to be out there. Then they’d go in and check the
barracks. They’d call you off one at a time, check
your dog tags. You had to call your prisoner of war
number. Mine was (? German numbers). That was
one hundred five twenty. That was my number and
they would check that off. By the time you go
through all those code numbers, a couple hours went
by. Then they would let you go to your barracks. And
then at noon again they would check you off again,
not every noon, and then every night again they
would do it. And if you had a big rain storm or
something, they would call you out sure as the devil
and do it.
NELSON: Was there any effort to try to lead a
normal life whatever that might have been?
GILBERT: No.
GILBERT: No. You couldn’t because they had spies
in the camp. They were prisoners themselves and
they were always trying to run things down and
giving false information about New York being
bombed and Chicago being wiped out. The Germans
had wiped them out. Things like that.
NELSON: What were the guards like?
NELSON: They were Americans?
NELSON: Were there any compulsory exercise
programs?
GILBERT: Well, we had one guard. A guy named
Schultz. He was trying to be real nice to us. In fact
they used the same guy, trying to be real nice to us.
He checked the guys every day. He always tried to be
real nice. He would bring things in to trade and he
was always trying to get information out of the men.
Outside of that the guards didn’t have anything to do
with us. They wouldn’t talk to us?
GILBERT: They posed as Americans. We know
they were quite a few of them. We didn’t know who
they were. Everybody had a hard time knowing who
they could trust and who they couldn’t and the
Germans wanted to keep it that way.
NELSON: How about military discipline?
NELSON: Did you talk to them?
GILBERT: They were all prisoners there and you
did what they told you to and that was it.
GILBERT: We weren’t allowed to. They wouldn’t
talk to you. The only one you could was Schultz and
that was his job. The other guards wouldn’t even talk
to you. Wouldn’t say a word.
NELSON: I mean within the camp. Did you observe
rank or not?
NELSON: Did you have any contact with any of
these others—say the Russians?
GILBERT: No. The fence was a whole row of fence,
then tin cans, then another fence, then tin cans and
GILBERT: No, in fact we didn’t even know who
was what rank. We just knew everybody by their last
name. That’s all you knew. And we were all
sergeants or staff sergeants and so forth. Nobody
under sergeant.
�Thomas D. Gilbert——Page 20
NELSON: They separated you then. There was no
lower rank.
GILBERT: There was nobody under that.
NELSON: You mentioned earlier about the gas
chambers. You had heard about them?
GILBERT: Just rumors and that’s all—from other
Americans and one time we had one guard tell us if
we didn’t do what they told us to, we were going to
go to the gas chamber, but they didn’t tell us anything
about it.
NELSON: How about work detail? Did they give
you anything to do?
GILBERT: Well, according to the Geneva
Convention, they couldn’t work sergeants. They had
to volunteer. If you didn’t volunteer, they couldn’t
work you. But they did get volunteers in some cases
where they said they wanted to use them for
something. Then they would get them out of the
camp. Guys wanted to get out of camp and then they
ended up—one time a group volunteered and they
sent them out to pick up dead bodies and throw on
trucks. Those guys never volunteered again.
NELSON: Do you remember any other guys who
volunteered for work detail?
GILBERT: No. The guys themselves decided within
the camp. Say the guy was a school teacher some
place, they would set up classes and teach English or
whatever was their specialty. And there were guys
who were barbers in private life and they tried to be
barbers. And they always seemed to have straight
razors—they managed to get them someplace—and
they would shave you dry—didn’t have soap or
nothing. The Germans wouldn’t let you grow
beards—so much lice and stuff you know. That’s
why they shaved our heads they said too. But it was
also because if you escaped they would be able to
pick you up.
NELSON: Did you ever have any contact with
civilians?
GILBERT: No. I marched one time to get my eyes
checked. The civilians were kind of scared of you.
They never wanted to get near you.
NELSON: Were there any escape attempts while you
were there?
GILBERT: We had one guy that got away about 3
times. They called him Frenchie. He lived in
Milwaukee. He'd be gone about a week and they’d
bring him back and throw him in the dungeon.
NELSON: That was his punishment? Solitary?
GILBERT: Solitary. He did it about 3 times, but
they always caught him. I really don’t know anybody
that got away and stayed away. They always brought
them back. We were in a bad place to get away. We
were up on that plateau and we weren’t close to
anything.
NELSON: What was the terrain—forests?
GILBERT: No, it was just a flat plateau, no trees or
anything. In the winter time, boy it was cold. What
we used to do—you know we had these barracks, we
tried to start little fires to keep warm. The guys would
take shingles off the outside and boards to burn.
When summertime came the barracks were almost
torn apart. We’d tear a board off the side because it
was cold up there.
NELSON: Did you have little furnaces?
GILBERT: Just open air fires. They had little
furnaces parts and everybody would gather around,
but there were so many in the barracks that that kept
it warm too. You get a barracks with two ends with
140 in each end and you’re all close together and
sleeping 8 in each bed.
NELSON: How long was each bed?
GILBERT: I’d say the barracks were 100 feet long.
And probably 40 feet wide. Maybe 120 feet long and
40 feet wide.
NELSON: Towards the end of the war were you
repatriated?
GILBERT: Well, after a certain period of time, the
Swedish government, not Swiss, sent doctors in there
to examine everybody that was badly injured and we
probably had about 120 that were badly injured, real
bad, but they still didn’t take but about 20% of those
that were the very worst and those that really couldn’t
take care of themselves and I was one of those. They
took about 20 of us out of there and put us on a
freight train, a box car, and they took us through
Nuremberg just as Nuremberg was bombed by the
American Air Force and we had to stay in the box
cars while everybody went for cover. So every time
there was an air raid, they would lock us in the box
�Thomas D. Gilbert——Page 21
car and one time we were all thirsty and we couldn’t
drink nothing so the train commander got jugs of
water from the train, the steam you know. Boy,
everybody got sick after that, but everybody had a
little drink of water.
NELSON: It was hot water?
GILBERT: Yeah, hot water, but it was from the
train engine, you know. Everybody was sick.
Everybody had the runs. It was terrible. But then they
took us to [Stattos] Germany [possibly Sassnitz?].
They took the train we were on and they put it on the
ferry and we went over to [Trelleborg] Sweden and
when we got over there, the Germans turned us to the
American Allies. We got on this [Trelleborg] Ferry
and well, nobody was safe even then because we
were still in their waters, but when we got over to
[Trelleborg] and when we got over there, we met the
American Red Cross and they took us on trains there
to [Gothenburg] and we were in [Gothenburg] a short
time and then they put us on the Gripsholm. That was
a luxury liner.
NELSON: Did you have any worries about your
wife and family?
GILBERT: Oh yeah, everybody did. We heard a lot
of rumors in the camp. That was what those spies
were doing. They would say they heard your wife got
married again and all that kind of thing. That your
wife had a couple of kids. They would tell us all
kinds of stuff. They told me—one of the guys came
up and said, “I was with your brother in the 393 rd
Bomb Group.” Well I didn’t know what group he
was with and he said, “He was killed.” He said, “His
name was Louie Gilbert.” Well, my brother was over
there but he was in a B17 Group and wasn’t
anywhere near the 393rd group. They told me that just
toAlways doing something like that and a couple
times that Rockford was a machine tool center and
Rockford was just bombed, killed all kinds of people
and they would tell you stuff like that. And we
thought it was true. We had no way of knowing it
wasn’t. And you’d get reports on the radio. The
Germans would make up all kinds of reports.
NELSON: You did have a radio then?
They took us from there to Liverpool and on to New
York. Into the channel and then on.
NELSON: Do you remember when that was?
GILBERT: That had to be about August 23 or 24th.
NELSON: 1944?
GILBERT: 1944.
GILBERT: Just what they would have on their post.
They would only give us German songs and stuff.
Every once in a while they would announce that New
York was bombed again and that kind of stuff. But
we did have one radio that the Americans had put
together. Every night one guy went around to each
barracks and told you what was news on the radio.
And all we ever heard was the Germans were in
Stalingrad, and they got beat back and they were in
and they were out and stuff like that.
NELSON: From Liverpool you went back to the
United States?
NELSON: It was all German news?
GILBERT: From Liverpool we went right into New
York, Staten Island.
GILBERT: Yeah. We didn’t hear anything on that
radio about what was happening in the U. S.
NELSON: By ship?
NELSON: Okay. When you got back to the U. S.
what happened?
GILBERT: By ship. But I know when we got on the
Gripsholm. There were only about 127 of us on it.
We all had our nice rooms and we were treated real
good. They took us out that first night and had a steak
dinner and we all got sick. We couldn’t stand that
steak. We all got sick. Everybody.
NELSON: What were your feelings at that time?
GILBERT: I could get only think of ice cream and
getting home and ice cream and cake.
GILBERT: Well, when we got back there, they let
us call our wives and that. Our wives could come out,
but we would be moved out as quick as possible and
they might not even see us. Which we were. And
they sent us to different hospitals throughout the
country. For instance with a burn center, they sent me
to O’Reilly General a burn center in Springfield,
Missouri. Then General Eisenhower gave all
decorations there. I know he came up to me and said,
“You’ve really got a fruit cake there.” I had about 6
of them he gave me.
�Thomas D. Gilbert——Page 22
NELSON: Can you name them now?
GILBERT: I received the Distinguished Flying
Cross, the Air Medal, the Purple Heart, the American
Theater, and the African Theater.
NELSON: And Eisenhower gave them to you?
GILBERT: Yeah, and he also gave us a letter and it
said, “Allow this soldier 90 days furlough upon his
demand at any time” which he only meant once.
When we came back, it was kind of funny. They took
me to O’Reilly General and the next morning, I said
to the captain, “I want a 90 day furlough. I want to
leave today.” He said, “You must be crazy. You’ve
been away too long.” And so I said, “I have the
letter.” He read the letter. So he took me to the
commanding officer, General Foster, and he said,
“We can’t give you a furlough.” I said, “You read the
letter.” He read it and said, “When do you want to
leave?” And I said, “This morning.” And they got a
jeep all ready; they got me all set. Took me down and
put me on the train and gave me that furlough right
then and so I was at home for 90 days.
NELSON: You came home then. That would have
been in August of ’44.
GILBERT: September of ’44.
GILBERT: Yeah. That airplane that I was in when it
went down, I went down a hundred times. Even yet I
have a nightmare and the whole thing comes back
like that. And then that other thing, thrown in that
cell bleeding and with all those mice. I just about
went crazy. And still mice bother me terrible. I can’t
even look at one. Isn’t that crazy? I can’t even look at
one.
NELSON: Were you treated at all for this, back in
the states?
GILBERT: No.
NELSON: After you got back here? Did you
recuperate? Did you get a job?
GILBERT: Yeah. I took about a month off.
NELSON: You were discharged at this time?
GILBERT: No. After the furlough. I went back and
had another couple of furloughs and then I went back
to Denver, and I was discharged from Denver. I had a
medical discharge and a regular discharge. I had the
points and everything. I had more points than
anybody at that time. I was overseas so long, so I had
plenty of points.
NELSON: What did you do after you were
discharged?
NELSON: That was home here in Rockford?
GILBERT: Yeah.
GILBERT: I went to work for Weiman Furniture
Company.
NELSON: Did you have any apprehension about
what your wife would think?
NELSON: Did you have follow-up treatments?
GILBERT: Yeah. Because she had got reports and
telegrams about how badly burned I was. She thought
I was killed in action for a long time and from there
on, she didn’t know what I looked like. She knew all
these burns. My mother and father met me in St.
Louis and then we went to Chicago and my wife met
me there. We stayed in Chicago a couple days. Then
we got notified that Rockford wanted to have a big
parade in my honor and I didn’t want it. So I
wouldn’t go back for it. So we came in without
letting anybody know. I didn’t want to meet people. I
was scared to meet people or anything. My hands
were still all bandaged up.
NELSON: Did you still at that time have
nightmares?
GILBERT: No. Right away I came up with high
blood pressure and never got over it.
NELSON: Did you get treated at a VA hospital? Did
you have anything to do with the VA?
GILBERT: Way later in life. Not right away.
NELSON: Do you have any war related disability?
GILBERT: Yeah, my hands.
NELSON: Do they bother you a lot?
GILBERT: O yeah, they do. The cold weather gets
me something terrible. Even in this kind of weather.
They can’t do anything about it. I’ve had
dermatologists back in the hospital. You see, I had
�Thomas D. Gilbert——Page 23
plastic surgery on my face, but not on my hands,
because I was an experimental case with the
Germans. The Germans took about four guys and
they did a different kind of plastic surgery on each
one. They had the four of us and they did different
types of plastic surgery. Of the four of us, mine was
the only one that came out. The others were all scar
tissue and their faces are solid scars yet, but they
didn’t even work on hands. That was but I was
strictly done as an experimental case with them.
NELSON: Has your attitude about war and POW life
changed over the last 50 years?
GILBERT: No. I’ll never forget it. In fact about 5 or
6 years after I got out of the prison camp, my wife
and I would be walking down the street and about
two blocks over, somebody would be having a
bonfire burning leaves and I would say to my wife,
“Dorothy, can you smell that flesh burning? That
flesh burning is something terrible.” I could just
smell it. Nobody else could smell it, but I could smell
that flesh burning—just terrible. Now I can do it, and
it doesn’t bother me, but for five years any bonfire
would make me sick, the smell of it and maybe I
wouldn’t even be close enough to smell it. I would
just see it.
NELSON: Earlier I was talking to your wife and she
said you didn’t even like to talk about your
experiences. Why do you suppose this is?
GILBERT: Well, I think one of the reasons
is—another guy and I got together and started getting
POWS together and fliers together. We’ve got 140 of
them now. Every month we have a breakfast meeting
and that’s all they do is talk about at the Atrium.
There are different ones at the table. Everybody
wants to get it off their chest. They all feel the same
way. They don’t talk to anybody outside but the fliers
get together and they talk about it. It’s really helped
everybody. Herb Healy and I were having breakfast
one morning and we decided let’s get together and
get some of the guys together. The only way you
could be in the club was you had to be overseas and
you had to have the enemy fire at you. You had to be
shot at—anti aircraft. Herb and I started that group.
NELSON: (Long pause). Some of these questions
like, “During your combat duty, did you capture any
enemy prisoners.” Some of these don’t apply. Oh, do
you remember VE Day?
GILBERT: Yeah.
NELSON: Where were you?
GILBERT: I was in the Coronado Theater.
NELSON: Gee, you were in the theater when it
started and—what was your reaction?
GILBERT: Oh, gosh, we were really happy.
Everybody was screaming, yelling and that. I was
probably happier than anybody.
NELSON: Do you remember where you were on VJ
Day?
GILBERT: Same thing. I was just about ready to be
discharged. The commanding officer in Denver, Fort
Collins, was in the hospital with me in Africa and he
recognized me and I went to his home for dinner
three or four night before VJ Day. He even let me use
his car. That’s something for a Colonel!
NELSON: How about the atom bomb? Where did
you hear about that?
GILBERT: I just thought it was a terrible thing we
had to do, I guess. But I hated to see it.
NELSON: Your opinion now—what do you think of
it?
GILBERT: I still hate to see it. It was such a terrible
thing. I hate to see people maimed like that because I
know what it is. I hate to see so many innocent
people get it. When you’re out bombing, you really
feel bad about it. You have to bomb a city, you know
there’s a lot of innocent people going to get hurt.
NELSON: Outside of dropping your bombs in the
sea, at one time you were talking about
Tape 2, Part 4
GILBERT: He didn’t know he had a flower in the
barrel of his gun. And they would do things like that.
You get a guy like Don Williams. He was always
doing something like that. It kept life interesting. One
time we watched the Russian barracks and one
Russian was on top of the barracks and the guard
would fire at him and then he would run to the other
side and the guy would run around the building and
fire at him again and he’d be just tempting the guard.
Finally he jumped off the roof and ran into the
barracks. Well, the guard had these dogs you know.
These dogs were deadly. They didn’t bother the
Germans but they did the Russians and Americans.
So he let the dog go after the guy and all of a sudden
you heard yelping and screaming. The guard ran in
�Thomas D. Gilbert——Page 24
and the Russian had killed the dog and taken all the
meat off it already.
NELSON: For food you mean.
GILBERT: Serves them right. I don’t think they
turned dogs loose after that.
NELSON: Did they turn dogs loose against the
Americans?
GILBERT: No, I didn’t see them against the
Americans. They carried them. No.
NELSON: Any other little stories?
GILBERT: I remember one time in the barracks.
These rats were this big. They were about a foot long.
They were big sons of a gun. One time all the
prisoners were chasing this rat in there. They finally
killed it. And one time a rabbit got loose in the camp
and everybody was chasing it.
NELSON: Did they catch it?
GILBERT: No. It got away.
NELSON: Ran outside the fence I suppose.
GILBERT: Yeah. It was just a crazy thing.
NELSON: Well, that about winds it up I guess, Tom.
Well, I’ve enjoyed talking to you.
GILBERT: Well, a couple of years ago I wouldn’t
have said a word.
NELSON: Well, thank you.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Midway Village Museum
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Midway Village Museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-2001
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Language
A language of the resource
English
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Charles Nelson
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Thomas D. Gilbert
Location
The location of the interview
Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Thomas D. Gilbert
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
March 23, 1994
Description
An account of the resource
Born January 19, 1921, Thomas D. Gilbert enlisted in the Air Force from 1942 to 1944 as radio operator. He spent time in the Nazi prisoner of war camp Stalag 17B in Austria. He died April 9, 1998.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Format
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pdf
Type
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Oral History
Prisoner of War
Rockford Illinois
Stalag 17B
Veterans
World War II
WW2
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25224/archive/files/2c2476e26635f9870fc61d90485cc2f5.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=ae4AT-xrAvuj9aE9GDi9JFkCY3HXCtRLppOPK2Xf%7EuCR7247wcDl6A8PwWkGiCA7mP0vGoHg2WiSsvpIRsEYv2aFdwHAJFob6CupeDvl1Fe4sY6l1Gter-Q0GttbWiDCZ9JkE3%7EMNlpUj9fsFEOAEhABeijfxKOTqZNN8qNJJldgJI4Doen5uTSkmMO0tvr4L4NZrVQjlYai18nhM1DR4nQO3bF5ur6XzBWd9jiTUNSBsT4drYUijiPjjzZ2Q%7E8OHQ%7EWwQMy39B8se4Ox9hrXm1e4RtkXBRzrr7tI0RyJpKkaDLN3GonxHXt3x73crn8Rs8FjS32arGQIRoheGjPkQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
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PDF Text
Text
Stanton Ragnar Olson
Stanton R. Olson
World War II Navigator with 15th Air Force
Transcribed by Lorraine Lightcap
Edited by Margaret Lofgren
Midway Village and Museum Center
Rockford, Illinois 61107
Telephone 397 9112
Page 1
�Stanton Ragnar Olson
Page 2
Stanton Ragnar Olson
Today is January 19, 1994. My name is Jim Will
and I am a volunteer with the Rockford Museum
Center, which is cooperating with the statewide
effort to collect oral histories from Illinois
citizens who participated in events surrounding
World War II. We are here in an office in the
museum center and we are going to talk to
Stanton Olson whose address is 3023 Newburg
Road, Belvidere, Illinois Mr. Olson served in a
branch of the United Armed Forces during
World War II. We are going to interview him
about his experiences in the war.
WILL: May I call you Stan? Would you give us
your full name, place and date of birth?
OLSON: My full name is Stanton Ragnar
Olson, born at St. Anthony’s Hospital here in
Rockford, January 16, 1923.
OLSON: My mother was picking glass from his
head but outside of that
WILL: You mentioned he was in the
OLSON: He was in the Swedish Army. That
was the normal way. Swedes had to donate time.
Then he got his citizenship in the United States
bythrough enlisting in the armed services over
here and served he served for one year in the
Engineer Corps in France.
WILL: Stan, do you remember what life was
like before the war, in the 30s maybe, especially
in 1941?
OLSON: Anna Johnson.
OLSON: Well, I just graduated from the last
class in Central High in Rockford. Jobs weren’t
especially plentiful. They were still, say more or
less, in the depression years or just recovering
from same. My first job was $0.25 an hour.
There wasn’t in those days, your thoughts
weren’t that you were to go to college, you were,
more or less, destined to get a job locally and
work your way up in pecking order, more or
less. Jobs were scarce in those days and the war
came along and, of course, that changed
everything.
WILL: Do you have any brothers or sisters?
WILL: What was your job?
OLSON: No brothers or sisters.
OLSON: What do you mean?
WILL: Can you give us some details about your
parents or family if you’d like to?
WILL: Did you have a job?
WILL: Okay. How about the names of your
parents?
OLSON: Anton and Anna Olson.
WILL: How about your mother’s maiden name?
OLSON: Both my parents came from Sweden
and my dad was a furniture worker for many
years. He was in the tornado, 1928, Chair
Factory “B”. He was up on the 4th floor and went
back to close the window in the southwest
corner and several minutes later he had the
window and he stepped out on the ground floor.
It blew the building down.
WILL: Wow.
OLSON: No. I graduated from high school and
my first job was in a plating company. Actually
they hired me as chemist in plating. All I had
was high school chemistry and was good at it
but then I had to also be on the plating tanks and
learn. All that was a little more than I could take
care of. I mean I lost 10 pounds one day in the
summer time.
WILL: It was physical work.
�Stanton Ragnar Olson
OLSON: Physical work. These big hubcaps for
International Harvesterlifting them in and out
of 120 water all day long in 100 heat. I did
know that I just drank a quart of water every 15
minutes.
Page 3
thing. So many things happened to me and to
otherskind of like it’s only been more recently
that I’ve even thought about it.
WILL: You recall reading in the newspapers
about German aggression in Europe?
WILL: You were doing this in 1941?
OLSON: 1940. Also my next job was to go
back toI took a course in drawing and I got a
job in the blueprint department at George D.
Roper Corp. I worked there until I enlisted in the
Army Air Force.
WILL: Remember hearing about Pearl Harbor,
December 7, 1941?
OLSON: It was over the radio and
everybodyyou know it doesn’t take very long
for new like that to be spread out.
WILL: Where were you at the time?
OLSON: Oh, yes. You know you were always
aware of itkind of sensitive to it. It wasn’t so
much in the news media, you know. Like we
have TV and that now. You didn’t have it then
so there wasn’t an immense amount of it where
you were kind of were today bombarded with
everything up to the minute and everything like
that. In those days you got it from the
newspapers and the radio but it didn’tthe news
media was there but it wasn’t, you know, didn’t
occupy a whole mess of time. It was the regular
news broadcast you got it but it wasn’t
continuous.
WILL: Did you have any knowledge of Hitler’s
speeches and ideas at the time?
OLSON I really don’t remember.
WILL: You just heard about it?
OLSON: Yes.
WILL: What was your reaction?
OLSON: Well, probably, I wasn’t quiteyou
know, the war was going on in other places in
Europe. But you were just likeyou’re not
going to get involved. I mean as far as that’s
concerned, it wasn’t like I’m gonna go down and
enlist right now and go over there and shoot
those dirty Gaps or whatever. It was, more or
less, kind of snuck up on you. After a while the
immensity of the thing and what was required
and all of those.
WILL: Did you have any prior opinion or
feelings about what was taking place in Europe?
OLSON: Well sometimes youI don’t
remember that much back then as to what my
feelings were. So much has happened in
between that time as far as my years in the
service, I kind of just closed my mind to the
OLSON: You know you still went to the movies
in those days. Pathé and Fox Movietone News
that was one of the features where you got live
action movies of Hitler speaking and wondering
how he could mesmerize the big audience that
he had to get the people to do this.
WILL: What events led you into military
service? Were you drafted or were
OLSON: No, I enlisted.
WILL: About what
OLSON: I took the exams out at Camp Grant in
1942. First place, of course, being an only child,
my parents were dead against me going into the
service and I didn’t get to be old enough to do
my own enlisting.
WILL: How old were you then in 42?
OLSON: I was born in 23, so in 43, I’d be 20. I
was 19.
WILL: Family and friends really influence you.
�Stanton Ragnar Olson
OLSON: A lot ofIn fact, I was probably more
in the first line of people to go in my group of
acquaintances and friends and stuff. I, perhaps,
could have stayed out because the company was
doing defense work. I was in the engineering
department so I could have stayed out if I
certainly wanted to. I always wanted to be a
navigator and I went and passed the Army Air
corps exams and we weren’t called in. I mean I
was sworn in in December of 42 but it seemed
that they were takingthe Navy was griping to
the defense department because they were losing
recruits due to the people enlisting in the Air
Force or Air Corps at that time didn’t have to go
in. They could enlist but they weren’t called in.
So all of a sudden in February of 43, they called
everybody in, I mean all these enlistees in the
Air Corps. The problem was that they didn’t
have space in the classification centers and all of
this to handle them. So you got your basic
training and then all the colleges were
practically empty of male people. So the Air
Corps went and say rented or leasedso that
you had college training detachment which was
kind of like a holding portion. You were
supposed to get ten hours Piper aircraft flying
plus additional studies in English, science and
mathematicsjust a holding type thing.
Page 4
OLSON: Went back home. We were enlisted
there. We got sworn in in December and still
went back home. They didn’t call us until
February and then I had to report to Chicago
with a bunch of fellows. Then we went by train,
troop train, down to Wichita Falls, Texas, for
basic training at Sheppard Field.
WILL: What did you think of the training? Tell
us something about that.
WILL: First of all were you inducted in the
OLSON: Well, you know, the big training, it
was cold. They had a lot of flu, spinal
meningitis, so they even had to convert a big
hangar. They didn’t have space in the hospitals
for the guys there were so many of them that
were getting sick. During basic training I went
and tried toyou know they have these ten foot
walls that you’re supposed to climb over and I
wentyou had to run up against the wall with
your foot and then grab up on the top ledge in
order to pull yourself over. Well, I broke a bone
in my footit snapped. I had to go on sick call
the next day. The only trouble was the line
started at six o’clock in the morning and you
stood. The only guys that got in sooner was
those that passed out. They were so taken up
with these other guys that were sick, they said I
had a sprained ankle. They gave me two aspirin
and said we were goofing off. So I sufferedI
wanted to be a navigator and if I got washed out,
I’d be a gunner, an aerial gunner, and I didn’t
want to be that so I toughed it out. It wasn’t until
the next base
OLSON: I was inducted out at Camp Grant.
WILL: You worked around
WILL: Then you went
OLSON: Yes. Fifteen mile road runs, marching
WILL: You did this out at Camp Grant?
OLSON: Oh, no. I had basic training down in
OLSON: That was physical and everything else
out at Camp Grant. There was quite elaborate
exams that you had to take out there. I mean
mentally and that in order to qualify and
normally in the cadet program out of 900 there
would usually be 200 or more washed out due to
either physical or to military and like that.
WILL: Out at Camp Grant after your physical
and other exams, where were you sent then?
WILL: With a broken foot.
OLSON: With a broken foot. It was not until I
got to college training detachment which was the
next Shreveport, Louisiana, __?__ College that
WILL: You were shipped from, Wichita Falls,
Texas
�Stanton Ragnar Olson
Page 5
OLSON: To Shreveport, Louisiana. There I
gotwe were supposed to play basketball only
we didn’t have tennis shoes and we were
supposed to play in our stocking feet. The
minute I took my shoe off and stepped out on
the floor, I collapsed. They took me by
ambulance out to the Barksdale Field which was
outside of Shreveport. The guy in x-ray said you
got a broken foot. The only problem was that
they said it was starting to heal already and what
they could do was support it and give me an
excuse to get out of PT. The only problem was
that the instructor of PT
remember one thing though. We had a 2nd
Lieutenant who this is his first administrative
job. He wanted to show off the cadets and so he
invited a retired Brigadier General to come and
inspect the troops. One of the cadets had
volunteered to learn how to be a bugler and to be
dismissed from physical training while he
learned to play the bugle. That evening at the
retreat parade he got out there and played some
pretty sad notes but there were about four or five
dogs that gathered and they started howling.
WILL: That’s physical training.
OLSON: That kind of rattled this Lieutenant
and he started to march the cadets off in mass
formation and he didn’t know how to maneuver
them so they practically walked into a wall. He
couldn’t think of what commands to stop them
or to turn them and so he offered a right flank
movement which you can’t do from a mass
formation so some guys reversed, some guys
stopped. Kind of embarrassed him. Then he
made the guys get back together again and
marched off the field whistling and singing the
Air Corp song.
OLSON: Physical training. hated the cadets
and so he said that excuse was no good. I had to
take physical training.
WILL: Now for the record, what unit was this?
OLSON: It was just a college training
detachment in Aviation Cadets. He was rather
rugged onI mean he caused a lot of heart
murmurs to thehis son was a 4-F and the
cadets made of him and so he in turn took it out
on the cadets. They had a stadium like Beyer
Stadium with the cement bleachers but they
were on both sides and had wooden platforms.
After an hour of very thorough physical
calisthenics, we had to do victory laps which
was up and down, up and down, up and down.
Go across the field up and down, up and down,
up and down. In a month’s time we completely
destroyed all the wooden parts of the things,
running back and forth. Very thorough, very
rugged. He was put on probation when we got to
the classification center because there was a
number of cadets had heart murmurs from the
vigorousand they were in good shape going
into itgoing into the program but one of those
things.
WILL: Did you have any duties while you were
there?
OLSON: Well, we had classes all day long and
we had to maintain our barracks in the style that
the Air Force or the Air Corps at that time. I
WILL: Sort of accompanying him.
WILL: Were you there til active duty?
OLSON: Oh, no. That was just a holding thing
to get you so that they’d have room in the
classification center.
WILL: Where did you go from there?
OLSON: Down in San Antonio, Texas. That’s
where their classification
WILL: No, that’s for determining where you
were going to be sent, whether you were going
to be a pilot, a navigator or bombardier. They
had to give you at least a week of testing, both
physically and mentally and psychologically,
too, to determine whether you were good
enough. They spent four hours on the eyes
alone. You couldn’t wear glasses. You had to
have 20/20 vision, both depth perception and all
this. They spent another four hours on the heart.
They didn’t have all this electronic gadgetry.
They normally just put you in different rooms
with a doctor, a sound proof room and a doctor,
�Stanton Ragnar Olson
and he would make you do different types of
exercises and get in different positions and listen
to your heart. So, I mean, heart murmurs and all
of that were part of the routine. Then they gave
you written tests again but then the spent, I don’t
know if it was four hours or possibly a whole
day on what they called psycho-motor tests
where they try to determine whether you were
mentally and emotionally, you could take
combat. I mean they’d make you do things
where you had to stick yourkind of collapsible
little rod that stuck in a little hole that had lights
on it or bells. You had to hold it and, of course,
you were nervous to the point where this thing
would hit on the side and it would ring a bell or
light. Then they would make you count the
number of times that that while they were
yelling at you to remember about your numbers
and shooting off guns in your ears and stuff like
that. All of this was probably a series of eight
different types of tests that you had to not only
coordinationthey had kind of a __?__ with a
wavy line on a thing but the handles reversed in
the direction that you would normallyIn other
words, if you were going to turn it would follow
this line only backwards so that there was
nothing that you could have trained for or
checked for before time. Everything that
theythen you had to have an interview with a
psychologist who asked you a lot of
embarrassing
questions,
you
know.
Homosexuality, masturbation, all of these
things, you know, if you weren’t kind of used to
it It was a thorough one and I had qualified
for all three positions, pilot, navigator and
bombardier. They were looking for pilots at the
time and I said I wanted to be a navigator. They
said, “Well, there aren’t any positions open for
navigation for at least a year. You can volunteer
for that and there’ll be some extra duties. You
have your choice of being permanent KP which
means working from four o’clock in the morning
to about nine o’clock at night or the
commanding officer on base has got a model
infantry field with trenches and everything like
that. You can go out there and help them/” and I
volunteered to do that. All I had to do was dig a
six-foot trench.
WILL: Maintain them.
Page 6
OLSON: No. It was in limestone. Hard stuff.
Pick axe.
WILL: And you had to help maintain that.
OLSON: No. No. Start it.
WILL: Oh, you had to start it.
OLSON: I had to digit was zig zag
trenchesand I had to dig six-foot long, about a
five-foot deep by two-foot wide trench. It took
me all day, the first day. I had blisters on my
hands and it was in July so I mean it was hot but
at the end of the week, I could do one in about
half a day and goof off the rest. Nobody
watching you. You were just assigned that. I got
shipped out first, before the other pilots, did to
navigation __?__.
WILL: When was this? You qualified for
navigator
OLSON: Yah. That means I was classified as a
navigator and then I was going to be sent to
what they call pre-flight school which is mostly
marching and schooling.
WILL: A training.
OLSON: It was just pre-flight. Then I got sent
to aerial gunnery school. Well, then the preflight school which was at Ellington Field,
Houston, Texas, we had a hurricane. It was also
an advanced school for twin engine pilots. At the
last minute, they decided that the planesthey
couldn’t get the planes out of the field, so the
hurricane was coming and we got volunteered to
hold the planes down. Quite an experience.
Winds of 125
WILL: How do you hold a plane down?
OLSON: With a rope. With a rope. And an
anchor
WILL: Hang on to it.
OLSON: Hang on to the rope. And that’s
fastened to the wing.
�Stanton Ragnar Olson
WILL: You didn’t fasten it to the ground?
OLSON: Oh, yah. The rope was fastened to the
ground. The winds were about 125 mile an hour
according to the air speed meters in the planes
on the ground. The propellers were revolving.
They were going and I ended up with a piece of
wing about twelve inches square. The airplane
went. Took off.
WILL: Took off. Nobody on it.
OLSON: And the it was quite an experience.
The rocks that were being blown with it would
hit you and you’d get some pretty good bruises
with that.
WILL: What happened to the airplane?
OLSON: It went up about forty feet in the air
and landed on its back.
WILL: What kind of airplane was it?
OLSON: It was a twin engine like an AT-11 or
an AT-6. An AT-6 is a single engine. An AT-11
and an AT-18 were twin engine Cessna or
Beechcraft trainers. So we had watermelons for
water and we had to get the base ready for
inspection. This happened on a Thursday and the
base commander wanted the base ready for
inspection on Saturday morning.
WILL: You cleaned up after the dirt.
OLSON: Couldn’t even tell where the streets
were. All the streets had to be shoveled out. The
curbing had to be white washed. We had fun.
WILL: Where’d you go after this, then?
OLSON: Then I went to aerial gunner’s school
learning how to be an aerial gunner.
WILL: Which you didn’t want to be.
OLSON: Yes. Well, I mean, officially I didn’t
want to be an aerial gunner in combat. We had
to all take aerial gunnery because we were still
in aif you’re in a bomber you still had to learn
how to shoot a gun, be able to shoot because you
Page 7
were in a possession to have one. I got my first
airplane ride.
WILL: Down at
OLSON: In Arlington, Texas. It was quite an
event from the standpoint that it was the last
flight of the day and I got the hottest block in the
Air Corp at that time from a pilot. You sit in an
open cockpit airplane facing towards the rear.
You had a 30-caliber machine gun with 200
rounds of ammunition which are dipped in paint
because you’re firing at tow target towed by
another aircraft. You can shoot the tail off your
own airplane if you don’t really, there’s no
mechanism to stop it or discontinue the gun
from firing. You’re also in an open cockpit. You
got earphones on. The pilot can talk to you. You
can’t talk to the pilot. You’re fastened in with a
gunner’s belt which allows you about eighteen
inches of movement. In other words you can
hang over the side of the cockpit. You also had a
hole in the floor which is open and you have the
cables of the rudder mechanisms and stuff for
the pilot to control the aircraft in the floor
exposed so you can stand on top of them. He
says, “I’ve got a date with a girl at five o’clock.
If the gun jams and you can’t fix it, throw the
ammunition overboard. These two things.” So as
we’re taxiing out to take off my load of
ammunition goes out the hole in the floor except
for a couple and I can’t talk to him. I’m pulling
the thing back in. I was kind of a little excited,
too. We flew out over the coast of the Gulf of
Mexico where there was open water where we
were firing and the pilot was playing trying to
tip the other airplane. They were flying like this,
get their wings under one and try to tip the other
one over. So this kind of disturbed me a little bit.
WILL: He was trying to scare you?
OLSON: Well, I don’t know if he was trying to
scare me but he did a good job. I’m going out
and so we get in position to fire and that plane
and target is far out there and I take like this and,
of course, the gun is kicking. The gun jams. The
gun jams. The gun jammed so I had to get the
gun into a 90 position so that I could crank it.
You might have a short round so you had to just
unload the thing several times.
�Stanton Ragnar Olson
WILL: You had to
OLSON: Recharge it and correct it. Well, in the
meantime, the pilot has to get out of position to
allow another plane to get into firing position.
Well, he goes into a kind of a dive and I hang
over the side with this gunner’s belt, pull myself
back in and I fire the rest of the shots the next
time around. We immediatelyHe’s supposed
to wait for me to get the gun into a neutral
position. I’m hanging over the side on the other
side and so for the rest of that mission, he’s
flying down into the gullies in Mexico looking
for a place where he’s going to go hunting that
Sunday. I didn’t throw up but my stomach didn’t
come I was kind of wondering whether I had
made a mistake in volunteering to enlist in the
Air Corp.
WILL: He wouldn’t land until you fired your
200 rounds.
OLSON: Oh, yah. I don’t think I hit too many.
The target was so far away that I couldn’t. The
next
WILL: You don’t know the results of that?
OLSON: Well, the next day I got the most
gentle pilots for firing and he practically talked
to me every time he was going to make a little
turn and he was very gentle. He got so close to
the tow target that I almost had to pull the target
so I wouldn’t shoot the same hole in the tow
target. I got all 200 rounds in the target. It’s hard
to explain not hitting it one day and putting them
all in the next day. I alsowe had another
incident where we were flyinghad to get
experience in a twin engine aircraft with what
they called a __?__ which had twin 30 caliber
__?__ to shoot at targets and the ammunition
was that you only shoot in short bursts, five
second bursts or something like that, otherwise
the gun barrels would get warm or hot and they
would bend.
WILL: They were air-cooled.
OLSON: Well, yah. They were just air-cooled
but you’d shoot like 200 rounds and the things
Page 8
bent. I mean they distorted from the heat. We
were fed some tainted meat down there by the
WACs. A number of guys and we got ptomaine
poisoning and the rest of the guys, they went to
the hospital but I thought that I could hold out. I
went up on this one flight. I had diarrhea and all
that and I had a temperature of about 106 and
when I saw that tow target out there, I let it go,
200 rounds. I got plenty of hits but the instructor
said, “You’re washed out.” I said, “I don’t care.
I’m sick.” They took me in an ambulance to the
hospital. They shoved about 150 sulfa pills
down me and the hospital was full and they said,
“You can go home.” I was in no state to do that
but I spent most of my leave at home. I had to go
by bus all the way from the southern part of
Texas to Rockford.
WILL: You got a
OLSON: Furlough. The only furlough I ever
had.
WILL: For how long?
OLSON: It was a week. Actually until the next
class opened up.
WILL: The next class was back down in Texas.
OLSON: Yah. I had finishedgraduated with
the next gunnery class. Then from there I went
to Hondo, Texas, where eighteen, let’s see,
eighteen weeksI guess it was advanced
navigation. That’s where you learn to be a
navigator.
WILL: A lot of math and science.
OLSON: Math and flying. You had to fly 25
dead reckoning navigation missions. Different.
To learn how to use your stuff in the air and
celestial dead reckoning, night and day. That
was my __?__ education. I graduated as a 2nd
Lieutenant.
WILL: In the Army Air Corp.
OLSON: Yah. I didn’t get any furlough upon
graduation. I had to go up to what they call
Replacement Training Center in B-17s up to
�Stanton Ragnar Olson
Rapid City, South Dakota. We were in
asupposedly we were supposed to have
leavefurlough at home and as an officer we
were supposed to get a little more respect. We
were a little like Roger Dangerfield, we didn’t
even get Pullmans to go up to Rapid City. We
got, I mean, it was one of theit was kind of
like a troop train from the 1800s. It had these
cane seats, you know, that you pull over back
and forth. It had a stovea wood burning stove
in the center and the chandeliers had been
converted to electricity. I mean they were the old
kerosene lamps and the first night we were on
there we had to sleep on the floor or that. All the
light bulbs __?__ because we had square lights,
square wheels on the train. I got up to Rapid
City, South Dakota. They were getting their final
phases. All the needed was a navigator. They
had been already trained in the B-17.
WILL: They were waiting for you.
OLSON: Waiting for me. Besides that we had
finished our training and we did better than the
class before so that we got shipped out before
the class before. We then got shipped to
Kearney, Nebraska, to pick up a brand new
airplane, B-17. It was fifteen replacement crews.
We were supposed to go to the 8th Air Force
which was England but they diverted 15 of us to
go to the 15th Air Force and that was in Italy. So
we flew an airplane
WILL: All the way from
OLSON: We flew up to Nova Scotia and then
from Nova Scotia down to the Azores which
was a small island and then to Africa.
Casablanca, Merrakech, Tunis and then up to
__?__, Italy, which was the hub of what they
called the Fifth Wing which consisted of about
four or five B-17 groups.
WILL: Where in Italy?
OLSON: __?__. It’s on the east coast of Italy,
up from the heel.
WILL: What were your duties?
Page 9
OLSON: I was a navigator on a B-17.
WILL: What were you assigned after you were
OLSON: I assigned to the 463rd Bomb Group,
773rd Bomb Squadron and at that time it was
July of 1944 and they were heavily . I know
what you’re talking about just after D-Day
Normandy and so there was a lot of activity. The
Fifth Army front was kind of stagnant which
was the Fifth Army was in northern Italy. In fact
it had just captured Rome and it was a little bit
north of Rome at that time. But it was very
stagnant. There wasn’t a lot of activity going on.
The movement. They were kind of jammed,
stalled out.
WILL: Did they put you right in a combat zone
immediately?
OLSON: Oh, yah. I started flying right away
because they were losing planes. In fact, we
were finishing up Ploiesti Oil Fields at that time.
The Fifteenth Air Force flew a total of about 30
missions to Ploiesti. It wasn’t just that original
one, it was probably one of the roughest targets
in the whole theater.
WILL: Low level.
OLSON: No, the original Ploiesti raid was low
level but the subsequent ones were all done the
whole Fifteenth Air Force would fly like 650,
750 airplanes and just bomb Ploiesti on thirty
missions because there was a number of oil
refineries around that and it was one of the most
heavily defended targets because all of their oil
for Germany came from there. It had the best
pilots in the Luftwafe there, Messerschmidts, the
__?__ and the 190s.
WILL: You were flying B17s?
OLSON: B17s. One thing that we flew at a
higher altitude than the B24s. They flew at a
lower altitude. The thing was that they always
flew and they picked out one particular target.
There was one oil refinery that they would go
into and then the planes would more or less
string out 50 miles just planes and groups.
�Stanton Ragnar Olson
WILL: In single file.
OLSON: It would be in groups. But I mean it
would be 36, four squadrons flying this way at a
different altitude. They’d go in more or less in
the same line but
WILL: Was this to confuse the Germans?
OLSON: No. Just because
WILL: (Interrupts at this point and it is not
audible what either one is saying.)
OLSON: One of the things when you’re flying
in a big mass formation, that is you’ve got to
keep out of each others way. But you got to be
visual. In other words you can’t be flying in
clouds. You have to be visual. You may not be
able to see your target but you have to be visual
because you can imagine what would happen if
you had a whole bunch of airplanes going off in
different directions. The only thing would be is
that you had the guns, the 88s, the 105s, and the
155s were all anti-aircraft were patterned in a
wagon wheel pattern on the ground. All they had
to do was know what target you were going to
and then they would aim all the guns there and
put up the __?__. Well they had the fighters
flying and calling up your altitude to the ground.
So I mean you had to go through those __?__
and there was kind ofI don’t know if you
could get through and say the target without
getting a couple hundred holes in the aircraft. It
was just a lucky thing that the aircraft could take
that much punishment and still survive plus also
getting wounded because all you got is 1/16th
thick aluminum between you and the outside.
Flying at that altitude you have oxygen but the
airplane is equippedthey’d taken off the fire
extinguishers because they wouldbecause the
gases inside to extinguish the flames were under
high pressure. They get hit by a shell and act as
a shell and explode and do more damage than
they would do so that you had to use just the
maneuverability of the aircraft to try to douse
out a flame.
Page 10
WILL: Do you remember your first combat
flight?
OLSON: Yah. Never flown at altitude before.
When you’re talking about flying at altitude, we
were bombing at between 25,000 feet and
30,000 feet in a B-17 over target. You are then
on a full 100% oxygen. If you don’t have
oxygen at that level supposedly you are brain
damaged at 2 ½ minutes. Actually, it worked
exactly that way. However, I never checked out
my equipment. We were issued those things but
never tried them out. So on the first mission you
know you’reit’s, say, 60 below zero in the
cockpit in the aircraft and the only way that you
have of that is that you have your long
underwear and flight coveralls and you have a
heated suit. Your shoes have a heated lining and
you have, it’s like an electric blanket that you
plug into 24 volts, and gloves. On top of that
you have heavy flight gear. Trying to navigate as
to work a slide rule, and pencils and dividers
with all that equipment on. You also have your
parachute harness. You can’t wear your
parachute very good with the strap on so you
had tobut you had the harness itself. The
parachute was left there. You also had a Mae
West and also you had 35 pounds of flak suit
which was kind of like the umpire they wear that
protects your chest region and front and back. It
weighed 35 pounds. You’re navigating standing
up.
(Will and Olson talking at the same time. Not
audible).
OLSON: Not a seat but you could stand on the
floor or __?__ but the vibration in the airplane is
quite so that you lay a pencil down or your
dividers down, it disappears. You also have
goggles, you have an oxygen mask, you have a
helmet on, and a flak helmet on and this ison
the bomb run, you’re supposed to turn around
and record your position, the altitude, compass
heading all this sort of stuff in there. During that
time my oxygen became disconnected.
OLSON: So I’m sitting there
WILL: You didn’t know it.
�Stanton Ragnar Olson
Page 11
OLSON: No. It’s the most convenient way of
committing suicide because you have no
feelings, you have nothing, no __?__. You don’t
even know. You could watch yourself. Your
fingernails would turn blue and that but you
have no conception that you’re going under. It’s
just a pleasant feeling.
WILL: Do you remember your first target?
WILL: This is on your first flight.
WILL: With no oxygen.
OLSON: Yup. __?__ So I mean nobody can
recognize you. I mean except at the end of the
bomb run. Well, on the bomb run, your plane
has to be flight straight and level and it might be
for six minutes, sometimes ten minutes, because
the bombardier in the lead plane, his bomb site
is connected to the auto pilot and so the pilot on
the bomb run trims the airplane up, levels it off
and plugs in the bomb site. Then the bombardier
is in charge of the aircraft. He can move the
aircraft, fly it. That’s just only the lead plane.
The other planes have to kind of fly in formation
off of it. The bombardier has control. The pilot’s
got hands and feet off.
OLSON: No oxygen. So then right at the
endafter the pull off the target, then you have
checking. I mean each crew member checks in
that he’s okay. No, I didn’t.
WILL: Inaudible.
OLSON: No. No. Only the lead and the deputy
lead plane. They didn’t have enough bomb sites
to go around and it didn’t make any difference
anyway because only the lead plane could
maneuver in the direction of that so you have to
follow him so the rest of the planes are dropping
bombs what they call toggling. You see the
plane ahead of you open up the bomb bays. You
open your bomb bays and then the bombardiers
in the rest of the planes, their __?__ was just to
take to make sure that the bombs gotyou had
to take the pins out of the bombs and set the rate
of, you know, how many they’re how they’re
going to drop. I mean in mass orthey have
timers on the things so that you dropso that
you change them and you just hit the switch.
When the bombs come out of the lead plane you
did that.
OLSON: Now wait a minute.
WILL: Okay.
OLSON: I’ll get you myhere I’m sitting.
WILL: You didn’t check in.
OLSON: Check in. So the bombardier saved my
life. Noticed that I was unplugged and that
happened on two missions.
WILL: Did you lose consciousness?
OLSON: Oh, yes. I was gone. I mean I was out
for six minutes or so. For all intents and
purposes I passed the (inaudible). It was around
the squadron it was noted that Stan Olson has a
new way of avoiding looking at what’s
happening because the planes on both sides got
bombedgot hit and disappeared
WILL: Shrapnel.
OLSON: That’s right. They got shot down.
They say well that’s a good way to do it. It’s
when you get on the bottom, you just disconnect
and you don’t see anything, and don’t know
anything.
WILL: Your first target. Do you remember
that?
OLSON: I don’t know. One of the first targets
was Ploiesti. I went three times to Ploiesti.
WILL: How many missions did you fly?
WILL: (Not audible)
OLSON: This is right. This is right. And you
had the notes.
OLSON: Actually, thirty-five. But we got
credit, like Ploiesti and some of the more
difficult targets farther up in Germany, we got
double credit for those because we
�Stanton Ragnar Olson
weren’twe’d be lucky if we’d get back from
them if anything happens because they were on
the limit of you fuel supply and everything else.
Page 12
OLSON: No. Good enough. They were
disabled. You know what I’m talking about like
got a foot shot off.
WILL: They were tougher.
OLSON: They were tougher, not only targets,
fighters also the distance if anything happened
because we had a lot of times where we get
shotthe normal plane for fifty missions would
probably have twenty-five engines shot out.
Also, we had self sealing gas tanks and we
probably have aboutany time you had many
holes, the whole wing had to be taken care of,
taken off. We were flyingwe couldn’t fly
more than about four days in a row. We’d run
out of airplanes.
WILL: How often did you fly a mission? Was it
once a week, or once a day, or every day?
OLSON: Sometimes every day. As long
aswell, the thing was this, that we were short
crew. Of the fifteen replacement crews that went
over there, seven were already shot down the
first week. I’m sitting there feeling sorry for
myself and a guy comes in and he says, “Well,
you should have been here when it was rough.”
It makes you feel good.
WILL: Was your plane ever hit?
OLSON: Yes. There were quite a few times that
it was hit.
WILL: Did you ever have to bail out?
OLSON: No. Almost. We decided to rough it
out. Got my first DFC (Distinguished Flying
Cross) because we got hit pretty badly one time.
And the co-pilot, his arm was more hanging than
nothing. It was shattered.
WILL: My next question is was anybody ever
injured?
OLSON: Oh, yah. I went through two
bombardiers, two co-pilots
WILL: They were killed.
WILL: This was all shrapnel, not enemy
fighters?
OLSON: No. This actually, we were lucky
enough that if you flew a tight enough
formation, there was other aircraft. I mean I’m
talking about bombers, B24s and disabled that
the fighters wouldn’t bother you. They were
more or less looking for stragglers or ones that
were loose formation so that they could
WILL: (Inaudible)
OLSON: This is right. We hadI think one of
the things that we were lucky to have was that
Hitler and his thinking, they could have had the
jets sooner. We run in to them and we lost nine
planes in one mission.
WILL: What did you think of those?
OLSON: There was nothing that could touch
them. Our tigers couldn’t touch them. Six
hundred miles an hour compared to ours was
four hundred. You know you don’t have too
much comparison there. And they were able to
WILL: Did that worry
OLSON: It was onlythey hadat the end of
the war supposedly they had five thousand of
those thingsplanes available but they didn’t
have fuel.
WILL: Pilots?
OLSON: Pilots were scarce because the airplane
was a hot airplane. It landedit took off on a
skid. Actually they were kind of expendable.
The pilotsthey landed at about 200 miles an
hour which is very high speed and they were
almost kind of told to bail out of the airplane and
come back and get another one. They were so
effective.
�Stanton Ragnar Olson
WILL: How were the injuries? How were they
treated, the injured personnel treated over there?
OLSON: What do you mean?
WILL: As far as, did they have good hospitals,
medical facilities
OLSON: Yah. Yah. They had a large, I mean it
was a permanent hospital.
Page 13
in on a bomb run at the right what they call the
initial point and go in there at that where other
planes are coming in before and after you so that
you don’t get mixed up and you may have to fly
over a flak area in order to avoid flying with
them or in their pattern. Everything has to be
visualized. You have to make the decisionit
takes you ten miles to turn a __?__ 180 so that
you have problems that you have to make
decisions ahead of time.
WILL: Whether you’re going to turn
WILL: Not audible.
OLSON: Being a squadron navigator, I had the
rough deal of scheduling the guys.
WILL: You were in charge of this.
OLSON: Yah. Well, squadron navigator, he
fliesI don’t know how I got the job but early
on I was flying almost through half my missions
in a couple months and then I got volunteered, I
don’t know how, to be squadron navigator.
Squadron navigator only flies when the
commanding officer of the squadron flies. The
squadron leads the group or the wing for the Air
Force. They rotate. In other words, each
squadronwe got four squadrons to a group and
one day or one mission
WILL: Four planes in a squadron?
OLSON: Oh no. Nine planes. So there was
thirty six planes in the squadrons and they rotate
and the only time that I flew with the squadron
commander and the squadron bombardier, we
would have the bombsite. It’s the lead plane that
everybody’s trying to knock down. But it’s one
of those things thatI was more scared
screwing up and not finding the target than I was
of the flack even thoughI wasn’t scared of the
flack butYou got limited areas to fly over and
to kind of tip toe yourself through up to the
target area because there are flak areas all over,
coming and going.
WILL: You had to get them through that.
OLSON: Had to get them through that and
besides that find the target and not be able to go
OLSON: Or whether you’re going to go to an
alternate target, that the weather isn’t going to be
right and all sorts of stuff. So I’ve flown the
leadAir Force leadyou know, the whole 15th
Air Force which is 750 airplanes.
WILL: Oh, yah.
OLSON: Also I have flown single aircraft, top
secret mission, one time where they
WILL: You want to tell about that now?
OLSON: Yah. The 15th Air Force was always in
competition with the 8th Air Force. Bombs on
the target, mounted bombs. (Blank space in tape
at this point). It was a matter of statistics. They
were getting all the glory and we were doing the
work. It’s been kind ofyou know, they get to
have women. You know, I mean they were in
civilization and we were in tents in the mud and
in a welfare state more or less.
WILL: How about as far as writing home or
hearing from home, folks at home? Did you
write a lot?
OLSON: Yah. Yah. Well, we weren’t allowed
to say too much but as far as that was concerned.
The mail was good except in the wintertime.
Had problems with thethe mail would come
into Naples on the western side of Italy and then
couldn’t be delivered and so at Christmas time it
seemed that a lot of our stuff was delayed. And a
lot of stuff never got to us. It piled up on the
shore, you know, packages of food and stuff like
�Stanton Ragnar Olson
that. A lot of it was even bulldozed, buried like a
land fill.
WILL: You got a lot of food or necessities?
OLSON: Yah. Care packages, so to speak. I
know, we had one of the fellows in our little hut.
He was from Wisconsin and we got butter,
canned butter, and cheeses and stuff like that so
we had snacks.
WILL: Did you make a lot of friends while you
were there with the fellow Air Force personnel?
OLSON: Not too much from the point of being
the squadron navigator, I wasand having
shortage of personnel, putting in long hours and
the squadron navigators were in charge of
planning the missions for the otherin other
words when you weren’t leading the group, you
had to go over early on to plan the missions for
the other groups leads. Draw up the maps for the
navigators, flight plans and mark the maps with
black areas and stuff like that as the lead
navigator.
At this point Will and Olson are talking so you
can’t make out what they are saying.
OLSON: All of the airplanes, after they come
out of repair had to be up and flight checked,
calibrated compasses, equipment and stuff like
that to see that they were okay again and so if
you’re short people you were doing a lot of
stuff.
WILL: Did you have any lasting friendships?
OLSON: I did. Even though there was changes
of personnel all the time. I didn’t drink or
anything like that. I didn’t have time for it
anyway. But I mean it was a lot of time and you
were just using people as much as you can and
sometimes you didn’t even get to know them.
WILL: Do you remember any of the members
of the crew?
OLSON: We were visiting in the hospitals the
guys that got wounded. I still write to some. The
bomb group didn’t have reunions or anything
Page 14
like that until late on, many years afterwards and
it became a historical society. That anybody
could join the bomb group. You didn’t have to
have any affiliation. They just wanted to I
went to one reunion down in Dayton, Ohio, in
88 and there was only two or three people that I
knew and I was in the bomb group for almost a
year’s time over there which was probably
longer that most other than the ground
personnel. But the actual combat crews, they
went through in about four months.
WILL: You mentioned early you went through
half of your required flights in about a month.
What was the number? You had to have twentyfive. Is that it?
OLSON: I had thirty, thirty-five.
WILL: That you were required.
OLSON: Well, actually, I had fifty all together
but I mean thirty-five actual flights.
WILL: Were there some high light occurrences
that you
OLSON: Oh, I had all kinds of high lights. We
covered all kinds of targets. My first gig as fleet
navigator was Ploiesti and the other navigator
who was the squadron navigator before me, he
was in the airplane. He took over on the bomb
line run. Pilots was a target that was well
protected from the stand point that when you
crossed the Yugoslav coast, they already knew
you were going to Pilots and so they would start
these oil smudge pots and they had the whole
target area for miles around covered over with a
smoke screen. So they had a tendency and we
were the radar at that time was not used for
connected up to the bombsite so you had to
bomb, more or less, visually. We were getting
practice or taking practice to try to coordinate
the radar man with his scope and the bombsite
with the bombardier but it was kind of crude and
so with a target like Pilots, they would set oil
fires out from the target and guys would drop in
that and they might be dropping in a potato field.
But, however, this first mission to Pilots at that
time that I was leading.
�Page 15
Stanton Ragnar Olson
OLSON: Well, this was not This was a
different one. We were on the bomb run and this
navigator who recognized there was an
opening in the clouds in the area. The smoke
pots weren’t covered. He recognized this other
oil refinery. It wasn’t the target we were
supposed to bomb and so he said, “Bomb that”
and so the bombardier checked out and let the
bombs drop on it and we raised a fire and stuff
that was visible 150 miles away. Smoke came up
to about 40,000 feet. It was kind of like ‘hey, we
really hit them that time.’ And the others might
have gotten shot up a great deal but we hit the
target that time. I got the relief navigator
__?__southern France and that was supposed to
be a milk run.
then they would move over a little bit when the
wind changed down in the valley. But the last
we bombed in trail like four squadrons. And
the last squadron made a run on the thing and
their bombs hit. We heard afterwards I don’t
know I have never been able to find out
specifically we had an infantry officer who
had a convoy and he said that there was
wreckage of trucks and stuff like that for miles
and he got 150 punctures in his tires in his
convoy going through that area. I tried to get a
hold of people, some civilians over there to
confirm it. You know, sometimes it’s kind of
exaggerated at times as to what actually took
place. I do find from the records from different
places in the library, in books and stuff like that,
that there was that the Germans had a lot of
problems getting through that particular area of
escape. I felt a little bit lucky on that.
WILL: On D-Day.
WILL: What about this secret mission?
OLSON: Yah. Our target was Valence, a bridge
at Valence, which was up from the coast. What I
mean, it was a main route, escape route for all
Germans going north. Not Italy. France.
Valence, France.
OLSON: That was going back to that, I
guess it was they wanted to have six planes,
one from each group, go out in broad daylight.
Supposedly the thing was that you would the
weather was supposed to be good, in friendly
territory and that __?__ cloudy and total clouds
and that __?__. These are flat regulations in
enemy territory and you had to plan your own
mission. It was up in Austria. (What Will says is
inaudible) But it had to be bombed. And so they
wouldn’t let the commanding officer fly. So it
was another crew except me and the squadron
bombardier. We had to fly, fly in our own
mission. Couldn’t tell anybody about it or
anything like that and take off. The weather was
awful going up there and radio silence. I found
out that the five airplanes turned back and we
were the only one up there.
WILL: (Inaudible)
WILL: In southern France.
OLSON: Yes. Southern France. It was an
escape route to go up inside. We were supposed
to go in low altitude. They were only supposed
to have six guns there and so some of the ground
officers decided that they wanted to go on a milk
run. They took some of the gunners off and took
their place. We went in we were just The
Alps are in that area, too. So I mean you are just
barely on top of the hills, the mountains, 50,000
feet. Actually, they moved in some heavy guns
and then when you’re flying anything under
20,000 feet __?__ they can pick up parts of the
aircraft. They don’t even have to aim at the
plane. So I was kind of we had a lot of planes
that were damaged that day that didn’t get back
to base. They were dropping all over the place.
But we hit that the winds shifted. We were
coming down a valley towards Valence and the
bombs were released but it seems that you could
see the bombs going towards the cockpit and
WILL: You didn’t know they turned back?
OLSON: No.
communicate.
Radio
silence.
Couldn’t
WILL: You didn’t see them.
OLSON: No, didn’t see them. You weren’t
supposed to see them. You weren’t supposed to
�Stanton Ragnar Olson
see anything. You were supposed to fly in this
weather and that was supposed to be the screen
on us so that the fighters could you know you
had no fighter protection, you had nothing. So
get up to the target area and it was open except
for one cotton pickin’ low cloud over the target.
You take a run on the thing and we couldn’t, I
mean the target was obscured so we turn around
and go on that thing again and it was still
obscured. We said, “Well, we can go to the
alternate. And we were getting scared and
scared, you know, I mean, this isn’t exactly
Page 16
you know, whether the plane was going to blow
up or not. We were sitting there and the pilot
said, “Get up here and get the copilot out of the
seat.
WILL: Is this the one you mentioned earlier that
you almost bailed out?
OLSON: Yah. Well, I was wondering whether
we were getting ready because when you get one
of these hits, the whole plane shakes and hitting
him he got shot. All the plane was full of
alpaca.
WILL: It was a railroad yard?
WILL: (Inaudible).
OLSON: Yah, so we went to the alternate target
and found that and got that. It was just another
martialing (?) yard but I mean of a nearby town.
The airplane, you know, of course the B-17 goes
at 150. That’s the normal speed that you drive it.
We were going 200 and some
WILL: Getting out of there.
OLSON: Getting out of there flying all the
way back. That was one of the
WILL: Any other remembrances?
OLSON: Well, the time that the we were
shot up pretty badly, when I got the DFC for
that.
WILL: You mentioned you got the first DFC.
OLSON: I got one and three, too. They didn’t
give out DFCs in Italy as readily as they did in
the 8th Air Force. You almost had to do a
number of things in proving like a squadron
navigator or do some leading or do something
like that otherwise you didn’t get decorated. I
could have gotten it for different missions. (This
part inaudible). But the thing was that that one
was kind of peculiar from a standpoint that I had
to take off my armaments. The plane was riddled
to the extent the oxygen was shot out, some of
the hydraulics was shot out. We didn’t know
whether one engine was out and stuff like this
and we still had to go over the Alps. But we
didn’t know whether we were going to make it,
OLSON: No, hitting the copilot. His arm was
shattered and I had to (something about oxygen)
and crawl up there without my parachute on. In
the meantime the plane might be going down.
Going up there there’s not room enough to have
all of this and take the flak suit off, too, so I can
get up there and pull him down into the
companion way and up in the front, plug him
into my oxygen, put a tourniquet on. He was
bleeding and give him morphine shots, keep him
warm and all this sort of stuff and still keep
track of where we are because you were having
to fly back by yourself. Screaming bloody
murder for fighters to come and help us and
escort us back. So there is a little bit of an
experience. He survived. Kind of landed back at
the base at the main air tour at __?__ that was
near the hospital. Sitting in the airplane, we’re
down on the ground afterwards, the blood and
stuff was frozen in there and then it started
unfreezing so you got blood dripping out of the
airplane. You kind of get a little shaky.
WILL: Even in the summertime.
OLSON: Oh, yah. You could go up and test out
an aircraft and take your candy bars and just in a
half hour you’d have a frozen candy bar at
30,000 feet. Sandwiches, too.
WILL: You said you arrived over there in July
of ’44.
OLSON: Yah.
�Stanton Ragnar Olson
WILL: Were you over there until the end of the
war?
OLSON: No. That’s another story. I got my 1st
Lieutenancy inside of four months. The position
of squadron navigator called for captaincy. I was
put in for captaincy. The rest of the crew got
their captaincy but some person of the 15th Air
Force noticed that I wasn’t a commissioned
officer for a year. That was one of the
requirements to be a captain. They said I had to
fly I only had four missions left to fly. They
said it wasn’t enough. You’d have to fly some
extra ones in order to get your captaincy so they
said, “You take off and go up to Rome for rest
camp and think about it and if you want to get
you captaincy, you can, say, fly an extra five. In
the meantime, they went to Berlin and they lost
nine airplanes. So I said, “I think I’d like to be a
live 1st Lieutenant than a dead captain.”
WILL: You did go to (inaudible)
OLSON: Yes. I did there.
WILL: What did you do there?
OLSON: At the rest camp. Toured. Looked
around. Of course, the Vatican. Beautiful city of
Rome. They had a lot of tours for the Red Cross.
Get a shower and go shopping at the PX and
souvenirs and all this sort of stuff but I didn’t
want to go to the Pacific.
WILL: You had a choice then.
OLSON: After you complete your tour, you’re
shipped home, get a leave and then you’re ready
for the Pacific.
WILL: When was the end of your tour?
OLSON: It was in March, I think it was, of ’45.
So then they still had some fighting in Europe. It
hadn’t been the end of the war yet and so they
said, “You can get into this ferry outfit” which
was an Allied called the Mediterranean Allied
Air Force. You can be a navigator there and they
only had like three or four navigators for the
whole squadron and you got __?__ in either a C47 aircraft and you go in for the ATC, Air
Page 17
Transport Command, __?__ in other words you
went into combat areas. But they were all VIT
(?) missions or mercy missions or anything like
that, special, so I volunteered.
WILL: This is still out of Italy?
OLSON: Out of Italy. We were based at the
base of Mount Vesuvius and we flew C-47s
originally but afterwards C46s. I had a variety of
missions, flew supplies into the partisans in
Yugoslavia.
WILL: How did you get them out?
OLSON: No. No. We landed and they marched
off the aircraft under guard with machine guns.
WILL: You didn’t trust them.
OLSON: Didn’t trust them. Couldn’t. Couldn’t
circle the field. It was just a gravel field near
Zagreb one of the cities. When they marched
off, the partisans looked at you aircraft. I mean
inspected it to make sure you didn’t have any
spies aboard, unloaded the supplies which were
meat, slabs of meat, and flour. Made you sign a
ticket, marched you back on the aircraft and you
took off. The Yugoslavians had their other
Yugoslavs, in other words, they fought among
themselves after they fought the Germans
together. They were very tough on each other,
too. I mean one of my buddies was a Yugoslav
and he had to crash land in Yugoslavia. The
partisans were at the aircraft sight and they were
salvaging the wreckage, draining gasoline and
stuff from the aircraft before the Germans come.
One of the partisans was smoking a cigarette
while __?__ and the airplane caught on fire. And
the Lieutenant, a Yugoslavian, shot the guy for
his stupidity.
WILL: Wow.
OLSON: No army court martial or anything like
that.
WILL: He’d finish it. He’d take care of that.
OLSON: I also flew Mercy Missions which was
one of the roughest ones that I have flown in that
�Stanton Ragnar Olson
they had a call that a guy in Athens needed an
iron lung. The only iron lung available was at a
hospital near and abandoned airfield up in
northern Italy. The problem was this was night.
None of our in that __?__ Squadron had made a
night landing in three years. In order to qualify,
they had to go up in an airplane and make night
landings just to __?__ their record for
qualification. The first airplane took up the
generator governor took off and the prop ran
away from us. We had to go back and get
another airplane and try it out. Finally got one
who qualified on the three landings. We didn’t
have the maps over there we didn’t have
maps of the area so this abandoned airfield was
just a mark on the map and the maps we had
were not the detailed ones. They were only area
maps what they call regional.
Page 18
aircraft because it just wouldn’t go through the
doorway.
WILL: This was a B-17 or what?
OLSON: No, a C-47. We finally got the thing
loaded and we thought we were doing pretty
good. Our eyes felt like sandpaper had been
rubbed on them and we were flying down to
Athens. We were thinking, boy, you know we
did something we did some good. We didn’t
bomb people. We didn’t hurt anybody. We were
going to save a guys life. So we walked into the
Athens airport there into the British guy in
back of the desk. Hey, we delivered your iron
lung. He said, “I say old chap, the guy died
yesterday afternoon.”
WILL: Oh. You guys were too late.
WILL: Inaudible
OLSON: No they weren’t. They were actual
navigation maps but they didn’t have the detail
of the area, just general big streams. That’s all.
We took off, a moon light night with plenty of
clouds. It didn’t look too bad. Then it kind of
dawned on me that the whole area was flooded
and we couldn’t tell the rivers and the lakes and
the creeks or anything like that up there. They
were the only thing we were supposed to
have was that these people in the hospital up
there had the keys to the landing lights on this
abandoned field, only they didn’t have the keys
to the lights on the abandoned field. All they had
was an ambulance with those
WILL: Half covered.
OLSON: Half covered headlights on the thing.
The abandoned field is in the mountainous area
over there and so it was difficult all I had to
do was to work with was the __?__. I had no
radios. All the stations were off the air at night
up there and all the cities and everything else
was dark. You’re flying into an area that’s
completely dark. Clouds and hills and once you
get below the hills you get your eyeballs
stretched out but we did find the field. We had
an awful time getting the iron lung into the
OLSON: We wouldn’t have had to make the
flight. We risked our lives so to speak. __?__war
criminal investigators around. There had been
some I don’t know what they done to
WILL: Were these Italians or Germans?
OLSON: No. No. We had a . The war
criminal investigators were investigating either
some disappearance or that of a reporter. Some
kind of newspaper man. Then we had to go up to
__?__ and we were the first ones in there. They
had never seen Air Force or Air Corps people.
Coming into Salzburg, they were under
occupation. At that time there was early on, the
war had just been finished and they were
occupied but hatred, you could say that if looks
could kill, we were dead. We had to take our
insignia off but what Berchtesgaden looked at
that time was the French had come in after the
occupation and smeared feces all over the walls,
crapped in the wash basins, and they urinated on
everything. They had a first class hospital there
with all the radar X-ray equipment and that
because they were trying to develop the master
race. They had SS troops and select Aryan
women. They were breeding a race. That was in
the mountains. They had champagne, of course.
All the equipment the x-ray equipment was
all broken and battered and the tunnel was this
�Stanton Ragnar Olson
deep in champagne. (What Olson says here was
inaudible) I flew supplies, aircraft people down
to Egypt for rest and recuperation, so I got into
Cairo and Alexandria. We took VIP people
around to set up this was the president [Yimo
Tao] and Vice President Ford, the production
manager of General Motors.
WILL: This was after the war.
OLSON: Yes, after the war in Europe. But they
were looking at all the different places to reconvert all the vehicles and that. We toured all
of Italy, especially northern Milan, Turin,
Venice, where they could We were flying
VIPs around and they were selecting and
inspecting the different places where they were
going to convert all the war equipment to end
the Pacific War.
WILL: Where were you on VE Day?
OLSON: VE Day, I was at Naples.
WILL: What was your reaction?
OLSON: It was kind of funny from the
standpoint they didn’t have it wasn’t planned
or anything like that. The most thing that I
remember was they had a probably about an
eight story building in Naples overlooking a
square. It was occupied by the British and they
didn’t have confetti but they had toilet paper that
the were reeling out and the kids were down on
the street and they had the other end of the roll
and toilet paper to them was really and they
were waving at the people up there to throw a
roll out .That was my impression of VE Day.
WILL: OK. How about VJ Day? How did you
hear about it? What was your reaction?
OLSON: I don’t remember, actually.
WILL: Being in Europe, I suppose you
wouldn’t pay that much attention to it.
OLSON: I was putting in so many hours flying
that I could get to rest camp. I might have been
in Cannes. I flew my maximum hours and I had
two weeks off each month just to go to rest
Page 19
camp. Total flying hours and so I was probably
one of the first guys to go into Switzerland on
rest leave. Spent 8 days and it only cost me $25.
But I didn’t have no idea what the exchange rate
was between the American money and that and
so $25 we got all travel, meals and housing,
hotels and everything. Then we got $25 to
spend. That was equivalent to 150 Swiss Francs.
They wanted a limit because we could probably
buy out the place if they had unlimited $25,
the guys had a lot of (inaudible) so you know
you could buy the best wrist watch. You know,
Rolex, or __?__ or any one of them watches and
still have money left over for other stuff.
WILL: VJ Day came after that. The atom bomb.
OLSON: Yah.
WILL: Did you hear about that? What was your
opinion to that?
OLSON: I don’t remember. I’m glad it was over
with. (Inaudible). We were given intelligence
briefings a lot, you know. Kept up on what was
happening in the war and if we had to go and
make a landing on the shores over there. It was
going to be costly in manpower and it was more
or less a blessing so to speak if it ended the war
even though there was destruction. I had made a
study of it afterwards and it was a different
perspective.
WILL: What do you thing about it now? Has
your opinion changed any?
OLSON: Part of my course at Rock Valley
College was Japan and Hirohito. I also have
missionary friends and I’ve been in Japan in
recent times, in 81, because my daughter was a
missionary, a short term missionary, for five
years over there. I had missionary friends, so
I’ve been to Hiroshima and Nagasaki and all
over. I did find out that Hirohito had already,
because they didn’t have extensive defensives of
Tokyo and some of the other places and the fire
bombing that the American forces and the B29s
had done that already hurt them. Hirohito had
made overtures for surrender before the atom
bomb was even
�Stanton Ragnar Olson
WILL: Looking back today
OLSON: The only problem was that Hirohito
and them who were talking surrender, they made
overtures to Russia and Russia wasn’t interested
in having the war cease until they were able to
get into the thing supposedly and get into the
sharing of the spoils. And so here the atomic
bomb really wouldn’t have had to be dropped.
WILL: That’s your opinion.
OLSON: It’s not just my opinion. Different
things have happened.
WILL: You were not seriously injured over
there.
OLSON: No. But we had a shortage of personnel
and I had bad knees. I had fallen off the truck
and we were short personnel so I had to fly
when they lifted me in the airplane. I couldn’t
have gotten in the airplane. I couldn’t have
bailed out. They would come down and get me
out of the airplane and bring me over to the
medics and give me heat treatments and stuff
like that.
WILL: Have you ever gone to a VA Hospital?
OLSON: None of that stuff is on my records.
WILL: I mean after.
OLSON: No. I said none of that stuff is on my
records. In fact I got into the
WILL: Have you got any opinion of the VA?
OLSON: I got into the service not knowing that
early on playing sand lot baseball, having brand
new spikes, hard ball spikes, and I didn’t know
how to slide into base and I ripped my knees and
in those days you didn’t go to the hospital. Vicks
Vaporub and aspirin and tough it out and didn’t
know that to qualify you had to sit on your
haunches. I couldn’t do that and they didn’t pick
that up in the physical exam. At that portion of
the exam was in a group and I was in a back row
and the doctor said, “OK, jump up and hit your
haunches, I mean kick yourself in the hind end.”
Page 20
I couldn’t but they marked it off. Every time I
took a physical exam I stayed clear of that. None
of it is in my records. Really, I wouldn’t have
been in the Air Force or the Air Corp.
WILL: How did your family support you when
you were overseas outside of communicating? I
know you mentioned your parents didn’t want
you to get in.
OLSON: Really, I had good moral support from
letters and stuff like that and CARE packages, so
to speak, and they even sent me one of these
battery operated, you know, you had to take
code and so I was practicing. They sent me a
code sender so I could practice outside of class.
WILL: Were you married at the time?
OLSON: No, No. I got married when I was
recalled to active duty in Korea.
WILL: What was tough about Korea?
OLSON: I don’t want to talk about that.
WILL: I know this is supposed to be about
World War II.
OLSON: I had equally as varied a career in the
three years of Korea. Roughly speaking
WILL: Was it easier, harder
OLSON: Harder in different ways. I was
involved in opening up the Tulane Air Force
Base up in northern Greenland where Bert
Hassel was the commanding officer up there at
one time. General Keuter you don’t know
him from Rockford?
WILL: No.
OLSON: He was the general from here and he
was one of those I think he probably
volunteered me or our squadron out of __?__. It
was my first affair when I was recalled to
Smyrna, Tennessee.
�Stanton Ragnar Olson
WILL: When was that?
OLSON: That was in 1950. We were four
navigators. We checked in that morning at the
base. The base had already been practically
eliminated from the standpoint that they were a
troop carrier outfit. They 2C119 and were all
sent over to Korea for the Inchon drop. So all it
was a bare base left over with just housekeeping
personnel. We checked in in the morning, us
four guys and they says, “We want four
volunteers to go to Alaska.”
“When?”
“Today.”
“What are we supposed to do?”
What happened was some general in
Washington called up that morning to the
commanding officer of the base and wondered
what those C82s which was the flying boxcar
aircraft were doing up in Alaska. Nobody knew
anything about it. Looked in the pigeon holes
and found they were supposed it was the only
airplane capable flying a radar tower over the
Mount McKinley range to an outpost because
they were thinking the Russians gonna be
coming and they had to have this radar tower
installed up there and that was the only aircraft
and nobody knew about it. We got volunteered.
Today that plane’s got to be off the base today
so we had to get all our shots, all our equipment.
We didn’t know what we needed or anything
like that and nobody else did either. We took off.
We had the pilot was an administrative guy.
He only flew five hours a month. He wasn’t that
really sharp on the aircraft. The aircraft were in
bad shape because they had taken all the
paratroop jumping assignments for the whole
United States so the maintenance on the planes
were being flown with mistakes or the oil
leaking out and all this sort of stuff so they
weren’t in the best of shape. We take off at five
o’clock. The red warning light for the fire the
engine is on fire. We didn’t know whether we
should because it might have been a short
circuit in the thing and that thing was just
turning red or whether it was the real thing. The
Page 21
guy said, We’ve been up here we’ve been
going all day. We might as well go back and get
a night’s rest.” We land. Of course, we got the
fire trucks, you got everybody. The outboard of
this one engine, the heater changer had separated
and the main hose line which led from the gas
tank was collapsed, burned and charred. Another
couple of minutes and the plane would have
blown up. They said, “Well, we’re going to get
that thing fixed and you’ve got to get that
airplane off this base whether you just taxi it
through the fence of whatever.” So at midnight
we took off. Got the plane fixed. It was going all
the way up to Alaska. They wouldn’t let us fly
route from Seattle out to Anchorage. We had to
go back to Great Falls, Montana, and fly the
inland route. Well, at that time was this big
forest fire that was spread over the whole
territory up there. We landed at Fort Nelson,
British Columbia; I think it was over there.
However, we sprung a leak in the gas tank and it
was leaking out. They were supposed to fly a
crew in to had to take the wing off and
replace the gas tank and stuff like that. However,
the forest fire was only about ten miles away
from us and they said, “You’ve got to get that
airplane out of here. The smoke covered the
whole area and it was going up to 40,000 feet
from the forest fire. They had an air crash up in
Mount Squetnal (?) up in Alaska and they were
bringing back the bodies on a DC4. The DC4
tried to go through this cloudit was violent
updrafts and stuff like that. The casketsthey
had passengers strapped on the regular pull
down seats but the caskets were in the middle
strapped and they broke loose and they were
floating. The skin of the aircraft was rippled.
Rivets had ripped loose and stuff like that. They
had a rough time. We had to drain the gas from
the thing and get out of there. In the meantime
these were four C82s and they were flying up to
Alaska. There was an emergency radio. A little
boy had fallen off a garage roof and had some
kind of skull fracture or whatever and he needed
to be taken to Anchorage as fast as possible but
that’s a no no. Regulations, you can’t pick up
civilians and stuff like that but one of the planes
went down, picked up the boy and the mother.
The mother was nine months pregnant. We
finally got her up to Anchorage. The airplanes
�Stanton Ragnar Olson
were in a hangar up there for about a couple
weeks. They didn’t realize how bad shape they
were in to get them flyable. In the meantime, I
decided to take a flight out on the Aleutian chain
in a DC4 with mats (?). That ended up, we had
two inches of ice on the aircraft which so
practically we were flying over the same
place for like an hour making no ground speed
whatsoever and the wind was battering . To
make a long story short, we landed at Shimya
which is the last outpost out there. We skidded
on the ice and broke the front wheel on the
aircraft. Had to get another aircraft and flew
back. We flew missions out to this outpost. We
had to supply them with all the fuel and stuff
like that for the winter because it was August of
1950. The snow was coming down the
mountains from Anchorage. The tundra started
on fire out there. So then we had to fly in a
couple hundred guys to fight the fire out there.
Of course, this place was a small gravel strip
with smoke all over the area we had a lone radio
beacon to home in on and just at the end of the
runway was a 7000 sheet of rock. If you missed
the runway you know you’re going into that so it
was touch and go to come in there plus the fact
the C82 is not a very good aircraft for landing on
gravel strips. It has heated wing, it has a hollow
propeller with electrical wires in it. In gravel,
you get a nick in the leading edge of the
propeller it stress cracks and you can lose a
propeller blade. If you can’t sever the engine
right away, you lose the engine. It vibrates right
off the airplane. Every landing we had to come
in we had to examine the blades on the
propellers to make sure we didn’t get cracks like
that but the cross wind on the gravel would
scrape off the rubber on the tires so we had to
have new tires put on the aircraft. This is my
first month in the Air Force. Coming back from
that, I volunteered to go to Matts Military Air
Transport out of Massachusetts flying milk runs
in DC4s which were actually planes from the
Berlin Airlift. They were passenger and cargo
we flew to __?__ Africa as well as Germany.
WILL: This was during the Korean War?
OLSON: Yah. We got this urgent call that they
needed we got volunteered by the General of
Matts, the first squadron, to deliver free supplies
Page 22
up to Tooley, Greenland, which is about less
than 800 miles from the pole. That’s where
Peary picked up his Eskimos to go to the pole.
This was in March. March is a no no. In the
winter you don’t fly up north in the pole region.
Nobody bush pilots wouldn’t even fly up
there. We were going up there in a plane that
was not even winterized, we had no survival
instructions. You couldn’t land up there. You
couldn’t bale out; you were quick frozen. It was
60 below zero on the ground. You got icebergs
out the Kazoo and all this sort of stuff. All they
had was a gravel field, two Quonset huts; no
hangars so the airplane had to be unloaded with
the propellers going. You flew 48 hours in a
row, the navigator and stuff like that.
WILL: You didn’t get to sleep on the flight
maybe.
OLSON: You’re a navigating. Normally the
Polar navigation requires the only thing that
they did in those days was the B29 flying to the
Pole above the weather with good navigation
gear, the gyros and stuff because your flying
north of the magnetic pole so that the equipment
in the C54s, the compass is pointing down I
mean backwards and just going this way. So you
use Polar navigation. We were taught a quickie
course in Polar navigation by some guys who
had never been up there. Well, they didn’t know
any perameters on the stuff and we were
supposed to fly up there and you used the gyros
in the aircraft and the B29s they didn’t __?__
hardly anything. You had three navigators. You
had a radar that you could pick up 100 miles.
You had navigation gear flying above the
weather. You had gasoline supplies so that you
could fly back no matter where you were. We
were going up there with limited gas. You had to
fly up there with the gas you had and come back
with the gas. I mean there was no supplies up
there. They only had one radio beacon up there
which you could get within five miles of the
field or you could have the runway lights
because they had one generator. It was just
awful from the standpoint we didn’t know
about twilight zones and all this sort of stuff.
The second mission I flew up there, all the
instruments in the plane froze. We lost our
�Stanton Ragnar Olson
heaters in the aircraft so we didn't know which
direction we were flying. Had no idea. Couldn’t.
I mean the twilight zone up there is eight hours,
but the sun is below the horizon but you can’t
tell whether it’s there. So we had no idea which
direction we were and the gyros they’re
supposed to fly up to altitude and they needed
the heat to maintain the gyros but we didn’t
know whether they were toppled or whether we
were going to fly in circles. If you don’t think
you can sweat at 70 below zero in the cockpit,
you can.
Page 23
you’re supposed to have a minimum of 100 feet.
We made them in less than 25 without any
ground control folks. We had to land. There was
no and that didn’t get any commendation for
it was much more difficult than night flying
unarmed aircraft weather ‘econ’ over in North
Korea.
WILL: It was Arctic flying is a lot harder
OLSON: Arctic flying. Yes.
WILL: How long were you in?
WILL: Never really thought of it.
OLSON: The only thing we could do is think
that maybe the gyros still had given us an
indication of direction to fly. We thought we
were flying south and trying to pick up on the
radio because a lot of the radio beacons up there
don’t function all the time. They’re just on
sometimes. I picked up the automatic radio that
searches. We were to far away from that to
indicate anything even where the station was. I
picked up a radio beacon leg and it spreads out,
an A and an N. If you are in the middle of the
beam you got a clear signal but you can’t tell
you have to pass through the leg in order to tell
which side of the radio station you are. We were
so far out from it, it was 150 miles wide before
we could find out if this radio station was here
ore there and we were running out of gas. We
did make it back. You’re at the base of the
Aurora Borealis so that
WILL: Does that interfere with it.
OLSON: All your radio communication is
blocked out for days so that you’re not getting
any radio signals or weather information or
anything like that so you’re flying up there
blind. We made the one airbase is 90 miles
up the fjord and there is 100s of fjords. They all
look similar it you’re trying to go underneath the
clouds and up there and we went up the wrong
one one time. We had to turn the aircraft around
in the fjord. A C54 to turn around in a fjord. If
we would have put the wheels down, we would
have touched the ground. All these things, you
know. We made landings up there you know
OLSON: Three years. After I flew 50 missions
in weather ‘econ’ over North Korea and China
got fired on, search lights, both night and day
missions in a B26 aircraft. We had pilots that
wanted to be jet pilots and they liked to take
risks.
WILL: You never flew in a jet.
OLSON: No, I never flew in a jet. I had charge
of 85 jet pilots at Dover Air Force Base when it
was being built. It’s now a Port of Embarkation.
At that time I was a Port of Embarkation officer
when it was being built. They took $97,000,000
worth of equipment from another base, Granier
Air Force Base in New Hampshire and stuck it
down in this base and none of the buildings were
I mean there was two different environments,
grounds, and all this sort of stuff and nothing fit
and try to in the midst of all we have here are
tar paper shacks and that and to try to stop the
whole construction going on to have them
realize that their buildings and everything they
were doing out there was wrong for the they
couldn’t just copy the buildings. You had the
Chesapeake Bay and the water was only like 12
inches down by the tide. They were trying to put
communications things in and all in cement and
the things would wash out constructors. They’d
get washed out and washed out.
WILL: Gee.
OLSON: I had 85 jet pilots all over the world
that had to get information back to me or to our
section so that we could send in a report to
�Stanton Ragnar Olson
Washington every day. The teletypes would get
soaked in water and all this sort of stuff and
they’d print gobbledy gook, you know, like
square words and stuff like that.
WILL: You sound like you’ve lived quite a life.
OLSON: I’ll tell you learn a great deal from
the six years is what I never know having
been, you know, a kid that wasn’t even destined
for college, who had never been farther than
Chicago by train and the World’s Fair in 1934
and 33 outside of that once to Wisconsin,
350 miles up, but I had measles at the time and
so I spent everything in the back seat of a car in
a closed bedroom up there so I knew nothing of
to see the whole world, I have been
practically all over the place.
WILL: You have since retired.
OLSON: Yes.
WILL: As a Lieutenant Colonel eventually?
OLSON: Yes. Well I was in the reserves for 20
years
WILL: Well, I guess that ends our official
interview.
OLSON: I had a lot of experiences in the
reserves, too.
WILL: Say goodbye
OLSON: Goodbye.
Page 24
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Midway Village Museum
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Midway Village Museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-2001
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Language
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English
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Jim Will
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Stanton Ragnar Olson
Location
The location of the interview
Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Stanton Ragnar Olson
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
January 19, 1994
Description
An account of the resource
Born January 16, 1923, Stanton R. Olson joined the Air Force from 1942 to 1945 as a navigator. He remained in the reserves and was recalled to active duty during the Korean War. He died October 7, 2001.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Format
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pdf
Type
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Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War II
WW2
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25224/archive/files/8e74bb0c75b75a34e0caedbb7a5efb1a.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=uLzfZDt2BuV9FfwSL3KsYD-e0eWyoumtgZR2U9hK76A0fYBsyu1URirA3DbikKtmGHWNy28bIvEiqHvyM2FnkgepyM7YuNh2tKFcOlTZ7ns60sHI8DHsfAqyUvUmB4Y10ISfhXVFWawcpzCmi58-nvKavi17bx98Wm9EdbqZWKyf62X80u-uB%7E3menfwhaG1sO5kseV%7Ek5ZfKaKJ4Kqvnz2hnvlL56VeDvnONXDHYUybJ8xTi4Ja%7EamXn-Xw%7EIHVw4MB3twQYKcSZrjFcODkXy3KBX6MgB9mBr0ywfp5KFvDso7pLrQ152XCazZ0cjnnSKqbV5Te1yUMbgVG%7EypCWw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
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PDF Text
Text
Russell Sanden
Transcribed
By Lorraine Lightcap for
Midway Village and Museum Center
6799 Guilford Road
Rockford, Illinois 61107
Phone 397 8112
�Russell Sanden
Hello. Today is February 2nd, 1994. My
name is Charles Nelson. I am a volunteer
with the Midway Village and Museum Center which is cooperating with the statewide
effort to collect oral histories from Illinois
citizens that participated with the momentous events surrounding World War II. We
are in the office of Midway Village and Museum Center and we are talking to Mr. Russell G. Sanden of 3917 Crosby Street, Rockford, Illinois, who served in the United
States Armed Forces during World War II.
We are interviewing him about his experiences n that war.
S: Well, my father served in World
War I in France if that’s of any consequence here.
N: Russell, would you please start by
introducing yourself to us. Please give
us your full name, place and date of
birth.
N: What thoughts did you have about
the war before the United States became directly involved in the conflict?
S: My name is Russell George
Sanden. I was born in Rockford Illinois November 17th, 1924.
N: We would also like to have names
of each of you parents.
S: My father was George Benjamin
Sanden and my mother was Evelyn
Frances Larson. That would be her
maiden name, of course.
N: Did you have any brothers and sisters?
S: No. I did not.
N: Are there any details about your
parents or your family that you would
like to give?
N: Okay. What was it like for you before the war, specifically during
1941?
S: Well, in 1941 I was still going to
high school, East Rockford High
School. I didn’t graduate from there
until June of 1943.
S: Well, that would be during the time
Britain and France and other countries
were involved with Germany and I
was rather surprised that things were
going so badly in Europe at that time.
I thought that the allies should have
been doing much better than what was
happening at that time.
N: How did you hear about the December 7th, 1941, bombing of Pearl
Harbor by the Japanese? If so, where
were you and what were you doing at
that time? What was your reaction
and response of those around you?
S: Well, this is a high school kid laying on his stomach in the living room,
listening to some news broadcast or
whatever program it was, I don’t
know. But it was interrupted by the
�news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
But it was early Sunday afternoon before I had got started with any other
activities that day.
N: What was you reaction?
S: I thought it was rather audacious
that this little country of Japan would
attack the United States. (Laughter)
N: Had you formed any prior opinion
or developed any feeling about what
had been taking place in Europe or
Asia?
S: As I said before, I was unhappy
with the progress of the war in Europe
but not having any prior experience,
of course, I didn’t know what was really going on there. And then as far as
the Pacific was concerned, that was
just one vast ocean out there that I
wasn’t too aware of many of the
names that we would become familiar
with later. I was mostly concernedWell, I don’t know “mostly”,
but I was also concerned about the
events in Africa. What the Italian
forces had been working around Ethiopia there and rather taking advantage
of those people there .that were not as
well equipped or trained as the Italian
Army. Of course, I was concerned
abut what the Japanese had been doing in China and Manchuria.
N: Did you have any knowledge of
Hitler’s speeches, ideas or actions?
S: A small amount of knowledge as
news reports and there was at that
time, if you ever go to a movie, there
was always news section there. My
opinion of him was sort of a raving
maniac.
N: What events led to your entering
into military service? Were you already in service, drafted or did you
volunteer?
S: As a kid just getting out of high
school in June of 1943, I was automatically drafted.
N: Was your response to entering military service influenced by family and
friends’ attitude towards the war, the
threat to National Security or any other considerations?
S: Well, actually not. It was just a
matter of you sign up with the draft
and then you go when they ask you to.
N: You were drafted?
S: Yes.
N: When and where were you when
you were inducted?
S: At Camp Grant.
N: Do you have any special memories
of this event?
S: Well, yes. I could not figure out
why I was staying there so long.
�There were a few of us that kept getting tests and more physical tests,
more written tests. Everybody else
was shipping out to places that I never
heard of before but a few of us were
still around until finally somebody
said, “Well now this group is going to
Jefferson Barracks, Missouri.
N: How old were you at that time?
We were sent to Carbondale, Southern Illinois at Normal, at that time.
N: Did you have any leaves or passes?
S: At that time, no.
N: What do you recall of this period
about places where you were stationed, friends you made and your association with civilians?
S: I was 18.
N: Where did you take your basic military training?
S: Jefferson Barracks, Missouri.
N: What were you trained to do?
S: Well, basic training as such was no
big deal for me because I had been in
the ROTC program at East Rockford
under the company commander there.
My major concern was keeping warm
in that wet, cold Missouri winter, in
those 6-man tents we were living in.
N: What did you think of the training?
S: Well, I didn’t associate with very
many civilians. I was rather a, shall
we say, a kid that hadn’t been away
from home all that much before. I
stayed pretty much in the school area
there. Of course, there were other civilians going to Carbondale and relations with them were very nice. I remember one thing that the cadet program people there were had fun with.
There was another detachment there
from the Marine Air Force or Air
Corps. We had a little habit of, when
we marched from one class to the
next, we would sing the Marine Hymn
to the tune of “Clementine.” It worked
real well but it was quite annoying to
them.
S: Oh, it was fine.
N: What was your military unit?
N: Did anything special happen there?
S: At what point?
S: No, other than that there were more
tests along with the basic stuff. Then I
was informed that instead of being in
the coast artillery that I thought I
would like to be in, why they told me
I was going to be an Aviation Cadet.
N: At this pointthat you were in the
Air Force?
S: Aviation cadet.
�N: What were your assigned duties?
S: Well, get decent grades in the classes and we also did a certain amount
of flying. We had to get in ten hours
in a Cub over at a small airport at
Marion, Illinois. I guess that was just
to weed out the guys that couldn’t get
their feet off the ground without
“tossing their cookies”. A remarkable
number of people have this problem
but then after that we went to San Antonio, Texas. Then at that point they
sorted out a certain group of us and
that group was assigned, supposedly,
to be in a pilot program on the P-38
which was a fighter plane at that time.
N: When you were sent overseas, how
did you get there?
S: Oh, well, there was a few other
things happened in between before I
went overseas. One cold morning in
San Antonio we were rushed out
about 4:30 or 5 o’clock in the morning with a GI raincoat and shoes and
not much else on for some sort of
formation. Now this was a little bit
unusual and it was very unusual when
the Colonel in charge of our school
there was up. He never got up that
early. But then we were informed that
we were going to be--how would they
say it? --relieved at the convenience
of the government, eliminated without
prejudice at the convenience of the
government. That’s the way they put
it. In other words they hadn’t lost as
many P-38 “Jockeys”. They weren’t
going to need us after all. We were
given the opportunity either going to
Infantry Officer Candidate School or
Aerial Gunnery. By that time I had
decided I wanted to fly so I volunteered for gunnery. I went out to
Kingman, Arizona. The field out there
for gunnery training and then
N: Do you remember what date that
was approximately?
S: That would be sometime in the
summer of ’44. When we got through
at Kingman, that was only six weeks
or something for gunnery school.
There I specialized in the revolving
ball turret, then went to Sioux Falls,
South Dakota, for assignment for the
rest of the crew and for further training in B-17 aircraft. Then down to
Louisiana near Alexandria, Louisiana,
for overseas training unit.
N: What did you think of our nation’s
war effort up to this point?
S: Well, I thought things were getting
turned around and they were going
our way. It was still touch and go out
in the Pacific and that the European
thing wasthere had been some invasions and we were out of North Africa
and onto the European Continent from
the south. We had gone from England
and opened up the beachhead in
France, of course, D-Day.
�N: Now when you entered in a combat zone, what group were you attached to?
S: I was attached to the 15th Air Force,
301st Bomber Group, 353rd Bomb
Squadron.
N: And what was the name of you pilot?
S: The name of the pilot was William
Hull.
Neal. But kind of sad too, because this
man had flown his 25 missions in Europe on a B-17 as a tail gunner and
came back to the United States. His
nerves were not the best and he just
didn’t take kindly to the “spit and
polish” of the Air Force back in the
States and so he volunteered for the
2nd tour of duty and we lost him. His
name was Leo Werderisch.
N: Where was he from?
S: Chicago. Werderisch.
N: And he was from where?
S: [Cheektowaga], New York. You
want me to spell that for you?
N: No. That’s fine.
S: It’s near Buffalo.
N: Tell us your experience in entering
your first combat zone.
S: Well, the first time we flew as a
crew in formation on a raid was over
we went over Vienna, Austria. There
was a suburb of Vienna called
[Floridsdorf] where an oil refinery
was located. We encountered rather
heavy flack. Took one burst off the
tail, lost our rudder so we couldn’t
hold formation any more. But the really bad part of it was we lost the tail
gunner. One hand of his was blown
up into the waist of the ship. We later
found that after we landed. We didn’t
know if there was anything left of
N: Taking these one at a time, please
tell us in full detail, if possible, the
approximate number and types of
casualties, how they occurred and
how they were treated.
N: Were there any other casualties or
injuries in your tour of duty?
S: Yes, there were several purple
hearts given out on the crew. I didn’t
get any. Down in the belly turret it
looked scary but I found out since
then that statistically it was a good
place to be. But then the day after the
war was overwell, not immediately
the day after but a few days after we
were told that we had to take our airplane back to the states. We had a
couple of rather tired engines by that
time and there was a couple of new
engines down at the maintenance shed
that we were told we could have. So
they were put on and we went out to
get a few hours on them before we
�tackled the Atlantic hop. We didn’t
want to do it with brand new engines
sobreak them in. Well, we took a
little ride up across Italy and visited a
few places like couple Mount Vesuvius, Naples, Florence and the canals of
Venice and Rome and flew up north
through the Brenner area. We were
rather low because we didn’t have
oxygen with us but we thought we
could go through the Brenner Pass.
But then we were following the railroad tracks and they went left into a
tunnel. The navigator informed the
pilot, “You better turn right at the
next corner.” There was kind of fork
in the pass but we flew into a blank
canyon. It wasn’t on the navigator’s
map. It’s true that this hump at the
end of the canyon wasn’t as high as
the rest of the Alps but it was high
enough to catch us.
N: And you crashed.
particularly care for the idea of being
shot at but it was part of the deal I
guess.
N: Did you write any letters home?
S: Oh, yes.
N: Did you receive any letters or
packages, if so, how often? What
types of things did you receive from
home.
S: Well, many letters. Almost daily
there were letters. Once a month or so
there was some food stuffs that would
make it through. What I sent home for
and really appreciated was an earphone and a couple of radio tubes and
some radio parts so that I could put a
small radio together and listen to various things. It was one notch above a
crystal set. It did have a variable condenser to select stations.
S: We burned. We exploded.
N: Did most of the other men write or
receive letters?
S: Well, nobody was quite killed. We
all got out, more or less.
S: Oh, yes. It was a common thing.
N: Did your mental attitude change as
combat continued?
N: Did you forge close bonds of
friendships with many or some of
your combat companions?
S: Well.
N: What did you think of the war so
far?
S: Like everyone else, I was rather intimidated by the whole thing. I didn’t
S: Just a few. Actually it was kind of
a weird situation. We didn’t really get
too close to other crews because
you’d lose them. One day you got
some good buddies in the tent next to
you and the next day someone’s
�cleaning out their luggage. We were
very close to the 10 men that flew in
the B-17 but not real close to others.
Let me take one or two exceptions to
that. One of the Rockford fellows that
I had gone to high school with was
Peter Kostanicus, was a co-pilot on a
B-17 in my group. I was, if you want
to call it close to him and also another
friend of mine, not a friend, a cousin
from Rockford, was in a B-24 outfit
over in Luchara(?) which was pretty
close to __?__. We were based incidentally at __?__, the 301st. He was
with a B-24 outfit as a flight engineer.
His name is Roger Storm.
N: Have you remained in contact with
any of your World War II companions?
S: Yes.
N: Did you ever have to help retrieve
a wounded buddy from a field of
combat which in your case would be
an airplane?
S: That’s difficult. (Laughter) I could
not walk on those clouds.
N: What was the high light occurrence of your combat experience?
S: I want to say the thing that I remember most was that crash in the
Alps. (Laughter) That’s hard to forget.
N: Okay. Tell us what you and your
other men did to celebrate America’s
traditional family holidays such as
Thanksgiving and Christmas.
S: We waded around in the mud as
usual and I suppose the main celebration would be a real decent meal at
the mess hall but that’s about the extent of the celebration. We didn’t put
up and Christmas tree or Halloween
decorations or anything.
N: When and how did you return to
the United States at the end of the
war?
S: Well, we got out of the hospital
(Laughter) and some stayed longer
than others. I was assigned to go
home as aWell, in leaving the hospital, for some reason, there was a replacement crew fresh from the States
that flew into that particular airport
that was closest to that hospital in
northern Italy. When it was time to go
back to __?__ I was sent home as a
passenger. Well, from the hospital in
northern Italy to __?__ which is about
half way down the boot on the Adriatic side, it wasn’t all that much. Here
was the inexperienced pilot landing a
plane that still had all its gasoline and
full crew with all their luggage and
several passengers and he just cut the
throttles a little bit too soon and this
thing sunk a little bit faster but that is
when we got to __?__ and we were
going to land. __?__ had been designated as a place forwhat would you
call itoverseas equipment preparation area.
�N: Supply center?
S: Yeah, they were lengthening the
runways and lengthening the approach areas. One of the army engineers had been out there with a D8
caterpillar clearing some trees, olive
trees from the end of the approach area. But he had gone to lunch and left
the “cat” sitting there in the middle of
the approach area. Of course, this guy
that was coming in with a B-17, a little heavier loaded. I got to give him
credit. He didn’t try to stretch his
glide and stall it out and crash the
whole thing. What he did do, not give
it any more. He didn’t give it a little
bit more throttle to reach over there
where the runway was. He had to hit
that caterpillar. So in ten days we got
to crack-ups. By this time I’m ready
to walk.
N: How many missions did you fly?
S: I only flew 15.
N: What happened when you arrived
in the United States?
S: What happened?
N: Where did you go when you landed in the United States?
S: Well, first placeincidentally after
that second crash, I was sent home as
a passenger on a B-24. We had to
cross the Mediterranean to North Africa, [Marrakesh] or something like
that. Then over to Dakar, French West
Africa then across to [Belem], Brazil,
and up to Georgetown, British Guyana, and from there to a place in
Georgia, but IIt slipped my mind at
the moment. Any way it was a goodsized airfield in Georgia.
N: Savanna?
S: Could have been near Savanna. But
there was a whole bunch of airplanes,
whole bunch of people. We were
more or less getting rid of some older
clothing and issued better, newer uniforms.
N: What was your rank and your decorations, especially campaign decorations?
S: Okay. As a ball turret gunner, I was
automatically a Sergeant. Decorations
were air medal with two oak leaf clusters, European Theater. Let’s see.
How many battle stars were there?
There’s one for the North __?__
Campaign, one for the Po Valley
campaign, one for Southern France,
another for the Southern Europe and
another one for Eastern Europe. We
had been involvedit was only fifteen missions but we were scattered
all over the place. Mostly we were
bombing from between 28 and 30
thousand feet and going over after oil
refineries and __?__ yards. We also
had gotten ground support missions in
there. We were dropping clusters of
white frost versus high fragmentation.
�N: How did you get along with the
men with whom you had the greatest
contact?
S: Fine.
N: Were there any things you would
do differently if you could do them
once again?
S: (Long pause). Well, perhaps but
nothing that comes to mind. After all,
you’re dealing with a kid fresh out of
high school. I didn’t know how to do
too much other than just do what I
was told.
N: What was the most difficult thing
you had to do during the period of
material service?
S: The most difficult thing was to actually shoot at a person that I could
see. That was during the Po Valley
Campaign. We had come over at tree
top level, you see. The Po River is
like the Mississippi. It’s wide, a lot of
slough on both sides of it and the
ground forces were having a terrible
time getting across that river because
the Nazi Artillery on the other side
was giving them a bad time. We were
suppose to go on the north side of the
Po River, which essentially flows east
and west, and take out some of these
mortar and artillery outfits. I was
down there in the belly turret. Things
were going past, about 180 miles an
hour. You don’t see too much out of
that little round window but here was
here was a bunch of tracers coming up
from the ground. I swung the turret
around over there and here was this
guy with a half-track, with machine
gun mounted on top, was shooting at
us. I thought if you’re shooting at me,
I’m going to shoot back. That halftrack was no match for those 250 caliber machine guns and it’s very computing sights. One burst and that halftrack went up in flames. That bothered me a lot, because up to that point
I’d never seen a person that I had to
shoot at. Don’t think I hit him but I hit
his vehicle and him but he probably
fried.
N: How did you learn about VE Day?
What was your reaction to it?
S: Well, I thought it was real great but
we didn’t do an awful lot.
N: How did you learn about VJ-Day
and what was your reaction to it?
S: Well, at that time I was out in
Sioux Falls, South Dakota. We were
sent there ostensibly to train for B29s. There was a certain amount of
rejoicing if you could call it that.
N: What was your opinion of the use
of the atomic bomb when it was used
against the Japanese civilians in August of 1945?
S: Well, being that I’d been involved
in dropping bombs, this was just a
bigger bang.
�N: What were your feelings toward it?
S: I thought we had one more new
tool to use.
N: Has you opinion changed over the
last years and, if so, how?
S: I now realize what a large tool that
turned out to be. Before I thought
when I heard about it, we had a new
bomb, finea bigger bang. But now I
realize, of course, that there were literally thousands of people killed in
thatthere were two blasts over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In time of war
it makes sense to end this thing as
soon as possible. It’s like a game of
chess. You capture the king. If there is
anybody else left around well that’s
fine. It’s not a matter of attrition. It
doesn’t have to be a matter of attrition. If you can effect a surrender
without one by one eliminating all of
the enemy, in the long run it’s a good
deal because it stops things quicker
and not all of the enemy have to die.
N: When and where were you officially discharged from the service?
S: Sioux Falls, South Dakota, November 1st 1945. I know that’s kind of
early but we got a lot of points in the
Air Force.
ry kid should have a four-engine
bomber to play with.
N: Do you have any opinions about
our nation’s military status or its policies?
S: Militarily it seems to be doing rather well right now. I think we’re
probably riding some kind of a crest
due to the previous administration’s
efforts in bringing the cold war to an
end.
N: Do you have any contact with the
Veterans’ Administration?
S: No, other than through my work
with the Veterans of Foreign Wars
who do go up to this Veterans’ Administration Hospital at Madison occasionally and doing things up there
for the guys that are hospitalized.
N: What is your opinion of the Veterans’ Administration if you have had
any contact with them?
S: Like I say, I haven’t any the
people I’ve seen up at the hospital are
very fine but I have no occasion to
take advantage of their services, fortunately.
N: Did you have a disability rating?
N: Would you like to tell us about
how your family supported you during your military life?
S: Discharged November 1st. That was
17 days before my 21st birthday. Eve-
S: They weren’t really supporting me.
I was getting sergeant’s pay.
�N: Morally, I meant..
S: Morally, okay. (Laughter). They
were very supportive for that matter.
N: Over the subsequent years, what
has this support meant to you?
S: I appreciated it at the time and do
what I can to return the favor whenever possible, although it hasn’t been
directly possible because there haven’t been other people in that situation. I appreciated and let them know
this.
N: Okay.
(This is the end of the interview.)
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
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Midway Village Museum
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Midway Village Museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-2001
Rights
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Midway Village Museum
Language
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English
Format
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pdf
Type
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Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Charles Nelson
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Russell Sanden
Location
The location of the interview
Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
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Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Russell Sanden
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2-Feb-94
Description
An account of the resource
Born November 17, 1924, Russell Sanden was drafted June 1943 into the Air Force as a turret ball gunner. He was discharged November 1945. He died March 18, 2004.
Rights
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Midway Village Museum
Format
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pdf
Type
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Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War 2
World War II
-
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PDF Text
Text
Russell Peacock
Interviewed by Chuck Nelson
Midway Village and Museum Center
6799 Guilford Road
Rockford, Illinois 61109
Phone – 815 397 2112
�Russell Peacock
We are in the office of the Midway Village and
Museum Center in Rockford, Illinois. We are
interviewing Mr. Russell Peacock who served in
the United States Armed Forces during World
War II. We are interviewing him about his experiences in that war.
NELSON: Russell, would you please start by
introducing yourself. Please give us your full
name, date and place of birth. We would also
like to know the names of you parents and if you
had any brothers and sisters.
PEACOCK: My name is Russell Peacock and I
was born January 1, 1925. Not the first baby
born. I was a born loser, second born. My parents were Charles W. Peacock and Mary Peacock. I have one brother, Glen, and one sister,
Shirley.
NELSON: Okay. Are there any details about
your parents or your family that you would like
to give us?
PEACOCK: My parents died quite young and
my sister died when she was 28 years old. My
Dad and my sister died from sugar diabetes. My
brother is still living, he and I. He is a veteran,
too.
NELSON: What was life like before the war
specifically during 1941?
NELSON: How did you hear about December
7, 1941, and the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the
Japanese?
PEACOCK: This is quite interesting because
my sister was going with one of the soldiers
from Camp Grant. On this particular Sunday
morning my dad, brother and I took this young
soldier and we went hunting out in the country.
We left early in the morning and when we got
back around noontime, we immediately heard
about the bombing to see the look on this young
soldiers’ face at the time it would be something
to really remember because I think it scared him
terrible.
NELSON: Had you formed any prior opinions
or developed any feelings about what was taking
place in Europe and Asia?
PEACOCK: Not at the time, no. I don’t think I
really knew too much about it.
NELSON: Do you recall reading newspaper
accounts of German aggression in Europe?
PEACOCK: Oh, yes. I remember that. I
thought that was terrible.
NELSON: Did you have any knowledge of Hitler’s speeches, ideas or actions?
PEACOCK: Not really, no.
PEACOCK: My dad owned a lumberyard and I
worked in the lumberyard part time and I was
going to school at the time.
NELSON: What thoughts did you have about
the war before the United States became directly
involved in the conflict?
PEACOCK: I really wasn’t particularly interested in it becauseI read the papers and so on
but I never felt that I would ever have to get in
it, but I did.
NELSON: What events led to your entering into
military service: Were you already in the service, draft or did you volunteer?
PEACOCK: I was drafted. As a matter of fact, I
was drafted right out of school. But I did get a
delay. They wanted me to go before I even
graduated. I did get a delay so that instead of
going in May, I went in September.
NELSON: Was your response to enter military
service influenced by family and friends attitudes towards the war, the threat to national security and other considerations?
�PEACOCK: My brother was in the service at
the time. He is older than I am m. I kind of
looked up to him and followed in his footsteps. I
was not sorry to go.
NELSON: What did you think of the training?
NELSON: When and where were you inducted?
NELSON: Did you have any leaves or passes?
PEACOCK: I was inducted in at Camp Grant,
Illinois.
PEACOCK: What?
PEACOCK: I liked it. I really enjoyed it. I was
number 1 in the class.
NELSON: Did you have any leaves or passes?
NELSON: Do you have any special memories
of this event?
PEACOCK: Not until I got back from overseas.
PEACOCK: No, except that one interesting
thing, when I was working for the lumberyard,
we used to sell chunk wood to Camp Grant that
they used for the cook stoves on the troop trains.
About a week before I went into the service I
hauled a load of wood out there. Then after I got
inducted out there, the next thing I knew, I was
out there chopping the wood.
NELSON: What do you recall about this period,
the places you were stationed, the friends you
made and your association with civilians?
NELSON: How old were you at the time?
NELSON: You were assigned as an aerial gunner, as top turret gunner. Is that right?
PEACOCK: I made a lot of friends, got along
good with the fellows. At that time, it was easy
to do. Once we got a crew, an airplane crew together, those fellows were your real buddies.
PEACOCK: I was 18.
PEACOCK: That was a ball turret gunner.
NELSON: What happened after you were inducted? Where were you sent?
PEACOCK: Well, at Camp Grant they put a list
on the boardanyone that wanted to volunteer
for cadet, to be aviation cadet could sign up. So I
thought it would probably be better to fly than to
have to walk. So I signed up for aviation cadet.
NELSON: Where did you take your basic military training?
PEACOCK: I was sent down to Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, and I took the basic training
there.
NELSON: What were you trained to do?
PEACOCK: From Jefferson Barracks I was
sent to Lawrey Field, Colorado. I went through
12 weeks of Armor School. After Lawrey field, I
was sent to Timber Field, Florida, for 6 weeks of
gunnery
school.
Actually
what
they
calledwhat my title would be was an Armored
Gunner.
NELSON: Okay. Where did you go after completing your basic military training?
PEACOCK: Well that’s when I went to Armor
School and Gunnery School after basic training.
NELSON: Okay. When you were sent overseas,
where did you go?
PEACOCK: We took overseas training down in
Georgia and then I was sent up to New York
City where our crew picked up a brand new
B24J airplane. We flew it around there for a
couple of hours and checked it out. From there
we went up to Bangor, Maine, where we were
issued overseas equipment. From there we went
to Newfoundlandflew up to Newfoundland.
From there we flew down to Azore Islands.
From there we went to North Africa and from
North Africa up to Italy where we were stationed at by Carinola, Italy.
NELSON: Tell us about your experience in entering you first combat zone.
�PEACOCK: Oh, boy. That I remember quite
well. The first flight mission that I went on was
to Athens, Greece. My job was to make sure that
all the bombs were out of the bomb bay and to
watch for enemy planes and so on. I was so busy
looking at the flack, and the planes and everything that I don’t remember where the bombs
went. They said we were bombing an airfield but
I didn’t see it.
NELSON: Did your mental attitude change as
combat continued?
NELSON: They didn’t get hung up in the bomb
bay?
PEACOCK: I was hoping it would get over
with. I didn’t like it.
PEACOCK: Anybody that says they are not
scared on their first mission was lyingyou
were scared.
NELSON: Did you write many letters home?
NELSON: Can you list for us in order of occurrence all subsequent combat action in which you
were involved, just briefly.
PEACOCK: Well, I was on 18 missions. Of
course, the first 5 missions that you fly when
you get overseas, you split up from your own
crew and you fly with a different crew so to get
checked out. The pilot that we had at the time
was flying with another crew and they got shot
down over Vienna. So we were without a pilot.
Then they sent another pilot over from the States
by himself and he was assigned to our crew. One
mission thatit was on my 5th missionI really
wasn’t broke in too good but I remember that
one quite well. There was the Black __?__ oil
refinery in Germany and they had sent up a barrage at the aircraft right ahead of us. I remember
getting cuddled down in the waist of the plane,
flack suits on me and staring at the side. The
flack was breaking all around. All of a sudden
there was a hole right in the side of the plane
where I was staring. We dropped the bombs and
flew through this flack. When we got backwe
finally made it back to the base on 3 engines
because one engine had a hole right through it,
about a 6-inch hole right up through the engine.
When we counted we had 78 holes in the plane.
That was one of the worst ones that I was on.
The navigator got hit in the face and the tail
gunner got hit in the leg with some
flackwasn’t anything serious but we did get
hit pretty bad on that one.
PEACOCK: I hated the Blue Danube River
because I flew over Vienna they were shooting
at us like crazy. I’ll never sing that song again.
NELSON: What did you think of the war so
far?
PEACOCK: I wrote home, not probably as
much as the family would like but I did correspond as much as possible. Wrote quite a few
letters.
NELSON: Did you receive many letter and/or
packages? If so, how often and what type of
packages did you receive?
PEACOCK: Oh my folks, my mother was a
good cook and she always sent cookies and candy and I’d get packages maybe once a month
something like that.
NELSON: Did most of the other men write and
receive letters?
PEACOCK: I think most fellows did. I think
most fellows had families that they wrote to. It
was always a big treat to make sure that you got
a letter in the mail and to hear from home.
NELSON: Did you forge close bonds of friendship with many or some of your combat companions.
PEACOCK: Like I say, the crew that we had,
I’ve kept in contact with most of them. Some of
them have died but I have several that I keep
pretty close contact with.
NELSON: Okay. Did you ever have to help rescue a wounded buddy from an airplane?
PEACOCK: Well, this one time when a fellow
got hit but they weren’t really serious. There
�wasn’t anything death defying but we did help
them get out of the plane.
NELSON: You were never involved in the capture of prisoners or anything like that?
PEACOCK: No. No.
NELSON: Prior to the end of the war were you
aware any civilian concentration camps existed,
if so, please explain how you learned about them
and how much you knew at the time.
PEACOCK: No, I didn’t really know about any
concentration camps that were there and I had
no contact with them.
NELSON: You had nothing to do with liberating?
PEACOCK: No.
NELSON: What was the highlight occurrence
of your combat experience or any other experience you can remember?
PEACOCK; Well something that was kind of
breath taking and kind of interesting, not heroic
or anything, but this new airplane we picked up
at New York City and flew overseas. When we
got over there, of course, they remodeled it.
They do a lot of changing with that airplane and
they wereall the ground crew, everybody was
quite proud of that plane because it was the
newest one that they’d seen. So they painted
pictures on it and did a lot of work on it. Of
course, they were dispersed out on the runway.
One night we were sitting in our tent playing
cards. We had candlelight and all of a suddenit was about 9 o’clock at nightwe heard
a lot of shotslot of shooting. My goodness,
what could that be and so we run outside. We
looked over toward the line and we could see a
bunch of flashlights coming through the trees. It
couldn’t be enemy people because they don’t
come around with flashlights. So we couldn’t
figure what was happening. Then about that time
we heard somebody called that the airplane was
on fire and it was loaded with 500-pound bombs.
So we had slit trenches there and I jumped in the
slit trench and abut 10 guys jumped in on top of
me. I thought this is no place for me so I crawled
out of there and I started running fast with a
couple of other guys. We started running out
throughwe were right in the grape vineyards,
olive orchardsso we started running as fast as
we could. We ran probably ½ mile and we
flopped down under a tree. About that time that
airplane exploded. There was fire up in the air
and stuff flying in every direction, propellers up
in the air. Well, after that was over with, we
went back to our tent and that was full of holes.
We were probably about 200 yards from where
the plane blew up. It was full of big holes in that
tent. That night everyone that wasn’t on call for
the next day had to go out on the runway and
pick up all the pieces of the airplane and debris
that was scattered all over the airfield so that the
planes could take off the next morning. We
didn’t have to fly the next day so we were out
there until about 3 o’clock in the morning clearing off the runway.
NELSON: Do you know what caused that fire?
PEACOCK: One of the fellows that were loading the bombs, in that bomb bay there is little
petcocks that gasoline comes out of. Well, there
is also, generator that generates electric and they
can run the lights with. But they are not supposed to run both at the same time. Somebody
opened the gas valve to wash their hands off and
that ignited the generator and that started the
fire. Well, with 100-octane gas it goes awful
fast. The plane that we had flown over in and
had all fixed up and a pretty picture on it was
setting next to this plane. So that blew up, too. It
took about 3 other planes out of existence, too.
We had a hole in the ground about 100 feet
across and about 20 feed deep where that plane
had been setting. I can remember that quite well.
NELSON: Were there any injuries?
PEACOCK: Yeah. One guy broke his arm because he fell down when he was running. That
was the only one that got hurt.
NELSON: Tell us what you and the other men
did to celebrate America’s traditional holidays
such as Thanksgiving and Christmas.
�PEACOCK: Well, of course, being in the Air
Force, we were probably lucky because they did
have turkey and all the dressing. We had some
real good cooks and they prepared good meals
for us. We were lucky we had good cooks and
they knew how to fix it real good.
NELSON: When and how did you return to the
United States after the end of the war?
PEACOCK: After the war was over, our pilot
was Captain at the time and he was in command
of the 759th bomb group. So he had to wait there
until they closed up the camp. So he made arrangements for us to fly home with another pilot.
So our crew got loaded up a B24 plane and we
flew home. We flew from Italy down to Africa
and down to [Natal], Brazil, or to Dakar, South
Africa then across the water to [Natal], Brazil up
to Cuba and up to Georgia. What was the name
of the field in Georgia? I can stillwe flew up
to Hunter Field, Georgia. We were there a few
days. That was an interesting thing, too. When
we left Dakar, South Africa, we had to fly out
over the water to Natal, Brazil. This is all over
the water. We took our parachutes and piled
them all in the corner. This plane that we were
flying home was one of the old combat planes
and it was not in very good shape. We gotwe
flew for 10½ hours and we got over by Brazil
and then we went to put the wheels down to land
at the field there, the one wheel would come
down and lock and the other wheel only came
half way. So the pilot put the wheels back up
again, tried it again, only came halfway. Well,
we’d been flying so long we didn’t have much
gas left. In fact, we ended upwe wouldn’t
have enough to circle the field once more. So the
pilot said get your parachutes on. Anybody
wants to bail out, get ready to bail out. Everybody made a dive for the parachutes and we
come up one short. So I got the hatch open. I’m
without a parachute. Got the hatch open and
said, “I’m ready to go.” The pilot said anybody
that wanted to go could bail out when he give
the order otherwise stay on the plane and it
would land with the wheels up. Well, I wasn’t
going to stay on that plane so I got ready to bail
out. He kept trying to get the wheels down and
about that time the wheels went down and
locked. So we flewwe got in and landed and
we didn’t have 5 gallons of gas left in the tank.
We couldn’t have made it around once more.
That was scary!
NELSON: You were very lucky there. Please
tell us about your military rank and your decorations, especially your campaign decorations.
PEACOCK: Okay, I was Sergeant when we
went over and I made Staff Sergeant. I was
overseas and I got out as a Staff Sergeant. The
ribbons we were given were the American Theater Ribbon, the European Theater Ribbon, Middle East Ribbon, Good Conduct Ribbon, Air
Medal and Victory Medal.
NELSON: I think you said you were on 18 missions?
PEACOCK: Eighteen missions I was on.
NELSON: Okay. This is return to civilian life.
How did you get along with the men with whom
you had the greatest contact while you were in
service?
PEACOCK: I got along good. I only had one
fight. I think I won that fightI was, of course,
I’m a little guy and I always made it a point then
I got some place new, I’d make a buddy out of a
great big guy. Several times I was happy that I
had some buddies that were pretty big because
they looked out for me.
NELSON: Are there things you would do differently if you could do them again?
PEACOCK: I don’t think so. I was happy in
there.
NELSON: What was the most difficult thing
you had to do during this period of military service.
PEACOCK: The most difficult thing?
NELSON: Yes.
PEACOCK: The most difficult thing? I don’t
know.
�NELSON: How about your first mission?
PEACOCK: The first mission, the first 5 missions were the most difficult thing because you
really didn’t know what to expect. You had to
go on your own knowledge and the help of people you were flying with. I guess that would
probably be about the hardest thing.
NELSON: Is there any one thing that stands out
as your most successful achievement in your
military service?
PEACOCK: The most successfulthe thing
that probably helped me the most was after I got
home. After we got back here, I was assigned to
a different duty. After we got back to the States
and I had a 30-day furlough. After the furlough,
I returned to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Then I
was sent to Deming, New Mexico. We had so
many guys and they wanted something for you
to do so we were processed to find out what you
might be able to achieve. So when I went
through the line a fellow asked me if I knew
how to type. I said, “Yeah, I know how to type”.
He said, “We’ve got just the job for you.” I said,
“Yeah, what’s that?” He said, “Working in the
recruiting office.” “No,” I said, “I want nothing
to do with the recruiting.” And he said, “Oh
yeah. You’d probably like that. That’s a good
job.” I said, “Well, okay.” So he told me to report to Captain “so and so” over at headquarters
building. So I went over to headquarters building and I wandered up and down the halls and I
didn’t see any recruiting office. I ran into a Captain that was looking the same way I was and I
said, “Are you a Captain of the Recruiting Office?” He said, “Yeah.” Then I introduced myself. He said, “You and I are supposed to start up
this recruiting office.” I said, “Oh, that’s great.”
He says, “I think this empty office here where
we are suppose to start up.” He said, “ Go down
to supply and get some desks, typewriters, some
chairs and so we went down and hauled up a
bunch of desks and chairs and so onfiling cabinets. We opened up a recruiting office. We
didn’t know what we were doing so the captain
and I in a few days, we got on a plane and flew
down to Dallas, Texas, to be at a meeting with
Washington people explaining about recruiting.
When I walked into this room and there were
generals and Colonels and every kind of officer
you can imagine, I was the only noncommissioned officer in there. Well, they explained the recruiting to us and gave us recruiting papers. So we went back and started up the
recruiting office. We had people waiting to sign
up again. Well, when I left there I had 7 men
working under me. I have had 2 other officers
that were in charge. I just had them come in
once a day and swear the fellows in and then I
told them to take off.
NELSON: Did you get any additional rank for
that?
PEACOCK: No, I would have if I had stayed
there. I was just on the verge ofI would have
got more but they said it was time for me to go
home. I said, “Well, I’m having too much fun. I
want to stay.” “No, you’ve got to go home.” So I
left.
NELSON: How did you learn about VE Day
and what was your reaction to it?
PEACOCK: I was in Florida Gunnery School at
the time and knew it should be coming up pretty
soon and when I did hear about it, I was glad
that I was in Florida and not over there.
NELSON: How about VJ Day?
PEACOCK: I was in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, when that came. As a matter of fact, I think
we were being processed to go to Japan but I
was glad it ended before we got there.
NELSON: What is your opinion of the use of
the atomic bomb when it was used against Japanese civilians in August of 1945.
PEACOCK: At the time I didn’t really realize
how extreme it was but I knew it was bad and
glad that it ended the war. Too bad it had to be
that way but it probably was the only thing that
could have been done.
NELSON: Has your opinion changed over the
past 50 years? If so, how?
�PEACOCK: No, I didn’t think it’s any different. I think we’re in a good country and I’m glad
to be able to be apart of it. I think all the wars
and stuff that is going onIt’s too bad it has to
be that way.
NELSON: When and where were you officially
discharged from the service?
PEACOCK: I was discharged after I left Deming, New Mexico, I was sent to Truax Field in
Madison, Wisconsin. I was discharged from
there.
NELSON: Do you have a disability rating or
pension?
PEACOCK: No, no definitely not.
NELSON: Do you have any feeling or opinion
our nation’s military status or its policies?
PEACOCK: No. I think we had some good
leaders. Like I say, it’s too bad we have to fight
to keep it that way. It’s too bad that most of the
countries can’t be good. I guess they can’t, so
NELSON: Do you have any contact with the
Veterans’ Administration?
PEACOCK: No, no.
NELSON: You have no opinion of the VA
then?
PEACOCK: No, I don’t.
NELSON: You have never been to a Veterans’
Administration Hospital?
PEACOCK: Nope. I tried to get in but they
wouldn’t take me.
NELSON: I see. Would you like to tell us about
how your family supported you during your military life?
PEACOCK: Well, I know my father was not
happy that my brother and I had to go to the service because he had to run the lumberyard all by
himself. He had bought it at the time for a family
business but my brother left before I did and so
my dad was not happy that we were gone but he
made the best out of it he could. He was happy
to see us come back home so we could help him.
He had quite a struggle. He was not well at the
time either. But he kept it going until we got
back home.
NELSON: And you continued the business?
PEACOCK: Yes, we continued the business.
As a matter of fact I stayed in it for 47 years.
NELSON: During the subsequent years what
has the support meant to you?
PEACOCK: What do you mean?
NELSON: The help that you got while you
were in service and the support you got from
your family. How did that
PEACOCK: Oh, I think it made us closer together and especially with my brother. My
brother and I are pretty close. My folks died
quite young and it wasn’t too long after we were
home they weremy dad was only 55. I could
do more at my age now than he could when he
was 50 years old. I just wish that he could still
be here.
NELSON: Is there anything you would like t
add to this interview?
PEACOCK: No. That pretty well takes care of
it. One other thing that I think I’m quite proud of
is the fact that while I was overseas I was part of
the lead crew. We were the lead plane on the
200th mission of the 459th bombing group of the
759th bomb squadron. We bombed some railroad
yards in Augsburg, Germany. I was part of that
crew and we had someat the time, we had
some big officers flying with us. I remember
when we got back to the field the colonel was
there, the general and Red Cross group. Everybody was out there and took pictures. This picture I have here. I was quite proud to be a part of
that crew.
NELSON: That wasn’t your last mission?
�PEACOCK: No. That was probably in the middle I guess.
NELSON: Well, thank you, Russ. That was
great. Thank you very much.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Midway Village Museum
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Midway Village Museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-2001
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Language
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English
Format
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pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Charles Nelson
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Russell Peacock
Location
The location of the interview
Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Russell Peacock
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
circa 1994-2004
Description
An account of the resource
Born January 21, 1925, Russell Peacock enlisted in 1943 joining the Army Air Corps as a top turret gunner. Died November 19, 2002.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War 2
World War II
-
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PDF Text
Text
Robert Robertson
Transcribed and Edited by Margaret Lofgren
Midway Village & Museum Center
6799 Guilford Road
Rockford, Illinois 61107
Phone – 815 397 9112
�Robert Robertson
Today is March 30th, 1994. My name is Jim Will. I
am a volunteer at Midway Village & Museum Center
here in Rockford and we are cooperating with a state
wide effort to collect oral histories from Illinois
citizens that participated in events surrounding World
War II.
Today we are in the home of Robert Robertson who
lives at 210 April Court, Machesney Park, Illinois.
Mr. Robertson served in a branch of the United States
Armed Forces during World War II. We’re going to
ask him some questions about his experiences in that
war.
JIM: Can I call you Bob?
BOB: Never looked into that. Then my mother’s
father was born in New York state and her mother
was born in Virginia.
JIM: Life, just before the war, what was it like?
BOB: I was busy going to high school in Detroit. I
was taking a technical course at Cass Technical High
School in Detroit and I was interested in aeronautics.
I was into building aircraft models and gas models
and that. I had a car. I bought an old Model A. Of
course, it wasn’t so old in those days, but I worked
one summer down here in Illinois for my grandfather
who built and repaired grain elevators. I’d saved up
enough money so I bought this car and it was⎯$25 is
what I paid for it.
BOB: Yes. Please.
JIM: Oh my gosh.
JIM: Would you give your full name and date and
place of birth to start off with?
BOB: I was born in Detroit, Michigan, on October
19th, 1924. My full name is Robert Travis Robertson.
JIM: How about your parents’ names?
BOB: My father was Alexander Robertson and he
was born in Rochelle, Illinois and my mother was
Maurina Travis Robertson, of course, and she was
born in Westchester, Iowa.
JIM: Okay. Did you have any brothers or sisters?
BOB: No. Only child.
JIM: Any special details about your family like did
they come over from the “old country” maybe or
were they born⎯
BOB: My dad’s grandfather was from Canada and
they had lived in Canada. Before the Revolution, they
were in North Carolina and then they stayed loyal to
the king so they moved to Canada. And my⎯his
wife, my grandmother, was born in Dublin, Ireland..
When she came over as a family, her name was
Kennedy.
JIM: Not the famous one. (Laughter)
BOB: It was in running order. It only had about
20,000 miles on it but the man that had owned it
drove back and forth to work in it. The upholstery in
it was really a mess inside. He apparently didn’t care
if he had greasy clothes or not but otherwise it was in
really good shape⎯no rust or anything.
JIM: You tinkered with it.
BOB: Yeah. My dad worked for Ford Motor
Company and he managed to get me any spare parts I
wanted.
JIM: You say you went to high school in Detroit.
When did you graduate from high school? What
year?
BOB: When I went in the service.
JIM: Yeah. What year was that?
BOB: 1943. I⎯It was kind of a funny thing. I, of
course, had registered in the draft and all that when I
was 18 and I hadn’t heard anything more from them.
It was getting close to⎯graduation was about a
month and a half away and I kind of wanted to stay
for graduation so I called the draft board and asked
them about it and they couldn’t find any record of it.
JIM: So they put you down right a way.
�Robert Travis Robertson⎯Page 3
BOB: I asked them⎯I said, “Well”.⎯when they
called me I said, “Could I have another twenty days
and graduate with my class”? and they said they’d
look up my grades and I was all set. I didn’t have to
take any more courses or anything so away I went.
JIM: You must have been in high school during
Pearl Harbor.
BOB: See it was the Army in those days. They
hadn’t divided it up yet.
JIM: The Army Air Corps.
BOB: Yeah. The Army Air Corps. I didn’t
particularly want to go in the Army. I had an uncle
that lived with us⎯my mother’s brother⎯and he had
been in the first World War in the Navy.
BOB: Yes.
JIM: So he recommended it kind of.
JIM: Do you remember what you were doing that
day?
BOB: Yes. We went to church on Sunday morning.
Got home around eleven o’clock and we heard it on
the radio.
JIM: What was your opinion of what happened?
BOB: Of course, we didn’t know all about the radar
follow ups and that but we was all optimistic. My
mother wasn’t too happy but I think as a kid you
think of the romance of it.
JIM: You betcha.
BOB: I know I had tried to get in the Air Force
before you could get in the cadet and maybe even
take the⎯you’d pass a test⎯a qualification test and
then you could get in as an air cadet. Once you
reached the age of 18 well then there was no
JIM: Whatever they wanted you to do.
BOB: Uh Huh. And he had done very well in the
Navy.
JIM: When you were drafted into the Navy⎯after
your physical⎯where were you sent?
BOB: They gave us nine days off after we were
officially in
JIM: After your physical.
BOB: Uh huh. After the physical. We had nine days
then. And then we had to report at the post office
there in Detroit for induction. Then they marched us
down to the railroad station and we took the train
over to Great Lakes.
JIM: Oh okay. In Chicago.
BOB: North of Chicago.
JIM: Do you have any special memories of basic
training?
BOB: Yeah where they wanted to put you.
BOB: No. My mother wouldn’t sign for me because I
was seventeen so I missed that chance.
BOB: I had kind of funny deal. The first night I was
there⎯it was kind of⎯kind of was⎯of course, most
of us there was⎯you was either 18 or 19 or else you
was 38 or 40. I meant it was just the way they had
taken
JIM: So you were drafted then after.
JIM: A big gap.
JIM: So you enlisted there before you were drafted?
BOB: Yes.
JIM: When you were drafted, how did you end up in
the Navy?
BOB: They gave us a physical. A pretty good
physical. That day, apparently, they asked me what
branch I wanted to be in and I said Navy.
JIM: You didn’t pick the Air Force or Air Corps.
BOB: The eligible ones you know, so there was a lot
of us there that was pretty young. And we⎯I
remember the first night there, I drew guard duty. It
wasn’t guard duty. It was a fire watch they called it.
And you had to patrol the barracks to look for fire I
guess. I think it was just inaugurated to give us
something to do.
JIM: What did they train you to do there?
�Robert Travis Robertson⎯Page 4
BOB: They trained us to row a boat, rifle practice,
marching primarily but there again I got out of that
because I had worked in a library⎯in the Wayne
County Library in Michigan there in Detroit before I
went in the service and they post things. If you have
special qualifications, they post it. I saw on the
bulletin board that they wanted a helper for the
librarian at Green Bay Station there. I applied for it
you know, and everybody said, “Oh heck, you’ll be
washing dishes or some⎯not as nice as it sounded”
and, gee, it turned out to be really a nice job. The girl
that I worked for was⎯I suppose she’s in her mid
twenties but she was a civilian and she would take
the books around to the different hospital wards for
guys to read. I’d’ drive the truck and unload the
books and that and then she’d take them around. So
I’d just wait til she came back. That got me out of all
the marching. All I went to were the “musts”. They
call it “musts”, M-U-S-T-S. You would miss
everything but⎯oh, like seamanship, knot tying, and
rifle practice, the essentials. So that turned out to be a
good deal. Plus I think she really put in a good word
for me because when it came to service school, there
was only two of us out of that whole company of
probably around a hundred people that got to go to
service school. Right at that particular time they were
really anxious for looking for armed guards on the
civilian ships, the Liberty ships and that, cargo ships
and they really took a lot of people into that branch
which wasn’t very lucrative.
JIM: Immediately in demand.
BOB:: Yes, because they were sinking so many of
our ships, I suppose.
JIM: After your training at Great Lakes, where were
you sent or what did you do?
BOB: About thirty days.
JIM: About thirty days.
BOB: Anyway it ended up⎯ when I got sent back to
Navy Pier, it was about a week before Christmas.
JIM: 1943?
BOB: I got back to Navy Pier. In the meantime, my
class had graduated but I did get pretty good grades
so I got a rating upgrade to __?__ Machinist’s Mate,
3rd Class. That’s the lowest pay office there is. They
asked me if I wanted to stay on their ships company.
I said I didn’t know if I could or not, you know the
way I felt in the cold weather. They said, “Why don’t
you try it.” So I did. I was just making up booklets
for the people, introducing them to diesel engines and
that. Just a matter of stapling different sheets
together. I was there a couple weeks but boy I
started⎯it got cold again. Funny thing, when you’d
go to bed at night everybody just went to bed with all
their clothes on.
JIM: Didn’t have any heat in the place?
BOB: The wind would blow through. It was all glass
like a factory. So then you always hear about⎯it’s
like the library deal. You hear about the chaplains,
you know. If you got troubles you take it to him. So I
went⎯I went down to see him but I told him that I
just felt that I was gonna⎯not going to make it
without getting sick again. So I don’t know if he had
somebody in mind for the job I had or not but⎯what
he give me⎯he fixed me up and gee, I think it was
about three days I got my orders. And so I went out
of the frying pan into the fire.
JIM: Where did they send you?
BOB: I got a⎯I think I got an eight day leave after
boot camp. I think we got eight days and then I went
to diesel school at Navy Pier in Chicago. I suppose
the school⎯I imagine it started in August and I went
there seven weeks and by that
time it was
cold⎯well not real cold⎯but Navy Pier, if you know
where that is, sticking out in the lake. I got
pneumonia and they put me in the hospital over at
Northwestern University Hospital. I was in there a
couple weeks and I was feeling better and then I
came down with scarlet fever. That’s contagious so
they transported me up to Great Lakes Naval
Hospital.
JIM: How long were you there?
BOB: Solomon, Maryland. Which is about, oh
probably eighty miles from Washington, D. C.
JIM: Were you attached to any special Naval unit
then?
BOB: Yes. I⎯we went well it was a school there.
They had a school there for diesel mechanics on the
particular types of engines they had there for the
landing craft. So I went to school there and then, I
think it was just a week but it was just on a General
Motors six cylinder diesel engines.
JIM: Just certain ones.
�Robert Travis Robertson⎯Page 5
BOB: Mm hm. And I went to school there for a week
and then they assigned me to a crew and what they
did⎯I was destined for an LCT Landing Craft Tanks
and
JIM: Training for small arms. Did everybody have to
take them.
JIM: What was the training like?
JIM: Everybody participated.
BOB: It was hands on actually⎯worked on the
engines tearing them apart and putting them back
together again. They formed a crew there of a
⎯everybody wasn’t rated but they had one for a
boatswain mate, quarter master, a gunner’s mate and
a Motor Machinists Mate. So there were four of us in
the basic crew. So we went
BOB: Mm hm. They had towed targets by airplanes.
Fire 20 mm is what we fired.
JIM: So you were the Motor Machinists Mate?
BOB: Yes. They assigned us then to an LCT which
was a training crew and for two weeks we were the
trainees. They’d be training us. The next two weeks
we’d train another crew.
JIM: Passed down to somebody else. Training was
like hands on actual out on the water.
BOB: Yes. We’d go on maneuvers __?__ all the time
Then when it became our turn to teach, they moved
us down to Little Creek, Virginia, which is right
outside of Norfolk. Then we really went on
maneuvers all the time. We’d go out into the ocean
and there was an amusement park there. I don’t know
what the name of it was. They had roller coasters
there. Of course, this was during the winter so they
weren’t opened. They’d have their army maneuvers
where they’d be shooting off tear gas and stuff like
that. Then we staid⎯It was a total of four
weeks⎯two weeks as a trainee and two weeks as the
trainer. Then soon as that was finished they shipped
us up to New York, Pier 92 in New York.
JIM: New York City?
BOB: New York City. Then they moved us out to
Lido Beach, Long Island, to take training and for
shooting all the small arms and anti-aircraft guns that
those ships were carrying.
JIM: Where about on Long Islands? The far eastern
portion?
BOB: It was in the southeast part of Long Island.
Lido Beach was a real snazzy resort, I guess, during
non- war times. It was probably a 10 or 12 story
building.
BOB: Mm hm.
JIM: Oh. I see. How about ship targets?
BOB: No, just aircraft. And they hit, of course, you
just had one chance, you know. So you’d⎯one day
the pilots quit because they started out too close to
hitting them. And then they issued us gear. They
issued us winter clothing. Up til then they’d given
you no idea if you was going to go to the Pacific or
Europe. They issued us all clothing what we called
foul weather gear, all lined⎯really, really good
clothing. They issued us each a carbine⎯the regular
standard army 30 caliber carbine. Then they took us
back to Pier 92. I don’t think that was such a funny
place. The Admiral that ran it was really a nut. I
guess him and Walter Winchell was
JIM: That was in New York.
BOB: Mm hm. They made us have a bag inspection.
A bag inspection was all your clothing and gear and,
of course, in those days we had a mattress, two
blankets and a pillow issued to us and a hammock
and we had to keep that with us all the time. Well, we
had the darn bag layout and like if you were short
anything like a hair brush, and they issued you a hair
brush in the first place and you didn’t have a hair
brush, you had to buy another one and all that
paraphernalia. Then they made us wear⎯instead of
wearing dungarees which were overalls we had to
wear dress blue uniforms which was __?__. We had
to wear boots and they had leggings that you lace up.
They took us and marched us over to __?__ and in
these funny uniforms from what people usually see
sailors you know. We didn’t have any of the white
striping or anything on them. Then we had to march
over to⎯I can’t tell you the pier number but it was
where the LST was docked. It was really funny
because people would really stare at us because they
wanted to know what army it was or what Navy it
was.
JIM: The enemy. During any of this training did you
ever get leaves or passes?
BOB: No.
�Robert Travis Robertson⎯Page 6
JIM: They kept you right there. Did you meet any
friends or make any friends?
BOB: See, I was assigned to an LCT and the ship
that carried us over was an LST. They’re a
commissioned ship but they didn’t have names. Just
numbers.
BOB: Not really. Not really.
JIM: Nobody that you still keep contact with.
BOB: Now that isn’t true. I guess, after they formed
the nucleus crew, I kept in contact with the gunner’s
mate.
JIM: What was his name?
BOB: Frank Moore.
JIM: Okay. Did the Navy have assigned unit
numbers or names like the Army had for different
groups?
BOB: You don’t mean the serial number.
JIM: No. I mean like the 3rd Army.
BOB: No.
JIM: The Navy didn’t have designated names.
BOB: No.
JIM: Okay. When you were in New York were you
assigned to an LCT?
JIM: You were telling me early that ship was⎯Tell
me a little bit more about that ship.
BOB: When we got over to⎯The ship going over
carried⎯I don’t know how many⎯a bunch of trucks
inside what they called the tank deck which was an
enclosed area. It also carried oil. They used the oil for
ballast. When we got over to England they took the
oil off, you know. Then they could use it. We went
up first to Scotland and they had to form a convoy to
go back down because I guess there were subs in the
Irish Sea⎯German subs. So we had to wait for a
convoy for a couple of days and then there were
some other landing craft there by that time. We went
down then to Wales to __?__ and then we went
around the very tip of England to __?__ and then we
went up the __?__ River and they launched our LCT
from the deck of the LST.
JIM: Do you remember about when this was? Do
you remember the dates? Was it early in 44 maybe?
BOB: Oh, yes! We left Boston Harbor on March
10th, put into Halifax, Nova Scotia for a day and then
they formed a convoy March 12th. Then, as I was
saying, on March 28th and the next morning we
entered the __?__.
BOB: Yes, we had received our⎯that we’d be on
LCT 663.
JIM: Okay.
JIM: Then what happened after that? Where’d you
go.
BOB: And went to Rosa (?) Scotland. We stayed at
anchor there for two days and then went to Port
Talbot in Wales.
BOB: Well, we got on board the LST and they gave
us an option if we wanted to become a part of the
ships crew the LST crew that is, we’d be able to have
a better place to sleep and that and we’d eat the same
food as everybody. Otherwise they⎯when they were
carrying troops⎯and they had some troops on board,
that they ate at a mess after us.
JIM: You showed me a picture early of the ship that
carried the LCT. What was the name of that ship?
JIM: This was just a stop over?
BOB: Mm hm. And then we went to the Rall (?)
River on April 7th, and the LCT was launched from
the deck of the LST. On April 19th
_______?__________our engines were started for the
first time and on April 21st she had her trial run and
compasses were set.
JIM: You had a lot to do then to get everything
started up.
BOB: The LST?
BOB: Yes.
JIM: No. The ship that carried it⎯Remember the
photo
JIM: What were your duties on board?
�Robert Travis Robertson⎯Page 7
BOB: Take care of all the mechanical equipment.
JIM: Like for instance. Can you describe what daily
work on the ship was?
time when it was getting close to D-Day we’d take
the soldiers out and go down and they had a beach
there that they had explosives rigged in the ground
and they’d be shooting machine guns.
BOB: Since we got aboard we painted our engine
room. The LCT was propelled by three six cylinder
diesel engines and we had two⎯almost like a big
lawn mower to raise the ramp. They had a ramp, the
bow ramp. We had a pump, a water pump on a single
cylinder Briggs and Stratton engine and then we had
two fire engines. They were outboard motors is what
they were but they had a high pressure steam⎯it had
an intake. You put a hose over the side and it was
high pressure but they were temperamental because
⎯and they were Johnson outboard motors.
JIM: Give them
JIM: You maintained them.
BOB: No. No. This Major⎯our skipper wouldn’t do
it. He __?__⎯they could walk off and only get wet
up to their knees and the Major, he jumped out and
the Skipper said, “Well, I’m in charge of this vessel
and I’ll do it my way.” He really stood up to the
Major.
BOB: Yeah, we had to start them about every day to
see that they run alright. And then besides that one of
the important things was the anchor. What we’d do
with this anchor⎯when it was going in to hit the
beach, we’d drop the anchor on the way and then
when you left and it was maybe a quarter mile or so
you’d stop it and service it and this to pull yourself
off the beach. It had six-cylinder continental (?)
gasoline engines.
BOB: And gas. Know that we, our shippers, the
captains of these LCTs were mostly young college
graduates and ours was a little older. He was around
28. And we went in and hit the beach and when this
Colonel wanted us to __?__, Army Major, wanted us
to land was __?__. You could see the guys were
going off in really deep water.
JIM: This was on D-Day?
JIM: Now how many on the crew of the LCT?
BOB: Well, normally it was twelve but they
increased it to around sixteen on the invasion. They
must have had about sixteen.
JIM: It had a lot of engines on it.
JIM: Why the extra?
BOB: Yes, like I say, we had two generators.
JIM: Over in England⎯when you were over in
England, they didn’t give you any idea what was
ahead.
BOB: Well, it gave you⎯if you could have three
men like diesel men⎯whenever we were under way
they had to __?__ and that way you get your watches
so you wouldn’t have so much time.
BOB: Yes.
JIM: Okay.
JIM: They did?
BOB: We did a lot of interesting things on
maneuvers because these were relatively new type of
craft⎯the type six and they were designed to make
bridges out of because they had an open stern end
with the ramp down you could put the ramp of our
ship on to the back end of another one and you could
lash them together.
BOB: Mm hm.
JIM: When did they tell you their plans?
BOB: Well, they never did tell us until we were
actually at sea.
JIM: Single file?
JIM: Just before D-Day. How long did it take to
organize that⎯get all their ships together in the
channel?
BOB: Really not long. They came from different
places. One interesting thing was, prior to the
invasion, we would go on maneuvers. We went one
BOB: Right. I don’t know if they ever used it or not.
We never did. Then we went out on night maneuvers
one time. The soldiers all had been issued
ammunition and we figured we was going
JIM: That it was the real thing.
�Robert Travis Robertson⎯Page 8
BOB: Yeah. Because it was at night, you know, and
that’s terrible when you’re out there with no lights
JIM: How did you feel at that time?
BOB: __?__. Because they seemed to be doing such
dumb things from my standpoint⎯of course, you
look back and think they was preparing you
JIM: At that time.
BOB: Yeah. And then they came and they issued us
all army clothing because I guess they had trouble at
Anzio where the Germans would try to pick off the
sailors, you know. I guess that was the reason. They
gave us regular wool and all these clothes that we got
had gas protectors.
JIM: Flammable or flame proof.
BOB: No They just⎯well like the shirts were regular
buttons and then there was a flap inside and I think
that they must have really planned on the German’s
using gas. Because we, besides that, they gave us
another like a coverall and we had to wear that over
all the other stuff. Then we were issued a⎯these
were like big garbage bags that was clear on one end
and then khaki on the other. If we got gassed you
had⎯it gave you a chance to pull this thing on before
you put the rest of your clothes on. So we had that .
Then we had to wear a life jacket which ⎯they’re
really cumbersome. Big old Mae West things, you
know and boy you really got warm with the gas
protective clothing. It wouldn’t breath like regular
clothing.
JIM: Is there anything else happen on maneuvers
that might come to mind?
BOB: Well, the LST 507 and two others were sunk
by German torpedo boats. We were there but we
didn’t know what was happening. You could see the
fires and the shells exploding in the air. Some of
them looked like they were coming our way.
JIM: They really kept that a secret?
BOB: Our commander thought that probably we
were still listed as being in the crew of that LST 507.
They advised us to wire home. All it said was
disregard the information. Nothing else about it.
JIM: Talk about writing home or wiring home⎯how
about mail or packages. Did you get a lot?
BOB: We were prepared then for the invasion. Then
they take you out and you’re just following the guy
ahead of you so you really don’t know what direction
you’re in all the time cause you’re always changing
directions.
JIM: The guy in front had to know where he was
going.
BOB: Yeah. He had probably⎯Most of the time he
had like a small vehicle⎯small warship ahead of us
like a patrol craft or a PT Boat or something like
that⎯something to kind of keep you in line. Then in
May, we went about every day some place.
JIM: On maneuvers.
BOB: Mm hm. We got the extra crew aboard then.
We got this even before then but then with additional
ones plus the other ones we’d gotten earlier we had a
total of fifteen men. Now I got these dates from the
ships log. I wrote this menu; down so I know I’m
right on the dates. When we got the extra guys we
had another ensign. Up to the time we just had the
one officer. Then we had an ensign. His name was
George Edwards and he came from down by Peoria,
Fairfield, Illinois. My uncle ran a grocery store in
Fairfield, which is a town of 200 people and, of
course, he knew my uncle.
JIM: No kidding.
BOB: Anyway, on May 23rd, we began to load the
LSTs with supplies.
JIM: They had troops out there?
JIM: For the crossing.
BOB: Yes. They lost a lot of men. That was called
Operation Tiger.
BOB: Mm hm.
JIM: Is that why they never said anything about it?
Never recorded it or anything until afterwards?
BOB: Yeah.
JIM: That was pretty early wasn’t it?
BOB: Mm hm
�Robert Travis Robertson⎯Page 9
JIM: When did you find out you were going to
France?
along the coast taking an eastern course. By this time
other LCTs and LCIs and LCNs would get in the line.
BOB: When they handed out the sheets and our
money. __?__Eisenhower __?__.
JIM: Now LCIs that was the infantry:
BOB: Mm hm. They looked more like at ship.
JIM: Okay. You got money from⎯everybody got
money
BOB: Mm hm.
JIM: French?
BOB: I don’t think it was really pay money. I think
they just gave us that money so we’d have it.
JIM: What was the other one, LC
BOB: LCN would carry one tank. There was just on
tank (Inaudible. Jim and Bob talking at the same
time). Very small steel boat. They had LCVPs which
is Landing Craft Vehicle Personnel. They could carry
one jeep and so many soldiers. They were
wooden⎯plywood. They had one engine where as
the LCNs would have two engines
JIM: To use over there.
JIM: Okay. They were all different sizes.
BOB: It was like $20 worth.
JIM: On the morning of June 6 of 44?
BOB: Well let me go back.
JIM: Okay. You want to back up.
BOB: On the night of June 1st we went over to Tor
Bay. We were in Tor Bay which is a coastal bay. We
pulled up to a __?__ and loaded on thirteen jeeps,
two two-ton trucks, a weapons carrier which was a
smaller size truck and a water trailer and seventy-one
enlisted personnel and two officers also came aboard.
They were members of the 1st Division. Most of
them were combat engineers. One group was going to
set up a field hospital and the other group was going
to blow a hole in the sea wall. All the soldiers that we
had on board had been in other invasions.
JIM: Oh, they did? Like Italy and North Africa.
They knew what to do.
BOB: Yeah. Then we went back over to⎯after
loading up on the 1st, we went back to
Dartmouth⎯camouflage netting over the tank deck
so you wouldn’t be able to tell if we had anything on
board. Of course, that was on the 1st. At 19:20 which
is 7:20 on the evening of June 3rd, we left the
anchorage with the rest of our flotilla of LCTs. I
think there were twenty some LCTs in our flotilla.
JIM: What did they do on the 3rd?
BOB: We was under our way. When we went
through the town of Dartmouth, all the people We
joined the escort ships out in the channel and sailed
BOB: Yes. We had escorts. It was getting
rough⎯the channel got rough and on the 4th (Both
talking. Inaudible).
JIM: There was a storm?
BOB: Right. So we received word by signal that it
was to be postponed until 5:30 a.m. on June 5 th. It
was set back twenty-five hours so that it would occur
on June 6th at 6:30. But obviously we had been out
there parading up and down the channel.
JIM: Waiting for the weather to clear.
BOB: Mm hm. So we went in to a harbor and staid
for⎯I don’t know. It wasn’t all night. It was
probably six hours or so. Then we started out again. I
think then we headed west. We were supposed to be
in the eleventh wave in the first time so that we
would be up close to the obstructions. __?__ is where
we staid. When we left in the morning⎯we again got
underway we again formed the convoy and headed
east in the channel toward Dover. In the afternoon we
turned around and headed back the other way again
staying in about the center of the channel. That night
we then went south towards France. At 6:15 in the
morning of June 6 we sighted the coast of France. At
that time we could hear heavy fire in the distance.
Huge flights of bombers and fighter planes were
going over us. We proceeded along the coast line for
about two hours all the time we kept passing
warships which were firing on the beach. We staid
about five miles off shore when we came to sort of a
shallow bay in the coast line. We were ordered to cut
our speed and circle around until we received orders
to hit the beach. At 0920 we received orders to go
into the beach so the other LSTs and I got under way.
�Robert Travis Robertson⎯Page 10
There twelve ships of all sizes of our U. S. LCTs and
the British LCTs . We were the second ship in line in
our wave. We followed it immediately behind the
LCT 777 which was our sister ship and was the flag
ship of our wave. At 10:30 we were about three miles
from the beach. The triple 7 hit a mine. The mine hit
in the aft section and cracked the 777 in half. Many
men were blown off the ship including all the men in
the __?__. Fortunately though two LCVPs rescue
boats were near by and came immediately to pick up
the survivors. Our orders were not to stop. We
noticed an increase in shell explosions around us and
they continually increased as we neared the beach.
We could then make out clearly the figures of the
men on the beach and the burning vehicles and gun
flashes. A control boat pulled along side and ordered
us to hit the beach as close as possible __?__. We
beach at that location at 11:55 and the ramp was
lowered and the vehicles were starting to debark. The
water then was about three feet deep at the end of the
ramp so that it would come to the hoods of the jeeps.
The vehicles were fairly waterproof but nevertheless
some of them stalled as they hit the water. We
figured it was because they had disconnected the fan
belts. The first jeep was just leaving the ramp when
three shells hit around us and landed near the bow
and one near the stern on the port side and one close
to the stern on the starboard side. The shrapnel
thrown by these shells splattered the ship killing our
executive, killed Ensign Edwards and a soldier.
JIM: That was the new Ensign?
BOB: Yes. And wounding Ensign Kurtz. That was
our acting skipper and quartermaster Thomas so all
was on top of the __?__got hit.
JIM: Where were you at?
BOB: I was on the throttles. You could control the
engines. In fact that is the only way you can do it.
JIM: At the rear?
BOB: Yes. It’s a little square cubicle.
JIM: Was it⎯Did you have some armor protection
on these ships.
BOB: They claim (inaudible) See that’s the __?__
over there.
JIM: Oh, okay. Like a square box.
BOB: It sets on top. Like this was⎯on this side it
was the officers quarters __?__ and on the opposite
side it was the crews quarters and then there was this
where the toilets were and the showers and then on
the opposite side was the stove for cooking. The rest
was storage area. There were several other soldiers
killed. They went out __?__.
JIM: They had good rescue ships? A couple of them
picked up survivors.
BOB: Yeah. After that at fifty second intervals shells
would light around us and they came in salvos of
three and landed at fifty second intervals almost to
the second and it was said later that the shells were
from a German __?__ located several miles away.
Well, anyway we were up on the beach and we
unloaded about half the jeeps and we got rid of the
two truck which we were happy about because they
were carrying explosives for blowing a hole in the
sea wall. And then we were⎯the water was getting
deeper for the jeeps to get out so we tried to back
around and hit the beach square again instead of
getting off at an angle. In doing that we caught the
anchor cable which we dropped the anchor a quarter
of a mile back. That was when __?__ caught the
anchor on the propeller. We couldn’t go forward or
we couldn’t go backward.
JIM: So then what?
BOB: We tried revving up the engines to see if they
could cut the cable. Then the __?__ was we couldn’t
decide if we cut the cable by one of the other screws
__?__ propeller or a German shell landed on it.
JIM: Oh, okay.
BOB: The only thing I knew about⎯we went back
out then. We went to the hospital ship then.
JIM: Which was out in the channel.
BOB: Yeah. We took the⎯The skipper had a hole
right in the front of his helmet but he didn’t have the
chin strap on it, you know, and it just knocked the
helmet and put a line⎯just like someone had taken a
red pencil and made a line across his
JIM: You never got hurt did you?
BOB: No. We had one of the gunner’s mates got hit
in the hand and then the quartermaster, he’s the
signal man also, he got hit in the butt. (Laughter)
JIM: Sore bottom. Not bad I presume.
�Robert Travis Robertson⎯Page 11
BOB:
No. We took him to the hospital ship and
they dressed their wounds and they came back. Then
we had to⎯we didn’t only go in without an anchor
but we carried a spare anchor so they told us to put
the anchor out and then they said not to go in. By
then it was getting toward dusk.
JIM: You had to wait for the next day then?
BOB:
Yeah. There really wasn’t much night. It
was really funny. It wouldn’t get dark over there until
eleven o’clock
JIM: Did you find that the medical treatment was
excellent, superb or adequate?
BOB: We would haul out wounded and we had a
Chief Pharmacists’ Mate which is like a combat
JIM: Medic like?
BOB: Medic. And he would⎯I mean when they
would bring them on on cots or stretchers, some of
them were in real bad shape. He would give out⎯to
kill the pain.
JIM: Morphine?
JIM: Oh, yeah?
BOB:
Mm hm. Of course, that was near the
longest day of the year, June 6th. But it really stays
light a long time. They wouldn’t send us in in the
dark. I don’t know. I suppose they didn’t want to
have them ramming into each other.
JIM: Now at this time you only had part of your
cargo unloaded.
BOB:
Yes. We only had⎯we got rid of the big
ones but we still had probably six or eight jeeps.
JIM: Do you remember what happened the next day?
BOB:
One thing that I thought was really
marvelous⎯well, there were a couple things. Going
into the beach, the cruiser⎯the heavy cruiser,
Augustus, which was a neat looking ship⎯it had a
clipper bow, you know, a real pointed bow and it was
a (blank for a short time) and then when we was on
the beach there and these jeeps would be stalling
when they’d get to __?__ there was some soldier
driving it a big “cat”
and he was really
impressive⎯pulling those jeeps. At least everything
that was falling there.
JIM: Then the day after, did you have to go back in
then?
BOB: Yes.
JIM: Finish the job.
BOB: We attached our cable __?__ the day before
__?__. I think the things that we were hauling in
weren’t, you know, __?__field hospital.
BOB: Morphine. And __?__ presently the hospital
ship came by. It seemed like they took their time.
JIM: Best they could at the time.
BOB: That evening when we went off and anchored
by ourselves, just at dusk there was some DC3s came
over and they dumped out parachutes but if they were
men or supplies, I don’t know. I thought they was
awfully low if they were men because they couldn’t
have been more than __?__.
JIM: Now on the beach, you’re talking about.
BOB: Mm hm. The Germans would⎯every night
and they did this for a long time⎯they’d come over
and drop what we called chandelier flares⎯a whole
group that I assume was magnesium __?__ on fire
and you could read a newspaper under them.
JIM: Light up the area.
BOB: They really fired a lot. Our ships
JIM: Were there a lot of German enemy planes?
BOB: Never saw any of them but one night⎯I think
it was the next night or so they strafed the beach and
you could __?__you could⎯most of the time the
tracer bullets were going up from the ground up but
these were coming out of the sky. All the gunner’s
mates were eager to shoot and we⎯that first night we
just anchored ourselves and didn’t have anything to
shoot at. The next night we had three men⎯we had
20mm cannons is all we had like overgrown machine
guns. We would have three men hand over the
ammunition. One guy would be the trainer and pull
the trigger, and the other guy would put up the⎯as
soon as it was empty would put up another magazine.
�Robert Travis Robertson⎯Page 12
JIM: From the top down.
JIM: What did you do there?
BOB: Yeah. The next night __?__ was right close.
We were again anchored by ourselves. We were
trying to get away from the big ships cause they were
shooting up there. So we were sitting back there and
also didn’t have a gun station cause everybody had to
be out when they called GQ, they had to be right in
the __?__ there was a JU88. That’s a medium sized
bomber, German, and I’m sure he was probably
dropping mines and he must have thought because
there was nobody out there where we were and he
came over and he was painted white underneath but
you could see the pilot. He was looking. Our guys got
chewed out before for shooting without waiting for
the skipper to tell them when to shoot so they had
radio telephone communications and he said that he
(of course, ones could argue either way) but I don’t
think he had the button pressed and the guys never
got the word.
JIM: So they sat there.
BOB: Otherwise the only time we saw a German
plane was⎯probably ten or twelve days after that, a
Messerschmidt 109 came out of the clouds. Nobody
fired at him. You could sure tell what it was. And
then a P47 came down and they down and they really
opened up on him.
JIM: Oh, my gosh. Your own plane.
BOB: Yeah.
JIM: He was chasing the German?
BOB: Must have been. We saw a couple of them
crash although they weren’t shooting at them but I
guess one of them was on the beach there and it had a
projectile in the engine but it didn’t explode.
BOB: Well, you see we would dry out. When we
were carrying gasoline, we’d go out and we’d just
wait ‘til the tide went out and go in as far as we could
and then when the tide went out __?__ otherwise
__?__. Because we’d carry five thousand of there
__?__.
JIM: You didn’t like that either.
BOB: No.
JIM: I can understand that. After you got off on
shore⎯after the area was secured, I guess.
BOB: We’d go around looking for __?__.
JIM: Looking the area over.
BOB: Some of the other LCTs would be there in our
group __?__.
JIM: You mentioned you found a German helmet.
BOB: Well, I didn’t get that until later on.
JIM: It wasn’t there.
BOB: When Bresser entered there in Brittany the
Germans⎯they took⎯or we took our soldiers took
rifles and helmets and had them all in different piles.
They let you take one of each. You could always
trade them or sell them to the merchant. They were
wild to buy anything.
JIM: I suppose. What were your duties after D-Day?
Where were you sent then?
BOB: Yeah. There were some big shells, too, like
battle ships⎯fourteen inch or so but they had flagged
them. You’d walk fast to go by them.
BOB: We stayed right there on the beach til⎯it
must have been⎯it was after the storm⎯A big storm
came on June 19th. We really⎯In fact they brought a
Liberty type ship in and beached it just to get ammo
off it because it was getting that close. __?__ we got
washed up on the beach.
JIM: I’ll bet. Say after he beach was secured⎯first
of all, you went in on which beach?
JIM: I heard stories or somewhere I read, they had
regular piers out to⎯after the storm.
JIM: They had to disarm it then.
BOB: Utah.
JIM: After the beach was secured you had a chance
to go ashore you mentioned earlier.
BOB: Mm hm.
BOB: Yeah. That’s__?__ steel. Most of them were
busted up. They were all shook loose and that but it
didn’t take long to get them back up. But what they
also did, they had about eight or nine of these Liberty
ships⎯I call them Liberty ships. They’re freighters
�Robert Travis Robertson⎯Page 13
and they brought them in and blew the bottom out of
them to act as a breakwater.
JIM: Oh. To make part of the pier.
BOB: Mm hm.
JIM: There’s a picture that looks like you beached.
BOB: Yeah. That’s when we got blown up on the
beach⎯where the Army tried to get us out.
BOB: Mm hm. But they went on and they captured
everything up to Brest because the Germans just
retreated on to Brest. They fixed up the holes in the
ship and we went back to the beach. We was carrying
big semis. They had like machine shops in them. The
Army did. They were Army and welding shops. The
truck part wasn’t there⎯just the trailer part. I think
there was one truck. Anyway, we had to dry out
because they couldn’t get them off except one at a
time. Then they’d take it out and park it someplace.
We’d carry cranes. Very seldom tanks. A couple time
we had tanks.
JIM: Okay. Did they ever get you out?
JIM: How long were you in England?
BOB: Yeah.
JIM: With balloons?
BOB: It was when the “Buzz” bombs were coming
over. We must have been there five or six days.
BOB: Well, the bulldozer pushing and there was a
tug ran out a cable for us and between the two of
them they pulled us. We hauled all kinds of
stuff⎯like, I said, nurses⎯one time we had a whole
bunch of nurses on board.
JIM: You weren’t anxious to stay then.
JIM: The hospital they set up.
BOB: We went back to Morlaix, a big railroad base.
BOB: Someplace. We never knew but that was
when they went off on the ramp. They had trucks
waiting for them. then⎯like say, we hauled all kinds
of things from the Liberty ships. The LSTs would
generally beach themselves. They had the same kind
of deal where they’d __?__ and we didn’t try to
unload them.
JIM: With Patton’s equipment and supplies.
JIM: From France, where did you go? How long
were you in France?
BOB: We were in France until⎯we were on the
beach head until it was in July. Then we went back to
England because some of our tanks had been pierced
and they had water in them and they were low in the
water. We went back and they welded those up. We
went
JIM: Did you make a lot of trips back or not?
BOB: No. Just that one. We went with⎯to meet
Patton. We had⎯I don’t remember if we had gas on
or lube oil. We had a bunch of lube oil, I know and I
can’t remember
JIM: __?__, I suppose.
BOB: No.
JIM: Where’d you go from there?
BOB: Yes. We stayed there. We had some funny
incidents. Do you want to hear about them?
JIM: Sure.
BOB: One time we went out and there was a
Brazilian ship came in loaded with coffee. It was a
gift from the people of Brazil to France. They came
in one hundred pound bags. Great big bags. Maybe
there were fifty pounds. But anyway they were really
big bags but they were really poor quality. The damn
coffee would leak on the deck. They were green
beans. They weren’t roasted. We let the
people⎯they’d see all that coffee. We would just
sweep it over. So they came and we let them on
board with their dishpans or whatever to get that
coffee. Just about that time, we must have had about
two hundred of them on the deck, some old lady fell
between the ship and the sea wall but she⎯It was
shallow water. It was only three feet deep or so. And
then she couldn’t even get down because she was
wedged in there. The ship was here and the sea wall
was at an angle and she was hollering her head off.
Just then our group commander came up and he was
raging that we was doing that and he said, “Get those
people out.” It really was tough to get them off if
�Robert Travis Robertson⎯Page 14
they didn’t have there bag full yet. We finally got
them off then we’d fill their containers.
JIM: Oh, okay. French.
JIM: Dished it up.
BOB: Mm hm. They couldn’t even get into the bay
where we normally had an anchorage there. It was a
big French liner and they
BOB: Right. One time we⎯I remember it was in
November. It was when the Army and Navy football
game was on. I always remember that because we
cold get that on our ship’s radio over there.
JIM: They were taken care of.
JIM: Who’d you cheer for?
BOB: Navy. They brought down a bunch of
Senegalese. They were French troops.
JIM: From Africa.
BOB: From Africa. They were all big guys. All with
like scars cut in and everything, you know. There
must have been⎯there was three of us carrying them
and I imagine there was over a thousand. There was a
lot of them. They hadn’t been paid like months and
they were revolting. The paymaster was on board and
he was scared to death. They issued us all side arms
__?__. He showed them a bag full of money and he
said when they got on the transport that they’d give
them their pay which I hope they did. Boy, I was up
on the bow this day. I don’t know why. I was in the
bow and brought up the ramp. He really scared me
because I didn’t know that to do with him. I told him,
“Go down. Go down.” He said “Just want to see. Just
want to see.” I said, Okay”. He could speak pretty
good English. He told me they hadn’t fed them that
day or anything. So I said, “Well, gee, we can give
you something to eat.” We had a bunch of processed
cheese in gallon cans. It was like Velveeta. We had
some⎯because they couldn’t eat meat. I don’t
understand that. (Not audible. Both talking at once.
Anyway we gave them a bunch⎯we unloaded a
bunch of canned goods we didn’t like. This was all
when we were at Morlaix. We had a bunch of French
that had been down to Africa. DeGaulle was there
welcoming these people. He must have been kissing
somebody or something because he was head and
shoulders above the majority of the people. The
Army had a band there.
JIM: This is a photo of unloading French refugees.
BOB: Mm hm.
JIM: Okay.
BOB: That’s what I call them. They’re really service
people.
BOB: You could see they built a ramp for them and
everything. One poor guy⎯when we were in the
channel the sea was running. It wasn’t a storm but we
still had waves probably eight foot waves. But, Geez,
one French man⎯we had a terrible time because they
couldn’t come down the cargo ramp. Normally troops
and that go down the cargo ramp then you can jump
over. They had a gangway that they had and, boy, we
had to keep the bow of the ship up against there.
When the waves would go up, they had to jump just
at the right time __?__. One guy dropped his bicycle.
He was carrying his bicycle when he jumped. He
made a grab for it but it went over. Geez, he cried.
Poor guy. You even felt sorry for him. (Laughter)
JIM: See, there’s the railroad bridge.
BOB: Yeah. That’s the big one.
JIM: Mm hm.
BOB: So we staid there and we were going to have a
big party. Those kind of things were interesting. It
broke the monotony.
JIM: Do you remember any humorous things outside
of the guys not firing at the⎯of course, that wasn’t
humorous at that time but looking back, I suppose
BOB: We got a kick out of it.
JIM: After your stay in France, you mentioned you
were
BOB: We were going to have a big party on New
Year’s Eve. Well, it was New Year’s Eve day. We
made a deal with an old gal there in the black market
to get champagne. What they were doing then⎯It
was rough crossing the channel __?__. The Germans
had subs out there. They were going to have a big⎯I
can’t think what they call it. It was a landing ship.
They could carry three LCTs in it and they could
float them in. They still had these for like the Army.
We were headed up . We didn’t have any cargo.
They didn’t have any ships in there. We were going
to go up to⎯up to Morlay for the night and we got
about half way there and there was two other ships
�Robert Travis Robertson⎯Page 15
coming the opposite way and they said then we had
orders to go back to England.
JIM: You didn’t have your party. You had to go
back to England?
BOB: Mm hm.
JIM: Did you write her a lot?
BOB: Pretty good, I think. My dad wrote.
BOB: Then we had to re-paint the ship and fix
everything up. They tore out the engines and put in
new ones and was sent to the Pacific.
JIM: You didn’t have to go to the Pacific, did you?
JIM: Do you remember the end of the war? VJ Day.
BOB: Yes.
JIM: Where were you?
BOB: Yes.
BOB:: I was on Okinawa.
JIM: Did you? Where were you sent⎯from England
then?
BOB: No. I came back and went to diesel school at
Fairbanks Morse in Beloit up here.
JIM: Oh, okay.
BOB: I put in for that. That was another thing where
they say that you never get what you ask for. I asked
for that because it was close to Shirley.
JIM: And you got it. You knew Shirley at that time.
This is his wife.
BOB: Oh yeah.
JIM: When did you meet her. You knew her before?
BOB: Yeah. When I was working for my granddad
on the grain elevators. Her dad owned the country
elevator and we met
JIM: Oh, were you. Out in the Pacific?
BOB: I was going to be on an LSM. It was a new one
that they came up with toward the end of the war. A
brand new ship. It was a little smaller than an LST. It
had an open tank deck. It was sort of like an
overgrown LCT, I guess.
JIM: A lot of celebrating at that time or not over
there?
BOB: Well, they celebrated the fist one that was
dropped. The first bomb. The ships were all⎯the
battleships and that were all in Buckner Bay. That
was really a sight. You couldn’t believe it. All the
battleships and these big aircraft carriers⎯generally
you see one or two, you know. Boy, they were all in
there. There were all the big cruisers. It was really
something to see. When they dropped the first bomb
they figured it was all over and they were shooting of
flares and these⎯they got a shell⎯like the battle
ship has got a shell. I forget what they call that stuff.
JIM: Near Detroit?
JIM: Like fireworks.
BOB: Oh, no. By Ashton, Illinois.
JIM: Ashton. Oh sure.
BOB: Yeah. A Jap plane came in and torpedoed the
USS Pennsylvania.
BOB: She lived out in the country.
JIM: Oh, my gosh.
(A considerable blank space on the tape.)
BOB: So that⎯the actual night⎯We was on beach.
We stayed there and it wasn’t much of a celebration.
JIM: Now you didn’t get married until after the war.
BOB: Right.
JIM: You just⎯quiet thinking.
JIM: I think this about winds it up.
BOB: Yeah. We was living in a tent. We must have
got there the end of July and I didn’t get any mail
from when I left home until I got on ship in October.
BOB: We corresponded.
JIM: You did. Did you get a lot of letters from her?
�Robert Travis Robertson⎯Page 16
JIM: You went straight from the U. S. over to
Okinawa.
BOB: Yeah. We went to the Philippines and they had
dysentery there and they wouldn’t let us off so they
took us⎯we were supposed to get off there and they
took us up (blank space on tape).
JIM: VJ Day. After the bomb was dropped, you
didn’t do much celebrating?
BOB: No. We got put in a camp that the CBs had
built and it was tents⎯these pyramid style tents
because it was warm weather there. We just kind of
rolled up the tent sides so the air would circulate.
They warned us about snakes. They had poisonous
snakes on Okinawa and that they were around and I
was sleeping just with my shorts on, laying on the
floor and, God, I felt something on my back. I
hollered and said, “I think it was a snake.” Everybody
got up, you know, and looking for it. It was a little
rat. We had all our gear and our clothes and that in
the middle of the thing __?__. I think that’s where it
was. I could feel that on my back for a week. Not that
it scratched me or anything but I could just
JIM: Okay. At the end of the war when the Japanese
finally surrendered, do you remember that?
BOB: Yes, I do. They were still holding out on
Okinawa for quite a while and what they’d do there
at that base⎯Camp Costello they called it⎯they’d
issue them grenades and rifles with ammunition on
Sundays and they’d go souvenir hunting. On the
south end of the island there was an old castle⎯
Cheree Castle⎯and there were just all kinds of caves
down there. Those guys would go up there and look
in those caves for Jap souvenirs.
JIM: How about the Japs. Were they out of the
caves?
BOB: No they were still in there. It was really scary
around there because there were so many places they
could hide. They had guys on guard duty our
guys⎯and one night the guy said there was
somebody and he shot about ten rounds. Scared the
heck out of everybody. Nobody could go back to
sleep.
JIM: I suppose not. One thought I had in
mind⎯being on Okinawa, so close to Japan. Was
that close?
BOB: Yes, to me it was.
JIM: Did you hear or feel the atom bomb at all?
BOB: No.
JIM: You couldn’t. It was still too far away. Never
thought to ask anybody that. Okay, I guess we’re just
about done here. Do you have any contact with the
Veterans’ Administration?
BOB: No.
JIM: You were never injured in the service?
BOB: No.
JIM: Have you ever gone to a VA Hospital?
BOB: For myself? No.
JIM: How did your family support you when you
were in the service? Were they against you going in?
BOB: No.
JIM: They let you go.
BOB: Mm hm.
JIM: And you wrote a lot to your wife⎯your fiancée
BOB: Yeah. My mother and dad.
JIM: Well, Bob, I guess that about winds it up. I
enjoyed talking with you. Would you like to say
good-bye?
BOB: Good-bye. I’m a history buff and it meant a lot
to me to see something like that and I don’t mind
talking about it.
JIM: Any last thoughts? If you had to do it over
again would you pick a different branch of the
service.
BOB: No. I’d stay with the Navy.
JIM: they had good food, I suppose.
BOB: Yeah. The food was generally good.
JIM: That about ends it. Bye.
BOB: Bye.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
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Midway Village Museum
Publisher
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Midway Village Museum
Date
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1993-2001
Rights
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Midway Village Museum
Language
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English
Format
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pdf
Type
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Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
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Jim Will
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Robert Travis Robertson
Location
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Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
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Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Robert Travis Robertson
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
30-Mar-94
Description
An account of the resource
Born October 19, 1924, Robert T. Robertson was drafted in 1942 into the Army Air Force. He died January 6, 2002
Rights
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Midway Village Museum
Format
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pdf
Type
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Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War 2
World War II
-
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PDF Text
Text
Robert Persinger
Interviewed by Jim Will, January 1994
Transcribed by Lorraine Lightcap
Edited by Martha Byrnes November 2018
For Midway Village and Museum Center
6799 Guilford Road
Rockford, Illinois 61107
Phone 815 397 9112
www.midwayvillage.com
�Robert Persinger
Today is January 31, 1994. My name is Jim
Will. I’m a volunteer at the Midway Village and
Museum Center, which is cooperating with the
statewide effort to collect oral histories from
Illinois citizens that participated in the events
surrounding World War II. We are in the home
of Robert Persinger whose address is 3411 Constance Drive, Rockford, Illinois. Mr. Persinger
has served in a branch of the United States
Armed Forces during World War II. We are going to interview him right now about his experiences in that War.
WILL: Was this in Iowa?
PERSINGER: In Iowa. And my father died
when I was 13 years old, so it left me, being the
oldest boy, kind of the head of the family. We
moved to Illinois to live on a farm with my uncle. And (I) studied in Marengo prior to World
War II. I worked in a factory there.
WILL: When did you graduate from high
school?
PERSINGER: In 1941.
WILL: Okay. Can I call you Bob?
WILL: 1941. From where, Marengo?
PERSINGER: Yes.
WILL: Can you give your full name and place
and date of birth?
PERSINGER: No. From Holcomb, Missouri.
We moved to Missouri. That is located in the
northeastern part of Missouri, just across the line
from Iowa and Illinois.
PERSINGER: I am Robert Persinger. I was
born in Weaver, Iowa, on September 29th, 1923.
WILL: And your job in ’41, after graduation?
WILL: Can you give us the names of your parents?
PERSINGER: My father’s name was Charles
and my mother’s was Lucille Persinger.
WILL: Did you have any brothers or sisters?
PERSINGER: Yes. I had two brothers and two
sisters. One of the brothers has passed away recently.
WILL: What were their names?
PERSINGER: William and Charles. Fern and
Darlene.
PERSINGER: Well, I worked in a small factory in Marengo doing metal products. I worked
there until I was drafted. I was offered a deferment because of being the supporter of my
mother and the rest of the children but I waited
until I was drafted and then I wanted to go at
that time even though I knew I should be at
home. I thought I should go.
WILL: On December 7, 1941, how did you hear
about the bombing of Pearl Harbor?
PERSINGER: I was listening to a football
game between the Chicago Bears and, I believe,
it was the Cardinals. It was interrupted in announcing the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
WILL: Now is there any special thing about
your family that you would like to tell us anything that you remember?
WILL: What
thoughts?
PERSINGER: We were born and raised on a
farm. My days, as a child and youth, were being
with the farm.
PERSINGER: I was surprised, but we had been
hearing about the War and the things that were
happening so we knew. I thought then that we
were definitely in War and that was it. I looked
was
you
reaction?Your
�forward, really, to getting a chance to get into
the service.
WILL: You mentioned you were drafted. That
was after Pearl Harbor?
PERSINGER: Yes. That was after Pearl Harbor. Yes.
WILL: Do you recall anything before Pearl
Harbor about what was going on over in Europe? Have you opinions of that?
PERSINGER: Well, like I said, by just the
news and following the newspapers that we
knew something was going to happen with Hitler doing what he was doing and Japan. We just
knew it was going to come. It was going to
break into a War sooner or later. The time was
up.
WILL: Okay. You say you were drafted. About
when was this? Do you remember the date?
PERSINGER: I can’t exactly [remember] the
date. I guess March of ’43. It was in that month.
PERSINGER: I was living in Marengo.
WILL: Do you remember anything about that
when you finally got it?
PERSINGER: I was inducted in Woodstock,
Illinois, and came right over to Camp Grant here
in Rockford, and spent about three days before
we were shipped to Camp Gordon, Georgia.
That was where our basic training was.
WILL: At Camp Grant you had your physicals?
PERSINGER: Physicals and tests. I think
you’re classed by the tests; classed by what they
thought, maybe, you could do. Were you mechanically inclined, whatever. So I was sent to
Camp Gordon, Georgia, and joined the 3rd Cavalry “reconnaissance” squadron mechanized, as
a tank company. I learned to drive a tank after
my basic training.
WILL: You had basic down there?
PERSINGER: Yes, basic training. Then we
started preparing to learn how to operate tanks.
My first job was to learn how to drive a tank.
WILL: You were roughly what age?
PERSINGER: Just coming on to 20 years old.
WILL: What was the response of your family
when you got your draft notice or before you got
your draft notice? Were they in favor of you going into the service?
PERSINGER: My mother never said. She never did say that I should stay home and help support her or help support the rest of the children,
my brothers and sisters, because at that time they
had no work. I was the only breadwinner, so to
speak.
WILL: What did you think of the training? Was
it
PERSINGER: The training was
WILL: Adequate or was it
PERSINGER: It was good. It was in the sands
and Camp Gordon, Georgia, was very hot. It was
a lot of loose sand and under the sand was red
clay. It was trying. We were doing close order
drill and training out in the sand.
WILL: Do you remember anything special
about the training.
WILL: What were their thoughts on the War?
PERSINGER: I don’t recall. We just had to
accept it like you do with everything in life. I
guess. I am sure that my mother was concerned.
PERSINGER: No, I reallyActually I really
enjoyed it, the training. Really, I went along
with it. I never fought it. I tried to learn everything I could that made it easier for me.
WILL: And where were you when you got your
draft notice. Were you in Marengo?
WILL: Did you get out with any passes?
�PERSINGER: Oh, yes. We were given a weekend pass to go to Augusta if you wanted to. But I
never did go much. I really didn’t. I stayed at the
base most of the time and attended the theaters,
movies there on the base. That’s about it.
WILL: How about after your training? Did you
get a furlough home?
WILL: You were immediately sent overseas?
PERSINGER: No. From then [Tennessee] we
came back [to Fort Gordon] and were transferred
to a camp at Fort Jackson, South Carolina,
where we were on a firing range for 30 straight
days.
WILL: When were you shipped overseas?
PERSINGER: Yeah, we did. After basic training that amounted to about 13 weeks, I got a
week off, I think. Yes, it was a week. I enjoyed
that. I came home by bus. Rode a bus all the way
from Augusta, Georgia to Chicago and then on
to Marengo on a bus and I returned the same
way. That was a big experience. I never ever had
to do that in my life or had the opportunityride
a bus, but I did.
WILL: Now this was the 3rd Cavalry?
PERSINGER: Yes, it was the 3rd Cavalry. The
mechanized cavalry consisted of 2 squadrons. It
was the 3rd and 43rd squadrons which made up
the unit.
WILL: What were your assigned duties?
PERSINGER: I became a tank commander of
the tank and when we went overseas
PERSINGER: Then I was shipped over in July.
I remember we were in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on July 4th, 1944. I can remember that.
We came back the following July 4th, 1945. I
was on my way back on the high seas again.
WILL: What did you think of the nation’s efforts up to this point?
PERSINGER: Tremendous. Our Countryeverybody wasknew what we had to do.
WILL: Everybody pitched in?
PERSINGER: Everybody pitched in. It just
made you want to get this thing over. Everybody
was pretty patriotic, I’d say
WILL: Nobody dragged their feet.
PERSINGER: No.
WILL: Which squadron?
WILL: Objected?
rd
PERSINGER: 3 Cavalry Squadron?
WILL: You weren’t transferred out to any other
unit.
PERSINGER: No. I was in that unit from
WILL: After the training, where did they send
you?
PERSINGER: After Camp Gordon, they went
to Tennessee maneuvers for three months
November and December of ’43 and January of
’44 so there were 90 days there living and
getting used to living outside, bivouacking, playing the war games, giving us training for what
we were eventually going to meet.
PERSINGER: No, there were very few conscientious objectors that I remember.
WILL: Upon arriving overseas was it France
orthis was after D-Day?
PERSINGER: Yes. I went with a convoy, the
last big convoy that went across the Atlantic. We
landed in Liverpool, England, and then we went
across the English Channel at South Hampton on
a landing ship tank. There were 64 tanks in that
ship. This is after D-Day, August 7th, 1944, was
when I landed in France.
WILL: How about when you landed there?
What was the first thing you had to do?
�PERSINGER: Well, we went in just getting
close to nighttime. We actually had a bivouac.
We spent a couple of miles inland and there was
no resistance because it was beyond . We met
our first combat at St. Lo so it was quite a few
miles of no resistance. So we justeventually,
we were given assignments and missions to help
General Patton’s 3rd Army.
WILL: Let’s see. In chronological order, I guess
they want the approximate number and types of
casualties and how they occurred?
PERSINGER: Well, the number of casualtiesour unit, our squadron, had about 750
men. The other squadron, the 43rd, had about the
same. I’ve heard since then when the War was
over, the deaths and men wounded was found to
be about 82%. So itYes quite a few deaths. A
lot of men killed in action but more so wounded
than killed.
WILL: How were they treated? Did they have
adequate treatment at that time?
PERSINGER: Yes, we did have. Tremendous!
Our medics and the field hospitals everything
was… I’d say they did the very best possible
job.
WILL: How did your mental attitude change as
the War progressed?
WILL: Did you write home a lot? Or did you
WILL: I did as much as I could. I probably got
a letter off to home at least every two weeks.
WILL: How about receiving mail?
PERSINGER: Sometimes it was prettydue to
our outfit and what we were doing, we’d get
mail in bunches. So it wassome days quite a
few days would go by before we got mail. But it
had to catch up with us. Being that we were a
reconnaissance unit for the 20th Corps, the 3rd
Army, we were on the move day in and day out.
WILL: You were out in the front more or less?
PERSINGER: Exactly. We did do a lot. We
were in the rears many, many times of the German Army. I think one time the deepest was 70
miles, in behind German lines. We were the eyes
and ears of the .
WILL: Did you in your experience over there
with other fellows did you establish friendships?
PERSINGER: Oh, yes. Those fellows that I
was with, in my own platoon, in my own company, we became so close. We used one another’s mess kits, their forks, their spoons whatever.
They were like brothers.
WILL: Do you remain in contact?
PERSINGER: Mental attitude? It changed I’m
sure. I never smoked until I gotI guess probably in the middle of thegoing across France
took about 39 days, I think it took us, and I started smoking probably about in that time because
you know, you wondered about how many days
or where you were going to be and what your
next… You really never really knew and it was
something to relax you a little bit. That’s why I
started smoking.
PERSINGER: Oh, yes, even to this day we
have a reunion every year. This next reunion
coming up in August of 1944 or 1994 will be in
Buffalo this year, and next year we hope to be
back in Fort Bliss where our 3rd cavalry is at the
present time.
WILL: Did you ever have to retrieve a wounded
buddy from the field?
WILL: Do you still smoke?
PERSINGER: Oh, yes, I did. I did do that. I
saw my buddies get killed.
PERSINGER: I quit smoking in 1968. Smoking through all those years, but I did quit. I was
thankful I did.
WILL: Did you ever capture any enemy prisoners?
�PERSINGER: Oh, yes. We got many prisoners.
WILL: You were talking earlier your unit went
up into Germany.
WILL: Can you explain some of this?
PERSINGER: Yes.
PERSINGER: Yes. Whenever we got missions
that whatever our mission was, why being a reconnaissance unit we would take Germans by
surprise. Many prisoners were taken because
you were on them and they had no way of escaping. We had them and we would simply get
them back to our headquarters and they’d go on
to the rear. I remember one time we were going
down a street in a small town and talking about
getting prisoners easily. There was artillery coming in. Our lead tank turned around and as he
was turning around his muzzle pointed right to
the basement door of this one building and here
walked about 19 or 20 Germans out because
they thought we had them dead right and we did.
It was to our surprise too when our tank
WILL: Then you headed south.
WILL: The gun pointed …
PERSINGER: That sort of thing seemed to
happen …
WILL: I can imaginelike the Germans probably didn’t want any more of the War than
PERSINGER: Oh, no. The Germans knew, I
guess a lot of them knew, that when we got in
Germanywhen we got on to their home
groundwhy they knew then that the War
would soon be over. The end was in sight for
them and us.
WILL: Okay. There’s a question here… Prior to
the end of the War, were you aware of any civilian concentration camps?
PERSINGER: Yes, for sure.
WILL: Before
PERSINGER: Oh, before the end of the War
and I just heard about concentration camps. I
never really knew exactly what they were, what
was involved.
PERSINGER: We went into Germany, probably we have it on record in our history book here
we were the first troops into Germany itself, the
20th Corps, the 3rd Army. The first troops of the
3rd Army to enter Perl, Germany. And we did go
across the Rhine, proceeding north and east, and
we were up in the north part of central Germany
and then turned and went south along the
Czechoslovakian border and down into Austria.
WILL: Near the end of the War?
PERSINGER: Yes, as we came south we
helped take the town of Regensburg. I remember
that was a long dash, and we proceeded on to
Bavaria and went into Austria at the end of the
War.
WILL: Can you tell us about liberating this
concentration camp in Austria?
PERSINGER: Yeah.
WILL: What the name of it was?
PERSINGER: The concentration [camp] was in
Ebensee, Austria. We entered that town of
Ebensee on May 6th. The War ended May 8th.
The Germans at that time were surrendering to
us as we proceeded to this town. We were two
days ahead of that. On the way to this town our
mission was to get to this concentration camp
which was in Ebensee. Now the Germans were
giving up and they didn’t want to be in contact
with the Russians. We were meeting the Russians, and so, rather than to surrender to the Russians, they were coming to us.
WILL: [Interruption] Meeting or beating?
PERSINGER: Meeting, yes. They were giving
up. The War ended like on May the 8th. On May
the 6th we entered this town of Ebensee. My tank
and another tank in my platoon I was platoon
�sergeant I was given the job of going up to
the gates of this concentration camp. The two of
our tanks, mine and the other one, entered this
concentration camp. The only resistance was the
German Volkstrom. They were the civilian army
that they had to control the people. They were at
the gate and I remember taking the gun away
from this old German Volkstrom
WILL: He didn’t resist?
PERSINGER: No he gave no resistance. He
handed me the gun and broke it over the… I can
remember breaking it over the muzzle of my
tank. They opened the gates and we drove in.
WILL: What did you find there?
PERSINGER: It was estimated that between
14- and 16,000 prisoners dying naked, skin
and bones. Maybe if they did have something to
wear it was just a robe, and rags was all they had
on. What a horrible place.
PERSINGER: The Army gave them all the
medical treatment right away, what our unit
could. Then the Army hospitals moved in right
away. Within a week they were all there and
then being taken care of very good. But many of
them died as soon as we entered the place. I
suppose they were so happy to see [us and] that
they were liberated. When they did get a chance
to eat something [they] just [gorged] themselves
and you couldn’t control it. I can remember that.
WILL: You couldn’t tell them to eat slower?
PERSINGER: Oh, no. There was no way. So
many… near the crematorium where they
burned them in the furnaces they were piled up
like cordwood. The sicker they got the closer
they moved them to the furnaces so when they
did die they would be near there. They would
just burntheir remains were put in a freight
car, shoveled in. Their ashes were put into those
cars, the freight train.
WILL: Any records of who they were?
WILL: What was your duty then?
PERSINGER: What we were suppose to do
then, and our unit along with all, immediately
progressed with the rest of the army. [Headquarters] was notified as to what was there, so our
unit started getting food to try to feed these people. They hadn’t eaten anything. I do remember
in two days within 24 hours I’d say, we
[it] was our first…. The following evening we
did have soup prepared for these people, and it
was prepared in these big kettles, heated and
made soup. I remember those people were
sothey wanted to get to that so bad we had to
fire our machine guns over their heads to calm
them down because they were just like animals.
PERSINGER: No, we had no records. We did
have
WILL: The camp kept records?
PERSINGER: Yes, the Germans kept records
and I think they probably… a lot of people were
identified by their records. After that we left
them, within two weeks after we liberated that
camp, so that was the last of my experiences
with the concentration camp. But I know it was
a horrible one. The very first day when we went
in the camp I got out and walked around with
this prisoner that could speak English. That’s
Garcia. And the night crew
WILL: Desperate?
WILL: With a name like that was he a Jew
PERSINGER: Yes, desperate for food. Many
of them that evening, I remember after that they
[gorged] themselves so it didn’t take much to
make them sick, and many of them died there on
the spot. Within hours after they were fed.
PERSINGER: He was a Jew but he was born in
Spain and the family way back in ‘14, I think it
was ‘92, Spain, if you were Jews, you had to
adopt a Spanish name. That family did. They
took on the name of Garcia. But anyway, we
walked around that camp. When I got back in
my tank and got back to our edge of this little
WILL: How about medical treatment?
�town, I discarded my shoes. I put my other pair
of shoes on. They were so filthy and the stench
was so bad. [Will made a comment.] It brings
back many memories. Every once in a while I
get to thinking of that, especially when we have
reunions.
WILL: Well, let’s see here. When and how did
you return to the United States at the end of the
War?
PERSINGER: I was in the States yes; I was
home again on furlough. That was our first 30
days home. [We] got home in July. The middle
of July [I] was given a furlough just getting
ready to go back to Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
That was the camp. [I] Was ready to go back to
there when VJ Day happened. I did go back and
then was discharged from the Army in October
of 1945.
WILL: Now, you weren’t married at this time?
PERSINGER: We got back on a train back to
Camp Lucky Strike at LeHavre, France. We
came back on a liberty ship. Our whole unit
came back by itself, back to Camp Kilmer, New
Jersey.
PERSINGER: No, I wasn’t married. I was single.
WILL: What was your rank at the end of the
War?
WILL: Of course, this was after the War?
PERSINGER: Yes. We were going to, well, the
War in Europe was over but
WILL: When the War ended in Europe, what
did you think?
PERSINGER: I was, at the end of the War I
was a Staff Sergeant and overseas I was until I
was made a Platoon Sergeant. I was what you
called a “duck” sergeant. Every tank Commander had that rating.
WILL: Did you receive any decorations at all?
PERSINGER: Well, General Patton on the 19th
of May ’45 told us he was glad the War was
over in Europe and he did not want to take us to
Japan. That was his
PERSINGER: Oh, yes, we had the European
Theater, four battle stars and all the othersGood Conduct, the Victory Medal, Purple
Heart. I have that.
WILL: [Interruption. Some double talk.]
PERSINGER: We all thought we were going to
because we knew
WILL: [Interruption.]
PERSINGER: Yes, it had to be done. We did
come back to the States, [I] was given a 30-day
furlough and went back to I can’t think of the
name of the camp for the life of me, I can’t think
of North Carolina and we went on a back on
preparation for movement overseas for training.
WILL: And VJ Day? Do you remember?
WILL: How did you get the Purple Heart, for
what?
PERSINGER: That was for shrapnel wounds
that happened in Germany oin December 15th. I
think, of ’44. That was the Siegfried Line. We
were just kind of
The [Battle of the] Bulge was on and the Germans were to our north of us and we stayed
there. We were transferred from there and
moved towards the Battle of the Bulge. We were
spread awful thin. I think our 3rd Cavalry unit at
that time covered the front at 40 miles. We were
[Interruption]
PERSINGER: VJ Day. Yes, I remember it
well.
WILL: How many tanks were there?
WILL: You were in the States then?
PERSINGER: A tank company had 17 tanks,
five tanks to a platoon.
�WILL: Do you remember how many campaigns
you were in?
PERSINGER: Well that’s [hard to] say. We
had four different campaigns. There’s France
and Alsace-Lorraine, Germany, and Central Europe.
WILL: Okay. How did you get alongthis is
before your return to civilian life. I ask this
question. How did you get along with the men
with whom you had the greatest contact? How
did you get along with them?
PERSINGER: Civilians, you mean?
WILL: No, in your unit.
PERSINGER: How did I get along? To me the
ones that were kind of “goof offs” or whatever,
“sad sacks”, we laughed at them. They were part
of us, I guess.
WILL: It’s obvious the ones you keep in contact with were the ones you got along well with.
PERSINGER: Yes, but we did have a few
thatvery few. But we did have a few that kind
of “goofed off” and that was in the States before
we actually had a solid 3rd Calvary unit that went
overseas. The ones that did kind of “goof off,”
they were weeded outtransferred somewhere
else. We were a unit that was sent to combat.
WILL: As far as your experiences
PERSINGER: No.
WILL: Would you have gone into some other
branch?
three meals a day if they were on a ship or something. No, I really have nothing against the service, I thought that… We had very good officers; we had all of that and, of course, General
Patton was the greatest.
WILL: What is the most difficult thing you had
to do during the service?
PERSINGER: Well, spending
WILL: Physically, mentally or emotionally?
PERSINGER: Well, the most difficult was contending with the weather, especially in the winter at the time of the Bulge and living with the
very cold weather and all the snowtrying to
keep yourself alive. All that, along with a lot of
course, times when your life you didn’t feel was
worth too much, I guess.
WILL: Just never knew about the situation.
PERSINGER: No, you lived for 24 hours a
day. Many a dayonce in a while we got relief,
got pulled off the line. We were in a reconnaissance unit that just neverand the 3rd Army
never stopped. If we hadn’t run out of gas we
probably could have won the War much quicker.
WILL: What was the most successful achievement?
PERSINGER: Well, I guess thatjust that we
won the Warwe whipped the Germans.
WILL: Let’s see here. You mentioned VJ Day
you were in the States. Was there a lot of celebrating?
PERSINGER: Yes, there was.
PERSINGER: If I had to do it over, I guess my
other two brothers when I was in service, I suggested to themthe first thing that wasI
thought he’d get better food. My elder brotherby that time the third one went in. Both of
us were trying to get him to take the Navy. My
second brother also took the Navy, so I guess I
won out in convincing them that may be if they
get in the Navy that maybe they’d have at least
WILL: Where, in Chicago?
PERSINGER: No, I was in the small town of
Marengo. There was a lot of celebrating over
there in that little town. I remember that.
WILL: Do you remember the atom bomb?
�PERSINGER: Oh, yes.
WILL: Did you spend any time in the field hospital?
WILL: What was your thought on that?
PERSINGER: Well, this was going to save us a
trip from going over there. When I heard that, I
knew that it was over.
PERSINGER: It was just over night in the field
hospital.
WILL: Do you have any contact with the Veteran’s Administration?
WILL: You didn’t know about it before?
PERSINGER: I had
WILL: What was your impression of what it
was?
PERSINGER: I couldn’t believe that they
could have that strong a bomb. I knew terrible
destruction of civilians. But somebody had to
wake up Japan; I guess that was the way to do it.
WILL: Has your opinion changed over the last
50 years?
PERSINGER: Not the Veteran’s Administration. No reason to.
WILL: Have you an opinion of it?
PERSINGER: Veterans’ Administration?
WILL: Or any organization?
PERSINGER: The organizations? American
Legion and the Veterans of Foreign War are
great outfits.
WILL: How about a VA Hospital?
PERSINGER: The only reason my opinion
would change, would be the way the young people look at the world today. If I had knownat
times I get so discouragedif I had known these
children were going to turn out like this I don’t
know if I’d have been so patriotic in those days
of 1943. It justI can’t believe we can have this
type of thing going on here in this countryall
the crime, drugs. Children with the wrong attitudes, no pride, it’s hard to believe this is what
we got today, 50 years later.
WILL: Yeah. I agree. When were you officially
discharged?
PERSINGER: October 29th in 1945.
WILL: And where?
PERSINGER: In Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
WILL: Did you have any disabilities when you
had that shrapnel?
PERSINGER: No, it was just my arm and my
handthe back of my hand and my side.
PERSINGER: Had no contacts with them.
WILL: Never gone for medical ?
PERSINGER: No, never. I’m glad we’ve got
them, what we do have now.
WILL: When you were in the service can you
tell us how your family supported you and your
brothers?
PERSINGER: Well, at home there was just my
mother. There were five of us altogether; five of
us children. Three boys went into the service;
two sisters that stayed home with my mother. I
am sure at that time they were getting along well
because my paycheck, which was hardly anything then. I was making, I think, $115 a month.
Being overseas that was called combat pay. We
got $115 a month and all of that money went
home to take care of my mother. My other
brothers did the same thing. They learned to live
with what they had.
WILL: [What], over the years, has this support
meant to you? From your family?
�PERSINGER: Given to my family? I always
thought of my family, my mother, supported us
children all the way through until she died in
1975, when she passed away. Whatever I gave
to her was never enough.
WILL: Do you have anything else to add?
PERSINGER: No.
WILL: Any comments? We’ve gone through
about everything here.
PERSINGER: Well, just glad I was able to do
what I didsaw a lotI visited the 3rd Cavalry
again at Fort Bliss [Texas]. I’ve been there
twice, and was lucky enough to be back there
last spring to a seminar we had. They were asking for a few Veterans of World War II. I did get
back there. I did see the new modern tanks, all
the equipment they’ve got. It was just tremendous. I hope they never forget that. I hope they
always have those units available.
WILL: Okay. I guess that about winds it up. Do
you want to say goodbye?
PERSINGER: I’ll say goodbye to you.
WILL: Okay.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Editor’s Note: Bob Persinger lived out his life
in Rockford, Illinois, where he was plant manager for All Rental Garment. In later years, he
frequently talked about his experience in World
War II and the Central European Campaign to
students and groups interested in history. He
also volunteered at the Madison, Wisconsin,
Veterans Hospital. He died November 19, 2018,
requesting memorials be directed to the Illinois
Holocaust Museum and Education Center, Skokie.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Midway Village Museum
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Midway Village Museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-2001
Rights
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Midway Village Museum
Language
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English
Format
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pdf
Type
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Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Jim Will
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Robert Persinger
Location
The location of the interview
Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
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Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Robert Persinger
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
January 31, 1994
Description
An account of the resource
Born September 29, 1923, Robert Persinger was drafted in 1943 and became an Army tank commander. Persinger helped liberate the Ebensee Concentration Camp in Austria. He was discharged October 29, 1945. Persinger died November 19, 2018.
Rights
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Midway Village Museum
Format
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pdf
Type
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Oral History
Ebensee Concentration Camp
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War II
WW2
-
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PDF Text
Text
Robert Lucas
Transcribed by Lorraine Lightcap
Midway Village & Museum Center
6799 Guilford Road
Rockford, Illinois 61107
Phone 815 397 9112
�Robert Lucas
Today is February the 16th, 1994. My name is
Charles Nelson. I am a volunteer at Midway Village and Museum Center in Rockford, Illinois,
which is cooperating with the statewide effort to
collect oral histories from Illinois citizens that
participated in the momentous events surrounding World War II. We are in the office at Midway Village in Rockford, Illinois. I am interviewing Mr. Robert Lucas, 1624 Scottswood,
Rockford, Illinois. Mr. Lucas served in a branch
of the United States Armed Forces during World
War II. We are interviewing him about his experiences in that war.
NELSON: Please give us your full name and
place and date of birth.
LUCAS: Robert Lucas. August 21st, 1921.
LUCAS: We were a close knit family. I was
educated in private schools and like I say, very
close with my sister, mother and father.
NELSON: What thoughts did you have about
the war before the United States became directly
involved in the conflict?
LUCAS: At that age, I didn’t give it that much
thought.
NELSON: How did you hear of the December
7th, 1941, bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese? Where were you and what were you doing
at the time?
LUCAS: We were having a family reunion at
my house with my parents, sister aunts and uncles when the news came about the attack on
Pearl Harbor.
NELSON: Where were you born?
LUCAS: Born in Dubuque, Iowa.
NELSON: We would like also to have the
names of your parents.
LUCAS: Frank Thomas Lucas and Bertha
Wanda Lucas. Both deceased.
NELSON: Did you have any brothers or sisters?
NELSON: What was your reaction and the response of those around you?
LUCAS: I wanted to sign up. I really did. In
fact, I did about a week after Pearl Harbor. I
tried to enlist in the Air Force as an aviation cadet. I did take the exam at that time.
NELSON: Had you formed any prior opinion or
developed any feeling about what had been taking place in Europe and Asia?
LUCAS: One sister.
LUCAS: No, I hadn’t.
NELSON: Are there any details about your parents and/or you family that you would like to
give?
LUCAS: Not especially. My mother was born in
Latvia and came to this country at the age of
eleven, so she had a pretty exciting background
in her younger ages. My father was born and
raised on a farm right outside of Dubuque.
That’s about all I can say that is really significant about my parents.
NELSON: O. K. What was your life like before
the war and specifically in 1941?
NELSON: Do you recall reading newspaper
accounts of German aggression in Europe?
LUCAS: Very little.
NELSON: Did you have any knowledge of Hitler’s speeches, ideas or actions?
LUCAS: None.
NELSON: What events led to your entry into
military service? Were you already in service,
drafted or did you volunteer?
�LUCAS: No. Like I say, I tried to volunteer into
the air corps but I didn’t pass, so I thought I’d
just wait then until I was drafted which I did.
About eight months later I was drafted.
LUCAS: No, nothing special.
NELSON: Was your response to entering the
military service influenced by family or friends’
attitude toward the war, the threat to national
security or other considerations?
LUCAS: That was really the onlyafter basic
training our company was shipped to Miami,
Florida. I was stationed in Miami, Florida, for
fifteen months as an M. P. and it was there that I
took the test for the aviation cadet again. I
passed it and I went from Miami into the Air
Force over to Miami Beach. I took basic training
all over again.
LUCAS: My father was a veteran of World War
I, very active in the American Legion in his
home town. I think he might have had a little
influence on me.
NELSON: Tell us about any other training
camps you attended.
NELSON: Did you have any passes or leaves?
NELSON: When and where were you inducted?
LUCAS: October of 1942 at Camp Dodge in
Iowa.
NELSON: Did you have any special memories
of this event?
LUCAS: Yes, I was drafted on December 23rd.
NELSON: How old were you?
LUCAS: Twenty.
NELSON: What happened after you were inducted? Where were you sent?
LUCAS: Basic training on New Year’s Eve we
were shipped out and eventually ended up at
Camp Blanding outside of Jacksonville, Florida.
NELSON: Where did you take your basic military training?
LUCAS: At Camp Blanding.
NELSON: What were you trained to do?
LUCAS: I was drafted as a military policeman.
LUCAS: The first year I had one pass or one
leave.
NELSON: What do you recall of this period
about the places where you were stationed and
the friends you made, your association with civilians?
LUCAS: I still have a friendship of a man who
was in the military police with me and his wife
who I knew when I was in military police. Another friend of his who still lives in Miami,
whom I still correspond with.
NELSON: Where did you go after completing
basic training?
LUCAS: After basic training in the air force I
went to radio operator’s school in Sioux Falls,
South Dakota.
NELSON: If you were not sent overseas immediately following basic training, when did you
finally leave the United States?
LUCAS: After radio school I went to gunnery
school. Then I crewed up in El Paso, Texas. We
were in El Paso, Texas for three months and
then we went overseas in December of 44.
NELSON: What did you think of the training?
LUCAS: I enjoyed it. I enjoyed army life.
NELSON: Did anything special happen there?
NELSON: What were you assigned to do after
arriving overseas?
�LUCAS: No assignment. We went on a few
training missions before we flew regular combat
missions.
NELSON: What did you think of the national
war effort up to this point?
LUCAS: Very good.
NELSON: If you did not immediately enter
combat zone, where did you go before entering
combat?
LUCAS: Before combat. I went right towe
picked up our plane after training in El Paso,
Texas, and flew overseas. I was assigned to my
bomb group and I went into combat five days
after I got there.
NELSON: What did you think of the war so
far?
LUCAS: I thought we were there for a good
purpose and hopefully we wanted the war to
end. I had no objections to being in the service. I
was glad to see the war come to an end. I was
satisfied with the job and what my other crew
members were doing.
NELSON: Did you write many letters home?
LUCAS: Yes, I wrote weekly to my parents, I
wrote weekly to my sister and I wrote weekly to
friends back home.
NELSON: Did you receive any letters or packages? If so how often?
NELSON: Tell us about you experience of entering your first combat mission.
LUCAS: I received letters from my parents, sister and friends weekly, also. Maybe every two
weeks.
LUCAS: Very scared! But it was interesting. On
my very first mission one crewmember was
wounded. Other than that it was a hairy and
scary experience.
NELSON: What types of things did you get in
packages?
LUCAS: Nothing overseas.
NELSON: Can you list for us in order of occurrence all subsequent combat actions in which
you were involved?
LUCAS: I flew 14 combat missions and after
that the war had ended. I think that’s about it
that I can say to that question, I think.
NELSON: Taking these, one at a time in chronological order, what was the approximate number of casualties that occurred and how were
they treated?
LUCAS: The only casualty, like I said, was to
our navigator on the very first mission. His
wound was a piece of shrapnel or flack went up
along side of his leg and through his chair that
he was sitting on and into his buttocks. It was a
minor. He was back flying again in two weeks.
NELSON: Did your mental attitude change as
combat continued?
LUCAS: No.
NELSON: Did most of the other men write or
receive letters?
LUCAS: Some. Maybe in our crew, maybe four
of my crew members did as I.
NELSON: Did you forge close bonds of friendship with any of your combat companions?
LUCAS: I had a close friendship with a crew
member on a different crew. I had a very close
relationship with him, but he was killed when
we were flying overseas. His plane crashed in
England.
NELSON: Have you remained in contact with
any of your World War II companions?
LUCAS: No. Only the one who was in the Military Police with me.
NELSON: Did you ever have help retrieve a
wounded buddy from a field of combat?
�LUCAS: No.
NELSON: During your combat duties, did you
ever capture any enemy prisoners? If so, describe the circumstances.
NELSON: Please tell us about your military
rank, your decorations and especially campaign
decorations.
LUCAS: No.
LUCAS: I was a staff sergeant, __?__ medal
and I received a citation for theI’ve forgotten
the campaignwith three battle stars.
NELSON: Prior to the end of the war, were you
aware of any civilian concentration camps existed? If so, please explain how you learned about
them and how much you knew at that time.
NELSON: How did you get along with the men
with whom you had the greatest contact?
LUCAS: Very good.
LUCAS: I had a friend, who I later found out,
was in a prison camp. I knew that he was a Prisoner Of War but the strange part of the whole
story is when his prison camp it was liberated by
his brother’s infantry outfit.
NELSON: What was your highlight occurrence
of you combat experience?
NELSON: Were there things you would do differently if you could do them again?
LUCAS: No.
NELSON: What was your most difficult thing
you had to do during you period of military service?
LUCAS: I would say my very first mission.
NELSON: Why was that?
LUCAS: It was exciting. It was a tough one and
the head the one casualty on our crew.
LUCAS: I would say taking the aviation cadet
exam again for the second time.
NELSON: Is there any one thing that stands out
as your most successful achievement during military service?
NELSON: Where did you go?
LUCAS: No, I wouldn’t say so.
LUCAS: I believe my first mission was at the
Brenner Pass. Northern Italy, Germany. I’ve
forgotten.
NELSON: How did you learn about VE Day
and what was your reaction to it?
NELSON: Tell us what you and the other men
did to celebrate America’s traditional family
holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas.
LUCAS: The announcement came over the loud
speaking system at our base camp. There was
really no big celebration.
LUCAS: Nothing special. We usually had good
meals on holidays. We enjoyed that.
NELSON: How did you learn about VJ Day and
what was your reaction/
NELSON: When and how did you return to the
U. S. after the war?
LUCAS: I was home on furlough at the time
after coming back from overseas. I heard it then
and that was a joyous occasion because finally
the whole affair was over.
LUCAS: We flew back in a B-17.
NELSON: What happened when you arrived in
the U.S.?
LUCAS: I kissed the ground.
NELSON: What was your opinion of the use of
the atomic bomb when it was used against Japanese civilians in August of 1945?
�LUCAS: I was completely for it.
NELSON: Has your opinion changed over the
last fifty years, if so how.
NELSON: I think you have answered the next
question. Have you ever gone to a VA hospital
for medical services?
LUCAS: My father has. Not I.
LUCAS: No.
NELSON: When were you officially discharged
from the service?
LUCAS: I was discharged in October of 1945
from Scott Air Force Base in Belleville, Illinois.
NELSON: Do you have any disability rating or
pension?
NELSON: Would you like to tell us about how
your family supported you during your military
life?
LUCAS: My dad was active in the American
Legion and he always said it was great to be in
the service. My mother supported me and my
sister supported through correspondence. The
whole family supported me throughout my
whole career.
LUCAS: No.
NELSON: Do you have any opinions or feelings about the nation’s military status or its policies?
LUCAS: Right now?
NELSON: Yes.
LUCAS: I don’t like the cuts in the defense.
NELSON: Over the subsequent years, what has
this support meant to you?
LUCAS: My dad insisted I join the American
Legion after I got out of the service. I still am a
Legionnaire. My parents are deceased now but
my sister is still in supportstill close. That’s
about it.
NELSON: Do you have any contact with the
Veteran’s Administration?
NELSON: Thanks a lot, Bob. Is there anything
else you would like to add to this interview?
Any stories you would like to tell or experience
you would like to tell about?
LUCAS: Right now, I don’t, but I did have with
the VA when my mother was in a nursing home.
She was treated royally by these people and she
received compensation each month because of
my Dad’s service in World War I. I thought the
VA did a tremendous job.
LUCAS: The only thing I would like to say is in
regard to the Veterans’ Administration. Like I
said, they were great to my mother through
compensation, through health and to this day I
am in full support of the Veterans’ Administration. That’s about it.
NELSON: Thank you, Bob.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Midway Village Museum
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Midway Village Museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-2001
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Language
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English
Format
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pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Charles Nelson
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Robert Lucas
Location
The location of the interview
Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Robert Lucas
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
February 16, 1994
Description
An account of the resource
Born August 21, 1921, Robert Lucas was drafted into the Airforce in August 1942 as a radio operator. He was discharged in August 1945. He died March 17, 2012.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War 2
World War II
-
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PDF Text
Text
Robert George Miller
Transcribed by Lorraine Lightcap
Midway Village & Museum Center
6799 Guilford Road
Rockford, Illinois 61107
Phone 815 397 9112
�Robert George Miller
Today is May 16, 1994. My name is Charles
Nelson and I am a volunteer with the Midway
Village at Rockford, Illinois, which is cooperating with the statewide effort to collect oral histories from Illinois citizens that participated in the
events surrounding World War II. We are interviewing Robert Miller who participated in the
Army Air Force during World War II.
NELSON: First give us your full name, place
and date of birth.
MILLER: My name is Robert George Miller. I
was born here in Rockford, Illinois, a secondgeneration native born January 15, 1919.
NELSON: We would also like to have the
names of your parents.
MILLER: I am the son of Adolph and Hilda
Miller.
NELSON: Did you have any brothers and sisters?
MILLER: I had one sister, Mary Jane Nelson.
NELSON: Are there any details about your parents and/or your family that you would like to
share.
MILLER: I don’t believe so.
NELSON: What was you life like before the
war, specifically during 1941.
MILLER: I worked at the Rockford Machine
Tool Company. It was engaged in the war effort
out there making machine tools, so I had a deferment out there. But I felt like hadwasn’t
doing enough for the war effort so that’s the
place I was when I enlisted in the service.
NELSON: How did you hear of December 7th,
1941, the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese?
MILLER: I had been married 2 years at the
time. I had built a house a year before we got
married. It took me a year to build the house. I
carried my bride over the threshold in our new
home in October of 1940. I was just in this
house on December 7th 1941. My wife and I
were having company over for dinner, her three
brothers and a cousin, all males. So we stayed
home from Sunday school and church that Sunday to prepare for this meal. As we were sitting
in our dining room with the radio turned on, we
always had music going in the house, during the
eating of the meal, maybe half way through, the
radio was interrupted by a special bulletin informing us that Pearl Harbor had been bombed.
It was such a shock that I don’t believe we finished our meal but we just sat around listening to
the radio for the entire afternoon, trying to get
all the reports in on this tragic event.
NELSON: Had you formed any prior opinion or
developed any feeling about what had been taking place in Europe or Asia?
MILLER: Yes, but I didn’t know too much
about what was happening with Japan. I really
wasn’t looking for any problem there. I was
concentrating all my efforts on the European
problem with this mad man going loose over
there, taking one country after another, lying to
everybody he talks to. So I knew that he was
someone who had to be stopped and stopped
quickly.
NELSON: What event led you to enter military
service?
MILLER: Like I said, I was in the war effort in
a small way in the machine shop, but I felt like I
wasn’t doing enough. I wanted to get directly
involved. So about ten months after the bombing
of Pearl Harbor I enlisted in the service.
NELSON: Do you have any special memories
of this event?
MILLER: Yes. Enlistment was a little unique in
a way in that it has held on through these many,
�many years. I went out to Camp Grant with a
high school buddy of mine, Franklin Lindgren,
who after the war was the chief pilot for Ingersoll Milling Machine Company. We went out
there to Camp Grant and took our examinations,
qualifying exams for the aviation cadet program.
We both wanted to get into fly. Unknown to us,
one of our other close friends went out there the
next day and took an exam. His name was Stanton Olson. Who was a navigator in the war. Well
anyway, we both passed our exam and Stan
passed his. A couple months later we allthe
three of us got a letter together, at the same time,
ordering us to report into Chicago for induction.
So as I said, I had been married. Franklin had
been married the same amount of time, so our
wives drove us down to the I. C. (Illinois Central) depot on South Main Street. Stanton Olson
was taken down there by his mother and father.
They’re a wonderful Christian family from the
Tabor Lutheran Church. The three of us rode the
train together from the I. C. Railroad going
downtown Chicago to a large warehouse where
there were many, many hundreds of young fellows just like us, just being inducted into the
service. We got on a train and it took us down to
Texas for our basic training.
NELSON: How old were you at that time?
MILLER: I was 23 years old when I went in.
NELSON: Did anything special happen there
during your training?
MILLER: During the training, of course, that
was very exciting for any young man going into
the flying program. After we took our basic
training at Sheppard Field down in Texas we
were assigned to college training at Texas Tech,
Lubbock, Texas, and we were there for five
months. During the five months they gave us a
concentrated two year college course. It was
very exciting and challenging. From there we
went out to California to Santa Ana to pre-flight
training.
NELSON: Did you have any leaves or passes?
MILLER: Yes, we had a few. Well, no leaves.
We had our weekend passes. Franklin Lind-
gren’s wife and my wife lived in town and they
worked in town. They followed us all over the
country. We got to see our wives on the weekends. That was the only pass that we really had.
NELSON: What was your military unit?
MILLER: My overseas unit?
NELSON: Well
MILLER: From Santa Ana pre-flight we went
into the actual flight training program which is
three phasesprimary, basic and advanced. I
took my primary flight training up at Tulare,
California, in the San Joaquin Valley at the
Techs Rankin Aeronautical Academy. That’s
where I learned how to fly. The first time I soloed in the Stearman bi-plane. I was really lucky
there. I was one of the few who had a World
War I ace fighter pilot as an instructor. The most
ironic part of it is, he was a German. He flew for
the German Air Force in World War I, but he
was the finest flight instructor a man could ever
have. Anyway, after primary training, I went a
little further up the valley, San Joaquin Valley,
to ___?___, California, which is the gateway to
Yosemite Park, and took the basic training up
there in the old __?__ vibrator and then from
basic training went down to Fort Sumner, New
Mexico, for advanced flight training in the AT17 Cessna Bobcat. While we were at Fort
Sumner, New Mexico, on the 23rd of May, 1944,
that I received my wings, silver wings as a pilot,
and a commission as a 2nd Lieutenant in the
United States Army Air Corps.
NELSON: When you were sent overseas, how
did you get there?
MILLER: I’ll pick it up from graduating. I had
toafter graduation, we were sent home for one
month. Then I reporteddown in Missouri to
the troop carrier command for five months transition flying in a C-47 Douglas plane which is a
transport plane for troop carrier. This is what I
wanted all along. I felt fortunate getting into
this. I didn’t want to get involved in the shooting
end of the war. My conscience and my make up
wouldn’t really allow me to go out and to kill
�people. I knew it had to be done but I didn’t
want to be the one to do it. I wanted to get into
something else that was just as important to our
effort but it would be something that would be in
a more helpful way. I asked for troop carrier
ATC work and I got troop carrier which was fine
because when we did get overseas I hauled hundreds of wounded and brought them back to the
hospitals and was helpful in that way and I
brought gasoline and food into the men on the
ground that needed it badly. Well anyway after
my transition flying I went to Bear Field, Indiana, and on our way overseas, I was assigned an
airplane, brand new C-47 “B” model, and we
checked it out. I flew it for a couple days with
my crew and we were given clothing but that
was the disappointing end of it. We were so
happy with the airplane, we wanted to gobut I
had my eyes on Europe but the clothing they
gave uswrong time of the yearthey gave us
summer clothes. So we knew we were going to
go to the Pacific instead of the European Theater. A couple days later they called me in and
told me I had to turn in my plane. I had to sign it
off. That was disappointing. I thought maybe we
were going to get a different model or whatever.
But then after that, they asked us to turn in our
clothes. We turned in our “suntans.” They issued
us winter clothes. So then we knew we were going to go to Europe. We waited for a couple days
and didn’t get a new airplane assignment. That
was real disappointing but instead of that we got
notice that we were going to get on a train and
go to New York so we knew it was going to be
by boat. When we got off the train, got off at the
dock there and we looked up at that huge thing
up there. I really didn’t know what it was, but it
was the Queen Elizabeth, the largest ship afloat
in the world. There were 18,000 of us on that
ship when we left New Yorkfour day journey
over to Scotland. That was the beginning of our
tour in Europe.
NELSON: If you did not immediately enter the
combat zone, where did you go after entering
combat?
MILLER: From Scotland, we went down to the
Midlands, the first day, and got our assignments
at Stone, England. And from Stone, we went
down to Basingstoke, England, which is about
70 miles west of London and I was assigned to
the 434th Troop Carrier Group with the 71st
Squadron. On the first day with this Squadron, I
was on a mission, across the Channel, over into
France.
NELSON: Can you list for us in order of occurrence all subsequent combat action in which you
were involved?
MILLER: One of the very first bigger missions,
more important missions, I participated in was
the Air Relief Drop at Bastogne, Belgium. A big
group of our men were down on the
grounddown there at Bastognetotally surrounded by the Germans and they had run out of
supplies. They were short on food, ammo and
gas, but more short on the ammunition than anything else. There was only one way to help these
fellows out was to give them a huge air drop. So
I went in there three days in a row and dropped
supplies to these men. Rather cloudy conditions
the first couple days but our groupour small
groupwe were only nine planes in our group
that we found a hole and went down through
itwent underneath itwe saw the fellows
down there and they had the ground well marked
for us. They were waving at us. You could see
them very clearly. We dropped their supplies
right on top of them. So that was really exciting.
The only thing is we lost a couple planes on the
first day mission when we went under the clouds
and dropping ours right on the boys. The fellows
that didn’t get under the clouds were dropping
their’s by parachute. The chutes were coming
right down on top of us. They were hitting their
targets but they were hitting us, too, and we lost
two planes that day.
NELSON: Did your mental attitude change as
combat continued?
MILLER: Oh, yes, it sharpened and it made us
more furious as time went on. We wanted to get
this thing done. We thought it would be finished
sooner than it had but we had to put up a terrific
fight.
NELSON: Did you write any letters home?
�MILLER: Yah. Many letters. Of course, being
a married man, I was writing almost every day.
My wife was writing. We had our letters numbered. We had a little secret code. I even had a
map so thatand she had a map so I could tell
her exactly where I was when we looked at our
maps. That was fun.
had to make that flight. We finally ended up in
Georgia with my plane. That was a nice long
flight.
NELSON: Did most of the other men receive
letters?
MILLER: I’m always real thankful to go out
for looking after me and my family all these
years and I’ve got fifty-two years of marriage in
already and for Christmas and Thanksgiving and
all, I’ll tell you most of our thanksgiving is to
the God for looking after us and keeping us together.
MILLER: I’d say most of the men did, yes.
And everyone was so good. Somebody got a big
box of cookies or whatever, he’d share them
with everyone else. It was the same thing with
mine. I’d share them with my buddies.
NELSON: Did you forge close bonds of friendship with many of your combat companions?
MILLER: Not a great many but my co-pilot
and I have maintained a very close relationship
during the years. He’s a fine, fine gentlemen, a
fine Christian man. He lives down in Kentucky
and I’ve been in his home about ten times, I’d
say, over the years, and we had some very enjoyable times together. It’s sad right now, he’s in
a nursing home. I went down to see him this last
year again. I keep close contact. Our radio operator is down in Oklahoma and I’ve kept in contact with him, too.
NELSON: What is the highlight occurrence of
your combat experience?
MILLER: I think the highlight of it was flying
my plane back home after the war. That was a
long, long flight with a little twin engine C-47,
you know, and can’t go straight across the ocean
with that little thing. It was big, in a way, but it
was still too small for a cross Atlantic flying.
We left to France and went down to Marrakech,
Africa, and Dakar, Africa; down to Roberts
Field in Liberia. Form Liberia, we flew over to
Ascension Island which is about a little bit better
than one-third of the way across. We flew to a
little tiny island only a mile and a half long in
the middle of the Atlantic. We had to find that
thing by ourselves. Then from Ascension Island
we flew over to Natal, Brazil. Then up to Belem,
Brazil. I never knew Brazil was so big until I
NELSON: Tell us about what you and the other
men did to celebrate America’s traditional holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas.
NELSON: What happened when you arrived in
the United States?
MILLER: There was an interesting time, too,
because I left my plane down in Georgia and I
hated to say good bye to the “old bird” so I had a
littleall of us G.I.s carried a little GI knife in
our pocket and it had a lot of tools on it. One of
them was a screw driver. So I pulled it out of my
pocket and I took the clock off the instrument
panel and I’ve still got that home on my desk
today. I took a train up to Fort Sheridan here and
then was home for a month. We got a one month
leave and my orders were to report out to California, pick up another new airplane and go to
the Pacific and end the war over there. During
my thirty days home, the two atomic bombs
were dropped which changed everything. We
didn’t know what was going to happen but I still
had to at the end of my thirty days I had to go
out to California and report in out there. And
there we stood. Really tens of thousands of us
fellows out there in California, on their way to
the pacific and they didn’t know what to do with
us. So we sat there for about three months waiting and waiting and waitingjust reading the
bulletin board every day to see what was going
to happen. Finally we were discharged out there
so I didn’t get to go to the Pacific.
NELSON: Tell us about your military rank and
decorations, especially your campaign decorations.
�MILLER: Well, I don’t usually go into that
much. I break down a little bit when I think
about this. My youngest son, our fourth child,
graduated from the University of Illinois Architectural School. He graduated about six years
ago. During his fourth year at the university, he
took a one year course over at Versailles,
France, which is just outside of Paris. It’s an
extension of the University of Illinois. The
French Architectural School at Versailles. During the Easter Holiday, he said he had time and
he wanted us to go over there and visit him. He
said, “I’m lonesome for you.”
NELSON: If you’d rather not talk about this,
that’s fine.
MILLER: Well, anyway, young Phil is very
close with us. My wife and I jumped at the invitation so we went over there and spent three
weeks over there. I got to visit with Phil. We
rented a car. As the war went on after England,
we moved over to France. We moved over to
Mourmelan, France which was about twenty
miles southeast of Rheims, France. That’s where
we were stationed. I finished out the war there at
Rheims. And so we rented a car. We went
around and visited the graves of some of my
buddies. Anyway, after visiting these beautiful
cemeteries over there, seeing the crosses on the
graves of my buddies, knowing that we had been
on the same missions, and here they were over
in Europe. Some of them had been transported to
the states but the crosses are still there. The military has left all the crosses in the cemeteries. It’s
at a time like that you reflect and on your own
self, was I fortunatewhy am I still here today
and my buddies never got home. They earned
the same medals we did and that’s why it’s hard
for me bring up all the decorations and all but
being in the transport unit like we were __?__
many medals the way the boys did in the big
bombers, medium bombers, the fighters. They
were in many more engagements than we were. I
only ended up with two air medals, distinguished flying cross and the European ribbon
with three battle stars. I cherish them very, very
much, but I never think of them for myself, I
always think back on these other fellows that are
still over there.
NELSON: How did you get along with the men
with whom you had the greatest contact?
MILLER: I never saw any problem any time.
Times were so different way back then in the
war, everybody worked together. Everybody
followed his orders. He was expected to accomplish his orders and there was never a question
asked. It’s so different from today.
NELSON: Were there things you would do differently if you could do them again?
MILLER: During the wartime, no. I did exactly
what I wanted to do. I thought it was the right
thing.
NELSON: What was the most difficult thing
you had to do during your period of material
service?
MILLER: I think it was when we brought some
supplies into Germany on this one particular trip
and we were right by a concentration camp. We
went in there to pick up a plane load and bring
them back to a hospital over in Paris. We were
waiting and waiting. I got on one of the trucks
and went over there, my co-pilot and I so we got
to see the entire camp. We saw the ovens. We
saw hundreds and hundreds of bodies laying like
cord wood. We saw these people that we were
going to take back to the hospital. People that
were half starved to death and in bad need of
medicine and help. It was real depressing but I’ll
tell you, to see the smiles on those people and
get hugs from them and me telling them that in a
couple or three hours they were going to be back
in a hospital, it was a great deal of gratitude.
NELSON: How did you learn about VE Day
and what was your reaction to it?
MILLER: VE day waswe were expecting it
but, to me, it came as a surprise. I was on a flight
from Rheims, France, up to Holland. I went up
there to pick up a plane load of hospital beds to
bring back down into France. It was a long flight
and it took a long time to get all of these beds
together and get them in the plane and get them
tied down and all. By the time that we were
ready for takeoff it was almost dark. We had
�heard about it then when we were on the ground
up in Holland. But on my flight from Holland
back down to Rheims, France, was one of my
closest calls during my time over in the service.
I came back and I had twenty-one holes in the
airplane. It was a beautiful sight to behold from
the sky flying at night time. Where ever you
looked they were firing their guns and a lot of
tracer bullets, only a lot of those tracers were
coming right up at us and there was no way to
get away from it. We just kept on flying. But,
like I said, we were lucky that day to get back
home with twenty-one holes in our airplane. It
was all small arms so just didn’t hit the right
spot.
NELSON: When and where were you officially
discharged from the service?
NELSON: How did you learn about VJ Day and
what was your reaction to it?
NELSON: Do you have any opinions or feelings about the nation’s military status or its policies?
MILLER: After the war had ended over in Europe, I flew my plane back home here and I was
given a thirty day leave before I was to report to
California for overseas assignment on the Pacific. Pick up a new plane in California. It was during those thirty days I was home waiting that the
two atomic bombs were dropped and VJ Day
was declared. There was a lot of whooping and
hollering going on that day, I know. We got it all
on the radio, but I had to drive down town to see
what was going on. It was really exciting.
NELSON: What was your opinion of the use of
the atomic bomb when it was used against Japanese civilians in August of 1945?
MILLER: I fully endorsed that decision. It must
have been a tough one for President Truman.
There were many lives lost but many, many
lives were saved. Many times more lives would
have been lost if we had not dropped that bomb
and we had fought Japan in a conventional way
having to have invade Japan with ground troops
and also there were a few Japanese that had to
sacrifice their lives in order for maybe millions
of Americans.
NELSON: Has your opinion changed over the
last fifty years?
MILLER: Not a bit.
MILLER: Let’s see, I was actually discharged
in Santa Ana, California, where I was waiting
for my assignment to go to the Pacific. The war
ended and I was discharged at the time out there
but at the very same moment, I enlisted in the
reserve. I stayed with the reserve forI served
34 years total in the reserve.
NELSON: Did you have a disability rating or
pension?
MILLER: No.
MILLER: I think we’re going the right route
with our military but it is a little unfair right now
that we are the one and onlywe’re the number
one military in the world now that Russia is
bowing out so a great deal of responsibility is
left on our shoulders. I’m just afraid if we’re
going to be used as a police action from here on
out that there’s going to be a lot, a lot of men
that are going to have to be used up in many actions which really have no direct relations with
the United States if we’re going to be a police
force for the whole world. That I don’t like. If
anybody threatens us in any way, I’ll be behind
it 100%.But as a policeman, I don’t quite go
along with that yet.
NELSON: Do you have any contact with the
Veterans’ Administration?
MILLER: Yes, I do. They’ve been very good to
me. I go into Great Lakes to the VA Administration there and pick up medicine for my wife. We
have to get that for her. The VA right in town
here has got a fine installation on Parkview Avenue and they take care of me. I’m out there every month, it seems for one thing or another and I
do get my medication from them.
NELSON: Would you like to tell us about your
family support of you during your military life.
�MILLER: My wife actually supported me when
I was in the service. She made more money than
I did
NELSON: How about moral support.
MILLER: Oh, moral support. Oh, wonderful. I
had a very understanding wife and mother and
father who were behind me on everything all the
time. They didn’t like to see me go but they
knew it was a thing that had to be done. So they
kept me in their prayers and backed me 100%
NELSON: Over subsequent years, what has this
support meant to you?
MILLER: I’m just one of the lucky ones that
has the love of a family, a caring family and a
praying family, one who really knows the importance of family which we seem to be forgetting here in the country lately, the family support
unit.
NELSON: Okay. Thank you.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Midway Village Museum
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Midway Village Museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-2001
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Language
A language of the resource
English
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Charles Nelson
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Robert George Miller
Location
The location of the interview
Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Robert George Miller
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
May 16, 1994
Description
An account of the resource
Born January 15, 1919, Robert G. Miller joined the Air Force in October 1942. He retired from the military in 1976. Died October 2, 2010.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War 2
World War II
-
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PDF Text
Text
Robert [Brooks] Stringer
Transcribed by Lorraine Lightcap
For Midway Village and Museum Center
9766 Guilford Road
Rockford, Illinois 61107
Phone 815 397 9112
�Robert Stringer
My name is Charles Nelson and I am a volunteer at the Midway Village and Museum
Center in Rockford, Illinois which is cooperating with the statewide effort to collect
oral histories from Illinois citizens that participated in the momentous events surrounding World War II. We are in the office of
Midway Village and Museum Center interviewing Bob Stringer. Mr. Stringer served in
a branch of the United States Armed Forces
during World War II. We are interviewing
him about his experiences in that war. Bob,
would you please start by introducing yourself to us and please give us your full name
and place and date of birth. We would also
like to have the names of each of your parents.
NELSON: What thoughts did you have
about the war before the United States became directly involved in the conflict?
STRINGER: My name is Robert [Brooks]
Stringer. My parents’ names are Gordon
Stringer and [Meta F.] Stringer.
NELSON: Did you have any brothers or
sisters?
STRINGER: We figured that this was a call
we were going to be inducted. Two of my
friends working with me were officers in the
ROTC in the horse drawn artillery. They
went home immediately and started writing
letters to get into the Air Force instead.
STRINGER: Yes. I had 2 brothers. One
died as a result of the South Pacific and the
other is living down in Arizona.
NELSON: Had you formed any prior opinions or developed any feeling about what
had been taking place in Europe or Asia?
NELSON: Are there any details about your
parents and/or your family that you would
like to give?
STRINGER: We didn’t like to see Germany doing what it was doing but we didn’t
know very much about it. Didn’t hear much
about it.
STRINGER: My dad was a high school
teacher in language and did coaching.
NELSON: This is about entering the military. What was life like for you before the
war and specifically during 1941?
STRINGER: I was in College of Engineering, University of Illinois going to school.
STRINGER: Very few. I was busy at college. (Chuckle).
NELSON: How did you hear about the December 7th 1941, bombing of Pearl Harbor
by the Japanese?
STRINGER: Sharing the noon meal on
Sunday at Sigma Chi Fraternity and it came
through on the radio at that particular time.
NELSON: What was your reaction and the
response of those around you?
NELSON: How about Asia?
STRINGER: Didn’t know anything about
Asia.
NELSON: Do you recall reading newspaper
accounts of German aggression in Europe?
STRINGER: No, I don’t.
�NELSON: Did you have any knowledge of
Hitler’s speeches, ideas or actions?
years of ROTC and I think I could have
taught most of the drill sergeants how to do
it.
STRINGER: Very little.
NELSON: What events led to your entry
into military service? Were you drafted or
did you volunteer?
STRINGER: I volunteered.
NELSON: Was your response to entering
military service influenced by family and
friends’ attitudes towards war, the threats of
national security or any other consideration?
STRINGER: I entered because I wanted to
have a place of my choice instead of drafted
rather than end up doing something I didn’t
want to do.
NELSON: Do you have any special memories of this event when you first were inducted into the service?
STRINGER: Yes, I was inducted in Chicago. We were put on a train and for 3 days we
rode around the country getting to Shepherd
Field, Texas. When we got there they decided they didn’t have and uniforms so __?__
another week while they tried to find uniforms for us.
NELSON: How old were you?
STRINGER: That’s a good question.
NELSON: Where did you take your basic
military training?
STRINGER: Shepherd Field, Texas. Worst
place in the world. The only place you could
stand with water to your waist and have dust
blow in your eyes.
NELSON: What were you trained to do?
STRINGER: As far as I know, absolutely
nothing. We moved from there to San Antonio Aviation Cadet Center for evaluation.
NELSON: I think I’ve asked the next question. What did you think of the training?
STRINGER: The training was all right if
you never had any before. If you had some
idea of what you were trying to do it would
be fine.
NELSON: Did anything special happen
there?
STRINGER: Absolutely nothing. We used
to have drill most all day and every once in a
while the Sergeant would say “Well, we got
to have a measles inspection” so we’d march
through this empty barracks and pull up our
shirt and walk through. It took about a half
hour. I never did see anybody looking at us.
Took time anyhow.
NELSON: Probably 21 or 22?
STRINGER: 21 I suppose in 19
NELSON: What happened when you were
inducted besides no uniforms?
STRINGER: We went to Shepherd Field
for basic training. I already had a couple of
NELSON: Tell us about any other training
camps you attended.
STRINGER: I spent 2 summers at Fort
Sheridan in Citizen Military Training, 1939
and 1940. I learned more there than I
learned in the regular army by far.
�NELSON: Did you have any leaves or
passes?
STRINGER: I was offered a pass into
Shepherd Field to the town if I learned the
General Orders. That was so long ago I just
gave up the pass. Nothing in there I wanted
to see.
NELSON: Okay. What was your military
unit?
STRINGER: Well.
STRINGER: That was a good deal. We got
on a Liberty Ship, Newport News, Virginia,
and took us 28 days to go over to Oran,
North Africa. We were there for about a
month. We don’t know why. We were just
sitting around waiting. Then we were taken
across the Mediterranean to Naples in a luxury liner called Merundo Castle whish was a
super tourist ship. My crew was taken over
in a cattle boat. I mean cattle boat. They
took the cattle off and put our people on it.
The toilets were holes in the floor and that
was it.
NELSON: This is still in the States.
STRINGER: Oh, I have no idea. We were
just recruits.
NELSON: At that time it was the Army Air
Corps, I suppose?
STRINGER: I don’t think. I guess, maybe
we were. Yeah, I didn’t get assigned until
after I finished San Antonio.
NELSON: I’m going to go right into the
conflict. Where did you go after completing
your basic military training?
STRINGER: San Antonio Aviation Cadet
Center to be evaluated to see what attributes
I had and what they needed.
NELSON: If you were not sent overseas
immediately following basic training, when
did you finally leave the United States?
STRINGER: After San Antonio they sent
us to East Central State Teachers’ College
for some additional education. It so happened there, I did too well on the test so I
didn’t stay but a month.
NELSON: When you were sent overseas
how did you get there?
NELSON: What did you think of the Nation’s war efforts up to this point?
STRINGER: I thought it was very slow and
poorly organized. They didn’t seem to know
where they were going. Just an example: In
1940 I was up at Fort Sheridan and they
took us on the red(?) range and they showed
us a grand rifle. Consider that as something
wonderful. We looked at it and a couple of
us got to “shoot it.” In addition to that they
pulled .037 millimeter gun, out there on
rubber tires yet and they could tow it behind
a truck. Wasn’t that wonderful? That’s as far
advanced as we were in 1940.
NELSON: If you did not immediately enter
combat zone, where did you go before entering combat.
STRINGER: To Oran, North Africa to cool
our heels until they’d get us over to Naples
and then from there to __?__ on our way to
the combat zone.
NELSON: Tell us about your experience of
entering your first combat zone or mission
STRINGER: Our first mission, I flew with
another copilot so he helped out to get started right. I remember it was quite uneventful.
�We flew up and dropped our bombs then
and back home.
STRINGER: Yes. Got a few letters, too.
NELSON: Yes. How often?
NELSON: Did you consider that a milk
run?
STRINGER: No, they shot at us.
NELSON: Can you list for us in order of
occurrence any subsequent combat experiences in which you were involved?
STRINGER: Altogether I flew 30 missions.
Some of them were a little rougher than others. A few mishaps but we generally got out
pretty well.
NELSON: Taking these one at a time, first
tell us in full detail, if possible, about the
approximate number and types of casualties,
how they occurred and how they were treated.
STRINGER: We had no casualties on our
aircraft. We had holes put in it. We had people pass out because they didn’t carry their
oxygen right. Nobody was worse for wear.
NELSON: Did your mental attitude change
as combat continued?
STRINGER: Gee, I don’t know. I think we
could see toward the end, the missions were
getting to be different because there just
weren’t the places to bomb as we started
with.
NELSON: What did you think of the war so
far?
STRINGER: We thought we were winning.
We could see progress.
NELSON: Did you write many letters
home?
STRINGER: Oh, probably once a week.
NELSON: Did you receive packets through
the mail?
STRINGER: Yes, we had to do that in order to get something to eat. We had lousy, I
mean lousy man that ran the Officers’ Mess.
We couldn’t eat what he put out. Then they
came in one day and said. “Well, no meat
today. Somebody dropped off on the overpass and unloaded the truck before it got
there.” The man was just incompetent, that’s
all. We’d have pancakes in the morning and
we’d feel the pancakes. They were cold. We
would throw them up against the wall. If
you can see a whole squadron eating there
you can’t imagine all the pancakes laying
around that place. He didn’t seem to mind at
all. He always wanted you to have a tie on
before you came to eat. Real, shouldn’t say
the word.
NELSON: Did most of the other men write
or receive letters?
STRINGER: Yes. Most of the time we
wrote to get food that you could hang on the
back of the door and eat it when you wanted
it. We just didn’t get any food worth eating.
NELSON: Did you forge close bonds of
friendship with many or some of your combat companions?
STRINGER: Yeah. The crew I saw all 13
last summer. We met together. Some of the
other people I’ve never heard from. I’d like
to but I don’t know there they are and they
don’t either.
�NELSON: And you remain in contact with
World War companions?
STRINGER: With the crew, yes. Some of
them I can’t find.
NELSON: Did you ever have to help retrieve a wounded buddy in a field of combat?
told the co-pilot to drop the gear. He did.
The left gear came down and the right gear
went up! (Laughter) Try them both up. So
he pulled them up and they both came up.
He took off over the Adriatic. We got back
about 2 hours after the mission got back,
about 100 feet off the water all the way
across 5he Adriatic.
NELSON: But how did you land?
STRINGER: No, but I was asked to identify some bodies in a plane we crashed and
some were friends of mine.
NELSON: You weren’t involved in any of
these concentration camps in Germany or
Poland or anything like that?
STRINGER: We dropped bombs on some.
NELSON: But you never actually
STRINGER: No, I wasn’t a prisoner of
war.
NELSON: What was the highlight occurrence of your combat experience or any other experience you can remember?
STRINGER: I think the most highlight
mission I flew, we were going somewhere
up in southern Germany and about 2/3s of
the way there, the right gear on the airplane
came down. It wouldn’t go back up. With a
full bomb load you can’t fly with one gear
down. So we asked for some fighter escort
to get back home. They said, “Forget it.
Go.” I got down low and found a target of
opportunity and dropped a load of bombs
on. They were surprised. Then we flew back
to a place called Sanski Most which was a
designated landing field in Hungary that we
could have landed on and been safe. Rather
than land there it looked like a cornfield to
me so I pulled through once to see what it
looked like and made the turn around and
STRINGER: In our regular
NELSON: Your wheels came down okay?
STRINGER: Yes. Soon as we got down
low enough there was ice in the hydraulic
fluid. It melted and then they worked all
right. About 2 days later that same plane
cracked up on the end of the runway because
they hit the brakes and nothing there. We
only had a 5000 foot runway. He sheared off
into the countryside.
NELSON: You didn’t have the same plane
each time?
STRINGER: No, never did. They found out
that the planes were a lot more reliable than
the crews. Somebody was always sick or
couldn’t fly and the planes flew every day.
NELSON: Tell us what you and the other
men did to celebrate America’s traditional
family holidays such as Thanksgiving and
Christmas.
STRINGER: Well, the first Thanksgiving
we were on the luxury liner, the New(?)
Castle and that’s an English boat. They
didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving. Forget it. We
had kippered herring and that was it. I
grabbed the waiter to get some bread so
we’d get something to eat.
�NELSON: When and how did you return to
the United States at the end of the war?
STRINGER: Well that was interesting. We
went to Bali to wait for a plane to fly back.
The crew waited with me. They gave me a
plane and I took it up and flew it. It was a
junk. You wouldn’t trim up. It wouldn’t fly
correctly. So I took it back and said “That’s
it. I don’t want it.” They said, “Well, you
won’t get home for a long while.” I said,
“That’s all right, I’ll get home in one piece.”
spent about 3 days in Marrakesh then we
took off for the Azores, flew over an overcast⎯ The whole complete day. Never saw
water or anything and you’re supposed to
find this little island out there. I had an excellent navigator and he found it right on the
money. We stayed there for a couple days
until it cleared up and then we flew to Gander, Newfoundland. At Gander it was in July
but it was cold. We had steam heat on. Then
we flew from there down to a field in Massachusetts around Boston.
NELSON: Were these B-24s?
NELSON: Can you think of the name of it?
STRINGER: Yes. I don’t want to fly that
thing that you got. Forget it. He gave me all
kinds of admonishments that I would be in
trouble. I didn’t fly this long to get killed on
the way home. They looked at you like you
were some kind of a nut. It was only 2 days
later they gave me another plane. It was a
beautiful plane. It was a lead plane. It had
radar on it and everything. We flew that
down to Marrakesh. First of all we got in a
sand storm. We flew up to 10,000 feet and
the sand was so white it looked like snow. It
was like grit in your teeth. I was worried the
engines were going to be eaten up with that
sand in there. You couldn’t go any higher,
we didn’t have oxygen masks with us. We
just figured 10,000 was high enough. When
I dropped down on the water, we were in the
Mediterranean, flew right up to the Rock of
Gibraltar. I didn’t get too close. There was
one plane on each wing. They said, “Turn
around and go the other way.” So I went out
and around the coast of Africa and went
over to Casablanca. We heard about it and
thought that’s a good place to land. So we
landed there. They wanted to know, “What
do you want?” Well, we just landed here.
What else can we do? They said, “We’ll put
gas in and you go.” So in about 20 minutes
we gassed up and flew to Marrakesh where
we were supposed to go to begin with. We
STRINGER: With the overcast weather I
was flying around the hills down there. You
couldn’t get up into the clouds and I thought
this is for the birds. I’m not going to do this.
I flew over a real nice looking airfield, a
commercial airfield. So we tried to contact
them but they couldn’t talk to us. So we
used __?__ which is green lights using code.
They answered back, “Come on land.” So
we pulled around and landed It was the
Hartford, Connecticut Municipal Airport in
Hartford, Connecticut. Some airliners had to
go around while we landed. We started getting out of the plane. Some guy rushes out
there and says, “Oh, you can’t get out.”
“The hell we can’t.” “Oh yeah, you can’t,
you haven’t been through customs yet.”
__?__ They were gone. The gals that were
stewardesses came out and shook hands with
us. We went in a little place to eat there and
ordered all the hamburgers and things that
they had. We didn’t have any money. All we
had was this Italian script which was worthless. Then they called the man at Miles
Standish. I said “Colonel “Look I got your
airplane down here. What will I do with it?”
I said, “It’s assigned to me and I’m not going to be charged for it.” He said, “That’s all
right. You leave it there on the field and
we’ll send a truck for you.” They sent a semi
and we piled all our gear in there and they
�took us up to the base. Then we were allowed to call home.
NELSON: Please tell us about your military
rank and your decorations, especially your
campaign decorations.
STRINGER: I was a 1st Lieutenant and I
had air medal with about 3 clusters and had
European
this __?__ running around the tents and the
houses we built and he’d stop at your place
and you know he’s going to get one of your
crew. The 4 of us lived together. And after
he did that then you’d go back to sleep and
sleep. Otherwise you waited until the jeep
came around and picked you up.
NELSON: Is there anyone thing that stands
out as your most successful achievement in
the military service?
NELSON: Did you get the Distinguished
Service Cross?
STRINGER: Getting back in one piece.
STRINGER: No, didn’t do anything spectacular.
NELSON: Lot of guys say completing their
missions.
NELSON: Now we’re going to turn to civilian life. How did you get along with the men
with whom you had the greatest contact?
STRINGER: I didn’t finish. I had 5 more to
go. But they finished the war before they let
me finish.
STRINGER: We got along real fine. Two
of the crew were Jewish, one that was a
Mexican and the rest were just normal people. We got along fine.
NELSON: How did you learn about VE
Day? What was your reaction to it?
NELSON: Were there things that you
would do differently if you could do them
once again?
STRINGER: Yes. I think I would spend
more time with the crew and teach them
what I want them to know. But at the time
we were so busy doing what we had to do,
we had no time for anything else.
NELSON: What was the most difficult
thing you had to do during your period of
military service?
STRINGER: Being assigned to a mission.
You never knew⎯You’d go up the night
before and look. But then you’d find out
what plane you got. That wasn’t worth
knowing. So we never did. We just waited.
In the morning about 4 o’clock, you hear
STRINGER: Well, our radio. Somehow
somebody had a radio and told us it was
done. The mission was called off, as I remember. We didn’t need to go on the mission. We celebrated by shooting rockets up
__?__. The Colonel came down and said, I
know it’s a lot of fun but you’ve got to
stop.” The flares were falling on tents and
burning them up.
NELSON: How did you learn about VJ
Day? What was your reaction to it?
STRINGER: I was home as a civilian on
VJ Day. I had been mustered out. I had all
the points and they didn’t need me any
more.
NELSON: What is your opinion of the use
of the atomic bomb when it was used against
Japanese civilians in August of 1945?
�STRINGER: I think it should have been
done. It shortened the war.
NELSON: Has your opinion changed in the
last 50 years and if so, how?
military life?
STRINGER: Well
NELSON: And what did this support mean
to you after these years?
STRINGER: No. Not at all.
NELSON: When and where were you officially discharged from service?
STRINGER: June, 1945, because it was in
July when the bomb was dropped I was already a civilian.
NELSON: Do you have any disability rating or pension?
STRINGER: No.
NELSON: Do you have any opinion or feelings about the nation’s military status or its
policies?
STRINGER: The nation’s military status
now is not what it should be. Our great president is trying to save all the money he can
and put into his liberal programs where they
give away to get votes. One of these days
we’re going have to get in a conflict somewhere and he’s going to look around behind
him and there ain’t going to be anybody
there to send.
NELSON: Do you have any contact with
the Veterans’ Administration?
STRINGER: No.
NELSON: You’ve gone to a Veterans’ Administration Hospital or anything?
STRINGER: No.
NELSON: Would you like to tell us about
how your family supported you during your
STRINGER: Wasn’t very much. My wifeto-be but girlfriend at the time use to send
me letters and clip out the funny papers.
NELSON: I know over the subsequent
years, what has that support meant to you?
STRINGER: Made all the difference
__?__.
NELSON: That’s a real fine interview. Is
there anything else you would like to add to
this, Bob?
STRINGER: I think the training I got in
San Antonio, Aviation Cadet Center, was
one of the finest things he’d ever done. They
had to have God, I don’t know how many
pilots, copilots and bombardiers⎯he had no
way of knowing who could do it or how to
get it. We spent over a month in testing and
the first time during that the testing decided
whether you had the qualifications. It
worked very well. I would like to have been
a navigator but they said “No, you’re going
to be a pilot.” I think that was a real milestone in placing people where they belong.
The army is always telling “You’re going to
be a cook,” then give you a job someplace
else. They were notorious in not knowing
what to do with people. In this case the Air
Force did an excellent job.
NELSON: Thank you very much.
STRINGER: You’re welcome.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
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Midway Village Museum
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Midway Village Museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-2001
Rights
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Midway Village Museum
Language
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English
Format
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pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Charles Nelson
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Robert Brooks Stringer
Location
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Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
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Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Robert Brooks Stringer
Description
An account of the resource
Born in May of 1922, Robert Brooks Stringer joined the Army Air Corps in 1942 and was discharged in June 1945. He flew a B-24 Liberator Bomber. Robert died May 16, 2007.
Rights
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Midway Village Museum
Format
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pdf
Type
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Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War 2
World War II
-
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PDF Text
Text
Richard rW. Blako-Page
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BLAKÃ
1010 Sullivan Drive
Belvidere, Illinois
Transcribed by Lorraine Lightcap
Published by Margaret Lofgren
Midway Village and Museum Center
6799 Guilford Road
Rockford, Illinois 61107
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This oral history was recorded February 16, 1994. Charles Nelson interviewed Richard W. Blake of l0l0
Sullivan, Belvidere, Illinois, at Midway Village and Museum Center in Rocldord, Illinois, Richard W.
Blake is an ex-prisoner of World War II.
NELSON: Dick, would you please start by
introducing yourself to us with your fi.rll name,
place and date of birth. We also would like the
If
so, where were you or what were you doing at
the time. What was your reaction to the response
ofthose around you?
names of your parents and family.
BLAKE: My name is Richard W. Blake, 1010
Sullivan Drive, Belvidere, Illinois. I was bom
Septernber 6, 1921. My father's name was
William McKinley Blake and mottrer's name was
Sylvia Ferguson Blake. I have on older sister and
one younger brother ... one younger sister and
myself inthe family.
NELSON: Are there any daails about your
parents or your family that you would like to
give?
BLAKE: We were always a very close family.
My brother went into the service and my sisters
were at home.
NELSON: What was your life like before the
war? Where were you and what had you been
doing at school or at work?
BLAKE: Life before the war ... I worked ... I
went into the service right after high school
graduation. Before that time, I just worked at
ordinary jobs around home, doing favors and
stuff like that. I went into the service in 1941 ...
BLAKE: I remember very clearþ I was stationed
at Scott Air Force Base at that time. It was
Saturday night, we were on a leave of absence
and in a little town in St. Louis what was called
tent city in downtown. Sunday moming we were
in the latrines washing up, shaving and all the
rest ofthe stuffwhen we heard the news. My fist
thought was "I guess we better get back to camp
and see what's going on."
NELSON: Had you formed any prior opinions or
developed any feelings or any misgivings about
what had been taking place in Europe or Asia?
BLAKE: We did read the news in the States but I
don't remember any prior thoughts I had about
what we were doing.
NELSON: Do you recall reading any newspaper
accounts, TV or news about German aggression
in Europe?
BLAKE:Yes
September 16ú.
NELSON: Did you have any knowledge of
Hitler's speeches, ideas or actions?
NELSON: Whatthoughts did you have aboutthe
BLAKE:Yes
war before the U. S. became involved in the
conflict?
BLAKE:
I don't remember my thoughts about
those years, so I have no comment.
'What
NELSON:
events lead up to your entry into
military service?
I can't really say why I went into the
service at this point. After school had let out in
June (graduated in l94l) I entered the service in
BLAKE:
NELSON: How did you hear of the Þecember 7,
1941, bombing of Pearl Harbor bythe Japanese?
�Richard
September of 1941 and then I spent six years in
the service before I got out.
NELSON: Was your response to enter military
service influenced by family and friends attitude
towards the war and the threat of national
security or other considerations?
BLAKE: I think most of these probably most of
those had to do to why I went into the service,
w. Blalre_Page
3
BLAKE: Well, when I first went into the service
I went to a radio school to leam to be a radio
operator but I di&'t particularly like the ra-ta-ta
stuff so I went into the Cadets and went into
primary basic went out of cadets into
Midland, Texas, as a radio maintenance man and
then I volunteered and I'm in Cadets or into the
glider pilot ...
NELSON: To which theater of war did you go
and how did you get there?
Yes.
NELSON: Where and when were you inducted?
BLAKE: I was inducted ... I enlisted, I was not
inducted, in September 16,L94L.
NELSON: Did you have any special memories of
that event?
BLAKE:
I
can remember but very little of
it. I
went into Great Lakes where I enlisted.
NELSON: Where and when did you take the
basic military training?
BLAKE: First went to Scctt's Army Force Base
to radio school, I stayed there. I can't say exactly
how long but there \,\ras so many different things
in phases of schooling that I did go through and
finally ended up in the cadets.
NELSON: How did you reactto this training?
BLAKE: We went to the European Theater and
went by boat and into Scotland, then down to
England and into France.
NELSON: Tell us about your first several days
or week at your new overseas place.
BLAKE: We were in quonset huts in England in
Utopia (?) I think it was ... I remember going out
to a big partythat night where somebody went to
and brought back a plane load of champagrre ...
we had a big party ... I remember that one. Then
we went over to France.
NELSON: What was your first combat action
and what led up to it?
BLAKE: Or first combat action
...
really we
flew into Hollandto bring out some gliders. I was
a glider pilot. We flerv into Holland to bring out
some gliders. My next combat mission was into
Bastogne ... baüle of the Bulge where I was
BLAKE: I enjoyed it ... I enjoyed all my service,
taken prisoner at.
NELSON: Do you have any special memories of
this time?
NELSON: Do you ¡ecall r¡¡hat your emotions or
thoughts were at the time about your involvement
in the wa¡?
BLAKE: Well I \ilas ... first time I remember ...
do remember a couple of us had bee,n to boxing
atthetime and I remember those times also going
I
tothe
(Ð_
NELSON: What was you military unit and what
were your duties?
BLAKE: I knew that when vve were in there to do
a job and I was doing as I was told,
NELSON: How do you think you and your group
performed?
BLAKE: I think that the mission we went into
part ofthe
_?_which
was in December
�Richard
into Bastogne. There were fifty
gliders of guns. The first few gliders ... 29
gliders made it rather safely but ftom there on a
lot of them were shot down. We lost quite a few
planes ... some of us was killed and some were
1ZZú¡ we went
taken prisoners.
w. Blake-Page
different people would feed us
people themselves would feed us.
4
... the German
NELSON: Did you have any
companions
captured with you?
NELSON: When and where !\¡ere you captured?
BLAKE: Well, none that I knew of at the time,
but there were about 50 of us that went down in
one field but I didn't see anybody get out of
BLAKE: December 27, 1944
those.
NELSON: What were you doing at the time of
your capture?
BLAKE: Éty.g into Bastogne in a glider
carrying ammunition ... aboard ship we had a
ton and a half of 155 howitzer shells.
NELSON: What were your first thougbts and
reaction about your capture?
NELSON: What was your first POW camp?
BLAKE: I was cnly in one POW camp and that
u¡as a Stalag Lucien, Barf Germany right across
from Norway in betrreen time. There was two
weeks, I think, that we would be in January
sometime we got us as far as ____JOtherwise we walked for two weeks, We took a
train from Berlin up north and stopped at a lot of
little bams and villages along with a lot of other
prisoners of war and so forth.
BLAKE: I made itto the ground! And after being
...hit my tote plane was shst down. I was
heading to the ground. You had only one way to
go and I was in the cross fire ,.. I did .,. had a
big hole and it went through the powder charges
that ... Thank the Lord we didn't blow up. I
landed in a big field and got out of the glider. I
was pinned down by enemy fire and they
captured me right there in the field.
NELSON: Was there interrogation or abuse of
you by your captors?
BLAKE: There was no interrogation at the time
of capture. I was taken later on along the line
somewhere, I was interrogated ... there was no
abuse that I can say of.
NELSON: What type of food and sheher was
provided for you?
BLAKE: The first two weeks we were prisoners
we just walked all the waythrough Belgium. We
had very little to eat. When we started on the
march I think we were given something like a
half of loaf of bread or something. Along the way
NELSON: How was the food?
BLAKE:Lousy!
NELSON: Would you like to elaborate on that a
little bit?
BLAKE: We really didn't get too much to
eat
and I don't remember exactly where we did eat
and all that sort of stuff. But I ... a lot of places I
can remember but
I dont even know how we
were fed now.
NELSON: But you said you were only at one
camp.
BLAKE: One prisoner of war camp but I stopped
at a lot of different bams, villages and stuff like
that when we were walking but I was only in one
prisoner of war camp and that was Stalag,
Lucien Barf Germany. There was ten thousand
of
us there.
NELSON: Describe the layotrt of this prisoner of
war camp.
�Richard
BLAKE: Prisoner of war camps consisted of five
different compounds, with about two thousand
people to a compound. There was barracks right
on the Bahic Sea. Each barrack held about 200
men and there was
about
?
NELSON: How would you like to describe the
living conditions, based solely on the camp in
which you were held?
BLAKE: The camp at which I was at, Stalag
Lucien ... there was 10,000 of us there with five
different compounds of 200 each. Each
compound had barracks in it which housed about
200 men. In our barrack we had about 16 to 20
people per room living in them and the compound
was closed at night. We could not go out. Some
of us had inside latrines which others did not
have. We did most of our own cooking from each
room. We did not have a mess hall to go to. Each
room ... we had ... food parcels from the Red
Cross that was fumished to us and it was mostly
all canned goods and that type of stuff like that.
It wasn't elaborate but we cooked together and
ate together. There wasn't much to do. Our bed
was just a woodem bunk bed, if you can call them
that, some of us had mattresses, straw mattresses
of some sort. We didn't have much to do during
the day, We had roll call in the moming and roll
call after we got back to the barracks at night.
We had some meetings to do ... played cards.
We did not have anywork detåils or anythrng like
that. We were just held in prisons with barb wire
fences around us.
w. BlalG_Page
5
we did not see inside facilities for two weeks or
better when we walked) they deloused us and all
that sort of stuff, The sanitary conditions that I
can remember seemed to be all right but I can't
rememberthe daails of it.
NELSON: Were there any provisions for doing
laundry?
BLAKE: I dont remember that there was. We
didri't have any clothes to change anyway but the
one set we had.
NELSON: Were hospital benefit facilities and/or
doctors available? If so, how were the sick and
wounded cared for?
BLAKE: I don't remember seeing any doctors or
any hospital care of any of the people ... the
prisoners of war camp. I had been to a couple of
hospitals in between time marching there. I don't
remember any medical facilities at the camp at
all.
NELSON: Did the men who became sick or
injured in the camp ... was there any dispensary?
BLAKE: Not that I know of ... not in our camp
NELSON: Did many men die or get killed at
camp?
BLAKE: I would sayno.
NELSON: What was the sanitation like in the
field of your camp in which you lived? Did you
have somethrng _?
latrines? What
tlpe of water supply did you have? Any
NELSON: What did you do for clothing or
blankets when those possessed at the time wore
provisiors
BLAKE: The only thing that they would ... we
did have blankets but I don't know where they
came from but we did have blankets to sleep on
but I can't think I was uncomfortable in there. It
was cold and we did have heat with the little
stove we had, We didn't have anything we could
for
washing yourself
or
doing
laundry? What did you do for toilet paper?
BLAKE: That's a lot of questions and I know
somebody should know. I don't remember too
much about it but I know we did have an inside
latrine for night use. We had a cent¡al latrine for
the day time. We did not have showers. We took
a shower once everytwo weeks or something like
that ... I know when we first got to camp (which
out?
pick up or die of anything there.
'Were
NELSON:
there any recreational facilities
available for you ... books to read?
�Richard W.
BLAKE: We had a central compound between all
the barracks in the open areas but we did play
volley ball, baseball, we did have some old books
and str¡ffto read, we did have a secret paper that
was out once in awhile. We called it the 'þow
worv" that w¿s information taken by radio on
some of the things that happened over there. We
knew even before the allies knew what was gonna
happen but that was a secret paper printed at
night and destroyed before moming.
Blalrc-Page
6
BLAKE: We could tell as the war progressed at
the tail end and this would be January and on up
to the end of May when the was over, we could
tell that the war was getting close to the end
because the guards themselves kept getting older
and older. Pretty they had just old men guarding
the camps.
NELSON: Were they brutal?
BLAKE: No.
NELSON: Did you have religious services and if
so how often? Wlro conducted them, how many
attended? Were there any special services on
NELSON: Did you talk to the guards?
religious holidays?
BLAKE:Yes.
BLAKE: I don't remember going to any of that
NELSON: Did any of the men trade any objects
with them?
tlpe of stuff at all
_?_
basically there
in the room and outside and that's about all ...
didn't have much to do.
BLAKE: Notthat I know of.
NELSON: What about organized control of the
NELSON: The POW from other nations
they inthe same camp with you?
POW'S?
BLAKE: The camp themselves
in
each
compound was nrn bytheir own allied personnel.
In our camp, if I can remember right, a Mr. Col.
Zudke and s Col. Dombruski in the camp were
the leaders in our camp. Each compound had
their own overseer.
were
BLAKE: Yes, but it was basically an Air Force
Camp. We did have one compound there at one
time ... at one time there were a lot of English
soldiers. They were from England but I don't
remember any other nation there other than the
Americans.
NELSON: Do you think any American POW
collaborated with the enemy guards to gain favor
for themselves?
BLAKE: I can't saythat I knew of one case
NELSON: OK. Were there any compulsory
exercise program? If so, how often and how
controlled?
BLAKE: Well, more or less every moming we
did go out to calisthenics. We went out there to
'We
do r¡¡hat you want to.
had a leader which was
up in front ... maybe an hour or something in the
moming just to be active.
NELSON: Was it possible to make contact with
them?
BLAKE: You could not make contact with any
other compound.
NELSON: What was a typical day like at camp?
What time did you get up ... what activities did
you do all day ... what time did you go to bed?
BLAKE: Time diùr't mean anything so we didn't
watch the clock. You got up in the morning; you
had something to eat. I don't remember even
doing that. We we,trt outside; we took roll call.
We did
NELSON: What were the guards like?
�Richard W.
have some calisthenics ... we had probably a
light lunch of some sort, I was used to having
three meals a day. We had probably two meals a
day. The aftemoon consisted of just reading,
playrng cards or something like that.
Blalß-Page
7
BLAKE: Yes, skip that. One final point along the
line before we got to camp we did kind of repair
railroads at night butthat was only a few days.
NELSON: How were you liberated o¡ released
from you camp? Give out all the details that you
NELSON: What affects were made by the
POW's to stimulate, simulate, or change normal
can remember.
interpersonal conditions between the men? Were
NELSON: How were you liberated or released
from your camp? Give or¡t all the detâils that you
there,
for
example, games rituals, holiday
can remember.
celebrations and so foaù?
BLAKE: Notthat I can recall ... you \üere ln
camp with northing to do.
a
NELSON: How long did the POW's maintain
their own military discipline and their outlook?
Who were the leaders of your camp or in the
camp. How did they enlist as leader? How were
they chosen to assume leadership roles
BLAKE: We had two air force aces in charge of
our camp once. One was Col. Dombruski. One
... he is still alive today because I see him up in
Oshkosh every year.
NELSON: In Europe the first POW camp was
usuallythe staging or processing camp where the
soldiers stayed only for several days before being
sent to the permanent camp. Officers were
divided from the enlisted men and all air corps
personnel separated from them and other
branches of the service. Non-commissioned
officers were sometimes sent to separate camps.
Enlisted men were sent to camps, stalags, from
which they would be sent out on all kinds of
work detail. Almost all of the Pacific data says
they were sent out on work ddails. But for
interviews if any interviewee were sent to the
work detail camp the following questions should
be asked: 1) Did you go to any work camp?
BLAKE: We did not have anywork camp?
NELSON: So we'll just skip that
BLAKE: OK. I think, in May or some sort there
it seemed like it was Mother's Day or
certainly before that the Russians liberated our
camp. If they hadnt surrounded the camp ...
opened up the gates ... we could pretty much do
what we wanted to. Some of us did venture
outside. I can remember seeing some of the
civilians that were there were mother, father and
baby laþg on the sho¡e and baby over there
somewhere laying on the shore. For most of us it
was safer in ståyrng inside the camp than going
out somewhere. We stayed there and then were
evacuated by a 817 from the air base back in
Germany airdrome or whatever they call it. They
flew us out of there back into France ...flew over
Cologne ... and all those areas when we went
out. It was quite a ride. We did see a lot of
devastation in Germany from the air. We ended
up in the heart of France and stayed there in a
camp. I did go from there back to my outfit in
Shadowen (?) France. They came up and picked
me up on the plane. I went back there for a week
to visit everybody then they took me back to
LeHawe andthen came home by boat,
NELSON: How and when were you able to first
contâct your family?
BLAKE: I probably did it by letter, after getting
back to my owr outfit or maybe it was after in
LeHawe r¡¡hen we was in the staglng area there
to come home.
NELSON:Were you hospitalized or rehabiliøted
in any way after your release?
�Richard w, Blake_-Page 8
BLAKE: No
NELSON: What were the immediate and.long
term affects and problems, mental and physical
of your POW life?
BLAKE: Well, I would say the biggest thing is
that you just never thought of it much for the
BLAKE: I think that I was welcomed back home
and I was glad to get back home. My family and
my wife and everybody treated me very good.
Why would I complain at all about that?
NELSON: Why do you think ttrat it had taken so
long for the POW's to organize and speak about
such experiences?
next 30 years.
NELSON:
Did you still or ever did
have
post traumatic stress disorder
nightmares and
aboutthis experience?
BLAKE: No.
BLAKE: I ttrink it was just part of your life ...
you just went through it yourself and it don't
mean nothing to a lot of peo,ple, so you just cant
say anything about it.
NELSON: Would you listthe military campaþs
in which you participated and the decorations
NELSON; How has the POW
experience
you received?
affected your life today?
BLAKE:
I
think you just lived through it,
ftankfi¡l for what you did. I did feel sorry for the
people who are prisoners of war or missing in
action because it isn't just yourself it's the
family that you left behind, your wife. In my
case, for instance, I was married ¡vo days before
I went overseas and missing for four months.
NELSON: Have you ever been treated at a VA
hospital? If so, will you clariS your treatment.
BLAKE: I have never
been
to a VA hospital
NELSON: Do you have war related disabilrty
today?
BLAKE: I've gone to a couple of meetings of
prisoners of war in Illinois and I had one, I think,
in '88 or something like that. We did go to a big
ceremony that gave you a medal for being an ex-
POW and so forth, but I've not gone to too
of stuff. All the ribbons and
so forth that I've got in a case that I have at
home that somebody made for me.
many of those type
NELSON: Prior to the end of the war were you
aware that any civilian concentration camps
existed? If so, please explain how you wrote
about them and how much you knew at the time.
BLAKE: I don't remember anyttring abor¡tthis.
NELSON: Did you help liberate any prisoners of
BLAKE: No
war at camps?
NELSON: Has your attitude today about and
PO\M experience changed during the last fifty
we got out but
years?
BLAKE: I cant saythat it changed any
NELSON:Would you careto commerit aboutthe
support you did or did not receive from your
family after you came home and how that
influenced your life during the last fifty years?
BLAKE: No. We went through a couple before
I can't say we liberated anybody.
NELSON: How did you leam about V-Day?
What was your reaction to that?
BLAKE: We
_?
the day
I
was home
this happened in August.
NELSON: That was
_?_May,1945.
�Richard
BLAKE:Well, May, that was the war in Europe.
We was still in prison camp and it just came
about through the camp that the war was over
and shortly after that the Russians liberated us.
NELSON: How did you leam about VJ-Day?
w. Blake_Page
9
BLAKE: I think it was necessary for it ...I did
think ... I'd hate to think that the use of the Abomb and so forth was necessary. It saved a lol
lives ... American lives ... when that happened. I
stayed in the service for two years after that and
got out
n
1947
.
What was your reaction to that?
BLAKE: VJ-day
I
was at home on a leave of
absence and v¡hen we heard about that I was just
glad the war was over ... and I think that we did
the right thing at that time.
NELSON: What was your opinion of the use of
the atomic bomb when it was used against
Japanese civilians at all in August of 1945?
NELSON: Has your opinion changed over the
last fifty years and how?
BLAKE:
I
can't say that
I
was necessarily
changedtoo much.
NELSON: Well, thank you again for cooperating
with this prqect.
�I
)
)
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
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Midway Village Museum
Publisher
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Midway Village Museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-2001
Rights
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Midway Village Museum
Language
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English
Format
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pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Charles Nelson
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Richard W. Blake
Location
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Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
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Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Richard W. Blake
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
February 16, 1994
Description
An account of the resource
Born September 6, 1921, Richard W. Blake served in U.S. Army Air Corps from 1941 to 1947. He died February 12, 2012.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Format
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pdf
Type
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Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War II
WW2
-
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PDF Text
Text
Richard August Anderson-Page
I
-
ßICHAßD A, ANDf,ß5ON
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U
Transcribed by Lonaine Ligþtcap
MidwayVillage and Musoum Center
6799 Guittord Road
Rocldor{ Illinois 61107
Phone 815 397
9ll2
{
�Richard August Anderson-Page 2
Interview with Richard A. Anderson by Jim Will.
Hi! Today is February 14, Valentine's
Day,
My name is Jim Will. I am a volunteer
with the Rockford Museum Ce,nter which is
1994.
cooperating with a st¿tewide effort to collect oral
histories from Illinois citizens that participated in
events surrounding World War IL Today we are
in the home of Richard Anderson who lives at
3111 Þartmouth Drive, Rockford, Illinois, Mr.
Anderson served in a branch of the United States
Armed Forces during World War IL We are
going to interview him about his orperiences in
ANDERSON: Well, we grew up in the
depression and when I was a youngster at 16 %l
decided to join the National Guard with some of
my füends. The local National Guard. It was
Company K of the 129ú Infantry. To help fulfill
some of the hardships, I joined the National
Guard for the extra income to help support
myself as well as give money to the farnily. In
doing so, I got caught up in the mobilization for
WorldWar II.
WILL:
the war.
WILL: Oka¡ Dick, can we start off with
your
When did you join?
ANDERSON: I joined in February'39.
firll name, place and date of birth.
ANDERSON: My name is Richard August
Anderson. I was born August 7*, 1923, tn
Rockford, Illinois. I was the son of immigrant
IVILL: What was life like before
the war?
country and married in Minnesota,
ANDERSON: What life was like before the war.
For me, I was still a student in school, At the
time of mobilization, I was a junior i" high
school, I lú grade. I worked at a theater as a
theater usher for eÍra money. The basic
entertainment was Saturday night dances at the
church. V/e did a lot of pool playng in the pool
halls ... State and Madison ... and in the winter,
sports. We did a lot of ice skating, hockey,
skiing. I was in the Rockford Ski Club which we
used to jump ... the youngsters used to jump on
the ski jump at Blacft*rawk Park. That all
materialized in the last 13,14,15 and 16 year old
periodthat I was a youngster. Along come March
5, I94l where they mobilized for this one year of
compulsory training. They mobilized. a National
Guard to enter the service to fulfill that
obligation for the reserves.
WILL: Theymet in Minnesota.
WILL:
parents.
WILL: Andtheirnames
ANÞERSON: And there names were Richard E.
and Dorothy Fannie Anderson. My mother was
from Sweden and my father was from Norway.
\ilILL:
Were they immigrants?
ANDERSON: Immigrants.
IVILL:
They came over
ANDERSON: They came over from the old
Do you have any
Was that at Camp Grant?
brothers and sisters?
ANDERSON: Yes. I have two brothers that are
younger than I and their names are Wamer Olaf
and Ralph Francis.
WILL: Are there any momentous occasions or
special events that you care to share with us
about your family and family life?
ANDERSON: No, when we mobilized we
marched down South Main to the Illinois
Railroad station and got a train and ended up in
Camp Forrest, Tørnessee. Because the camp
wasnt quite finished,-gepared for us,- they
hauled the scrap lurnber that was left from
building
the barracks-we made wooden
sidewalks
to stay out of the mud
so we
wouldn't
�Richard August Anderson-Page
have to walk around in the mud. That took us
two or three months at which time the draftees
and the selective service people that were being
mobilized into the army-the military would
come to our camp and we organized our units
3
cadre because our ratings for efficiency in
training were the best of the division They
selected our regimørt to be the training
division----or training regiment.
and began our basic training.
\ilILL:
WILL:
ANDERSON: 33'd Division, Illinois National
Guard and I was part of the 129ú Infantry. We
had four regiments, t2eú krfantry 130ú Infantry,
131't and the 132'd Infantry which at that time
This is in Tennessee?
ANDERSON: This
is in
Camp
Forrest,
Tennessee. That was in an area by Tullahoma,(?)
Termessee, halfiray between Nashville and
Chattanooga.
WILL: You were there on December 7 n 1941?
ANDERSON: December 7ú we were at Camp
Forrest, Tennessee, and I was in a movie theater
on a Sunday aftemoon when I got the word that
Pearl Harbor was atþcked. A notice came on the
screen for all the men of the 129ú Infantry to
report back to base immediately. So I jumped up
and ran outside and, God, it was pandemonium.
People running everywhere and we couldn't
figure out what the heck-why is everybody
running around. Well, it was mobilizng the
guard at the camp. A lot of ttrem were moving on
the emergency moves out to the west coast, to the
TWA dams, the aircraft plants, to set up guard
dutyto prevent any sabotage.
WILL:
Here in the States?
Which division was this?
designated a square division which in tactics and
maneuvering and what have you in war, four
regiments had a purpose but because of the new
armored divisions and armor coming up and the
artillery, the cavalry was obsoleted for armored
vehicles. To speed up the movement of a
division, they trimmed it to a triangular division
which was three regiments. That's why the 132od
krfantry went overseas as a separate regiment
and joined up with two other regimerts that made
up the Marical division which our General
Powell recently--our Commander in Chief--rcur
General used to be part of the Marical Division.
During that December 7û period in January of
'42...
WILL: What was your
reaction to Pearl Harbor?
ANDERSON: Pearl Harbor was-during this
period, they mobilized us into the military army
full time. was the
ANDERSON: That was in the St¿tes and we
up stationed at Chattanooga, Te,nnessee,
on the Chicamauga Dam on the TWA Dam
projects to prevent any sabotage. That lasted
ended
about two weeks and in the next two weeks we
ended up at the multi-air craft plant at Nashville,
Tennessee, guarding the air craft plant for two
weeks. Then we got our notice to retum to Camp
Forrest, Tennessee, to be alerted
move
to
somewhere and we got back to camp--our base
camp-and found outthat our division was being
broken up. The 132"d lnfantqy from Chicago area
was being mobilized and senrt to the west coast to
go overseas immediately They became part of
the Marical Division which was in Australia and
the 129th hfantry was designated as a training
European War-the way the
Germans were escalating the war. We purposely
thought we were being mobilized and trained to
go to Europe. It was a complete shock to hear
that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and that
changed the whole strategy and units that were
scheduled
Europe got changed
be
scheduled for the Pacific, imagine that was a
for
I
to
nightmare at the War Office. But anyways, it
was a shock. In a way we were excited about the
fact that maybe we'd go to the Pacific rather than
Europe. Past experiences, books, literature that I
had read about'World rü/ar I which my uncle and
father were in, sleeping in the winter snows and
ice and everything dunng World War I, diúl't
look too inviting to me, I didn't relish that
experience so I preferred the Pacific. As it tumed
�Richard August Anderson-Page 4
out I was fortunate that our unit was sent to the
Pacific. During the exchange of troops in training
and making our regiment a cadre, I stayed with
my regiment all through the war from initially
from Rockford, Illinois, in March 5, 1941, to
Iuly 12, 1945. March 5th '4lis when we were
mobilized and I stayed with the unit all the way
up to July 12ú of '45 until my discharge.
WILL: You
heard about what was going on in
Europe with Hitler, What was your opinion on
that-before Pearl Harbor.
ANDERSON: My opinion on Hitler was-he
was â maniac and we had to hurry up and get
trained to get over there and stop this maniac
from...
WILL:
You were expecting
ANDERSON: We were expecting to be shipped
to Europe in the '41 period but things changed
and when they broke up our 33'd division, the
129ú hfantry the 130ú krfantry and the l3l't
made up the triangular division the ne\il
organization. Why all the veterans or trained
personnel were transferred out into other cadre
units, paper divisions that were being mobilized
and organized through the war department which
the trained personnel were sent out as training
cadres for other divisions, orther regiments so our
table of organization is normally around 217 mert
in a rifle company-infantry company. At this
period in August, or I beg your pardon October
of '41, we were down to about 35 men in our unit
which we were the nucleus of a cadre for training
, We got draftees and selectees transferred into
our unit which we started our 13 weeks basic
training which brought it into February of '42,
the end of the basic training. We were a firlly
organized training regiment. The other personnel
up to Octobet '41were transferred out to other
divisions that were being organized as training
'We
cadres.
went in to æst out the troops before
they were transferred to other units. We had a
maneuver
October)
in 1941 (August, September and
in Arkansas and Louisiana-
maneuvers which we had what we called a blue
army and red armythattried to out maneuver one
another and move through the countryside. We
went from Arcadelphia, Arkansas, all the way
down to Alexandria, Louisiana, where the battle
stopped to be continued, maybe in another war.
WILL:The realthing
ANDERSON: Well, we started our mâneuvers
at Arcadelphia(?) which was left off after World
'War
L During World War I there were some
army units that started a üumeuver in Missouri
and ended up in Arcadelphia, Arkansas. Then in
World War II period 1941, these maneuvers were
still on file. The army just picked up where they
left off in World War I and had us start up for
two months rnaneuvers or three montls
maneuvers in fukansas and Louisiana and it
ended at Alexandria.
WILL: What
date was this?
ANDERSON: That was about October of '41
after which we were transported back to our base
camp in Tennessee by trucks. Everybody was on
truck convoys, So we lived in bivouac areas, in
state parks, Shiloh Park in Memphis, Tennessee.
We bivouaced there at night setting up our tents
in a row for bivouacing and wæur
transportation was army trucks-moving from
one area to another. We retumed back to Camp
Forrest in October '41 and that's when all the
trained personnel that were eligible to be
transferred into ottrer units for training cadres. In
October we started all over training a batch of
new trainees. We were through with them- we
were through with our basic training by February
of '42 which we were told that it was imminent
when ever we were going move. We didn't know
whether we were going to go to Europe or
whether we were going to go to the Pacific.
Eventually they moved another division into our
Camp Forrest, Tørnessee, so we had to move out
into the countryside and set up a base camp in
tents, bivouacing. We did that for three months.
Then in August we got our alert notice, August
of 1942, that we were shipping over and as of the
day we left our countryside camp in Camp
Forrest, Tennessee, got on the trains. We thought
�Richard August Anderson-Page 5
we were shipping over to the east coast. Then the
people were saying we were going down to
Louisiana, New Orleans, and ship out by boat
through the Panama Canal to the Pacific. Now
we had all kinds of gambling pools, betting on
what was going to happen.
WILL:
Where were you gorrg?
ANDERSON: Well, it ended up that we got on
our trains and we just went straight west. We had
the red flag, everything coming eastward on the
railroads was sidetracked. Anything going west
had first class---drrough way. We got to Camp
Stroman, California, right outside
of
San
Francisco near St. Petersburg, Califomia. We got
to a þlace called Camp Stroman(?) and there we
were examined by doctors to see if we were
physically fit. We got shots for overseas dutytyphus, malaria, and what have you. In three
days we were on a boat heading out into the
Pacific out of Frisco Harbor. We said goodbye to
the golden Gate r¡¡hen we went under it. The ship
that took us out of Frisco was a Dutch-what
they called a deluxe cargo ship--åalf passengers
and half cargo. It was a Dutch ship by the name
of Clip Fontaine(?) and we were on that ship for
16 days, We left the 2od of September and on the
lSth of September, after zigzagging through the
ocean and-a couple of submarine, scaressubmarine alerts-we ended up in a harbor on an
island. We couldn't ñgure out what ttre name of
the island was, 'til they finally told us this is
where we were debarking,--+he Fiji Islands. So
on the 18û of September we were in the Frji
Islands. When we got there that's when we
became ... We went overseas as a regimental
combat team, the l2eft nfantry. When we got to
Fiji, we became part of the 37û krfantry Division
which was a National Guard Division from Ohio.
They were short one regiment. We became the
129û Infaritry ofthe 37û Division, The other two
regiments were the 145û hfantry and the 148ú
Infantry. We were the 129ft' We stayed with the
37ú Division through the whole Pacific combat
zone. We were on the Fiji Islands about six
months, digg¡rg in defense positions just in case
the Japanese would rnvade. We could defend her
with a couple of regiments but there wasn't very
many troops for an invasion. You dont stop an
invasion when it starts. August 7ù of 1942 when
we were in the Fiji Islands was my birthday, I
was 19 years old. The Marines landed at
Guadalcanal which was about 600 miles north of
us. There was a group of islands in between
Guadacanal which is in the Solomon chain of
islands in Frji. That was in the New Hebrides, the
main island in the New Hebrides was Espri
Santo. This scheme of islandhopping is actually
what was happening, We moved from Fiji to
New Hebrides and the 37û Division, part of it
was on New Hebrides with the regiments of the
145ú and 148û went from New Hebrides to New
Georgia. The 129ú came on to New Hebrides
behrnd the 37ft Ðivision to occupy the island
while the 37ú went on to New Georgia and
Tulagi. That lasted for a period of about six
months, At the end of that period we were
practicing beach-head maneuvers with the Navy
and the Merchant Marines. \üe got on a ship and
we headed out. We did nd know where we were
going yet.They told us we were going to
Guadalcanal. We got to Guadalcanal. They were
just finishing mop-up operations and what have
you. To get us familiarized with combat they
went us out on patrols in front of the Marical
Division, 132"d Infantry, one of our old mother
regiments, just to get a taste of being afraid,
scared and possibly getting shot at. We were on
Guadacanal for three weeks. Then they said our
mission has been desþated and we're going to
make the invasion of Bougainville,
WILL: What was your rank
and duties?
ANDERSON: My rank and duties in Company
K of the 129ú Infantry was reconnaissance
sergeant which was a staff sergeant. That's 3
stripes up and one rocker below. I went overseas
as a staff sergeant and stayed as a staff sergeant
up until this time. We prepared our combat
loacting of the ships for the invasion of
Bougainville. We were invading Bougainville
with the 129û hfaritry and the 148û Infantry of
the 37û Division and the Third Marine Regiment
'We
of the Third Marines.
said this was history
because we had never heard of the army making
�Richard August Anderson-Page 6
a beach-head with Marines before but this was
the first time that it was a combined operation.
The Marines had their own sector, the 129ú had
their sector and the 148ú had their sector but we
hit the beach at the same tíme. When we hit
Torkina(?) point on Bougainville, the point was
like a right angle so as we penetrated we were
forming a perimeter which was a quadrant of a
circle because of the point was like 90os you had
less yardage to cover instead of a complete circle
in a perimeter. So we advanced about six miles
inland which took 2 % to 3 weeks in which
sporadic fighting took place. The fapanese
retreated all the way up into the mountains and in
fact to the other side of the island to get away
from any contåct with us as they
wete
ouürumbered. Anyways, we formed a perimeter,
six mile radius from the Torkina(?) Point so that
the Seabees could move in and start building
bomber strips, fighter strips. Our whole mission
was to hold the perimeter while they built the
bomber strips and the fighter strips so the allies
could fly and take off on bombing missions to
reach out to Râbal(?) New Britain, and all the
other islands that needed
air
support
and
bombing. While we were on Bougainville, like I
said, the battle petered out about April. We
landed in Bougainville November of '42, We
landed on Bougainville in November of '43 we
were on Bougainville all of '44-up until
December of '44.'We were on Bougainville for
13 months holding this perimeter and during that
\J
period the Japs attacked us twice. Once on the
132'd Infantry which used to be part of the 33d
Division was also the Marical Division. The 37ú
Division was holding the perimeter. When we
formed the perimeter the Marines were relieved
and retumed back to their commander. They
were probably sent on other missions like
Tarawa or Ferel Island(?) or Marshall Islands.
Anyway, the army had the whole perimeter on
Bougainville up until December of '44 at which
time after the main battles were over with, we
knewtheywere defeated. Theywere coming in as
prisoners, straggling in the jungles, half starved
and some of them would attack us. We would
shoot them or kill them, get rid of them. We
fought the 10ú Infantry division of the Japanese
Army that was in on the "rape of Nanking". 'We
were told that, so during the fighting, you might
say it was quite fierce because we resented the
îaú.thatthey were the butchers and they weren't
gonna scare us, you know. We practically
annihilated them. In fact in March of '44 they
attacked us. In þril of '44 they really attacked
us with everything ... 10,000-
WILL:
By sea or by air?
ANDERSON: No, by coming down out of the
mountains. On Bougainville. We formed a
perimeter on Bougainville and they had the whole
island. We just waited there for them. If they hit
us, they hit us. But we weren't out to annihilate
them. We were there to protect--defend the air
strip. The military didn't want the whole island.
They just wanted enough space for bombers and
fighters. It was our job to protect the airstrip.
After April of '44 when things quieted down,
through reconnaissance and patrols, thousands of
them ... that the enemy had retreated to the
opposite side of the island. They were trying to
survive themselves by growing vegetables. We
saw that they had planted gardens and trying to
grow stuff. Then our air force ... the fighters ...
would go in and spray the fields and kill off
everything. So they practically starved them to
death. Anyways, the,n we started training of all
things, in the jungle, in clearings that they had
cleared when they were making the air strip to
practice beach-head landings for the Philippines.
\üe would group on the land and march down to
the shoreline and take out Higgins boats and
coxswains boats, infantry boats to the ships that
were out in the water with landing nets on their
sides. Several of them were American made,
some were Australian made. The ones we
practiced beach-head landings off of was the
Westralia from Australia,. For about two months
we did nothing but get on the ship, eat our food
on the ship, and the next moming, early- four
or five o'clock-daybreak-sound the alert, go
down the rope ladders into the boats so we could
practice beach-heads on Bougainville for the
Philippines.
�Richard August Anderson-Page 7
\UILL: You didthis how manytimes?
WILL: Hit
ANIIERSON: We did it for two months
ANDERSON: Our fleet. Our convoy was
attacked by something like 20 kamikazes. The
one that dove on our ship, hit the stem-hit the
WILL:
Everyday?
ANDERSON: Everyday, Wet, sand¡ dirty and
during that period we thought boy this is the big
one. Then they finally told us we ïvere gonna hit
the main island of Luzon. When we were
finishing up our practice landing they had just hit
Leyte. The army made the beach-head at Leyte.
And it went so smooth there that they moved up
to the beach-head to Lingayan(?) Gulf which was
January 9ú of t45. So January gú'45 we were on
our troop ships cruising up through the islands.
rù/e got over to the Admiraþ Islands
to pick up
some extra troops to fill in the vacancies that we
had in some of our units that were trainees from
the--I forget the name of the relocation center
no--the repo depots-they sent
over
replacemurts from the States to the replacement
depot and then from the replacement depot by
MOS numbers to trained desþation number like
an infantryman number MOS. My MOS was
1542 which was a reconnaissance sergeant But
anyway, we got our units filled up with spares
for the big invasion, They figured we'd better be
full strength when we made this big invasion. We
were in the Admiraþ Islands about three, four
days living on the ships. They let us go out on the
Coral Islands-5O0 yards in diameter. FIad a
beer shed on it. We get on the island and they i
served you two cans of hot beer. We'd sit there
and drank the hot beer and then back to the boat.
We got to do that every day, once a day, two
beers. Then we finally got the alert and we're
taking off. It was the largest troop convoy of the
war including Europe at this time, January of
1945, There was over 800 ships involved in this
invasion of Luzon-Philippines. 'We took off
from the Admiraþ Islands and started snaking
up through the chain of Philippine Islands. Went
up in through Mindanao Straits, went by Leyte.
We were on the west coast of Luzon right outside
of Manila Harbo¡ which you could see right on
the horizon. We got hit by Kamikaze airplanesJapanese fighters-Kamikaze panes.
.
the fleet or just your ship?
water at the stem-damaged the rudder, literally
lifted the ship right out of the water. We thought
it was going to break apart when it landed back
down. But the ship--{he airplane the Jap was
flying was full of dynamite They loaded up their
kamikaze suicide planes with explosives, mostly
dynamite.
WILL:
Enough gas for one raid!
ANDERSON: Yes, enough gas for one raid. But
anyways we survived the kamikaze crash and it
was getting dark. The Kitcom(?) Bay aircraft
carrier right in front of our ship got hit by six
kamikazes and we watched that one being towed
away. It wasn't sinking but it was listing. All the
aircraft that was available flew off of it on a
list-aircraft carrier on a slant. But anyways
they all flew offand they had to report to another
carrier somewhere in the vicinrty. There were 800
ships scattered over the seas from horizon to
horizon. You could see them everywhere. All the
time in the sky at nigbt, just before dusk, during
this attack all the F4Us, Navy fighters, P38s
coming from Leyte. It was just a big dog figlìt in
the air and fireballs.
WILL:
You had ringside seats
ANDERSON: Yah. The P.A. system, the
speaker on the system, said "I don't know who it
is but there goes another one." There would be a
fireball going down into the water and I guess we
lost around five or six airplanes. But they lost all
of their 20 or so that hit us. An¡ruvays this was
January 8* right outside of Manila Harbor that
this happened. The next morning we were in the
Lingayan(?) Gulf where we were making our
beach-head. We awoke at four o'clock in the
moming. Theywoke us up from our bunks and it
was just becoming daybreak about 4:30. The sþ
looked like a polka dot sþ antiaircraft smokeclouds of smoke just like a pattem like a polka
�Richard August Anderson-Page 8
dst dress. Suicide planes flying around crashing
into U. S. carriers, into cruisers, into an
Australian battleship. We were forming up in line
to
ready
disembark-get
off the ship-and
wired up on the bridge. The Japs were ready to
blow.
WILL: After you got over or before you
went
anytime something could hit us, you know,
over?
WILL:
ANDERSON: No, they hadn't blown it yet.
When we went under it we saw those bombs. We
told the driver of that amphibious tractor kick it,
you know, kick it in the ass and get this thing
going. We dont wantthis bridge to fall on us. So
it was the whole convoy. There was about eight
or ten traçtors for our unit for our company.
How many men lilere on the ship?
ANITERSON: About 3000. It was a battalion3'ú battalion of the l2gú krfantry. We
disembarked out over the side on the rope ladder
down to these amphibious tractors like the
Marines used. The reason our unit got those,
through our prior planning in Bougainville,---{ur
mission was after the beach head go inland ¡vo
miles, cross the Camay(?) River, get inland three
miles past the river and set up a combat--or an
MLR they called it-a Main Line of Resistance.
The reason we had amphibious tractors was for
the speed that if we went ashore in Higgins boats
we couldn't run that fast to get up into our area
so that we had alligator tractors that the Marines
used to land on shore, Then we had to watch out
for explosive ammunition that are duds from the
Navy from shelling. We get by that and here
comes all the civilian Phillipinos coming up out
of holes out of the ground just yelling "Victory!
Victory! MacArthur has retumed" and all that
stuff. It was quite thrilling to see this but we had
to be careful because in some cases there were
saboteurs and pro-Japanese that would wait till
we pass them and then they'd shoot at us f¡om
the rear. So we half way had to ignore them and
there were troops purposely on land that landed
on land that would surround up these people and
herd them into a group to keep them away from
the troops. Our mission was to keep going so we
went on through this town of DeMali(?) We were
being sniped at but not bad-not enough to really
harass us.
WILL:
Where would this be?
It was in the vicinity but not
always at us. We got to the river and crossed the
ANDERSON:
h
crossing the river we had to go
underneath a railroad bridge. As we went under
the railroad bridge, we saw 500 pound bombs all
river,
When we hit the shore we were about Yz mile out
of a line on what they called the red beach or
blue beach. I forget what our beach desþation
was. So when we hit the river the company
commander said we got to make a left tum in the
water so we had to go under this bridge and that
is when we saw the bombs. We kept our fingers
crossed that the Japs wouldn't blow it. We
moved into position about 500 yards-600 yards
to the to the left-then went ashore and got on a
highway that was heading for Malasinki(?).
which was little town of about 5000 peoplecivilians. Our first niglrt after we got or¡t of the
river heading for Malasinki(?) we had to-it was
nightfall. We had to bivouac for the night. So we
set up our perimeters and these amphibious
tractors said, Well we got to go back." They
tumed around and went back in the dark, back to
their beach desþation. There we were. Early
moming--{aybreak-we se,nt out patrols. Then
we got in columns of two's and started marching
down the road. The patrols out in front of us, the
scouts, were watching for snipers, activity and
r,vtrat have you. We got all the way up into
Malasiki(?), just about sundown. We heard a lot
of shooting going on and we cut across a rice
paddy onto a railroad because the
communications we were getting was don't come
down the highway. So they said come down the
railroad. We had this advance patrol that was
fiehting offthe Japs up there in Malasiki(?), the
town of Mallasiki(?). We gotthere about-it was
getting dark-and so we were told 1s dig in, so
we dug in right along side the railroad track. By
this time we had them laps trapped in
a
tnangle-the highway and the railroad crossing
�Richard August Anderson-Page 9
for the triangle. There was a dirt road maybe a r/t
mile up from the railroad crossing and we closed
in-surrounded them. We were pitching
grenades and shooting all night long. Snipe
shooting, youknow, justharassingthem. All of a
sudden my parhrer and I, Bill Cave(?)., (he was
my best man at the wedding when we got back
it
after the war)-we were laying in a fox hole
pitching grenades at certain places where we
heard noises and all of a sudden somebody
jumped in our slit trench and it was a Jap and he
had a saber. He was getting ready to swing that.
Both Bill Cave and I jumped up and grabbed him
and pulled him back down and butted him to
death with the butt of a rifle. I asked Bill if he
was O. K. and he said, ooYah, f'm O.K." So there
was a few nicks that we got, one on the cheek
Bill Cave got and on myhand.
WILL: Fromthat Jap?
ANDERSON: Yes, from that lap. That was just
could have been anything scuffling in the dark.
That moming the first thing at the break of dawn
we ñnally had a Jap interpreûer come down the
railroad from the rear headquarters as an
interpreter. Nothing was really happening. The
shooting had stopped. We had the interpreter yell
out to surrgrder, "You're surrounded. You don't
have a chance. We got food for you." They were
starving. You could tell the ones that were
captured during the night trapped in a small little
patrol pockets hadnt eaten for days, By that time
they start coming popping up and running out of
'We
the wooded area with their hands up.
herded
them into a theater in the town, a cinema, outdoor
theater, with a roof on. rile had them strip down
naked so that we could tell if they had any
weapons on them because a lot of them carried
grenades hanging on their neck, ammunition,
money belts, around their waists and stuff like
that. So we had them strip down and we ended up
with 168 Prisoners of War,. We killed 60 some
Japs-captured 168. During the hassle we're
calling regimental headquarters that we got over
160 prisoners and what did they want us to do
with them? They said send them back in groups
of 20 and two GIs to each group of 20. So we
organized groups of 20 and then two Gls-two
riflemen-to escort them back. The groups were
spaced apart like 20 to 25 yards. I was in one
group.Walked them back 20 miles to
Cabachuan(?) right by a railroad crossing on the
river, Camia River, and tumed them over to
MPs. On the way they wanted to drink the water.
We pointed down to the swamp "Drink that
water just like you did on the Bataan March."
\ilILL:
Theynever gave you any other trouble,
ANDERSON: No, they argued a lot and some
would say, "I went to school in UCLA" And
stuff like that. You ran into all this kind of
English speaking Japs trying to get preferential
treatment. That's rvhat they were doing. But
anyways, we reported back to our unit at
Monkada(?). Before we left with the prisoners,
the civilian-in the town govemmentapproached our unit commander and said, "One
of these men raped a woman last night"--during
the night. Captain Kelly said, "\ñ/hat do you want
me to do about it?" We want permission for the
woman to look over the prisoners to see if she
can find him and point him out." Kelly said, "Go
ahead. If you find him, you tåke him." She
walked through that whole crowd. We had them
sitting on wooden benches, naked. She went
through and she pointed to the guy-bearded
guy-bushy hair. He wasn't really a Japanese
soldier. He was a civil engineer, civilian attached
tothe military.
\ilILL:
Philippino?
ANDERSON: No, Japanese. The mayor or the
city official. She said "That's him." He's shaking
his head r1o, no, no. She's jibbering in Phillþino
"Damn right you're the one." So Kelly lets them
t¿ke him and boy, they had a Kangaroo court
right there in the court yard and shot him and
Kelly said, "That's one less we have to worry
about." So that's when we organized those
groups of 20 and marched them back to
Cabachuan(?) and Bayonbon(?) where the two
cities were there.
�Richard August Anderson-Page 10
Tane I. Side 2
Anyways we marched the prisoners back and
when we got back to Malasiki(?) again we got
orders to advance towards Manila. We landed on
Lingayan Gulf on the 9ú of January and we were
in Manila
ll7
miles south by February 17û,
marching offand on. On the way down we got to
a city called Tarlac(?) which is right by Clark
Air Field That's an old U. S. Air Force base that
'We
the Japanese took over.
were bivouacked off
the highway of Clark Field when we got a news
bulletin, they're mimeographed and they're
passed out to the troops ofthe current events of
the week or the days.
WILL:
Somettring like a
little
ANDERSON: Like a news letter and we said,
"Hey, General MacArthur says Clark Field has
'We
been taken.
ought to breeze right through
there on the way down to Manila." The next
morning we got orders to take Clark Field. So we
were side-tracked to take Clark Field and that
took about sevem days. What was suppose to be
like a 12 hour battle lasted seven days-I2
thousand yards later. We swept across the whole
Clark Field up into the mountains where we
pushed the Japs up into the mountains. During
the course of battle \¡ve were strafed by our own
Marine Air Force when we were on Clark Field.
Theythought we were the Japs.
WILL: Theyhadn't
gotten the word yet.
ANDERSON: They hadn't got the word. And
that's when I first got wounded. I was on the
attack to take towards the hill top, called "Top of
the World." I was with my unit commander and
he told me to run over to a tank and tell the
tanker commander to get his group of tanks
moving-we're moving out. We were suppose to
attack with these tanks. Well, there's a telephone
hanging on the back of the tank and you go up
and grab the phone and whistle through it. You'd
get an answer and the tank commander says
"Yah. What can we do for you." And I said,
"Captain Kelly over here on your left is saying
we're ready to take off and attack this hill. He
wants you to move along with the infantry." "Oh
I can't, he says, "we're low on ammunition and
we're low on gas." So then I kind of waved at my
company commander. 'lMe've gat a problem.
Come on over." So he comes over and he talks to
the guy and said, "I don't give a God damn if you
ain't got enough gas, you're gorma run it 'til it
runs out of gas. We'll get you gas." You know,
those five gallon cans from the jeep and trucks.
So anyways we got the battle going and in the
heat of battle I knew I was getting shot at and I
hit the ground and a bullet hit right in front of my
face and cut my lip in two places. I rolled over
into the gÍass to get out of the line of fire. I
figured once I got hidden in the grass he couldn't
see me. It was a rifleman because it was single
shots. It wasn't a machine gun? So then I'm
layrng in the grass trying to figure out what
happened. My teeth are all there and everything,
so I figured it must have been debris-rocks and
stuff. The bullet ricocheted and splattered gravel
and stuff all over my face. By that time Captain
Kelly was yelling "Anderson, where in the hell
are you? He's over there behind that t¿nk. So I
yelled at him. He says "Come on over." So I ran
over to him My face is all bloody and he says,
o''What
the hell happened to you?" I said, "I don't
lnow. I think I got bullet shrapnel or stones
splattered in my face from being shot at." At that
time his radio man happened to move out a little
bit to far from behind the tank and he got shot in
the arm. \üe had to pull him down on the ground
and get him out of the line of fire--told the tank
to stop so we had something in front of us. Got a
medic to come up and treat him. Then we took
offagain, We finallytook this small hill that was
right in front of "Top of the World". As we're
climbing the hill I got hooked up with a squad.
My; company commander was right next to me
but he wanted me to go with this squad as an
extra rifleman because they were shorthandedsome wounded people. So I'm with this Sergeant
Pottsis. He's the squad leader, and we're moving
up the hill. advancing and I'm just behind
Sergeant Pottsis, more or less, acting as his guide
or guard while he was directing his men. If I saw
something, I told him to duck. I didnt know that
we had another platoon circling around the hill to
�Richard August Anderson-Page 11
come up the back side. They shot off a WP
is a white phosphorus grenade
from a rifle launcher and that thlrg sailed over
grenade which
the target which is a Japanese anti-aircrafttwenty millimeter gun on the hilltop that they had
been using for flat fire over the airfield when we
were attacking the airfield. They were using antiaircraft guns for artillery and for machine guns.
But anyways I saw that \MP grenade coming up
over the hill which is maybe 150 yards from
me-coming right down on us. That thing went
off. I got it on my arms. I had my fatþe jacket
on but had the sleeves rolled up to here on both
so there are scars on my ann,
WILL: How far awayhad it landed?
ANDERSON: Oh, about l0 to 15 yards. It
exploded and it looked like a fireworks display,
white phosphorous. We used that for enemy
positions and stuff like that. Sometimes they'll
get in a little pocket hole in the pit of a gun
emplacement and shrapnel they can duck down
enough that the shrapnel will miss them. But
you get a WP in there, that covers everything. It
sticks on you. You tryto wipe it ofl you got it on
your hands. Any ways, it bumed so much and I
thought I had it in my face. I did get some in my
if
face and it was buming. You find out real fast
how much pain level that you can stand. By that
time Sergeant Pottsis grabbed me and laid me on
the ground. He said, 'ol-ay down." I heard him get
this canteen out and sprinkle water on the ground
and make a mud. He spread mud all over my
arms and all over my face. By that time he had to
move out. He said, "fust stay here. I'll have a
medic get you" Well I must have passed out or
woke up I was rn a
medical station laying on a stretcher. The doc
said, "I want you to ope,n up your eyes." I said,
"Are they O.K.?" He said, '"\Me want to see if
they're O.K. Open your eyes?" I had my lid
closed because the pain was such that-well,
anyways, I noticed the pain in my face was gone.
They had washed my face off and used co,pper
sulfate. They smothered the phosphorus with
sulfate and if it doesnt get oxygen, it doesn't
bum. So they were, with tweezers, picking it out
of my face and a couple other guys were working
something because when
,-)
I
on my arms.
hadn't got
I stiil felt pain in my arms. They
it
all. There was some heavier
amounts buming in like a crgareûe butt. I finally
opened my eyes. Boy, were they watering but
they said they looked O.K. That's when saw
I
little streaks of smoke coming off my faceparticles still in my skin buming. I was there for
observation for two days back in this first aid
tent. They said, 'lilhat the hell happened to your
fãce?" I had pock marls all over too, from the
stones. And they diùt know whether that was
phosphorous-. They were digging out the little
stones, That's when I got two purple hearts. I got
one when I reported to the medic and he put a tag
on me for a Purple Heart for my lip being busted
open or split ope,n. He put tape over it to hold it
together until we got to the aid station and then
see if I needed stitches or not. I never did have
stitches.
WILL:
You were there two days?
ANDERSON: Yes, I was in the medical station
two days and then things cleared up I had this
white salve, zinc oxide, or whatever it was
plastered on my face. I looked like a zombie
when I reported back to my unit. That's when the
l't Sergeant gave me my two Purple Hearts.
rüell, he gave me my Purple Heart and then he
gave me an oak leaf cluster that goes on the
Purple Heart. Actually, I got six altogether. I
only claimed two. The others were just minor.
The shrapnel in my knee and mythigh ...
WILL:
Where did you getthal?
ANDERSON: I got that-well, I was at Clark
Field again-running across the field and getting
shot at by anti-aircraft weapons, But they were
so minor I didnt even go to the medics for that.
Then the other one was going through the streets
of Manila while going through the buildings. The
Japs dropped a grenade through a hole in the
floor. It hit the floor-just a poor quality hand
grenade and it just split open and I got slivers in
my back. One of the guys pulled it out. We got
Clark Field occupied after seven days which was
suppose to take a couple of days. They put us
�Richard August Anderson-Page 12
back on the highway to start marching towards
Manila. Wren we got to the outskirts of Manila
on March 2"d of 1945, they stopped us from
entering Manila. We were right at the gate of
Manila. There was a statue at the entrance. I
forget the name of the statue. It was a Spanishsome kind of a Spanish officer, hero, during the
Spanish, when the Spaniards had the Philippines
years ago. Anyways, they held us up so we had
to move off the road and let the l't Cavalry go
through-armored division, MacArthur's pride
and joy. They were going in first.
WILL:
Where were they at?
ANDERSON: They had just landed and they
were racing down Lingayan Gulf, 117 miles,
with their armored vehicles to get to Manila, We
were within a few miles-Clark Field was like 45
miles from Manila*S0 miles. By the time they
were racing down-fl don't know when they
landedFbut they were racing down to get to
Manila, they wanted to retr¡m the First Cavalry
to Manila with Mac Arthur, "I have retumed"
deal. Anyways we waited there offthe road---on
the side of the road. We had to set up our
defensives--our perimeters-because after the
first day nobody showed up. But they said still
wait, wait, wait. It took them three days. The
third day-here they come. It wasn't more than
two or three hou¡s this whole convoy ends up
being swallowed up in Manila. We hear a lot of
shooting and artillery going on. Then we got
orders to advance. So we continued to advance.
Come to find out the First Cavalry was so
rambunctious to get to Manila that they sped
right across the bridges, the Passive(?) Riverwent across the bridges-got all their units south
ofthe river and Japs blew the bridges up and had
hem trapped on the south side. So we got into tlìe
outskirts of Manila and into the building to
building-hand fighting and also house to house.
We confiscated lots of beverages that we found
in the houses-scotch, wine, beer. We sent that
back with our jeep for a rear CP to hold for us so
we could all split it up and divide. When we got
down to the Passive(?) River, the fightings is
pretty fierce. The buildings, hotels are buming.
They declared it an open crty but the Japs
wouldn't let it be an open crty to save it--they
just fired it up. We got down to the Passive(?)
river. We couldn't get across the river. The way
the situation was, the walled city which was like
a big fort-Fort Stachinberg(?)--the walled city
called Intreborous(?). The Japs were holed up
and their fields of fire were so heavy nobody
could cross. They had the First Cavalry pinned
down. All the bridges were blown up. The post
ofñce was full of Japanese. The large post office
like we have in Rockford or bigger. The walled
city here, the post office here and they
had
control of everything. Somebody had the bright
idea to make a river crossing and get into the
walled city. During the night they lined up 144
artillery pieces on two sides of the walled cityso they could hit two sides of the walled city
from the south side of the Passive(?) river-the
north side of the Passive (?) river. We were on
the north side. The Japs are on the south side, We
found out that our unit, the 3'd Battalion, 129ú
Infantry, Company K, was going to make a river
crossing and invade or get inside of the walled
city and try to make--get enough people going
there where we're fighting-getting the Japs
knocked down and holed up, making it easy to
get through. Well, during the night they moved in
all these artillery pieces and at the break of dawn
all hell broke loose. They were shelling direcf fire
across the river. The artillery pieces were pointed
directly at the wall. They would have maybe 6,7,
I guns pointed at onê spot and ¡5ing concrete
piercing ammunition, they just pulverized the
wall so you could walk over it. Prior to that it
was a sheer granite stone wall you couldn't climb
over. If you attempted to climb, the Japs would
get you before you got over. So we shelled the
hell out of it, and they bombed it from the air for
the first two hours at the break of dawn. By six
o'clock we were in engineer boats making the
river crossing. And you know, machine gun fire,
sniper fire and everything going on and we got up
to the wall and we climbed over the crumpled
part that we \¡/ere at. There were several areas
that were the same way that troops got in. Our
unit went in right by the river crossing by the
mint building in the walled city. When I say the
mint building, w€ had to go through the mint,
where they make money. Of course there are
�Richard August Anderson-Page 13
stacks of silver, stacks of gold and st¿cks of
coins and paper money, counterfeit money, We
even found counterfeit money that the Japs were
printing for their purposes.
\ilILL:
Occupation money, I suppose
ANDERSON: Anyways, we're inside the walled
crty within a couple of hours of the shelling and
through the mint building. Everybody
confiscating silver-stuffing it in their packs.
'We're
inside the walled crty, on the wall
protecting--dre Japs were buried underneath The
Walled Crty in the tunnels--ttre dungeons which
later on in modern day ('45) it was like a sewer
system. They used it for t¿ctics I guess. You
know to hide. It was estimated over 500 down
there undemeath The Walled City. So one of the
officers-I was a still a staff sergeaût. I was an
SFC now. I got promoted in Bougainville with an
extra stripe--only to get a little more pay raise.
They would give you a higher rank to get you
more pay, so I was an SFC at this time.
Everybody was "over in grade" because this was
like going on 37 months in the Pacific. You
wondered if you were ever going to get home.
September of '42 when we left the united States,
there were 88 guys, Rockford men, in Company
K. In July of '45 there were only four of us.
WILL:
Oh my gosh. Did they transfer out of it?
ANDERSON: No, most of them were wounded
and killed-mostly wounded. There were 16 or
17 killed of the original 88 and the rest were
wounded. Only one guy out of the whole 88 that
never got wounded. His name was Canaly. He
worked for the Post Office. He got out of it
without a scratch. Eighty-seven guys something
happened to them" killed, wounded, including
myself. 'When the years go by and you're
overseas fighting, Guadalcanal, Bougainville, in
the Philippines, you just wonder if you're every
going to make it. The odds-well, fortunately
when we got to Manila and took it--they then
put us out in the rice paddies. Made up a base
camp and then we started basic training-not
basic training but military training againexercises just to keep us busy. Then we got
orders to go up into the CagayanValley where we
were to øke R*au(?) which is on the northem tip
of Luzon. So there's a town called Lapal(?)
which is rigttt about north of Clark Field where
we started our mission walking up this country
road, winding road up up through the mountains.
On the way we would skirmish with the Japs.
They'd dig their t¿nks into the hillside and use
them for pill boxes. rrl/e had skirmishes here and
there, This was like in May of '45. We're up in a
liüle town called Retau(?) which was half way to
Apari(?) whiçh is the northerm end of Luzon.
We'd just finished off knocking out four Jap
tanks with flame throwers. One of my additional
duties as a cornmunication sergeant, I was a
flame thrower squad leader. I had two flame
thrower crews-{welve guys, six guys one each. I
had an assistant squad leader-{en guys, five
guys on each flame thrower. We used napalm
and jelly gas. These were all fueling gases.
WILL:
Weren't those kind of dangerous. To use
it?
ANDERSON: Ya. You get one on your back
and you get shot when one of the tanks go off.
Good bye. Anyways we had that happen to one
guy. He just went over the edge a little bit. He
went further than we wanted him to but he was
determined to get the job done. In doing so he got
shot. Well, he got shot plus the fuel tank got
penetrated and þited and blew him up. 'When
we got to Aritåu(?) there was a hospital there
with Japanese wounded in it but they were all
half dead. rüe called and said we got about 32
prisoners here but they're all sick. They're in the
hospital beds. They said, 'lMe don't want any
more prisoners." Well, what we gonna do with
them?" They told us it was up to us. So we shot
them all. We didnt want to leave them behind.
They could be playrng possum. By this time we
were so hardened we could open up a can of hash
and eat it \ilith our fingers next to a dead lap with
maggots crawling,all over him. Di&t bother us
one bit. Then we got up from Arutau(?) we went
to a little tovm, Trinidad. For
some reason or
oûher the Japanese convoy got strafed and shot up
there by our air force. There was money laying
all over the ground. Silver pesos, like a silver
�Richard August Anderson-Page 14
dollar.
I got a handful of thos+-about 2500 of
them. Anyways we found out that they were all
layrng in the weeds-the Japs-in the brush,
dysentery malaria, and they just didn't have the
strength to fight.
WILL: Not
near where the hospital was?
ANDERSON: No, this north, a little town called
Trinidad north of Aretau. fuetau(?) is where the
little hospital was where they were all laying on
the beds. They hardly moved. They were just half
dead and they look at you mercifully like they'd
say "Do it. Kill me". You get to that point where
you don't want to suffer.
WILL:
Putthem out oftheir misery
WILL: How did you feel-you
and the rest
of
them feel about it?
ANIIERSON: Well we felt real bad about it. We
just hoped the country would hang on and get the
job done like he was doing. We thought he was
doing a magnificent job. Then Truman took over.
Was it Truman?
IVILL: Yah, Truman took
over
ANDERSON: Was it Truman?
\ilILL:Yah.
ANDERSON: Just ten years later he was
involved in Korea, too, Anyways I don't
remember who the Vice President with Roosevelt
ANDERSON: We get up into the hillside on this
road by Trinidad. That's where we found this
convoy and all this money and stuff. Then we
found over 320 Japs that were scattered or¡t from
this convoy. The convoy was all shot up and
bumed and the ones that still survived the
strafing were undemeath the branches and the
bushes-in the ditches and culverts, We called
them and told them again, 'lMe've got about 320
some Japs up here that are either dysentery,
malaria, sick wounded, half dead." "We don't
want them." So everybody got ready to go otrt
and anything they saw shoot it, kill it, make sure
its dead. Well then a je€p comes up. Stiles from
Detroit, Michigan, and shouts "Anderson,
McVay, Harry Revere, and Getts, get your
stuF-we're going home. This is on the point
system at this time. Anybody with over 100
points rotated as fast as possible to the States,
They wanted to make a big showing, The war in
Europe was over. That was over in April
sometime in '45 or was it sooner than that?
WILL:Thatwas May
atthattrme. Ithink itwas Truman.
WILL:
Yes, Trumantook over
ANDERSON: Was it Truman, the haberdasher.
Anyways, I threw my satchel pack, my maps.
See, by this time we're being infiltrated by GIs
from Europ+-air force individuals, sent the
infantry and everything. This Nightingale, was an
air force sergeant, a ground crew, and he was
assþed to the Pacific and they put him in the
infantry. I said, '1.{ightingale," I ttlrew my map
bag at him and said "It's all yours, goodbye".
Captain Greeri-we
had 13
company
months. Thirteen company
commanders in 38
commanders. Thirteen
bo¡ that
13 must be a
of them. This is #13lucþ number for me. The
just before him was wounded, then we had
one killed. Some of them were just transferred
out---exchanged. We had one killed, 2 or 3
wounded. I was just breaking in this Captain
Green with the maps and what the strategy was
wtth the battalion and battalion commanders
because I was a kind of liaison be&veeri our unit
one
and battalion headquarters and all the other uniæ.
ANDERSON: April, May. Somewhere in there.
Roosevelt died, That was a crush on us. It really
hit us hard over there because we were all raised
in families under Rooseveh. He was the greatest,
you know.
By this time I'm old hat-you know-Sgt.
Anderson. It was gettrng to the point where the
captain would say '"\Mhat do we do now
Anderson?" You lnow, because he's fresh. I'd
bring him up to date on what the situation was
�Richard August Anderson-Page 15
and then our executive officer was always in the
rear bringing up the kitchen and what have youthe rear supplies-so he was never involved. So
it was up to me to brief the company commander
as to what the situation was. Then he'd go back
to
report to the battalion commander to get
briefed some more, I suppose. He probably met
the battalion commander prior to that. They
usually say get up to your unit as fast as you can
and get acquainted, then work back in getting
information. So here this Captain Green-we'd
just finished this battle and he lived through it,
fortunately. This jeep drives up and says,
"Anderson, Devere Getts and McVey, you're
going home. Climb aboard." So I got on the jeep
which took us back to original headquarters. We
had to stay there for the night. They took our
guns away and our gear. "What the hell if the
Japs come down offthe hillside, what am I going
to do?" They said, "Don't worry about that."
Then we got shelled that night by the Japs. So
anyways we got back to Manila at the
replacement depot-got processed through. It
took three or four days.
WILL:
This is probably in what-June?...
ANDERSON: This is June 23'd. On June 23'd, I
got on a ship called
and that took us
back to San Francisco. We made a stop at Guam
to pick up some more GIs and transferring back
to the States. Then we were on our way back to
the States and arrived in San F¡ancisco on July
4e,1945. The war's still going on. It took us so
long to get back. We had to keep zig z"aggngsubmarine tactics. Got off the ship, went to
Angel Island, we,nt across the dock, got on a
furry, went to Angel Island. The first day
processed, there. This is luly 4ú. It was 72 and
we were freezing to death. We were shivering.
WILL:
ì
Your were used to the
.
ANDERSON: We had fatigues on. We were
climatized for the Pacific, 120o weather. Here it's
72o-almos/.. half. Our blood was thin so they
got us in wool clothing--overcoats. You know,
the regular army blouse and Eisenhower jackæ,
wool pants. People on the base at Angel Island
were in T-shirts, walking in T-shirts. t, 'lMhat's
the matter with those guys?" Anyways, l l
o'clock that night-this was early in the
moming-seven o'clock we were off the ship,
over to Angel Island, got processed, paper work,
back pay, stuff like this. By eleven o'clock that
night we were on a train heading for Fort
Sheridan.
WILL:Chicago.
ANDERSON: They split up the guys in the
different directions they were going. I was in a
group going to Chicago. July 4ü, that nightmidnight-we were got on a train-, It took us
four days and four nights. Every train stop-.
See, ever¡hing going west had priorrty. So now
we're on the eastbound train so we had to take
siding. I'm telling you, the GIs were crary. Every
time that train stopped they'd jump oË run into
town, buy a bottle, get some beer, then the train
starts moving again they'd grab a cab and meet
us at the next town and get back on. Then we'd
be out there writrng on the Pullman cars,
"MacArthur's pride and joy--{he U. S. Army"
all over the train. We had Jap flags flying on the
outside ofthe train. July l0ú we get to---{hat was
five days and five nights, I guess----on July 10ft
we got to Fort Sheridan for two days of
processing. I had German prisoners sewing up
my ruptured duck patch on my shirt-issuing me
ribbons put all my garbage on my chest. Then
they'd ask us questions-the ones that spoke
English. "\Mere you in Europe or the Pacific?" I
said, "Pacific". "Oh," he said, "You fought those
damn Japs." He's a German prisoner. Then July
12ú I got separated from the service for the
convenience of the govemme,lrt, I wasn't
discharged, They gave us 90 days to decide
whether we wanted to stay in or not. I says, "90
days ain't enough. I have been away for 38
months overseas. I've only been home once in 4
t/zyears for six days." That was in '41 before we
shipped out. I got home-We rented a cab from
Tallahoma, Tennessee, all the way to Rockford.
There were six of us in the cab with the cab
driver. Seven guys. It tv\¡as a Chevie and we were
�Richard August Anderson-Page 16
packed in like sardines. We had one guy sleep in
the trunk.
years old then, and my other brottrer is two years
younger than I am. I was ...
WILL: How did you get back?
WILL: Werethey inthe
A¡IDERSON: Same way, He stayed in tovm,
We had six days. Four days home and one day
getting up here Twenty-fours roughly, Aurrd 24
hours gefring back. So he stayed up in town. 'We
paid his-$60 a man times seven. We had to
rotåte. One had to sit in the trunk. We wired it
open so you could see out and then wired from
inside so it stayed up and didn't bot¡nce. That
was a riot. But anyways, getting back to July 12ú
when I got separated from Fort Sheridan. We
all-several of us guys--decided lst's all meet at
the Palmer House and have one for the roadyou know-in Chicago. I was the only one that
showed up at the Palmer House. I sat there for
two hours waiting for everybody. Then I thought,
"The hell with this noise." My train is about due
to go to Rockford so I went down to the train
station. Sure enough, tlere was the train getting
ready to go to Rockford. I got on and got in
Rockford on July 13ú at 2 o'clock in the
moming. I thought I don't want to wake up
everybody at 2 o'clock in the moming, so I
grabbed a cab and hauled me up to the Nelson
Hotel on South Main Stræt-the old Nelson
right there on Elm Strest and South Main. The
Cutler Building-old Cr¡tler Fumiture--Hanley
ANDERSON: Yah, myyounger brother, Vemie,
was. He was in the Marines. They called a cab
Fumiture-right
across the street was the Nelson
Hotel. Anyways, got in the hotel and when I got
my room I said, "I want a like a sauna bathsteam bath. I wanted to get all this crap out of
my system. So I'm in there and you could just see
the dirt rolling off my skin, coming out of the
pores. Went for a little swim and by 3:30-4
o'clock I jumped in bed. Woke up about 8, went
down to the barber shop, got a shave and a hair
cut and asked him to use the phone. He let me
use the phone. We were talking war. I just got
home. He was all excited, the barber. Vem, my
younger brother, just rigþt after me, answered the
phone. I said, "Hey, I'm down here at the Nelson
Hotel. Anybody got a car that can pick me up?.
01.{o,
we don't have a car but we'll come down
with a cab." I said, "OK". Then Raþ, my
younger brother, came with him. He was nine
service?
and bythe time they got to the barber shop, I was
paymg the barber. We got in the car and went
home. Everybody at home, my step-father, my
mother, two brothers. Then they called a bunch
of people by phone and they all came to visit. So
really I loafed around for about two weeks. Met
mywife downtown shopping for civilian clothes.
WILL: You were married?
ANDERSON: I wasn't married
WILL:
First time you met her?
knew her in school. I met
her downtown and that started the affair. I called
her a few times. Finally she consented she'd have
a date. We went to a show. tn fact it worked out
so good that by November l0û we got married in
'45 about three months after I got out of the
service we were married. That was it. We got
married. We had two children. rejoined the
National Guard, became a commander and a
custodian of the armory. I became an officer in
ANDERSON: No,
I
I
the National Guard and Io and behold come
December 1"t, 1953, we mobilized again and I
had to move my unit to Ca-p Cook, Califomia
of the National Guard. Had to leave the famrly
home and went to Camp Cook, Califomia for a
year. I went back to Fort Be,nning, Georgia for
three months refresher course as a re0read. Got
my _(?)_
orders and ended up in Japan.
In Japan I got assigned to the 45ú Division which
was on the front line in Korea. So when I got to
Korea-30o below zero on this night train that
was air conditioned with outside air-30o below
zero with leather boots on. We didn't have our
winterized boots that they hadn't issued to us,
We got to division headquarters-the 45ú
Division-and I got assþed a bed. The first
thing we did was strip down naked and get in that
�Richard August Anderson-Page 17
sleeping bag to get warm. When you're naked
you wann up fast when your skin body is in that
bag. Then in the moming, this was in February
4ú 1953, we get dressed and wandered around.
Found out where we were goffia have breakfast,
went and had breakfast. A few of us officers
wandered around and we found the S-1, the
administrative officer to find out who do we
report to. Who are we assþed to They said that
will be at 9 o'clock. We met the division
commander.
don't remember his name but
found out I was going to be assþed to the 180ú
krfantry butttrey said, '"\Me dont know what unit
you'll get. You'll find that out when you get to
your regiment." So they put us in trucks and they
I
hauled us up and I said, "Sure as hell, 180û
Infantry-I'm gonna be right there--sand bag
castle." We get up to the 180ú and they had a
coffee break-had lunch-then a regimental
Commander Colonel DeOrsa-He was from
New Jersey, He said, "You men have already
been assþd by name to units so we're gonna
read off your name and the unit-you know, no
explanation or nothing-just read you name off
know-not cleaned up. I said, "Ho\ry can you
stånd it up here?" He said, "Oh you're never in
it. You'll never notice it." Well, from the talk I
heard from the troops, they're all trigger happy,
scared to death. They had no confidence in that
officer so they're all looking out for themselves. I
had three days to get acquainted with the front
line before I sþed his release but after the ñrst
night I stghed his release and got him out.
WILL: Didn'the
ANDERSON: He started shooting up in the
bunker at rats. They had rats up there like that.
'\Mell," I said, 'the reason why there in here is
because you let food lay around and everything
else." So, (I know I've goüen into this Korean
thing) anyway I was in Korea-well you eam
four points a month whe,n you're on the front
line. You rotate at 32 points. So I was on the
front line all the time I was there. By September I
was rotated back to t?re St¿tes and came out as a
captain.
\ilILL:
andthe unit.
Do you remember where you were in
Korea?
WILL:No
choice
ANDERSON: So Anderson being the first on the
list,-He
says,
"l"t Lt.
Anderson, headquarters
company, 3'd battalion, l80th Infantry. I said,
"See, I told you-sand bag castle." Lt. Poe said,
"I'll probably be with you." He got assþed
somewhere else. Anyways, I ended up reporting
to the headquarters company, relieved the
headquarters commandant, took his job. I held
that job for about a month. And the battalion
commander got wounded and got shipped out.
Major Ottenter took over and said we need a unit
commander at Company L up on the line, He
said 'I want you to go up and take over that
company." The unit commander that was up
there was combat fatlgued and going a little
berserk. So I packed up and there was another
officer that took my place. This was like within a
month-I took my place as
commandant and
reported in to
Pointer by the
I went up to
headquarters
Company L and
this lieutenant. He was a West
way-dark, gloomy bunker, you
ANDERSON: Yah, 35 miles inland from the
east coast krji(?þ-north of InJi(?) about 30 miles
nortfi. We were north of the 38ú parallel. The
38ú parallel kind of crossed over about 60 miles
intand from the east coast down below the 38ú
over by Seoul. But I was up 35 miles in from the
east coast. On a cloar day I could see the ocean
and the mountain tops, We had some of the well
known combat areas in Korea was the Punch
Bowl which was on my right flank within 500
yards and Heart Break Ridge was about 1000
yards to my left across the valley, My position
was Sand Bag Castle which got to be a good
name over there. Everything happened at Sand
Bag Castle. Anyways I shipped out of Korea in
September and came back to the States. I was
released from Camp Carson, Colorado, on
September 23'd of '53 and thetr I started my
second family-a boy and a girl. So really I
raised two families. I've got children-the oldest
is 48, the youngest is 36. The youngest passed
�Richard August Anderson-Page 18
away here six years ago with cancer. My
youngest daughter.
Tape 2. Side
I
realized that-she was 16 and I was 17 %. We
were just kids, you know. It wasnt really love.
We were just going together but we thought we
were made for each other. As you get older things
change.
\ilILL: OK. Looking back on the 2"d World
War, You did a good job so far here. The mail
and stuff---can you tell us about the mail? Did
you write a lot and did you receive ...
ANDERSON: Yah, I wrote a lot. We used to
like a-we had what we called the "V" mail
where we'd write the letter then our officer would
censor our mail--cut out the bad stuffand then it
would be photographed and sent by microfilm to
the States and then reproduced in a negative type
like a photograph letter. The "V" mail was a
form a single page that you wrote your letters.
WILL:
You were limitedto a single page?
ANDERSON: You were limitedto a single page
for one page and then you'd seal it up and ttrat's
a one page lefrer. But lot of fellows would write
on one page and number
it I
and then the 2"d one
#2, #3 for the different pages. Occasionally we
or a plane
got shot down. The mail was lost. So a lot of
people in the latter part of the years overseas, the
guys getting their leÉers from their wives and
their girlfriends. I never had it happen to me. I
never wrote more tåan one page being a single
kid-and writng to lots of girls-you know-all
kinds of guys had sisters, girlfriends and all that
were in our unit. I had lots of time being a single
kid, a young fellow-2O - 2l years old-A guy
would say, o'Hey, I got a sister at home that's
pretty down in the dumps. Why don't you write
her letter and pick her up?" I'd do that and I got
a chain reaction going. I had about six different
girls going with letters. I only got to see two of
them after the war. One was in Chicago and one
was in Kewanee, Illinois. The one in Chicago
wasnt that serious although it could have been. I
hadnt met my wife yet. I was writing to a girl
but she joined the Navy so I wrote her off. The
girl friend I had when I left home joined the
Navy-Waves. The older we got, the more we
understand some of the mail got lost
\ilILL:
Did they send packages?
ANDERSON: Oh, yes-We'd get popcom. I
had a friend that would send me Old Jack Daniels
in a box of popcom. The ones that got through
were pretty mangled
but still
one
discovered what it was so I'd get it. I know there
were many that got broken open in mailing and
up
no
handling. Somebody would say, "Hey, look at
this!" and they kept it themselves. But we used to
get cakes and cookies. Sometimes the mail in
transition-where we'd move from one island to
another-the mail would end up being a month or
two late.
WILL:
The mail would arrive in bunches then?
ANDERSON: Yah. You'd get it in bunches.
Then you'd get your cake and it's all moldysitting in a bag somewhere on an island waiting
to be transferred to another island in the hot sun.
We used to get bouillon so we could mix with our
field food, like v¡hat we called field rations-we
get our army beef stew and army hash and mix a
cube of bouillon with it and it flavored it up
pretty good.
WILL: You
mentioned early, you were pretty
hardened bythe time-months into the war. How
else did you feel? Were you continually scared?
ANDERSON: Oh yah. You're never-in fact
every battle you'd go into you feared the worst
andthen after it was over with you realized, Hey,
it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be.
Based on how involved you were with the
mission like-my case I worked under the
company commander as reconnaissance sergeant.
had to maint¿in his maps and the situation for
him and mark up all the positions and while we
were in a defensive mode I had to make overlays
to tum into the battalion that they mark up their
I
�Richard August Anderson-Page 19
master map. I rryasn't too involved in any fighting
except when I got to Manila and Bougainville on
patrols. When was assigned to a patrol as
reconnaissance sergeant I'd draw maps and I was
trained to use the compass for measuring the
I
height of a-inside of the jungle you could see a
knoll or hill and I'd shoot an
? and
figure the trig, you know, the height of the hill
from where I was and then the master planner
knew what the different elevations were up into
these mountains and valleys from mosaic
photographs. Established elevations. And then
when I would submit a sketch back to our
battalion then our battalion puts it together with
others and se,nds it back to our regiment-the
regiment puts their's together and sends it back
to the division. The group that makes up these
?
maps
more accurate maps with
more accurate daails that we send back. Then
every time we made a tum in the trail we'd shoot
_?___and mark it on the map-how far
was it-100 yards-did we walk a 100 yards and
then tum 30 degrees or what. This is how we
established the topographical icons and grids, and
what have you on the map, the contour lines and
the valleys and ravines and the-not a dam but a
waterfall-stufflike thatto make the detåil of the
map more clearly. When we first
hit
Bougainvelle, we had a map that showed the
shoreline outline and a thousand yard grid-and
a thousand yards betrveen grids lines and a big
blotch of green and down here on the shoreline it
shows like a river outlet so you know a river goes
up in there somewhere.
\ilILL:
In the green ...
ANDERSON: When we built up this perimeter
and sent out patrols daily in different directions
and make these strip maps on the trails or we
made a trail, made a strip map. Then down
further back in headquarters division or corps
headquarters they pieced all this together. Then
your rnap makers would begin to put it together
and print up a decent map. So if we weren't in
combat we were on patrols doing this work and
occasionally we'd run into combat making maps.
WILL: You carried
a weapon then.
ANDERSON: We'd find a stray Jap patrol or a
couple of stragglers lost in the jungle.
WILL: You
carried a weapon?
ANDERSON: Yah. We carriedweapons
WILL: What were they?
ANDERSON: I carried a BAR. That was a light
ïveapon with a carbine but I never trusted a
carbine. I was good at a BAR in training. I shæ
expert in the Brownrng automatic rifle. That's a
20 round clrp. The second part ofthe BAR I like
is 20 rounds versus I rounds in a M-1, and I'd
carry it hangmg on a sling by my hip like what
they called snap shoot. If you got good eye
sight-I was good at pull(?) shooting so I figured
if I'm good at pull(?) shooting and I see a guy
100 yards from me , I can snap shoot I can hit
him. That was one of my favorite weapons.
WILL: How about--did your unit run across
any conce,ntration camps in the Philippines?
ANDERSON: Yes, in the Philippines
WILL:
Were they civilian prisoners?
ANDERSON: There were civilians-prisoners
of war from Bataan March when the war first
started. There were a lot of civilian school
teachers, educators, nurses, doctors. I went on a
90 man patrol. I went with a G2. G2 is a division
intelligence group. There was about-they
wanted a patrol, an infantry patrol, to protect
them on this mission. It was a recoruraissance
patrol where we got up in the mountain and
looking down at this town of Cabathauan(?) with
all American prisoners-about ó00 of them-a
little over 600. We had to sit there for 15 days
protecting this G2 crowd, intelligence group.
They were monitoring the changing of the guard
and how lacsidasic they were. If they were alert
and they made all these notes and put a plan
together for the marauders, Mural marauders,
commandos attacked Cabathauan(?).
But
on the
way back on that patrol when we were heading
�Richard August Anderson-Page 20
t\
I
back we were out in front of the front lines with
this patrol looking at this prison camp and on the
way back we got caught. The plan was if we got
caught, we'd scattered in groups of five and find
our way back to the line. Our group, the one I
was
in-I
went with this infantry
platoon
because I was a recormaissance sergeant. I was a
map sergeant. I could draw maps for these people
on this patrol while they wrote up all the
information. I monitored all the maps. A rifle
platoon was fifty-two guys and then the rest were
all from G2. It was about 90 people on a patrol. I
thought to myself at the time-I thought moving
90 people around at night-sleeping in the
thickets, and the woods and the jungle by the day
and then moving at night-moving 90 peoplemoving a lot ofpeople. You know it ain't too bad
moving 20 or 3A but to control 90.
WILL:
\4ihere was this in relation to Manila?
ANDERSON: This was straight east of Clark
Field on Highway 5 and the next prison camp
was in Manila at the University. I want to say the
name, I can't say it. Sanitomaz(?) University.
The only time I got involved with that was when
they called up the units and wanted volunteers
for-well several things on the PT boats out in
the harbor. Picking up Jap prisoners on the boats
that were sniping from the sunken boats out
there. But we volunteered our services to go to
this Sanitomaz(?) University because the word
was-they thought they had liberated the people
but there were a lot of Japs hiding inside and they
were threatening the people if they told them
where they were they'd kill them, We had to go
in there and fleece them out. There was a few
people killed. Some ofthem just died from shock,
you know, heart att¿ck. But we had to clean it
out. Right by the university, there was the ball
field or the football-baseball,
\üILL:
Athletic field?
ANDERSON: Athletic field, like Wrigley Field.
We had a t¿nk force that went in there and they
were holed up undemeath the stands and the
tanks were shooting through the wooden walls at
the base of the stands when they went into the
field. There was infantry on the other side gettmg
them that were trying to escape. But we went
through all the rooms of the university one floor
at a time. That's when I got that shrapnel in my
back. When I caught a piece of shrapnel but it
was-the guy just picked it out. A sliver, you
lnow. But it left a mark on you. Anyways, then
the other-{o have something to do-the war
over as far as the Philþines was concemed. It
was cleaning up these pockets. We found out
there was a prisoner camp here or there. Well, we
got volunteers and wanted volunteers to go on the
PT boats to go out and search out all the sunken
ships that were half exposed in the bay. 'Cause
they were complaining, the Navy and
the
Merchant Marines were complaining they were
getting sniped at from
bay so we
had four PT boats and on the way out we
searched all the ships and we caught one prisoner
and we caught him because we saw a pair shorts
hangrng on a-a pair of boxer shorts hanging on
a railing. The PT boat commander says, 'oThat's
kind of weird. By this time you'd think that thing
would be rotten or blown away when the ship
was sunk. Why is it all of a sudden there's a pair
of shorts there. We better check it out." So I
jumped on deck on the railing and slid down the
deck to the bullfread which was at 45o. The stem
was up out of the water and I grabbed the handle
on the door and I kept the steel door between me
_?_offthe
and whoever was inside the paint locker or
it was and I opened it up and another
GI standing on the railing hooked with his legs on
the railing pointing his gun and there that son of
a bitch was buried in the water-naked-trying
to hide. He stands up. We yell at him to get up
and he gets up, he says, "Don't shoot, Don't
shoot." and there was his rifle and we threw that
overboard. It sunk. We put him on the PT boat.
He was the only one we captured. The rest of
them-we shot two of them that tried to escape
or shoot back. We shot them before we got to the
boat. Then we went over to, I want to say
Salvidor where MacArthur's last stand was ...
Oh, the little island of Corregidor, We went over
to Corregidor because there were some
complaints over there but they said they took care
of it. We spent one night on the PT boats and the
whatever
�Richard August Anderson-Page
Navy guys fed us. That was great. Two days out
there in the water scouting around and cleaning
2l
the single guys accept that because he needs to go
home.
up things.
WILL:
WILL
: Something different.
Where were
you-Did you
remember
VE day over there in the Philippines?
ANDERSON: VE day. Victory Day?
I
ANDERSON: And getting fresh ice cream and
fresh food. So then we got back to our base camp
u¡hich was in the rice paddies north of Manila.
That's about the time we got orders to head up
towards Cagayan Valley. That's where I went up
in Cagayan Valley out of Re{au(?) and got ...
between Retau and Trinidad when they come up
and said, "Geddes, Anderson, Devere and
McPhinney you're going home." I had ll7
ANDERSON: Oh, Europe. Yes. We were in
Lapau getting ready to go up in the Cagayan
Valley around April or May of '45.When we
were up in the Cagayan Valley in August, they
points.
droppedthe bomb on Hiroshima.
WILL:
How many points did you need?
ANDERSON: You needed over 100. The first
batch was 120, Then they dropped it dovm to
100. Now the 120, there were guys that were
only overseas a yeâr and a halfor two years but
they were married and they got so many points
for each kid. I was single. But I had ll7.
Wounded ¡vice with two purplehearts. That was
five points apiece. Then you got so many for
each ... five points for a beachhead. Two of
those. That was ten. Purple Hearts awards,
Combat Badge. Everyone added up into points so
I
was one of the highest-I17 that was single,
not a married status. Now Devere, McPhinney
and Geddes-Geddes was a National
Guardsman, McPhinney was a National
Guardsman and Bill Cave and myself. We were
the last four.
WILL:
About their points maybe?
ANDERSON: Oh, points,
yah They were
married and they had less points than I had. They
had 108 or 107.
\ilILL:
They started or¡t with an advantage then.
ANDERSON: Well marriedmen and family men
they had an advantage but that was-you lnow
was
home.
WILL: I mean
of Europe?
WILL: What didyouthink ofthat?
ANDERSON: That was August 6tr. That was
the day before my birthday.
WILL:
You were home here.
ANDERSON: No. Yah,
I
was home here. July
12ú I got out.
WILL: What
did you think the atom bomb was?
ANIIERSON: What did I think the atom bomb
was. The training that we got in Califomia-no I
mean in Camp Forrest, Tennessee. No it wasn't
either. It was in Bougainville when they talked
about electrons and protons and itrons and what
they called the isotope bar. The officers had a bar
in their officers
mess
hall called Isotope Bar.
They went through a seminar on the atom bomb
and what to expect of it and when they went
through that class, they graduated as being
educated and one ofthe atom breakdown was tle
isotope. We really didn't know how terrible this
thing was burt I forget now what they told us that
Hiroshima was the equivalent of so many tons of
dynamite. We coulùr't imagine from ground zero
a mile radius was completely wiped out and
diminished fromthere, you lnow, bums and what
have you. When we heard that we dropped the
bomb-Truman dropped the bomb on Hiroshima
�Richard August Anderson-Page 22
on August 6û and then three or four days later,
Nagasaki. I never gave it much thought-I lnew
it was going to help win the war, end the war but
how soon I didn't know. But then when they told
me when they come Geddes, McPhinney
Anderson, you're rotating back to the states, I
figured something's happening that turned this
got on a train to go to Camp Carson, Colorado.
Took a little more time going home from Korea
than I didWorldWar II.
around.
Rockford with my so called girlfriend, wife to be,
around September 2"t ot 3d whenever the truce
for the unconditional surrender was sþed by
MacArthur and the Japs and \ùe ran downtown,
Vehicles weren't too sufficient in Rockford
WILL:
You weren't needed, it sounded like
ANDERSON:
W'e11, they got so nu¡ry GIs from
Europe coming home and we were overseas three
years and havent been home. They had to make
a quick exchange and make a good showing to
the public.
WILL:
For morale.
A¡ilIERSON: Yah, for morale, what have you.
When we came back from the Pacific and went
underneath the Gold€n Gate Bridge on that
Hunter Ligg€t ship, troop ship, the Navy band
was up there one the Golden Gate Bridge playing
"Anchors Aweigh" and we came into dock side
near the Fisherman's Wharf at San Francisco at
Fort rüilson, arrny base. And the Red Cross and
the Salvation Army and some other charitable
organization welcoming us back and I couldn't
get over how all these civilian people knew we
were coming home. Because half the guys on the
ship, it was their families. And a lot of them were
living in Califomia, oCause we were trained in
Califomia before we went overseas. Tennessee,
Camp Forrest, Tennessee. They must have paid
the radio man a few bucks to send a telegram that
they're going to arrive approximately such and
such a úy in Frisco because there were
thousands of people waiting. So they hustled us
offthe ship, wenrt through the warehouse on to a
ferry over to Angel Island and, ofcourse, by that
time I was more concemed about myself, getting
myself cleared up, and processed and get on that
train and get home.
WILL:
Rather than hang around San Francisco.
ANDERSON: Yah. Although coming back from
Korea, I hung around Frisco for a day before we
WILL: How about VJ Day?
ANIIARSON: VJ Day
during that period.
I
was
in
downtown
A lot of cars with the
rationing and everything. The only way I could
get around was to rent a car from a taxi cab
company which is like Hertz and I'd rent that car
for about 3 or 4 days out of the week. Send it
back Sunday night or Monday morning and pick
it up on Thursday or Friday so I could run
around, you know, otherwise there was just a lot
of walking. My wife, at that time my girlfriend,
lived on Hinkley Avenue which is only about
eight block, ten blocks, from
downtown
Rockford. We ran downtown and the streets were
just full of people that were building bonfires in
the middle of State and Main. Just going like
they're going nuts and then, of course, the MPs
were out there trying to control the military
people and then they glance at me and seen my
ruptured duck on my shirt and we can't bother
him, he's through. I didnt get touched by the
MPs.
WILL: I think we've about covered
everything.
A
couple last little questions here. You don't
have any disability or anything.
AIIDERSON:No.
WILL: You dont have any association
with
Veterans' hospitals
ANDERSON: I got malaria. When I got home I
came down with malaria. That lasted about two
years and nine months. They gave me quinine
shots and that bumed it out and gradually-but
they still wonl take my blood at the blood bank
because of the malaria.
�Richard August Anderson-Page 23
WILL:
'l
Another question I forgot to ask how was
the medical treatment in the service?
AIII]ERSON: In the states when it came time
for physicals, like once a year we'd have a
physical. That was good. I accepted it as
adequate And overseas you avoided a lot of stuff
that could make you sick, Like natives, if they
had elephantitus, what do you call that where
there fingers drop offand everything.
\ilILL:
in Korea tlat were wounded were in World War
II they'd a died. We lost a lot of guys in World
War II because of the seriousness of the wound
and shock treatment. They're in shock. Location,
too. See over there you get on an island you're
battling an enemy that is a fanatic and if you
don't kill him, he'll kill you. And you're on an
island. I they overrun you, who's left.
IVILL: No where to go.
ANDERSON: No where to go unless you're a
Leprosy
good swimmer.
ANDERSON: Leprosy. We witness-I saw
leprosy in the Fiji Islands, New Hebrides and the
Philippines. I saw elephantitus, I saw a lot of
weird diseases that you woul&r't want to have
WILL: I just got a couple more here. How about
the Veterans' Administration. Þid you have any
contact with the VA?
any contact with them so you avoided that.
ANDERSON:
WILL:
As far as medical treatment ...
ANDERSON: Medical treatment as far as I was
concemed when I was wounded, it was efficient.
It was fast. When somebody got hurt they got
you back to a first aid station like, well, in Korea
it was helicopters which was a life saving device
to me because in Korea I had a lot of wounded
GIs in a few battles. In fact I had a hundred and
sixteen killed and wor¡¡rded in a period of eight
months.
WILL: Didtheyhavethose MASH
units likethe
TV show there?
ANDERSON:Yah.
WILL:
They were more advanced than in World
War II?
ANDERSON: Yes. Yes. More hlgh
tech
material and x-rays. In World War II you diúr't
see no high tech equipment, x-ray machines or
anything like that. The doctor had to decide
whether you had a compound fracture or
something and straighten it out or cut it open and
lined it up and sewed you back up. Where Korea
there were so many fantastic life saving devices.
They had for blood plasma. If half of those GIs
I
used the
Veterans'
Administration right after the war. I went to work
at the John S. Bames as a machine operator.
That's what I was when I was going to school on
surnmer vacation and weeke,nds worked at
Greenlee Bros, leaming the trade on the drop
I
hammers
and leaming lathes and
I
milling
came back from World
War II, my father-in-law, firture father-inJaw,
was working at John S. He got me a job down
there on the night shift running mills and grinders
becâuse it was a night shift, you got a bonus. I
thoughtthæ was pretty good, a dollar thirty cørts
an hour which at that time was good money in
1945. Two weeks after I got out of the service, I
was working. I came down with malaria which I
coulúr't stand at a machine. I'd freeze to death.
Shake and everything. They were worried I might
injure myself trfng to run a machine with the
shakes so they had to let me go. I went to the VA
and $/hile I went to the VA, I went to the post
office because they said they'll hire Vets. They
hired me and I was there three months sorting
mail in the mail service. By that time got
organized with the VA to start on the job training
and gave me medical assist¿nce on-I got $11 a
machines and when
I
monttr disability to buy my medicine, really.
That's what paid for the quinine. I went to the
doctor in the same building I worked in. I stårted
training as a mechanical desþ engineer and
going to Rockford College nights. The amounts
�Richard August Anderson-Page 24
the government pay changes with the raises you
get from your employer So started out with
I
$125 a month subsistence and I started out at .25
cents an hour. When I gæ 30 cents an hour my
$125 probably would go down to $120, ll5. I
reached my journeyman's wage in two years,
nine months which means I was qualified. When
you reach a joumeyman's wage, you're qualified.
So the ratn at that time was $3.40 an hour as an
engtneer I got my apprenrticeship training with a
company called _?_
Industrial Engineers,
got a couple of patents that he got, things I
desþed justto have something to do. They were
lawn gardening equipment, tools. Then from
there, he ran out of work, I had to find my own
training place to keep getting my subsistence
money from the govemment. I found a job up at
Liberty Engineering in Roscoe, Illinois, desþing
machinery and I was there about a year and ran
out of work, lack of work, and I found myself
with a job ît Witcomb(?) Locomotive in
Rochelle, Illinois, desþing mining locomotive,
diesel locomotive and I finished off my
apprenticeship there. I was there nine months in
Rochelle. I reached my joumeyman's wage in my
first job as a joumeyman was at Roper Stove
Company in plant engineering. I would plan out
automation projects and what have you. Then
from there they went on a s0rike. I got laid off. I
went to Greenlee Bros., worked there for a few
months, leamed
the transfer line,
special
machinery desþ and eventually ended up in
1967 with Sundstrand Machine Tool in sales
application engineering, how to apply machine
tools to the industry. I retired out of there in '78.
Retired with a pørsion with Sundstrand Machine
Tool. Then I had to have something to do, I went
to work for Redin Corporation, Unisec(?)
Company. Since'78 I've been working all over,
free lancing, I got my o\iln consulting business. I
work out of my house. Semi-retired.
\ilILL: Yah. Sounds like a good way to go. Last
question. Would you tell us something about how
your family supported you during your military
life. Were your parents against you going into the
service
ANDERSON: No, I got my mother to sþ for
me so I could leave with the National Guard. I
was underage, I wasn't over l8 so-
\ilILL:
Did
she have any regrets or?
ANDERSON: No. I don't think so because I
tålked her into it. I said, "Mother, one less mouth
to feed. I'll be able to send you so much a money
a msnth. I kept $25 a month. The rest went to
her. Then pretty soon my younger brother got in
the Marines. Same thing happened to her. So I
think it really helped her out a lot. She only had
to raise one boy who was 9 years old when I got
out of the service, She regretted it in a way that
she could lose her sons and then she was worried
about her parents and relations over in Norway
when the Germans took over. Then she went to
Norway aftor the war to visit her family and
friends, found out they were living better than she
was. She got mad. All in all, things worked out
fine. Prior to tlre war, my mdtrer separated from
my father and when I got called in with the
National Guards she remarried another gentlemen
which was my stepfather and he tumed out to be
a nice man for her. A stepfather, even though
he's a nice man, he's not your father.
WILL: Well, I guess that about
does
il Dick.
ANDERSON: Everybody was behtrd me all the
way.
WILL:
Sounds like you had an exciting time
of
it.
ANDERSON: kr fact, I was working at the
Times Theater as an usher, Mr. Van Mear (?)
who owned the Coronado and the Midway, the
Palace, the Times Theater, Ståte Theater called
me up to his office when I tumed m my time, I
was leaving with the National Guard and he gives
me a little brown envelope with a $50 bill in it as
a bonus for being patriotic.
\ilILL: All right.
�Richard August Anderson-Page 25
,í.l
ANIIERSON: He was
a
patriotic
gentlemen
himself.
\ilILL:
That about winds it up, I guess, Do you
wantto say good bye?
ANDERSON: Yah. We'll
IVILL:
Bye.
ANDERSON: Bye. Bye.
)
*J
see you.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Midway Village Museum
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Midway Village Museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-2001
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Language
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English
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Jim Will
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Richard A. Anderson
Location
The location of the interview
Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Richard A. Anderson
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
February 14, 1994
Description
An account of the resource
Born in August 1913, Richard Anderson served in the National Guard and Army from 1939 to 1945. He died September 16, 2004.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
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Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War II
WW2
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25224/archive/files/17a8a7dadd929e762dffb3606294bef1.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=Yn-wrjQbCd07BGEJDBtGyD26mukgWtoiQviSbZlk90P77m1kTr3rKFoY18lCOAYhq%7E3CMZZAY6l6Mc6UivAQbGDKI4FY-KoDbKNwyvoDDIq0Ho%7ELtgpOQCe69oNTkMUhh%7EaAcFu%7EdNistWNKJn4Op8GDTow8iOqYWP5Lhga3l1JTyRSP61tA6rq6WIy07iS1xq37RIbjucwMVlgmuXwr9ukPp0K8SezDAwOKq3jldZnieNnhoUApD2wbvY4u2BFSx5pxw40dt326bfNISPMZ0JfdFoAhNzIyRKYlPbGXLotRHij2G4QWXolJBNTauY1Hq7Ckp-UNIpWh3iD7ZKWqCw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
0d83eb3f8e3621376ce686c6181e6f1a
PDF Text
Text
Reverend Doctor Robert WildmanPage 1
Reverend Doctor Robert Wildman
Interviewed by Lorraine Lightcap
Midway Village and Museum Center
6799 Guilford Road
Rockford, Illinois
Phone 815 397 9112
�Reverend Doctor Robert WildmanPage 2
Reverend Doctor Robert Wildman
My name is Lorraine Lightcap and I am a volunteer at Midway Village & Museum Center research library. In addition to the many transcriptions of tapes of World War II Veterans’ interviewed that were done in cooperation with the
State of Illinois, we thought it would be interesting to interview a few other men and women.
Today is December 30, 2001. The interview was
held in my home.
LORRAINE: Bob, to begin I would like you to
tell us a bit about your background, date of birth,
place of birth, parents’ names and names of any
brothers and sisters.
REV. WILDMAN: I was born in Traverse City,
Michigan, on April 20, 1924. My parents were
Elizabeth Shank Wildman and Frank Wildman. I
had two brothers, Richard and John.
LORRAINE: Would you also tell us something
about growing up in Traverse City plus your
schooling through high school?
REV. WILDMAN: I loved Traverse City and
still do. I spent all of my life there until I left for
the army. I had a good time growing up, attending school and enjoying visits with my grandmother in a nearby small town of Empire, Michigan. My grandfather, who died a year before I
was born, was a doctor in Empire who made
house calls with his horse and buggy. One summer, while visiting my grandmother, I picked
cherries to earn money to buy a new bicycle for
$25. I worked twelve hours a day and could earn
.75 a day. At the end of the summer I still did
not have enough for a bike. I enjoyed school,
had a great time in high school and graduated in
1942.
tled to a deferment from the draft. However after
a few months I decided I wanted to enter the
service and so I informed my draft board. My
volunteering to enlist letter crossed in the mail
with their draft notice, so I was drafted. Actually
I was struggling with whether I should be in college while my country was at war.
LORRAINE: Tell us about your experience
when you first entered military service and place
of entry and training camps you attended.
REV. WILDMAN: I was inducted at Kalamazoo, Michigan, in April of 1943. From there I
was sent to Fort Custer in Michigan and from
there was sent to Camp Polk, Louisiana, for
basic training. At Camp Polk I was assigned to
the 536th Armored Infantry Battalion. Later we
were redesignated the 536th Amphibian Infantry
Battalion. Fort Ord, California, was to be the site
of our amphibian training. At Camp Custer the
army decided that my military occupational specialty would be that of a chaplain’s assistant.
However, the army sent me to an outfit that had
no chaplain and had no plans to get one! While
at Camp Polk I was sent to the armored school at
Fort Knox, Kentucky, for clerical training. Upon
my return I became a company clerk and handled all the records for about two hundred men.
Eventually I became Personnel Sergeant Major
and was responsible for records of the entire battalion. From Fort Ord we were sent to Fort Lawton, Washington. From there we went to the
Hawaiian Islands. In June of 1944 we arrived on
the island of Oahu. In October we left Oahu for
Leyte in the Philippine Islands (via Eniwetok
and Ulithi). We arrived in December of 1944
and took part in the Battle of Leyte. In May of
1945 we left the Philippines to take part in the
Battle of Okinawa.
LORRAINE: Tell us about your decision to
enter military service. Were you drafted of did
you enlist? What influenced this decision?
LORRAINE: Tell of some of your experiences
while in the Philippines.
REV. WILDMAN: After graduating from high
school, I entered Hope College in Holland,
Michigan, with the intention of preparing for the
ministry. As a pre-ministerial student, I was enti-
REV. WILDMAN: I remember the night that I
landed on Leyte. We were marching down the
beach and finally were told that we would be
sleeping on the beach that night. I stretched out
�Reverend Doctor Robert WildmanPage 3
in my sleeping bag and soon was dreaming of
water. I woke up to find that the tide was coming
in and I was drenched. It was a very wet welcome. The next day I witnessed a Japanese Kamikaze pilot dive into and sink what I presumed
was one of our ships in the Leyte Gulf. The 536th
was an amphibian tractor battalion, which was
like a sea going tank, except the top was open so
that we could take troops and supplies from ship
to shore, and inland if necessary. They served
well during World War II and today there is a
monument to the 536th in the Armored Park at
Fort Knox, Kentucky. I don’t know if amphibian
boats are used now.
picked up a southern accent. If I did, I soon lost
it. As to experiences, because we did not have a
chaplain, a few of us organized occasional religion services for the battalion that never had a
chaplain. I also remember, while on Okinawa,
that one night I was sleeping in the sheltered
doorway of a tomb built into a hillside. As I
slept I dreamed of popcorn popping. I awoke
and discovered a Japanese pilot had dropped a
bomb when he discovered lights. It seemed
some men had been playing cards and needed
light. This was forbidden but they had ignored
the blackout orders that night and the pilot discovered this.
LORRAINE: How did you get to the South Pacific and how did you return home?
LORRAINE: Do you keep in touch when possible with any of the men in your group and do
you attend reunions?
REV. WILDMAN: Both times by naval ships.
REV. WILDMAN: I believe my parents were
very proud that I was able to serve my country
but am sure they worried about my safety. My
father had been a World War I veteran and had
treasured that experience for the rest of his life.
REV. WILDMAN: The major way in which I
have kept in touch is through a newsletter that is
sent to all members of the 536th about twice a
year. I have attended two reunions. They are
usually held in Oklahoma City or the south. In
addition there is one friend that I have been corresponding with for a number of years. One of
my special friends became a Christian clown and
enjoyed visiting nursing and retirement homes.
LORRAINE: Was it hard to adjust to military
life?
LORRAINE: Where were you on December 7th
when the Japanese bombed Pearl?
REV. WILDMAN: No. I learned that I could
live under many different types of circumstances. When we first arrived at Fort Knox there was
no electricity, central heat and not many “good”
meals. I was rather amused, one time, when we
were finally served steak dinner that some men
complained there was no catsup and another
time when we were given ice cream and the
complaint was there was no chocolate.
REV. WILDMAN: I was attending a concert at
my high school.
LORRAINE: How did your parents feel about
your being in the Armed Services?
LORRAINE: Tell us about the friends you
made or any other experiences.
REV. WILDMAN: I made many friends from
different areas of the country. Many of the men
were from the south and I got an introduction to
southern culture and thinking. Many of them
were still fighting the Civil War. When I returned home my mother was sure that I had
LORRAINE: What about VE Day and VJ Day
when the atomic bomb was dropped? How did
you feel about this?
REV. WILDMAN: I was on the island of Okinawa when the A-bomb was dropped. After
more than fifty-five years it is difficult to reconstruct feelings. I do know there was joy and relief that the war was ending even though rumor
had it that we would be a part of the occupation
forces in Japan. This later changed and –we
were sent back to the States.
LORRAINE: Did you think the United States
was capable of fighting wars in Europe and the
South Pacific:
�Reverend Doctor Robert WildmanPage 4
REV. WILDMAN: Don’t think I thought much
about that but I didn’t doubt that we would win.
I was confident of my country’s abilities.
LORRAINE: Were you aware of Hitler’s actions in Europe?
REV. WILDMAN: Actually there wasn’t much
media attention at first as the United States was
trying to avoid being involved in that conflict.
As the conflict grew, the news became more
plentiful. Actually I was still in the United States
and news came from radio, newsreels at theaters,
and the newspapers. By the time I entered college I was very aware I could be drafted.
LORRAINE: What did you do if you had free
time or passes?
REV. WILDMAN: I mostly explored places
like Shreveport and DeRidder, Louisiana; Louisville, Kentucky, Carmel, California, Seattle,
Washington, Honolulu, Hawaii and the Island of
Oahu as well as Leyte, Okinawa plus other places in the Pacific. We really didn’t have much
free time in Leyte or Okinawa. When in Louisville, I discovered hamburgers!
LORRAINE: Do you remember anything special about Christmas or Thanksgiving?
REV. WILDMAN: I remember special meals
prepaid by the company cooks. I also remember
spending Easter Sunday loading ammunition
onto the light cruiser Burmingham as our outfit
prepared to take part in the Battle of Okinawa.
Incidentally that Easter Sunday was also “April
Fools’ Day.”
LORRAINE: Were you able to write often to
you family? Did you receive letters and packages from them?
REV. WILDMAN: Yes, I tried to write whenever possible and I looked forward to mail from
home. Mail call was one of the highlights of army life overseas, whether it was a letter, a package, or any kind of printed material that would
remind a person of home.
LORRAINE: Do you have any other thoughts
or memories of those years in service?
REV. WILDMAN: My thoughts of army life as
I experienced it were good thoughts. I felt that I
could have made a career of the army if it hadn’t
been for my sense of call to the Christian ministry. My memories are many, both good and bad.
LORRAINE: When and where were you discharged?
REV. WILDMAN: I was discharged at Camp
McCoy, Wisconsin, Januar6y 27, 1946, having
served over two years and nine months. When I
was discharged I was asked to stay in the Army
Reserves. I declined, as I wanted to get back to
Michigan again and enter college to prepare for
the ministry. I had had this sense of call when I
entered the service and even thought I tried to
talk myself out of the ministry, I couldn’t. As
someone said, “God had His hand on my shoulder and wouldn’t let go.
LORRAINE: Where did you resume your college education?
REV. WILDMAN: I entered Hope College in
Holland, Michigan, to complete four years of
college and then I entered Western Theological
Seminary in Holland for three year of preparatory studies for the ministry. Years later I continued my theological education by taking a Doctor
of Ministry Degree from the Louisville Presbyterian Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. While
at Hope College I met my future wife, Lois, and
we were married upon graduation from college
on June 29, 1948.
LORRAINE: What churches did you serve after graduation?
REV. WILDMAN: My first church was the
Reformed Church in Hopkins, Michigan. From
there I moved to Bethel Reformed Church in
Harvey, Illinois. Next came Calvary Reformed
Church of Southgate, Michigan. Finally I came
to Illinois to the Hope Reformed Church on
Spring Creek Road in Rockford. I served there
twelve years and retired in 1989. Since then I
have conducted services in churches of many
�Reverend Doctor Robert WildmanPage 5
Denominations in and around Rockford. After I
retired I became active in the Alpine Kiwanis
Club of Rockford and also in Kiwanis International. For six and one-half years I headed the
Kiwanis International’s First World Service Project. This project was designed to work with
UNICEF in ridding the world of the leading
cause of preventable mental retardation plus a
host of other physical problems. In 1994 I was
able to go to Bangladesh, one of the poorest
countries in the world, to look at this problem.
There I saw for myself how a little bit of iodine
in salt can make an unbelievable difference in
the lives of people. Today this project can deliver ninety-one million children from mental retardation and the number is growing. Kiwanis
International is involved in this outreach. There
is still a ways to go, before the job is complete,
as there are still millions to be helped. This too
is a ministry.
LORRAINE: Many people from area churches
have been challenged by Bob'’ preaching and his
Bible classes. Both he and his wife, Lois, a former teacher, are active at Midway Village &
Museum Center plus having time to enjoy their
children and grandchildren. A book on the history of the 536th Amphibian Tractor Battalion has
been written and I am including some interesting
stories written by its author Caldwell Smith that
Reverend Wildman does not recall.
_____________
Comments by Lorraine Lightcap
A book on the history of the 536th Amphibian
Tractor Battalion was written by a member,
Caldwell Smith. .Some of the stories he tells,
Reverend Wildman does not recall. Smith tells of
the train ride to the West Coast that was so
crowded with soldiers that meals were brought
to them. This train ride from Camp Polk via
Houston, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and then
on to California took ninety-nine hours.
At times while at Leyte and Okinawa, Smith said
they ate in the rain as there was considerable
rainfall in that area.
It was at Fort Ord that the battalion first
learned they would be trained as an Amphibian
Tractor Battalion. It was there they began training to land troops and supplies on beaches. Reverend Wildman had some training for this.
Smith, in his history of this group, mentioned
during the two thousand-mile trip from Hawaii
to Leyte, fresh water was rationed and salt water showers were not very pleasant. He also
wrote that seven hundred ships converged at
Leyte along with Admiral Halsey’s 3rd Fleet.
This included battleships, cruisers, ships, carriers, escort carriers, destroyers, transports, cargo ships, plus LPs, LCDs, PT boats plus
the536th “A” battalion. Smith also stated this
battalion traveled 5,404 miles from Hawaii,
around Leyte, Okinawa and back to the States.
Smith wrote many stories of soldiers adjusting to
military life; what they did to relieve the tension
(sometimes boredom) of life in Leyte, Okinawa.
Winthrop Rockefeller was part of the Battalion
but Rev. Wildman never met him.
Fortunately, Rev. Wildman did not succumb to
any tropical diseasesnor can he recall hearing the voice of Tokyo Rose.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
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Midway Village Museum
Publisher
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Midway Village Museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-2001
Rights
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Midway Village Museum
Language
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English
Format
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pdf
Type
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Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Lorraine Lightcap
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Reverend Dr. Robert Wildman
Location
The location of the interview
Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Reverend Dr. Robert Wildman
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
30-Dec-01
Description
An account of the resource
Born April 20, 1924, Dr. Robert Wildman enlisted in the Army as a Chaplain's Assistant in April 1943. He was discharged in January 1946. He died February 26, 2005.
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Midway Village Museum
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pdf
Type
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Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War 2
World War II
-
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PDF Text
Text
Raymond L. Purfeerst
Transcribed by Elaine Carlson
Midway Village and Museum Center
6799 Guilford Road
Rockford, Illinois 61107
Phone 815 397 9112
�Raymond L. Purfeerst
Hello. Today is July 13, 1994. My name is
Charles Nelson. I am a volunteer with the Midway Village and Museum in Rockford, Illinois,
which is cooperating with a statewide effort to
collect oral histories of Illinois Citizens that participated in the momentous events surrounding
World War II. We are in the office of the Midway Village in Rockford, Illinois, interviewing
Mr. Ray Purfeerst. Mr. Purfeerst served in a
branch of the Armed Forces during World War
II. We are interviewing him about his experiences in that war.
NELSON: Ray, will you please start by introducing yourself to us. Please give us your full
name and place and date of birth.
PURFEERST: My name is Ray Purfeerst. I was
born in Wisconsin in the small town of River
Falls.
person. At that time, I think, we were probably
making 25 cents an hour. In the middle of that
summer in July I was still 17 and I left home
looking for work and ended up in Beloit, Wisconsin. That’s where I got my first job.
NELSON: What thoughts did you have about
this war before the United States became directly involved in this conflict?
PURFEERST: Being a German when the war
started, I didn’t have any opinions yet although I
had read about the German invasion of Poland
and Czechoslovakia and Austria. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December of
1941 it made me aware of what was going on in
the rest of the world.
NELSON: What year were you born?
PURFEERST: I was born November 22, 1923.
NELSON: Would also like to give the names of
each of your parents?
PURFEERST: My mother’s name was Luella
and my father’s name was Louis.
NELSON: Did you have any brothers or sisters?
PURFEERST: I had two brothers and two sisters.
NELSON: Are there any details about your parents or your family that you would like to give?
NELSON: How did you hear of the December
7, 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese? Where were you and what were you doing
at that time?
PURFEERST: I remember it very clearly. I was
sitting in the hotel lobby, a little hotel in Beloit,
Wisconsin. There were probably 12 or 15 people
sitting there on Sunday morning. I had just returned home from church. I called home but the
hotel
NELSON: Was that the Caroline Hotel?
PURFEERST: Yes, my father had a general
store in Northern Wisconsin in the small town of
Cornell. I worked in the store with my dad from
the time I was 12 years old and graduated from
school in my little town in 1941.
NELSON: What was life like for you before the
war specifically during 1941?
PURFEERST: 1941 was the year I graduated
from high school. In Northern Wisconsin at that
time it was just coming out of the depression.
There was very little work to be had for a young
PURFEERST: No it was the old Gateway Hotel.
NELSON: What were your reaction and the
response of those around you?
PURFEERST: Most of us didn’t even know
where Pearl Harbor was. I was the newspaper
office was about a half a block from the hotel
lobby and everybody ran over there to see the
bulletin stuck up in the window of the newspaper and they had a map there showing the loca-
�tion of Pearl Harbor. If they had just said Hawaii, everyone would have known where it was.
NELSON: Had you formed any opinion or developed any feeling about what was taking place
in Europe or Asia?
PURFEERST: I think it was the threat that was
going on in Europe at that time. Seven or eight
countries had been overrun and if we didn’t do
something to stop it that we would be getting the
same having the same problems they were
having in Europe.
PURFEERST: Not really. When I graduated
from high school one of the requirements was, in
those days, you had to write a thesis in order to
get your graduation certificate. It happened very
strangely that I had written my thesis was about
the US foreign policy in the Pacific and specifically Japan. I had done a little reading in high
school about the trade problems we had been
having with Japan.
NELSON: When and where were you inducted?
NELSON: Do you recall reading newspaper
accounts of Germany and Russia in Europe?
NELSON: How old were you at that time?
PURFEERST: I was inducted in Chicago. After
I had taken the examinations we had to pass in
order to become a pilot trainee, I took that test at
Madison, Wisconsin, at the University there.
There were about 120 of us who took the test
and I believe there were 33 that passed the examination at that time.
PURFEERST: I was 18.
PURFEERST: Yes. Our civic teacher would
bring newspapers to school when there was
something going on in Europe particularly when
they went into France or Holland.
NELSON: Did you have any knowledge of Hitler’s speeches, ideas or actions?
PURFEERST: Not really. I didn’t read that
mostly information simply came from newspapers and radios.
NELSON: What events led to your entrance
into service? Were you already in the service or
did you volunteer?
NELSON: What happened after you were inducted? Where were you sent?
PURFEERST: We were sent to Sheppard Field
in Wichita Falls, Texas. I thought to myself
this was in January of ’42 I thought surely
that I was going to a warm climate having lived
in Northern Wisconsin most of my life but I
found out it was just as cold down there as it was
in Wisconsin.
NELSON: That’s where you took your basic
training?
PURFEERST: Yes.
PURFEERST: I volunteered at the time I was
still 18 and was just turning to my 19th birthday
when I enlisted. I had seen these nice colored
ads about being a pilot for the Air Force in those
days and it seemed very exciting for a kid in
those days. I did end up taking the mental examination and then the physical and before I knew
it I was in the U.S. Army Air Corps.
NELSON: Was your response in entering the
military service influenced by family and friends
attitude toward the war that threatened national
security or any other consideration?
NELSON: You were trained to be a pilot?
PURFEERST: Yes.
NELSON: What did you think of the training?
PURFEERST: First of all we had to take special tests and examinations, at that time it was
the Air Force Base at Kelley Field in San Antonio. After our basic training we went to Kelley
Field to get a special type of test to qualify for
pilot, bombardier or navigator or whatever it
was going to be.
�NELSON: Do you remember anything about
these tests?
PURFEERST: Yes, we were put in One of
the tests, I remember, we were put in a chamber
that simulated the high altitude. They would take
the oxygen out of these they were almost like
a big tank take the oxygen out and simulate a
10,000 foot altitude or a 20,000 foot altitude.
And they did it primarily, to show us also what
would happen when you lost oxygen. Many of
the fellows would pass out because there was no
oxygen at the simulated altitudes we were at.
NELSON: Tell us about any other training
camps you attended.
PURFEERST: Because there wereat that
time I think they were taking the trainees in as
fast as they could handle them, I was sent to a
small college in Oklahoma, Shawnee a small
town near Oklahoma City. At that school we had
a crash course in engineering, aircraft engineering, mathematics and so on. Also they had special people there to get us into better physical
shape, too, to be able to handle the duties that
we would have.
PURFEERST: Yes, I did as a matter of fact.
When I was in training at the Enid, Oklahoma,
which was our basic training field, I did get a
ride to a camp in Madison. At that time it was
only like a five-hour ride to northern Wisconsin
where my family lives.
NELSON: What do you recall of the period
about the places you were stationed, the friends
you made and your association with civilians?
PURFEERST: We were really treated unbelievably nice by the civilians in the towns that I
trained in. Being that it was the first time that I
was away from home and I was quite young holidays were very difficult because you were generally home. Every town we were at, someone
would have a list of families that would take the
cadets to alike Thanksgiving dinner or
Christmas dinner, whatever it happened to be.
When I was in Lake Charles, Louisiana, which
was basically the final training to go overseas
for combat, is where I met my wife, Lee. After
the war was over, we were married.
NELSON: Wonderful. You were in the Air
Force at that time assigned duty was a pilot.
NELSON: Did you have leaves or passes?
PURFEERST: Yes.
PURFEERST: Yes. After each area of training
that we went through, like our primary training,
before we would go to the next bigger airplane
that we would learn to fly, we would get a pass
between each of these schools. It was usually
like a ten- day pass and we would come back
and start another series of training.
NELSON: Where did you go after completing
your basic military training before sending you
overseas?
NELSON: How did you use these passes?
PURFEERST: In those days, there wasn’t airplanes available and many of us, at that time, we
could get special rates on the trains. I would take
a train to Chicago and then hitch hike to northern Wisconsin to visit my family.
NELSON: Did you ever try hitch hiking on a
military plane?
PURFEERST: We picked up our crew in Lake
Charles, Louisiana. That was called transitional
training where you did simulated combat bombing and formation flying and so on. We were
then sent to England. We took a train from Lake
Charles, Louisiana, to the East Coast. I can’t
quite rememberSavannah, Georgia, I believe
it was. Then we went by train up to New York
and left for Europe and we went on theAt that
time it was called the Ile de France. It had been
taken over by the United States as a troop carrier. We went from the United States into Europe.
At that time, it was the second largest transport.
Next to the Queen Mary, it was the second largest boat in the water at that time.
NELSON: You went on a convoy over there?
�PURFEERST: Yes. We went on a night convoy. It wasI think it was five days and five
nights we hadOf course at that time the submarine scare was very bad and everything was
black-out. You looked out and you couldn’t see
anything.
NELSON: Did you have any experiences where
destroyers were trying to get these submarines?
PURFEERST: No. By the time I was going
over the Allies by that time had pretty much
control of the Atlantic. Fortunately we had no
experiences with the submarines the Germans
had.
NELSON: When you got overseas what were
you assigned to do?
PURFEERST: We were in England about a
month. They had already crossedD-Day had
already taken place and there were already bases
being established at that time in France. So from
England we flew into France and were assigned
to the 387th Bomb Group 559th Squadron. We
wouldour planes were based on an old German Air Field that they had built in France. Our
flight engineers had cleared out the airstrips
from mines. We would set up our quarters on the
German Air Field.
NELSON: What airplane were you assigned to?
PURFEERST: I was a pilot in a B26 twin engine medium bomber.
NELSON: If you did not immediately enter a
combat zone, where did you go before entering
combat?
PURFEERST: By the time we got to Europe,
before we got assigned to our squadrons, we
spent about a month in England and at that time
England was so full of American people they
were very nice to us. The English people were
so thankful to have someone helping them because they had just been literally run out of
France by the German Army.
NELSON: Tell us about your experience of entering the first combat zone.
PURFEERST: This was in October of 1944.
We had our first mission that I flew. We were
going after bridges and tanks, communication
centers. Our first mission we flew was over Cologne, Germany. We were going after railroad
yards in that city.
NELSON: Can you list for us in order of occurrence all subsequent combat action in which you
were involved or the ones that come to mind?
PURFEERST: It’s been so long ago that it’s
hard to put them in any kind of order. I did fly
twenty-six missions while we were in Europe.
First we were on air bases in France and then
one in Belgium and then one in Holland which is
the one I was on when the war was over. Each of
these fields we were at had been previously occupied by Germans and our engineers would go
in and get them ready. We were following pretty
much along the lines of the combat that was going on, on the ground. In many cases, in order to
get target altitude we would have to go back toward England and then get to our altitude before
we could go into Germany for our mission we
were on at that particular time. A normal takeoff
would put us, in some cases, too close to the
German line.
NELSON: Did you get involved in different
types of casualties, how they occurred and how
they were treatedcasualties with other members in your group.
PURFEERST: One event I remember happened
on December 23rd during the time that the Battle
of the Bulge was going on. We had drawn two
missions that day and on the last mission, one of
the planes came in that had difficulty in landing
because it had lost its hydraulics and had no
brakes. Another plane came in and crashed into
that. He had a hung up bomb. We lost twentythree men on our own base at that time because
three airplanes were burned up in that crash.
NELSON: Did your mental attitude change as
combat continued?
�PURFEERST: Yah, it probably did. I think
when you are young you are a little bit immune
to danger. During the time after the first couple
of missions when we realized what was really
going on and how good the Germans were with
anti-aircraft fire, we did have a lot of fear in us
as we took off and went on our mission into
Germany.
NELSON: What did you think of the war so
far?
PURFEERST: At the time that I went over the
Allies had been getting pretty much control of
the skies which helped us greatly because the
German fighters weren’t able to get to us. That
did kind of change our feeling about what we
were doing. When the German fighters couldn’t
get into our formations all we had to do was
worry about the flak from the ground. That did
make it easier for us to perform our missions.
NELSON: Did you have fighter escorts?
PURFEERST: Initially the fighters would follow us in about an hour into Germany and they
would have to go back because they didn’t have
enough flight time in fuel. Slowly as the German
lines went back, then the fighters were flying
from France, too, instead of from England and I
think in our last ten missions we had fighter escort in and out. That really made it seem like a
milk run for every mission.
NELSON: You were on a B26. How many man
crew did you have?
PURFEERST: We had a six-man crew: a pilot
and co-pilot, a navigator-bombardier. He performed both duties. We had a radio man who
was also a gunner, we had a tail gunner and we
had an engineer who was also a gunner.
NELSON: Top turret.
PURFEERST: Top turret, yes.
were also in the service. I had two sisters at
home at the time so I wrote either to my sisters
or to my parents.
NELSON: Did they ever send any packages?
PURFEERST: Yes, as a matter of fact, I did get
packages. Sometimes it would be canned fruit or
something that we could have as kind of a special dessert sometime. Sometimes they would
send __?__ or some things they thought we
might need.
NELSON: Did most of the other men write and
receive letters?
PURFEERST: Yes. There was a lot of correspondence, I guess, with men in the service and
their parents. In those times, the officers of our
squadron were assigned to do, I can’t think of
the word I wantwhere we would check the
mail. We would censor it to see that some information that might possibly get through that
could be considered dangerous to the get out
into the public so I was probably aware of it
more than most people might be.
NELSON: I didn’t know that, until years afterwards our pilot always checked the mail before
it was sent out. I didn’t know that.
PURFEERST: Yes. I did that.
NELSON: Did you forge close bonds of friendship with many or some of your combat companions?
PURFEERST: Yes, I did. I had two in particular. One is his name is Bill Prince. He happened
to be from Arizona. We went through our training classes together in each of the series of training we had. We remained friends and corresponded for about forty years after the war was
over. Another friend was my tail gunner on my
crew. His name was Joe Geharty. He was a
Brooklyn boy and I corresponded with him for
probably about thirty years after the war.
NELSON: Did you write many letters home?
PURFEERST: Yes, I wrote at least once a
week and I had at that time both of my brothers
NELSON: Did you ever have any reunions
where the whole crew got together?
�PURFEERST: No, we didn’t have any reunions. I wish we would have. I wish there would
have been some effort in those days where we
could have maintained a closer contact with each
other.
NELSON: This has to do with injuries in the
field. You probablywere you ever involved in
anyone who was injured on the airplane?
PURFEERST: Fortunately, no. Several times
we had heavy battle damage to the plane but we
did not have any injuries. We came close once
when we had a forced landing on British Spitfire
field near Brussels, Belgium. No one was hurt in
that accident.
NELSON: You never did tell me about you
squadron or the name of your airplane.
PURFEERST: Yes. I flew a B26.
NELSON: Did it have a name on it?
PURFEERST: The ones that we had were new
planes that were just coming in from the States
and we did not have a name on it at that time.
PURFEERST: No they didn’t. From Holland
they shipped those people into Poland or the
eastern part of Germany.
NELSON: What was the high light of your
combat experience or any other experience you
can remember?
PURFEERST: I guess that anybody that was in
Europe at the time that was referred to as the
Battle of the Bulge which took place the last
week of December or the early part of January,
and because of bad weather, our planes had to
wait for good weather to bomb the tanks that
were threatening our ground forces. I remember
particularly that we would get up about four in
the morning and wait for the weather to clear.
This went on for about at least a week when we
finally got clearance and the first mission we
flew that helped break up that German concentration near Bastogne. On the 23rd we flew double missions on that day and that was the beginning of the time that the German army was broken up and could no longer defend itself.
NELSON: Tell us about how you and the other
men celebrated America’s traditional family holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas.
NELSON: What group were you with?
PURFEERST: The 387th Ground and the 559th
Squadron.
NELSON: Okay. Good. Did you ever get involved in liberating any enemy prisoners in concentration camps?
PURFEERST: No, I didn’t. I did find out about
them though. I lived in a tent with a group of our
intelligent officers and they had received this
information from the ground forces.
PURFEERST: They did manage, with all of the
things that were going on there, all the other
things they needed to support our army, the
cooks always seemed to be able to manage to get
turkey or some other special food for those holidays. I think the airforce did have very good
kitchen facilities.
NELSON: Were they good cooks?
PURFEERST: That was in Holland, yes.
PURFEERST: Yes, I can truthfully say that I
don’t have any bad memories of having bad
food. The ground forces had to eat their canned
foods and different type of rations. C-Rations
was one. Those were probably not the best types
of foods you would think of for a feast day.
NELSON: Did they have camps in Holland that
you were aware of?
NELSON: They had worse conditions than
what you had in your camp?
NELSON: Is that while you were in Holland?
PURFEERST: Oh, yes. In many cases we
would be one hundred miles or so in back of the
�lines and what ever was available at that time,
either through our own kitchens or what we
could get from civilians we managed to eat pretty good.
NELSON: Did you sleep in huts or camp tents
or what did you sleep in?
PURFEERST: We were in tents, four men to a
tent. And the reason for that was that we were
moving quite often in a period of like nine
months, we were on four airfields. We never did
have regular quarters and never lived in a building. I lived in a tent for almost two years.
NELSON: How did you heat these tents?
PURFEERST: There was a big pot-belly stove
in the middle of the tent and the smoke stack
went up through the center along the post that
went up through the center of the tent. The fuel,
we had to scrounge to get what was around,
what we could find. In some cases we would
even trade candy, or gum or cigarettes to civilians if we could find some wood that we could
burn. Any place there was a bombed out building there was nothing left there but bricks because the wood was all taken out.
NELSON: Coal wasn’t available.
PURFEERST: No. Towards the end of the war
they did get some primarily so that they could
have it to heat water with.
NELSON: When and how did you return to the
United States after the end of the war?
PURFEERST: We had orders that we would be
leaving some where around the 15th and at that
time the war had been over in Japan. We had
been training to go to the Japanese theater and
we went down to Northern Africa and then over
to India and Burma and that area. However,
when the war was over, we didn’t know what to
do with our airplanes so we flew several of our
squadrons into a small field in Germany. They
cut them up with torches and then burnt them.
We waited then for the boat to go home. We did
arrive in the United States in January, the first
part of January, of 1946.
NELSON: Please tell us about your military
rank and decorations and especially your campaign decorations.
PURFEERST: I was a 2nd Lieutenant. Considering my age at the time, I guess I was one of the
younger ones that was an officer. I was commissioned just before my 20th birthday. I remember
the missions during the Battle of the Bulge
which was the turning point of the war. At that
time we were awarded what they called the presidential Unit Citation. It’s probably similar to
the Distinguished Flying Cross that was awarded
to every member of our squadron for our performance on the 23rd and 24th of December in
1944.
NELSON: Okay and you also got the Air Medal.
PURFEERST: Yes, I got the Air Medal as usual.
NELSON: You did say how many missions you
were on.
PURFEERST: I flew twenty-six missions.
NELSON: Twenty-six missions. How did you
get along with the men with whom you had the
greatest contact?
PURFEERST: The fellowship in the Air Force,
I think, is probably the greatest thing that ever
happened to me. The officers and the men were
so close together and had close personal contact,
we were more like brothers, I think, than we
were officers and enlisted men. It seems to me
now there was really no distinction of rank other
than when we were in the plane we were performing the duties we were supposed to perform. Most of our short passes I had in Europe,
our entire crew went out together when we had
time off.
NELSON: What are the things you would do
differently if you could do them once again?
PURFEERST: I think if I could do it all over, I
think what I would do is make a special effort to
have better contact with all of the crew mem-
�bers. We kind of went about our own problems
and duties when we became civilians and probably neglected those contacts we should have
made.
NELSON: What is the most difficult you had to
do during the period of your military service?
PURFEERST: I think the most difficult thing
was when we got on the boat going to Europe. I
was still not twenty-one years old yet. Leaving
the shores of the United States was the most difficult thing for me that I can remember.
NELSON: Probably not knowing if you’d ever
see those shores again.
PURFEERST: That’s right.
NELSON: Is there anything that stands out as
your most successfully achievement in your military service?
PURFEERST: I think that the thing that stands
out most in my memory was the fact that when I
enlisted they had just changed the rules of enlistment and requirements you had to have. In
those days, prior to my enlistment, the required
you to have a college degree in engineering or
something that would make them easier to train
for flying on an assigned crew. I remember
when I took this test at that time they changed it
so if you passed equivalency examination you
were qualified to become a cadet in the Air
Force. And the fact that I was one of those who
passed the test was probably the turning point of
my life.
NELSON: In cadet training what type of training did they give you mostly?
PURFEERST: Surprisingly the ground classes
training that we had in engineering and the mechanical parts of flying was in every step we
took whether it would be in primary or basic
events of flying, the ground training was as important as the flight training.
PURFEERST: Not really. I remember in our
first flight, my first time in an airplane in my
primary training, the pilot took us up and would
fly us around to see if we would be subject to are
sickness and so on. I didn’t know what he was
doing at the time but he cut the switch at the end
of the runway and did a dead stick landing and
scared the hell out of me.
NELSON: This has to be about Europe. How
did you learn about VE Day and what was reaction to it?
PURFEERST: The fact that I lived in the tent
with the intelligence officer, I think I probably
knew what was going on before a lot of the other
people did. When they were having the meetings, I think Eisenhower and Montgomery from
England were meeting with German officers to
sign the surrender, I knew about that two or
three days before it was published.
NELSON: How about VJ Day? What was your
reaction to that?
PURFEERST: That was another great day in
my life because we were training to go from Europe over to the Pacific Theater and when we
heard about that everybody was really happy
that we wouldn’t have to go over there.
NELSON: What was opinion of the use of the
atomic bomb when it was used against the Japanese civilians in August of 1945?
PURFEERST: I think it was probably the best
thing that ever happened to end that war as fast
as they did. The number of casualties and deaths
that would have taken place if we had to go on
the Japanese homeland beaches and fight for that
ground, I think it probably would have been
much, much worse then having dropped the
bomb.
NELSON: I understand too that most of the civilians were armed at that time.
PURFEERST: Oh yes. They were.
NELSON: Did you ever have any close calls on
your training?
NELSON: To defend their country.
�PURFEERST: It was estimated that a half a
million people would have been killed if they
had to make an invasion.
NELSON: Has that opinion changed over the
last fifty years?
PURFEERST: No, I still feel the same way. To
me, the person who had to make that final decision was probably the most difficult he ever did.
I think it was President Truman at the time that
gave the okay for that.
PURFEERST: The fact that I was the first one
in our family to go into Service I did, matter of
fact I surprised my parents when I enlisted. I did
that right when I turned eighteen. I did get lots
of mail from them and encouragement from
them to do the best I could.
NELSON: I imagine they were very proud of
you.
NELSON: When and where were you discharged from the Service?
PURFEERST: Yes, in those days every ableperson was in the service in the age group probably from eighteen to thirty-five. The fact that I
was the first one of our family that went into
service, I’m sure they were very proud of me.
PURFEERST: I was discharged in January of
1946 from Fort Sheridan in Chicago Illinois.
NELSON: In the subsequent years what has this
support meant to you?
NELSON: Do you have any disability rating or
pension?
PURFEERST: It’s been so long now; some of
those memories are so far back in my mind, I
find it difficult to remember them. When I see
some of the old pictures we have at home when I
was in uniform at that time, of course, my parents were quite young; it meant a lot to me that
they supported me.
PURFEERST: No, I was fortunate and didn’t
have any bad injuries.
NELSON: Do you have any opinions or feelings about our Nation’s military status or policies?
PURFEERST: You mean today’s military? I
think that they need a defensive force is very
important ands is one thing that seems to be bipartisan even in Washington. Our government
people are managing to keep a good defense
force.
NELSON: Do you have any contact with the
Veterans’ Administration?
PURFEERST: Other than my old GI insurance
which I still have carried I have no contact with
them.
NELSON: That was a smart decision to keep
that, wasn’t it?
PURFEERST: It sure was. It turned out to be
the best things I did when I got out.
NELSON: Would you like to tell us how your
family supported you during your Military life?
NELSON: Ray that was a very good interview.
Is there anything else you would like to mention
that we haven’t covered?
PURFEERST: No, not really. I think I have
given you most of the things I can remember.
NELSON: Thank you very much.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
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Midway Village Museum
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Midway Village Museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-2001
Rights
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Midway Village Museum
Language
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English
Format
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pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Charles Nelson
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Raymond L. Purfeerst
Location
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Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
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Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Raymond L. Purfeerst
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
13-Jul-94
Description
An account of the resource
Born November 2, 1923, Raymond Purfeerst enlisted in January 1942 into the Air Force as a pilot. He was discharged in 1946. He died March 22, 1999.
Rights
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Midway Village Museum
Format
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pdf
Type
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Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War 2
World War II
-
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PDF Text
Text
Ray EricksonPage 1
Ray Erickson
Transcribed and Edited by
Margaret Lofgren
For Midway Village and Museum Center
6799 Guilford Road
Rockford, Illinois 61107
�Ray EricksonPage 2
Interview with Ray Erickson of Rockford, Illinois, about his World War II experiences.
Don Marston is the interviewer and this is being
recorded on March 23rd, 1994.
DON MARSTON: When were you born Ray?
RAY ERICKSON: March 30, 1919.
DON MARSTON: Ray is going to tell about
his experiences being accepted into the service
and his experiences in the war. We’ll turn it over
to Ray.
RAY ERICKSON: Thank you. Starting out
with the drafting of men into the Armed Services, right after the war had been declared all
men between the ages of 18 and 40 had to register with their local draft board, which had hastily
gotten created. Each man was then assigned a
number and all these numbers were tossed into a
giant fish bowl type of thing. The numbers were
picked from the fish bowl, one by one, in a sequence to determine when you would be called
up by the draft board.
As the Armed Services sent their requirements
for men to the various draft boards, evidently I
wound up with a very, very high number sequence. I would not be called for a long time.
Most of my friends were called in two or three
months after first registering having had low
numbers. They were in the army when they used
broomsticks instead of rifles.
My number wasn’t called until April of 1944. It
was June of ’44 before I was processed into the
Army. At that time I was working at Woodward
Governor Company, what they classified as a
vital defense industry and I probably could have
gotten deferment on that cause if I had applied
for it. By that time it had become quite embarrassing for me to even go down town with my
wife. Remember I used to go down town on Saturday nights. I was one of the only young people
down town wearing civilian clothes. It became
embarrassing. All the Camp Grant boys in town,
walking around looking at me, “What’s that guy
doing?” Anyhow, on June 6, I walked away
from my Loves Park house with my wife and
daughter waving a tearful good-bye to me. I took
the bus to the Illinois Central Railroad station on
South Main. From there on in I was in the hands
of the army.
We went to Chicago. From there on north to
Fort Sheridan, about twenty miles north of Chicago, a large induction center. Typical of normal
procedure, guys from Sheridan area were sent to
Camp Grant for induction and guys from Camp
Grant were sent to the Sheridan area. At Sheridan we had more extensive physical tests and
also mental tests.
I recall a beefy red faced sergeant who was interpreting the results of my mental test saying to
me, “From what the results of these tests show,
you should be a general but right now Uncle
Sam needs privates and that’s where you’re going”. WHAM with a rubber stamp. Woodward
Governor had always been test happy and I had
taken a mental test, quite similar to this one the
army aptitude test put out, two or three months
previously to the one Woodward Governor had.
I had an edge upon on them. I knew a few answers.
They processed us for three days then sent us
home for a weekend to report back on such and
such a date. After a week-end at home I returned
to Fort Sheridan again for four days of army
processing and actual swearing in.
We boarded a train at Fort Sheridan one evening
and after all night and next day and following
night arrived at our destination that was some
place in Florida. We were then trucked to Camp
Blanding a basic training camp situated in the
swampiest snake infested area of Georgia interior, Florida interior, about fifty miles inland from
Jacksonville.
As soon as we got off the trucks the camp cadre
non-commissioned training officer started to
throw the fear of God into us. They soon let us
know they were going to do their damnedest to
make soldiers out of us or destroy us in the process, which they did made soldiers out of us.
Blanding was very hot and very humid but nevertheless each day started out with a two-mile
�Ray EricksonPage 3
speed hike that was walking thirty seconds and
running thirty seconds. Each day one or more
would collapse during the hike of heat exhaustion then the cadre would drag them to the side
of the road and the rest would carry on.
At the end of the hike, breakfast was served if
the mess sergeant could witness you swallowing
the two required nauseating salt pills. All meals
were hectic but breakfast was the worst. The
food was served family style, bowls on the table
and the hillbillies (I don’t know if I should say
that) who comprised most of the company
seemed never to have eaten before. If you didn’t
get your milk or cereal before one or two seconds had passed then forget it. Some hill-billy
had it. This happened every day like that.
Daytime was full of endless close order drills,
calisthenics, and stupid classes. We would sit on
the ground for all these classes. A few minutes
after they were over some lieutenant would
come around with an eight-foot rattler he had
just shot in the area where we had been sitting. I
worried more about the coral snakes, much more
poisonous than rattlers and much harder to spot
being only twelve to sixteen inches in length.
The cadre treated us all like we were idiots and
of course some of us were. We had a lot of guys
from South Carolina and Alabama to come in.
Most of these people were illiterate. In my hut
were six men. Only myself, and a little Italian
guy from Chicago, could read or write. I was
elected to read and write the letters for the other
four guys and I suppose someone else did the
same at the other end.
After six weeks we were allowed weekend passes and I think I went once into Jackson and then
once to St. Augustine. The South Carolina boys
headed home and then always returned with
their bottles of “white lightening”. This was way
before my drinking days. One swallow of this
stuff it would knock me out for the night.
The final week of basic training consisted of
what the army called bivouac. That was living
out in the open more or less off the land. The
first shovel of dirt that I turned over when starting to dig my foxhole revealed dozens of king
snakes from two to thirty-six inches in length,
harmless, but nevertheless they did not make it
pleasant sleeping. To make things worse, the
next day a hurricane struck Florida and we spent
the rest of the week trying to keep warm and
dry. When basic was finished, twelve weeks that
is, we got a ten-day furlough to return home before going on to the next camp. However, some
stupid clerk had overlooked the fact that I needed glasses installed in my gas mask. This was
very upsetting to me at the time but it probably
was a lifesaver. Kept me from getting to Europe
in time to get caught in the Battle of the Bulge.
In that battle everyone in Company G of the 79th
Division was either killed or captured. But for
that clerk’s mistake, I might not be here taping
this record.
After ten swift days at home I was to head for
Fort Meade, Maryland, a gathering spot for
troops heading overseas. My father came down
to see me off at the train station in Chicago. It
was good to see him.
My only memory of the three-day stay at Fort
Meade [is] a record of the Inkspots singing “Into
Each Life Some Rain Must Fall”. My barracks
was next door to the canteen and soldiers were
arriving and leaving all hours of the day and
night. The canteen never closed.
Then north to Camp Miles Standish outside of
Boston. The first night there they bussed us into
Boston. I wound up with some guy that seemed
to stick to me like glue. I cannot recall his name.
Anyhow, I went to a fancy restaurant and ordered their turkey dinner. Having had one or two
drinks before hand, I could not finish my meal. I
left part of a huge drumstick on my plate. Many
were the times in Europe when I longed for that
delicious drumstick setting on that plate back in
Boston.
The second and last night at Standish I and this
same nut were called up for guard duty at the
paymaster’s office. The Army always paid wages in cash. This being the night before payday
the office had a lot of cash on hand. We were
given Thompson sub machine guns but not really given much in the line of instructions as how
to use the guns. In the wee hours of the morning,
�Ray EricksonPage 4
I got curious and took off the safety forgetting
that I still had my finger on the trigger. I stitched
a hole in the door up to the ceiling. That thing
just rose before I could shut the damn thing off.
The lieutenant Officer of the Day came in. He
was ready to kill me. The only thing that saved
me he said was the fact that I was shipping out
to Europe that day and they needed live bodies
over there.
That morning they trucked us to the dock
crammed us into the ship and after a few hours
of useless waiting, we sailed out on the calm
harbor. Before we left the harbor I got seasick
and I remained so for twenty-four hours of the
next ten days it took us to get to France.
This was a large ship. It had formerly been a
passenger ship on the South American run but
now all holes, dancing holes, all swimming
pools, etc. had been converted to hammock
strung bunk holes. My bunk was four flights
down the lowest hold and I was second from the
floor in a tier of seven high bunks. Being this
low made be very vulnerable to splashes when
the guys above me leaned out of their bunks and
vomit which happened day and night.
The next morning going up the deck I could see
literally hundreds of ships of all sizes and descriptions. We had joined a convoy during the
night and this was a very thrilling sight to see.
All the troop hauling ships had Navy men manning the anti-aircraft guns on board and one of
them even told me the ships __?__ was continually circling the convoy and darting in and out of
the perimeter were Navy destroyers. The second
night out the destroyers began dropping depth
charges. The noise that came through the hull
and the vibrations was tremendous. Evidently
they either got the sub or scared them off because we never lost a ship in the convoy.
The next morning a hurricane struck. The next
following three days was up and down, roll left,
roll right, tempers growing __?__. It is impossible to conceive the power of the sea unless you
have seen it. Also impossible these metal man
made ships could stand up to the battering the
hurricane gave it. The first day of the storm we
were not allowed to go on deck. It abated some
the second day so we took turns spending some
time on deck lying flat on your back. On the upper most deck was a place that seemed to ease
my rotten stomach the most as the ship plowed
through the storm. You could see the sea fifty to
seventy feet above your head and the ship would
roll 30 to the right and then to the left. You
could see the water fifty feet below. Almost impossible for that damn ship to stay afloat. At this
stage a lot of us didn’t really care.
That night with typical army fore sight, they
served spaghetti for the evening meal. The cooks
would slam the stuff in the mess kits and soon
we walked to the line the ship would roll 30 to
the left and we’d hit the deck with the spaghetti
flying through the air. The mess hall was completely covered with spaghetti with GIs sliding
helplessly back and forth upon it.
After ten days of this nonsense we arrived at
LaHavre, France in the dark, of course. We then
proceeded to load about two thousand men into
landing barges that could not possibly hold one
thousand for the trip to the shore. Being the
smallest of the pack, I literally thought I might
be smothered to death but some how I managed
to breathe enough to sustain me ’til we arrived at
the dock. I cannot recall how we spent the remainder of that night but the next morning they
marched us a short distance to a railroad yard
where three or four tracks of French box cars
were standing. “Hit the box cars” they shouted
and we all headed for what looked to be the
most sturdy of these little cars.
Another typical army __?__ of 0the week,
someone got the great idea of scrounging up
wood throughout the railroad yard. We all
rushed out to get any type of wood that looked
burnable and proceeded to get a fire going in the
corner of the boxcar. These cars were all wooden as was the floor but we did not have a furnace. The floor would have to do. This fire lasted two days before it burned through the floor.
Then we just moved to a different corner and
start another fire. It was wintertime in January.
This turned out to be a three-day and night trip.
We seemed to be stopping more than we were
going. It was obvious the army was able to con-
�Ray EricksonPage 5
duct a fighting war without this bunch of raw
recruits. The strange part about our railroad trip
was that the guys in our box car __?__ with me.
This was a “C” ration-trip a lousy can of cold
stews. Any time we stopped near a village, we
rushed there searching for better or anything else
they might have to eat. The villagers were always happy to see us but they seldom had any
food for us. I looked in one __?__ it was literally
ankle deep in “C” ration cans and “C” ration
boxes. I could not imagine how they’d ever get
those tracks cleaned up. At the end of the line,
ours that is, we were trucked someplace up in
the __?__ mountains to a repo-depo, replacement depot. This was a gathering place for the
new members to be distributed to the company
to replace the casualties. My vague memory of
the repo depot was a big guy continually striding
around shouting how tough we had been at the
Anzio Beachhead and what he was going to do
to the Germans the next chance he got. Believe
it or not, this lovable bantam wound up as an
ammo bearer in my mortar squad. His name was
Wimpy and he came from some place in New
York state. I did not learn his name until fortyfive years later, Raymond Jennings, when I
tracked him down in Styrevant New York. He
was always good for a laugh and maybe sympathy. As I said, the boxcar boys and I ended up in
G Company the 314th Infantry, the 79th Division
and then luckily in the weapons platoon. I say
luckily because the weapons platoon was always
fifty to one hundred yards behind the rifle platoon the guys that really had the __?__ of the
enemy.
The weapons platoon had small mortars, 60mm
and small machine guns, thirty caliber. This was
as compared to the weapons Company "H" that
had 81mm mortars and fifty caliber machine
guns. Back of them some place was artillery
with 90s and 105s. While our artillery had the
edge in caliber size, the German eighty-eight
caliber artillery had a superior muzzle blast and
that is what caused the most destruction. There
88s were devastating. When I joined G Company they were stationed in a farmhouse that was
back of the front line. This was mid southern
France at the edge of the [Auvergne] forest. G
Company was in reserve at the time. That night
a fellow named Arthur Cubadore(?) and myself
were appointed to stand guard duty. For some
reason this was not a regular two on and two off
duty. Cubie and I were on guard all through the
night. We could hear the cranking of tank treads.
Then airplanes dropped flares that really lit up
the countryside. Shortly thereafter Sergeant
Pittman our platoon First Sergeant came around
and told us the tanks we heard were German and
the flares dropped also were German. He also
told us not to worry. We were well over a halfmile back of the front lines. Our only trouble
would be if they dropped paratroopers, which
they did. As this was both Cubie’s and my first
introduction to war we developed a close bond
between us that lasted throughout the entire conflict.
Sergeant Pittman was a small guy, just a shade
taller than I. He was a regular army guy having
been in for twelve years already. He seemed to
be very well in charge of himself and all the platoon business. The next morning he gathers together for introduction to our new platoon leader
Lieutenant Henry Cullom. The lieutenant was a
raw recruit just as we were but he presented a
very competent man. I think we remained in this
area for two or three days before they started us
north by foot and by truck; mostly by foot. The
rain was constant and the mud was deep. So
along this march I threw away my overcoat and
also my gas mask. At this point I had become
only a foot soldier needing only a mess kit, rifle
and shovel and my particular of the mortar, that
base at that time. Everything else was useless (I
don’t know if I should tell this or not)
Here I can begin a chronological account the
reason being that I had written the following
down about thirty years ago when it was fresh in
my mind. The paper had become yellow with
age so I am duplicating it here.
February 23rd, 1945: After our truck driver had
dropped us off expressing his great happiness
that we were heading forward while he was
heading backward we stormed up the road to the
first farm house, cut across the field and back to
the barn. I was wearing a fur pilot jacket beneath
my field jacket and the sun was shining. It became hotter than hell. I was sweating profusely
�Ray EricksonPage 6
carrying a forty-five pound mortar base plate,
my nine-pound M-1 rifle plus everything else I
owned. The field was full of dead cattle and only
a couple of live goats wandering around bleating
plaintively.
Word was sent back to walk in the footsteps of
the guy ahead of you, as there was danger of
land mines. Being the fore guy I was #1 in the
column. I can’t recall of any more terrifying than
the thought of you might be walking through a
mine field. With every step your imagination ran
wild. Between my sweating, the weight I was
carrying thinking about land mines, it was not a
pleasant afternoon stroll.
About one-half mile further on the lieutenant
sent the machine gun squad straight ahead then
led the mortar squad to the right around a small
barn into a small patch of woods. Climbing
through a wire fence, I stumbled and the edge of
the mortar base plate hit me in my stomach driving what little wind I then had out of me with a
rush.
Beyond the woods we dragged ourselves
through a knee deep swamp for about five
minutes and then emerged on the edge of a
cleared field with a full view of a village about
two or three hundred yards ahead. Sergeant
Pittman and the Lieutenant took off running towards the village and beckoned us to follow.
Sergeant Powell, my squad leader, took off running following them and I turned to Wimp and
said, “Stay here Wimp until I catch up with
them. I can’t try to run now. I’m too winded”.
He nodded his head and I started off. I got about
half way to where the Lieutenant was crouching
and all of a sudden the war started for me. I
heard the “zing” of bullets around me and then
the crack of the rifles from the village and I suddenly realized that those guys were shooting at
me. At this point I was not the least bit frightened but I did quicken my pace somewhat heading for a small screen of shrubs where Sgt. Powell was burying his face in the mud. Powell was
visibly shaken and he told me to take the barrel
from him and set up the mortar. By the time I
got that completed, our four ammo bearers had
arrived to our spot. The bullets were snapping
through the brush around and over us so heavy
nothing better to do than imitate Powell and
bury our face in mud also. Bill Montgomery was
a platoon runner for the event He carried the
walkie-talkie. He was about twenty feet and he
shouted, “Hey, Erick, I’m getting a blow by
blow account on the talkie and the Krauts are
pulling back across the river”.
Each company man __?__ their high explosives
and sent in smoke to cover the riflemen that are
moving into town. Suddenly Sergeant Powell
lifted his face from the ground and screamed,
“That’s coming in”. A second later the shell hit
with a tremendous noise about fifty yards or so
to the rear. I thought if that’s artillery Coming at
me, it’s not really too bad. How wrong could
you be? Above the constant crack of the small
arms and the whining of bullets the high pitched
scream of the aviates started again. This one
landed somewhat closer to the rear. They kept
coming in each time landing nearer. By now I’m
getting scared. In fact, I’m terrified. Each one of
those 88 shells seemed to be heading right for
the middle of my back. The few seconds between their whine and their landing seemed to
be an eternity. Here comes little Sergeant
Pittman walking along gathering up some __?__.
“It seems like you guys are pinned down”. The
lieutenant was following Pittman. You could tell
he was just as scared as we were but little
Pittman behaved as if he was going to a Sunday
school picnic.
When the artillery shelling stopped, Lieutenant
Cullom told us to withdraw back across the field
about a hundred yards from a small creek bed
and set up the mortar there. Sgt. Powell took off
like a bat out of hell leaving the mortar, his jacket and his carbine for the rest of us to carry. I
broke down the mortar, picked the barrel and
gave the base plate to Wimp and told the rest of
the squad to head back to the creek. I was the
last guy to leave the spot. I was still too tired to
run. Hunched over I made the safety of the creek
bank. By then Sgt. Powell had become useless
frantically trying to dig a foxhole and sobbing
loudly and shaking like a leaf in the wind.
Collum saw him and told me to take over the
squad using Cubie for the assistant gunner and
he would get us another ammo bearer tomorrow.
�Ray EricksonPage 7
He had me set up the mortars then and await
further instructions.
I started to dig a foxhole near the creek bank.
Then I was so tired I seemed to spend more time
resting than digging. Now and then an 88 shell
would come in not landing too close to us and
Sgt. Powell would dig like a mad terrier. As the
shells kept coming closer, he curled up in what
little hole he had and implored me to dig around
him. That night I got the distinction of being the
first man to dig a foxhole around another man.
through what dresser drawers we could find that
had not already been cleaned out. It seemed that
Gerry had taken most everything of any value.
We did get a look at the Ruhr River with a very
quick __?__ looked quite deep and approximately fifty yards across.
We had only occasional 88 shells dropping in
throughout the day. Of course, they new the exact range because they had been living there only the day before but in spite of that, we did not
have any casualties.
Thirty to forty minutes later I got both mine and
Powell’s foxhole completed looking forward to
a very miserable night of sleeping in the mud
and wondering if the Krauts would be counter
attacking. As usual the walkie-talkies were not
working. The company runner come around and
told us the village had been taken plus __?__ we
were to move on in to town. Somehow in the
dark we found a house complete with mattresses
and blankets. Fantastic compared to sleeping on
that muddy creek bed. Cubie and I volunteered
to the first shift of guard duty. He’d go in the
front and I’d go in the back. Before entering the
village we had been warned to be on the lookout
for boobie traps. I was quite relieved to get out
of the house for a while. By now it had begun
raining and then turned into sleet. The snow and
cold wind. I had now wished I had not thrown
away my overcoat. I had been at the post for a
short while when orders came down to dig in the
mortar for a counter attack. Digging in the mortar means a hole about four feet in diameter and
two or three feet deep, one tough job for a very
worn out little soldier with a small shovel. I had
never, never ever experienced such tiredness
before that. I soon found out was one of the
worst things about war. The eternal exhaustion
was almost as bad as the constant fear of death.
That night or the next morning Wimpy awakened me at 2 a.m. as I was going on guard duty
with Russ Osborn(?) another mortar squad leader. It was dark as pitch and awfully quiet and
Russ and I got the post on the edge of some
nearby woods. Russ and I were worrying about
one of the 35th Division men had told us early
that evening about Gerrys had sent a combat
patrol in the village a few nights ago and they
had taken town from the 35th. The 35th Division
is the one we replaced on the front line in this
sector. The 35th had taken this town twice before
and twice before had been kicked out again by
the Krauts. Evidently this was __?__ ground
fighting defense on the Ruhr River. Our guardship was uneventful. When we returned to our
house at 4 a.m. the lieutenant was there and told
us we’d have to spread out the platoon. The captain did not want too many men concentrated in
one location. That meant another search by Max
for booby traps. We found none but did find a
cellar with only six inches of water on the floor.
We also found two beds that stood high and dry
in the basement so my squad had good sleeping.
Remember two out of six guys were on guard
duty so we only needed sleeping room for four.
The only thing we took off is our shoes and
some guys did not even do that.
Walking all through the day carrying such a
heavy load, digging holes and never getting over
two hours of uninterrupted sleep besides worrying about those other bastards out there trying to
kill me.
February 25th 1945.Montgomery __?__ and
Cubie __?__ 04:00 hours. It was our turn to go
on guard. We spent two cold miserable hours
with only a few flares coming down on the
German side of the river and some of their aviates dropping in around us just as though they
wanted us to know they were still over there.
Coming off guard at 06:00 we awakened the rest
of the platoon broke open our K-rations made
February 24th, 1945: this day, our first in the village dawned raining and cold. We spent the
whole day just loafing around and looting
�Ray EricksonPage 8
some instant coffee, ate our biscuits and began
feeling a little more human again. About 7:30
the lieutenant came around and said we could
move closer to the river so there goes our __?__
and __?__ beds. A land tree had been felled
across the road. Probably as a tank stopper and a
dead Kraut was lying back of it. He must have
been hit by automatic fire because his chest was
a mass of dried bloody holes. Such a young man.
Such a waste. About a hundred yards or so to the
left in a field were the bodies of two young GIs,
casualties of mine __?__ They could not be removed until the field had been cleared of the
mines.
right in his face the next time he lit the pipe. I
can remember that _____?_____.
We had a hill billy named Moran with us. I think
he was from Alabama. He was a member of the
machine gun squad. He smashed his rifle butt
into the dead German’s mouth and removed
some gold teeth that he had knocked loose. The
last time I saw this cold tough guy was about
one week later. He had crawled underneath a
tank and was screaming for help ___?___ at that
time. We went about half way through the village when Lt. Colman had directed to what
looked like a combination store and a house. He
told us to dig in the mortar in the back yard and
make sleeping arrangements. Colman moved in
what must have been the kitchen. We moved in
the hall across from that. The house had been
ransacked by Germans but Wimpy and I were
able to find five mattresses on the second floor
and we dragged them down to the first floor.
Then we even managed to find clean sheets in
some drawers upstairs. We could make up the
beds just like the comforts of home. The sheets
on our room did not stay clean very long as Sgt.
__?__ came tramping in all over them. He never
removed his shoes. Joe wanted was tap, ale a
just retreat.
The army expected lot stiffer resistance once we
got into Germany after our fake smoke attack we
loaded our trucks and headed north winding up
in Belgium a couple of days later. When the army moved up to Belguim it never moved in a
direct line the fastest way. There were always
stops and delays to keep this route
_____?_____. We were billeted, my squadron,
at a Belguim farm __?__, taking our meals with
the family. I suppose the army gave these people
rations to cook for us and they treated us like
kings. It was at this time __?__ I learned that my
brother Wayne was nearby in __?__ about fortyfive miles away. I asked for and received an
overnight pass to visit him. I hitchhiked to
__?__. When I got to his outfit, I found that he
had taken a jeep and driven to my company area.
Wayne was a driver of some colonel at headquarters and had the use of a jeep at any time.
February 26th, 1945: This morning Wimpy
scrounged through the town and brought back
two chickens for us. We had a delicious lunch.
Burned chicken and dry K-rations. Bob __?__
found a quaint pipe curved stem and all and
__?__ the bowl and smoke all the time breaking
up cigarettes in the bowl. Wimp and I broke up
some rifle cartridges and managed to sneak the
pipe and pour some powder in the bowl __?__
February 27th, 1945: The previous night they
told us that the 35th Division was going to launch
an attack across the river at a point a few miles
south of us. We were to send over a smoke
screen also some high explosive as a diversion
tactic to take the pressure off. Before the day
was over se got the news that the 35th Division
had crossed and met little resistance. The Krauts
had again pulled back towards the Rhine River.
The Rhine __?__ a big one. After we crossed
that we had __?__.
The guys in his outfit made me very welcome
and they got in touch with my company and sent
Wayne on his way back. Wayne and I had never
been too close but still it was an emotional meeting concerning the place, time and events going
on there.
The next day Wayne drove me back to my company. One of these days these days he drove the
company out into the country and showed us
thousands of landing crafts stacked up __?__.
That was our training for crossing the Rhine
River looking at those landing crafts.
The good times ended. Then came the time to
move to the Rhine River. We got to a point
�Ray EricksonPage 9
about a half-mile from the river I found out later.
Then we were instructed to dig in for the night. I
dug a hole about three-foot deep with a standing
ledge around it, a real classic model of a foxhole. I spent the night sitting on the ledge sleeping fitly until our artillery barrage opened up
sometime early in the morning. Later on in life I
learned that this barrage was a large piece of
pipe that had never been used in a war before.
The barrage lasted for about an hour and I was
bouncing up and down in my foxhole like a rubber ball even though the artillery was a half a
mile in the rear. The concussion was tremendous. If it was so bad on this side where the
shells were __?__ what must it have been on the
other sided where the shells were landing. It was
impossible for us to be _____?_____ on the far
side of the river. We found out later though that
just went in the (inaudible)
mother had a fit until Sgt. Rogers consoled her
with the fact her son was now out of danger. He
was probably going to the United States and
surely return home at the end of the war. Sgt.
Henry Rogers came to ___?___ after Sgt. __?__
went back to the hospital. Rogers had been put
in charge of all three-mortar squads as he had
been in experienced combat. Rogers had been
born in Hamburg, Germany but he had left home
as a young teenager and wound up in Brooklyn.
He had left two brothers behind in Hamburg and
so supposed at any time he would be fighting
against his own brothers. Rogers had a lot of
guts and of course was invaluable as a translator.
From then on we were always moving forward
at a fast pact sometimes walking, sometimes
riding in trucks, sometimes tanks. Most of the
time we were walking. Even though we had the
Germans on the run they still shot back and they
still had those dreaded 88s.
SIDE 2
To the landing boats were waiting for us. We
piled in them and crossed the river with nary a
shot being fired at us. We could hear some Berman “burp” guns in the distance ahead of us.
That was all __?__. A “burp” gun was a hand
held machine gun that fired so fast it sounded
like an elongated burp. We did see some dead
cattle in the field but only one dead German soldier. Now we are across the Rhine River heading
into the highly industrial Ruhr River Valley, the
heart of the German’s industrial section. I can
recall one day coming over a hilltop seeing a
vast panorama of factory rubble and most everything in rock piles and just the smokestacks
standing. So many smokestacks it was almost
impossible to believe. The big picture was the
__?__ where I was to sweep to the east on the
northern border where General Patton’s Third
Army went east on the southern border where of
the valley. Both armies to meet and encircle the
final majority of the German army. The plan
worked and the Krauts were running by the hundred of thousands. Of all those thousands my
little squad only captured one prisoner. We got
him as he rode up to his home on a bicycle starting his furlough. We had moved forward so
slickly the Germans did not know how far forward we were. We just stood on the stoop of this
guy's apartment and he dove into our arms. His
As I say, from now in I have no real chronological memory as when these incidents happened. I
just remember that the occurred.
One evening we came upon Hitler’s autobahn
the four lane super highway that was built to
facilitate troop movement. Adolph got credit for
inventing this concept of road. It was an unusual
for us to see. We crossed this and entered a thick
woods. After walking through the woods for
about a quarter mile we came to a fairly large
brick farmhouse set in a clearing. We moved
into this house. Right away we heard the clanking of tank treads and looking out the window
openings we saw an American tank moving into
firing position about a hundred yards down the
farm lane. Then we heard the “F” Company
Commander on our walkie-talkie directing the
tank to open fire on this farmhouse he’d seen the
Krauts just move into. As per usual when you
really need it our damn walkies would not send;
just receive. The shells and the machines gun
bullets and tanks started crashing through the
brick walls and we were all hugging the floor.
One shell crashed through the wall and hit __?__
on the shoulder. Thank heaven for American
“goof offs for making dud shells. It didn’t explode. At that time I was laying right next to
__?__. Lt. Cullen ordered us to crawl back to the
barn. We would have the house between the
�Ray EricksonPage 10
damn tank and us. We did but the trouble there
was that three or four horses were still tethered
in their stalls. I wound up with my head less than
a foot from the back feet of a very skittish horse.
You lie there and get trampled to death or you
stand and get fifty caliber machine gun bullets
through you. The Lieutenant solved my predicament by directing me to take Pop our way back
to battalion headquarters and have that tank
called off. Pop was an olderI think
39Mexican guy that had joined us just a few
days back. Pop and I crawled on our bellies out
of the barn and through the woods with machine
gun bullets clipping over our heads all the time.
We finally got out of range and we stand up and
run. We came to the autobahn at a place where
another road crossed over it. Underneath the viaduct great was a doorway. By now it was pitch
black dark. Thinking the battalion might be in
there, we went in to discover hundreds and hundreds of German civilians huddled inside for
protection against the artillery dropping all
around. The only light we had was by matches.
It would have been very simple for the people to
disarm us and kill us. By that time I think they
were very glad to see the war coming to an end
and they were welcoming American soldiers.
We left a minute later back through the factory
rubble until we finally found the battalion. But
by the time we’d gotten there though I walked
inside the __?__ function and the tank had been
called off. That left Pop and me having to make
our way back through the dark to find our platoon.
We did get back to the farmhouse but our platoon had moved on so we spent the night in the
farmhouse planning to find the rest of them the
next morning. Pop and I were sleeping two
hours on and two hours off. __?__ side arm I
still am ashamed of.
Each soldier had what they called sulfite pack
that was carried on their belt. This contained a
medication to swallow and also a paste to apply
to your wound. This was a preventative for
shock one of the big killers of wounded men.
We were walking in a deep ravine headed for the
front. Another line of men was walking the opposite way returning from the front. That’s how
the army replaced troops on the front line, one
for one. This guy came limping back asking everybody for their sulfite packet. He’d been hit and
was afraid he might not be able to make it back
to the aid station. I was one of the guys he asked
and I refused him thinking I might soon need
that pack in the front line myself. I’m very
ashamed of myself for not helping this guy out.
He was a walking wounded but I will never
know if he made it back okay to the company
station.
A long __?__ at Pine Lake suddenly this airplane with pontoons came zooming over our
cottage and lands on the lake. It taxied to the
first island when a girl in a green bathing suit
went out and went swimming. About thirty
minutes later it taxied up there and roared down
the lake taking off. A mystery. The reason I
mentioned this is because it brought back memories of “Bed Check Charlie”. Every night a lone
German airplane would come flying over our
area and once in a while he would drop one little
bomb. I say little because it was a one hundred
or two hundred pound bombs. You cannot imagine the noise and concussion from that one
bomb. I now blamed “Bed Check Charlie” for
my hearing loss later in life. When our air force
had those thousand plane air raids dropping one
or two thousand-pound bombs, the havoc they
reaped cannot be imagined.
My most frightening experience comes to mind
now. We somehow wound upmust have been
either army camp or else a camp for displaced
workers. I think the former because I cannot imagine them building their own bomb shelters for
just the workers. It had small wooden shacks all
over the place and long concrete structures that
protruded about three-foot above the ground. As
per usual we did not stop until it nearly became
dark so you could not get a really good lay of the
land as to what surrounded it. Lt. Cullom ordered me to take my squad to one of the huts on
such and such perimeter directed the other
squads likewise. These wooden juts were about
ten-foot square with dirt floors. We were at least
out of the elements for sleeping and it was raining again. I volunteered to take the first shift to
guard again not being a hero, just trying to get
my turn over with. I stumbled through the dark
�Ray EricksonPage 11
toward what I supposed to be the enemy direction ’til I came to one of these long concrete
structures probably fifty yards from the hut. I
had no sooner gotten there than all hell broke
loose. Mortars came dropping and heavy mortars. Being a 60mm mortar man myself, I could
tell these were the 81mm mortars and the mortar
shells gave no advance warning. BANG! They
just hit. I retreated to the shelter of the concrete
bunkers and started to descend the steps that
were built into the opening. I got to the second
step and hit water, the third step more water, the
fourth step still more water. The fifth step put
me in water up to my hips and my head was still
sticking out of the opening where the shells were
dropping. I had two choices. I could go down
into the bunker and drown. I had no idea how
deep these bunkers were or I could stay above
and get my head blown off. I chose to stay above
the water drawing my head inside the bunker as
much as I could. It must have been dozens and
dozens of mortar shells they dropped and then,
of course, I knew what was going to follow. The
Krauts were going to send in their infantry to
follow up the mortar barrage. Suddenly the barrage stopped. What to do. I’m out there in the
dark and all alone. I can fight with my life and
probably get killed or I can raise up my hands
and surrender when they get here and maybe
stay alive. I was up to my hips in water and
completely unnerved by this horrible mortar barrage and all alone and don’t want to die alone. If
I’m going to die I thought it would be so much
better to die with some friends of mine than to
die alone in the dark foreign place. The war cannot go on much longer. I didn’t want to die so
close to the end so I ran back to the hut where
my squad was. To hell with the outpost. I have
never never in my life been so glad to see
friends again even though they were just as
scared as I had been.
I think then that we decided to fight back and in
a group there is much more strength. Alone you
are nothing. To solve our dilemma nothing happened and later on a company runner came
around to see if there were any casualties in the
accidental barrage of “H” Company. Their range
had been too short. I think that I forgot to mention that Wimpy had been wounded in the “F”
Company attack on us he being the only of that
escapade. It is amazing that “H” Company did
not kill or wound half of our platoon.
After that tough night we moved forward passing an American tank burned out with two
blackened bodies protruding from the hatch. After that I never envied the protection the tankers
had over us. We moved to a farmhouse that had
a patio in the back. It was about twenty feet
square with a wall around. My squad and __?__
squad was sitting there on the patio probably
talking about the price of oats when suddenly
heavy mortar started dropping in again. We hit
the ground behind the two-foot wall. Before we
could do that, one of the guys was hit. He got
what we called the million-dollar wound. That
was a wound that would not kill you but would
get you out of the front lines back into a safe
hospital. I have no idea of this guy's name and
the shrapnel hit him in the top of his upper leg,
lots of blood and pain but not any danger. We,
of course, congratulated him on his milliondollar wound and became very happy until the
order came for us to move on. We had not been
able to find a medic for him so we had to leave
him alone in this little place. We promised him
we would send back a medic. I remember he
was very frightened when we left. Moving on I
recall we went through a large city riding on
tanks just like the movies waving our rifles in
the air and shouting.
The sobering effect though was when we began
to see so many dead civilians lying upon the
sidewalk. Then you realize how horrible war
really is. The tanks dropped us off at the edge of
a large city. From there we were once again infantry, sliding our way through the mud. Need I
say it was again raining? Now we were going up
hill and down hill. These hills are damn near
straight up and down. We dragged ourselves up
and then hill literally slid down the other side.
This went on for about thirty minutes. Then we
came over the top of a steep hill to seen the panorama of the Ruhr River Valley before us. Along
the river were hundreds of factory buildings at
least the rubble of former buildings. High above
the valley was a very large mansion. We entered
the first one we came to. A beautiful room with
light colored carpeting or flooring, huge enough
for a baby grand piano in the corner. A well-
�Ray EricksonPage 12
dressed gentleman came walking down the
curved stairway very very nervous as he welcomed us into his house. Our boots and also our
uniforms were covered with mud that we tracked
into his house. Immediately David __?__ sat
down at the piano and started playing. This was
the first indication that we had a musician in our
midst. I hate to think about it but the only heat in
the place was a fireplace. We kept that going by
breaking up the high priced furniture in that
room. This area must have been the suburbia of
all the executives that worked at __?__ the largest factory in the Ruhr Valley.
The next morning as we were sitting on the large
deck overlooking the hills we heard the news
about FDR’s death. It really saddened all of us.
We knew that he had been the leader of our
country during the war and had not been able to
see its conclusion.
I thought I was about done but now a memory
jogged. This happened earlier in the day when I
told you about the American tankers and they’re
burned our tank. We had been advancing when
suddenly we were stopped by a machine gun
nest and everyone was pinned down. The lieutenant had me set up the mortar in the background of a two story-house and he would direct
my fire from there. He called down the range
and elevation directing et cetera and we fired off
three rounds. Then he gave me a new range and
we dropped three more shells into the barrel.
That did it right into the bomb crater the machine gun had been firing from.
Later on when we passed this crater I saw two
teenage dead boys lying amongst the wreckage
of the machine gun. Nothing I like to remember
but what else could I do. Many of my friends
could have been killed if my mortar shells did
not spot them. One of these days as we were
advancing through the rubble of bombed out
factories near Essen a news photographer took
my picture. Of course, I never saw the picture
but I thought it was very brave of him to be that
close to the front without having to be there.
Shortly thereafter I was walking through this
__?__ with Pop following me when bullets began zinging in around us. Pop shouted, “A sniper. I’ll get that bastard”. He took off running
toward the block of apartment buildings that was
still standing off to the right. He turned saying,
“I got the bastard” and I guess he did because
the bullets had stopped. Later on I was walking
some ahead of the rest of my squad and aviates
came in like mad. I ran to the nearest bomb pit
and jumped in only to land right next to a German soldier. Scared the hell out of me until I
realized he was dead. At this time we were approaching a famous Shrinehertz, a ball bearing
factory, one that the Air Force had bombed so
many times. However for about one-half mile
leading up to the factory the ground was covered
with bomb craters. The closer to the factory we
got the less were the bomb craters. The place
must have been surrounded with hundreds of
flak __?__. The air boys must have dropped
their bombs a little bit early and got the hell out
of there. In fact the factory was practically in
tact. Carrying on moving forward again __?__
just before dark toward another small village we
came to a creek about twenty feet wide and the
engineers were building a bridge over it. There
were three or four tanks sitting there waiting for
the bridge to be built so they could cross. This is
the place I saw that tough guy, Moran, lying on
the ground underneath the back of one of the
tank crying for somebody to help him. That
__?__ was the last I ever saw of him. The infantry doesn’t wait for bridges to be built. We waded the creek. It was only about knee deep.
Meanwhile the engineers had search lights going, machinery running full gear and 88 shells
were dropping all around them as they worked.
This was the first time I’d ever seen the job
these guys did. I thought it was tremendous. As I
waded, the creek one of them shouted down at
me, “Go get those aviates, Shorty, they’re getting on my nerves.” Continuing on to the village
I recall standing in the door of a house three or
four steps up from the street getting some protection from the artillery shell come in. Suddenly a shell hit between me and Bob Margas who
was in the street following me. We charged up
those steps at the same time knocking both of us
into the house. No damage done to me though.
Just knocked the wind out of me temporarily.
This must have been sometime in late April. The
days and nights seemed to blend all together to
me not __?__. Sometime around this area we
were encountering less and less resistance be-
�Ray EricksonPage 13
cause of masses surrendering. We had been
moving all day through rubble strewn factory
buildings huge bomb craters and late in the afternoon were stopped by machine gun fire. Lt.
Cullom had Makenral set up his mortar in a
large bomb crater in an effort to knock out the
machine gun placement. The rest of us along
with the riflemen found refuge in a huge sewer
tunnel near by. This must have been about twenty feet in diameter. It had concrete benches built
along the sides. The Germans must have used it
as a bomb shelter for the factory workers. It had
a ladder built along the wall to descend into. We
had only been in there a few minutes when an 88
shell smashed down real close. Engler came
scrambling down the ladder shouting “Mac’s
been hit. Mac’s been hit.” Engler was Mac’s
assistant gunner. I asked Engler if Mac was
coming in too and he said that Mac was unconscious. The Krauts were very good, too, at picking up the puff of smoke the mortar gives off
when it’s fired. It had only gotten off two or
three shots before the aviate got this direct hit on
them in the bomb crater. I said, “We’ve got to
get Mac in here before they drop some more
rounds in. Who's going to help me carry him
in?” I got some blank stares and down turned
eyes and I found it hard to believe. I said,
“Come on,” and headed for the ladder. Finally a
guy; named Ball, I can’t remember if it was Bob
or Don, got up and said, “Let’s go.” We got Mac
and lowered him into the sewer. He’d been hit
very badly in his lower back and although he
was unconscious he was moaning loudly so we
knew he was still alive. I found out later in 1990
that he had had to endure two years in an army
hospital and numerous operations before he regained the use of his legs. Ball was a BAR man
in the rifle platoon BAR standing for Browning
Automatic Rifle, one of our better weapons. I
got to know Ball much better after the war. He
and I were the only two men in the company to
play on the baseball team. We spent many an
hour riding in the jeep together as we were going
to battalion headquarters to practice and then
around the regiment playing games. We must
have been called out of the safe sewer because
the next thing I recall was seeing this “mad
Lieutenant” come charging back to us waving
his rifle over his head and yelling “Come on you
guys. Your buddies are pinned down out there.
You going to stay here and let them die?” Lieutenant must have been nicked on his forehead by
shrapnel so blood was running down his face
profusely. It was just like a scene out of a John
Wayne movie but it worked. He got the riflemen
going and we saw them shortly. This lieutenant
had gotten the battle field commission a few
months previously for bravery under fire. This
guy wasn’t afraid of anything. Bullets and artillery were just apple pie to him. He was in charge
of one of the rifle platoons. This must have happened sometime late in April because I know I
don’t remember too much of any more skirmishes, just advancing with less and less resistance.
You know only one bullet whizzes by your head,
only one artillery shell lands in your area; it is
still a war as far as you’re concerned. Looking
back at this story I can see where I mixed up the
dates __?__. The incidents I remember all
through. Aside from this, I am now writing this
after I had my reunion with these guys after forty-five year hiatus. Many of these stories I related here were remembered quite differently by
my former buddies. It was strange hearing two
or three of them come up with completely different interpretations of the same incident. It is a
common thing with all people from what I’ve
heard. There may have been many more incidents. We would all be similar. __?__ being
cold, tired and scared. It finally ended. But now
we’re going to __?__ in __?__ path of war.
Just a couple of [things] that came to mind while
lying awake in bed this Sunday morning, I recall, the time when somewhere, somehow we
ran into a bunch of automobiles along the way
and they were all in operating condition. There
were enough of them so that each squad had
their own vehicle. We were then the motorized
infantry of Company G. I can also recall feeling
some remorse when a couple of weeks later we
were forced to abandon them for some reason or
other. I think it was because we were heading
for a deep woods and cross a large creek.
Another time it was in the Ruhr Valley when we
entered a fairly large city. We had column of
tanks and we were told to climb aboard and then
roared through the city on the tanks waving our
rifles and acting like Hollywood soldiers going
into battle and the war was over.
�Ray EricksonPage 14
DON MARSTON: When did you get back
home?
RAY ERICKSON: I didn’t get back home ’til
April of ’46. or the end of May. It was eleven
months before I got back. You know they had
the point system. _____?_____ Just after the
German __?__ we were up on a mountain top
waiting to head for Japan and they started the
point system and our company clerk had been
with the company for months, years, he got
shipped out, went home. The captain said, “Does
anybody know how to type?” I said, “Oh, yeah”.
He made me company clerk. I could type. One
day, a different captain we had during, Capt.
Cassidy, we called him “Chicken Shit Cassidy”.
He’s dead now. Any how he came to me and
said, “Hey, Erick, we got our allotment of Silver
Stars and Bronze Stars. What do you want?”
“What do you mean, Captain? How come they
give out so many”? It turned out they had a proportion.
“I didn’t do anything to deserve a Silver Star or
Bronze Star. He said, “I’m writing you up for a
Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts”. I said,
“That wouldn’t be right.” He said,
“_____?_____”. I had to write it up. But I saw
from the First Sergeant refuse him. Then the
damn points came out and the Bronze Stars and
Silver Stars were worth five points. I could have
come home four or five months earlier. We
should have kept those darn things. I was so
damn mad at him. He had never been in combat
this Capt. Cassidy. He came with us after the
war ended. He came from Battalion Headquarters, I think. But there is just and allotment. Each
company is allotted “X” amount of those medals.
DON MARSTON: Anything else?
RAY ERICKSON: Oh, I did get my Bronze
Star two years ago. Because some General in his
wisdom ten or twelve years ago decided every
guy who had a combat infantryman’s badge deserved a Bronze Star. I found this out from one
of my meetings. So I wrote the Army and sent
me one back. It looks good to my grandchildren.
They say if you stayed on alive long enough to
earn the combat infantryman’s badge which thir-
ty days on line, then you deserve the Bronze
Star, too. That’s about it. We had a lot of fun
playing baseball.
DON MARSTON: Thank you Ray.
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
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An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Midway Village Museum
Publisher
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Midway Village Museum
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1993-2001
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Midway Village Museum
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English
Format
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pdf
Type
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Oral History
Oral History
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Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Don Marston
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Ray Erickson
Location
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Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
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Cassette Tape
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Title
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Ray Erickson
Date
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March 23, 1994
Description
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Born March 30, 1919, Ray Erickson joined the army in 1942.
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Midway Village Museum
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pdf
Type
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Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War II
WW2
-
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�����������
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
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Midway Village Museum
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Midway Village Museum
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1993-2001
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Midway Village Museum
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English
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pdf
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Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Charles Nelson
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Nels Gunnar Fransen
Location
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Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
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Nels Gunnar Fransen
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
June 1, 1994
Description
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Born February 10, 1924, Nels Gunnar Fransen joined the Air Force as a pilot. He died May 31, 2010.
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Midway Village Museum
Format
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pdf
Type
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Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War II
WW2
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25224/archive/files/fdb159b9c15205a99cb4e288203d0fd5.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=XQOuFFudqJoa%7E7-8btM-lJRLWDGm%7E85Zf80ErrKGKg85nbOzO1s2V1HzkpQjMuEoIakrOmGoHpzxKUAhBktXHQ4riUb7qhyC7D3joMfwvLziRUvKbKEArjwv3PsvCqsJsTT6touHJgGRhgfmIzEaz-nLC71ShpXOCNSN7TUeviXX6cIEPirRDpBY2P4Y6KDApGiiSTqedvC3n0gtpAHeiurgr5NlxV3d1tb%7E7ovNveSCsokNf1dNEa2r9q-R-bByHFDHuh9t7UOKVwTeMJ81FB8OhCDegOk6gDX6OQ4H7d69FzWMOS6fJ%7EZs0hPcyGd6tpK%7EMbLceqD7K4xHwQIulg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
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Maxine EckPage 1
Maxine ECK
Transcribed and Edited by Margaret Lofgren
Midway Village and Museum Center
6799 Guilford Road
Rockford, Illinois 61107
Telephone 815 397 9112
�Maxine EckPage 2
Maxine ECK
Today is March 16th, 1994. My name is Jim WILL.
I’m a volunteer with the Rockford Museum Center
participating in a state wide effort to collect oral
histories from Illinois citizens that participated in
events surrounding World War II. We are in the
home of Maxine ECK who lives at 1944 Wisteria
Road in Rockford, Illinois. Maxine participated in the
war effort as a civilian on the home front during
World War II. We are going to interview her now
about her experiences.
WILL: Maxine, could we start off by giving your
full name, date and place birth.
ECK: My name was Maxine Kittinger and I was
from Warsaw, Indiana, in the heart of the lake region,
northeastern section.
WILL: You were born there?
ECK: Born there on the 6th month, 12th day, 1919.
WILL: Can you give your parents full names?
ECK: Yes. My father was Jud H. Kittinger and my
mother was Maud.
WILL: Her maiden name?
ECK: Her name was Maud Young from Watseka,
Illinois, originally.
War, the War of 1812, the Indian War, the Civil War,
fighting on both sides, World War I and World War
II. We’ve been involved in all of those.
WILL: Okay. Thinking back in the 30s before
World War II, what was life like back then?
ECK: Well, in our little town, Midway Village here
in Rockford, Illinois, reminds me somewhat of it.
This is on a much smaller scale. Life was very
simple. No one locked their doors. We had a general
trust in one another. I grew up in a very happy go
lucky atmosphere, I would say.
WILL: This was in Indiana?
ECK: In Indiana, uh huh. And no one was privileged
with a lot of luxuries and yet we didn’t miss anything
because we had never had to give up anything.
WILL: When did you graduate from high school?
ECK: In 1937.
WILL: Did you have a job after graduation from
high school?
ECK: Well, right after I graduated, before I went
away to school, I wrote for a newspaper part time. I
was the society reporter there and in Warsaw a fill in
and sort of a helper.
WILL: Do you have any brothers or sisters?
ECK: Yes. I had one brother. He came out of World
War II as a Major in the Air Force.
WILL: Do you remember the beginning of the war?
Say, for instance, before the war, do you remember
anything reading about what Hitler was doing over in
Europe? What are your opinions of that?
WILL: What was his name?
ECK: His name was William M. Kittinger. He was in
charge of all the aircraft from the Rocky Mountains
to the Smokey Mountains in the southern half of the
United States in air traffic control.
WILL: Is there any special things about your family
that you care to mention? I mean did your like for
instance did your parents did they immigrate over
here or were they born here?
ECK: No. On both sides of our family we are from
the original 13 states and have been able to trace our
histories to their involvement with the Revolutionary
ECK: Yes. We always took the Indianapolis Star and
the Chicago Tribune at my house so we were pretty
much aware. I remember before that all came up, we
were reading about the Great Wall in China. The
fighting of Chinathe Japanese and the Chinese
always fighting and quarreling and then the wall was
going up but as the war was coming on, I was
involved from 1938 to 41 in nurses’ training in
Chicago. I went right on to Chicago to school.
WILL: Okay. So you had your high schoolyou
knew what you wanted to do.
�Maxine EckPage 3
ECK: Yes.
WILL: Now for nurses’ training in Chicago, was that
two years?
ECK: No. It was three years with a month off each.
Once a year you could have one month off so
actually it was more than a four year college course
St. Luke’s Hospital was affiliated with Northwestern
University. A lot of our professors were from
Northwestern.
WILL: All right. When you graduated in nursing,
what happened after that?
ECK: Well, I was hiredI did private duty nursing
and for a little while, while I waited to hear from
American Airlines, because I had been interviewed
by them, they told meI graduated in May 1941 and
they told me that I would have a letter by July 8 th as
to whether I would be hired or not on American. So I
did private duty nursing and that was very interesting
in Chicago.
WILL: So in July of 41 you heard from them?
ECK: Yes. I called my hotel where I was living and
asked if there was a letter in my mail box from
American Airlines and they said, “Yes, there is.” I
said, “Would you open it and read it to me?” And
they told me I was hired and I was going to start
school at LaGuardia Field in New York. Very shortly
after thatI think in August maybe.
WILL: So in August …
ECK: I went to school and flew over to New York to
study.
WILL: How did they train you?
ECK: Well, we were taught quite a few things. As it
mentioned here in this paper we had flight, routing
people, miscellaneous types of conveyance to put the
air traffic control. We had food service, aeronautics
meteorology, ticketing, company procedure and
helpful hints to make passengers comfortable and
happy. Then we went on some preview flights to
observe and I went to Boston and to Memphis,
Tennessee and different place as an observer on the
flight to begin with. I had quite a remarkable
experience on my first flight that I was to take alone
as a stewardess. Would you like to hear about that?
WILL: Sure.
ECK: Well, it was always necessary to be in the
operations department for an hour before any flight
that you were assigned to fly. The flight plan was
being drawn up by the pilots with the meteorologist. I
knew that I was going to be flying non-stop from
New York to Chicago on my first flight so I told my
parents in Indiana when I’d be coming over
approximately on my first flight which was a night
flight. In New York we waited our full hour and at
the last moment I was put on the second section
which was to leave five minutes after the flight that I
was to be on. So we took off and the first flight went
out and then my crew and I left five minutes later and
when we got into Chicago, we learned that my flight
that I would have had went down over Niagara Falls.
A flock of wild geese went through the fuselage of
the plane and brought it down over Niagara Falls. So
my father was standing at his friends in the
newspaper office in Warsaw, Indiana, by the ticker
tape and he saw, as they were standing there, that
American Airlines flight such and such has just gone
down over Niagara Falls. Our plane came on into
Chicago and we waited 2 ½ hours for that flight to
come in and it never did. I called my parents and told
them that we had made it.
WILL: That was probablywhatin August,
September, maybe?
ECK: August, I think. Maybe September of 1941. By
then it was interesting to me in the flights that I was
starting to take that there was the talk of the war in
Europe and of Hitler and all of England being very
apprehensive as to what was going to be happening
next. France and all of the European countries were
very much alerted to Hitler’s activities. I was really
alarmed to see that we were cautioned to already start
rationing sugar in August and September of 1941
where President Roosevelt was saying in his
“fireside” talks that he was having that the American
sons would never have to go on foreign soil. Now
this was all before Pearl Harbor and I have a feeling
they knew.
WILL: Gee. This rationing-- what type of rationing
was it?
ECK: For one thing we carried little packets of sugar
that were placed on each tray that was passed out to
each of the passengers. If they didn’t use the sugar
then I was to retrieve those little packets and they
were returned for further use on other flights. That
was one of the things.
�Maxine EckPage 4
WILL: Do you remember any other rationing? Did
rationing have a big effect on your way of life?
on fire. We couldn’t believe it. We knew we had
been attacked by the Japanese.
ECK: Rationing did–—although I didn’t have a car,
one of my roommates had a car and as we got
involved in the war then, of course, we had to have
the stamps to get gasoline so that we all tried to help
her to find some tickets because she drove back and
forth.
WILL: What were your thoughts?
ECK: Well, we very alarmed because to be drawn
into another was with the Japanese as well as trying
to anticipate what would happen to us with the
European War, it seemed like it was a tremendous
thing to face.
WILL: So it did cut back on people’s activities.
WILL: Scared.
ECK: Oh, yes, it did. I had an uncle who was so
honest that when I went home on a visit once during
the war, he had a few extra gasoline tickets, stamps
they were called, and so he was so honest that he
passed them to me under a book in the living room so
God wouldn’t see.
WILL: Now these planes you were trained in. You
had class, I guess you called them. What kind were
they?
ECK: They were DC3s. That was the best and only
plane well not the only but it was the best
commercial plane in flight. We heard of some DC2s
that had been used prior to when I came on the line.
I’m not sure how many they had but those were all
disposed of by the Ferry Command. The Ferry
Command took them over and they were flying those
DC2s and some DC3s to across what they called the
“hump” to China, going across Africa and these were
pilots and people who were flying the Ferry
Command. We had quite a few friends. They wore
uniforms, too, and they were mostly made upthe
pilots were made up of those who had been rejected
by the commercial airlines. They had adequate
number of hours but for some reason they were
rejected by the commercial airlines so
WILL: You remember Pearl Harbor Day.
ECK: Yes.
WILL: Where were you? What were your thoughts
on that?
ECK: Well I wasat that time I was based in
Detroit. That was my first base for the airline and we
had gone out to Birmingham, a little suburb north of
Detroit, to spend that Sunday afternoon and evening
with a friend. There were four of us there playing
bridge and just listening to the radio. By evening time
it was started to come across the radio that Pearl
Harbor had been bombed and that a great part of our
fleet had been destroyed and it was in flames, it was
ECK: Mm. Hm. We couldn’t believe it.
WILL: Where you were stationed at at any time were
there military camps or anything nearby that you had
any association with.
ECK: Yes. The blackouts began and soon after
WILL: How soon did the blackouts begin? Right
after Pearl Harbor?
ECK: I’m not quite sure any more except that I flew
on the first blackout flight over Chicago. It was a test
flight to see how successfully they could blackout
Chicago, a city of that size, you know. The flight was
chartered by city officials and Jack Brickhouse did
the reporting from the airplane to the ground as to
how it was going and at the signal the whole city
became black below us as we circled around it. The
air traffic had kept the planes away so that we could
circle the city and it was a total success except for
one filling station on the south side of Chicago for
some reason forgot and it spoiled the whole black out
because on the top of the building it had printing
indicating what city it was. Every city that we landed
inBuffalo, Newark, Boston, New York City, of
course, Washington, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
Cincinnati, Indianapolis, all had to be blacked out.
Our curtains were drawn on the plane before we
came into a field and no one was to even look out
those curtains. They stayed closed until the “all clear”
came when we took off again and was far enough
from the city, the captain announced that the curtains
could be opened.
WILL: This was just at night.
ECK: Uh. Huh. No all fields.
WILL: Daytime, too.
ECK: Mm. Hm. Then we went overwe were
carrying a lot of passengers who hadI’ve forgotten
�Maxine EckPage 5
what they called itvery high priorities to fly. It was
all military almost and then, well, people working
with the government officials and those working with
planes and everything that was being sent overseas.
Those people were the only ones. The higher priority
they held, they could bump people below them. So it
was very difficult to deal with people. You had to be
very cordial and nice and tell them that we’re
extremely sorry but they had to be removed at the
next landing because had a higher priority passenger
coming on board.
ECK: So whenever they commandeered one, I had to
take passengers to the hotel, feed them and then get
other transportation for them to get to their
destination.
WILL: Did most people understand, or not?
WILL: Just for a temporary amount of time and then
they returned them, I suppose
ECK: Well, I remember one perfume salesman who
was very belligerent and he fastened his seat belt and
said he refused to get off when he was to be removed.
WILL: This happened to you then.
ECK: Oh, many times.
WILL: What did the government do with the plane?
ECK: Well, they needed them for…
ECK: Well, as far as I remember, we didn’t see them
again. Maybe after the war they were returned. See a
lot of them were
WILL: High priority.
WILL: Maybe you just never flew in the same ones.
ECK: So he did. He leaned back in this seat and
strapped himself in and put his brief case and
everything on top of him and the __?__ agents had to
carry him off.
WILL: Oh, my gosh.
ECK: That was in Buffalo, New York.
WILL: Generally, most people understood, I
suppose.
ECK: Mm. Hm. It really made it very difficult for
them to go on but they had to get off. There wasn’t
any choice. The captain usually told me how many
I’d have to remove at the next stop.
WILL: Was American Airlines converted over, more
or less, towards helping military and the government,
outside of people bumping other people?
ECK: Well, no. Actually, all of our we remained a
commercial enterprise. However, if the government
calls for the number on the underside of the wing,
if they call it and we were in flight, wherever we
were in the United Statesif the government called
that plane serial number, then we had to land at the
first place on our route and we had to evacuate all the
passengers and turn it over to the government. They
took it from that point.
WILL: Oh, I see. They took the plane.
ECK: Well, see they were almost all painted, to
camouflage so they had toand they were
WILL: What colors?
ECK: They were usually painted a dark green or
camouflage like the colors of the country that they
were being sent to transport troopsdifferent colors.
WILL: I didn’t realize the commercial planes
ECK: Once when we were flying down over Tulsa,
Oklahomasee, the Air Force was training a lot of
their pilots very quickly. They hardly had very many
hours at all and they were turned over to fighter
planes and two Air Force planes collided right at the
tip of our wing right just over Tulsa, head-on and
burst into flame. Of course, we had to go down to the
field down there in Tulsa and the Federal Aeronautics
people came immediately to the area. You had to stay
at the field and it had to be closed until the
investigation was over.
WILL: That took quite a while?
ECK: It could take a day or two.
WILL: How about any memories of War Bond
drives.
ECK: I know we were all buying them every time we
got a chance and enough money saved up.
�Maxine EckPage 6
WILL: Did most people you know support these
fundraisers?
whole month at the Allerton which was a lovely hotel
out near the Water Tower Place, $40 a month.
ECK: Yes. We’d always go to the bank every time
we had enough money, like $18.50 I think was the
cheapest one, whenever we had saved up that much
money. See, salaries were much lower then.
WILL: Talking about the stamps, I can remember the
stamps and the coupon books but I remember these
little round cardboard tokens. What were they for?
WILL: Can I ask you how much you made?
ECK: Yes. As a stewardess and an RN I made $125
a month and when we were out on a flight, they
bought whatever meals were required away. We were
allowed, I think, .35 for breakfast, .50 for lunch and
$1.00, I believe, for dinner. Now this was going to
New York City, and all over. Some girls even
ECK: I’ve forgotten.
WILL: Little red cardboard
ECK: I don’t believe I remember what we had those
for.
WILL: I’ll have to ask my mother sometime.
ECK: Yes.
WILL: Probably was a lot of that, too.
ECK: Yes. And $125 a month and that gradually
raised a little bit.
WILL: Do you remember any victory gardens? Any
people have victory gardens that you knew of?
ECK: Yes. They had those in my hometown.
WILL: Did they seem to benefit people?
ECK: Well, I really wasn’t around enough to know
how they benefited.
WILL: You weren’t on the ground long enough. As
far as your friends and family, how did they react to
all these restrictions of rationing, victory gardens, to
fun raisers and so forth?
ECK: Sugar was very short and food stamps were
required for everything so there was not nearly as
much meat as we’d had heretofore for families. Meat
was shortvery severely shortin shortage and
sugar I remember and canning had become rather
hard. We always had a lot of fruit canned at our
house and with the limited amount
WILL: You did more of that then.
ECK: Mm. Hm. Butter was very difficult and I know
I went at least a year or so without getting any fresh
fruit and I know in a lot of the hotels where I ate, I
was sure we were eating horse meat. It just didn’t
taste like steak. It had a sweet taste to it, you know.
The Sherman HotelI lived in the Allerton Hotel on
the near north side in Chicago and my rent for the
WILL: During the warAfter the war started in 41,
did your interest increase or decrease in what was
going on? Were you
ECK: Well, we were very involved. I was very
involved with all of the areas of the army, navy, air
force, Marines, C-Bees and all of them. A lot of the
underground, French underground people, traveled
with us. Colonels, generals, their aides and we were
picking them up mostly at the coast line of
Washington D. C. or New York. I have flew to Fort
Worth and Dallas and taking them to all these
different fields, you know, as they were coming in
from being abroad and coming back or being shipped
out. The paratroopers, as I looked at my notes, were a
wild bunch of young men who felt that they had to
live for the moment, actually, because they weren’t
sure where they’d be landing and they really were a
bunch of kids who just thought there was no
tomorrow and they really lived it up.
WILL: When things weren’t going so well for the
United States in the early part of the war, especially
in the Pacific, did you ever fear the Japanese would
bomb the U. S. mainland?
ECK: Well, I think we were always aware of that and
we heard about the Japanese who had come to
California to live who were being put in the private
camps, you know, rather a concentration type of
camp. You know one thing I remember that Eleanor
Roosevelt traveled with me twice on my flights and
her son, James, had just married a nurse, too, and
although I heard that she didn’t approve of the
marriage, they were on my flight, too, a very
beautiful girl. And EleanorI also sat on a flight
between Chicago, a night flight, and Washington D.
�Maxine EckPage 7
C., with Steven Early who was the Secretary of State
and visited with him quite a bit.
WILL: Did you talk with Eleanor?
ECK: Oh, yes. And Mayor LaGuardia traveled with
me, too, and everybody was pretty much concerned
withThere were lots of people who were involved
in the war scene then and Eleanor was making
speeches here and there and she was writing a
column in the newspaper, too. Another colorful
person who was flying wasof course, there were
lots of senators, ambassadors and Congress people
and Frank Lloyd Wright who had designed a lot of
homes especially up here in Wisconsin and had done
building homes all over. He and I visited on one
flight to Washington D. C. Sat with him. Saw Jimmy
Doolittle several times down in the airport in
Indianapolis as we came in, Jimmy was out to greet
the flight.
WILL: Didn’t have to borrow a plane for his raid on
Tokyo, did he?
ECK: I’ve kind of got away from your question you
asked at that time.
WILL: Let’s see. Where were we? Oh, when things
weren’t going well for the United States. You
mentioned the Japanese out on the west coast. What
were your thoughts on that? Do you think they
deserved it?
ECK: Well, actually, we just knew that there were so
many things happening in the country and then with
everyone telling these stories as they came back or
when they were going. I was particularly interested in
a couple of peoplefellowsyoung men who were
involved with the French Underground and who
managed to survive and there were others from other
parts of the world who managed to survive and they
would tell me these tales that just were unbelievable.
WILL: These friends, did you keep contact with
them?
ECK: No. I didn’t. All this was happening in a very;
short period of time. You just see them, you’d meet
them, you’d talk and they were gone forever. There
were a lot of fellows, you know, when girls are
young, the fellows are interested and there were a lot
of Air Force people and people in theofficers,
young lieutenants and captains would leave me
presents at the different airports. I think theyone
lieutenant left me six pairs of hose at the Washington
airport and they __?__ service gave them to me.
WILL: These were nylons?
ECK: Uh. Huh. They had a way of getting things.
Now one wanted to send me a yellow monkey and I
said, “I have no place in the hotel to keep it” but they
just wanted to do things.
WILL: Was it real?
ECK: Uh, huh. A real one. I don’t know. Everyone
was sort of living like you must do it today, you may
not have tomorrow. And then I, of course, was
interested in the big jazz bands that came and went
and got to know a lot of them in Chicago. The
singersBillie Holiday was singing in there and
Frankie Trumbauer was with Bing Crosby’s brother
at the Blackhawk. I’ve forgotten what that Crosby’s
name was.
WILL: Bob?
ECK: Bob Crosby. Yeah. He was at the Blackhawk
and we’d go to hear the bands all over town and
everyone was in uniform, you know.
WILL: Now you mentioned all the east coast towns.
Did you fly much out on the west coast?
ECK: No. I flewsee since I had requested Chicago
as my home base so I could get to Indiana once in a
while, I flew to Washington, D. C., quite a lot by way
of Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Elkins, Huntington.
Elkins was one of our stops on some of the flights
and then some of them were non-stop to Washington
and that’s where I met a lotI got to visitI was
invited to visit the National Press Club. Senator
Kefauver invited me to the House for breakfast
several different times but I never got there. I never
went.
WILL: Getting back to these black outsair raid
drills. Can you explain more on these aside the one
over Chicagothe first one?
ECK: We hadwe came in for ato land on a night
flight in New York City and as we were coming
indue to weatherwe were stacked up 18 deep
and we were on the top and then you could descend
1000 feet to come into the city, when each one made
their approach to the field, then we’d all lower 1000
feet. When we finally got inwe had come from
Chicago and you had enough gas to return to your
point of origin so we circled for a long time over
New York City. Finally had our chance to come in
and it was the black out then and we had to sit on the
�Maxine EckPage 8
run way there in New York City at the end of the run
way for over two hours until
WILL: Were they nerve wracking coming in without
lights?
ECK: We did come down with our lights. That
reminds me. We lost our lights over Cincinnati one
night. All of that electrical unit went out and we were
circling up over Cincinnati for quite a while and
TWA sent a plane up to find us. It was like hunting in
a bowl of vegetable soup and we came following on
its
landing
lights.
The
blackoutsHenry
CabotHenry Luce and his wife were on a flight
with me one night andHenry Luce was the editor
of the Time Magazine at that time.
WILL: Yah. His wife was the
ECK: What was she?
WILL: I forgot, too.
ECK: We’ll think of it. Henry kept peeking through
the curtains and we had to caution him not to do that.
He wanted to see what was going on outside on all
the fields with the planes.
WILL: I suppose you had a lot of people want to do
that.
ECK: Another thing that we had to do wasevery
landing during the war, we had topeople had to get
off during the time that we were on the ground and I
had to search the whole plane up and down for
bombs.
WILL: You had to or a member of the crew
ECK: I had to. Of course, the crew had to search the
cabin or I mean the cockpit and check it out but I had
to go through the whole cabin and look underneath
the seats. They told us they would be probably in the
form of a fountain pen. So that’s mostly what we
were looking for.
WILL: You never did find it.
ECK: I never did.
WILL: Gladly.
ECK: There are so many things, you know, after 50
years, that I’ve forgotten but I do remember that.
WILL: How aboutyou mentioned Eleanor
Roosevelt. How about Franklin Roosevelt? What
were your opinions of the President and some of the
other, your friends and family members. Did you
think he was doing a good job?
ECK: No. His fireside talks or chats, I’m not sure
which he called them the he had, I think every
Sunday night it was through the fall preceding Pearl
Harbor and on through a good part of the war, he was
reassuring people all the time, you know, and he
would quote that he was in constant touch with the
world leaders, Winston Churchill and he __?__ but
we were also hearing the rumors that was
disillusioning to young people, such as I was. I was
an idealist, that Franklin had his mistress, you know,
and when Eleanor came on board, I felt very kindly
toward her and had compassion toward her because
she was a very refined lovely educated woman, you
know. Once Eleanor was coming up the ramp and she
slipped and fell. She had all her books she was
carrying. She always had six or eight books with her,
you know, and she tried to read them all at once.
Franklin RooseveltI think we had hopes that he
was a good leader through all of this because our
country was in such a dangerous position. Being from
Indiana, we were all members of the GOP and having
always been a Republican, you know, I had my
qualms.
WILL: In general, I guess most people supported
him.
ECK: I think we had no choice. We depended on him
to see us through.
WILL: You didn’t change presidents in the middle
of
ECK: And he wasn’t well as you know. Later on
some of the things he signed our country
WILL: He must have kept that kind of quiet, too.
ECK: He was, of course, in a wheel chair and he was
bundled up and wheeled around every place he went,
you know. He was, of course, before the war, you
know, he was doing much more than they are doing
today with the CCC Camps and his getting the people
who had nothing to do at least occupied, you know.
The WPAI feel that I admired him for at least
putting them to some kind of work making them feel
useful.
WILL: Finding jobs for them
�Maxine EckPage 9
ECK: Mm. Hm.
WILL: Did you follow the progress of the war
through newspapers, movies, or magazines.
ECK: Mm. Hm. Many of them got those fungus
infections in their ears, you know.
WILL: Did you meet your husband during the
warafter the war?
ECK: Yes, we did.
ECK: Mm. Hm. During the war.
WILL: What were your sourcesradio
WILL: Was he a passenger?
ECK: Lots of people involved with putting out the
news, you know. Many people who wrote. I had an
opportunity to have a Cardinal come on aboard one
day. That was quite a thrill. Right in the middle of the
war. I’m not sure where he was bound for but he, a
Cardinal as I learned, you may probably know, wore
red entirely, a red cap, a red cape and we had to learn
how to adjust that. We had to know all of the titles
for nobility. Your Royal Highness. My roommate had
the Duke and Duchess of Windsor who was the king
who had abdicated and married Wally Simpson. And
then, you know, another interesting thing, too, was if
a seeing eye dog was to come on board, this
reservation was made ahead of time and food was
prepared especially for him and a special seat for his
master and you never went near the dog. I would then
take his food to his master.
WILL: That’s interesting. You never think about
things like that.
ECK: I know. We just had such a variety.
WILL: You mentioned your brother was in the Air
Force. Did you have any other close acquaintances
that were in the service?
ECK: Many. All my friends were involved with the
WILL: Do you keep in contact with them today?
ECK: Many got killed during the war. One of my
best friends went down in the Coral Sea. It was an
Air Force bomber. The whole crew was lost. Another
of my very best friends was flying as a navigator out
of England bombing Europe and came home with a
Purple Heart and many medals. My husband was
involved with the Navy in the South Pacific. He was
based in the Admiralty Islands in the New Hebrides.
There was so little action down in the New Hebrides
Islands that they just prayed for something to happen,
you know.
WILL: Getting bored down there.
ECK: Yes. He got on in Cincinnati. He was stationed
at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station. We got
married during the war and my father told me that I
should wait but we got married thinking there’s no
tomorrow and he was gone within two to three
weeks. I was sent out on a flight and I only saw him
twice before he was shipped to the South Pacific.
Never saw him again for another year. He was the
only one at that particular time to be flown home
from Guam to go to midshipmen’s school at RPI in
Troy, New York, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
He went to become a midshipman at that school and
that’s how he looked when I first met him.
WILL: What were his duties?
ECK: He was in the medical corps. He was a
pharmacist.
WILL: He was a pharmacist. That’s what I am.
ECK: Really.
WILL: Yes.
ECK: Well, that’s interesting.
WILL: I’m a pharmacist at the hospital. So after the
war, how long did you Your husband was away for
a year. You hadn’t seen him for a year, you said. Did
he come home after the war or before the war ended?
ECK: Well, I know I was coming home on May 5 th I
think it was. Well, anyway D-Day came along. He
had enough points for a discharge but there was some
technicality, they thought he might have to go out
again It turned out that he didn’t so he was finally
discharged late in 1945, I believe, after the war was
over but I didn’t see much of him.
WILL: To back up a little bit now, when were you
married?
ECK: I was not married until 1943. I was one of
three stewardesses in the whole United States, all
�Maxine EckPage 10
airlines, who could be married and still fly providing
our husband was overseas.
WILL: They allowed that?
ECK: Yes. So then I signed up to fly with American
Airlines overseas based in the Azores. I was fitted for
uniforms to start that work and I got word that my
husband was being flown home from Guam to RPI so
Troy, New York, where his f0ather was born. That
happened to be where they were sending him to RPI
to school so I quit and went up to Albany, New York,
and became a nurse in the Albany General Hospital
in the men’s surgery.
WILL: You quit the airlines?
ECK: Uh. Huh.
WILL: Oh. Okay. In 44?
ECK: 45. I decided not to go on with American
overseas.
WILL: So you never did leave the country as far as
American airplanes.
ECK: No. We just flew into Windsor just a hop
across from Detroit, landed there. Up until a half a
year before I quit flying, I’d been around the worlds
45 times in mileage.
WILL: You never flew in one.
ECK: Since I have flown in a lot of big equipment.
And they always take me around and show me the
equipment when I fly. And the crews are very nice to
me as an old lady. They always present me with a
bottle of champagne. The girls come up and give me
a bottle with a big pink bow on it or something on the
flights.
WILL: Do you remember any of your old friends
that worked with you?
ECK: Yes.
WILL: Do you keep in contact with any of them?
ECK: The girls that flyno, I think I’ve lost all of
them now. We were all too scattered but I have kept
in touch with all of my original campfire sisters and
there are 17 of us left. We were organized when we
were 11 years old and all scattered. We had our 62nd
anniversary last summer. We’ve been friends since
we were 10 and 11 years old and they’re all over the
United States so we all went to the whole thing
together.
WILL: Does American Airlines ever have reunions
for
WILL: All in the United States.
ECK: They have an organization called the Kiwi
Club for the stewardesses and the Kiwis, you know,
have had their wings clipped so they don’t fly.
ECK: All in the United States.
WILL: Oh, that’s why
WILL: Did you ever wish you’d gone along with
you husband, if possible, as a nurse?
ECK: I don’t belong to the Kiwi Club but I have had
correspondence from them. Some of the pilots
ECK: No. I really liked what I was doing. We flew
80 hours a month and they’re still flying 80 hours a
month, today, with the larger and faster equipment.
Then with the flights being slower, they took longer.
We hadon the longer flights, we were out two
days. Like Fort Worthone day, and back one day
and then we had two days off between trips. We
could still fly our 80 hours a month.
WILL: How fast did they fly?
WILL: Now the planes. It was always a DC3 or did
they
ECK: Well, yes. All of the commercial airlines were
using DC3s then. However, in the hangars, at many
of the fields we went aboard the bombers, the B25s,
B52 bombers.
ECK: We flew between 160 and 210 miles an hour, I
estimated. Of course, they’re much faster now. They
turn the planes around and return to their starting
point. They may go much much further in the same
day but we knew quite a few of the crews who were
flying with the Ferry Command and they’d bring us
souvenirs back from Africa and they would bring
back a lot of tales from China, too. The people were
so anxious to get out of China that they would hang
on to the plane when it was taking off even. They
overloaded those DC2s. They crowded as many as
they could on and there’s just a threat that they’d be
coming down, you know. They’d even hang onto the
plane to try to go with them, so badly they wanted to
�Maxine EckPage 11
get away from China. One branch of the service that I
always admired were the Seabees. You’ve heard of
those.
WILL: Engineering?
ECK: Yes. Who always went in ahead of the other
branches of the service and prepared the way and I
felt those were really brave people. Then the Green
Berets, we had them on board quite a bit. We had a
lot of officers from other countries flew with us, too,
so there wereI had a charm bracelet, a silver charm
bracelet at the time and there were many people
whogenerals, colonels would take the insignia off
their shoulder and leave it at the airport for me for my
bracelet.
WILL: Oh, my gosh.
ECK: So I have that locked up in the bank. I have a
lot of memories from flying.
all the way to Texas. We carried so many young boys
and so many people. One interesting thing, I was
down in Elkins, Virginia, and it’s set down in the
midst of a lot of high mountains all around it and one
day this big B25 bomber kept circling around that
field and slowly came in. It was a small short runway
to bring a B25 bomber in but it came down and
descended and we were all out watching. The
mechanics were out there, all passengers were out
there, everybody from the airport and air traffic was
watching from the control tower, you know. Out of
this big plane stepped this beautiful woman with gray
hair and real trim in her WACs uniform and she was
a colonel in the Air Force, herself. She proceeded to
climb up on that engine and started taking it down.
The mechanics were just impressed with a woman
who could take this engine down and repair it herself
and take off again.
WILL: The plane was in trouble?
ECK: Uh. Huh. And she brought it in.
WILL: Along with these notables, did they ever fly
any enemy prisoners? They probably sent them by
ship, I suppose.
ECK: I don’t remember that. I do remember FBI
people being with us and I remember a flight that was
way laid in the air. We were unable to land at a field
for some reasonI’ve forgottenwe had to circle a
long time. A fellow who was an inspector of
gambling joints all across the United States, the big
casinos, he got up in the front of the cabin and
entertained people with his sleight of hand card
tricks. His fingers were so fast and one of them that
really intrigued me was he would just point to a
passenger and have him call out a card and he could
just raise that up out of a deck so quickly. I mean
he’d just have them pick a card and he could raise it
up and I do not know how he did that to this day. He
could shuffle cards with one hand and he was just so
quick. One day I was flying going through St. Louis
down to Texas and Dizzy Dean was on board which
would interest people, maybe.
WILL: Boy, you met a lot of nifty people.
ECK: Dizzy Dean was very outgoing and flamboyant
and he’d sit on the arm of the passengers’ chairs and
visit with them, you know, up and down. Then
King’s Ranch, Mr. King, the original King Ranch of
the big land spread, you know, in Texas, he would fly
with us quite often and stand in the middle of the
aisle and read all the way. He was a very small man
and he’d stand there and read his paper or magazine
WILL: How about propaganda during the war. Ever
hear anything about what you might have thought
was propaganda? Maybe printed or on the radio or
anything like that.
ECK: I’m sureI remember Tokyo Rose. We were
very much aware of what she was doing. I think they
thought she was an American college graduate. We
would hear re-broadcasts of what she was feeding out
to the
WILL: It said that thesome people say that the war
years were ‘fun time’ years for the Americans on the
home front. Have you got an opinion on that?
ECK: Being a young person, myself, I had some
enjoyable times. After I married and my husband was
over seas, my activities were confined mostly to the
hotel where I lived and activities there but we didI
would saygo to hear all the big bands and then, of
course, we were terribly disappointed when Glen
Miller was killed in the service. You just sort of had
the feeling life was sort of put on hold, it was sort of
temporary, you know.
WILL: I had one vet tell me that after it was all over,
it was one of the saddest days of his life. He had a
purpose then and all of a sudden there was none.
ECK: I guess it depends on what you went on to do.
�Maxine EckPage 12
WILL: Now you were out of the flying on VE Day
in May of 44?
WILL: Yes, I’ve heard that.
ECK: It was so sad but I admired Dr. Greeley.
ECK: Yes. I was out flying then and I had the
WILL: You were still flying then.
ECK: When VE Day came along, I was on my way
to Indiana. I resigned from the hospital and was
going home to Indiana for awhile and my husband
still didn’t know whether he was going to be sent
back overseas or what he was going to do so we were
sort of up in the air about that. As far as flying was
concerned, I had been flying since I was a little girl
of four. Whenever any aircraft came to our little town
of Warsaw, my father let my brother and me go up on
any kind of aircraft so I’ve been in big open cockpit
planes, old biplanes, monoplanes, seaplanes, every
kind of plane there was and I knew that I was going
to fly. I knew when I was a little girl I was going to
fly when I got big enough and my brother,
apparently, too, because we’d run out whenever we’d
hear a plane over head.
WILL: So the only reason you went into nursing was
to get into flying.
WILL: How about the atom bomb, when they
dropped that? What was you opinion on that? What
did you think?
ECK: We knew how devastating that was. That was
a tremendous thing. All I could think of was the plane
that carried the fellow who let the bomb go. What a
terrible responsibility and how badly he’d feel
afterward forever all his life. I had a Japanese student
living here with me year before last who was telling
me all of how it was from their angle. I stillthat
was a terrible thing to have happen.
WILL: Did you feel that way at that time or do you
feel that way now?
ECK: I felt that it was a necessary thing that they had
to do, that they wouldn’t have done it. I heard a lot of
criticism from people in the Navy. Admiral
McArthur. There was a lot of criticism. There was
quite a lot of criticism of the Red Cross during the
war, too, from the service people. Some of the things
you ask me just sort of come back.
ECK: Yes.
WILL: And after flying, you had a career in nursing.
ECK: Well, then I raised my family. Then I’ve had a
couple more careers after I raised my family. I’ve
retired twice and I’ve got my third job.
WILL: Do you remember VE Day? What happened
VE Day? Where were you coming into Indiana?
ECK: I think I have the feeling it was sort of like the
4th of July. It was just so unbelievable that it had
finally come to an end. We really were still hearing
of many places in Europe and all over where they
didn’t know the war was over. There was still
fighting occurring here and there. My doctor from St.
Luke’s, a man we were all so proud of, was a fine
plastic surgeon. He volunteered to go to San
Francisco or San Diego, I’m not sure, I think it was
San Francisco, and to meet the troops coming back
and do all of the plastic repair work he could do. He
quit his big practice there in Chicago and went to
give his time to these fellows who had been so badly
disfigured. I was really thrilled about that. There
were about two thousand of them, we heard, who
refused to come home. They just couldn’t have their
families see them. They stayed out there on the
islands.
WILL: After the atom bomb came VJ Day. Do you
remember where you were then?
ECK: Well that was in August, I think. We were out
in Indiana, Warsaw, Indiana. My husband had come
there expectinghe had received his orders to go out
again. He was just waiting for the assignment. Then
somehow they contacted him or he contacted some
headquarters and found he had enough points to be
discharged so we went to Chicago to celebrate with
another couple who’d beenthis fellow, a friend of
ours, had been in, where was this last war fought?
WILL: The Gulf War?
ECK: Yah, the Gulf War.
WILL: Iran?
ECK: He’d been in Iran for five years, Iraq or Iran
for five years. He was in charge of the entertainment
there and he was stationed there all that time and so
they went to Chicago with us.
WILL: Did you do any celebrating?
�Maxine EckPage 13
ECK: Yah, we did that. We celebrated with them,
went to Chicago and then my husband went back to
Cincinnati to his original job in the pharmacy there. I
stayed in Indiana until we could find some place to
live. It was very hard to find a place to live and rent
was so hard to come by so we moved in with his
brother who had an apartment and then he moved
away and let us have his apartment. I think that’s how
we got it. My brother was discharged from the Air
Force, too, and he came home as a major in the Air
Force.
WILL: What was your job after the war? Did you
stay in nursing?
ECK: No. Then I became a housewife and raised my
family.
WILL: Okay. That’s one of the toughest jobs.
Looking back over the past fifty years, do you feel
that social changes that had begin developing during
the war years, in general, was it good for the people,
good for the nation, good for you and your
familiesover the fifty years, the changes.
ECK: You mean do we feel the 2nd World War was
worth it?
WILL: Well, no. Different changes as far as women
working
ECK: Well, I knew quite a few people during the war
who were working in the war plants and felt they
were doing their part. I think that women have
asserted themselves more as they did have an
opportunity to serve in World War II and were
proven to be useful in their jobs. I think women have
made progress through the years to prove to
themselves that they can do more things and I think
men are gradually becoming more acceptive [sic:
receptive] for the fact that they are capable people
holding jobs. I have seen jobs that were held by men
now being taken over by women, particularly in
broadcasting.
WILL: I think the major social change most women,
getting out from the house, out in the work field and
so forth.
ECK: Now they’re almost doing it too much. I think
they have been liberated to the point where they have
become irresponsible, in a way, to their families.
Although, to me, the most important assignment a
woman can ever have is to raise her children properly
and supervise them and to be there when she’s
needed and then do what she is capable of doing.
WILL: Well, I think that about winds it up. Is there
any last thought you might want to add.
ECK: No. I do think that that was one of the
highlights in my life to be able to be a part of the
(The tape ended here.)
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
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Midway Village Museum
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Midway Village Museum
Date
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1993-2001
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Midway Village Museum
Language
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English
Format
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pdf
Type
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Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Jim Will
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Maxine Eck
Location
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Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
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Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Maxine Eck
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
March 16, 1994
Description
An account of the resource
Born June 12, 1919, Maxine Eck served as an army Nurse from 1941 to 1944.
Rights
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Midway Village Museum
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pdf
Type
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Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War II
WW2
-
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PDF Text
Text
Max Rubin
Max Rubin
Quartermaster Corps in England
Transcribed by Lorraine Lightcap
For Midway Village and Museum Center
6799 Guilford Road
Rockford, Illinois 61107
Phone – 815 397 9112
Page 1
�Max Rubin
Page 2
Max Rubin
Hi. Today is March 15, 1994. My name is Jim
Will. I am a volunteer with the Midway Village
and Museum Center which is cooperating with
the State wide effort to collect oral histories
from Illinois persons who participated in the
event surrounding World War II. We are at the
home of Max Rubin who lives at 630 East State
Street in Rockford, Illinois. Mr. Rubin served in
a branch of the United States Armed Forces during World War II. We are going to interview
him right now about his experiences.
RUBIN: Our families there were other kids that
went to school. My brother and I were out of
school at the time. My brother went to work
with my father in business after he graduated
from high school. I graduated from high school
in 1925 and in 1926 I enrolled in Lake Forest
College and was there for one semester. Then
after that I tried [anything] I could think of and
finally in 1941, I opened up a package liquor
store and ran that until the time that I went into
the service in October of 1943.
WILL: Max, can you give us your full name,
place and date of birth?
WILL: You mentioned that you got married
RUBIN: Got married in November of 1942.
RUBIN: Max, no middle initial, Rubin. Born
November 2, 1907, in Rockford, Illinois, Saint
Anthony Hospital.
WILL: What was your wife’s name?
RUBIN: Julie.
WILL: Would you like to give us the names of
your parents?
WILL: Maiden name?
RUBIN: My dad’s name is Henry and my
Mother’s name is Doris.
RUBIN: Julie Fletcher.
WILL: Do you have any brothers or sisters?
WILL: Did you have any thoughts about what
Hitler was doing over in the old country before
the United States got involved?
RUBIN: I have one brother, Isadore, and there
were 4 sisters, Esther, Tammy, Goldie and Edna.
The only surviving sister is Goldie.
WILL: Your brother is still alive?
RUBIN: Brother is still alive.
WILL: Are there any special details or events
that you would like to tell us about your family?
RUBIN: It was just a case of reading, listening.
You could make your own ideas of what the
__?__ situation when the war was in its infancy
and becoming worse as time went on. Same way
with the Japanese War, we had no control of that
but we were drawn into it.
WILL: Do you remember Pearl Harbor Day?
RUBIN: Yes.
RUBIN: Well, my father and mother and my
older sister came from the old country, Poland,
Warsaw. They came to the United States. My
father started into making a living in the scrap
business until he passed away. That was his endeavor.
WILL: What was life like during or just before
the war in the ’30’s for your family?
WILL: What were you doing when you heard
about it?
RUBIN: I was in the tavern business then in
1941.
WILL: I mean on that particular day.
RUBIN: It was
�Max Rubin
Page 3
WILL: Do you remember or not?
WILL: Do you remember the number of __?__.
RUBIN: No.
RUBIN: I don’t remember that.
WILL: What was your reaction of the Japanese
bombing of Pearl Harbor?
WILL: How old were you when you were
drafted?
RUBIN: Well, the old adage: If you kill an
American soldier, you’re into kill somebody
who killed them. That’s the start of big conflicts.
RUBIN: 36.
WILL: What events led you into military service? I mean you mentioned you were drafted.
RUBIN: Well, 38 was the limit at that time.
Then they lowered it after that.
RUBIN: Drafted. I was given a pre-induction
physical because I had trouble with my eyes. I
was given a pre-induction physical. Went to
Chicago, passed with flying colors and I came
back and waited until I was actually drafted.
WILL: Okay. Do you remember your basic
training?
WILL: That’s pretty old for
RUBIN: Yes, but
WILL: Any special memories?
WILL: You mentioned you were drafted in October
RUBIN: October 1943. Short 6 months.
WILL: Where did you go from here when you
were drafted?
RUBIN: Yes, when we got on the rifle range,
Christmas time, and snowing and freezing. The
day I started to shoot at the target. I’d never had
a rifle, firearm or B-B gun in my life. When I
got through that course, I got a medal for the
record shooting record.
RUBIN: I went from here to Camp Grant and
from Camp Grant I was designated to go to
quartermaster in Virginia.
WILL: Sharp shooters?
WILL: Okay. You had a physical induction and
test there in Camp Grant?
WILL: Now what were you trained to be, I
mean basically.
RUBIN: All my basic was in
RUBIN: Basically, I was qualified for salvage
collection that was a part of the training at the
camp. But I wound up being a clerk. I don’t remember the classification but that’s where I
wound up.
WILL: In Virginia?
RUBIN: Quartermaster was in Virginia, Richmond, Virginia. Spent 6 months there and was
transferred to __?__.
RUBIN: Yeah. I still have it.
WILL: What did you think of the training? Was
it adequate or was it boring?
WILL: Do you know the name of your unit?
RUBIN: Was the Quartermasters’ unit that I
was drilling to and training for Class 2 and Class
4 commodities, which was with food and clothing. After we met the basic training there, I was
transferred overseas.
RUBIN: No such thing as boring. You have 18
and 20 year old to do the direction. I’m a 36year old and the captain of the companyjust
had to do the best you can. With that attitude,
that’s what I did on a field fact trip and such.
The officer in charge knew that I wouldn’t be
�Max Rubin
the first in line to be up there. I got back all
right. You learn to shoot, you learn to exercise
and all that.
Page 4
WILL: Now, you say you don’t remember your
unit number or anything?
RUBIN: No, I don’t.
WILL: What other training camps did you attend?
WILL: Were you transferred at all?
RUBIN: That was the only one.
RUBIN: No.
WILL: That was the only one?
WILL: You stayed with the same unit? Okay.
Where did you go after completing basic training?
RUBIN: __?__
WILL: Did you get any leaves or passes, furloughs or anything at that time?
RUBIN: No, you could have a leave but you
had to have 6 weeks of basic training or you
couldn’t leave the camp. All you had was the
PX, recreation and movies. That was it. I guess
after 6 weeks, if you were married your wife
was allowed to come in and could be over night
off the bases. But that was it.
RUBIN: We were sent to Port of Embarkation.
That way you were put into a unit that was composed of various sections and from there we
went overseas to England.
WILL: By ship?
RUBIN: Yes, by ship.
WILL: Do you remember about when this was?
WILL: You don’t recall where you were stationed.
RUBIN: 1944, I would guess. Yes. We were in
an area waiting for D-Day.
RUBIN: In Richmond.
WILL: Now, you were over in England before
D-Day?
WILL: That’s Richmond, Virginia?
RUBIN: Yes.
RUBIN: Yes.
WILL: Okay. Did you meet special friends
while you were in training that you remember?
RUBIN: Yes, I met a GI whose name was Edwin Rush. He was the president of State Farm
Mutual Insurance of Bloomington, Illinois. He
was right behind me when we were inducted.
We went through our basic training. He could
have gotten out. All he had to do was say the
right word but he went along with all the rest of
us and he never asked for special privileges. I
thought very much of him. I met him when I
came back from the service. He has now passed
on but he was one of the finest individuals that
you ever wanted to meet. He went through just
like he was another number.
WILL: What happened? Was there lot of waiting?
RUBIN: They had a definite date set for invasion but they had to postpone it 24 hours because of the weather conditions. We were stationed in England and after the invasion we were
relocated and went over to France.
WILL: Where at in Englandremember that?
RUBIN: Well, I don’t recall these times.
WILL: So when you went to France, was it
immediately after D-Day.
RUBIN: Shortly after they had gotten further
into France so we could establish stations and
that. Then we went over to France. We left Eng-
�Max Rubin
land and got into Rennes, France. That was the
headquarters for quartermasters at that time.
WILL: Well, okay.
RUBIN: Stayed there during the duration as a
quartermaster.
WILL: You said that your duties were food and
clothing?
RUBIN: Yes, in deed. In the army called it
Class 2 and Class 4 that is food and clothing of
the Army. We supplied different units, Italians,
armies and requisition orders.
WILL: Okay. You kind of outfitted them.
RUBIN: Yes. They came in for requisition
units. We supplied them.
Page 5
gave anything away free as far as food was concerned, if they had a van and they were out in
the field away from any city, if there were units
there, they would give them the donuts and coffee free.
WILL: Rather than letting it spoil?
RUBIN: No. That was part of Red Cross operations. If they were run out into the field outside
of being in the city, they would give donuts and
coffee. Anyway, I’m saying if GIs came into the
city, as the English say “Queue up” in line to get
and pay for donuts and coffee. I never will forget that.
WILL: Why do you say that they did that? Do
you have any idea?
RUBIN: Part of the routine. When I came back
home, if the Red Cross ever came to me for
money, I showed them where the door was.
WILL: Okay. That was what you were assigned
to do.
WILL: You never saw any combat?
RUBIN: Right.
RUBIN: No.
WILL: What did you think of the United States
war efforts up to this time?
WILL: Did you ever see any casualties?
RUBIN: We had no way of hearing what was
going on other than the briefing that which we
wouldn’t get first hand any how. But one thing
that I still remember in being over there is that I
disliked the Red Cross.
RUBIN: No. We had a hospital in the city that I
was at but we never got to visit them at all. They
came back from the front lines and that, I don’t
know.
WILL: Never had to supply any of the hospitals
with food?
WILL: Would you like to explain that?
RUBIN: I’ll give you details on that. When we
__?__ arrived in warehouses that included food
and clothing we also stored the items that were
necessary to the Red Cross such as donut flour,
sugar, coffee and those things, we supplied
them. They would come inthe ladies, would
try saying that was their job. I don’t ridicule
them a bit. They would come in with requisition
orders we would supply them. We would take
their goods back down town. Whenever any of
the GIs from wherever they came, come into a
city, they had to pay for donuts and coffee. To
this day I disliked that way of doing it but that
was such. The only time that the Red Cross ever
RUBIN: Yes. The hospital in our area, they
drew their rations from us.
WILL: Okay.
RUBIN: We had them all
WILL: What did you think? What is you opinion of the medical treatment at that time?
RUBIN: The medical treatment was excellent.
WILL: Excellent.
�Max Rubin
RUBIN: I had a Supply Sergeant that would
come in for whatever they needed for the hospital with a requisition order we gave them for
whatever they needed. At one particular time my
back was killing me. It justwell, I don’t know
what it was. The Supply Sergeant from the hospital brought an officer in with him one day and
I explained the situation to him. The officer got
me a pass from my company to go into the hospital and give me heat treatments on my back.
They would take a barrel, a round 65- gallon
drum and cut it in half, so we had a half-barrel.
(Will interrupts. Inaudible)
Page 6
WILL: __?__ anybody or just to Patton?
RUBIN: No, just were, these were designated
for his 1st Army. He had an order to go from his
location to advance 75 miles.
WILL: In what direction?
RUBIN: I never forgot that.
RUBIN: I don’t know. We were to follow with
our food and clothing to that point. The trucks
were loaded and on their way when they get to
the point 75 miles away from the starting point,
‘blood and guts’ didn’t stop there. He saw clear
sailing so he went on further. So beyond the 75
mile point, that’s where they cut him down.
__?__ he didn’t want the boots. It was mud galore, but the General said, “No, you take an extra
pair to his men. Take an extra pair of socks, and
put them inside of your shirt that when the boots
and socks you are wearing gets wet, take those
out and put the dry ones in. You had time for
that but you haven’t had time to put your boots
on.
WILL: What was your attitude? What did you
think of the war up to that point?
WILL: Your unit never really supplied Patton
with anything else?
RUBIN: You don’t do any thinking. When you
put a uniform on, the government does the thinking for you.
RUBIN: Oh yes. We advanced food and clothing to him.
RUBIN: That was up and down. They put tubes
in itelectric tubesfastened and put that up
over my back, turned the electricity on and the
heat came to my back. Did that a couple times
and my back was just as good as I was 12 years
old.
WILL: High tech treatment! (Laughter).
WILL: I mean, were you aware that the United
States and Allies were winning the war?
RUBIN: We wouldn’t know anything. The only
thing that I can remember of that war in France
was the “Battle of the Bulge”.
WILL: Oh, okay. What do you remember of
that?
RUBIN: We had in our possession, I say we I
mean the warehouse had in our possession 4 car
loads of __?__ designated for this ‘blood and
guts’ General.
WILL: Patton?
RUBIN: Patton. We got TW, which is a telegram “don’t issue the boots.”
WILL: Okay. I thought
RUBIN: Our designated location was to furnish
him wherever they were going into Germany,
Belgium but when he went in beyond the point
of 75 miles, that’s where the Bulge took place
and that’s where we lost a lot of boys.
WILL: Where were you at that time?
RUBIN: __?__, France. That was the only location I had after I got located from coming into
England and into France.
WILL: They didn’t ship you around?
RUBIN: Yes, after we had captured Germanyafter the war was completed in Germany
we went from Rennes, France, our unit went
down to Marseilles, France. That’s the southern
�Max Rubin
tip of France on the Mediterranean. We were
earmarked to go to CBI (China, Burma, India)
with all our gear, all our records, everything was
at the point of debarkation, Marseilles, ready to
go on to ships to go to CBI and the war was
ended in CBI.
WILL: Okay.
RUBIN: So we went back to Marseilles into a
gathering area on our way
WILL: When you were over there, did you get
any letters from home?
RUBIN: Oh, yes.
WILL: From your wife probably, your sisters
and parents.
RUBIN: Yes. I got them occasionally.
WILL: How often?
RUBIN: That is hard to say.
WILL: Once a month, once a week?
RUBIN: I’d say once a month, I was getting
letters from the family. Friends of mine would
write. Of course I always had time to write because I was not one to go to the PXs and all that
for drinking purposes and that sort of thing. I
wasthat didn’t bother me.
WILL: How often did you write?
RUBIN: About twice a week.
WILL: How about as far as packages? Did you
get many packages?
RUBIN: No, I wrote and told as far as the food
was concerned we had the best there was and we
were supplying kitchens, we were supplying
units and food. It was there. If you didn’t like it
you didn’t take it. We had no problem there.
WILL: Did the others guys in your unit, did
they write a lot or no? Did they get a lot of mail?
Page 7
RUBIN: The unit I was in went over from the
states. It was made of youngsters from the south,
Tennessee and Kentuckyas they were named
‘hillbillies’. Well, we didn’t call them hillbillies
because they knew how to shoot a rifle from the
hip (Laughter) and anytime you can do that, I
said, “You’re a good man”. I had one occasion
while I was in this unit in France. There was a
hanging to be held in that area.
WILL: A hanging?
RUBIN: Yeah. A colored GI as the terminology
is, ‘shacked up’ with a French white. The French
man happened to come home unexpectedly and
the GI shot the Frenchman. Well, the law of the
Army is if there is such a thing __?__ trial and if
he is convicted he is hung in that area. Well the
head of the company that I was with picked me
out as one to witness the hanging. They’d take
this GI and he is dressed in an American uniform but they took all the buttons off. The United States buttons and they take him up on a scaffoldwe were standing at attentionput a hood
over his head and a noose around his neck. The
old Buck Sergeant standing there with a knife to
cut the cord from __?__. Well, we had to stand
at attention until an officer goes out and around
to check the scaffolding to check and see if the
boy is dead. That was the worst part of what I
saw over there.
WILL: Hm.
RUBIN: Yes, it is, but that’s routine and that’s
one of the things I did see. There were areas in
England over there before we got to the invasion
that you wouldn’t believe it until you saw it. If
you had an American colored company stationed
in an area, you had a white boys stationed in
another area, you never let the two units go into
the city the same night. Alternate.
WILL: A lot of segregation?
RUBIN: Most of the units there that would
drive up or handle food or was transporting was
the colored boys. They managed to do real well.
WILL: How many were there over there?
�Max Rubin
RUBIN: I don’t know.
WILL: Okay. How about any friends outside of
that one fellow you mentioned earlier.
RUBIN: Well, he wentRuss went to a different area. I never saw him after that. In basic
training, I never had any close friends in the unit
I was with because most of them were from
Kentucky, Tennessee, youngsters 18 – 19 – 20,
always got into problems.
WILL: Did you feel like, you weremight be
the ‘old man’ of the unit?
RUBIN: Could be. I was 38 years old when I
went over, 20 years difference, you know. I
didn’t associate with them. I kept my place.
WILL: Okay. When you were over there, were
you aware of any concentration camps.
RUBIN: Oh, sure.
WILL: Their stories or hear
RUBIN: Well, we had German prisoners that
were doing our basic work. In our area, the officers would go to the camps and bring these
prisoners for physical packaging and physical
work in the warehouses. They __?__ and move
cars and once in a while you’d get to be the older fellow, a German prisoner. We would ask
them and he’d talk very understandable English.
I said to one in one particular instance, “How
come you, at your age, you had to work in uniform. He said, “That is how we lived. That’s
how you do it.”
WILL: I suppose they put the Germans who
could speak a little English on work detail probably so they could understand them.
RUBIN: We had one guy that was a cook with
the enlisted outfit that was as good a cook as we
ever had in the army. But the officers’ mess
found out about him and they wanted him. We
wouldn’t transfer him. We had fellows that were
__?__. I said, “How long do you have in basic
training in order to qualify with a rank. He said,
Page 8
“Five years.” __?__ Electrician or carpenterthen they went through basic training.
RUBIN: But the funny part of all of this, and it
still goes on in Rennes, France, if they captured
the camp that had Russian soldiers in as prisoners held by the Germans, we would take them
and get an area for them to eat, sleep and did
nothing. They would be given rations. We would
give them uniforms, GI uniforms but they took
the buttons off. The brass buttons.
WILL: Kind of a non-existent, noncombatant
RUBIN: The only other thing we put a red star
on a hat that he wore, showing he was a Russian.
They could get a job __?__. We used to issue
them new shoes. They’d go outyou see they
were actually an army in quarantine.
WILL: United States liberated them?
RUBIN: United States did a pretty good job. We
gave them a new pair of shoes to him and he
sold them tonight. Next day he got new shoes
from us. Requisition order. They always allowed
that thing. These were Russians held by the
Germans.
WILL: Now did you talk to any of them?
RUBIN: Not so much the Russians. The German prisoners talked to us because they too were
doing the work. Not the Russians. The Russians
were just as free as we were. We had to feed
them and all that. I’m talking about the Russian
prisoners who became the duty boy service of
whatever work they did. They had a good life
same as these prisoners down here in Rockford.
They went out on work release __?__.
WILL: Out on the farms and stuff
RUBIN: They did pretty good.
WILL: Okay. How did you guys celebrate holidays, like say the 4th of July, Christmas, Thanksgiving?
�Max Rubin
RUBIN: Christmas and Thanksgiving you had
the same thing. December 25th we had whatever
the food was plus entertainment. Every once in a
while they would bring over some __?__ service. (Will interrupts).
Page 9
there to home. We got home on the Billy Mitchell.
WILL: That’s the name of the ship?
RUBIN: Yeah.
WILL: USO?
RUBIN: USO was areas here in the States that
you went to for shows and things like that. But
over there, like turkey, came Thanksgiving,
Christmas we had regular menus, the boys had
back home.
WILL: Well, okay. Where did you arrive in the
United States?
RUBIN: I don’t remember.
WILL: Were you discharged right away?
WILL: How did you supply the feed to the front
lines for their meals?
RUBIN: Oh, no. You were discharged at the
station where you went in.
RUBIN: We didn’t supply front lines.
RUBIN: They sent us back to Camp Sheridan.
WILL: You didn’t. You supplied as they requisitioned.
WILL: In Chicago? Did you have a rank when
you were over there?
RUBIN: Right.
RUBIN: Not interested. I didn’t want it. You’re
just a private and when you get discharged, you
get discharged with one rank higher then when
you went in. They wanted to send me to OCS
and I didn’t want to because of mytested me
and I was qualified as for that but didn’t want
any part of it.
WILL: You didn’t (Rubin interrupts).
RUBIN: Whether there were units in the areaMotor vehicles, we supplied those units.
The infantry we supplied them. Just like I say,
when Patton went forward 75 miles that’s where
we brought the food up to 75 miles but no
“blood and guts”, he was over in the
WILL: Okay. You weren’t injured or anything?
RUBIN: No.
WILL: Didn’t come back for his meals.
RUBIN: But then to top it off, old “blood and
guts” got killed in an automobile accidentin a
jeep.
WILL: Yeah. That’s right. When and how did
you return to the United States?
RUBIN: Well, being down in Marseilles when
the war was over with I supposed they start making out the rules and regulations for who was
going home when. While I was still in Marseilles, they start making up the units of the older guys, the longest ones in and sent us back to
the northern part of France. Then we went from
WILL: Okay. Do you remember VE Day? Were
you over there in Europe yet, VE Day?
RUBIN: What day was that?
WILL: That was May 8th, I think 1945, I think.
RUBIN: I was still over there. I was discharged
__?__ but I don’t remember the day, VE Day.
WILL: When you heard the war in Europe was
over?
RUBIN: That’s when they started figuring out
how to get us home.
�Max Rubin
WILL: Okay. So you were over in France yet.
What did you think of that day? What were your
thoughts?
RUBIN: How far away am I from being home.
(Laughter)
WILL: How to get home fast. How about VJ
Day in Japan? First of all, did you have any
thoughts of being shipped over in the Pacific?
RUBIN: Mostly we were alreadywhen the
war in Germany was over with and we had all
our company units, books and everything, in
Marseilles. Japan was still going on. We were,
our books and everything, were on ship in the
Mediterranean waiting for us, the personnel, to
come in when the war in Japan was ended.
WILL: Do you remember the day?
RUBIN: No, I don’t.
WILL: Any celebrating going on?
RUBIN: Well, we were ready to go over there
to help them finish, I guess. And then we were
ready to go over there to help them finish it. But
they finished it before we had a chance to get on
the boat. We came back to the northern Part of
France segregated to go on home. I left from
France to go home. I didn’t go over to England.
Page 10
RUBIN: __?__ once again someplace else in the
next 50 years from that date on, I don’t believe
humanity would allow that. They would put a
stop to that.
WILL: Let’s hope so. Is there anything that
stands out that was your most difficult thing that
you had to do while you were in the service?
RUBIN: When you put a uniform on and you
got a corporal giving you orders and a 2nd Lieutenant gives the corporal the orders, there is only
one thing to do
WILL: Hear the end result.
RUBIN: Do it or else. It doesn’t make any difference if the kid is 18 years old telling a 39 year
old fellow what to do you aren’t going to go up
and slap in the face or talk back to him. You
might as well make up your mind to do the best
you can and
WILL: That was difficult. What was your most
successful accomplishment?
RUBIN: Getting home, of course.
WILL: Getting it over with.
RUBIN: Yes.
RUBIN: Right this minute, I don’t.
WILL: If you had to do it over again would you
have done the same or gone to some other unit
or branch or, if the war started all over again and
you were drafted?
WILL: Did you have any opinion of it when
you first
RUBIN: I’d do just like the President of the
United Statesdraft dodger.
RUBIN: In the first place, if you don’t know
anything about it, what it’s supposed to do or
what it could do or that sort of thing, you got to
wait and see the answer. The answer wasn’t to
explicit.
WILL: Oh. Okay. You’d head out.
WILL: Now do you remember the atom bomb?
WILL: As youhave you had any thoughts
about the atom bomb in the past 50 years up to
the present? If it did the job what it was intended
to do or
RUBIN: You betcha. If we can have a President
of these United States today that was a draft
dodger and I’m just as good as he is, I want to be
non-drafted, too. Anyone ever tells me now l
you __?__ calling a draft dodger, I don’t care
what he’s doing, he’s doing right, wrong or indifferent, if he’s the Commander in Chief, he’s a
draft dodger.
�Max Rubin
WILL: Do you remember when and where you
were officially discharged?
RUBIN: Yes, October 1945, in Fort Sheridan,
Chicago, Illinois.
WILL: Now you never had any disabilities in
the service?
RUBIN: No.
WILL: Do you have any opinions about the
Veterans’ Administration?
RUBIN: I think they’re doing wrong to some
parts of the Veterans’ Administration Operations. It just doesn’t make sense, in my own personal view; I still get examination of my eyes at
the Veterans’ Administration Hospital. I know a
few years back, I had some tests for detached
retina in the left eye. They sent me to Madison
to the Veterans’ Administration Hospital and
they corrected it. They did what they had to do.
Since they’ve given me once year schedule to
come in and check and see how it ishow the
eyes are doing. Here within the last 3 years or so
I got a notice that I’m not allowed to be examined at the Veterans’ Administration Hospital
because that my injury was not inflicted during
the war. I didn’t go for that. So now I go, finally
found somebody that sends me up to the Veterans’ Administration Hospital in North Chicago.
As a matter of fact I was there last week for an
exam of my right eye. I do get examined for
that, but other than that they’re not doing well
for theVeterans’ Administration is not doing
well for some of the boys. I asked them here
recently about my teeth. I have a partial bridge
and part of the bridge fell out. I asked if the Veterans’ Administration in North Chicago if they
could put that which fell outif they could put
it back. He says, “The law is if it isn’t service
connected, you don’t get any help.” When you
do go to that hospital in Chicago, I want to tell
you, see some real sights there. Now recently I
see that they’re going to put the Veterans’ Administration Hospital here out on East State
Street instead of going to the medical center in
Parkview. So I thought to myself, what are you
taking, you’re going to have to put an office up
or building. They said, “It’s more convenient for
Page 11
transportation,” which it is, than going out to the
medical facility. If you got to put a building up,
you’ve got to spend some money. Why don’t
you spend some money on the people instead of
the building?
WILL: Have a couple of more here. How did
your family support you while you were over
there outside of the __?__. Were they in favor of
you going in?
RUBIN: Jim, you don’t make decisions. They
make the decisions. If you once get a number,
you’re it.
WILL: And as far as your family were they
RUBIN: My wife? I don’t remember the dollars
and cents that was allocated to me. They took, I
think, now I’m just guessing, they sent $50 a
month to her and the balancethere were deductions for my laundry and
WILL: How did she feel about you being over
there?
RUBIN: She had no choice. She didn’t make the
decision.
WILL: Okay.
RUBIN: Jim, I gave the liquor store upI
didn’t want my wife to run a liquor store. I gave
it away.
WILL: You didn’t sell it?
RUBIN: When I say “gave it away”, I paid $200
for a liquor license. In those days during the war
they were getting 20 and 30 thousand dollars for
a liquor license.
WILL: Oh my gosh.
RUBIN: The guy that I sold it to was another
4F’er. He’s still here. But the point is, my wife
was a very good secretary. Before I married her
she was a top secretary. She managed to work
while I was away. If I remember correctly, I got
$50 per month pay. I sent her that. I got like I
�Max Rubin
say for the necessities. Of course, I never drank.
I never smoked. As a big shot, I’d get ice cream.
That was it.
Page 12
WILL: How about the red box express? Were
you involved in that? Know anything about it?
WILL: One other thing, since you were in the
quartermasters, was there a lot of black marketing going on? You’d hear stories about it but
you can’t stop it.
RUBIN: No.
RUBIN: One boy in particular in our unit was
going into townthat was in Rennes, France.
He’s walking into town and ran across a vehicle
that an officer was driving and it conked out on
him. The officer says to the GI, “Would you stay
here, there’s something wrong with my car. I’ll
send mechanics down to get it fixed.” So the GI
waited a couple, 3 or 4 hours there. Then it registered. So he went out. It was a vehiclehe
went out in the back of it and lifted up the back.
It was loaded with coffee. The officer was going
to make a killing. Well, see every vehicle that’s
in operation, there is __?__ in the operations,
company operations. It’s got a name on the front
of the bumper. So he took the name down
andI don’t know how long after that he found
out where that officer was located. He got permission to see the Commanding Officer. He
walked in to him, explained the situation and
says, “Now I’ve got $50,000 dollars in French
francs. I want it sent to my mother.”
RUBIN: We use to see some funny things going
on there. We had a 2nd Lieutenant in our company. He was as useless as that machine out there.
He was drunk all the time. We all covered over
for him because he was a good boy. But I neverany time a guy got drunk and I have to work
with him __?__ never had any use for him. (interruption by Will) because I’m not a drinker so
I don’t care whetherWe had a unit, Jim, that
was one of the best in France. The captain was
the head of the company. He used to get excellent reports and he didn’t do shit. He sat around
on a table and did the planning and delivery and
the supplying and that was it.
WILL: I think we’ve covered about everything.
Have you got any other comments or thoughts?
WILL: And got the credit?
RUBIN: Yes, sir. I would like to have him work
for me when I got out. That’s how good he was.
WILL: Do you remember any of your comrades
while in the service?
(Some of this is inaudible)
RUBIN: No, never.
WILL: Hear stories like that?
WILL: Like you said, they were all younger.
RUBIN: Oh sure. We hadthere would be endless amount getting back to supplying the area
that would supply food and clothing. We always
__?__ and we loaded them up and they’d take
off for where they were going to go __?__ distribution at night. Always traveled at night. The
biggest sight you ever got was as big as the machinery. Every once in a while one unit would
unit would break down and it would stop. We
had an officer in front and an officer in the back
of the jeep. The rest were in convoys. They
would mark the guy off as having problems.
Three or 4 days later he would come back to the
unit but he couldn't find his truck, you know
with all its equipment.
RUBIN: Well, you never made friends if you
didn’t go to socialswhether or not like you
didn’t go to the PX, sit down and drink beer.
Whatever they did well, that was all right with
me. I wasn’t __?__, I’m just like that the same
way now. You know, I’ve been a widower for
35 years. I have no family. Two months after my
wife passed away at the young age of 50, I
bought a business down here and I worked 24,
not 24worked 7 days a week, kept my nose to
the grind stone. I had no time to horse around.
WILL: What did you do right after the war,
when you got out?
�Max Rubin
RUBIN: Came back home and my late dad and
my brother were in the lumber business.
WILL: Okay.
RUBIN: We couldn’t get good lumber after the
war. So the various areas in the country, Uncle
Sam started selling camp buildings.
WILL: Barracks and stuff, right?
RUBIN: Right. Well, when my dad first started
in the lumber business he was getting his lumber, used lumber, from Chicago. But you
couldn’t get new lumber during the war. That
was all allocated. But when I got home, my
daughter was still working for him. It was easy
going, explained to me the measurements, what
various size was, and that sort of thing. She
learned how much lumber is in a 2 x 4s (Will
interrupts). So when Uncle Sam started selling
these buildings, the first place they went for sale
and I went along with them was these pre-fab
buildings down outside of Peoria. They had a
camp down there, Camp Ellis. We had 3 sectionswas a floor to make a 20 x 20 building,
floors. They had 2 sections each. They had a
bunch of them for sale down there and we put an
order in for a billion(?) and we got them. We
loaded them up down there. We didn’t have any
trouble where the sides were or anything and the
roofs were all in sections.
Page 13
RUBIN: So after that then we started building
the buildings. Well, I went from Camp McCoy
up in Wisconsin. I bought some buildings there
and go up there and hire guys and take them
down, board for board and I was selling them. If
you wanted to buy a building and you paid me to
take it down the lumber was yours. So I got sort
of athe biggest job I had was in 1956. I bought
12 buildings, standing warehouses, theaters, and
barracks __?__ at an old base in Orlando, Florida. My little wife was still alive. We were there
for six months. I had 200 million feet of lumber
to take down.
WILL: You got it done in 6 months. We’re sorry you had quite a struggle
RUBIN: Since then my wife passed away, of
course, __?__, my wife passed away and I
bought a junk yard down there on Kishwaukee
Street. It was an old junk yard, the owner had
passed away and had run it for years and years
and years but he had the only machine in Rockford that can compress a bale of carbide.
WILL: Okay.
WILL: They had torn them all down.
RUBIN: He had a crane operator, just a little
guy. In the first place take off the motor, take
off the __?__, take off the __?__ set it down in
the machine and squeeze half of it. Then he’d
lift it back up again __?__ so when we got all
through with it you had carbide in a package of
24” by 24” by 4 feet high.
RUBIN: They separated them by sections.
WILL: Compressed!
WILL: By sections?
RUBIN: I bought that company from the bank
who were the trustees for the estate. There right
behind me __?__ that I bought __?__.
RUBIN: Right. So that’s the beginning of the
deal of learning how to measure feet in 20 x 20
building or a warehouse or in the hospital. They
were small __?__ and that sort of thing. So we
learned how to measure the lumber and put bids
in. We were getting them. The ones that came
from Camp Ellis, those sectional ones, we had
no problem selling those. Anybody that wanted
a 20 x 20 house why __?__.prefabricated.
WILL: Right.
WILL: What was the name of it?
RUBIN: Rubin’s Junk Yard on Kishwaukee
Street. Just before you get to Broadway. The
Illinois Central was just up the street and
Broadway starts here __?__. So it’s down here
near to McDermaid Roofing Company.
WILL: Okay. So that’s the general area.
�Max Rubin
RUBIN: Yeah. I bought it, ran it for 6 years.
The Behr’s couldn’t run it. They had all kinds of
money but they didn’t have the machine. That
kept me going 6 days a week. I forgot roughly. I
had about 10 guys working when I first took the
place over. I chopped it down to 3 men besides
my brother-in-law. I wasn’t doing a big volume
business but I was making a dollar because if
you keep your overhead down, I don’t care what
kind of a business you got, if you keep your
overhead down, you’re bound to make a buck. If
you spend it by overhead you __?__. Well that
really ranI sold that place and then went on
my own. I’d been a follower government’s real
estate surplus.
WILL: Oh. Okay.
RUBIN: I bought a place in Winston-Salem.
Now this is after 1975, I bought an outfit down
in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, which is as
large as Barber Colman is down in South Rockford, if you know that area, used to be in the
middle of the citymillion dollars of equipment
there. Bought it and sold it to a guy that was
supposed to be a good manager. He was going to
check the place out and that sort of thing so
WILL: __?__
RUBIN: Yeah, I bought I started that, the bank
down there offered me three quarters of a million dollars for it. I wanted a million and a quarter because I had $3,000,000 evaluation with the
equipment in there. Anyhow this guy that I got
in there was going to rent out sections of it to
various companies and that sort of thing. Then it
got to a point where the payments were still be
made by me and he formed himself a closed
company. He signed me out of it instead ofI
was going to sell it to him and he was going to
take possession and transfer the title. I never
signed papers to that agreement and he claimed
he had a company that was going to buy it an
exclusive on it. So what he did, I signed the
agreement to sell it to a company. He in turn,
after I signed that, he took and scratched it out
Page 14
and put his name into it. He sent that to Uncle
Sam’s and Uncle Sam and Uncle Sam approved
it. I still have a case on that yet. Then I had a
lawyer in Chicago that was going to take the
case. He set it all up as a federal case and he set
it all up and it was put on the docket. It kept on
being stalled off and stalled off and stalled off so
I finally went to Chicago to the federal courts
there. I find out that the attorney that I had, had
just died.
WILL: Oh, my gosh.
RUBIN: He wasn’t disbarred on this particular
case of mine but he had been disbarred on something else. So now he had something going to
__?__ the case. You see, in the law if you don’t
start a law suit in a certain length of time then
WILL: (interrupts)
RUBIN: It all depends on what kind of case it
is. The statute of limitations, if you don’t start, it
is TSwe had already started it, it was on docket and its got a number and I’m working now to
get the case reopened. I’ve got a lawyer to handle it
WILL: Good for you. Do you have any more
comments?
RUBIN: Do you have any more questions?
WILL: Want to say goodbye?
RUBIN: So long, Jim. Nice to have met up with
you.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Midway Village Museum
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Midway Village Museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-2001
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Language
A language of the resource
English
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Jim Will
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Max Rubin
Location
The location of the interview
Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Max Rubin
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
15-Mar-94
Description
An account of the resource
Born November 2, 1907, Max Rubin was drafted October 1943 by the British Army as a clerk. Died August 4, 2002.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War 2
World War II
-
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87227bdb674a16da5278a4de83be6d4e
PDF Text
Text
Leroy W. Elfstrom
2316 24th Street
Rockford, Illinois 61108
Transcribed and Edited by Margaret Lofgren
Midway Village and Museum Center
6799 Guilford Road
Rockford, Illinois 61109
Telephone 815 397 9112
�Leroy W. Elfstrom
Today is January 24, 1994. My name is Charles
Nelson. I am a volunteer at Midway Village &
Museum Center which is cooperating with the
statewide effort in Rockford, Illinois to collect
oral histories from Illinois citizens that
participated in the momentous
events
surrounding World War II. We are in the office
of Midway Village & Museum Center and we are
talking to Mr. Leroy W. Elfstrom, 2312 20th
Street, Rockford, Illinois. Mr. Elfstrom served in
a branch of the United States Air Force during
World War II. We are interviewing him about his
experiences in that wary.
NELSON: What was like for you before the war
and especially during 1941?
NELSON: Leroy would you please start by
introducing yourself to us. Please give us your
full name, place and date of birth.
ELFSTROM: I went to school at Frederick
where we moved from Minneapolis when I was 5
years old. I moved from Frederick, a small
community, on a farm about 2 miles out of town.
Things
were
rather
tough
at
that
timedepression years. We fired a wood stove.
We pumped water outside for the cows. We
chopped our own wood, of course. Primitive
circumstances but we didn’t recognize it at the
time. But the school itself was great. I was able to
play football, was on the debate squad, a club,
played in the orchestra. I did these things that I
would not have been able to do had I been in a
larger school.
ELFSTROM: Okay. I’m Leroy W. Elfstrom. I
was born August 14, 1922 in Minneapolis,
Minnesota.
NELSON What thoughts did you have about the
war before the United States became directly
involved in the conflict?
NELSON Okay. I would like to have the names
of each of your parents.
ELFSTROM: Actually at that time I knew of the
warI was proceeding to Chicago at the time in
a car without a radio. I found out about it the next
day when I got into Chicago. Prior to that time
we didn't there were no daily papers where we
were. Radio received from Minneapolis and we
did listen to that. Of course, we knew there was a
war going on. We knew about Hitler. We knew
that these countries were having problems. But it
had not reached us until December 7th, ’41.
ELFSTROM: My father’s name was William
Carl Elfstrom. He was born in Sweden, came
over here when he was 17 years of age. My
mother was Gertrude Elfstrom and arrived here
when she was about 2 years of age.
NELSON Did you have any brothers of sisters?
ELFSTROM: I had 4 brothers and one sister.
The sister served in the armed forces.
NELSON: Are there any details about your
parents and/or your family that you would like to
give?
ELFSTROM: Well, they were hard working like
most parents of the time. Dad came over here by
himself. It was different for him to come over
without the language. Finding work to do but he
did. He raised his family without any help and he
did a fine job.
NELSON: How did you hear of the December
7th, 1941, bombing of Pearl Harbor by the
Japanese? If so, where were you and what were
you doing at the time? What was your reaction
and the response of those around you?
ELFSTROM: On December 7th I was in route to
Chicago. I was going to stay with an aunt and
work in the Chicago area. I graduated from high
school in May of ’41. I worked at local jobs
__?__ and fireplace builder, but when cold
weather came there was nothing to do. So I
decided to go to Chicago. I made a plan to __?__
was already in Chicago. Drove back with him in
�a car without a radio. We stopped at Madison
briefly. Nothing about the Pearl Harbor bombing.
We arrived in Chicago about 2 o’clock in the
morning when I found out about it from my aunt
who had a son in the service in California.
ELFSTROM: I joined the service __?__ in
1943.
NELSON: How old were you at that time?
ELFSTROM: I was 20 years old.
NELSON Had you formed any prior opinions or
developed any feelings about what was taking
place in Europe or Asia?
ELFSTROM: I really hadn’t. There wasn’t
much talk about it in the school system. I really
didn’t know a lot about what was going on then.
NELSON Do you recall reading newspaper
accounts of German aggression in Europe?
ELFSTROM: I didn’t read a lot. As I mentioned
we had no local daily paper. We received the
Inter-County Leader, which was a small paper
that had a few things on the editorial page but not
very much.
NELSON: What events led to entry in military
service? Were you already in service, drafted or
did you volunteer?
ELFSTROM: As I mentioned I came to Chicago
in December 7 the end of 1941 the beginning of
the war years. I was underage at the time but I
made a special trip back to Fredrick to get
recommendations from three people. So then I
tried to get into the cadet program.
NELSON Was you response to entering military
service influenced by family and friends attitudes
towards the war or threat to national security or
any other consideration?
NELSON: What happened after you were
inducted? Where were you sent?
ELFSTROM: I was inducted here in Rockford. I
happened to have a special girlfriend and I
moved to Rockford from Chicago. I was drafted
by the local draft board. I was sent down to St.
Petersburg,
Florida
for
basic
training
immediately and then later on had other training.
I don’t know if you want me to go into that at this
time.
NELSON: What were you trained to do?
ELFSTROM: I received general tests at Camp
Grant to look for something I could work at in
the service. I apparently did well in code tests
and memory work and that sort of thing and my
aptitude was sufficient so I went into the air
force. The funny part of it was, we were
interviewed by a panel of officers. Of course,
they asked they asked me my favorite actor and
one thing after another. Then they said do you
have any preference. I would like to get into the
Air Force. The gentleman told me he was a
colonel. He said, “You’ve got about as much
chance as a snow ball in hell.” Those were his
exact words.
NELSON: what did you think about the
training?
ELFSTROM: The next day after I arrived in
Chicago. I was on [79th Street East End Ave.] I
walked up to 79th Street and there were blocks of
people waiting to enlist in the service. There was
a loud speaker with “Let’s remember Pearl
Harbor” already and everybody was in a highly
patriotic mode. So it appears to me that the only
thing a healthy person could do is join the
service. That’s what I did.
ELFSTROM: I thought the training was good. I
went to radio school in Scott Field and I thought
that training was very good. It was pretty good
mostly by aptitude and if you did really well you
a 24-hour pas. So we all worked very hard at
code, theory. We had to build a transmitter and a
receiver, mount it in the airplane, take off and go
10 miles away and contact the ground station.
That was our graduation.
NELSON: What was the day of thatdo you
remember?
NELSON: Tell us about any other training
camps you attended.
�ELFSTROM: I further trained at Pensacola,
Florida, and gunnery school. I trained at Scott,
Camp __?__, Utah, advanced radio. Leaving
Camp __?__ in the Salt Lake City area there we
were assigned to a crew and I further trained, for
3 months, at Casper, Wyoming, while assigned to
a crew and flying practice missions Bomber B-24
(?) liberated crew.
NELSON: Did you ever have any leaves or
passes?
ELFSTROM: Please repeat.
NELSON: Did you have any leaves or passes
and how did you use them?
ELFSTROM: Any leaves or passesThe one
leave I remember was coming up from
Pensacola, Florida, in gunnery school and being
assigned to Salt Lake City, Utah, where we were
to have an assigned crew. We had 10 day leave
which they called at that time delay in route that
allowed me and my wife to become married on
January 7, 1944. I guess that’s that you would
call the only leave I had.
NELSON: Okay. Were there any other transfers
to other units? Please give the details.
ELFSTROM: No. I don’t really think I
transferred. I was assigned to a crew at Salt Lake
City and was trained at Casper, Wyoming. The
first pilot of our crew was okay but he didn’t was
to fly any more so he had himself a grounded.
We got another pilot, Ralph __?__, who we
trained again with for about 3 months and my
wife at that time came to Casper. We had a little
apartment there and at the end of that period we
went to Topeka, Kansas, and we were assigned as
an “X” crew that meant we didn’t have an
airplane to fly over. We went over on the Queen
Elizabeth at that time to England.
NELSON: Okay. When you were sent overseas,
how did you get there? You answered that
question. What were you assigned to do after you
arrived?
ELFSTROM: We arrived in England __?__
September 27th, of 1944. We were put out
__?__we went on a truck, for a while on a train;
got into [Tibinen] which is in the Norwich area
of England about 2 o’clock in the morning. Every
member of the people on the ground was up to
meet us. Of course, it was blackout. The crew the
group that day had gone to [Kassel] Germany and
only 2 airplanes came back from that group. The
rest of them were shot down25 in 10 minutes
over [Kassel]. The rest of them crashed on the
way back. Two finally survived. We got together
now. We’re going back this September.
NELSON: What group was that? What squadron
were you in?
ELFSTROM: I was in the 445th Bomber group.
I was in the 703rd Bomb Squadron which, at that
time, just prior to that, had been headed up by
Jimmy Stewart.
NELSON: Okay. What did you think of our
nation’s war effort up to this point?
ELFSTROM: A little hard to say. I know we
were putting a lot of effort into the war effort. I
knew people were very conscientious. They’d do
anything including dying for our country.
NELSON: If you did not immediately enter
combat zone, where did you enter into combat?
ELFSTROM: We entered combat almost
immediately. We had about a 3-day checkout,
flew a few practice missions around in England
but we started flying 35 missions. Think that was
in early October and continued on until April of
the following year.
NELSON: Do you remember what happened in
your first mission?
ELFSTROM: The first mission was what we
call a milk run. We saw no flack. We saw no
enemy fighters, but we saw a lot of puffy white
clouds below us that resembled cotton and it was
absolutely a milk run. We thought, oh boy, if it’s
all like this we’ve got it made.
NELSON: Can you tell us in order the
approximate member and type of casualties and
�how they occurred and how they were treated, if
you had only casualties?
since we disbanded. But others are very close and
I have kept in touch with them.
ELFSTROM: We had numerous casualties.
Sometimes we came back with casualties. More
likely the airplane was shut down and we had no
knowledge of what happened to them until they
were declared prisoners of war or had been
killed.
NELSON: During your combat duties did you
ever capture any enemy prisoners and if so please
describe the circumstances? This probably
doesn’t pertain to you.
NELSON: Did your mental attitude change as
combat continued?
ELFSTROM: I guess the longer we continued to
fly the more I thought that maybe, not well, and
perhaps not get back and I wrote letters to my
wife on that.
NELSON: Did you receive many letters and
packages from home?
ELFSTROM: I got a letter almost every day
from my wife. However, they were bunched up
and I received several at a time and nothing for
weeks at a time. But very few parcels. When they
did come, they either didn’t come at all or they
were badly malled.
NELSON: What did you receive?
ELFSTROM: All I got was some cookies,
mostly came in crumbs; some candy. Things like
that.
NELSON: Did most of the others men write and
receive letters?
ELFSTROM: It depended on the individual. I
went to the __?__ club almost every night and
wrote letters. Some of them didn’t write at all but
most of the, especially those that were married,
wrote home regularly, mostly every day.
NELSON: Did you forge close bonds of
friendship with many of your combat
companions?
ELFSTROM: I did with most of them. Our
crewwe still get together with most of the
crew. Some of them, I have never heard from
ELFSTROM: If you want me to respond, no.
We fly in an airplane and we hadwe went over,
completed our mission and came back. Except
perhaps for sometimes seeing bombs explode in
the towns and cities, I really didn’t see anybody
that [was] a captive.
NELSON: Prior to the end of the war, were you
aware of any civilian concentration camps
existed? If so please explain how you learned
about them. How much you knew at that time.
ELFSTROM: I really didn’t find out a lot about
concentration until I got back from service. I was
over there just a few months, made 35 missions
and really about the only information we get
came from the Stars and Stripes. So I didn’t
know much about that and I didn’t know about
concentration camps in Germany. I did, on the
day we came backwe came into an area where
there were German prisoners of war and of
course, Camp Grant here there were thousands of
German POWs. When I came back from the
service.
NELSON: What was the highlight occurrence of
your combat experience?
ELFSTROM: Well, I suppose for most of us,
the highlight experience is that date we __?__ off
the 34th mission and you had one to go after you
got back. We had ups and downs; sometimes we
literally dumped fairly well by dodging a target.
Other days we bombed the heck out of some
cornfields or woods. We always read about what
we did in the Stars and Stripes. There were
numerous little things and somebody having a
sister or brother whom had done well. Other
times pictures of the family as we sat around.
Sometimes little parties and I suppose they would
be the highlights although it was pretty drab
living conditions at that time.
�NELSON: What was your worst experience in
combat?
ELFSTROM: Probably my worst experience
was coming into the bomb group at night or early
morning and hearing that my good friend Allen
Brook from __?__-- was as close to anybody had
been in the __?__ -- and he was either killed or a
POW. I didn’t find out until a year later that he
was killed on that mission.
NELSON: Tell us what you and the other men
did to celebrate America’s traditional family
holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas.
ELFSTROM: Christmas, I remember, my first
Christmas down at __?__ field, Florida. We were
suppose to fall out in class A uniform. It was
raining and very cold and we wanted for dinner
close to our hour. They told us to put fatigues on
and go to the mess hall. We got over there
soaking wet. The meal, as I recall, was good.
Circumstances not so well.
NELSON: When and how did you return to the
United States after the war?
ELFSTROM: At the end of the war, after I
completed my 35 missions, we were assigned to
fly so many missions at that time. I completed
my 35 and then I was to be rotated back to the
United States and go into another state of
operation but which was the Pacific. I came back
on a hospital ship. That’s the war most of the Air
Force people came back. By the time I got
assigned to the hospital ship many of them were
flown over from prisoner of war camps. Our
prisonersat that time there was 135 people who
survived on egg nog, whiskey or brandy for 3 or
4 days. Finally they were given baby food. Their
stomachs were that bad from lack of food in
Germany at that time.
NELSON: What happened when you arrived in
the United States?
ELFSTROM: I was given charge of about 18
GIs, like myself from Camp __?__, New Jersey:
Chicago, Fort Sheridan that were to be processed
or released or whatever. I came back to Sheridan.
Those 18 I was in charge of, all but 6 managed to
get off the train somewhere. I still had the
records, which I turned in and they asked if you
wanted to file for any disability or any thing like
that or you could proceed directly home. Of
course, I chose to go back to Rockford.
NELSON: First tell us about your military rank
and your decorations, especially campaign
decoration.
ELFSTROM: I was a Tech Sergeant, which
means I had 5 stripes, radio operator mechanic,
gunner and over all handyman on the crew. That
means assisting the pilot with the black suits. We
got 10 hours of flying to learn how to land the
Liberator without the wheels upwithout the
wheels down. You were also first aid man and
had a few other duties because the radio operator
they have a gun position except in emergency.
NELSON: How
decorations?
about
you
campaign
ELFSTROM: Okay. I have the air medal with 7
clusters. I have the 3 campaign ribbons. I have
the, well, a __?__ which was awarded by the
French; got one from the Belgium government
but mostly air medals which was what awarded.
NELSON: Plus your good conduct medal.
ELFSTROM: Oh yeas. I did get it.
NELSON: How did you get along with the men
with whom you were the greatest contact?
ELFSTROM: I got along very well. I was kind
of in charge of the enlisted men and most of them
were very cooperative some of them were very
young. There was, however, usually on a crew,
we had one maverick and I had a maverick in our
crew who had to have very close supervision. We
did have some problems with him but mostly it
was a very new bonding experience
NELSON: Were there things you could have
done differently if you could do them again?
ELFSTROM: I really don’t know if I would
have done anything different. I did what they told
me to do pretty much. I didn’tof course, flying
�was a voluntary job. You didn’t have to fly. We
had some in our air group who decided not to fly
before they went over and they were given jobs
in the PX or something and other places I had
thought at that time because we had lost __?__
training crews the night before, our pilot decided
not to fly anymore. He was reassigned and we
got a new pilot. I didn't sleep all that night. As
you know I had married and possibly a child on
the way. But I stayed with the crew. I figured this
was my job and whatever it was, was what I had
to do.
NELSON: What was the most difficult thing you
had to do during you period of military service?
ELFSTROM: I guess the most difficult thing I
had to do was my wife was expecting a child and
I had to wait to find out that everything was all
right. It was a cesarean operation which was not
really at that timeit was not completely
perfected and I didn’t hear about it until several
days later. I suppose at this time, waiting at that
time to find out if everything was okay.
NELSON: Was there any one thing that stood
out as the most successful achievement in the
military service? Completing 35 missions.
ELFSTROM: Well, completing the 35 missions
and again we had some real successes where we
had done a great job. We had 100 missions
__?__, other achievements and awards for doing
a good job. We had our citations for the group
and 2nd Air Division itself having done a good
job. I suppose that would be the highlight.
NELSON: How did you learn of VE Day and
what was your reaction to it?
ELFSTROM: We, as I mentioned, I was
assigned to a hospital ship and we had departed.
All of a sudden we heard that the war was over,
just after we got aboard. But shortly after we left,
I think the next night, with all these explosions, I
thought by golly war was over or not. Well it was
determined that it was over and apparently they
had found a submarine that had gotten too close
and dumping that we called “ash cans” on that
submarine.
NELSON: How did you learn of VJ Day and
what was your reaction to that?
ELFSTROM: We had had a 5 week, what the
called a recuperation furlough on Miami Beach,
Florida, and when I got down there, I think I’m a
little bit ahead of myself, sorry abut that.
NELSON: That’s okay.
ELFSTROM: We went down there and I was
assigned to a B-29 Squadron in the Dakotas, I
forget whether it was North or South Dakota. But
in the meantime they split up the battle Germans
into 3 battle zones which each give me an
additional 5 points. My air medals gave me 5
points each, so I ended up with 80 points. I
decided the men married with a child, doesn’t
have to risk (?) anymore. Besides you’ve been
out with 2 __?__ missions and they said the war
in the Pacific would be like the European war
would be like a picnic compared to what the
other stuff you’d go through in Japan.
NELSON: What was your opinion of the use of
the atomic bomb when it was used against
Japanese civilians in August, 1945?
ELFSTROM: There again I would have
misgivings. I __?__ when we were over Europe
over Germany and dropping a bombs. Of course,
bombs were not perfected as they would be today
and we knew a lot of civilians were killed.
Nobody likes to see civilians killed. I’veI
talked to German pilots on more than one
occasion. They were in the service for the same
reason we were; they were young men. They
entered the service as 20,000 fighter pilots. They
ended up with 2000. At least people didn’t know
what it was they were told what to do and I guess
for the same reason that we were in.
NELSON: Has your opinion changed much in
the past 50 years?
ELFSTROM: I have 2 sons in Vietnam in the
combat area and at first I thought this is what
should be done. I was in a debate squad up here
at Blackhawk, we got together once a wee and
we were given choices, whether pro against
Vietnam. I always accepted the pros side. But as
�it extended more and more and more I began to
have a very sour attitude toward the Vietnam
War. I could still __?__ almost unpatriotic at the
time and then I wasn’t sure. That’s the way it
ended.
NELSON: When and where
discharged from the service?
were
you
ELFSTROM: Yes, I got back from the
European Theater for 5 weeks of recuperation
and then spent some time in Miami and as I
reflect, it was the end of July or August I got my
discharge.
NELSON: Do you have a disability rating or
pension?
ELFSTROM: I have no disability rating and I
receive no pension.
NELSON: Do you have any opinions about our
nation’s military status and its practices?
ELFSTROM: I hear a lot of things on the radio
programs and, of course, I listened to State of the
Union speech last night by President Clinton. I
hope and I maintain that we must have a good
strong military position and I hope that is being
done. Sometimes it depends on what politician
you listen to.
NELSON: Do you have any contact with the
Veterans’ Administration?
ELFSTROM: I have no contact with the VS
because, of course, I’ve had no disability and no
reason to participate with the VA.
NELSON: You’ve never gone to a VA Hospital
for medical services?
ELFSTROM: No, I worked at __?__ in the
civilian sector and I __?__ had good insurance. I
did get insurance for about 15 years with the
government. So I never was in a Veteran’
Hospital or participated anything in Veterans.
NELSON: Would you like to tell us about how
your family supported you in your military life?
ELFSTROM: My family supported me with
letters and encouragement and of course they had
a wedding party for us during that 3-day delay in
route. And we spent . . . although my parents are
dead now. We’ve been very close to my brothers
and one sister and I know what they’re doing
practically all the time although we were
separated by about 300 miles. Use the phone and
my letters, some post cards, we maintain strong
family relationships. I’m very close to ourwe
have 2 sons; one has a PHD in philosophy but no
family. My other son, Lance, works at the airport
as an electronic technician, has 3 children. They
have 10-year old twins and the little guy is 8
years old. We just had our 50th wedding
anniversary. A little 10-year gal played the
anniversary waltz for us. She’s just the apple of
our eye. We adore all of our grand kids.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Midway Village Museum
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Midway Village Museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-2001
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Language
A language of the resource
English
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Charles Nelson
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Leroy Elfstrom
Location
The location of the interview
Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Leroy Elfstrom
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
January 24, 1994
Description
An account of the resource
Born August 14, 1922, Leroy Elfstrom enlisted in the Air Force as a radio operator. He died July 9, 2006.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War II
WW2
-
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PDF Text
Text
Leonard AdamsPage 1
Leonard Adams
4360 Leighton Downs Drive
Rockford, Illinois
Transcribed and Edited by Margaret Lofgren
Midway Village and Museum Center
6799 Guilford road
Rockford, Illinois 61107
Phone 815 397 9112
1
�Leonard AdamsPage 2
Leonard Adams
Today is May 12, 1994. My name is Sue Kasten. I am a volunteer with Midway Village & Museum Center and we are cooperating with a state- wide effort to collect oral histories from Illinois citizens that participated in World War II. We are at Midway Village today in Rockford, Illinois, and I’m with Leonard
Adams who lives at—
LEONARD: 4360 Leighton Downs Drive,
Rockford.
SUE: Rockford? Okay and Leonard served in a
branch of the United States Armed Forces during World War II. We’re here today to talk
about his experiences in the war. Leonard, if you
could give me first of all your name, your full
name, and date and place of birth.
LEONARD: Leonard H. Adams and I was born
in Bettendorf, Iowa—on a farm back there.
What else did you want to know?
SUE: The place and date of birth.
LEONARD: Date of birth, June 19, 1921.
SUE: And your parents names?
LEONARD: Peter and Mary Adams.
SUE: And did you have any brothers and sisters?
LEONARD: I had two brothers. Neither one of
them served in the service, but I had two brothers.
SUE: Okay. Let’s start out with how you entered the military and what was your life like
before 1941? Do you have any memories of
what—
LEONARD: Yes, I lived on the farm and we
also had quite a bit of timber and so we cut timber and sawed lumber on the farm also. And
then I went to high school and after high school
I went to a junior college over there in Elkader,
Iowa. I went two years to that junior college.
When I got out of there, I think in 1941, I looked
for a teaching job and couldn’t find one. Then
the military draft started coming up and I knew
that I would have to answer the call to the military. So I had to sign up for the draft. I signed up
and they drew lottery numbers. I drew a very
high number which deferred me for about a year.
Then about the time that my number was coming up, I wanted to have more choice, so I enlisted in what was known then as the U. S. Army
Air Corps, so I enlisted on October 9th or something like that in 1942.
SUE: Did you have any thoughts about the
United States getting involved in the conflict?
You obviously had anticipated it because you
were planning that in your future you would
have to be in the military, but what thoughts did
you have about the U. S. involvement at that
point?
LEONARD: Well, I felt that it was necessary. It
was one of those things that you just couldn’t get
around. That was it. That’s what you were confronted with.
SUE: And how did you hear about the bombing
of Pearl Harbor? Did you remember how you
heard about that?
LEONARD: Yes, I remember. We were quite
news conscious. We always had the radio on and
we got the daily paper from Dubuque, Iowa.
That was our town. But we heard it on the radio
first, see? And we heard of the bombing of Pearl
Harbor and of course it was no great shock because there were so many controversies going on
at the time You could expect anything and so
when it really happened it wasn’t really too
much of a shock it was just, “We were going to
get into this thing and now we’re in it.”
SUE: And you heard it over the radio?
LEONARD: Yes! It was on the radio.
2
�Leonard AdamsPage 2
SUE: Had you formed any prior opinion to that
about what had been taking place in Asia—as
far as expansion or—were you aware of that?
LEONARD: Oh, yes, yes. The Japanese were
going into—over in China mostly there. I believe it was Chenault or somebody like that who
had these Flying Tigers over there in China.
They frightened the Japanese over there so the
Japanese were expanding out into that area and
then just before Pearl Harbor there was one of
the Japanese ministers over here in Washington
and he was in kind of a conflict with the administration, you know, and wanted a lot of things
we couldn’t grant them, you know, one of those
things we couldn’t—it was an impossible situation. So actually, when Pearl Harbor was struck
it was not a big surprise. Because at that time it
was just some thing—It was more at that time
more in favor of everything that was going on
than there is—There wasn’t as much controversy as there is now days about Bosnia and whether we should or we shouldn’t. In those days it
was “That was it and you had to contend with
it.”
SUE: As far as the Germans, do you remember
like newspaper accounts or radio accounts of
their aggression.
LEONARD: Oh, yeah, yeah. When they went
into Austria and all that stuff. They were, at the
time we got into the war, they had already captured most of the continent. As far as I can remember, and I used to—well, this was quite a
few years before the war started, maybe ’36 or
’37. I was still in high school and I would get up
in the morning about seven o’clock and Adolph
Hitler would be giving a big speech on the radio
at that time. That’s one thing I remember and
there would be—Crowds would be yelling in
favor of him, you know, and Adolph Hitler
would be giving a speech.
We had a hired man and I’d kid around about
things sometimes. I always kidded the hired
man. I said, “Well, you’re going to have to get
over there and fight.” He didn’t like it. I
shouldn’t kid about that. I was about fifteen or
sixteen years old at that particular time. “You’re
going to have to go over there and fight.” No, he
didn’t like it.
SUE: So Hitler’s speeches were also broadcast
on the radio.
LEONARD: Oh, yes, here in the United States.
Hitler’s speeches, yes, they were broadcast. I
remember just before I went to school, around
seven o’clock, I had to catch this bus to go to
school. I got up and was having my breakfast.
Mother was getting breakfast and so forth. You
know like they are about six hours ahead, of
course. So at seven o’clock, that would be about
one o’clock in the afternoon, he’d be giving a
big speech on the radio.
SUE: All in German?
LEONARD: Yes, but they were translating it
too, what it was, but I can remember those big
speeches.
SUE: Tell us. As far as how you got in the military, did you say you enlisted?
LEONARD: Yes, I enlisted, yes. But I was just,
let’s say you’d call it a forced enlistment, because I knew I was going to be drafted. That was
coming. I was classified A-1 and that was to be
drafted. If you enlisted, you had more choice. So
I just jumped the gun about six weeks and enlisted in what was known then as the Air
Corps—Army Air Corps. At that time it was a
part of the army. The Army Air Corps, so I enlisted in that part. I enlisted for a mechanic; actually that’s what I enlisted for.
SUE: Is that what you ended up?
LEONARD: No, I didn’t come anywhere near
that. Do you want me to advance a little further
into it or do you want to—on one of the other
questions?
SUE: Maybe just how you were inducted and
where and so on and then we can get back into
that. Now you were inducted where?
LEONARD: I went to Des Moines, Iowa. They
put us on a train. From there we went to the
basic training camp out in Camp Luna, New
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Mexico, which was situated up in the mountains
7,000 feet above sea level and me never being
above 1000 feet—it was kind of hard on my system to take that extra elevation.
know where we were headed. We knew we were
going through Kansas and Illinois and so forth
and about the third day the rumor came out,
“We’re going to Presque Isle, Maine.” Do you
know where Presque Isle, Maine is?
SUE: And how old were you at the time?
SUE: Mm. Hm.
LEONARD: Well, I was twenty-one.
LEONARD: You do?
SUE: Twenty-one. So then what did they train
you to do in your camp?
LEONARD: Well, that is something that is kind
of a joke with me because I didn’t get any training at. I enlisted as a mechanic. But first we had
to go to this basic training camp. We weren’t in
this basic training camp very long. Like I said I
think it was the 9th or 10th of October that I enlisted and I was in there about a month and we
marched around a little bit and shot the rifle a
couple of times. In fact, on the farm I was accustomed to a rifle and one thing and another so the
amount of training I got was just—I would classify it as absolutely nothing. And so then, I think
what—I just thought about this in the last day or
two. I got into the situation that I got into because you see I had two years of college and I
could type, I had taken a commercial course in
high school and I think that looked at that and
they said, “We need guys up…along the Atlantic
Air Bases. We need people that can work in offices—who can type and so forth.” And I think
they looked at that and they said, “We don’t
have to train this fellow, we’ll just send him”—
And that was true of 250 other fellows—well
they were probably—they took all sorts of people like truck drivers—that could drive fuel
trucks, you know. They didn’t have to train them
for the bases up there in the North Atlantic.
They took truck drivers and somebody that was
already a mechanic, they were not going to train
them. They didn’t have time to train them probably, so they just picked all of us up—250 of us,
put us on a troop train. We were on there— well,
the total time we were on the troop train was
about four days because we were going from
Camp Luna, New Mexico to the very tip of
Maine. Outside of being transferred from California it was about the longest train trip you
could take in the United States. And so we were
on that train for about two days and we didn’t
SUE: My sister lives in Maine. Bangor.
LEONARD: Bangor. Yeah. And I thought I
knew my geography fairly well.
SUE: That’s a pretty obscure place.
LEONARD: Presque Isle, Maine. Where is that
at? I’m dumb. I should know my geography but
I don’t know it that good. Finally we did end up
in Presque Isle, Maine—which is up north of
Bangor, Maine. Just about as far up in the tip of
Maine as you can get. Bangor has a little inlet.
Ships can come up to Bangor. Presque Isle is
something like 40 miles north of Bangor and it’s
inland. It’s and inland community and there was
an air base there and then there were barracks
there and they dumped us in these barracks. Do
you want me to continue on or do you have
some more questions?
SUE: Yeah. Lets go in chronological order so
you can just continue on—with, you know—
how long you were there and then we can move
onto where you went from there.
LEONARD: Well, we arrived at that air base,
Presque Isle Army Air Base it was called. In
those days it was called Army—Army Air
Base—Presque Isle Army Air Base it was
called—See? And we arrived there the first part
of November. I just told you I enlisted in the
second week of October so you see I didn’t have
much training. So then we were in the barracks
there and we just hung around there for, oh,
about three weeks in my case. Then there was a
shipping list of 25 fellows called out and I happened to be on that shipping list. In those days,
in the service, things went mostly by rumor but
you would be surprised how correct the rumors
were. The rumor was that this shipping list was
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going to Goose Bay, Labrador. And it was.
That’s where we went. We flew on up to Goose
Bay, Labrador, and then the others,—let’s say
roughly 225 guys—were still down in Presque
Isle, Maine, and there—just branching off into
what happened to them is that they stayed there
until about February.
And so really I’m only one of about 50, or at
least 25 that didn’t get scratched. The rest of
them that was in this—that got arms and legs
frozen off and that wasn’t too good either.
And really the idea was that all of these 250
guys were to go mainly to Greenland. There was
a base in Greenland, where we were supposed to
go. But they pulled us 25 off for a special reason
to go to Goose Bay so we went—but the rest—
the 225 were headed for the base in Greenland
which was called BWI and it’s near Narsarsuaq,
Greenland, if you know where that’s at. Anyway
they were going to fly in up there but the flying
conditions during the winter and the airplanes
available got to be such that they realized,
“Well, we can’t fly.”
LEONARD: I think it was because, like I mentioned before, that I had two years of college and
I could type and so forth and they were looking
for people that could man the offices in these
areas.
So they shipped them down to Boston around in
February and put them on a boat. Now this boat
went out of Boston in a convoy. The convoy was
headed for England. So when they got up just
off of New Foundland the convoy headed east
toward England. And this single lone boat with
these 225 guys on it headed for Greenland.
Well—evidently there was a U-boat watching
the situation. They couldn’t attack the convoy
very well but they saw this boat take off and
they thought we’ll get that guy, and they did.
They sunk the boat. The trouble with this time of
year up there it was so cold that all the ropes and
so forth to get the life boats off were frozen so
tight that they couldn’t get them loose and so
most of everybody went down with the ship. But
there were 25 fellows from the unit—I don’t call
it a unit—we were just a group of people—
soldiers—and they were lucky enough to get off
and get in life boats. I don’t know just how they
were picked up. It was so cold and icy and so
forth and I don’t know exactly how they were
picked up. They had frozen off—
Then come the next June we at Goose Bay—
some people working out where the airplanes
were coming in from Greenland, saw and met
these fellows that we were with down there and
some had arms missing and legs missing—
frozen off—and they told them what happened.
SUE: Why do you think that you were chosen in
that 25?
SUE: They split you up from where you were in
New Mexico, right?
LEONARD: Yeah, that’s right.
SUE: And then they kind of—you all were together.
LEONARD: Most people in the service were in
something like 61st Division, 21st Regiment,
such and such a Battalion. But that was not true
in our case. We—the 250 people that left New
Mexico were just a miscellaneous group of people that didn’t have any name or number to it
whatsoever. We were just—we were in the Air
Corps and that was about the only thing you
could say about it, so they just split this group
up as they felt like it.
SUE: Hm. Once you did get up to Goose Bay,
what were your duties there? What kind of
things did you do? Did you do typing, and—
LEONARD: Immediately, I was assigned to the
headquarters office, some of it was typing, but
my main duty fell into the filing classification.
We had the commanding officer’s office and the
sergeant major’s office which was the enlisted
men’s portion of the commanding office there.
See? And so there was quite a bit of filing to do
and eventually I was to take care of all of the
filing for the whole main command of the base, I
was in charge of all of the files. I learned later
that back in my home town that the banker and
so forth got inquiries about me because I was
cleared for secret information. Many of these
files were marked “Secret” and “Top Secret”
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and so forth. Many of these things were marked
that way. Before I got into that, they’d evidently
inquired back in my home town—“Well, what
kind of a fellow is this?” See? So then I was put
into that, so then I would have to file all of these
papers.
Then when the Colonel—Colonel Hassell—well
before Colonel Hassell became Commander,
there was a couple of other commanders but anyway when the commanding officer of the base
would come in and want to know, “I want to see
such a radio gram,” or so forth. I would have to
know—I would have to read the stuff so I knew
where to file it and I had to know—have a
knowledge of what he was talking about so I
could go—these matters—they wanted it right
now. So you had to know just where you put it.
SUE: So, all the military correspondence that
would come through would go past your desk
then.
LEONARD: Yeah. Yeah. Well, a lot of the top
secret stuff probably went to the commanding
officer first and then came to my desk. I wasn’t
the first one to see it.
Now in addition to our base at Goose Bay, we
had command over about three or four bases
further north, like in Baffin Island and those areas. It was called “Crystal Command” or something like that. We were also handling
information abut the other bases that were further up north than we were.
SUE: And when you were stationed there, did
you ever have a chance—did you get “off time”
when you got to go off the base? And maybe
meet some of the people who lived up there or
something?
around the base there within twenty miles there
really wasn’t a single—well, yes, there was a
little Indian village down there, we had to have
passes to go down there and I had no interest to
go down there but we did take one excursion by
boat. I think I showed you the picture where we
were on that excursion. We went up the Northwest River and the Northwest River is the most
civilized part outside of Indians. It was regular—I don’t know whether the people were Scottish or something. They were not Indian people.
They were sort of missionary people that—and
this was a village of about maybe 200 people.
And now—we drove up there in 1986 and it’s
probably a village of maybe 1000 right now.
And they’ve got a paved road and a bridge up
there and everything now, but at that time it was
only accessible by boat.
SUE: Is the climate there pretty harsh?
LEONARD: I wouldn’t say it was real harsh,
no. The winters, you know get very cold—well,
40 below zero. But it was a very dry cold and
the snow in the winter time kind of keeps falling. It never melts, so at that time they just let it
pile up on the roads and they just kept driving
over it, and the packed down snow would get
four feet deep on the road. I remember one time,
I was very lucky all the along. I was up there
about a year and then they said after a year you
could go home on furlough so I went home in
September and do you know that we went to a
church picnic in Iowa in September and I almost
froze to death and here I came from Labrador. It
was the dampness. Up there you didn’t have the
dampness and that made a great difference.
There wasn’t as much wind. If we had 40 below
out [?] it was more still and I didn’t really suffer
from the cold at all.
SUE: How long were you in Labrador?
LEONARD: Oh Yeah! There were sort of Indians to a certain extent. And then there was this
town that’s just north of Goose Bay. I don’t
know if you know when I talk about Goose Bay
if you know what I’m talking about.
SUE: I know vaguely where Labrador is.
LEONARD: Yeah. You ask—the people—you
see Labrador is pretty sparsely populated and so
LEONARD: I was in Labrador from December
of ’42 to—I guess it was about December—
no—January of ’44. A year and a half. We were
supposed to be there two years, but it doesn’t
figure out just right—but I went there in ’42 and
came out of there—oh, it was the latter part of
’44. It was almost two years. But I was so doggone lucky that I seemed to get into lucky situa-
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tions where other people—like, for instance, in
September of ’43 that was, I got a furlough.
Then turned around in December of ’43 they
chose two of us fellows to go to administrative
school and to the envy of everybody—while we
were supposed to go to Colorado, I guess, Fort
Collins, Colorado. So we got in the airplane and
got down to Presque Isle, Maine, and were on
our way to Colorado to this administrative
school—and—
SUE: Would that have been strictly for the military then? Administration for the military?
LEONARD: Yeah, administration for the military. And when we got down there, I was so
doggone lucky, you know that they said, “well,
they’re closing the school in Colorado, but they
are moving it to Florida and it will not open until
January 15th, and we don’t know with you, so
we’ll just give you a leave of absence and you
can go home for two weeks.”
SUE: And this was when the war was still going
on?
LEONARD: Yeah. It just shows how extremely
lucky I was! And I’d just had a furlough in September and now here comes Christmas. I was
home for Christmas, and then I was in warmer
climate and then we headed down to Florida and
it was extremely warmer and these poor guys up
there! We didn’t—we finally got back up there
about April. I don’t know—we just couldn’t
hardly face the guys that were up there.
SUE: Did you spend a Thanksgiving and
Christmas up there—another year? Do you remember what you did?
LEONARD: Yeah, the first Thanksgiving we
were still in Presque Isle, Maine, and the second
Thanksgiving I was in Labrador.
SUE: What was it like there? Did they try to
make it like the traditional American—?
LEONARD: Yeah! I mean,—you see we had
good living conditions. We weren’t like over in
France or somewhere like that where they were
living in bunkers and foxholes and so on. We
had sort of luxurious living. I want to state what
our mission was, a little bit, up there. You think
we were up there and we weren’t doing anything, but our mission was this. If you look on a
map—In fact this Colonel Hassell, he was one of
the first ones to try to fly this route in 1928 and
if you were ever on an airplane going to England
or any of those areas, they fly over those areas.
So that is really the route to England. If you look
on a map England and those areas that are that
far north, except they are warmer because of the
ocean currents there. And so all the bombers that
went over to bomb Germany—there were two
bases. There was one named Gander Bay in
Newfoundland and ours, about two hundred
miles further north, was called Goose Bay. Now
those two bases carried most all of the bombers.
The bombers would land there as their last fueling stop to go into formation and bomb Europe.
We had many days a hundred bombers come in
and go out and I was working in the office, so I
didn’t [do it] directly but the line crews had to
fuel up these airplanes and all that stuff. We had
to have quarters for these crews to stay over
night when they would come in one day and if
the weather was bad the next night they’d go fly
and they flew by celestial navigation. They
would take off about seven o’clock in the evening and fly all night and get to England the next
morning. And that’s about true. We’ve made a
couple, three trips over to Europe and England
since the 1970’s and that’s true of the commercial airlines, although they take off out of Chicago now. They all take off about four o’clock in
the afternoon and arrive in England about seven
o’clock in the morning. That’s true.
SUE: When you were telling me before and you
showed me that picture of the funeral where you
were a pallbearer. Was that because one of the
flyers crashed on take off, leaving the base?
LEONARD: Yes, that’s right. One of the
bombers crashed on take-off.
SUE: Did that happen very often?
LEONARD: It happened at least twice and
maybe three times. I don’t quite remember. I
know at least a couple of times it happened.
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SUE: They were on their way to England?
LEONARD: Yeah, yeah.
LEONARD: They were heavily loaded with
fuel and they had to gun their engines as hard as
they could to get them off. Those old engines
would heat up too much and catch on fire and
then down the plane would go. You see they
were heavily loaded with fuel to go to England
and in order to do that, they really had to gun
their engines and they kind of overdid it sometimes.
SUE: And then you went up to New York?
SUE: And they had bombs on board, too?
LEONARD: No, they didn’t carry any bombs at
all.
LEONARD: No, no. I went back to Labrador
after that, see?
SUE:: OK. Do you remember how you felt
about VE-Day when you heard about it?
LEONARD: Well, I was in New York at that
time and, well, we were quite elated. Of course,
I went down to Times Square in New York for
the big celebration. I was lucky. I was there.
While they were fighting over there in the
trenches and foxholes, I was going to free radio
shows and so forth in New York.
SUE: Oh, they didn’t?
LEONARD: No, not then. Because they had to
have all the flight gear for the personnel that
were on the bomber and plus they had to carry a
lot of gas.
SUE: What was your role in the military when
you were in New York? Did I ask you that?
SUE: You had typed in this letter that you were
in New York for sometime.
LEONARD: In New York, it was getting toward the end of the war, and our role there was
to—there were orders. Personnel would have
orders for where they were going overseas, and
there they were also coming back from overseas,
the ones that had their tour and they were being
assigned from there to different places in the
United States and it was part of my—they had a
big line that went around the table, a big counter
that went around and these people would come
in there. We were processing only people that
came back by airplane or went over by airplane.
They went out of LaGuardia Field and we were
only processing those who went by airplane.
And so they would come off the airplanes there
and then they’d go by this counter and we would
have the orders ready for them and give them
there orders—whatever sort of papers they
needed to get their meals and so forth, or to go
where they were going to go in the States.
LEONARD: Yeah, yeah. That was after I had
finished the two year tour up in Labrador.
SUE: So some of these soldiers that had been in
the European Theater—
SUE: OK, that was after—
LEONARD: Oh, yeah. Most of them were
bomber crews that were coming back, had
served their tour of duty, and then after once
they—see, I was there in August when VE-Day
was very shortly after that. Then there was a
high influx of these cruisers, as many as the air-
SUE: And so they got the bombs in England.
LEONARD: Oh, yeah. They were shipped over
by boat.
SUE: Let’s see—if you could name the most
difficult thing that you did in the service, what
would it be?
LEONARD: Boy, that’s a…What sort of thing
are you thinking about? I can’t think. Like I say
I keep repeating all of the time. I was the luckiest man in the world and I just can’t think of
anything that was difficult—really.
LEONARD: Yes, that was toward the end of
the war.
SUE: OK, you went to the school then in Florida?
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planes they could muster up—to get them to carry men—they were carrying, oh, maybe three or
four hundred people a day coming in off these
airplanes. We were processing them, sending
them back to wherever they were going to go.
SUE: Did you ever talk to any of them? Did anything stand out in you mind about any of the
guys who came through.
LEONARD: One of the things that stands out in
my mind is that—you see, in those days, they
had the USO groups, see? At that time Frank
Sinatra was very popular. And he came through
our line.
SUE: He did? You got to do his paper work?
LEONARD: Yeah.
SUE: Did you say anything to him? Did you ask
for his autograph?
LEONARD: No, I didn’t ask him. I wouldn’t do
that. It was all business as far as I was concerned. We just treated him, we didn’t stand
there and Ah. Ah and Oh Oh. He didn’t say
much. He wasn’t obstinate or anything like that.
He just didn’t say much. We just processed his
papers and he took them away. And there was a
whole bunch of other people, including a band
or something or other. Yeah, see it was back in
the Frank Sinatra days when the bobby soxers
were going crazy in New York where he was
singing there and here he comes bouncing right
through our lines cause he’d been going overseas on a tour.
SUE: What was your opinion of the use of the
Atomic Bomb in Japan, at the time when it was
dropped?
LEONARD: Mm. I don’t know. There’s many
opinions. The general thought was, “Well, this
has to be done,” you know. And that was it. We
agreed with it.
I just want to divert back to Goose Bay—a couple of little instances that were peculiar. We
were talking about planes that came up there and
crashed or something like that. A B-24 flying
over one night—he was circling to land at our
base, see. It was a tanker airplane with gasoline
on board—it was gasoline. He didn’t have too
much on board but it exploded at about 4000
feet—up there about 20 miles north west of the
base. And the radio operator was blown out of
that airplane and fell free into a snowdrift and
the next day we found wandering, we were up
there looking around. We found him wandering
around in the woods the next day.
SUE: Was he alive?
LEONARD: He was alive, walking around, because he fell without a parachute into the snow
bank. I’ve even heard of people falling out of
planes into the Pacific and happened to hit the
ocean just right and surviving. Another day we
were in the office. Of course, we had a few defense planes around there, fighting planes
around there that would come in buzzing—
VAROOM—over the airport every once in a
while and so we got familiar with the sound—
VAROOM—and we knew what it was when
they came over, see. So one day we were in the
office and it went VAROOM—Oh, oh. That guy
didn’t pull out. So we went out quick and looked
and a big plume of smoke was over there. And
what it happened to be was an English Mosquito
plane. I don’t know if you know what that is but
anyway it was built out of wood and it was up
20,000 feet and there was something wrong with
the plane and they were checking it out. They
were going to fly it across the ocean. I didn’t
know how he got up there, 20,000 feet. So we
went out and looked and we saw this big plume
of smoke going up over there. And well, he had
crashed and we were kind of milling around.
Then there was pieces of the plane and clouds
maybe 7 or 8 or 10,000 feet up. Some of them
are made out of wood. These pieces of wood
kept falling out of the clouds and all of a sudden
we looked up and we saw a parachute coming
down.
We didn’t think too much about it except that’s
good. So it was only a couple or three blocks
from where we were at to where he was going to
land—the parachute. So we thought we’d run
down there. We ran down there and we got as
close as we could. The rescue officer was down
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there, see? And as we were looking up there,
maybe a thousand feet up, we thought, why is he
kicking his legs around so much. Why is he
throwing his arms around so much? And so he
was coming down. He was headed right straight
for a concrete ramp. Our rescue officer was out
there with a rescue truck and so forth. He was
coming right straight at this concrete ramp. And
so it turned out that the reason he was dangling
his legs so much was that he got blown out of
the plane and fell several thousand feet when the
parachute opened and just about tore him out of
the parachute so— one leg was still caught in the
parachute and his head was first down. You can
imagine—he was head first down toward the
concrete ramp. So he was trying to right himself,
trying to pull himself up and get hold of something so maybe he wouldn’t [break out further]
or hit the ramp and so forth. So the rescue officer saw that and I don’t know why they didn’t
get a rescue net—maybe they didn’t have a rescue net in time to get out there, see? So the rescue officer took aim with his body, ran for the
fellow and caught the guy and deflected him
enough so that he didn’t hit the concrete. We
saw that.
SUE: Wow!
LEONARD: That was some kind of a miracle.
SUE: I’m going to ask you this just in case. Did
you ever go to a VA hospital?
LEONARD: No. Well, my uncle was in about
20 years ago.
SUE: That’s probably about it unless you can
think of something else you’d like to add. Would
you rather stop for a moment?
LEONARD: Let’s stop for a minute…I mention
the fact here in this write up that they tried to
ferry fighter planes over to Europe. That was
just a little bit before I got up there in 1942 but it
never was a success with fighter airplanes.
These other bases like at Greenland and up at
Forbisher Bay—they were for the fighter
planes—to take shorter hops at a time. And one
of the most—I don’t know if people know about
it—There was, I think, one B-17 and five or six
fighter planes behind it, following it, and they
took off from a base a little further north in
Greenland, and were heading for Iceland and as
they got toward Iceland, they found out they
were fogged in and they couldn’t land in Iceland
so they had to turn around in Greenland and they
didn’t have enough fuel to get back to their base
in Greenland, so they landed on the Ice Cap on
Greenland and every one of the Fighter planes,
the B-17—they landed safely up there—on the
Ice Cap. The Ice Cap in supposed to be a dangerous place, but they landed safely there. None
of them got injured. And then this B. R. J. Hassell from Rockford here—he happened to be
commanding officer in Greenland at that time.
He flew a search plane up there and found them
on the Ice Cap. I don’t know if I mentioned it
before, but Colonel Hassell—he flew up there in
1928. He was flying to Sweden. There were a lot
of Swedish people in Rockford and they were
interested in Sweden, so—so he made up a plane
that he was flying over to Sweden. He got lost,
well—sort of lost—as he approached Greenland
and he couldn’t find his little old base in Greenland in 1928 and so he landed his plane on the
Ice Cap and walked off safely. And so now here
in 1942 he was flying another airplane—
searching for these people and he found these
six airplanes and the B-17 up there on the Ice
Cap and then he supervised how to get up on the
Ice Cap and get them off and get them down and
they all got safely down. And now, today,
there’s a big push on right out here at Rockford
Airport—they are rebuilding World War II airplanes. They are, as I understand it, they are trying to dig these six fighter planes and this B-17
covered with ice somewhat up there. They found
some of them and they are digging them out and
bringing them back and restoring them.
Then I might just mention that when I got out of
the service I was entitled to go to college. Everybody was entitled to a certain amount of college and I was entitled to four years of school.
Well, so I started to go to school and took up
engineering and I went to Loras College in
Dubuque, Iowa, and then I went to Iowa State in
Ames, Iowa. And then I got a Mechanical Engineering degree and that’s what I was. I was a
Design Engineer. That was my life time work
after that. In fact, the schooling—I was in three
9
�Leonard AdamsPage 10
years. I was entitled to four years of schooling.
SUE: Was that completely paid for?
LEONARD: Almost. The government, really.
The GI Bill of Rights. You probably have heard
of the GI Bill of Rights.
SUE: My dad went under the GI Bill, too.
LEONARD: Anyway, I was entitled to four
years of school. Here I was lucky again. I go to
four years of school and I took an extra course in
between and I graduated from Loras College. So
I took some side courses so it took me longer to
get through this engineering because I went to
Loras College and then I thought I might flunk
out of the Engineering School so I took some
education courses and Science courses and the—
so when it came to the last quarter to sign up.
Actually I had a week or two or a month or two
before the four years was up, see?
low—my classmate—he went on to be a fighter
pilot in Europe during the war. But it was interesting that he was a flight instructor for a classmate of mine over in Iowa. And then I took my
first flying lessons from him and I’ve been flying ever since. I’ve been flying now—I had my
license—I think an unofficial title that I had.
I’ve been active pilot for more years than anybody in Rockford. It’s been almost fifty years
now. And I’m still active. I’m going out this
evening.
SUE: That’s fine.
LEONARD: I’m seventy-three years old in
June and still flying.
SUE: That’s great!
LEONARD: That’s my life.
SUE: Thank you very much.
SUE: Did you have to do it in a four-year period
of time?
LEONARD: Yeah. But with me, I got about
four years and two months. That’s part of my
luck again. I appreciate the fact that I had luck
beyond luck. Right to the very end. I got two or
three months of schooling beyond the four years.
My life time work after that was as a Design
Engineer, which I retired from in 1986. After
that, well, I’d always been interested in airplanes
so I learned to fly on my own, the latter part
of—just give you a little bit of the coincidences
that you can’t believe in hardly. When I was
over in New York, why there was a guy bunking
above me. He was just working. I don’t know
what he was doing. He wasn’t flying or anything
but he was a flight instructor, see. It happened to
be this fellow from—well, he wasn’t from
Dubuque, Iowa, but he was doing flight instruction before the war—I’d say in 1940, ’41, ’42—
in that era—doing flight instructing in Dubuque,
Iowa. And it happened to be that he was the
flight instructor for a classmate of mine back in
Iowa. And so I took my first flying lesson from
him, and that’s another sort of a coincidence
thing that this guy just sleeping in the bunk
above me was a flight instructor for this fel-
10
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
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Midway Village Museum
Publisher
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Midway Village Museum
Date
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1993-2001
Rights
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Midway Village Museum
Language
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English
Format
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pdf
Type
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Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Sue Kasten
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Leonard Adams
Location
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Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
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Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Leonard Adams
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
May 12, 1994
Description
An account of the resource
Born June 19, 1921, Leonard Adams served in the U.S. Army Air Corps from 1942 to 1945. Adams served at Goose Bay, Labrador under Commander Bert J. Hassell. He died May 20, 2015.
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Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
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pdf
Type
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Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War II
WW2
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25224/archive/files/704db85ab521e9fb02408b8d2597fa41.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=LshwuTCRoqmo0jhB%7EdneyCHjoAqz7nItvXc%7EJJSm8Twaz1zzSWqqjrhs8R2ohV5b-LztvuWe1v2n5eznsXVN8HcSATvVcKGyqrUABROUQZikJXbFPQpSN65aaoyQqt1KzgBlRtz%7E-M%7EXUWsU-jccjV0CCV94p7NrmQon%7EWw5EKvAde%7EKE8mxQea6tIAO8Rs9T4c9p7FXgQx-uCZj%7ECgM0ltv6DGyujV5qBJ2O-xPOddJhqn-VDlj2fD4MYVeeBA5AzSgkJdKjYi89ImWOmMDrOhvXxllrVpMIw4jDpmfaGtSSa773KBdt-xnyQJ0s8V4m52SORQf2lOOVIY9MdvuRQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
37c58a076dd627fac53bfbc5789cf035
PDF Text
Text
Kaare
Nevdal-Page I
ll
KAAßf,NflVDAI
)
þ
Lorraine Lightcap
Edited by Margaret Lofgren
Transcribed
Midway Village andMuseum Center
6799 GuilfordRoad
U
Rocldord" Illinois
Phone 815 397
9ll2
{¿"
��Kaare
Nevdal--Page?
K.&&Rü IIESD.EIL
This is Jtfly,27e 1994. My name is Charles Nelson. I
am a volunteer with Midway Village in Rocldord, Illinois, which is cooperating with a statewide effort to
collect oral histories from Illinois citizens that participated in the momentous events snrrounding World
War IL We are in the office of the Midway Village in
Rocldord Illinois, interviewing Mr. Kaare Nevdal.
Mr Nevdal served with the Royal Norwegian Air
Force attached to the British Royal Air Force in lceland and England during World War II. We are interviewing him about his e4periences in that war.
NELSON: Kaare, would you please start this interview by infroducing yourself and how you come to
be involved in the Air Force during World War II?
NEVDAL: Okay, Chucþ as you know I was born in
Norway. I was born October 9th, 1920. I lived in a
small town in a suburb of Bergen on the west coast of
Norway. On Oclober the 9e, 1940, the Nazis invaded
Norway and I was there when that happened. I lived
under the occupation for almost a year. The Norwegari king and the government had fled earlier to
England and est¿blished a government in England in
exile. They also established an Ai¡ Force, Navy and
Army. I w¿s forhrnate enough to get together with
some other gûys-twenty
of
us---and we escaped
across the North Sea to Shetland Islands and from
there we went down to London and got inducted into
the various services. I wanted to be in the Air Force
and I applied for that. They took me in. They sent me
to Toronto, Canada, where the Norwegian government had established a training camp. So I went to
Toronto, Canada, the same year-it was in March of
l94l---¿nd was training there and became a radio
gunner. That means I was trained to be a radio officer
or radio man on the airplane and also a gunner. From
there I went somewhere in 1942, I went back overseas to England first and then they sent me to a
coast¿l command squaùon in Iceland; That's where I
first started in operation andthatwas tn1942.
NELSON: Would you give us a little lowdown on
your parents? Did you have any brothers or sisters or
any details about your parents or your family that you
would like to give?
NEVDAL: Well, my father was a retired sea captain.
He had been retired for many years. As a matter of
fact, he retired before-I can't remember him being
at sea. One memory of the thing was, when he found
out I was going to escape across the North Sea, he offered me his old se\tant which I couldn't take along
because I couldn't try to escape carrying a sextant. It
would have been obvious that I was up to something.
I had my mother there and we were five-we have
four boys and one girl.
NELSON: What was life like before the war, espe-
cially 1941?
NEVDAL: Life was fine. We had the depression
there the same time you had it in the United St¿tes
but we were coming out of it when the war started.
Of course, we tried to be neutral but then the Germans came andthings changed dramatically.
NELSON: Did you have any idea that Germany was
attempting to take over Norway before they did it?
NEVDAL: No, we had no idea. As a matter of fact
the night before they came, we knew there were some
naval movement by German ships south of Norway
but we thought they were going out to the North Sea
and do battle with the British. Instead they came up
the Oslo {ord and invaded us.
NELSON: Were there a lot
of
losses, Norwegian
losses during this time?.
NEVDAL: Yes, tlrcre were a lot of losses-a lot of
losses.
NELSON: Okay, now Ilm going to ask you something about December 7h, 1941, when Pearl Harbor
was bombed by the Japanese. What were you doing
at the time and do you remember the response of
those around you?
NEVDAL: Yes, I remember very well, Harbor Day
Harbor Da¡ I was in Toronto in the banacks
-Pearl was training.
where I
I remember my reaction
was-I
felt terrible that this had been done to the Unrted
St¿tes. At the same time I knew that in the long nrn it
would help me regaining my country because I lflew
that now the United States would get involved and
the only hope for Europe that I knew from the begnningwas United States getting involved in the war.
NELSON: It must be very depressing to see a country
come like that and tåke you country away from you.
�Kaare
NEVDAL: It was awful. The rvorst was to live there
because we had absolutely no freedom of movements. We couldn't go like from here to Belvidere
without a pâssport. So it was very difrcult and frustrating.
NELSON: Had you formed any prior opinion or developed any feeling about what was taking place in
Europe and Asia?
NEVDAL: Yes, Europe in particular.
I
was well
aware of that Hitler was trying to conquer at least all
of Europe and maybe go on from there.
Nevdal-Page
3
NEVDAL: Yes, they put me on a cargo ship in con2I days to go across the Atlantic be-
voy. It took us
cause we had to crisscross to evade the submarines.
NELSON: So you were taking a chance there too just
being on that ship...
NEVDAL: Yes, like everybody else was particularly
the sailors who had to do it all the time.
NELSON: Yah. That's true. They lost a lot of sailors,
too.
NEVDAL: Oh, yes
NELSON: You heard of Hitler's speeches and ideas.
NELSON: Where did you take your basic military
NEVDAL: Oh, of coruse. Yes. And then, of course,
the last year I was in Norway I saw the soldiers
üaining?
marching in the stleet and singing and carrying on.
NEVDAL: In Toronto.
NELSON: Now you volunteered in the service,
right:
NELSON: And you were trained to do what?
NEVDAL:Yes.
NEVDAL:Radio andgunner.
NELSON: Went up to England and volunteered. Do
NELSON: Okay. What did you think of that training?
you have any special memories of this event?
NEVDAL: Itwasvery good. Very good. Excellent.
NEVDAL: My
escape?
NELSON: Tell us about other training camps you
NELSON: When you got inducted and you went to
attended.
London, I suppose.
NEVDAL: I was at radar training camp in England to
NEVDAL:Yah.
learn to operate the radar equipment.
NELSON: Do you have any special memories of
NELSON: So you we-re
this---arything special happen.
equipment on your airplane,
NEVDAL: Well, the first thing that happened when I
NEVDAL: Yes. We got it later on---{rot in the begin-
got to London, we were interned because we had to
be cleared
had to make swe we wer€n't spies.
-{hey
lVe weren't spying for Germany. So they put us in an
institution there and I was thrown in there with people from all nafions, all colors. Being from a little
town, it was kind of scary at first but I was fortunate.
I only three days and they cleared me and I was out.
ning*åutwe got it.
NELSON: You were about 20 years old?
¿
in radar. You had radar
NELSON: Didyou have any leaves or passes?
NEVDAL: Oh,
yes.
NELSON: Now in this camp, were all you people
Norwegians or was...
NEVDAL:Yes.
NEVDAL:Yes.
NELSON: Then what happened after you were inducted? You said you were sent to England and then
NELSON: Just Nonvegians.
NEVDAL:Yes.
to Canada,
NELSON: What was your military unit? Was ttnt the
Air Force?
�Kaare
NEVDAL: Air force,
NELSON: Where did you go after you completed
I
4
NEVDAL: No.
yes.
your basic military training?
NEVDAL: First to England.
short time and then
Nevdal-Page
I was in London just a
was assigned to the Coastal
Command Squadron #330 in lceland.
NELSON: You just kept on going.
NEVDAL: Yah, There was some talk about afteryou
had been in action for eighteen monthq you could
apply to get reliwed.
NELSON: What were you assigned to do after aniv-
NELSON: I
ing?
way.
NEVDAL: To fly
as a wireless operator and gunner.
NELSON: What did you think of your nation's war
see. The
British were operating the same
NEVDAL: I don't know how they were
NELSON: They just were flying flytng and flying,
efforts up to this point? The Norwegians.
NEVDAL: Yah. Yah. There wasn't talk about numNEVDAL: Well, we were limitedbut we were doing
very well considering that we were in exile. What
made it possible for the Norwegian government to do
bers.
it
drd have casualties aboard your airplane.
was the Norwegian Merchant Marine. They were
confiscated by the government and the merchant marine which \ilas at that time the fourth largest in the
world. They were operating all over the world and
they were told to go to neutral ports or allied ports as
soon as the occupation happened. The government
took them over and the revenue that they received
during the war was used to finance the three branches
of the military.
NELSON: So they were working for a lot of different
countries delivering supplies, I suppose.
NEVDAL:Yes.
NELSON: They had a lot of losses, too, then.
NEVDAL: Oh, they had a tremendous arnount of
losses and large amounts of the oil that was transferued from the United States and the war material
was transferred on Norwegian ships.
NELSON: Tell us about your experience of entering
your first combat area.
NEVDAL: Our job in combat was mainly to
seek out
submarines and destroy them. We were given certain
territory in the Atlantic to cover. We'd be out for
12
hours sometimes, Sometimes less.
NELSON: Were there so many flights you had to
NELSON: No. Not like fhe Americans ..
NEVDAL: Oh, yah.
NELSON: Can you tell us a little bit about how they
occurred and how they were treated?
NEVDAL: Well whathappene#-I was only in combat with a submarine one time. Even though we
didn't see too many submarines, they could see us
and they would submerge as soon as they saw us.
They spotted us before we could spot them. It's easier to see an airplane than to see a little ship-a little
boat in the ocean. So when they saw us they would
submerge and just by the fact that we were there, we
slowed them down because they couldn't travel under
as fast as they could on the surface. They wanted to
be on the surface--+hey could go faster. This particular submarine that we encountered was on May
16, 1944. That was in the North Sea. This was a large
submarine. It was 1800 ton. It was a supply submarine for the other suhmarines that were out there. It
was on the way out to the Atlantic to supply others.
And I imagine since it was so large, they figured
when they saw us that they could fight us, so they
didn't submerge. They remained on the surface. As
wo went in, they startcd shooting at us. We were
diving down because we had to get down low to sink
them with our depth charges.
NELSON: What were they using to shoot you with?
make or was it based on the amount of time or how
did you know when you were through doing this.
NEVDAL: Guns. Big
NEVDAL: There was no regular ... you just
"
NELSON: 40 mm cannons
NELSON: No time schedule.
Now you
ones. Big guns.
�Kaare
NEVDAL:
I
had no idea what carurons they had.
They had cannons and they had machine guns. There
was a terrific barrage of fire at us as we came in, As a
matter of fact, as we approached and got closer we
got a real bad hit in the front turret and the front gunner lvas killed instantly. They hit him in the chest. He
was dead. We continued down and they kept shooting
at us. Finally we get down and going to release the
depth charges and they didn't release. So we had to
make a turn and come back again but
this time we
had killed most of the gunners. There was only one
gun firing when we came back
þ
Nevd¿l-Page
5
rything. Then I had to send SOS and leave our ditching position because they thought we would have to
ditch.
NELSON: Were both of these engines on one side or
was there one on either side?0
NEVDAL : One on
each side. Fortunately
NELSON: So it was balanced out.
NEVDAL: Yah, a little bit. Yah. But there wasn't
enough power to gam any height. Then wejettisoned
NELSON: You were shooting at them, too.
NEVDAL: Oh, yes. We had sixteen guns firing at
a whole bunch of gasoline and threw the guns overboard-¡hrough everything overboard that was loose.
them.
NELSON: How far were you from your home base?
NELSON: The nose gunner now was out of action.
NEVDAL: About two hours. And litfle by little we
gained a littte height.
NEVDAL: Yah. He was out of action. We had another gunner with 50 mm under the front turret. He
was shooting. We made a second turn and when we
came back we were able to drop the depth charges
and straddle them. As we left the scene we could see
we sank them. We could see they went down with the
stern first. And the angle and it was obvious we had
sunk it.
NELSON: By cutting the weight down.
NEVDAL: Yah. And \ile can get out of this position
and we managed to get back to base which was in
Shetland Islands. When we landed, we were so frrll of
holes from the bombardment that the hull. This was a
flying boat, so we had to beach it. We had to beach
the plane when we landed
NELSON: Do you think they had any survivors?
NELSON: Otherwise it would have sunk right away
NEVDAL: No. There wasn't
a chance for survivors.
NEVDAL: Yah. We made it home
NELSON: So you had tlut one casuaþ and you told
us how it happened. There was no chance of trying to
NELSON: Did your mental attitude change as com-
save him.
bat continued?
NEVDAL: No
NEVDAL: Not really. Not really
NELSON: No other casualties
at the
time?
NEVDAL: Yah. We had small wounds. I just got a
little drst. I was at the radio when this happened. My
fust job was to send a position--+end the word that
\ile went in for attack and give a position so that's
whatl did.
NELSON: So in
NELSON: What did you think of the war so far?
NEVDAL:Well
NELSON: Besides being brutal
NEVDAL: It was brutal. I don't wish anybody to be
case you needed
help-
NEVDAL: Yah. Th¿t was routine. As soon as you
went into action, tell them that you were going into
action and what is your position. Then when this was
done, one engine was out of commission. Another
one was hâltmg so we couldn't get-we were right
down on the surface almost and we couldn't gain any
height because the other engine leaking oil and eve-
in it but we were highly motivated to fight because of
the fact we had lost our country. At the time there it
looks like we never get itback.
NELSON: Could you get in contact with your family
at all.?
NEVDAL: No
�Kaare
Nevdal-Page
6
NELSON: So you couldn't get any letters or anything
like that from home.
NEVDAL; Yes. The first night we flew into Stockhokn-I'll never forget th¿t because the whole
NEVDAL: No. They didn't know if we were dead or
alive. They did know that I had reached the United
States because I was visiting Rocldord when I was
training in Toronto. I had an aunt and uncle living
here. We took a picture of my aunt and me and
in England" like you
Stockholm was lit up and
þ
I lived under the blackouts
di{ for several years. I'll
never
forget the sight of the Stockholm airport in the middle of the night as we flew in there and the whole city
was
lit
up.
mailed that
Red Cross---+ent it to Norway. She put
on it that was her son, My family ftnew, of course,
that I was their son. I had escaped and I was supposed to be dead as far as the Germans were con-
NELSON: Yes, that's true. Tell us what you and the
other men did to celebrate America's traditional fam-
cerned.
NEVDAL: We celebrated Christmas wherever we
ily holidays such as Thanksglving and Christrnas.
was like in Shetland Islands. I celebrated in lceland.
If
I
they knew that you had escaped, they
probably would have taken it out onyour family.
celebrated in London. We tried to do it in our own
way. It was sad times because we were away from
NEVDAL:Exactly
the family and we didn't even know
were still alive so it was a sad time.
NELSON:
if our family
NELSON: You were taking a chance.
NELSON: When was the first time that you actually
turned back to Norway? Was that after the war was
NEVDAL: Yah.
over.
NELSON: Have you remained in contact with any of
your World War II companions?
NEVDAL: After the war was over. We flew in rn
May of 1945.
I have. Two years ago I was at the
Squadron Reunion in Norway and met quite a few of
NELSON: That was just about when the end of the
NEVDAL: Yes,
war was.
my old friends.
NEVDAL: Yah. Just after Norway had been liberNELSON: Didn't they have a special celebrity at that
meeting, too. You say that you met the king.
ated.
NELSON: Were there still German soldiers around at
NEVDAL: I met hinr-I met the king in Toronto, He
came to Toronto to commemorate or
that time?
it was a plaque
given to the crty of Toronto from the king or a stone
as a memorial. The king came and I talked to him
NEVDAL: Yah, but they were in prison, (Laughter).
then.
taken over.
NELSON: That must have been quite an honor to
see
They were imprisoned by the Norwegians that had
NELSON:
So the
Norwegians didhave some guns
him.
NEVDAL: It was. I had met him once before. I was
on the crew that flew him from Oslo to another city ,
NEVDAL: Yah. The underground They came out
and then, of course, we got Allied Forces come in,
too, to help.
Trondheim, just after the war.
NELSON: Had to turn in all their ammunition and
NELSON: What was the highlight occurrence of your
combat experience or any other experiences that you
can remember? You've given me so many here-
NEVDAL: One of the highlights was when
I
was
supposed to be on an easier assignment when I flew
with a career plane between Scotland and Stockholm
when I again could fly over my homeland.
$urs...
NEVDAL:Yes. Yes.
NELSON: Okay. Now when you first come to the
United States, did you go to Canada and then to the
United States?
NEVDAL: You mean after the war?
NELSON: Andyou were free.
�Kaare
Nevdatr-Page7
NELSON: Yes, after the war
NELSON: I suppose tlús was constantly on your
mind too, while you were away from there what was
NEVDAL:Yes. Yes.
happening to your family.
NELSON: When did you first come to the United
NEVDAL:Yes, exactþ
States?
NEVDAL: After the war, first I got a job as a radio
offrcer with the airlines--with the Norwegian Airlines which later became the Scandinavian Airlines. I
had a good job there but the housing shortage was so
bad because of the war and then my wife, she had
come frorn-I met my wife in Toronto and we didn't
get maried there but she corresponded whüe I was in
England I asked her to come over to Norway after
the war and we'd get married. She came and we were
married in Norway in December of 1945. Then when
she get pregnant and housing shortage she had to go
back to Toronto to have the baby. She was going to
come back but afrer six months, things were going so
slow I decided to leave and so it was easier to get into
Canada than the United States so I went to Canada
and join her there. We lived there for a year and then
in 1948 ìMe came to Rocldord.
NELSON: I'd like to go back before this when your
parents were living and your family were living under the German government. How were they treated?
NEVDAL: My family, in particular, didn't suffer
any. They came--{he Gestapo came and inquired
what happened to me because they knew I had disap-
NELSON: You hadno way of knowing
NEVDAL: No, that.was very difficult.
NELSON: Retum to civilian life which we had been
talking about. How did you get along wrth the men
with whom you had the greatest contact-your crew
members?
NEVDAL: No problem. Very well. Very well.
NELSON: Were there things you would do differently if you could do them once again?
NEVDAL: No, I can't think of anything.
NELSON: What was the most difficult thing you had
to do during your military service or prior to your
military service when you got involved with the
Germans?
NEVDAL: Prior to my service? Living under the occupation. It was dificult thing was to put up with it
and I get involved in sabotage.
NELSON: You got involved in that?
peared,
NEVDAL: Yah. That was diffrcult and risþ and very
NELSON: How did they know of your existence?
rewarding.
NEVDAL: They knew I had disappeared.
NELSON: Unless you got caught.
NELSON: Yah. But how did they know you existed?
NEVDAL: Yes, that's one reason
I
had
to get
out,
too, because I would get caught sooner or later.
I don't know. They knew everybody. So
they asked my dad what happened to rne and he said,
"I don't know. I hope he went over to England," he
NEVDAL:
NELSON: Is there any one thing that stands out as
your most successfrrl achievement in the military
says. They
said "That's what we think too. We're
going to confiscate everything he owns." He said
service?
"That's easy because everything he owned he had on
him and I had provided it for him." Nothing come of
that. But that's all they ...
NEVDAL: No, nothing special. I'm proud of the time
I served thanlftl to Crod that I survived.
NELSON: They never bothered them after that.
NEVDAL: No, they didn't. A lot of people suffered
tenible
undertheil-
NELSON: I think you should be real proud that you
served your country. Now this has to do with victory
in Europe. How did you learn about VE Day and
what was your Ìeaction to it?
NEVDAL: VE Day was interesting because of a couple of days before when I was in St, Andrew's in
Scotland my captain, my pilot came and knocked on
�Kaare
my door in the middle of the night and said we had a
special trip. You better get up right now and come.
That special trip was to got down to London. We
flew down to London. We get down there-we were
parked there and some
VIP's.
VIP 's came-Norwegian
I don't know who they were but they were
VIP's. They come aboard and I was told to be aware
on the radio for orders. At that time, we knew something special was going on and \Ã/e suspected that we
fly these people to Norway because the
surrender was about to take place. We were all excited. I was sitting glued to the radio hoping to get
the message to head for Norway. As it turned out, we
were going to
went up to St. Andrew's to Lucas Airport and landed
there instead. The VIP's went to a flying boat that
was just a few miles from there and flew to Norway.
We had an inkling that this was going to happen before. Two days after, it was all over.
Nevdal-Page
8
NEVDAL: No. It had to be done.
NELSON: Where were you officially discharged
from the service?
NEVDAL: I was offrcially discharged in Oslo, Norway in 1945.I think it was in June or July of '45.
NELSON: Is there anything else that you would like
to talk about that you haven't discussed-your feelings and so on?
NEVDAL: Only that I've been an American citizen
since 1954. I've lived here since '48. Only how proud
I ãm to be an American now and how much I've enjoyed talking to Veterans from the American Air
Force and how well they have accepted me even
though I am from a different counûy. That's about
all.
NELSON: How about VJ Day. What was your reacfion to that?
NEVDAL: I was very happy, very happy about it. I
was back in Norway at the time and followed it \ /ith
great interest, the end of the war. I felt bad for-I
knew some of the Americans who had been in
Europe were shipped right to the Pacific afterwards
NELSON: I thinlc, basically, everybody in this country, somewhere along the line, were from a different
country.
NEVDAL: Yal¡ but I'm the real thing.
NELSON: Yah. Right. Right.
andhadto fight there.
NEVDAL: I have an
NELSON: Now, you had been away from Norway
for how long? Four years?
accent.
NELSON: Well, Kaare, that was real good.
enjoyed that and I thankyou very much.
NEVDAL. Yah, at least.
NEVDAL: You're welcome,
NELSON: Had there been many changes
in
your
town?
NEVDAL: Not man¡ no, no.
NELSON: They never had any air raids or an)'thing
in Norway.
NEVDAL: Oh, yes, They had like Bergen-ìn a sub-
urb of Bergen was bombed. There was a German
submarine base there and the Allies-{hey bombed it.
NELSON: What was your opinion of the use of the
atomic bomb when it was used against the Japanese
civilians in August of 1945?
NEVDAL: I was all for it because I knew that that's
what it took to save a lot of lives, not only American
lives but also Japanese lives.
NELSON: Has that opinion changed over the last
fifty years?
I really
��
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Midway Village Museum
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Midway Village Museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-2001
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Language
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English
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Charles Nelson
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Kaare Nevdal
Location
The location of the interview
Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Kaare Nevdal
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
July 27, 1994
Description
An account of the resource
Born October 9, 1920 Kaare Nevdal joined England's Royal Air Force as a radio operator and gunner, in March of 1941. He was discharged in June of 1945. He was still living as of 2016.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War 2
World War II
-
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PDF Text
Text
Jud DalmadgePage 1
Jud Dalmadge
Transcribed by Elaine Carlson For
Midway Village and Museum Center
6799 Guilford Road
Rockford, Illinois 61107
Phone 397 - 9112
�Jud DalmadgePage 2
Jud Dalmadge
Hello. Today is January 12, 1994. My name is
Charles Nelson. I am a volunteer with the Midway Village and Museum Center which is cooperating with the statewide effort to collect oral
histories from Illinois citizens who participated
in the momentous events surrounding World
War II. We are in the office of Midway Village
and Museum Center Village interviewing Mr.
Judson Dalmadge who lives at 4893 Braewild
Road, Rockford, Illinois. Mr. Dalmadge served
in a branch of the United States Armed Forces
during World War II. We are interviewing him
about his experiences in that war. Jud, would
you please start by introducing yourself to us?
DALMADGE: I am Jud Dalmadge and I am
now living in Rockford and I am now retired. At
one time I was in the United States Naval Air
Force and I am being interviewed and discussing
some of the events before World War II and
during the war.
NELSON: Please give us you full name, place
and date of birth.
DALMADGE: My name is Judson Bernard
Dalmadge. I was born in Watertown, New York,
on July 11, 1923.
NELSON: And the name of your parents.
DALMADGE: My Parents are Irvin Dalmadge
and Florence Dalmadge.
NELSON: Did you have any brothers or sisters?
DALMADGE: I had 11 brothers and sisters.
NELSON: Are there any details about you
and/or your family that you would like to give?
DALMADGE: No, other than we were a regular family at that time, sort of struggling as I
remember, mostly in the depression time. We
lived outside of the city of Watertown about 9
miles and my father got this so he could have a
big garden so we could supply food for the family.
NELSON: Good. What was life like for you
before the war and especially during 1941?
DALMADGE: Well, before the war as I explained, we lived out in the country. We had no
electricity or running water. Toilet facilities
were outside the home. It was sort of primitive,
as we know it today. In 1941 I had just graduated from high school and I had to wait until I was
18 and I entered into a
NELSON: What thoughts did you have about
the war before the United States became directly
involved in the conflict?
DALMADGE: Well, as you know, we were all
aware of what was happening in Europe. The
people I grew up with felt we were eventually
going to have to join into the fighting because it
didn’t look like anything that Hitler was doing
eventually had to be taken care of us by entering
the war.
NELSON: How did you hear of the December
7th, 1941, of the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the
Japanese. If so, where were you at the time and
what were you doing and what was your reaction and the response of those around you?
DALMADGE: Well, my brother and my brother-in-law and sister had been deer hunting up in
the Adirondack Mountains and we got home to
our home about 10:30 in the evening and we had
the radio on. Put the radio on and we heard the
announcement of the bombing. We couldn’t
believe it. We didn’t believe it. It kept repeating
itself, repeating itself. We so we felt something
did happen but we weren’t quite sure, so it was
really a surprise to us that something like this
was happening because we had been away for
the weekend deer hunting.
�Jud DalmadgePage 3
NELSON: Had you formed any prior opinion or
developed any feeling about what had been taking place in Europe or Asia?
DALMADGE: Well, to repeat what I said. , I
had an opinion that nothing was going to stop
Hitler short of us getting into the war. I did not
think too much about the Japanese at that time
because I was not aware of some of the conditions that were transpiring that the Japanese was
not a big factor at that time.
NELSON: Do you recall reading newspaper
accounts of German aggression in Europe?
DALMADGE: Yes, continued transgressions of
Hitler and all his takings, yes, I do recall very
vividly that we read about this on a daily basis.
NELSON: You had knowledge of his speeches,
his ideas and his actions?
DALMADGE: Yes, definitely.
NELSON: What events led to your entering the
military service? Were you already in service,
drafted or did you volunteer?
DALMADGE: No. My brother and I he was 2
years older than I was. We were supporting the
family at that time and we decided right away
that one of us would have to stay and one of us
would have to go or would, go. We were both
working at New York Air Brakes (?). We were
started making ammunition, if you want to call
it, and we were working 7 days a week, but we
both knew that one of us would go and one of us
would stay. So we flipped a coin and he won.
Prior to that he had taken his test for the Army
Air Corps. I had taken mine for the Navy Air
Corps and at that time they didn’t give anything
for dependents as a cadet and so that was why
we decided that one would have to go and one
would have to stay. So with him winning the
toss, he went into the service. I was supposed to
stay home, which I sometimes regret in a sense
as I went against what we decided to do. I went
against what our agreement was.
NELSON: Basic training when and where were
you inducted?
DALMADGE: I was inducted at Albany, New
York when I finally decided that Watertown is
Fort Drum now, was always a camp since World
War I and they have about 30,000 or 40,000
troops there at all times and Watertown is
roughly 30,000 population. It got so you
couldn’t go down the street or go out on a date
without being called a 4F. So eventually I decided with the last 2 or 3 people I hung around
with they decided to go in the service. I had
already been in the category 5A. I was supposed
to after women and children because I had 5
dependents, 5 brothers and sisters. Anyway, I
did go in. From my understanding my mother
and father thought they were holding me back
and so she gave me permission, or she agreed
that maybe I should go in the Navy. So I went in
the Navy and . . .
NELSON: I am going to ask you the next 4
questions. You can answer them in own. How
old were you? What happened after you were
inducted? Where were you sent? Where did you
take your basic training?
DALMADGE: I was 19 years old. I was inducted at Albany, New York and I took my
training at Samson Navy Base that Samson,
New York. From there, which was a period of
about 12 weeks, for boot camp. Because I
wanted to get in the Navy Air Corps and eventually become a pilot or thought I would be, I had
to take either Aviation “Mech.”, a machinist’s
mate that is, or Aviation Ordinance, or Aviation
Radio, which I selected. Aviation mechanics and
I was sent to Norman, Oklahoma, for schooling
which was a 6-month deal.
NELSON: What did you think of that training?
DALMADGE: I thought it was very good. Of
course, I had been an apprentice toolmaker before I went in and so I was somewhat mechanically inclined and the regiment in this type of
thing did not give me any problems that I remember.
NELSON: Okay. Did anything special happen
there? Tell us about any other training camps
�Jud DalmadgePage 4
you attended. Did you have any leaves or passes? If so, how did you use them?
DALMADGE: Well, mostly after a period of
time, probably 3 or 4 weeks before they would
give us any liberty and they would give us liberty for 1 or 2 days on a weekend with I think
about a 50 mile radius that we could travel in.
Most of the time, I happened to meet up with a
fellow from near my hometown and we would
hang out together with and we used to play golf
and play tennis together at the University of
Oklahoma, which was just outside our gates.
Most of the time, we were in that area. As far as
anything unusual, I don’t recall any particular
thing. From there we went to, also because at
that time we decided I was going to become a
gunner, I had to take Radar which was at the
same place in Norman. Then I went to Purcell,
Oklahoma, for a period of 5 weeks of gunnery
school. And from there I went to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, for operational training which was
partly schooling and partly flying.
NELSON: Okay. I think you have answered
what your assigned duties were in the military
unit. What was your participation in the conflict? Where did you after completing your basic
training and I would like to know the group you
were with and the squadron and so on and so
forth: And the area you were in.
DALMADGE: From Fort Lauderdale we went
up to Seattle, Washington. We were in a [cashew] outfit which was a group, you may say, of
different classifications. You were just waiting
to be reassigned as they so desired. At that time,
Air Group 9 had just returned from overseas and
was on the Essex Aircraft Carrier and they were
regrouping and so this was where we got assigned to that group. And so, Air Group 9, I was
in the Torpedo Squadron 9, which was made up
roughly of 16 torpedo planes along with part of
the Air Group. When we went to Pasco, Washington, which was near Walla Walla, Washington, we trained out of there, flew out of there on
a daily basis usually and we went to up to
Whidbey Island for our torpedo practice and
went down to San Diego to practice carrier
landings. Went to Salton Sea, which is in California for rocket runs and operation. So we were
up and down the coast for a period of probably
of 6 months. At that time we were sent over to
Hawaii.
NELSON: This was on your way to overseas?
DALMADGE: This was overseas. From there
we went to overseas. The first place we landed
was Hawaii and we stayed there for approximately 2 months and we were sent down to a
small little island down off of __?__. It was just
large enoughit was a coral reef that was made
over by the CBs, and we stayed there about a
month for just training and to get time on every
aircraft. We were supposed to get 50 hours before we went aboard ship. From there, in January 1945, we went and hit the fleet at __?__
Ulysses and that was when we met the huge fleet
of everythingcarriers and this type. At that
time we went aboard the USS Lexington, which
ended up to be preparation for the first time that
the Navy Air Force was to hit Tokyo as a major
operation. There were something like a thousand
planes in that operation. We only stayed about
six weeks aboard the Lexington. During that
time we also covered operations for landing on
Iwo Jima and after that operation we transferred
to the USS Yorktown and went back to the
States. So from that point on we just kept from
the Yorktown we just kept hitting Okinawa basically and the mainland
NELSON: Can I interrupt for a minute? Can
you tell me the type of airplaneThis is not the
question, but I think it should be in here. What
type of airplane and what your job was on this
airplane that you were assigned to?
DALMADGE: Yes. This was a Grumman torpedo plane. They called it the TBF. It’s a torpedo bomber. “F” means for Grumman, the manufacture. It’s a 3-place, 3-man planethe pilot,
the radioman and a gunner. The gunner was on
the turret. That was my location. The gunner
was down in the bilge and so I had 50-caliber
machine gun and the radioman had a small 30
caliber and basically my role was to keep track
of where other planes were and also as a gunner
be aware of the enemy at least.
�Jud DalmadgePage 5
NELSON: At this point, what did you think of
our nation’s war efforts and your feelings on it?
NELSON: Okay. How about casualties? How
did they occur and how were they treated?
DALMADGE: Well, we just happened to hit
the operations or combat at its good time. The
Japanese had been beaten pretty well, even
though they were hittingstill had a lot of Kamikazes, which was probably our biggest fear,
but basically, we could fly almost anywhere any
time without seeing too many enemy aircraft.
The big serious threat at that time was the kamikazes which I think at one time practically
every large carrier and small carrier was hit at
least once, which we all went through. It was a
time when Kamikazes and Japanese knowing
they were fairly well beaten. I hit the fleet at a
good time as far as that goes.
DALMADGE: Well, as I said, we lost 2 crews
on Iwo. One was, I thought was pilot error.
What happened, when we were aboard the Lexington, each ship had its own way of determining what planes we were going to fly in. Well,
the Lexington, we were assigned to a particular
aircraft and it happened to be, they were going
to try a new pilot to lead the group. His plane
was the last plane to take off so everybody else
had joined in and he came rushing up to become
the lead man. I witnessed this from the flight
desk and what happened was he rushed up to get
the lead and when he did, he must have pulled
back the stick, of the throttle, and he actually
went into a wing tip stall, trying to get in location. He went into the water. That’s the first time
I ever saw a TBF explode because we didn’t
carry that much fuel to explode like some of the
bigger planes. So that was my firstand so
those bodies two of them were recovered by a
destroyer butthey did the memorial service
right aboard the destroyer and they were destined to the sea. In other words they were buried
at sea.
NELSON: Can you list for us in order of occurrence all subsequent combat action in which you
were involved?
DALMADGE: Well, the first was when the
Fleet hit Tokyo. We were on 2 missions there.
We hit a small aircraft plant, making aircraft, I
should say, about 70 miles north of Tokyo and
of course the B29s later on said that all we did
was break the windows. We dropped like 100
pounders and we reloaded with 2000 pounders,
but we didn’t get back there because we ran into
a snowstorm and the whole operation was cancelled. From there we sort of, we came back and
we hit Iwo and we covered the invasion of Iwo
Jima. From the air it didn’t' look like much was
happening down there. We dropped “Daisy cutters” which was an anti-personnel, which was
opposite Mount Suribachi. As I recall it was
because we were like number 2 man in and all
we seen was a fantastic amount of dust and debris because we went down to probably 50 feet
from the ground and those anti-personnel bombs
were throwing up the dirt. What we found out
later was just from the volcanic ash. We did very
little damage as I recall from what we heard
later. Anyway we stayed on station there, as I
recall, for roughly a week. We lost 2 planes in
that particular time, not so much from enemy
action but through neglect of flying or whatever
you want to call it. I do recall that.
NELSON: Did your mental attitude change as
combat continued?
DALMADGE: Well, it’s a funny thing. When
you see the people you’ve been with for a couple
years, training and stuff and losing them now
and then. The thing I recall we sort of joked
about it. If something is going to happen, it’s
going to happen. I didn’t think and I don’t think
anybody thought too much about it, whether you
were going to make it or not. We just sort of
made it a joke type thing before you went off,
you’d talk to your fellow flyers and say, “Well,
if you go down can I have your dungarees?” and
this type of thing. It was sort of a joke in that
way. You see in the Navy, what people don’t
understand about the Navy, if you volunteered to
fly in the Navy, as far as crewmen goes, you
could quit any time and this was hard for some
of the Air Force people to believe, but that’s
true. And we had, after the first hope after Tokyo, we had about 6 crewmembers that quit and
they were flown back after the operation to one
�Jud DalmadgePage 6
of the islands. The skipper came in at that time
and suggested that even though he knew we
could quit any time, he suggested, that to stop
this situation, he made a statement. Anyone else
who wanted to quit, he would guarantee them at
least 2 years on the worst island out there. So,
knowing some of the stuff, the galloping crud
and all that stuff on some of these islands it sort
of stopped our thinking of ever wanting to quit.
Charles Nelson stopped the tape at this point
and began again.
NELSON: Did you write many letters home and
did you receive many letters or packages? If so,
how often? What type of things did you like to
get in packets?
DALMADGE: Yes, I remember writing. I
probably wrote every week or so. This is funny,
before I went my last leave before I went overseas, I had a deal with my mother that, because I
found out we couldn’t even tell anybody we
were in the Pacific. We had a deal that the last
paragraph to let her know where I was. We
hadI set up a little code that I would ask for
one of my particular brothers and that would
mean I was either Hawaii or Japan. I had a little
code I used to do that but the funny part of it is,
when I got home after the war, I found that she
didn’t even remember we had that so all was for
naught. She never did know where I was. Anyhow, I thought that was funny. Now days you
wonderyou know exactly where everybody is.
We just couldn’t even tell them we were in the
Pacific. That is how things have changed. Yes, I
wrote and I received it. The destroyer used to
come along side, probably once every 2 weeks
or so on, whatever, and they would bring the
mail. That was a big thing about the carrier.
Everybody used to go down and watch them
when they transferred the mail over. So it was
quite an occasion, something to look forward to.
As far as packages, I remember getting packages
but most of the time it was cookies or something
like that. But by the time it got to us, it was just
a pile of crumbs and the mail bag thing was full
of crumbs. So nothing really came as they were
sent.
NELSON: Did you forge close bonds of
friendships with many or some of you combat
companions?
DALMADGE: Oh, yes. I still have friends and
we still get together. We still correspond. I continued every few years to go to reunions and this
type of thing. I would say probably that I had 4
real good close friends that we continually were
very, very close in our friendship.
NELSON: Some of these questions may not
pertain to you. I will read them. I think this is
more about people out in the field. Did you ever
help retrieve a wounded buddy from a field of
combat? Answer yes or no.
DALMADGE: No.
NELSON: During your combat duty did you
ever capture any prisoners. If so, please describe
the circumstances.
DALMADGE: No.
NELSON: Prior to the end of the war, were you
aware that any civilian concentration camps
existed? If so, please explain how you learned
about them and how much you knew at the time.
DALMADGE: I didn’t know an awful lot about
them and I didn’t really know about them. Being
in the Navy I think you’re away from that type
of thing. But I will say this, that it was a real
thorn in my side at the time. One of the kamikaze planes was shot down and the pilot survived.
We were aboard the Yorktown at the time. The
admiral was aboard our ship. They brought him
aboard the ship and they interviewed him and so
forth. Our personnel officer of our squadron
used to be the head registrar of Union College
and he was a greatI don’t know what you’d
call him, but he caused a lot of problems with
me, mainly because he was a great Samaritan.
He came in said to try to write a letter home
every month and let our parents know where we
were, or what we were doing and he wrote and
said the Japanese prisoner he wanted to come
back to America. Getting back to this story of
the Japanese Kamikaze pilot and so he was
writing this home to my mother and saying that
�Jud DalmadgePage 7
his favorite dish was ice cream and all these
great things about what he was doing and what
he wanted to do and how he liked Americaand
would have liked to be in America.. It didn’t sit
with me because my brotherI had just been
notified my brother had been killed in a B24
over in Europe. I explained to him that I didn’t
want this sent to my mother because she thought
I was up there trying to win a war. This caused
an awful lot of problems with him and I. He
became very indignant and never did treat me
the same afterward but that’s the way I felt. So I
was aware of at least one prisoner of war, and
that was the nearest I ever got to it.
without Jato so it was sort of a good experience
and we stayed aboard for like 4 days a seaplane
tender before brought us back to a ship off Okinawa.
NELSON: You can answer this with yes or no.
Did you help liberate any enemy prison camps
or concentration camps? If so, which ones?
Please describe them especially what conditions
you found in the camp.
DALMADGE: Well, weone Thanksgiving
when we were in Fort Lauderdale was very funny in a way when I think about it now. After we
had the traditional turkey and all that, they suggested if we wanted anything because they had
an awful lot of turkey left over that we could
take whatever we wanted. So I took a tremendous large big drumstick and took it back and
put it in my locker and proceeded to go on liberty. All day and all night long I kept thinking
this drumstick was going to be nice to come
back to. And so, in those days they had curfew.
The lights went out in the barracks at 10 o’clock.
We got back a little after that and I went in and
opened the locker. Of course, the lights were off
and I proceeded to take one great big bite out of
this turkey leg and my mouth exploded. Not
knowing what it was, I ran into the head and
here it was, just thousands and thousands of just
big red ants. So I spit for needless to say hours.
And then the next time we were in Hawaii and
as far as I know like Thanksgiving we always
had our turkey and this type of thing. Then at
Christmas time down in this island of [Konan]It’s a little island, we had rations of 2
cokes or 2 beers a day and we had a ration card
and everything. I don’t recall really what we had
at that time. It was a little bit less far as having
any problems with eating and that sort of thing. I
can really say
DALMADGE: No, I did not.
NELSON: What was the high light occurrence
of you combat experience?
DALMADGE: Well, I guess probably being
shot down. We were dropping bombs that had 1
hour to 24 hours on an air field on a small island
between Taiwan and Okinawa where the kamikaze were coming. We were trying to upset the
runways and we happened to hit it during a
thunderstorm if you want to call it. There was
about a 200 or 300-foot ceiling and so we had to
hit going at roughly 250 knots in the process and
about 50 feet off the ground. Our plane got hit in
the engine by small fire or 20mm we think.. We
had to abandon the ship shortly after off the
coast. The seas were about 20 feet. So probably
that was a high light. We did get picked up. We
went about 7 o’clock in the morning and got
picked up just before dusk in the afternoon.
Originally we could see the Japanese when we
first went down trying to get at us. Coming out
in a boat for us, but we had fighter cover all day
long. Every 24 hours or so they would change so
they would attack whatever was coming put
after us. Anyway, we got picked up by a PBM, a
Navy PBM, and it had Jato on it which is an
assist take off. They said that they would never
be able to take off in those waves or that sea
NELSON: This isn’t one of the regular questions. Was anybody injured?
DALMADGE: My radioman broke his ankle.
Other than that, no.
NELSON: Tell us what you and the other men
did to celebrate America’s traditional family
holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas?
NELSON: You had plenty?
DALMADGE: Yes, compared to what other
people had, we were well off.
�Jud DalmadgePage 8
NELSON: When and how did you return to the
United States after the end of the war?
DALMADGE: We came home in July of ’45. I
was home on leave when the war ended and so
Iit was 4 days before I had to get back. I was
destined to go to a refresher gunnery school.
From Oklahoma I was supposed to go down
there. But I was home on leave when the war
ended and so anyhow, naturally we celebrated
because I was home at the time.
NELSON: Please tell us about you military rank
and your decorations especially your campaign
ribbons.
DALMADGE: Well, I guess, first of all I had
the Flying Cross, 3 Air Medals, I believe. And
then I guess there’s several Presidential Unit
Citation things. I don’t really know other than
that. But that’s the only one individually awards
that I know I have.
NELSON: What was your rank?
DALMADGE: I was Aviation Machinist Mate,
Second Class.
NELSON: How many campaigns were you in?
DALMADGE: Well, I really don’t know how
they determine but Iwo, the invasion of Iwo
could be considered one and Okinawa. Okinawa
was probably our biggest. We probably had 30
to 35 missions over Okinawa. For several reasons, some of the missions were to land. I
should say, Okinawa was our biggestprobably
we spent 30 to 35 at Okinawa. Some of the missions were just to drop supplies. It rained so bad
they couldn’t get supplies so we would land and
put everything on parachutes and fly over with
our wheels down and drop them. We would
always get hit with the small arms fire but I
guess you would say that was the first I mean
those were the two main operationswould be
Iwo but I don’t know how the services or how
the Navy determines which is an operation.
DALMADGE: I got along great with them as
far as I knew. If I knew I was going to come
back I would had had a hell of a good time, as it
was I had a good time.
NELSON: Are there things you would do differently if you could do them once again?
DALMADGE: Well probably, but I don’t know
what they would be off hand.
NELSON: What was the most difficult thing
you had to do during your period of military
service?
DALMADGE: I guess probably several times
when we were on missions that got a little scary.
I guess that would probably be considered the
ones I had concerns about the most. But, actually, yes, I think that probably some of the missions we were on that probably was concerning
the worst situations, but I think you sort of got
used to it and you didn’t take them quite as I
won’t say serious but you didn’t get too concerned with it. I really don’t know, of course, a
lot of things could be saida lot of things you
didn’t like and you would wish you were somewhere else. At the time and under the circumstances, I really don’t know what I considered
the most difficult.
NELSON: Okay. Is there anyone thing that
stands out as you most successful achievement
in the military service?
DALMADGE: Well, I think being just being
party to a group of guys that were pretty well
dedicated and looking back and saying we did
what we could do and what we were supposed to
do and I think I did it pretty well. I think that to
me what I considered a good thing, I think and
what I considered a good American and what I
was supposed to do as an America and for my
country. I guess at the time. I think that was
NELSON: You did your job and did it well.
NELSON: Now, this is a return to civilian life.
How did you get along with the men with whom
you had the greatest contact?
DALMADGE: Yes. I think I did it was well as
anybody could do it and so I felt,yes. I did
what I should have done.
�Jud DalmadgePage 9
NELSON: Okay. How did you learn about VE
Day and what was your reaction to it?
DALMADGE: VE Day, we were flying and we
got it over the intercomover the radio and they
announced it that VE Day and we were very
happy. We knew we were going to win and that
was another indication that, yes, we were going
to win this thing.
NELSON: What was your opinion of the use of
the Atomic Bomb when it was used against
Japanese civilians in August of 1945?
DALMADGE: I loved it. I loved it. I thought it
was the greatest thing that ever could happen.
When we left the fleet in July they were preparing for the next operation. It was going to be
landing on the mainland and we had to leave all
our equipment, flying equipment and stuff we
had to available to our squadron knowing that
they were going to have to use it. We also knew
what they projected for the casualties so I was
very pleased. Happy.
NELSON: Has your opinion changed in the last
50 years? If so, how?
DALMADGE: No, It has not changed. I’ve
heard all these people and all the people who
made their comments on how bad it was. But to
me being there, the situation has not changed on
iota.
NELSON: When and where were you officially
discharged from the service?
DALMADGE: In New Yorkoutside of New
York City, September, 1945. The Navy had a
deal. If you had a DFC or above, you didn’t
have to wait for points and all that. Of course, in
my case I had a lot of points because I had a lot
of dependents, so we were out hardly before the
shouting was over.
NELSON: Do you have a disability rating or
pension?
DALMADGE: No.
NELSON: Do you have any opinions or feelings about our national military status or its policies?
DALMADGE: Not really. Not really.
NELSON: Do you have any contact with the
Veterans’ Administration?
DALMADGE: I use to have it. I had a lot of
trouble with my ears from flying but after about
10 years of fighting with them, I gave up.
NELSON: You’ve answered the next question.
Have you ever gone to a VA Hospital or Medical Service?
DALMADGE: I have never gone to the hospital
but originally, right after the war, if you had
anything at all, they would make sure it was
taken care of. After a year or two they forgot
about that situation andI had a situation with
my ear drum that had been taken out of place
due to some altitude flying and dive bombing, so
that has always been a problem with mine. But
after about 10 years, they refused to do anything
about it. I gave up. I’m not happy with the way
they treated it, but that’s the way it goes.
NELSON: Would you like to tell us about your
family support during your military life.
DALMADGE: Yes. There were 5 of us in the
service, 5 brothers during that time. Some got in
at the tail end but there were 4 of us in practically 3 years or so and the youngest brother, he
went in at the beginning of 1945. We were pretty well involved with it. The whole familymy
sisters used to write and my mother. So we were
pretty much of a family tied up with this war.
NELSON: Okay. Over subsequent years what
has this support meant to you?
DALMADGE: Oh, well, it was what I expected. It was what America used to be at one
time. You supported people who were in the
military and supported the wars the government
got involved in. Whether they were good or bad
or what. That’s the way we were brought
upthe way I was brought up.
�Jud DalmadgePage 10
This appears to be the end of the interview.
There is no “sign off.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
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Midway Village Museum
Publisher
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Midway Village Museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-2001
Rights
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Midway Village Museum
Language
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English
Format
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pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Charles Nelson
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Judson Dalmadge
Location
The location of the interview
Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
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Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Judson Dalmadge
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
January 12, 1994
Description
An account of the resource
Born July 12, 1923, Judson Dalmadge became a Naval Air Force Gunner.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Format
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pdf
Type
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Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War II
WW2
-
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PDF Text
Text
John T. Sowle—1
John T. SOWLE:
Transcribed by Lorraine Lightcap
Midway Village and Museum Center
6799 Guilford Road
Rockford, Illinois 61107
Phone 815 397 9112
�John T. Sowle—2
John T. Sowle
Today is June 5, 1996. My name is Charles
Nelson. I am a volunteer for Midway Village
and Museum Center, Rockford, Illinois, which
is cooperating with the statewide effort of
Illinois to collect oral histories from World War
II Veterans that participated in the momentous
events that occurred during World War II. We
are in the office of Midway Village interviewing
Dr. John Sowle. Dr. Sowle served in the branch
of the military armed services during World
War II. We are interviewing him about his
experience in that war.
NELSON: John, would you please start by
introducing yourself by giving us your full
name, place and date of birth. We would also
like the name of each of your parents.
SOWLE: My name is John T. Sowle. I was
born in Rockford, Illinois, in 1920. My
parents—my father was Charles J. Sowle and
my mother was Gertrude Elizabeth Stewart, then
of course, Sowle. My father was a dentist and he
was the one that developed the ROTC program
in Rockford at Central High School for several
years on a volunteer basis.
NELSON: Did you have any brothers or
sisters?
Corps in 1942. I had worked at Ropers for 9 or
10 months.
NELSON: What thoughts did you have about
the war before the United States became directly
involved in the conflict?
SOWLE: It seems to me that I wasn’t really
involved. Didn’t think a lot about it. But as I
recall, I was interested, I think, in sports and
things like that. I did have a hobby. I was a
camp(?) gremlin in the years at high school until
I went into the service. Don’t think I was really
conscious of the situation until we went into the
war. Then right then I thought it was time to
enlist.
NELSON: Did you go because of the December
7th bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese? If
so, where were you and what were you doing at
that time?
SOWLE: At the time I was bowling on a
Sunday afternoon. I don’t recall the lanes but I
remember the announcement and that kind of
took care of the bowling. At the time there was
sort of a somber reaction, as I recall.
NELSON: What was your reaction as to
responsibility?
SOWLE: Yes, I have one brother that is living
who is a dentist. I also had two more brothers,
Stewart Sowle, who also was a dentist in
Rockford and ____?____Sowle who was in the
dental business and two sisters, one in Rockford
and one in Peoria, Illinois.
SOWLE: I was, of course, astounded, mad,
upset about it it was the topic of conversation
for a good long time. Along with the group of
people I was associated with at that time, several
of us enlisted over the next two to three months.
NELSON: What was life like before the war
and specifically during.
NELSON: Do you recall any newspaper
accounts of things and events in Europe?
SOWLE: I graduated from Central High and
entered the University of Illinois in the fall of
1940. I attended the university until the spring
of 1941 and then left the school and went to
work for the George Roper Corporation. I
enlisted in the Naval Service, the Naval Air
SOWLE: Yes, I do. I remember that was a
concern of mine at the time.
NELSON: Did you ever know of Hitler’s
speeches, his actions?
�John T. Sowle—3
SOWLE: Yes, I did. I was just amazed at his
transgressions and like everybody else felt
something had to be done about it.
NELSON: What events led to your military
service? Were you drafted or did you enlist?
SOWLE: Actually I was—I volunteered but I
was aware of the fact that my number was
coming up. At least I thought it was.
NELSON: Was your response to entering into
the military service influenced by your family
and friends’ attitude toward the war, or a threat
to national security or any other considerations?
SOWLE: I’m sure it was. I was concerned
because I had lost some associates and friends
that had been in the service and had been
involved. That, I think, was probably the main
reason. And, of course, my father being a
military man even though he did practice
dentistry he was much involved in the Illinois
National Guard here.
NELSON: When and where were you inducted?
SOWLE: I was inducted in Chicago in
February of ’42. I remember the name of J.
Burlagen (?), an outstanding author at the
University of Chicago who interviewed me. He
talked to me about my enlistment.
NELSON: Did you have any special memories
of this event?
SOWLE: Yes, I do. Because of that man, I can
remember that I was impressed because I knew
the name he really was a gentleman.
NELSON: How old were you then?
SOWLE: I was twenty-one.
NELSON: What happened after you were
inducted and where were you sent?
SOWLE: I was sent to Iowa City for three
months of physical fitness and basic training.
Primarily it was one-half day of physical fitness
and one-half day of diabetics. I was a naval
cadet air cadet and that did have quite a
bit of math involved in it.
NELSON: What did you think of the training?
SOWLE: I thought it was excellent training. I
remember my mother came down to visit me
after the 3 months period of hard training. When
my mother came down to visit, she was
impressed with my physical health at that time. I
remember that I had been smoking and I stopped
because of the condition down there.
NELSON: Tell us about any other events
pertaining to your training.
SOWLE: Well, we had 3 months of training
there and then had liberty on weekends. If we
could pass an aptitude test on Saturday, they let
us out on Sunday afternoon for two or three
hours. It was a rigorous training and I remember
that I was whole heartedly involved in it. We
left for Danville, Illinois. I just started pilot’s
training and was there for 5 months. Actually, it
was scheduled for a 3 month period but because
of the weather around Chicago a lot of our
flying time was canceled. A lot of the flights
were canceled because of the weather especially
in the fall of the year. I remember that it took
about six weeks to get in four hours of night
flying. That was the last part of the course that
we had to do. From there I went to Corpus
Christi and was in the King Ranch outlying
fields. Went through training there and
graduated in August of ’43.
NELSON: Do you recall friends and associates
that you made with civilians at that time?
SOWLE: Not so much with civilians. I can’t
recall having any contact with civilians during
the training. Immediately after graduation I went
to Hawaii. There I joined a squadron that was
sent to Guadalcanal and just part of that for 2
months.
NELSON: That was with the Navy?
�John T. Sowle—4
SOWLE: Actually, when I graduated from
Corpus Christi we had an opportunity to join a
Marine Corps if you so desired. I inquired of
Jerry Foss of ____?____Corpus Christi where
we talked with him. He told us of his exploits
and a dozen of us could hardly wait to join the
Marine Corps, which we did. There were Navy
____?____ who couldn’t believe this. After we
graduated in the Marines, I was a 2nd Lieutenant
and for some reason I recall that I was to be
married on that leave we were sent
immediately to San Diego and then directly to
Hawaii, so I had no leave for two years.
NELSON: Where did you go after completing
your military training?
SOWLE: Well, we went directly to Hawaii and
weactually I was trained as a fighter
pilotbut when we got to Hawaii—it was just
after the bombing of Midway and they were
replacing men into the squadrons that were on
Midway. So as they were short of dive bomber
pilots, four or five of us volunteered to join that
squadron and go down to Guadalcanal. That’s
what we did.
NELSON: Were there ____?____.
SOWLE: No, these were SPD’s, dive bombers.
NELSON: I see. When you were sent overseas,
how did you get there?
SOWLE: We took a boat to Hawaii and trained
there for about 6 weeks. Then we took time
going down to ____?____ in the New Hebrides.
That was the staging area for Guadalcanal.
NELSON: What was the ____?____ up to this
point?
SOWLE: I was impressed with it. As I recall it
was very well organized and as I looked at the
equipment that I was issued, I couldn’t believe
the way they took track of it. I just generally
thought the service was very competent.
NELSON: Tell us about your experience
entering your first combat zone.
SOWLE: Well, we were at Guadalcanal and
then left with the squadron there and then we
were based about 150 mile north at the island of
[Lundel]. There we staged the first combat flight
that I had been with and invaded Bougainville.
We flew flight and dive bombing before the
troops went in to land at Bougainville. I
understood the Bougainville landing was just to
develop three or four air strips so we could fly
from [Lundel] into Bougainville. Then we could
fly up and down from [Lundel]. and that’s what
our mission was.
NELSON: I see. Can you list for us in the order
of occurrence the combat actions in which you
were involved?
SOWLE: Yes. The first this wasn’t combat
action we were scheduled at [Lundel] and we
were ten of us were sent back to Guadalcanal
to pick up some new aircraft. I remember that
we checked them out on the ground as they had
been there for awhile. We checked them out on
the ground and then took off. Once up my
engine cut out and I went down and landed back
on the runway. Got back and a guy looked at the
engine, put a cap on the ____?____ and that was
my first experience in combat. In December of
that year, 1943, we started bombing ____?____.
On the first mission I was shot down and spent 2
days in the water, was located and returned to
my squadron. I was on leave then for a week or
ten days and then started flying again. And that
was the way that we operated in the Marine
Corps. You had six weeks in combat and then
we had ten days R and R (rest and relaxation)
and then you were and in training for another six
weeks. After that you were back into combat.
You did that until your time was up and that’s
what we did. That was the procedure until I was
relieved and sent back in November of 1944.
NELSON: When you were shot down in the
water, what was that caused by?
�John T. Sowle—5
SOWLE: The way we operated from down in
[Lundel] it involved 65 dive bombers, 38 PBS
and about 200 fighter planes. We all agreed on
the lay up. We had fighter cover through all
areas at 30,000 feet and 240180 then 12. We
started our bombing range about 21,000 feet.
We pushed over and got speed up over the target
and, of course, then we went down. I was
approaching [LaVel] and zeros were all over the
place. One came up to our formation and
exploded, probably a 20 millimeter cannon shot
or something like that. My gunman got it and
was killed immediately. It destroyed some of my
controls so I had no rudder control but I had arm
control. So I had to leave the formation because
I couldn’t stay in it and started back home. Of
course there were planes all over the air all
over the water and there was no use in telling
anybody as we had radio silence. It didn’t work
anyway. So I started back home because I had
no rudder control. To keep ahead I had to fly
with one wing down and that probably saved my
life as two zeros had started making runs on me.
But because I was in a skid all the time it wasn’t
easy for them to destroy my aircraft. I started
losing oil. Well, I got back and kept losing
altitude and of course the zeros couldn’t stay
with me because I had a lot of fighter friends all
over the sky. So I started back and I was losing
altitude. Finally my engine conked out, lost all
controls and had a water landing. The gunner
was, of course, dead at the time as far as I could
tell. I got in the water and got in my raft all right
and then just started drifting. I struggled so
much getting that boat out and then getting out
of the water that I fell asleep. When I woke up I
could see land it was Bougainville. So I got
____?____ so the current took me into the
island. But Bougainville was 130 miles long and
all we had was a perimeter of about 10 miles in
the middle of this 130 miles so I drifted down
the coast. Finally a day and a half or two days
later I was opposite where we had our runway
metal runways that we used as I described
earlier. I thought for sure I would get into shore
but I couldn’t. So I was kind of frustrated. All of
a sudden I heard machine guns and I thought,
gee, they’re strafing me. Well actually it was a
navy pilot that signaled his leader that he was
dropping out of the formation because he had
seen me. So he started circling me and pretty
soon 4 or 5 others joined him. Then two PT
boats came out and picked me up.
NELSON: Wonderful! I suppose this was a
grand experience for you?
SOWLE: Yes, it was. I don’t remember
everything being real scary but when I first got
hit at that altitude, my first inclination was to
climb out and hit that parachute. But for some
reason or other I stayed with it as I had a little
control. So I felt that was fortunate. If I had
bailed out earlier, boy, at that time they were
shooting parachutes up so my chance of survival
was nil.
NELSON: Would you have had a life raft if you
had bailed out?
SOWLE: No, just in the water.
NELSON: This goes into the approximate
number of casualties, how they would have
occurred and how they were treated
SOWLE: Well, our casualties were usually
they went down with the plane. We lost maybe
in the squadron of 86 pilots, we lost maybe
seven over the period of about 13 to 15 months.
NELSON: Now of this seven planes there were
two men crews?
SOWLE: Yes, 7 planes and 14 crew members.
Our squadron was 36 in number. We had 36
pilots and we lost 13 of them.
NELSON: Did your mental attitude change as
combat continued?
SOWLE: No. Not then it didn’t. But to
continue this saga, I came back in November of
’44 and was married then went down to
____?____ and was acting as an instructor down
there with the rescue TC, the new dive bomber
they had developed. I was down there just six
months and then the sent me back overseas. I
�John T. Sowle—6
was in the Philippines for three months. I
developed hemorrhoids to the point that they
were going to send me home to have surgery.
But by the time I got home on the ship the
hemorrhoids disappeared and I never had any
trouble since then.
NELSON: What did you think of the war so
far?
SOWLE: As I said, I thought that it was a
tremendous experience one you couldn’t buy.
It was fortunate you came out alive. You met a
lot of good people and I never was really
____?____time. After hemorrhoids, I had about
enough of it.
NELSON: Did you write many letters home?
SOWLE: Yes, I wrote quite frequently.
NELSON: Did you save letters?
SOWLE: Yes. One incident that was kind of
different. Ronald Colman, the actor, was in a
show and he interviewed servicemen overseas.
He had a telephone hook-up and I was
scheduled to be on that program and I was to
talk to my fiancee. At the time she was at the
telephone at home with her parents awaiting the
call. For some reason it never got through.
NELSON: Did most of the other men write
overseas letters?
SOWLE: I think so, yes. That was an important
part in the service. We were involved in the
thick of it in the islands down there. We didn’t
have any contact with civilians we had rest
leave two rest leaves at ten days a piece in
Sydney, Australia. Of course, that was a
welcome relief.
NELSON: Did you forge close bonds of
friendship with many or some of your combat
companions?
SOWLE: Yes, I am still in contact with one
recently passed away. There were four or five in
the squadron. We never had an organized
reunion. It was an individual thing because our
units were rather small. Our squadron, of
course, was only 36 pilots and so we didn’t have
large groups. But I kept in contact with four of
them now and as I said one has recently passed
away. I lost track of others but two of them I
still correspond with.
NELSON: Did you have any contact with
captured or army prisoners?
SOWLE: No.
NELSON: What was the highlight occurrence
of you combat experience or any other
experiences that you can remember besides the
ditching?
SOWLE: I will tell you one thing. When I was
picked up by a PT boat I was taken to the
hospital in Bougainville. Who should come in
but a very good friend of mine by the name of
Chuck Cross, a Rockford native. Chuck was a
spotter for the artillery and he is now a G-5 as I
recall. He flew around Bougainville and spotted
for the artillery and kept in the area navy
spotter. The first night I came in I wasn’t in
any kind of bad shape, maybe something from
exhaustion so they automatically kept me over
night. So he visited me. The next morning he
went out on a mission and was shot down. He
was shot down and if you know anything about
jungles, Bougainville was real ____?_____, He
was shot down in an area that is about 15 miles
from where we had the lines. I found this out
later, that when they crossed he was seriously
hurt. However, his observer who was with him
built him a lean-to and left him there and then
went for help. The navy observer was found
about six weeks later in a local garden. He had
passed out from exhaustion. So that he’d
been in the jungle more than two weeks. I don’t
remember the time, but he had an awful time
getting back. Of course, he couldn’t retrace his
steps and he had no idea where he left Chuck
Cross. I came back here to get married. I had a
cold and my mother said that I should go down
to the Nelson Hotel as they had a masseuse
�John T. Sowle—7
down there. I was to go down and get a steam
bath and try to get rid of the cold. I was telling
the masseuse about military life as he was
interested in what I was doing. When I told him
about Chuck Cross, he excused himself. He
returned with Chuck’s military belongings and
pleaded with me to go see Chuck’s mother and
tell her what had happened. It was probably the
toughest thing I ever did in my life.
Emotionally, I wasn’t set for it but I did it. I’ll
never forget that as long as I live. She, of
course, was appreciative but was still broken up
over it herself. Still I think she thought there
might be some way he’d be OK. That was really
a strange experience.
NELSON: Tell me what you and other
servicemen did to celebrate America’s
traditional holidays such as Thanksgiving and
Christmas.
SOWLE: Well, I think — I can’t recall what we
did very much. Nothing impressed me that I
remember as any kind of celebration on those
holidays when we were away. Of course, in the
jungle in the South Pacific it wasn’t really like
Christmas or Thanksgiving. The food was not as
good as anywhere else. I do remember that they
had Bob Hope and Jack Benny on the island. It
was really a welcome relief and I thought Bob
Hope did a splendid job. I was a little upset with
Benny because he had a beautiful woman with
him and he was kind of — he was a little liberal
about sex in his program. I’m thinking of all
these marines stuck on this island and you
know, I didn’t really appreciate that. I remember
Bob Hope and Connie Lange and others really
had a great show.
NELSON: When and how did you return to
America?
SOWLE: I came back on a boat from the
Philippines, landed in San Diego and discharged
there. I was to take a troop train back to Chicago
that night and then to return and I did. I was in
charge of a car of the troops going to Chicago
and then come right back to be discharged. I
didn’t have to do that and I was discharged. It
would have been tough to go home and then
have to go back.
NELSON: Please tell us about you military
rank and your decorations, especially your
combat decorations.
SOWLE: I was finished as a 2nd Lieutenant in
the Marine Corps. We had a presidential
citation, of course. Had a — can’t remember, I
think — I know that I had four ribbons and I
don’t
NELSON: How many missions were you in?
SOWLE: I was in 39 missions and a lot of them
in the Solomons and probably 15 the
____?____.
NELSON: In these missions did you run into
any contact with planes or flack or any of that?
SOWLE: No. We had anti-aircraft covering the
thing and zeros were there for the first 6 weeks.
We disposed of all the airfields and then it was
strictly bombing the aircraft, anti-aircraft and
shipping that was using [LaBau] Harbor. In the
Philippines we were with the Fifth Army and
were bombing isolated pockets of Japanese that
were still in the Philippines.
NELSON: How did you get along with the men
with whom you came in contact?
SOWLE: Fine. As I recall we were a real close
group and we had only one or two fellows that
didn’t fit in but the most part, there were 36
pilots and we were all living in tents. Maybe
there was six men in a tent so it was pretty close
contact. You had to get along.
NELSON: What was the most difficult thing
you had to do in your military career
experience?
SOWLE: Probably talking with Mrs. Cross
about her son Chuck.
NELSON: Does any one thing stand out as
being the most successful achievement in the
�John T. Sowle—8
military service? How about when you got your
wings? Was that a memorable time?
SOWLE: That was a memorable time. It started
in October and went on to the next August.
There were ups and downs, good times and bad
times. When we had a bad flight because we
checked flights with every plane every two
weeks. So we had some stress. When it was all
over we were pretty much relieved.
NELSON: But as a young fellow from
Rockford, that was a pretty big deal?
NELSON: I don’t imagine the Japs would have
taken any prisoners?
SOWLE: No.
NELSON: Has your opinion changed over the
last fifty years?
SOWLE: No, I don’t think so. I’m quite
patriotic and I had a lot of difficulty right after
the war. I was watching a parade and hearing
military bands and it was quite an emotional
stress. I couldn’t handle that for a long time.
SOWLE: Yes, it was quite a presentation.
NELSON: How did you learn about VE Day
and what was your reaction?
NELSON: Do you have any disabilities or a
military pension?
SOWLE: No.
SOWLE: VE Day we were in the Philippines
and we were pretty much isolated. There was
only one squadron as I say. We were with the
Fifth Army and, of course, there was a
celebration. We did have alcohol that was
available at time somewhat.
NELSON: How did you learn about VJ Day
and what was your reaction.
SOWLE: I was on my way home aboard a
hospital ship. As you can well imagine, it was a
very happy time quite a celebration.
NELSON: Do you have any feelings or opinion
of the military status or its policy?
SOWLE: No, I’m certainly convinced we have
to maintain strength in the military as a deterrent
for any type of action against us. I hope that
people in charge maintain the level of the
military.
NELSON: Do you have any contact with the
Veterans’ Administration?
SOWLE: No I don’t other than my insurance.
NELSON: What is your opinion of the use of
the atomic bomb where it was used against
civilians and others in Japan?
SOWLE: I was very thankful that Truman did
that because I know what would have happened
if we had flown and engaged Japan. Our mission
with the Fifth Army was — we were looking
ahead and from what I could learn we were
going to be aboard aircraft carriers and would
have to go up and engage with Japan. The Fifth
Army would lead and secure the fields. After we
got through flying and bombing we were to land
on their airfields. That probably would have
been the worst possible thing that could possibly
happen.
NELSON: Would you like to tell us of how
your family supported you during your military
life?
SOWLE: They were very supportive. My father
being an ex-military man was quite proud of me,
as they all were. I got quite a bit of mail and
occasionally a box from home. I always felt they
were real supportive.
NELSON: How does your father fit into this
war effort?
SOWLE: He was very proud of me, I know. He
was rather ill at the time but he still is a military
man from the word go.
�John T. Sowle—9
NELSON: You mean as an instructor?
Would you like to add to this interview?
SOWLE: No, he was a volunteer. There is a
plaque at East High School honoring his ROTC
efforts.
SOWLE: There’s not a thing. I think you’re
doing a great job.
NELSON: I enjoy it.
NELSON: I see. What has this support meant to
you?
SOWLE: My children have been interested in
what they were doing I guess. They asked me
many times about my experience. I have kept
interested in flying. They’ve been very
interested in what went on during the war.
NELSON: Every once in a while I’ll ask in an
interview if there is something else to be added.
SOWLE: I felt that I probably was not going in
the right direction by not going back to school
— just spending money. But I’ve always been
impressed with discipline and I think the Air
Corps did a lot for me in shaping my future. I
also give credit to my Dad for that.
NELSON: Well, John I enjoyed this interview.
Thank you very much.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
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Midway Village Museum
Publisher
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Midway Village Museum
Date
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1993-2001
Rights
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Midway Village Museum
Language
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English
Format
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pdf
Type
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Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Charles Nelson
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
John T. Sowle
Location
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Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
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Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
John T. Sowle
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
June 5, 1996
Description
An account of the resource
Born 1920 , John T. Sowle joined the Marines as a pilot from 1942 to 1944. He died November 20, 2005.
Rights
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Midway Village Museum
Format
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pdf
Type
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Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War II
WW2
-
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PDF Text
Text
John Danaher
Interviewed August 8, 1994
By Volunteer Charles Nelson
Transcribed by volunteer Lorraine Lightcap
For Midway Village and Museum Center
6799 Guilford Road
Rockford, Illinois 61107
Phone 815.397.9112
Midwayvillage.com
Edited November 7, 2018 by
volunteer Martha Byrnes
�John Danaher
Today is August 8, 1994. My name is Charles
Nelson. I am a volunteer at Midway Village and
Museum Center in Rockford, Illinois, participating in a statewide effort to collect oral histories from Illinois citizens who participated in the
momentous events that surrounded World War
II. We are in the office of Midway Village and
Museum Center interviewing John Danaher. Mr.
Danaher served in a branch of the United Forces
during World War II. We are interviewing him
about his experiences during that war.
NELSON: John, would you please start by introducing yourself to us. Please give us your full
name, place and date of birth. We would also
like to know the names of each of your parents.
DANAHER: Okay. My name is John Danaher
and I was born in LaSalle County in Illinois. My
birth date is February 14, 1920. My father was
Michael Danaher and my mother was Katherine
Danaher. I was raised near the small town of
Winona, Illinois, about 100 miles south of
Rockford.
NELSON: Did you have any brothers or sisters?
DANAHER: I had one sister. She is 12 years
younger than I am. She is now a retired scientist.
She and her husband worked in a big company
that made all kinds of medicine and this type of
thing. She has a doctorate and is now retired, but
she is 12 years younger than I [am], and [as] one
of my friends said, “She not only gets the brains
from the family but she also got the looks!”
DANAHER: In 1941, of course, things were
getting unsettled. I was in college at Illinois
State University and I figured that I was going to
be taken in the draft. I decided not to go back to
school in the fall of 1941. I had enlisted on August 28th, 1941 into the Navy Air Corp. They
weren’t able to take me until January 2nd [which]
is when I went into the service. And I can remember very well when the
NELSON: Well, we’ll get to that a little bit later. What thoughts did you have about the war
before the United States became directly involved in the conflict?
DANAHER: It was very, very clear that there
was going to be a war. It was imminent, this
type of thing, and so I wanted to enlist so that I
could choose the branch I wanted to go into. I
wanted to fly and so the reason I went with the
Navy was, I heard--and I don’t know if this is
true--that if you washed out of the Navy, maybe
the Army would give you a chance. But the reverse was not true, so that’s why…, --I really
wanted to go to the Army Air Corp. That’s why
I ended up with the Navy.
NELSON: You did too well on your test! How
did you hear of December 7th, 1941, bombing of
Pearl Harbor by the Japanese? If so, where were
you and what were you doing at the time? What
was your reaction and response to those around
you?
NELSON: Are there any details about your
parents and/or family that you would like to
give?
DANAHER: Well, as I said, we had been to
church and then we had lunch in the dining
room. I was carrying out the dishes to the kitchen when [the radio announcer] broke in with
they shut off the Bears’ game, and told about the
Japanese attacking Pearl Harbor.
DANAHER: My father and mother lived on a
farm. Their forebears had come over from Europe and settled many years ago and the family
was into farming for many, many years. I
farmed for a while after World War II myself.
NELSON: Do you remember who the Bears
were playing?
NELSON: What was life like for you before the
war especially during 1941?
DANAHER: No, I don’t.
�NELSON: Had you formed any prior opinion or
developed any feeling about what was taking
place in Europe or Asia?
DANAHER: Well, I don’t know, we were very
cognizant of the situation in Europe, of course,
but I think we were surprised at the Japanese,
you know, attack on Pearl Harbor.
NELSON: Do you recall reading newspaper
accounts of German aggression in Europe?
DANAHER: Yes, I do. But I can’t tell you specifically that there was, you know. We read the
papers like most other people and, of course, we
had the radio. That was before television.
NELSON: Newsreels. You knew
DANAHER: Oh, yes.
NELSON: Did you have any knowledge of Hitler’s speeches, ideas or actions?
DANAHER: Not that I recall, really. I suppose
we did but I don’t recall them specifically.
been already into the Army Air Corp, as they
called it at that time. He used to write back these
glowing letters, and he was up in New England
at the time that war broke [out], and he lost his
life going from Australia up to one of the Japanese islands. They had put their planes onto the
first carrier that the Navy had, and they were
having these P-40s taken up there, and it was
sunk and he was lost in the battle.
NELSON: When and where were you inducted?
DANAHER: I started at St. Louis at the air station down there on the 2nd of January, 1942.
NELSON: Did you have any special memories
of that event?
DANAHER: Oh, yes. They had us walking duty
and it was real cold and snowy down there. You
would have thought the Japanese were at the
outer suburbs--that they were going to take over
St. Louis! But, anyhow, that’s where we went.
From there we went to New Orleans and then
from there to Corpus Christi, Texas, where I
took flight training.
NELSON: What events led to your entry into
military service? Were you already in service,
drafted or did you volunteer?
NELSON: How old were you?
DANAHER: Well, I had already volunteered
and I had raised my hand and sworn in on August 28th. I was waiting. They told me it would
probably be a month and something like this,
you know. So then word wasn’t coming and I
was getting a little concerned. I heard very
quickly after the attack.
NELSON: Were you?
NELSON: Now your response in entering the
military service, was that influenced by family
and friends attitude towards the war or the threat
to national security or any other consideration?
DANAHER: How old am I? 74.
DANAHER: Oh, let’s see? I was 22.
NELSON: What happened after you were inducted and where were you sent?
DANAHER: I was sent to St. Louis and then
some immediate flying and ground school and
then to New Orleans and then to Corpus Christi,
Texas.
NELSON: What did you think of the training?
DANAHER: I don’t know if any or all
NELSON: You wanted to fly.
DANAHER: Well, I was, and one of the fellows that I knew and I grew up with, and he had
DANAHER: Well, I think it was very thorough.
They kept you in line. We had a lot of things to
learn as anybody involved with aircraft knows.
Now, I wanted to be a fighter pilot, of course,
like most guys, and I got stuck with the “big and
�slow” big, twin-engine seaplanes. We took our
final training in the old PBYs, which were out in
the Pacific when the war started. Then we went
into--when I graduated--we went into flying a
big twin-engine seaplane, which was much bigger that the old PBY, I won’t say any better, but
they got us back. We were at anti-sub, in the
Atlantic for a long time and then air/sea rescue
in the Pacific.
[Editor’s Note: the Consolidated PBY Catalina
was known as a “flying boat.” November 2018:
http://www.worldwar2headquarters.com/HTML/
aircraft/americanAircraft/catalina.html]
NELSON: Were you a pilot or copilot?
DANAHER: Well, both. I started out as a copilot and then eventually I had my own crew.
NELSON: Did you have any leaves or passes?
DANAHER: Oh, yes.
NELSON: If so, how did you use them?
DANAHER: Sightseeing mostly, you know.
NELSON: What do you recall of this period
about the places you were stationed, the friends
you made and your association with civilians?
DANAHER: Pretty limited as far as with other
people who lived in the area. Well, there was a
few people that had you over for dinner or
something like this, but basically, we were with
our own group of trainees.
NELSON: Okay, you pretty well explained
about your training, is there anything about the
training that you would like to add to that before
we get you overseas?
DANAHER: No, I think it was pretty routine.
We had this one fella…
[Interruption by Nelson, then resumes.]
NELSON: Well, anyway, you got your wings?
DANAHER: Oh, yes, you bet it was. That’s
why we were going to get married when I got
through.
NELSON: You had a fiancée at the time?
DANAHER: Oh, yes. And we didn’t know because of weather, all this type of thing, when we
were going to actually be [able to have the ceremony]. When I first signed up, you couldn’t get
married for four years. Then as it got closer to ,
war they dropped it to two years, and then when
war came, they said, “When you get through
with your flight training.” So that’s why we got
married in 1942.
NELSON: Where did you go after completing
your basic military training? All your preflight
training and all this training? Whereabouts
overseas did you go?
DANAHER: First, we came back and we went
to additional training because we switched from
the PBYs to PBMs and down to--into Florida,
not too far from Cape Canaveral now. They
called it the Banana River Naval Air Station.
That was where we transferred from PBY planes
into PBM, which was a larger plane, but I
wouldn’t say any better.
[Editor: Additional information on the Martin
Mariner PBM patrol bomber in November 2018:
http://www.worldwar2headquarters.com/HTML/
aircraft/americanAircraft/mariner.html]
NELSON: More difficult to fly?
DANAHER: I don’t think so. I think it had
some things that were improvements, that [made
it] easier than the old one.
NELSON: Did you have armaments on that
plane?
DANAHER: Not during training, but as soon as
we were put into [an] anti-sub squadron, and we
operated out of Norfolk and all up and down the
East Coast in search of German submarines.
NELSON: When and where were you sent
overseas and how did you get there?
�DANAHER: Well, the first time I went overseas was in the Panama Canal. We were down
there [inaudible] from there down to out in the
Pacific.
NELSON: By ship?
DANAHER: No, we flew.
NELSON: Oh, you flew?
DANAHER: By this time with a squadron. We
were sent down there to protect the Canal from
attack. They were afraid the Japanese were going to come over to knock it out and they’d have
to go clear around, you know.
NELSON: Even the Germans, too?
DANAHER: Yes, they were more concerned at
that time about the Japanese, and because then
they would have to go all the way around, you
know, South America, and add thousands of
miles. So we were there for a while, and then we
did anti-subs in the Atlantic off the East Coast
from Norfolk; we operated all the way up to
Quonset Point, Rhode Island. This type of thing,
too.
They were able to salvage it. The Skipper--this
is something you won’t be able to read about in
history books--but anyhow, the German sub
skipper, who was in charge, was knocked out
during the battle. He claims they brought them
into Bermuda. The old gent was down in the
local hospital -- the military hospital. He had one
leg partially amputated below the knee. One of
my good friends had been in for minor surgery
down there. I’d go down to visit him and walked
right past the door of the old boy. He didn’t look
happy, I’ll tell you. Now, I never talked to him
[directly]. My friend, when he got mobile, he
went down --and he used to speak some English
[the skipper]. He was worried about his family
back in Germany in one of the big cities. They
also had a home out at a lake and he was hoping
the wife had taken the kids out there. He was
captured.
I did see where the skipper of the Guadalcanal,
which was a small jeep carrier, that helped to get
them. They ended up being friends, but my
friend, he would go down and visit the old boy
[the German skipper] and he asked him, “Did
you ever see any of our planes?” He said, “Many
times, but we see you first and then we pulled
the trigger."
NELSON: Then they would dive?
NELSON: Did you ever see any submarines
[inaudible] --any German submarines?
DANAHER: That’s right.
DANAHER: No, I [inaudible] --Yes, I did.
NELSON: What did you think of the nation’s
war effort up to this point?
NELSON: Not at this time?
DANAHER: No, later we did. In fact, I might
cover that right now. The sub that’s on display
up in the Museum of Science and Industry…
[The U-505 German submarine is displayed at
the Museum of Science & Industry Chicago.
http://www.msichicago.org/explore.]
DANAHER: We started off without much help
with anything but with the surprise that we were
taken into it, but, I think they made great progress. There’s no question about it. Boy, the
people at home in the factories and so on and so
forth that gave us the planes and the guns and
the crews….
NELSON: They gave us good equipment, too.
NELSON: 234? I've seen it there.
DANAHER: Yes, they sure did.
DANAHER: Okay. It’s up there. It came into
Bermuda while we were operating out of there.
It had been captured off the coast of Africa.
NELSON: Tell us about your experience of entering your first combat zone. Unless you want
�to [inaudible] --this would qualify, I suppose, as
a combat zone around the Panama Canal.
You’ve told us that. From there you went to
Panama. Where’d you go from the Panama area?
DANAHER: We went back out to Bermuda and
then I was sent back to Corpus Christi, Texas, as
an instructor down there, getting new crews to
go out to the Pacific. While I was there I was
asked to take a brand new crew in the Air/Sea
Rescue out to the Pacific. So, we were an
Air/Sea Squadron that operated out of Saipan,
and then at Okinawa prior to the end of the war.
NELSON: Were these people flying PBYs
mostly?
DANAHER: No, but I said PBYs early -- most
of us that were [there were] in the PBMs.
NELSON: What did you think of the war so
far?
DANAHER: Well, I didn’t like it.
NELSON: Didn’t like it?
NELSON: How many crew members did you
have?
DANAHER: No, I was glad when it was over,
but I wouldn’t take a lot for the experiences and
the people we met.
DANAHER: Well, it varies, depending on [inaudible] … 8 to 10, sometimes 12.
NELSON: Wouldn’t invest a million dollars?
(laughter) Did you write many letters home?
NELSON: Sometimes 12? Why would you
need so many?
DANAHER: Yes.
NELSON: How about receiving letters?
DANAHER: They had to have people to [inaudible] …if they got down, and had to have
swimmers to get the pilots, this type of thing, so
on and so forth.
NELSON: In your combat experience were you
ever involved with anyone that sustained casualties? How they occurred and how they were
treated?
DANAHER: Fine, I corresponded, of course,
with my parents and, as I say, we got married
after I got through flight training and so [inaudible].
NELSON: Will you tell us a little bit about
that?
DANAHER: About what now?
DANAHER: None of us were captured.
NELSON: Never got involved with that?
DANAHER: No, not with that, no, but we did
get up to Japan, itself.
NELSON: Did your mental attitude change as
combat continued?
DANAHER: Well, I think we were concerned
just like everybody else. I’m concerned now,
going out on the highways(!) But we were
lucky; we lost so many good friends, or --you
know-- to crashes.
NELSON: When you got married. Did you get
some time off?
DANAHER: Yes. We went to Norfolk, Virginia, where we operated out of, and my wife was
able to be with me when we were stateside.
NELSON: Did you wife work during the conflict?
DANAHER: No, she didn’t.
NELSON: Where did she stay?
DANAHER: Well, you know, where we stayed
in places where we were stationed….
�NELSON: She followed you around?
NELSON: Did you forge close friendships with
many, or some, of your combat companions?
DANAHER: Yes, many of our group was that
way. In fact, we got friends that we are still [in]
contact with that got married at the same time
we [did].
DANAHER: Yes, very definitely.
NELSON: Where did she go when you left?
DANAHER: Yes, we [have] had several reunions.
DANAHER: Norfolk, that was the first one--all
up and down the East Coast and then later on
down in Corpus Christi, Texas, and then out to
San Diego where we took off
NELSON: How were the facilities where you
were staying?
DANAHER: Places where we stayedin most
cases was in private homes.
NELSON: I see.
DANAHER: And we correspondednice people took us in, you know. In fact, Rosemary got
pregnant before I left for the Pacific. We were in
San Diego and she was a grandmother herselfthe old lady. But, she took care of Rosemary like a daughter.
I will never forget one thing. When we took off
to fly out to the Pacific, we took off before dark
and flew out during the night. I got there in
mid-morning, 16.8 hours it took. That was one
of the newer planes that we had. We landed over
there and our planewe landed in the water and
then they would put dual wheels on the side and
pull us up a ramp to park. We werethis tractor
was pulling us and there were three or four
young fellows. I walked across there and one of
them was a kid from my hometown! I didn’t see
him again until after the war, and he still lives in
our hometown.
NELSON: Have you remained in contact with
any of your World War II companions?
NELSON: Did you ever have to help retrieve a
wounded buddy? (Nelson is reading the question
and makes the comment, “I don’t think this
question pertains to us.” Nelson continues with
another question).
What was the highlight occurrence of combat
experience or any other experiences that you
remember?
DANAHER: I think two big things were the
rescues that we made. We were Air/Sea Rescue
out in the Pacific. We rescued, first of all, one
Corsair pilot that washad to gowell, he was
actually shot down, but he wasn’t able to get all
the way back to base, and had to bail out and
that was the day that they dropped the bomb on
Nagasaki. We saw the cloud from that.
NELSON: Can you tell us a little about that?
DANAHER: Yes. We were sent up. We took
off pre-dawn because we were slower than the
Corsairs with the fighter planes – [they] took off
afterwards and caught up with us. We were just
at the southern tip of Kyushu, which is the
southernmost [major] island of Japan.
NELSON: (Interruption). How far is that from
Japan?
DANAHER: Oh, I don’t remember. Japan, that
was Japan.
NELSON: How about the other guys. Did they
write letters and receive letters from home?
NELSON: That was Japan?
DANAHER: Oh, sure.
DANAHER: Yeah. That would be the southern
most island.
�NELSON: I see.
DANAHER: Right. We did a lot of searching.
DANAHER: We were just off the thing. We
were sent up there with this group of fighter
planes who were going in to strafe and bomb
airfields. They left a small group out there with
us. It looked like a big mother hen with baby
chicks, except the chicks had the sting. So we
were just waiting for them up there as they come
back out. We were just circling around. We
come around 180 and there was the mushroom.
We didn’t take pictures or if we did the photo
(Laughter).
NELSON: I see.
DANAHER: I forget how many days. After
four or five days if they hadn’t found somebody,
they kind of gave it up.
NELSON: Did they have a radio or anything?
DANAHER: They had little hand-crank click
radios with them.
NELSON: Did you know what it was?
NELSON: What did they call thoseGibson
girls or something like that.
DANAHER: Of course. They had briefed us.
DANAHER: Yes.
NELSON: They had briefed you that you might
see this.
DANAHER: And this was the SECOND one.
NELSON: Tell us about [inaudible]. You had
mentioned before a case where four men [were]
in a pontoon boat for a certain length of time
that you rescued?
NELSON: I see. Nagasaki.
DANAHER: Oh, no. That was two P-51 pilots.
DANAHER: I know. Excuse me for interrupting but we did pick up one of the Corsair pilots.
He had to bail out. He was a young Marine and
he wasn’t in the water, I don’t think, [more than]
15 or 20 minutes.
NELSON: Okay.
NELSON: How did you know where to find
these people?
DANAHER: Find them? We were right there
with them.
NELSON: Okay. When they went down?
DANAHER: Yes, we had him in sight when he
went down.
NELSON: Well did every group of fighter
planes have your type of plane along with them?
DANAHER: No.
NELSON: Well how about planes that would
go down where there weren’t your type of airplane rescue?
DANAHER: That was right at the end, too.
They had gotten lost coming back from Kyushu
and had missed Okinawa because of haze, and
they couldn’t raise anybody on the radio. They
were lost.
So what happened is they went east -- they were
going southwest. They had missed it, to the
south, and they were lost. One plane that ran out
of fuel first, he bailed out. Then the second pilot
stayed up until his [engine] konked out and then
he bailed out. [They] Came down out of sight of
each other. It was getting toward dusk, and well,
toward the later part of the day, and just shortly
before dark. They [inaudible] just before a crest
of a wave by the other fella. They tied the two
rafts together. One fellow, when he bailed out,
had taken kind of a chunk out of the calf of his
leg, so they put him in the raft that was best and
the other guy had to keep bailing and scooping
the water out. They were out there four nights
and four days, going on into the fifth night.
�They had seen all kinds of planes go over them
and none of them had spotted them. They had
used mirrors, and so on and so forth. Here come
two B-24s coming up from Saipan. As they got
past them, one fellow had despaired and had not
tried to… because nobody else [inaudible], but
the other guy kept flashing, and the tail gunner
caught a feeling, I guess, when they started to
make the circle. Then they, in turn, called in to
Air/Sea rescue. How we were involved? We
were on the plane on standby and
NELSON: Did you get any gifts from home or
anything?
NELSON: You were flying at the time?
DANAHER: I would have liked to have fought
DANAHER: No, we were sitting at Okinawa.
DANAHER: Oh, yeah. Like you know, some
cookies and I suppose cake but mostly cookies, I
think.
NELSON: The next question pertains to going
back home. Is there anything else while you’re
still over there in the Pacific that you would like
to add to that?
NELSON: Add to this, I mean
NELSON: How far were you from there?
DANAHER: No, we wrote a lot of letters.
DANAHER: Oh, about an hour, about an hour
out. We were afraid we weren’t going to get out
there before dusk. In fact, we came back in the
dark. We had jet assist to take off by this time,
too.
NELSON: They gave you a location where they
were?
NELSON: Okay.
DANAHER: No, a lot of letters back and forth.
NELSON: Now what happened when you arrived [back] in the United States?
DANAHER: You mean coming home?
DANAHER: Yes, the B-24s did. In fact, I met
one of those pilots a couple of years ago. We
had a reunion and one of the young fellows that
we picked out of the water, who had despaired,
was the main speaker. So I had never met the
pilot or any of the crew of the other plane because we were just airborne. So, after all those
years, there were three of us that [inaudible].
NELSON: ‘Lot to talk about.
DANAHER: That’s for sure.
NELSON: Tell us about how you and the other
men celebrated traditional holidays, such as
Thanksgiving and Christmas?
DANAHER: Well, they usually had some better
chow than other times, if they had it.
NELSON: That was about it.
DANAHER: Yes, it was.
NELSON: Yes.
DANAHER: Okay. We were at Okinawa, as I
said, and having been signed up before war
starting I got a chance to come home, but I had
flown every place I went and I was put on a little
destroyer escort as a typhoon was moving in.
Anyhow, to make a long story short, it was a
rough ride for a few days but the [inaudible]
broke out and the flying fish were out, you
know, and we were heading home, and the sun
was shining and the Cubs were in the World Series. We listened to them --each day an hour later-- and they didn’t win that one, and they’ve
never been in one since! What do you think of
that?
But I remember coming into the Golden Gate.
We were coming in at mid-morning and there
was ground fog, and we could see the Golden
�Gate [bridge] as we came through the mist, and
there she is!
NELSON: Wonderful feeling?
DANAHER: Oh, yes!
NELSON: Tell us about your military rank,
your decorations, especially campaign ribbons.
DANAHER: I didn’t get anything like this for
bravery. We got [inaudible] various things.
What am I trying to say?
NELSON: Campaign ribbons?
DANAHER: Yes, campaign ribbons, but .
DANAHER: Well, I had some great teammates.
I think more of a team as opposed, to say, [inaudible] in a big group of men. We were relatively
small50 to 60, -100, something like this, you
know. Made some fast friends and we’re still in
touch.
NELSON: Were you housed in the same area?
DANAHER: Maybe just another tent down the
way.
NELSON: Would you change anything or do
anything different if you had a chance to do it
again?
NELSON: Did you get the Air Medal?
DANAHER: Yeah. I’d like to be a fighter pilot.
(Laughter). No, I can’t saypleasedthe good
Lord was good so (Interruption)
DANAHER: No, I don’t think I did. See, we
were pretty much in a
NELSON: Well, I think you made a wise decision as you returned.
NELSON: Non-combat area.
DANAHER: Returned?
DANAHER: Yes. That’s exactly right. No, I
didn’t get any big Air Medals [inaudible] or anything like that because I didn’t deserve it. We
didn’t we were involved in many places and
so forth, but the only time that we really [were
close] to [an] actual battlefield was in the South
Pacific, and I didn’t get to it.
NELSON: Yes, when you returned and came
back home.
NELSON: So, you weren’t considered having
missions? You were on standby, so any time you
could get a call?
DANAHER: Well, we were assigned almost
daily.
DANAHER: Well, we were lucky.
NELSON: What was the most difficult thing
you had to do during your period in military service?
DANAHER: Well, I don’t know. We had plenty
of challenges I would say. For example, going to
Sergeant [inaudible].
NELSON: You didn’t fly probably [inaudible]?
Why, my goodness, somebody would be there
for breakfast and killed before lunch. So we
were …and some were very good friends.
DANAHER: No, not every day. I think I ended
up with a little over 2,000 flight hours.
NELSON: What was your most successful
achievement in the military service?
NELSON: That’s a lot of hours. How did you
get along with the [crew] members with whom
you had the greatest contact?
DANAHER: I think it was very hard work and
you could be out in nothing flat, in about two or
three days. You could be down.
�I think it was pressure in that respect. I think the
Navy did a great job of teaching us, and then
also when we got out that the junior officers or
pilots were brought up [inaudible] so the next few
DANAHER: Yes, they did. I don’t know the
numbers but too many. We would look for them
so many times in emergencies. Why, if they had
given us a decent report
days if you were. [Nelson interrupts.]
NELSON: Where they were?
NELSON: Well-trained?
This has to do with the war in Europe. How did you
learn about VE Day and what was your reaction to it?
Do you remember?
DANAHER: Yes, I do. I’m just trying to think where
we were at the time. That was June the 6th.
NELSON: I think that was in May.
DANAHER: Was it May?
NELSON: Yes.
DANAHER: Okay.
NELSON: I think around May the 8th.
[Editor: May 8 and 9, 1945.]
DANAHER: Okay, I remember hearing about it at
the time, but what the [inaudible] source.
NELSON: How about VJ Day?
[Editor: August 14-15, 1945.]
DANAHER: Oh, boy that’s going back. Yes,
[inaudible].
NELSON: You knew about the first bomb that
they dropped?
DANAHER: Yeah. See we were stationed at
Saipan, and Saipan is [inaudible] the bomb is the
[inaudible] B-29, so we worked a lot with the
B29s because a lot of them were coming out
over [inaudible], so they would send us out at
various stations.
NELSON: Sure.
DANAHER: And when they were going and
coming.
NELSON: Did they have a lot of B-29s?
[Transcript incomplete]
�Endnotes:
John Danaher
Birth Date: 14 February 1920, Illinois
Enlistment Date: 2 January 1942
Release Date: 10 December 1945
Death Date: 1 August 1997
Source Information found 7 November 2018:
Ancestry.com. U.S., Department of Veterans
Affairs BIRLS Death File, 1850-2010 [database
on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.
Original data: Beneficiary Identification Records
Locator Subsystem (BIRLS) Death File. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
Naval Aircraft Resources:
Swanborough and Bowers, United States
Navy Aircraft since 1911. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1990.
Richard Alden Hoffman, The Fighting Flying
Boat: A history of the Martin PBM Mariner.
Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2004.
Bill Gunston, Combat Aircraft of World War II.
London: Salamander Books Ltd., 1978.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Midway Village Museum
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Midway Village Museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-2001
Rights
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Midway Village Museum
Language
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English
Format
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pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Charles Nelson
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
John Danaher
Location
The location of the interview
Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
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Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
John Danaher
Description
An account of the resource
John Danaher was born February 14, 1920. He enlisted in the Navy Air Corps in August 1941 and served until December 1945. He died August 1, 1997.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Format
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pdf
Type
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Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War 2
World War II
-
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PDF Text
Text
John B. Whitehead
Transcribed by Lorraine Lightcap
For Midway Village and Museum Center
6799 Guilford Road
Rockford, Illinois
Phone 815.397.9112
�John B. Whitehead
Today is December 21st, 1993. My name is
Gerhardt Seegers. I am a volunteer at Midway Village and Museum Center. We are in
the office of John B. Whitehead who lives at
2417 Barrington Place, Rockford, Illinois.
Mr. Whitehead served in a branch of the
United States Army during World War II.
We are interviewing him about his experiences in that war. First of all, John, I thought
you would like to introduce yourself for us.
What is your full name?
WHITEHEAD: My name is John Whitehead. We are sitting in my office at 5100
East State Street, on the first day of winter,
1993, Gary Seeger and I.
SEEGER: Were you born in Rockford,
John?
WHITEHEAD: I was. I was born in the old
downtown Rockford Memorial Hospital on
Elm Street.
SEEGER: What is your date of birth?
WHITEHEAD: September 10 of 1923.
SEEGER: Would you also give us the name
of your parents?
WHITEHEAD: My father was Loren L.
Whitehead. My mother was Harriet Burpee
Whitehead.
SEEGER: Do you have brothers and sisters?
WHITEHEAD: I have two sisters. My sister Ruth, who is three years younger, who is
married to Dan Nicholas; a sister Jean who
is three years younger then she, I guess was
married to Page Reese.
SEEGER: Going back to your time in the
military, what was life like for you prior to
the war? What were you doing prior to your
service?
WHITEHEAD: Well, I graduated from
Rockford West High School, the first graduating class in 1941, spring of ’41. I was the
class valedictorian. We had the big graduation at the Coronado Theater. I got a scholarship and went on to Northwestern University. That being the fall of ’41 and war was
all the way around us but not upon us. I
joined the Navel ROTC. So I had 2 years of
normal college life. Then the Navy took
over the campus as a training center and we
lived our life as trainees in what was formerly our fraternity houses, but now we stood
watch and marched and exercised and all
these things that went on from ’43 to early
’44, when they suddenly decided they were
running short of Naval officers so they
dragged us out slightly ahead of time and I
went on to serve there.
SEEGER: Were you inducted then? In
WHITEHEAD: I was commissioned as an
Ensign in February of ’44 having been indoctrinated as a seaman, I guess you would
say in the summer of ’43.
SEEGER: What did you do after your
commission? What was
WHITEHEAD: Well I was shipped to the
Philadelphia Navy Yard and outfitted with
woolen shirts and so forth, that being February. We were sent down to Cape May, New
Jersey, where there were a number of fledgling officers like myself, and we served on
various small craft that did patrol duty off
the mouth of the Delaware River. Some
minesweepers swept that area because the
�German subs, early in the war, had been active in that section. So I was at Cape May
for about four months. Then I was shipped
down to Miami, to the Small Craft Training
Center where we were trained in underwater
sound detection at that time. Then I was sent
to the Naval gun factory at Washington, D.
C., [Washington Navy Yard] for about three
or four weeks, or a little longer. We were
finally assigned to the PGM-32 which is a
patrol craft which was being built in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, as many of the smaller ships were at that time, [at] the Smith
shipyard there [Leathem D. Smith Shipbuilding Company].
That ship came down through Lake Michigan, through Chicago and the Illinois River
and down the Mississippi and down to New
Orleans, where I met it and we outfitted it,
took it on a shake-down and so forth. From
there, we went through the Panama Canal;
up to San Diego; up to Pearl Harbor and
down to the Southwest Pacific and down to
__?__ where the war had just finished. Up to
__?__ for a couple of weeks and then they
sent us to Okinawa at the end of the Okinawa invasion.
Later we went on into Japan after that. We
were on a ship that was built because the
famous wooden PT boat that President Kennedy and others were on, which were very
zippy Chris-Craft type ships, were attempting to clean out the Japanese barges that
were in the Philippines. This was beforeI
don’t knowit was right about the time
when MacArthur returned to the Philippines.
These PT boats were faced with rather slow
moving Japanese craft that they put heavier
guns on and they were blowing these wooden boats out of the water.
So they built our ship, a sturdier vessel with
a half-inch of armor plate, a three-inch gun
and a lot of machine guns and so forth. We
were to go down there and clean out the
Japanese barges, but by the time we got
there, why the war had been won in that area
and the barges had been sunk by some other
means--aircraft I suppose. So then we were
assigned to work with a mine-sweeping fleet
which were extensive out in that area;
around north of Okinawa, because the Japanese had heavily mined the homeland waters. And so forth.
At that time we were about ready to finish
off the Japs in Okinawa and they were going
to invade the Japanese homeland. So we
would follow along behind the 30 or 40
minesweepers. They would have cables drift
out behind the ship; that had underwater
veins that would hold these cutters down
under the water and they would steam back
and forth, then the cables would pick up the
mines that were moored by cables themselves. They would slip back along the cable
to the cutter at the end of the line, which
would then cut the cable on the mine. And
the mine would pop to the surface, and
somebody would have to go in and detonate
them and that was primarily what we were
doing.
So we were slowly steaming back and forth
in the China Sea, getting ready to go into
Japan, when the first atomic bomb was
dropped. And of course this [mission] came
to a basic conclusion at that point in time. So
our ship was then ordered back to Okinawa
where we took on fresh supplies and then
steamed up to the [unintelligible] I think
they called it, which was the bay outside of
Tokyo Bay. By that time the second bomb
had been dropped. The Emperor decided
that they were going to surrender. The point
was that they couldn’t send these large task
force vessels, the aircraft carriers, and the
battleships and so forth into Tokyo Bay
without being sure that they weren’t going
to run into mine fields. So our group went in
�ahead of that in ahead of that and swept Tokyo Bay and made it safe for the hospital
ships to come in and that sort of thing.
SEEGER: Were you there when they surrender was signed?
WHITEHEAD: Well, the surrender was
signed a few days after the main occupation
of that area. By that time, why, they had already-made plans for us to go to some of the
other coastal cities of Japan and sweep the
mines out of their harbors. On the day before the surrender on the Missouri although
we were as close as a thousand yards form
the Missouri. We were ordered to steam out
of the harbor and leave. We were close to
signing the [unintelligible]. It was an interesting High School reunion I had last year
because a friend of mine who I hadn’t seen
in 50 years, was in the Navy and was saying
that he was on the first ship in Tokyo Bay. I
said, “What do you mean, the first ship. You
couldn’t have been, because I was there!”
He was on a destroyer that was in Task
Force 38 and they were outside the in main
harbor outside of Tokyo Bay, but they were
unable to go in until we [our gunship] had
gone in with these minesweepers. So this
chap, when he got back to California, wrote
the Navy Department and sent for all of the
ship’s records of his ship and my ship--the
minesweepers that I was working with. So
he says that he had to admit he was not the
first ship in, but he probably was the first
destroyer.
SEEGER: Do you have any contact with
any of your shipmates?
WHITEHEAD: No, surprisingly, but it’s
like being an immigrant from the old country or something. You kind of cut the ties
and everybody had pleasant friendships but
bad memories of the war. We have never
been close, never had a reunion or anything
of this sort although we have a mixture. We
had about a half a dozen officers and
aboutI think we had 65 other enlisted men
on board that came from all over the country.
SEEGER: And you had how many men total were on board?
WHITEHEAD: Well, there was about 70
of us altogether. I started out as the lowliest
Ensign and worked up so that when the war
was over why then, of course, the senior
people who had been around longer like our
Captain. My original Captain had been in
the North African campaign on a destroyer
then shipped then over to the Pacific on our
ship. He had quite a bit of seniority and he
left almost as soon as the war was over.
In any event we swept the waters around
Sendai up on the northeast coast of Japan.
Then we went around to the southwest coast
around [unintelligible] where I had a reunion
with half-dozen friends from Rockford who
were also in the Navy. Then after that, we
went back down through the Marshall Islands and back to Pearl Harbor.
My wife, who I had met at Northwestern,
and I were engaged, of course, all during
this time. So I told her that it looked to me
like we were going to be coming back to the
States; we should plan to get married.
Somewhere in 1945 that would have been.
So she went ahead merrily with all sorts of
plans as you would for a wedding in July.
Before anything elselet’s seewe went
from Pearl Harbor back to San Francisco
and that’s where I guess I wired her and said
it looked like I had time off.
Lo and behold, they decided to hold the
atomic bomb tests at Bikini. So our ship was
a nice little taxi- (sort of) sized craft, so they
said that we should take on a whole new
�crew and go back to Pearl Harbor from San
Francisco and stand by to go to Bikini.
the Okinawa area; we saw a lot of banged up
stuff.
We had to cancel the wedding plans. This
must have been in January or February of
’45or ’46 because we were going to talk
about a wedding in the early spring of ’46. I
ended up sitting in Pearl Harbor waiting for
the armada to go to Bikini to form, and my
time ran out; my points, as they termed it at
that point, [and I the ship] over to my executive officer. We came back to the states in
June; we were married in July in New York.
SEEGER: Were you involved in any campaigns?
SEEGER: When did you separate from the
service?
WHITEHEAD: Well, it must have been
late June of ’46 and we were married in July.
SEEGER: What was your rank then?
WHITEHEAD: Well, I was a Lieutenant
Junior Grade, which was one above being an
Ensign.
SEEGER: Did you have leaves or passes
during the time you were in the service?
WHITEHEAD: Well, not when you left the
States, but prior to that time, I got home at
least once that I can recall.
Other than that we were pretty much confined to what was really quite a small ship
by Navy standards. Although, if you owned
it, you’d think it was a hell of a big yacht! It
was a sporty little craft that did about 25
knots. We were living in close confinement
with your fellow shipmates. It was interesting. We didn’t really have any narrow escapes. We were close to a lot of big ships
that had been damaged in the war. I think
that there were kamikaze pilots out there in
WHITEHEAD: Not in the term that you
would use it, like an invasion of this island
or another. By the time we were out there
by the time we arrived off the shore of
Okinawa onthe day when the rocket ships
were standing off the beach just raining
what looked like the 4th of July; raining
rockets in on the shore. There was still a lot
of fighting going on in there. A lot of guys
that got killed after that but, [in] those island
invasions, unless you were on the small craft
that really ran up on the beach and dropped
the front door and soldiers ran out of, why
we were not in a position to take part in that.
We weren’t as big as say a destroyer; that
could operate with the task forces that would
be protecting the larger ships and shooting at
aircraft. So we were kind of an in-between
Navy [vessel], I’d say.
SEEGER: Did youwere you strafed by
any planes at the time you were out there?
WHITEHEAD: No, we werewhat do I
want to say?A few cases at night when
we’d be steaming along without lights and
couldn’t see a darned thing, where planes
would zoom down right over the top of the
wheelhouse. We were never quite sure
whether they were Japs or friendlies, but we
were never in danger.
Our main danger was when we were destroying mines likethey could go off like a
ton of bricks throwing shrapnel into the air.
So everybody had to have flack jackets and
helmets on. I remember one morning, out
there when I had the watch when we destroyed 45 mines in a 4-hour period. Those
went off with a boom. You couldn’t get too
�close because they would set your gyrocompass off its track and destroy and hurt your
own ship. The percussionif you were too
close to a depth charge or something.
SEEGER: How would you destroy these
mines?
WHITEHEAD: Well, that was left to the
ingenuity of each ship, but in our case we
finally resorted to the skill of a lot of the
crew men that would come in and out of the
woods and the hills of Kentucky who were
sharpshooters. We set them up on top of the
wheelhouse with 30 caliber rifles and they
would wing away at them like he was shooting at the Hatfields and McCoys.
SEEGER: What would they have to hit a
certain areasstrike a certain area?
WHITEHEAD: Well, I guess so. I was
never quite sure of that. These things
[mines] hadthey were probably three feet
in diameter. They had horns. Now whether
we had to hit the horn or whether just the
concussion of a bullet would set it off, I
can’t remember. When you hit it off, you
knew it. Earlier, why we had tried to use 40
mm cannon and 20 mm machine guns, 50
caliber machine guns, all of which we had
on board. All that would dolike skipping a
stone. You had to get high enough to come
down on top of it.
SEEGER: Did you have any casualties on
your ship?
WHITEHEAD: No, I don’t think so, other
than total seasickness on the part of a few
people, we had no problems.
SEEGER: Were there storms? Did you
have some storms at sea?
WHITEHEAD: Yeah. We were a couple of
times out there in the Okinawa area where
they would send the small crafts such as
ourselves into any kind of protective inlets
that they could find. We were never capsized, or anything like that.
SEEGER: Then what did you do when you
were separated from the service? I know you
mentioned
WHITEHEAD: Well, I went back to
Northwestern and finished up my last year.
As I say we had been taken out of school a
year early and commissioned. So I went
back and finished up. My wife worked for
the Encyclopedia Britannica in the loop,
[she] supported us. With the help of the GI
Bill we got through. I came back to Rockford or we came back and I went into the
real estate business that fall and I have been
here ever since.
SEEGER: 1946?
WHITEHEAD: Well this was 1947.
SEEGER: I forgot the year of school there?
WHITEHEAD: Yeah. My naval career was
not heroic but it was very interesting. We
saw a lot of the world that we would not
have seen before and probably don’t care to
see again.
It was interesting to anchor in Tokyo Bay
the first night without lights and you’d look
ashore you’d see some of the activity vehicles and a few of the lights. When we
steamed into the bay you would see the
shore batteries that had a white flag tied
around them. You weren’t quite sure whether some renegade might decide that he was
going to take one last shot at you or not. But
going ashore, why the devastation was just
so enormous that Yokohama, which was just
�south and adjoined Tokyo, had just been
flattened by firebombs. People were living
in tin huts just among all this rubble and
they suffered enormously, so you can see the
atomic bomb was just the finishing touches.
SEEGER: Were there any American prisoners of war in Tokyo?
WHITEHEAD: Oh, yes. I’m sure they
were sprinkled all over Japan. We
hadthere was one three-story warehouse
that was on the waterfront there, somewhere
south of Tokyo. That had a great big handpainted sign on it that said, “We are Yank
prisoners. Come rescue us.”
What had happened was apparently when
the Emperor said, “Surrender,” they handed
the keys to the jail to the inmates and they
walked away. So ultimately, after we finished the minesweeping, the hospital ships
came in. They would dock right near this
place, and I presume that’s where the prisoners went.
SEEGER: So you never had any contact
with the Japanese?
WHITEHEAD: No, we went ashore a couple of times there early in the first three or
four days. The people were very deferential.
They wouldyou’d walk down the street
with a 45 holster on your side. The people
would bow and get out of the way. It was
just like the Emperor was walking down the
street.
In those days, why, they were wearing
wooden clogs for shoes and they were the
historic type of Asiatic shoes there, made
out of wood bottoms and so forth. I brought
home a pair that I took off of somebody’s
front porch over there thatnot sure it was
the best thing in the world to do but
SEEGER: Where were you at the time the
first atomic bomb was exploded?
WHITEHEAD: We were out [in the
ocean], south of Japan and north of Okinawa, east of China out in the China Sea, just
steaming back and forth, according to somebody’s plan, where the mines were or were
supposed to be. There was literally a plan
for the invasion of Japan at that point. Nobody looked forward to that, but they felt
that some of those islands would have been
difficult to take where the homeland would
have been the World Series of that type of
war.
SEEGER: What were your feelings when
you had heard that there was a destruction of
a town?
WHITEHEAD: Well we didn’t have any
concept of what it was. I mean, nobody in
the service knew anything the atomic bomb.
It was just the fact that the explosion larger
than anyone had seen before and dropped on
these towns and so after all the bombing that
had gone[on] over in England and Germany
and so forth, we figured it was something a
little bigger than thatthe conception of the
[unintelligible].
SEEGER: When did you find out just how
large this bomb was?
WHITEHEAD: I suppose that after a few
days, why then the armed forces radio or
somebody was talking about some of the
details to others as to what it was. I don’t
think they really knew what they had done
in terms of devastation. The damage to humanity over there was terrific. I don’t think
anybody in the service regretted it before or
after, to be honest with you, because I think
we’ve got a lot of guys around today who
wouldn’t be here if they had to walk over
the beaches of Japan to win that war.
�SEEGER: Did you have any contact with
the Veterans Administration following the
War? Did you have any occasion to use their
services?
WHITEHEAD: No, I waswhen you’re
discharged, I had to go to Great Lakes to be
discharged. You enroll at the college with
the GI Bill and other than that I have never
used their medical facilities. I paid the premiums on my life insurance for 40 some
years, now. Hope to collect on that someday.
In our case, I had taken an Atlas of the Pacific area and set it out into grid numbers, so
when I referred to grid 47 why they could
take out the Atlas and see where grid 47
was. At that point, I was sure the Emperor
didn’t have a similar book, so
SEEGER: What was the most difficult time
during your time in the service?
SEEGER: Did you receive mail on a regular basis?
WHITEHEAD: I think the transition from
being a couch potato to a new enlistee in the
active duty at Northwestern was probably as
tough as anything could be. I never wanted
to get up early in the morning. Certainly
while you’re living under military type conditions and they get you up at six o’clock
and run you for several miles, climb rocks
and so, they get you in pretty good shape.
WHITEHEAD: Yeah. They were very
good about that. I suspect that the frequency
that I received them was less than some of
the big ships. But we might go to two or
three weeks, let’s say on a rare occasion, and
not see any mail, but then there it would be.
I wrote my wife every day during the time I
was over there, and to my folks frequently,
and it turned out that both of them saved all
the letters.
Then we were commissioned and sent to
duty on board small ships where there
wasn’t any room to be active and so our
physical condition rose to a peak and then
deteriorated as the war went on. That was
the most memorable part of it. And interesting, because when you’re mixed in with a
bunch of men like that, you really don’t
know them as well as you should or their
background.
Now we have kind of a running history of
what was going on day by day. As you read
those, the fact that you had to be [unintelligible]. In the first place, the officers censored mail of all of the enlisted men, to
make sure you weren’t giving away any
State Secrets of War, which I think looking
back on it, it’s rather hilarious. Importance
of our activities probably was not paramount
to what happened in the war, but in writing
yourself, why then you had to be careful.
You couldn’t say, “Tomorrow we’re going
to be at Okinawa.”
I remember the gun control officer--not officer, he was a Petty Officer of some kind-on board who was in charge of the antiaircraft guns that we had. Very quiet sort of
a chap. So, he left the ship when I went back
to college, and one day when I was in the
bookstore in Evanston, I ran into this guy. I
said, “What in the world are you doing
here?” He said, “Oh, I’m here getting my
Ph.D.!” Of course, I was still working for
my undergraduate degree. So I’d been [kept
off the ship] and I thought it made an interesting conclusion to our relationship.
SEEGER: Did you receive mail?
WHITEHEAD: Oh, yeah.
�SEEGER: Did you findyou mentioned
there were five officers and
SEEGER: Was this ship, one that you were
on? That one you said was
WHITEHEAD: Yeah.
WHITEHEAD: Yeah. I was on it for a
month.
SEEGER: Was there a problem when you
were an officer as far as contact with the enlisted men?
SEEGER: You were the only white
WHITEHEAD: Yeah. That was the old
Navy line. I guess we broke the rules as
much as anybody did on a small ship like
that but still the officers had separate quarters and it was, “Sir!” this and “Sir!” that.
The officers had there own clubs on shores
at Pearl Harbor or wherever they were. The
officers had their own set-up. The enlisted
men were in a different world as far as that
part goes.
There was not a democratic relationship apparently. Let’s put it that way. Strictly from
a racial point of view, because I don’t remember that there were many blacks in the
Navy, other than stewards mates, who were
the really the waiters in those days.
The only exception to that was that one of
the first ships that I was onit was down at
Cape May, New Jersey. It was a wooden
tuna fishing boat that had been rigged up as
a minesweeper with electric cables to go out
and detector break up mines that were
electronc, I guess. I can’t think of the terminology. They were hooked up to great big
storage batteries [unintelligible] sort of a
minesweeper but they were [unintelligible]
ships, and all the officers but me were
Black.
That’s the only real occasion I can remember of being [with Blacks]I don’t think we
had no Blacks on board. I don’t know
whether they ended up in the Army or
whether that was by choice, or what went on
but
WHITEHEAD: Yeah, I was the junior officer and I think there were 2 other black
officers at that point but it was a very unusual occasion. I never saw a situation like
that.
SEEGER: Did you ever find out how that
came to be?
WHITEHEAD: No, because I was shipped
on to another ship. From there I went to another ship. We rarelyOur history of duty
was usually one of “to be prepared to move
at any time.” Those smallcraft that they used
along the Eastern Shore, there were a lot of
converted yachts. The DuPont yacht was
one of the ships that was in the harbor at
Cape May. A lovely teak wood ship had
been painted Navy gray top to bottom was
out there [unintelligible] to a submarine.
SEEGER: Was that fairly common to see
that? The ships [being commandeered] by
the service?
WHITEHEAD: I don’t know how they
handled that. I suppose the DuPonts probably would beglad to donate the ship [for
their use] or something. Or the Navy might
have leased them. Sort of like the Queen
Mary; I am sure that the Conard line probably got some rent for the use of it. My Naval
career was not [unintelligible] Halsey’s life
with theor the bombs raining down. The
Jap fleet coming through the pass and so on.
It was very
�SEEGER: How long were the days? Did
you have long days?
WHITEHEAD: Well your days were when
you were on watch for four hours and then
you were off for eight, I think. Then you
would be on for four and then you’d be off
for four. Wasn’t like being on a day shift or
the night shift in a factory. You were constantly revolving, around-the-clock. In a
small ship like that, why our boardroom and
officers quarters were below deck, with no
portholes. So there wasn’t really any place
[to go]the weather was nice outside. You
were steaming at any speed, why it was
spray and water coming over the top, so you
couldn’t take a nice book and curl up on
most occasions.
SEEGER: Was there regular [unintelligible]?
WHITEHEAD: I think so. Well, yeah. [Unintelligible] I find that, to my regret, was
that I didn’t have a camera along, but you
weren’t suppose to have a camera or film or
anything. I got a few pictures somebody
smuggled or took, but those memories are
little hard to look back on. Fifty years to
know just exactly how life was. I have spent
quite a bit of time listening to short wave
radio [unintelligible] So you could just hear
broadcasts of Tokyo Rose. Listen to Hong
Kong and some of the other stations that
were around that area as well as the ones
that were relayed from the States.
SEEGER: What did you think of the Tokyo
Rose broadcasts?
WHITEHEAD: Well, I had noI guess it
was just entertainment. Hard to imagine that
you were being seduced or persuaded otherwise. One of my favorite memories is listening to the World Series of 1945 in Tokyo
Bay, which is the last year the Chicago Cubs
played in the series! So when they talk about
that length of time, it really is quite a long
time!
SEEGER: Is there any other episodes or
events or details that we haven’t touched on
that you perhaps want to ?
WHITEHEAD: No, I don’t think so. The
War years; I can remember standing watch
with green water coming up over the bow.
You would be drenched and saying to the
other guy on watch, “These are the days we
can look back on fondly.” And I think we do
to some extent. No matter how tough the
conditions were for a small ship like that,
there was a wet duty and it was a rough duty. It was just as comfortable being in bed as
it was in any place, but yet there are people
who were on a lot smaller ships.
Then you would hear these guys on the big
ships get seasick and never get over it and
were complaining about it.
SEEGER: Did you have any trouble with
seasickness?
WHITEHEAD: I used to get sick for the
first day out and then you’d get over it. We
had some of the toughest guys on board that
would not get over it. They would literally
lie down on the deck in the wheelhouse
when they were supposed to be on watch
and froth at the mouth and we had to get rid
of those guys. This wasthey were of no
value and it was a disservice to have them
on board.
My brother-in-law was on the Yorktown and
I remember visiting him one time over there
in Japan after the war. His ship was in the
harbor. He sentI don’t know. He was a
lieutenant I think. He was a minor officer on
a huge ship, with several thousand others on
board. He sent the Admiral, or somebody,
�[important] over to our ship. I went over and
visited him and, of course, in those days any
officer who walked up the gangplank and
came aboard got the full treatment.
Then we went to the ward room and sat
down to white tableclothscelery and olives, all those things that we, in the small
ship, maybe had forgotten that it existed, so
to speak. We were eating pretty much Spartan food. Then you go upI remember going into one of those typhoon retreats over in
North Okinawa one time. We had been out
[mine-]sweeping; the typhoon was approaching. There was still fighting going on
on-shore there at Okinawa, but somehow a
couple of Army officers came on board and
I remember how appreciative they were of
the food that we gave them from our ship.
Because they had been eating out of a tin
can or hardtack, C-rations, or something
during that entire battle up there. It all depends on your views as to what you’re being
fed.
SEEGER: Did the typhoon hit?
WHITEHEAD: Well, I think it did but I
think it didn’t come into area we were in.
When those things hitwell, the ship that
carried the atomic bomb out there [unintelligible] Submarine I think, going down to the
Philippines afterward [with] the Indianapolis, which was a big cruiser. There were two
or three destroyers that went through the typhoon and literally took in water in the funnels and they rolled over to the point where
the engine rooms were deluged and they literally sank. So even on a modern [unintelligible] ship like that when you get into bad
weather you can be sunk. So life went on
and we lived happily ever after. I guess
that’s all [I] can say, Gerhardt.
SEEGER: Thank you, John.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Midway Village Museum
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Midway Village Museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-2001
Rights
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Midway Village Museum
Language
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English
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Gerhardt Seegers
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
John B. Whitehead
Location
The location of the interview
Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
John B. Whitehead
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
December 21, 1993
Description
An account of the resource
Born September 10, 1923, John B. Whitehead was drafted in 1942. He served in the Navy until 1947.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Format
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pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War II
WW2
-
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PDF Text
Text
Joe H. Crawford
Transcribed by Elaine Carlson
Midway Village & Museum Center
6799 Guilford Road
Rockford, Illinois 61107
Phone 815 397 9112
�Joe H. Crawford
NELSON: Hello. Today is January 19,
1994. My name is Charles Nelson. I am a
volunteer with the Midway Village &
Museum Center, which is cooperating with
the State’s efforts to collect oral histories
from Illinois citizens who participated in the
momentous events surrounding World War
II. We are in the office of the Midway
Village & Museum Center interviewing Joe
H. Crawford who lives at 4245 Oaklane
Road, Rockford, Illinois, 61109. Mr.
Crawford served in the branch of the United
States Armed Forces during WW II. We are
interviewing him about his experiences in
that war. Joe, would you please start by
introducing yourself to us?
CRAWFORD: My name is Joe Crawford
and I live at 4245 Oaklane Road south of
Rockford on the Kishwaukee River. I have
been here for a little over 20 years in
Rockford. I was here earlier. I have worked
for several companies in town.
NELSON: Okay. Would you give me your
place and date of birth?
CRAWFORD: I was born in Kansas City,
Missouri, on November 13, 1921.
NELSON: We would also like the names of
each of your parents.
CRAWFORD: My Father’s name was
Chester A. Crawford and my mother’s name
was Mildred C. Crawford.
NELSON: Did you have any brothers or
sisters?
CRAWFORD: I had one sister, Rachel
Crawford.
NELSON: Are there any details about your
parents and/or your family that you would
like to give?
CRAWFORD: Well, if you are taking
histories of wars, my father was in World
War; my grandfather was in the Civil War;
my great grandfather was in the
Revolutionary War. We’ve hit them all it
seems, down the line.
NELSON: Wonderful. What was life like
for you before the war, specifically during
1941?
CRAWFORD: I was in California. I was
working for Douglas Aircraft Company. I
was young and single and went out to the
West Coast to have a good time in
California. You know how that is. When the
warI was there when Pearl Harbor
happened and so I came back to enlist in
Kansas City.
NELSON: What thoughts did you have
about the war before United States became
directly involved in the conflict?
CRAWFORD: I figured it was inevitable
that we would be involved because I was in
high school. That was one reason I took
ROTC in high school because it looked like
we would be involved sooner or later. I’m
glad I did that preparation.
NELSON: How did you hear of the
December 7, 1941, bombing of Pearl Harbor
by the Japanese? If so, where were you and
what were you doing at the time? What was
your reaction and response of those around
you?
CRAWFORD: I was working 2nd shift at
the Douglas Aircraft Company and the
National Guard was conducting a mock raid
on the aircraft plant at the Santa Monica
plant and I was standing at Wilshire
Boulevard thumbing a ride into town to see
a friend of mine. I lived in west Los Angeles
and a fellow picked me up in a ’36 Ford. He
said, “What do you think of the war?” and I
said, “Who won?” because I thought he was
talking about the raid by the Air Force
�against the National Guard at the Santa
Monica plant. And I said, “Who won?” He
said, “Well, you better listen” and he turned
on the radio and I heard Roosevelt
announcing it again about the December 7th
raid on Pearl Harbor.
NELSON: Had you formed any prior
opinion or developed any feeling about what
was taking place in Europe or Asia?
CRAWFORD: Well, as I said earlier my
opinion was that we would be involved in
the war, hence the term world war, because
we can’t stay out anymore it seems.
had to sign for me. My Dad had a fit when
he found out later what branch I had
selected.
NELSON: What branch was he in?
CRAWFORD: My Dad was with the
engineers over in France in World War I.
NELSON: When and where were you
inducted?
CRAWFORD: In Kansas City.
NELSON: Do you have any special
memories of this event?
NELSON: Did you recall reading
newspaper accounts of German Aggression
in Europe?
CRAWFORD: No. I just was there in the
office and we took the oath.
CRAWFORD: Oh, yes, yes.
NELSON: You said you were 17 years old?
NELSON: Did you have any knowledge of
Hitler’s speeches, ideas or actions?
CRAWFORD: No, in 1941, I was 19.
CRAWFORD: Oh yes, yes.
NELSON: What events led you to enter into
the military services? Were you already in
service, drafted, or did you volunteer?
CRAWFORD: No. I volunteered. I went
back home to Kansas City from California
to enlist. In fact I went out to CaliforniaI
went out to March Field first and took my
physical for the Air Force and I passed
everything and so I said, “I’ll go back home
and enlist.” And there I didn’t pass the
__?__ color confusion test. The little dots,
the little brown reddish dots and so I went in
the Infantry, which I know more about.
NELSON: Was your response to entering
military service influenced by family, your
friends’ attitudes toward the war, the threat
to national security or any other
considerations?
CRAWFORD: The threat to national
security, I guess. My parents had to sign for
me because I was young at the time. They
NELSON: Nineteen years old. Yeah.
CRAWFORD: You had to be signed for at
the time. Later they moved the age down.
NELSON: What happened after you were
inducted? Where were you sent?
CRAWFORD: I went to Jefferson Barracks
in St. Louis for some processing. Then I
went down to Camp __?__ in Texas when I
had my training. What we call the Infantry
Basic Training.
NELSON: That was your basic military
training?
CRAWFORD: Yeah.
NELSON: What were you trained to do?
CRAWFORD: Well, it sounds kind of
smart, but we were trained to kill people, but
that’s what that branch of the service did. I
was trained in the weapons. I was in heavy
�weapons training company at Camp __?__.
(Some interference here).
NELSON: What did you think of the
training? (More interference).
CRAWFORD: The training then? It was
reasonable. But one problem was it was very
early in the war. The equipment that we had
wasn’t bad and we had enough rounds of
ammunition for a good practice on the
range. I would say it was reasonable,
everything considered. It wasn’t as bad as it
was the year before, of course when you had
the National Guard running around with
sticks over their shoulders in place of guns.
NELSON: Did anything special happen
there?
CRAWFORD: No, except I got a little bit
sick from all the shots but nothing exciting.
NELSON: Tell us about your other training
camps you attended.
place very long and when we got over to
Oahu we were really out in the field and we
spent all our time doing fortification and
stuff you see. We were expecting an
invasion at any time from the Nipsthe
Japanese.
NELSON: What was your military unit?
CRAWFORD: When we left the states and
went to Oahu, they put us in a big compound
there by the theater and the said “You, you
and you go to E Company and you, you, you
and you got to F Company. I was assigned
to G Company, 21st Infantry, part of the 24th
Division, which was formed out of the Old
Hawaiian Division.
NELSON: What were your assigned duties?
CRAWFORD: I was a rifleman. Did more
digging than rifling because as I said we
were so busy putting up the barbed wire,
digging emplacements, putting up big
bunkers. Labor battalion was really what it
really was.
CRAWFORD: That was all, there. We left
from there and went out to San Francisco,
Angel Island and took off from there to go
over to Oahu.
NELSON: This next part is about your
active participation in the conflict. Where
did you go after completing your basic
military training?
NELSON: Did you have any leaves or
passes?
CRAWFORD: Yeah, well I just mentioned
thatgoing over to Oahu right after Pearl
Harbor. Well, we got there in May, late
May, early June of ’42. We were the first
bunch of replacements to come in there. We
came into Pearl Harbor like being across
from the USS Republic, a big transport, and
we could see the mess and the damage at
Pearl Harbor as we went up. They put us all
in little sugar cane cars on a little engine and
we went chugging up the side of the hill to
go out to Schofield Barracks which sits in
the center of the island on the planes __?__
up there. And we went up in that.
CRAWFORD: No.
NELSON: If so, how did you use them?
CRAWFORD: No. Sorry, I did have an
overnight pass and we went up to Fort
Worth and came back. That was it in the
States.
NELSON: What do you recall about the
places you were stationed, the friends you
made, your association with civilians?
CRAWFORD: I guess one of our problems
was we had very little association with
civilians because we weren’t in any one
NELSON: What was the date? Do you
remember the date?
�CRAWFORD: Not the exact date. As I say
it was ’42, late May or early June of ’42.
hit, but fortunately no one was killed. But
my unit wasn’t really involved.
NELSON: What did you think of the
nation’s war efforts up to that point?
NELSON: Did your mental attitude change
as combat continued.
CRAWFORD: Well, later on when I did
get into combat, I don’t know how to answer
that question for sure because it was later on
when I got into combat.
CRAWFORD: Well, everybody was kind
of staggered. I know that the aircraft people
responded very rapidly. There were a bunch
of planes setting outside of the hanger at
Douglas Aircraft where I worked with OD
paint on them scheduled for England. The
820s – 820 bombers. I worked 2nd shift and
so I didn’t go back to work until Monday
afternoon, after the Sunday attack. When I
got in there they had already changed the
Bulls eye, the British marking, to the star of
the United States plus they had a bunch of
transport DC-3s scheduled for the
Netherlands East Indies and again those had
been painted then. They were shiny; they
were painted OD and they had a star and
then sent them over to Oahu right away to
bring back wounded. So they moved them as
far as I could see.
NELSON: Would you consider
entering the first combat zone?
this
CRAWFORD: Oh yeah. I’m sure. We were
sweating out the Battle of Midway, which
came a little bit later, and fortunately they
didn’t make it to Oahu, but they had an
invasion force schedule for Oahu. And they
could have taken it if they had landed the
troops right away because we had nothing
there.
NELSON: I believe that. Taking this one at
a time, please tell us in full detail if possible,
the approximate number of types of
casualties, how they occurred and how they
were treated.
CRAWFORD: Well, as I say, on Oahu, I
got there late after the Pearl Harbor attack
and we lost some fellows in the outfit I
joined. They were hit by strafing. Wheeler
Field sits right next to special barracks and
they were strafing Wheeler Field and the
barracks, too. And we had couple guys get
NELSON:
combat?
You
didn’t
consider
this
CRAWFORD: No.
NELSON: Well, okay, let’s say later on
when you were in the Philippines.
(Disconnected conversation). Okay. What
did you think of the war so far? Did you
write any letters home?
CRAWFORD: Oh yeah. I was writing
letters home but I also I got my commission
in Australia and I had to censor mail down
there so then I was careful about “leaky”
letters. There were a few events that
happened in the Pacific down there where
some how or other they got information that
we were going to land on a certain island
and it was hurtful. We had some bad
casualties. Most of the fellows in our outfit
they were very good about it. They didn’t
write anything home or tell anything. So
actually our letters home were rather
nondescript. It was kind of “We were taking
more training, etc., etc.
NELSON: Did you receive any packets
from home?
CRAWFORD: Oh, yeah. I got a packet
from Australia. I met a fellow there and his
family was very nice to me.
NELSON: What type of things did you
receive?
CRAWFORD: I got a fruitcake one time.
Some of the fellows got Listerine bottles
that had liquor in them instead of Listerine.
�The packets we liked and I got a couple,
were things like A-1 Sauce and hot sauce
and sauce and spices so we could zap u that
food which was a GI __?__.
we had a few cases where we lost them, too.
They’d surrender and somebody shot them
on the way back, which we didn’t like. But
it happened.
NELSON: Did most of the fellows write or
receive letters?
NELSON: Now these questions probably
are more for people in Europe, but I will
read them anyway. Prior to the end of the
war were you aware of any civilian
concentration camps existed. If so, please
explain how you learned about them and
how much you knew at the time.
CRAWFORD: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
NELSON: Did you forge close bonds of
friendship with many or some of the combat
companions?
CRAWFORD: Well, when I really got in
combat I had my commission then and my
job then was to see that the men did the job.
I know it sounds rather crass but you
avoided very close bonds particularly with
the enlisted men, although I liked to. And I
know a lot of them and since then I have
formed some close bonds. We had a reunion
here in the city just this year, or just last
year, 1993. With some of the enlisted men
who were under me during the war, but if
you formed too close a bond and then he
was killed a gone it was tough. You just
couldn’t do too much of it.
NELSON: Did you ever have to help
retrieve a wounded body from the field of
combat?
CRAWFORD: Oh, yeah, several times.
NELSON: During your combat duty, did
you ever capture any enemy prisoners? If so,
please describe the circumstances.
CRAWFORD: Oh, we had a couple cases
where they came out of caves and we would
take them back to S-2 And I interrogated
some of them later when I was an
Intelligence Officer when I was in S-2. I
took a course in "“pigeon Japanese" and I
could interrogate them with basic questions
as to who their __?__ for example. Who
were their officers? We had a lot of data on
officers. Nip officers could keep track of
them there. Yeah, we had a few cases. And
CRAWFORD: Yeah, we liberatedI guess
they weren’t really in a camp, but they were
literally under guard on Palawan in the city
of Puerto Princesa, which is aPalawan is a
far western island in the Philippines and
there was a camp. Some of the guys learned
about a camp, and it was a concentration
camp for civilians up on a little island north
of Palawan. They went up there.
NELSON: Run by the Japanese.
CRAWFORD: Yeah, yeah.
NELSON: What was your highlight
occurrence of your combat experience?
CRAWFORD: I don’t know the high light
of combat, I guess, is the day you were hit
you got a couple of purple hearts. The whole
combat experience, I guessthe times you
really felt the best I guess was when we
liberate some civilians or we wouldYou
see the Japanese had civilian laborers on a
lot of the airstrips around there. They
brought them in from Java, Sumatra, and
Borneo. They brought them in from all over
and they were just laborers, and boy they
were like slave laborers. They weren’t
getting fed very well and to liberate them
you see in that sense was just very, very
rewarding. Very good.
NELSON: You said you were hit a couple
times
CRAWFORD: Oh, yeah.
�NELSON: How did that occur?
CRAWFORD: Well, the rounds came a
little too close to me. That’s all. I got some
shrapnel in my butt. Fortunately, it was just
minor things.
NELSON: Was this from aircraft?
CRAWFORD: No, it was from small arms
and also from rifle grenades. Explosive
devices of theirs. Mortar rounds. I’m not
sure at that time.
NELSON: Tell us what you and other men
did to celebrate America’s traditional family
holidays, such as Thanksgiving and
Christmas.
CRAWFORD: It depended on where you
were. When I was on Oahu we got some bad
turkey and we all celebrated Thanksgiving
there by spending our time in the latrine. It
was really bad. Christmas came and went.
The holidays usually just came and went.
We hardly ever had time off just to
celebrate. We did have a chapel on Biak. We
had a chapel there and if we weren’t
working, you know, out in the fields
shooting each other, we would have services
in the chapel there at Christmas or whatever.
NELSON: When and how did you return to
the United States after the end of the war?
CRAWFORD: Well, I returnedI went
from the United States to Oahu on the USS
Republic. I was down about the “Z” deck,
way down at the bottom of the ship and I
could just see big bull’s eye painted on the
outside of that damned ship. And I swore to
myself, “By God, I’m going to come back a
little bit better off than I went over.” So
guess where I was put. I cam back from
Nagoya, Japan way down about “Z” deck
again even though I had my commission.
But, I left from Nagoya and came back
about the same way as I went over, but it
was damn good of course, to be coming
back
NELSON: What happened when you
arrived in the United States?
CRAWFORD: Well, we landed in
Portland. Actually Vancouver barracks,
that’s across the river from Portland. I got a
lot of back pay as I hadn’t been paid for
some time, so we went out on the town. We
had to have a beer for Sam and a beer for
Fred and a beer for George. All the guys
said have a beer for me when I left Japan, so
I had lots of beer. Meanwhile, I was
chomping at the bit to get on a train to go
back to Kansas City. I was separated at Fort
Leavenworth and we were waiting for a
train. They just didn’t have enough trains
running at the time.
NELSON: Please tell us about your military
rank and your decorations, especially your
campaign decorations.
CRAWFORD: As I said, I was a corporal
on Oahu then after I had been there a little
while. Then we went on down to Australia
in late ’42. I was just trying to remember. It
was getting toward springtime of ’43
because when we hit Australia it was down
under, it was wintertime down there. It was
fall. It was colder than hell and all we had
were tropical things. Anyway, I was a
corporal. I went to OCS, Officers’ Candidate
School in Brisbane and got my commission.
I was a nice fresh 2nd Lieutenant and then
later on I went to 1st Lieutenant. If I had
stayed in a while I would have probably
been a captain. I was executive officer of the
company when I left. That would have been
a lot of fun, too. I was executive officer of
our company and the captain of our
company was the supply officer and he
didn’t know anything about running a line
company. It would have been fun too. We
were scheduled toWe were all set up to
land in Japan. We had our maps out and we
had our boats at Zamboanga in the
Philippines and we were getting ready to
load the boats. We loaded the boats on
paper. You make a big lay out on the table
and you load in all the trucks and guns and
�whatever. We had our boats loaded on paper
and the LSTs had come in Zamboanga to
start to load up for the invasion of Japan.
Anyway, I ended up a 1st Lieutenant.
NELSON: What about you decorations?
You got 2 Purple Hearts.
CRAWFORD: Yeah, I got 2 Purple Hearts
and an air medal.
NELSON: That’s unusual
infantryman to get an air medal.
for
an
CRAWFORD: Yeah. I’ll tell you how
really started was, I got a call from division
headquarters and they said, “Hey Crawford,
how many times you been up?” I said, “I
don’t know. I really hadn’t kept track.
Didn’t keep a log or anything.” They said, “
You been up about 12 times?” and I said,
“Oh, I guess so”. They said, “Can you turn
in some dates and times”. I said, “Well, I
can approximate”. The reason was, the Air
Force General was giving out bronze stars to
the Air Force people and it wasn’t supposed
to be that way. It was only supposed to be
for
ground
troops.
Our
Division
Commander, he said, “Well, I’m going to
give out air medals, so, myself, Charles
Foltz, who was our regimental S-2 and
couple others of us, got air medals. We had
a big decoration ceremony up in Nagoya. No
it was at [Hitachi] Barracks which was just
outside of Hiroshima.
NELSON: Then you also got a Bronze Star.
CRAWFORD: Yeah, got a Bronze Star, but
the one that was best is the combat infantry
badge. That’s the big long blue one with the
musket. That was our best one, plus
campaign ribbons.
NELSON: Do you remember how many
campaigns you were in?
CRAWFORD: Well, yeah. Let’s see. We
had New Guinea at [Hollandia?] then we
had the Philippines of course. The
Philippines was quite a prolonged one,
because you see, we would go from island to
island to island. In our theater we would
count each little island as a separate
campaign really so it’s kind of hard. We had
the general Philippine ribbon, then, of
course, we had the Pacific ribbon. Then we
had arrowhead decorations on your
campaign ribbons for each landing you
make. We probably made 10 to 20 landings
at least in our outfit alone. Some were hot
and some weren’t. Some we got shot at and
some we didn’t. So the Pacific campaign
was kind of tough in that respect. They just
talk about the Pacific campaign and hell in
the mean while a guy might have been on a
dozen islands down there. Each one could be
a real hot, sometimes short and sometimes
long campaign. We got down to Mindanao
and that thing went on for quite a while
down there. It’s a big island, a lot of area.
NELSON: How did you get along with the
men with whom you had the greatest
contact?
CRAWFORD: Well, that was my outfit. I
think we did pretty well because, in my 4
years of service, I had 2 years enlisted and 2
years commission time. So when I had my
commission in talking to an enlisted man, I
knew what he was thinking. I knew what the
guys were thinking because I had 2 years of
it myself. I think we got along real well. The
fellows
themselves,
theythis
was
something that I never mentioned. Just come
to think of it. I hadn’t thought about it for
years. They turned me in for an award. The
men in my platoonI was very touched
about that. In fact, it bothers me now to
think about it. (Sounded teary). Sorry.
NELSON: Were there things you would do
differently if you could do them once again?
CRAWFORD: Well, it’s a basic arm of the
services. All the other services really are
dedicated to supporting the Infantry, you
see--Artillery, quartermaster, ordinance, all
those people. It’s the best part of the service.
�NELSON: What was the most difficult
thing you had to do during your period of
military service?
CRAWFORD: To write letters home to the
fellows that had been killedwriting letters
to their parents. That was bad.
NELSON: Is there any one thing that stands
our as your most successful achievement in
the military service?
CRAWFORD: One of the times I got hit.
We closed up a gap on a ridge, you see,
which moved the whole campaign forward
and enabled the Air Force to move in and
use the air strip which was below the hill
there and that sort of thing. We felt it was
very critical to the campaign. So that was
alwaysI
gave
us
a
sense
of
accomplishment to have done that in a
particular campaign.
NELSON: How did you learn about VE
Day and what was your reaction to it?
CRAWFORD: Well, we were right in the
middle of a campaign on Biak and we didn’t
have much time to do anything about it. We
just said, “Boy, that’s great.” We kept right
on. We were busy.
don’t everAt the time there were no more
issues involved as I said, well, I haven’t said
yet, but when we got into Japan, I was in
charge of Hiroshima getting rid of the
weapons, ordnance and ammunition in that
area. I talked to many civilians there. I had a
Japanese girl there with me as a translator
and she told that to them at the time it was
merely bigger weapon that they had and that
was in the rules.
NELSON: And you haven’t changed your
mind in the last 50 years?
CRAWFORD: Absolutely not. No, I
haven’t. Some of our men are
claimingsome of our mensome of the
fellows in our outfit are claiming radiation
problems from being in the area. I went in
with the Navy crew and they had what they
called “cutripies” at the time, which is a
radio-active sniffer. And, of course, the
radiation levels then, they said were okay,
but we know more about radiation levels
now than we did then. And the town was
fairly hot.
NELSON: What city was this, Hiroshima?
CRAWFORD: Yeah, Hiroshima.
NELSON: How did you learn about VJ Day
and what was your reaction to it?
NELSON: When and where were you
officially discharged from service?
CRAWFORD: Well, on VJ Day we had so
damn much shooting going on from the
other troops. There was another aircraft unit
down the road a ways and they were
shooting off rounds and stuff and we heard
on the radio and we had to damn near get in
our bunkers because of the stray rounds
coming down from all these other clowns
shooting so much ammunition.
CRAWFORD: At Fort Leavenworth in
Kansas.
NELSON: What was your opinion of the
use of the atomic bomb when it was first
used against the Japanese civilians in August
of 1945?
NELSON: Do you have any disability
rating or pension?
CRAWFORD: Absolutely correct. If it
hadn’t been for that, I wouldn’t be here. So
NELSON: When, what year? ’45?
CRAWFORD: Yeah, ’45. You see I had 90
days leave coming that I never had.
Terminal leave. I had that coming, but my
official discharge date was in February.
CRAWFORD: No.
�NELSON: Do you have any opinions or
feeling about our nation’s military status or
its policies?
CRAWFORD: Well, I think we should try
to maintain our troops and services that we
have now and keep them in as good a shape
as possible. One of the biggest things, one of
the troubles is, when we finish up a war,
Congress is cutting back on things so darn
much that, then you got to go through a big
scramble again to try to get things back up
to par. Fortunately, with Korea we still had a
lot of stuff around a lot of equipment I came
close to being called back for Korea. I was
in school and my military occupation
specialty at the time was a small unit
commander and they were yanking them,
those guys, off campus. I was going to
school in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I would see
some guy disappear and I would say,
“Where’s Fred”? “Oh he got called back in”.
I was in the reserves. I joined the reserves in
Ann Arbor to make a little money, while I
was in school. I was on the GI Bill, I didn’t
have a lot of money, so fortunately that’s
what saved me. They said they would take
the whole unit if we got call back.
NELSON: Do you have any contact with
the Veterans’ Administration?
CRAWFORD: No, other than my
insurance. I have been carrying insurance
for years.
NELSON: What is your opinion of the
Veterans’ Administration if you have any
contact with it? Well, you don’t have any
contact
CRAWFORD: No, I have no contact.
NELSON: Would you like to tell us about
your family support, how your family
supported you during your military life?
CRAWFORD: Oh, yeah, I was very
fortunate. I got good support from my
family and they wrote me regularly, my
mother and dad and my sister, of course, that
was my main family and my other relatives.
I was engaged when I went into service. I
wasn’t going to get married because I was
afraid the branch of service was in I might
leave a widow so we didn’t get married but
we were engaged. Well, after I had been
overseas about a year and a half I got a letter
from my mother saying, “Joe, I’m sorry to
tell you but Mary’s engaged to Earl, another
chap, you see, so I lost that engagement.
NELSON: Dear John.
CRAWFORD: Dear John but didn’t even
get a Dear John letter. So many fellows did
in my outfit but I didn’t get any and my
mother had to tell me and so my present
wife, I dated her a little bit and I just wrote
her a letter when I was in Australia. Well,
I’ll just write you a letter and see what’s
going on. Well, boy, we just kept writing
and writing and she got together with my
folks and she and my folks had it all set up
really.
This taped interview stopped abruptly at this
point.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Midway Village Museum
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Midway Village Museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-2001
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Language
A language of the resource
English
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Charles Nelson
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Joe H. Crawford
Location
The location of the interview
Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Joe H. Crawford
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
January 19, 1994
Description
An account of the resource
Born November 13, 1921 Joseph H. Crawford was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1941. He was discharged in 1945. He died February 7, 2005.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War II
WW2
-
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Text
Joe Geraghty
Transcribed by Volunteer Elaine Carlson
Edited June 14, 2006 and December 2018
Midway Village and Museum Center
9766 Guilford Road
Rockford, Illinois 61109
www.midwayvillage.com
Phone 815 397 9112
�Joe Geraghty
INTERVIEWER CHARLES NELSON:
Today is March the 16th, 1994. My name is
Charles Nelson. I am a volunteer at Midway
Village and Museum Center in Rockford,
Illinois, which is cooperating in a statewide
effort to collect oral histories from Illinois
citizens that participated in the momentous
events of World War II. We are in the office
of Midway Village and Museum Center interviewing Mr. Joe Geraghty who served in
a branch of the United States Armed Forces
during World War II. We are interviewing
him about his experiences in that war.
NELSON: Joe, would you please start by
introducing yourself to us? Please give us
your full name, the date and place of birth.
We would also like to have the names of
each one of your parents.
GERAGHTY: My name is Joseph Geraghty.
I was born February 27, 1920. My father
was Joseph Geraghty, Sr. and my mother
was Evelyn [Heath] Geraghty. They both
lived in Rockford. My father’s family goes
back to the 1800s in Rockford, Illinois.
NELSON: Would you like to give us their
names?
GERAGHTY: My grandfather’s name was
James Geraghty and my grandmother’s was
“Grandmother”. [Laughter] I forget her first
name.
NELSON: How about any brothers or sisters.
GERAGHTY: I have two brothers, Robert
and Gerald Geraghty and they both flew in
the Navy as I did in World War II. They
were Navy pilots.
NELSON: Are there any details about your
parents and/or your family that you would
like to give?
GERAGHTY: My parents were in business
in Rockford. My grandparents were in business in Rockford since the 1800s in the military and costume business. That lasted up to
approximately 1975 or ’80 something.
NELSON: What was life like for you before
the War specifically during 1941?
GERAGHTY: Prior to the War I attended
St. Thomas High School and graduated in
’38 and I had taken engineering schooling at
the time. And the position opened up at
Camp Grant with the engineers, which I accepted. I stayed with this company in Rockford at Camp Grant for the construction of
the camp for about nine months. Then I left
Rockford and went to Des Moines, Iowa, for
about a year at the same type of work. This
was the construction of a powder plant north
of Des Moines. Then I went from there up to
the Badger Ordinance Works up in Baraboo,
Wisconsin. That was in 1941. So I was involved with determining the progress of
construction of these camps.
NELSON: What thoughts did you have
about the War before the United States became directly involved in the conflict?
GERAGHTY: Well, I was aware that things
were building up because of my work. They
were pushing for powder plants to be constructed in a hurry and Camp Grant. I knew
there was a military build up in the United
States and I was also aware that the Germans were pushing the Europeans around at
that time and I was frankly not impressed
with their actions.
�NELSON: How did you hear of the December 7th, 1941, bombing of Pearl Harbor by
the Japanese?
GERAGHTY: I happened to be driving my
car on South Main Street in Rockford, Illinois, and heard it on the radio.
NELSON: Had you formed any prior opinion or developed any feeling about what was
taking place in Europe or Asia?
GERAGHTY: Yes, I felt that we were helping the English who were our allies and I
felt thought that we would have to do a lot
more to help them because they were having
a hard time with the Germans at the time.
NELSON: Do you recall reading newspaper
accounts of German aggression in Europe?
GERAGHTY: Yes, I do. Right.
NELSON: Did you have any knowledge of
Hitler’s speeches, ideas or actions?
to national security or any other consideration?
GERAGHTY: I’d say all of those considerations influenced me. I have two brothers and
as I said, one of themall three of us were
in the Navy Air Corps program. My middleaged brother, Robert, had joined the Navy
almost six months prior to myself and my
youngest brother.
NELSON: When and where were you inducted?
GERAGHTY: I was inducted in Chicago in
the fall of ’42.
NELSON: Do you have any special memories of this event?
GERAGHTY: Yes. It was in the Board of
Trade Building in Chicago. Raising my right
hand and being sworn in was very impressive.
NELSON: How old were you then?
GERAGHTY: Yes. At this point I read some
of it in the paper and I knew they were making roads in parts of Europe. They were going into Poland and places like that. Taking
over areas with their war machines.
NELSON: What events led to your entry
into military service? Were you already in
service, drafted or did you volunteer?
GERAGHTY: I volunteered. Since I was
with the war effort in engineering, I wasn’t
accepted immediately. I volunteered the first
part of 1942 and I was accepted in October
of ’42, in the Navy Air Force.
NELSON: Was your response to entering
military service influenced by family and
friends attitudes towards the War, the threat
GERAGHTY: Let’s see. I was 22.
NELSON: What happened after you were
inducted?
GERAGHTY: I was sent tofirst base, I
went to Monmouth College for about six
months and after that I went to the University of Chicago for probably about four
months. Then I went to Iowa preflight for
my physical training and also navigation and
academic training.
NELSON: What did you think of the training?
GERAGHTY: I was impressed with the
training. We had a lot of, not only academic
�work, but a lot of physical work to accomplish. It was very thoroughly put together.
friends and everything, I thought, was well
done.
NELSON: Did anything special happen
there?
NELSON: What was your military unit?
GERAGHTY: I was in the B5 program.
GERAGHTY: In my training?
NELSON: Yes.
GERAGHTY: I had preflight training at
Notre Dame in 1942. In my training and flying was located at five different bases.
NELSON: And that was the Navy Air
Corps?
GERAGHTY: Navy Air Corps the B5 program.
NELSON: What were your assigned duties?
NELSON: What other training camps did
you attend?
GERAGHTY: Iowa pre-flight school. I
trained at Minneapolis, [inaudible] and also
graduated at Pensacola and different bases at
Pensacola and then I graduated from there.
GERAGHTY: You mean prior to
NELSON: At this time.
GERAGHTY: During training?
NELSON: Yes.
NELSON: Did you have any leaves or passes?
GERAGHTY: Yes, I did.
NELSON: How did you use them?
GERAGHTY: I was able to come home
once or twice during my transfer of bases
and I seemed to accomplish that. I think I
was home maybe twice.
NELSON: What do you recall of this period
about the places you were stationed, the
friends you made and your association with
civilians?
GERAGHTY: Well, the program and training was pretty strict. They kept us in base.
We would get leave probably on Saturday
evening, afternoon and evening, and maybe
Sunday afternoon. That was about it through
that total training period but I made a lot of
GERAGHTY: Prior to joining the Navy I
had CMTC military training. That’s Civilian
Military Training Corp in the Chicago area.
Consequently I had two years training that
most of the fellows didn’t have, so they assigned me as Battalion Commander for the
Cadets and I have that type
NELSON: This is participation in the conflict. Where did you go after completing
your basic military training?
GERAGHTY: After Pensacola, I was transferred to a field outside of Miami for torpedo bomber training. I graduated with my
youngest brother. The two of us went
through all the training together and when
we were commissioned, he went into “Hell
Divers” and I was sent to Torpedo Bombing
Training School.
NELSON: When you were sent overseas
how did you get there?
�GERAGHTY: The first part of the War, after initial training in torpedo bombing, I was
trained into night flying and was assigned to
a night flying torpedo bomber squadron stationed in Maine, and we had a section of the
North Atlantic that we flew at night. We did
searches for German subs off the coast at
night.
ros and Kamikazes were coming in at night,
so they switched us as fast as they could and
they sent us out to the Pacific. Then I joined
the Night Fighter Squadron out there. By the
time I arrived in the Pacific that particular
problem ceased to exist so I was stationed in
Honolulu.
NELSON: Were you ever on a carrier?
NELSON: What did you think of the nation’s War effort up to this point?
GERAGHTY: The nation’s effort everybody was going all out. Everybody did everything they could do to help the War efforts
along. I thought it was 100% go for everybody.
NELSON: Tell us about your experience of
entering your first combat zone.
GERAGHTY: My first combat zone was
basically flying off the North Atlantic at
night with radar searching for German subs
that would be… that would surface at night
to recharge their batteries. That would be my
first experience.
NELSON: Can you list for us in order of
occurrence all subsequent combat actions in
which you were involved?
GERAGHTY: Other than searching for
German subs… this happened about… I
was doing this for approximately 12 months.
This was night flying. The North Atlanwas
very clean of German subs [inaudible] and
we carried depth charges rather than torpedoes with a sonobuoy and we would drop
our sonobuoys We had five of those. We
tried to ascertain the direction of the sub and
we dropped the depth charges. After that
this probably lasted about 12 months.
Things were quiet and they changed our
whole squadron to night fire squadron because in the Pacific there were Japanese ze-
GERAGHTY: I was on five different carriers, yes. I belong to the Tail Hook Association. You have to have a hundred [inaudible]
or more.
NELSON: Did your mental attitude change
as combat continued?
GERAGHTY: Not really. I don’t think so.
You just knew you were in a war and the
time that’s involved. I don’t think my attitude changed, to my knowledge.
NELSON: Did you write many letters
home?
GERAGHTY: Yes. I corresponded with my
folks quite oftenprobably once a month at
least.
NELSON: Did you receive many letters or
packages, if so, how often?
GERAGHTY: I received letters and a few
packages, very few, but it was always very
welcome to receive letters.
NELSON: What type of things did you receive in packages?
GERAGHTY: I got cookies a couple times
and a few things like that, all crumbled up.
NELSON: Did most of the other men write
and receive letters?
�GERAGHTY: Oh, yes. There was a mail
every so often would come through and
would be distributed amongst all the troops.
NELSON: Did you forge close bonds of
friendship with many or some of your combat companions?
GERAGHTY: Yes. To this day I still have
some good friends of the service.
NELSON: Did you ever have to help retrieve a wounded buddy from the field of
combat?
GERAGHTY: Some of my buddies would
go down in the ocean, and [we would]
search for them, one time for 14 hours
straight, but we couldn’t find anything. That
type of situation.
NELSON: You didn’t get involved with any
foreign prisoners of war camps or anything
of that nature?
GERAGHTY: No.
NELSON: What was the highlight occurrence of your combat experience or any other experience you can remember?
GERAGHTY: One night we located a German sub in the North Atlantic [inaudible]
torpedo bombers [but] they had decided to
surrender, and they were surfaced, and we
were told not to drop any charges or anything like, that so that would be one of the
NELSON: They were later captured?
GERAGHTY: Yes, they
NELSON: The Navy come in and captured
them?
GERAGHTY: Yeah.
NELSON: Tell us what you and the other
men did to celebrate America’s traditional
family holidays such as Thanksgiving and
Christmas.
GERAGHTY: On board ship or on the bases
we normally would have turkey on Thanksgiving. I don’t know where they got it all.
The food was excellent in the Navy. I can
say that. At Christmas time we would have
very special meals also.
NELSON: When and how did you return to
the United States after the end of the War?
GERAGHTY: I was in the Pacific at the end
of the War, and then they started disbanding
our squadrons and I joined a Utility Squadron out in [inaudible] at Honolulu. And I
stayed an extra six months in Hawaii and
then I came to the United States.
NELSON: What happened to you when you
arrived in the United States?
GERAGHTY: I flew from Hawaii to San
Francisco. At that time, a lot of the fellows
were getting out, and it would take two or
three months to get back to the United
States. I was fortunate enough to get a flight
to San Francisco and then I was there about
two or three days and was able to catch a
train back to Chicago. I was a few weeks at
Great Lakes.
NELSON: Tell us about your military rank,
your decorations, and especially your campaign decorations.
GERAGHTY: Basically I was a Lieutenant
in the Navy. One of the incidents during the
War, I was stationed south of Miami. This is
when we were being trained as night flyers
and a hurricane came through. They warned
�us that our planes were to go to Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba. We were just about ready to land
there and they told us to come back and land
at Richmond, Florida, which was just south
of Miami, because the hangars could withstand a 155-mile-an-hour wind, which we
did. Along came the hurricane and that 165mile-an-hour wind, and we lost 150 military
planes, lost 3 dirigible hangars, 10 dirigibles, 150 civilian aircraft and all the fire
fighting equipment and everything!
GERAGHTY: I wasn’t really in campaigns.
I was on five different carriers. They kept
switching me around: Midway, Mission
Bay, Sitka Bay. I can’t remember. There
were five of them. Ford was on the Mission
Bay -- President Ford.
At that time I happened to have the only vehicle on the base; I was one of the first people to notice that the hangars were down. I
was at the BOQ. It turns out that I told my
skipper. Three of us left the BOQ and went
out to see the hangars. We could; the sky
was lighting up a little bit. The warning system was about two blocks away so we made
our way over there. The winds were about
165-mile-an-hour wind and so we crawled
on our belly over there.
NELSON: This is return to civilian life.
How did you get along with the men with
whom you had the greatest contact?
I found one truck that was not inside. I
brought quite a few of the injured back that
were in these hangars and it lasted probably
aboutwe were right in the calm, right in
the center of the hurricane, because there
was a dead calm to it for about an hour, and
then it started up again. For this adventure I
got a [inaudible] citation for a few things I’d
done. Other than that, the regular ribbons of
World War II.
NELSON: He was also a pilot or
GERAGHTY: No, but he was aboard the
ship.
GERAGHTY: How did I get along with
whom I had the greatest contact? During the
service, I didn’t have any problems at all.
NELSON: Were there any things you would
do differently if you could do them again?
GERAGHTY: I don’t believe so. I volunteered for flying and I was accepted and I
volunteered for night flying and was accepted and I did as much as I could. I went
where they told me to go.
NELSON: What was your most difficult
thing you had to do during your period of
military service?
GERAGHTY: Notifying friends when one
of my friends died. Something like that.
NELSON: Overseas?
GERAGHTY: Yeah.
NELSON: Is there any one thing that stands
out as your most successful achievement in
the military service?
NELSON: Air medal?
GERAGHTY: Yeah.
NELSON: How many campaigns were you
in?
GERAGHTY: Most successful achievement? I think one was the time of that hurricane I was able to help over 100 and some
people get back to sick bay.
NELSON: You saved a lot of lives.
�GERAGHTY: Their arms [were] cut off and
things like that. [Mine] was the only vehicle
on the whole base that was running, 12 or 14
hours.
NELSON: How did you learn about VE Day
and what was your reaction to it?
GERAGHTY: How did I learn of VE Day? I
was
NELSON: That was in April of ’45.
GERAGHTY: Yes. I heard that, of course,
on the radio as far as I know. Everybody
celebrated as I recall. There was a big party.
Everybody went out in the street and it
was… everybody was impressed that that
part of the War was over.
NELSON: How did you learn of VJ Day and
what was your reaction to it?
GERAGHTY: We were aboard a carrier at
the time in the Pacific, and about the same
thing. Everybody was excited and everybody was talking about they were glad it
was over with, and what it meant to them to
start thinking about going home.
NELSON: When and where were you officially discharged from the service?
GERAGHTY: I was discharged at Great
Lakes [Chicago] in July of 1946.
NELSON: Did you have a disability rating
or pension?
GERAGHTY: No.
NELSON: Do you have any feelings or
opinions about the Nation’s military status
or its policies?
GERAGHTY: Present day, the military today?
NELSON: Yeah.
GERAGHTY: I feel that we should have a
strong military, carry a big stick all the time,
so that we’re not in the position that we have
to defend ourselves.
NELSON: Do you have any contact with the
Veterans’ Administration?
GERAGHTY: No I don’t.
NELSON: What was your opinion of the use
of the atomic bomb when it was used against
Japanese civilians in August of 1945?
NELSON: Would you like to tell us how
your family supported you during your military life?
GERAGHTY: I was impressed that we had
such an arsenal that we could use. It probably saved an awful lot of lives -- American
lives and also probably Japanese lives.
GERAGHTY: There were three boys in our
family. All three of us joined the Naval Air
Corps. Of course, my mother and father
were for it but they were worried also. You
might say so we had 100% support from my
mother and my father, and anything we
wanted we could contact them, and if it was
in their power they gave [it to] us and supported us 100%.
NELSON: Has your opinion changed over
the last 50 years? If so, why?
GERAGHTY: No. That was the thing to do.
Harry Truman made a great decision.
NELSON: Over subsequent years what has
this support meant to you?
�GERAGHTY: The support that I felt? I had
a family that would accept me and I could
always rely on them to fully support [me].
NELSON: Now this is not an official question, but are there any other events that you
would like to relate at this time that stand
out in your mind as to what happened to you
in the service?
GERAGHTY: In service? Basically my total
service lasted approximately close to four
years. In that four year time I had a year and
a half of training and they kept me moving
probably about every ninety days to a different base.
Whatever they neededI was in a particular
Night Torpedo Squadron and there was
probably about 30 of us there in this particular squadron, and then they kept us together
in a Night Fighting Squadron, and then they
switched to Night Fighters.
They had us when we were in the States,
they had us put one quite a few air shows
during the time we were there because we
would Once, I remember our Squadron
was sent to Atlanta, Georgia, and we put on
an air show for the City. Three days! And
we flew tight formations.
In those days you could fly about as low as
you wanted to. The Georgia Tech game was
going and we flew inside the stadium and
out again to give them a little thrill!
But we put on the shows for Cuba, put on
shows for Miami, New York City, Chicago,
Milwaukee, Hawaii. We did put on quite a
few shows because our Squadron was together a lot.
Incidentally, I started flying the F4 and then
we got the F6. That was the plane I probably
flew the most. After the F6, that was right at
the tail end of the War they got the F8 out
and that still I guess is still the fastest prop
plane in the world today. After the War I
joined the Naval Reserve. I was with aircraft
for 10 years and in the Reserve I flew the
Phantoms, the Banshie and Jets and that was
my
NELSON: Were there any close calls that
you would like to relate?
GERAGHTY: A lot of close calls. One coming in Hawaii for a carrier landing my fuel
gage read 1/3 and I was going to make about
one pass (we were shooting landings at the
time). We were going to make the last pass,
then I was going to change tanks.
Just as I was coming in, just about 1000 feet
away from landing, my gas run out in that
one tank. I was about 200 feet high with
everything down, the flaps and wheels. As
soon as I stopped the [inaudible] we went
right down towards the water and I pulled
back and landed in the water. In the meantime I switched tanks. It had emergency fuel
pumps on and it caught but my tail was
dragging in the water. We finally got out
and I got up about 4 or 500 feet and it quit
again! I went back down and it was the same
thing. After it quit again, I went up to about
5,000 feet, stayed up there a little while until
I settled down, came back. Then they had to
scrap the plane because salt water had gotten
into the tail section and also the controls.
That was one little incident.
NELSON: Any others?
GERAGHTY: There were quite a few incidents just in flying. At night you had the
lights but they were very dim lights. You
had bright lights and also very dim military
flying. When you are making passes at night
and you come back up again, your leader, of
course, goes first and I guess I was second
�or third. And when you’re separated two or
three blocks then you can’t see these little
lights. One time I went sailing by and I never saw them. I thought it was a star but I saw
it move just a little bit and we were on a collision course and I just saw a little movement and I pushed down real fast we went
by them just by a few feet! There are a lot of
things like that when you are flying, story
after story after story.
it was four days that we searched trying to
locate nine torpedo bombers and I think
there were 27 fellows that just disappeared.
NELSON: Well, Joe that is very interesting.
I think this was a very good interview and if
that is all there is to talk about right now, I
think we should quit.
NELSON: End of interview.
We never found them. We never saw anything, any traces of oil slicks or anything
like that. We have no idea what happened to
that group. That’s another one. There’s a
bunch of them that I can think of that happened.
EDITOR’S NOTE:
Geraghty retired from Naval Air Reserves in
1958 with the rank of Lieutenant.
GERAGHTY: Okay.
NELSON: Here is another little incident that
Joe would like to relate to us.
GERAGHTY: When I was flying with the
Night Fighters off of the Bermuda Triangle I
was flying at night and it was just a pitch
black night, but the stars were out and you
catch the horizon off the ocean somewhat.
Probably I was flying for about an hour and
then I checked my instruments and I looked
out and looked up and I saw the stars. Then I
looked down and I saw stars. I thought I got
vertigo or something and I am probably upside down but I didn’t change anything but
when I looked out every direction I looked I
saw stars. To this day I can’t figure what
caused that one. It was a pitch-black night
but there were stars out. I have never seen
stars reflect over the ocean. I can’t believe
the ocean could be that calm.
NELSON: Do you think there is something
strange at the Bermuda Triangle?
GERAGHTY: That’s what I ran into. I guess
you’d call it strange. I also spent two days
looking for the nine torpedo bombers that
went down in that Bermuda Triangle. I think
His obituary says, “One of his accomplishments during his 10 years in the Reserves at
Glenville, IL, was to be the first person to
fly a jet out of the station. Joe had a passion
for aviation. In addition to flying in the Navy, he owned his own planes, and dealt with
the military bringing in aircraft to the Midwest Airfest.”
Source: Legacy.com archived obituary from
the Rockford Register Star, published November 26-27, 2014.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Midway Village Museum
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Midway Village Museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-2001
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Language
A language of the resource
English
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Charles Nelson
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Joe Geraghty
Location
The location of the interview
Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Joe Geraghty
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
16-Mar-94
Description
An account of the resource
Born February 27, 1920, Joe Geraghty served in the Naval Air Corps during World War II. He died November 22, 2014.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War 2
World War II
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Text
Hilda (Redmond) Wills
Transcribed and edited by
Margaret Lofgren
Midway Village & Museum Center
6799 Guilford Road
Rockford, Illinois 61107
www.midwayvillage.com
Phone 397 9112
Final edit December 2018 by Martha Byrnes
�Hilda (Redmond) Wills
MCGINTY: Hello. Today is June 24th, 1999.
My name is John McGinty and I am a volunteer
with the Midway Village and Museum Center
which is participating in a statewide effort to
collect oral histories from Illinois citizens that
participated in the momentous events
surrounding World War II.
We are in the home of Hilda Wills who lives at
4220 Kenneth Avenue in Rockford, Illinois,
61101. Mrs. Wills participated in the war effort
as a civilian on the home front during World
War II. We are interviewing her about her
experiences in that War. If you’d introduce
yourself, please give us your name, where you
were born and when.
WILLS: My name is Hilda Marie Wills and I
was born in Bridgeport, Wisconsin. My birth
date? I was born in 23rd of December, 1920.
MCGINTY: What were the names of your
parents?
WILLS: My parents were Frank Redmond and
Josephine Faust Redmond.
MCGINTY: Okay. The names of your brothers
and sisters?
WILLS: My oldest sistershe’s still living.
She’s Frances Clark and she lives in Forreston.
I’ve got a sister, Opal, S(?) who lives in
LaCrosse, Wisconsin. I’ve got a sister, Ruby
Lee, who lives in Machesney Park, Illinois. I
have a sister, Iola, who lives just on the other
side of Beloit, and my sister, Norma Jean, she
lives in Edgerton, Wisconsin, and my brother
was named Franklin Redmond but he passed
away two years ago. He was in the Korean War.
MCGINTY: I see. Would you want to tell
anything more about your family before we start
on your war time experiences?
WILLS: I lived with other families. Let’s put it
that way. When they said there was going to be a
war I was living with a family named George
and
Dorothy
[inaudible]
up
in
WisconsinPrairie Du Chien, Wisconsin. He
worked in a garage and I worked for a lady that
was bedridden and she had a little baby and I
took care of the baby and took care of her.
He got up one morning and he said, “We’re not
even making a living here. Let’s go to Rockford,
Illinois.” He said, “Are you game?”
I said, “I’m ready to go any time you are.”
And so March 6th, 1939, we got in this old
Chevy, packed everything we could get in there,
tied them to the wheel on the back of the Chevy
and it took us all day to get to Rockford. We had
no place to live. We got here. We didn’t know
what we were going to do when we got here.
We hunted and hunted all over Rockford. We
ended upI don’t know if you remember the
Quonset huts they had down on Brooke Road.
We ended up in one of thewell it was really a
chicken coop! We ended up there. Then I
worked for Abie [Abe] Pekarsky. I had to get a
job. So I worked for Abie Pekarsky.
And from there on I started to do stuff for the
government. I was single and I was available so
when they found outsee, I’m ambidextrous. I
could use either hand. One was as good as the
other. They would pick me out of different
places I worked to run a government job.
MCGINTY: Where was this?
WILLS: the first one was Abie Pekarsky. That’s
Abie’s place on Harrison.
MCGINTY: How do you spell Pekarsky?
WILLS: P-E-K-A-R-S-K-Y.
MCGINTY: What did you do there?
WILLS: I helped his wife around the house
‘cause she was going to have a baby and she
couldn’t do everything by herself. I worked for
them and they were dear people, beautiful
people. He knew I had to get another job, you
�know, and so then I came clear over here on
Chestnut Street and I got a one room apartment.
The rooms you had to live in then is nothing like
what people think they were. You didn’t know if
you were going to get ate up with bed bugs or
whatever. All you had was a mattress. They
never even gave you a cover or a sheet to put on
your bed. This is the way it was years ago. The
stoves were a little hot plate but you had to put a
quarter in or it didn’t heat up. Most of the time
you didn’t have the quarter to put in so you went
without. I’m telling it like it was, because it was
hard. I took a bus and went all the way over on
11th Street to that furniture factory because they
got a government job in making cots for the…
army cots. So they put me to work on that and I
finished that one up.
MCGINTY: Do you know when that was?
WILLS: I can’t remember. But it was right after
that you know because this ended up all the way
down to 45. From there I got a job down to,
where you said you was, down on Cedar Street.
And I started to work there.
MCGINTY: What was the name of that?
WILLS: Rockford Metal Products. I think they
moved out in Loves Park or something. I started
to work there and then we started to get different
orders in from the government. The government
men would come out and give us an order. It
seemed to meI didn’t say anything but it
seemed every time they got an order they picked
me to run the machine. We run a riveter and I
was the only one that could run that. That was an
Army job.
As fast as it would come inwe needed it right
away500 pieced. Get it out as fast as you
could get it out, and that’s the way they had us
to do it.
Then we started making carburetors for jeeps.
That ended up you had to learn how to spot
weldautomatic spot weld. You had to test
them in grease. You had to run them through a
washer and then you had to bring them back.
Then you had to solder the pieces together. One
piece aroundhad to solder that together and
then from there it went over to another table and
then the two little pieces that you had made
before you brazed. They call it hot welding
because that’s hotter material you used. You had
to put them on there. You had to test them again
to see that they didn’t leak and that’s what we
started out with.
The government kept coming in wanting us to
do more jobs and so then they came and asked
me if I would work for the government and do
the jobs that they wanted. I said, “Anything to
help. I don’t care what it is. I’ll do it.”
So then they said, “All right. We’re going to go
to a bigger item.” And I said, “Well, that’s fine
with me.” But then they swore us in that we
couldn’t tell anybody. We couldn’t let anybody
know what we were doing or anything.
So then they said, “We’ll have to get another
place to do all of this,” because it was too open
there. So I said, “That’s all right.”
The week before we went to this other place,
I’ve got to tell you this. Barbara Hale came in.
so we all got to meet Barbara Hale. I thought
that was pretty neat cause she came in. She was
interested in what we were doing for the war.
We got this secret place. They went from
different shops and picked out certain people
from each shop. Now the only two I know was
myself and the lady I worked with. None other
revealed their names. We just worked.
MCGINTY: Where was this place?
WILLS: You had to go downtown. You know
where old Osco Drug use to be? You went down
that streetCourt Street?
MCGINTY: Church Street.
WILLS: You know where the old White Owl
cigar place was there right up from the Post
Office? Well we had to go downI met my
partner down there. We’d go down all dressed
up and then we walked through the cigar store
like we were going shopping, walked through
�the cigar store and walked down the steps.
Where we did all the work was down in the
basement like. And there wasI think there was
five men and there was six of us women that
worked there.
Now I only know the two. The girl that I worked
with, her first name was Jeanette. I don’t even
know what her last name was cause we all split
afterwards. We would go in all dressed up. The
men would come in dressed up. The women
came in dressed up and then we’d change. And
then we’d work our heads off.
But what we did then was harder work yet. We
did tail pipes for airplanes and you had to weld
fins in them. There was a little place near the
bottom part of the tail pipe. You had to put five
pins in it and weld them five times
eachautomatic. You had to weld on each side
and then the tail pipe was about three yards long
and then you welded all the way down how far it
went, you know, and then you turned it over and
you welded all the back down. Then you welded
that piece on the bottom. Then you had to test it
to make sure that there wasn’t a leak in it. If
there was you had to take it out and do it over
again and that was hard work.
They gave us a quota to put out and if you didn’t
get the quota out you had to stay until you did.
And that was hard. I’m telling you I thought I
wasn’t going to make it home some nights it was
so hard. We stayed there and we worked at all of
theseEvery time they brought something in it
seemed likeOf course I was the only one that
could use both hands. They would bring it over
and I would have to work some of them in
between doing the other smaller jobs that they
had. Boy that was hard work. They give us
quotas. You know what quotas was? Twentyeight tail pipes a day put out. And that was hard.
MCGINTY: And this was in the basement
underneath the cigar store?
WILLS: Yeah. And when the trucks came in to
pick it upsee they had what looked like a cigar
truck…
It backed in… but it went down the chute and
they pushed the stuff in and took off.
MCGINTY: This was on Church?
WILLS: Yeah. I don’t know if that building is
still there even. I haven’t been down there for
years.
MCGINTY: Is it in the same block as Osco’s?
WILLS: Yeah. You just went downjust on
the next you know, across the streetyou
know where the old post office is? Well, just
right up there on the corner wasright over here
on the right hand side was the cigar store.
MCGINTY: So it was north of the post office.
WILLS: We did all of that for the Army. I mean
they kept coming in and saying, “Not a word.
Not a word or we’re going to be bombed.” They
had everybody scared to death, you know. You
didn’t say one word.
Just a while back I talked to a man down here in
the drug store and I asked him. He lived here
pretty near all his life. I asked him if he knew
about it. He said, “No. We didn’t do that.” I said,
“Yeah.” But when it first started, my sister,
Ruby, came down here and we were walking
downI’ll tell you how dangerous it was. Camp
Grant was out there. They had all them boys
coming and they were pretty rowdy because they
didn’t want to fight the war to begin with. They
were pretty rowdy.
So we were walking down Kishwaukee Street
and one guy jumped out of the car and he took
my sister out and he walked her away. The other
one jumped out and held a gun right over my
heart. I stood there for I don’t know how long.
Finally the other kid brought my sister back and
they jumped in the car and left. What it was all
about, we never found out.
MCGINTY: What did they say to your sister?
WILLS: Nothing. Didn’t say nothing to me and
didn’t say nothing to her. Why they did it, we
�don’t know. Well, see people don’t understand
what a war is all about.
don’t mean just military. It was just Army or
Navy?
MCGINTY: The War had started then?
WILLS: Most of the time it was the Army that
came in but it was really for the military I think,
because it was the Air Force and the other
twothe jeeps. I put in some of the humor that
went along with this. We had a guy in the
[inaudible]. He was an electrician. I filed the
points and, of course, left-handed filed the
points. They told me I would never make it.
Well, I did. I even filed the points on my
machine to do the parts. I didn’t ask somebody
else to do it. I did it myself. We had a guyI
don’t know his last name either. We called him
Buster. And while I went to the washroom he
put Limburger cheese on the points of my
machine and it was hot when youand oh when
you did one thing he laughed his head off. We
did have a lot of humor and we kidded each
other ‘cause it was just like a family.
WILLS: It wasn’twell, they hadn’t bombed
Japan yet, but it still it was bad. You know it
was bad. Because you couldn’tIf you went out
you didn’t know what them soldiers was going
to do to you.
MCGINTY: Do you remember what year it was
you were making tailpipes.
WILLS: Yeah. 1941, I started.
MCGINTY: Before Pearl Harbor?
WILLS: Yeah. And then we started making
them full blast and then carburetors for jeeps.
We put a lot of them out because I wrote down
all the things that I did on them. I did the spot
welding because I could grab a piece with this
hand, grab a piece with this and put them
together on the machine and go four times on it.
Then throw it down here and grab two more and
you had to do 500 of them a day. That was a job.
MCGINTY: Do you remember what you made?
WILLS: We started out at $0.65 an hour. And I
made, I think when I told them I can’t stand to
work so hard, please can I have a raise? and so
this man from the Army came in. Of course,
they thought they were a lot better than we were.
Of course, they’re not person to person. He said,
“I can do better than you are.” I said, “Okay.
Here it is. Help yourself.” So I stood back and I
watched him. But he didn’t watch what I did. I
had slacks on I had a heavy apron on and I had a
bunch of rags on my lap because the sparks flew
every where. He sits down with his beautiful
blue serge suit. The first plop he burned a hole in
his suit. I was standing there trying to keep from
laughing. He said, “You knew that was going to
happen.” I said, “You knew I wasn’t making no
money, too, but you didn’t want to give me any
more.” I got a raise. Let’s see
MCGINTY: Now this is where? When you say
Army you mean that branch of the service. You
We worked together and one couldn’t do
something--we depended on the other. I mean
we really worked together. There was nobody
said, “I can do that better than you,” or nothing
else. And if you needed help you'd say, “Hey,
Hey!” and they’d come and help you. I know I
talked to a lot of people and they don’t
understand that when you’re doing stuff like this
the main thing is working together. We all
worked together. We put in an awful, awful lot
of work down there. My boss, his first name was
Rubin. I’ll never forget him either. This was way
back in the war. His name was Rubin.
MCGINTY: This is the guy at the cigar store
place?
WILLS: No. He worked in the one on Cedar
Street.
MCGINTY: Oh, okay.
WILLS: We didn’t really have a boss down at
the cigar store. We didn’t really havewe just
knew what we had to do and we did it. We
didn’t really have a boss. There was no one
came down there only the government once in a
while would come in.
�MCGINTY: How did you get paid? Did
somebody hand you the check or were there
WILLS: Yeah. Well, they paid us through the
one on Cedar Street so nobody else would know.
WILLS: No, we still did the carburetors for
Jeeps. Then we did parts for the army cots. I’m
just telling you what I know I did. The men over
there, now they did some heavy, heavy parts but
they wouldn’t tell us. It was so secret they
wouldn’t tell even anybody that’s working in
that shop.
MCGINTY: Oh, I see.
WILLS: So we would get our pay through
them.
MCGINTY: So everyone else thought you were
still working for them even though you were in a
different place.
WILLS: Yeah. And then I was on the safety
committee. You had to go around and check
everybody before you could go sit down and do
your work, which I did. One lady wouldn’t listen
and she came in drunk and she burned her thumb
off welding the pins into the airplane things. She
burned it right off, her thumb!
MCGINTY: How long did you work at the
place under the cigar store?
WILLS: Just until the War ended. When the
War ended you didn’t have no job no more. You
just walked out and that was it.
MCGINTY: So you were there from ’41 to ’45?
WILLS: Yeah. You just walked out and that
was all.
MCGINTY: Wow.
WILLS: No. See that’s how the jobsall of
themand I talked to different ones. I met one
of these ladies, her aunt did that down in
Tennessee, and she had the same experience as I
did. When the War was over and peace was
declared that was it. You had no job. You go
find another one. You go back to that other shop
or whatever you wanted to do.
MCGINTY: Could you tell us any more about
the different kind of things you made or was it
all just tail pipes?
MCGINTY: You worked on the same kind of
part then through the whole War?
WILLS: Yeah. I hadwe had to do the same
thing, like I said, them airplane things for they
were hard to do.
MCGINTY: Did they ever tell you what aircraft
it went towhat airplane?
WILLS: Well, the way they were talking it went
to the jetsthe fast ones that was flying right
over Japan. They are very secret about stuff like
thisvery, very, very, ‘cause they’re afraid you
might let it slip. Cause they warned usthey
said whereever they got that rumor that if they
knew what we were doing here in Rockford,
Rockford would have been bombed! And they
told us that two or three times. I don’t know,
maybe more than that, cause they would come
in… cause they were worried. The government
guys were worried. You could tell how they
acted and it was hard. I don’t know, because you
had to keep up with all that stuff to made sure it
got to the government where they couldthe
airplane placeso they could get them airplanes
out and some of them went down pretty
fastthem airplanes. So that was
MCGINTY: Do you remember what it was like
living in the Rockford community besides your
work? What people talked about? What they
thought about the War, or even before it
happened? Did you feel like war was going to
come before Pearl Harbor?
WILLS: Oh, yeah. See, we knew that before we
ever moved here. George Brookner, the one I
lived with there, he worked in a gas station and a
guy came in and he said, “The War is going to
hit pretty soon.” We heard, I don’t know if you
heard it way back, people always said the First
�World War hit in 1920. Twenty years later, we
have another war, which we did. You just watch
it’s going to happen. I know I heard that when I
was a kid. But all of this happened.
WILLS: Yeah. In the Navy. He was a gunner,
see.
MCGINTY: Do you remember what it was like
living in Rockford during the War? Did you
have to--like rationing or blackouts or anything?
WILLS: He was drafted in 43. Right after we
got married, he was drafted. And then there in
San Diego there was a fleet of ships and he was
in that fleet of ships in San Diego. When peace
was declared, he was on his way to Japan but he
got as far as Hawaii. We could hear them
screaming and screaming over the radio, you
know, them guys. They were coming home.
They didn’t have to go any further.
WILLS: Oh, yeah. We were rationed sugar and
shoes. You only got one pair of shoes you could
wear and, of course, I never wear shoes out so
I’d give my ticket to somebody else. Your sugar
and your coffee and different stuff like that and
that was rationed. You had to live in such awful
places. The places were so horrible that when I
came to Rockford, they were so horrible to live
in.
When my husband and I got married in 43 we
lived in an apartment. Well, it was a little
kitchen and a front room and bedroom together
and you shared the bathroom with three other
apartments and sometimes you got locked out.
That had them stoves in thereif you didn’t
have a quarter you didn’t get nothing cooked,
cause you had to put the quarter in every time.
Didn’t seem like it run long enough to even cook
a meal. Then you had to put another quarter in.
I went through that for so long. It wasone
place I lived they were so full of [inaudible]
that was Noble owned it. “Old man Noble,”
we called him. And bedbugs. You couldn’t
sleep. The bed bugs [would] eat you up. So I
finally got a different place. Moved in with two
girls then. They were married and they each had
a baby and they put too much on me. I couldn’t
keep going for what work I was doing so I had
to find me another place.
MCGINTY: What was your husband’s name?
WILLS: Leonard Wills. He was a… I got to
show you what he did. That’s him. He was a
gunner.
MCGINTY: In the Navy?
MCGINTY: When did he enlist? Do you know?
MCGINTY: Did he know the kind of work you
were doing back here?
WILLS: No. He didn’t know until just a year
ago. I never told him.
MCGINTY: Really?
WILLS: No, I never told him. I never told
nobody. I kept it a secret. They told me I had to
and I did.
MCGINTY: Yeah. I guess. What changed your
mind?
WILLS: I figured it was long enough. I said I
will be dead and gone pretty soon. It’s about
time somebody knows what went on in
Rockford cause when we first came to
Rockford, it was nothing like it is today.
Do you know there was only two black families
here when I came to Rockford? We didn’t have
buses. We had street cars with that rod across
there and it kept falling off and you’d stop in the
middle of the street. See, I took the bus
everywhere I went. I had nobody. I was by
myself really. I just took the bus where ever I
wanted to go. I know exactly… I just knew
directions. I could get anywhere’s in Rockford.
MCGINTY: Do you remember any other
hardships during the War besides rationing?
WILLS: Oh, yeah. Because lot of times… see,
you didn’t make very much money. Whatever
�you did, you didn’t make enough money to buy
your food. If you paid $6 a week for rent you
didn’t have enough to buy food. I had a
hamburger a day. That was about my limit.
MCGINTY: Wow.
WILLS: Cause that’s all the money I had but I
never complained. Of course, I lived such a life
all my life since I was a little kid, you know. We
just got in there and we all worked. I never heard
any of them people I worked with and they had
nothing either. I mean we were poor. You know
when you work for the government, they didn’t
pay you enough for to keep you going. Didn’t.
See, when you have to take a bus back and forth
all the time and buy your own food and pay for
your own room and everything, you ain’t got
nothing left.
MCGINTY: You remember where you were
when you heard about Pearl Harbor?
WILLS: I was at my mother-in-law’s and we
lived on Short Corbin up there. I can just see the
house. We were living on Short Corbin up there.
We heard it over the radio and everybody was
screaming and hollering. And if you know there
was a tavern that used to be there, and another
tavern on the other side. We lived in the back
there of it. You could hear… they all ran out the
door of them taverns and everything and you
never heard so much screaming and singing…
And, oh, they just really went wild!
MCGINTY: Is this when it ended in Europe or
when it ended in Japan?
WILLS: In Japan. It ended in Japan. I can still
hear them people shouting and singing and I got
their picture, too. I’ll just show you. Here’s one
that was over there. This one here, he was over
there.
MCGINTY: The brother.
MCGINTY: So you were at work when you
heard about it?
WILLS: No. These is all different guys. This is
Bruno Paletto and this is Cockell. I forgot what
his last name is. This is Joe Martini. He was
over there but he got his leg shot off. He came
back then afterwards, but he was in the hospital
quite a while. Those are the ones that was in
Japan. These are the ones that went to Vietnam.
They were all over there with my husband.
WILLS: Mm hm.
MCGINTY: Was your husband wounded?
MCGINTY: What was your reaction and the
people around you?
WILLS: No. They told him he’d go deaf before
he died. When the torpedo shipsit’s such a
loud blast that they said it would affect their
ears, all that was there.
WILLS: I wasI worked so many places. I
think I was working at Rockford Furniture the
one that used to be over here on Fairgrounds
Park. There used to be big furniture store there. I
was floor lady boss over the second floor.
WILLS: I wasn’t surprised. No, I wasn’t
surprised because I’m one of these that read and
I’m one of these that listen to everything. I
wasn’t a bit surprised when they said Japan was,
you know, it was bombed. I wasn’t surprised. I
had a friend that went over there and she was
inright by that where they bombed it, only she
was back into that camp by it, and she was back
there. Of course, she called home then and said,
“I don’t know if I want to go any further or not.
“They bombed.” She said, “Oh, that was awful.”
MCGINTY: Do you remember where you were
when you heard that the War was over?
MCGINTY: Do you remember what kind of
ship he was on?
WILLS: Torpedo ship. They told them don’t
grab for a life jacket. Grab for a [inaudible]
You’re going to be down in the water so don’t
even grab for it because it ain’t even going to
work, because they said they’d just blow them
sky high and that’d be it. But that was them
ships that they had over there at that time. You
can see what they are.
�MCGINTY: When did he finally come home
then?
WILLS: He come homeI think on one of
them pictures it’s 45 I think. I think it says 45
on one of them. Yeah. He came home. That’s
the ship he was on. He came home right after
that in 45.
MCGINTY: I bet you were happy to see him?
WILLS: Well, you didn’t know if they were
going to make it back or what, you know.
MCGINTY: You know Camp Grant was in
Rockford. Could you tell me if you had any
connection with anybody out there, or people
who trained or worked there or anything like
that?
WILLS: Yeah. But that was secret, too. A lot of
thiswhen you can’t talk about something, you
can’t get too much information, because they
don’t want to talk to you because you can’t talk
back.
MCGINTY: Do you remember anything about
other people’s attitude toward the War? Was
there people that you knew that were in favor of
it? Or people that were against? Or their opinion
changed as the war went on? Any kind of those
kinds of memories?
WILLS: Oh, I heardof course, you hear the
older people at that time cause to me it was the
older people that would tell, “This is a bunch of
nonsense. They’re getting our guys killed!” And
all this and that.
WILLS: Not when I worked for the
government. They wouldn’t let us associate with
any soldiers or anything. It was so secret that
they advised us against it. If we met them, we
just said Hi and go on, you know, but we never
stopped to talk to any of them.
A lot of them didn’t put two and two together
that if they had to do it, it was for our good. And
a lot of them, you couldn’t make them
understand that. It was just that they were killing
our boys. And I would try… sometimes I’d say,
“Most of them will be back. You watch. They’re
going to come back.” What else could you say?
You just comforted them.
MCGINTY: What do you remember that you
knew about Camp Grant at the time? Did you
know anything about what was going on out
there?
MCGINTY: Did you know the soldiers or
sailors that were lost in the War?
WILLS: Oh, yeah. I knew mostly what was
going on because Camp Grant was just down
from when I was living at Abie Pekarsky’s.
There was… They would say we had to train so
hard today and we had to do this. You’d hear
different ones say that but you never talked to
them to get all the details, cause I’m a very
good listener and I would hear them telling
about, “Boy, that was rough that we had to do!”
or something like that. I guess they really did put
them through an awful lot because they knew
where they were going to go and they had to be
pretty tough.
MCGINTY: did you know about the prisoner of
war camp out there?
WILLS: Oh, I did at one time. I can’t think of
it. I know one soldier that came back from Iwo
Jima when they lifted the flag. He’s still here.
MCGINTY: In Rockford. Do you know his
name?
WILLS: Yeah. Matthew Bridges.
MCGINTY: He was in the Marines?
WILLS: Yeah. He helped lift the flag. He was
on Iwo Jima. His name is Matt Bridges. He lives
out in Machesney Park.
MCGINTY: Do you know other service people
that were wounded that you knew of?
WILLS: Yeah. That’s my brother-in-law. The
one that was living in LaCrosse. He got
�[inaudible]. He got wounded in the stomach over
there.
MCGINTY: So you remember what people
thought about F.D.R. and has that changed over
time?
MCGINTY: Over where?
WILLS: Oh. He was in Germany. He got
wounded in the stomach in Germany. He just
died last year. I knew different ones that came
back and would tell me different stuff, but I
can’t remember all their names cause there’s a
lot of people I didn’t know real close but you
heard their names. What can you say? I try my
best.
MCGINTY: Do you remember ever going
through an air raid drill or a blackout or anything
preparing for a possible attack here in Rockford?
WILLS: No, I don’t think so. They talked pretty
nice about him. The only one they didn’t like is
Nixon. I didn’t like him either.
MCGINTY: That was a little later.
WILLS: Yeah. Then this one here[pointing to
a photograph] I’m going to tell you. Now this is
my cousin. He lives in California. You can’t
guess what his job is.
MCGINTY: What?
WILLS: He makes these bombs.
WILLS: They did have an air raid drill one time
that I can remember and about scared everybody
to death!
MCGINTY: Which bombs?
MCGINTY: Do you remember what you had to
do?
WILLS: All these ones that’s going off. He
goes from one place to the other and he’s one of
them guys that works on little bitty parts and
makes the bombs.
WILLS: You just hit the floor and put your
hands over your head. You couldn’t go no place.
MCGINTY: Was this in the factory?
WILLS: Yeah. You just hit the floor and then
we [inaudible]. There’s nothing else you could
do.
MCGINTY: Did they ever have blackouts here
where you couldn’t turn on lights outside.
WILLS: No. They were pretty good at that. I
don’t remember one time that they had us to turn
out all the lights. No, they were pretty good at
that.
Well, they were so scared here in Rockford. I
got to say that. They were scared because when
you work with a bunch of people and you only
know one person’s name out of 10 people you
work with, you have to be pretty scared. They
really worked. They might not have been in the
service doinglike in the Army, Navy or
Marines or anything, but they did just as hard
work as any of them guys. They did.
MCGINTY: You mean, this is now?
WILLS: Every so often, it’s such tedious work
they put him in a mental hospital for a while and
then they go back to work again. Now he’s done
that since I don’t know when.
He was here. He came here to see me. He moved
to California when he was a kid. And then he
was down here to Champaign for a while. Then
he went to Battle Creek, Michigan, and working
on them there, and then they sent him back to
California. See I got from all parts of the War. I
just about got them all.
Now this is Vietnam [pointing to another
photograph]. There’s my oldest son and that’s
my youngest one.
MCGINTY: I hope they got back okay.
WILLS: No. There’s my youngest son up there.
He had half of his head taken off.
MCGINTY: Oh, boy.
�WILLS: He was in the hospital 7 ½ months.
And he went to Germany, but [then] he went to
Vietnam. He’s got 12 medals from Vietnam.
MCGINTY: Is he still in Rockford?
WILLS: No. He lives in Durand now. But that’s
what I got. I didn’t get the other pictures but I
had a bunch of all these boys that went with my
kids. All went to the service.
Everyone that used to come to my house which I
had 12 here every weekend. I took all the
neighborhood kids in because their parents
drank and everything and I don’t believe in that
stuff. I took them all in, and most went. I wrote
five letters a day for 2½ years. I wrote to all of
them kids cause their parents didn’t write to
them, T\they just left them! And I wrote five
letters a day.
I got to tell you a little funny story now. It
wasn’t all hard work. It was… You had little
funny things happen to you. They put me on an
ether tank. If you don’t know what an ether tank
is it’s like an [oxygen] tank but it’s got ether in
it. They put me on that. It cleans off your
material like your carburetors and this, you
know, and cleans just as slick as a whistle and
then you can do anything else with them.
So they put me on that. Well, they didn’t tell me
it was an ether tank. So the next thing I knew
where I was at I was walkingI had Ruebin on
one side and Buster on the other side--and I was
walking up and down the railroad tracks. I was
sound asleep from the ether tank!
still get paid for it.” She would work. She
wasyou know you don’t meet too many
people like, that but she helped me because like
I said, I only weighed 90 pounds. I was just a
little tiny old skinny thing. She would help me.
When you put these other ones onyou had to
put them on a rack and then you’d go down and
then you welded it. I looked up. I didn’t have
nobody putting it on the rack. She was out on the
floor. She passed out. So we had to pick em up
and take them and get them going again.
MCGINTY: She was weak from disease or
hunger?
WILLS: Well, it was so hot.
MCGINTY: The heat.
WILLS: See, she was between the welder and
the soldering tanks and between the two, I
looked for her and she was gone and she was on
the floor behind.
But she wouldn’t give up. She kept on working.
Now this was a little Black girl. She just started.
“I’ll make it,” [she said]. “The rest can go to the
Army and the rest can do stuff,” she said. “I’ll
make it, too.” And she did.
She stuck right in there but she didn’t go to us
when we went and done all them tail pipes and
all them other things. She didn’t go with us.
They just picked a few out. Some of the other
ones came from the other shops where you never
met them before any way, but they never looked
up at you.
MCGINTY: Oh, boy.
WILLS: You had different little things, you
know. You got to remember some of the good
times you had, too, because, like I said…
Now this hereWhen I was making these I got
to tell you there was a Black lady that worked
with me, and she had three sons in the war at the
same time we was working down there. She
worked and I mean that lady could work. If I
didn’t feel good she’d take one look at me, “I’ll
help you. I’ll do most of your jobs and you’ll
I can still see them sitting there with theWe
had the helmets on. You put the helmetsyou
know how you weld and they had to order me an
extra dark one because when I was a kid I was
blinded by the snow. When it was bright, then I
couldn’t see nothing. They would order me a
special one.
Then you had to put these gloves on that had all
the leather and stuff on here. Lot of times when
you got through they were welded right to your
�fingers. You couldn’t hardly get your gloves off.
That’s how we welded. Think of all them years
doing that stuff. It was fun though.
people don’t realize what other people do for
us.”
MCGINTY: Sure.
MCGINTY: Is there anything about your
memories of World War II that you’d like
people today to know or not forget about?
WILLS: Yeah. I’d like them not forget You
see, they have forgotten, because I’m one of
these remember all this, because like I said, I
had people in my family in every war. I had
somebody in every war.
When it came to Vietnam, I had my two boys
that went in the service. And then I had all these
-- 12, 14 boys -- that was here every weekend. I
had all of them to gonow this is in church, I
have to tell you anyway. I went to church
Memorial Day. I thought nobody thinks about
what people went through in the service so I
dressed with a white skirt on, a red blouse and a
blue jacket. I walked into church. When church
was about ready to leave out they never
mentioned it; just like the boys didn’t do
nothing. Nobody worked for the government,
nobody did nothing.
That got to me, so I stood up and I told them,
“See how I’m dressed. This is Memorial Day.
Let us remember the people that worked in the
shops and did different things and all the
soldiers that went in to protect our country for
you, for me and for everybody else.” Everybody
in church was crying. They never even thought
of it that way. What would you say. Ain't that
right?
MCGINTY: Sure.
WILLS: I just got up. I couldn’t take no more,
because if I hadn’t seen all this and went through
all this and with these boys that went to
Vietnam. Oh that was terrible. One boy that
went to Vietnam, he was fighting on this side of
the mountain, my son was on this side and they
couldn’t get together. Now don’t think that
wasn’t heart-breaking. So I just stood up and
told everybody. I said, “I want you to go home
and think about it because this is terrible when
WILLS: I don’t want to get credit for all the
things I did. I did it because I wanted to do it. I
felt that that was my duty, my part, even if I was
justlike I said, I had a hamburger a day and
that was about it. I didn’t starve to death. I’m
still going and I’m 78 years old. So you see it
didn’t kill me.
MCGINTY: Would you please describe again
the location of the secret basement under the
cigar store?
WILLS: Yes. When we went to work down at
this place where it was secret, no one else was
supposed to know about it. We went down
where the Osco Drug is on Court Street or
Church Street and you go over a ways and there
was a cigar store right there and it was right up
from the post officekitty corner.
MCGINTY: So on the corner of Church and
Green Street?
WILLS: It’s not right on the corner. It’s over
just a little ways from the corner.
MCGINTY: So it’s on Church between Green
and Chestnut?
WILLS: Mm hm. Because sometimes we would
come out, and we would walk down the street
and that big furniture [store] was down there on
Main. We would walk down there and we would
pretend we were going shopping in that big
store, which we weren’t, but we would go in and
look around, you know. So we walked in, this
lady I worked with.
I got to tell you this humor one, too. Walked in
and she always did her hair up and she had
blonde hair. She was kind of fussy how she
looked. So she went out the door first. I came
out later. A bird flew over and did his job right
in the middle of her beautiful hair!
�MCGINTY: Was this cigar store on the east or
west side of Church Street?
there was nobody in the store then we went on
down to our work.
WILLS: If you go from State Street, it’s on the
right hand side.
MCGINTY: So there was a door in the store
that took you to the basement.
MCGINTY: Away from the river side.
WILLS: Mm hm.
WILLS: Yeah.
MCGINTY: Could you see that from the front
of the store or was it hidden somewhere?
MCGINTY: It’s on the west side. Okay. You
don’t remember the address, do you?
WILLS: No. There was a storeThere was one
of them cigar stores moved out here off of up
there on West Stateyou know where them
motels are? In thatOne of them moved up
there but I don’t know if it’s still there or not.
MCGINTY: You don’t remember the name of
the store?
WILLS: White Owl. No, we didn’t call it White
Owl. I used to order cigars all the time cause I
worked for Oscos and I ordered cigars and
everything and I ordered from them, but I’m not
sure if that’s the one that moved or not.
WILLS: Oh yeah. It was like it wasn’t secret. It
was just like that was their storage bin. And
that’s what they pretended it was, I guess. We
would walk in but we had to look around to
make sure there was nobody in the store at the
time and then we could go down.
MCGINTY: So the owners of the store knew
what was going on in the basement.
WILLS: One guy. He was always there when
everybody was there.
MCGINTY: He knew what was going on in the
basement.
WILLS: Mm hm. He had to.
MCGINTY: When you entered this basement,
did you go into the store first and then down or
was there a door outside that you went straight?
MCGINTY: And where were these deliveries
and pick ups made? Was there an alley behind
the store?
WILLS: I don’t know how the men and the
other women went in ‘cause we all went in at
different times. Two went in at a time; I don’t
know how they went in cause the men were
always there when we got there, so how they got
in, I don’t know. They never did tell us.
WILLS: No. It was on Main Street right up
from the Post Office. When the truck went in it
went… You see, some of these trucks how they
go down and sloped into the building?
When we went in, we would meet down there by
Oscos and we’d say where shall we shop today
like we were really going shopping and so then
we would walk down the street and we would
walk in the front door of the cigar store.
WILLS: Yeah. It went right down to the inside.
MCGINTY: Of the cigar store?
WILLS: But they knew who we were. So we’d
look around. If there was somebody in the store,
then we would pretend we were shopping. If
MCGINTY: What do you mean? It went into
the building?
MCGINTY: Kind of a driveway?
WILLS: And went right in
MCGINTY: Was that off of Green Street or off
of Church Street?
�WILLS: Where the Post Office is. It was right
off of where the Post Office is. They would
come up this street and turn in here because they
could go down that driveway right into the
place.
MCGINTY: Okay.
WILLS: That’s where they picked it up.
MCGINTY: So the truck was actually down at
the basement level when it was loaded and
unloaded.
for the Army, but they only would come in and
give them an order and then they’d do it and
they never told you what you were doing. And
they’d send that one out.
Then I was working down here to Washburn’s
and that was after the war. The Army neededI
don’t know what it was. They didn’t tell me
either. It was a thing that you had to rivet
together. They took me offI was making flour
sifters cause we made kitchen utensilstook
me off my job and run 500 pieces of that. That
was for the Army, too, and you made 65 cents
an hour!
WILLS: Mm hmm.
MCGINTY: You don’t remember what it was?
MCGINTY: And it looked like a cigar truck?
WILLS: As far as I could tell because they
wouldn’t let us out to see too much of what went
on. The pick ups and deliveries was in the
middle of the night; it never was during the day.
MCGINTY: So you never saw
WILLS: No. I just They told us how they did
it, and we seen the driveway down in there, you
know, how they went down in there and they
said, We can’t have anybody coming in during
the day or anything because we don’t want
anybody to see it.” That’s how secret it was.
MCGINTY: Sure. So who’d you tell first when
you decided?
WILLS: Charlie. Charlie down at the drug
store. Him and I talked because he knew I
worked in a drug store, and I could talk about
things, and he’d ask me different things about
the drug store because I worked in Oscos over
seven years.
He would ask me different things. We used to
kid about. I don’t know why, all of a sudden one
day I asked him if he knew about that. He said,
“Why don’t you call up the newspaper and call
up everybody?” he said, “So people know how
much Rockford did for the Army?” I said, “All
they ever say is there was Camp Grant. If you
notice, that’s all they say.” Now Rockford
Standard Furniture over there, they made cots
WILLS: No they never told me what it was.
They just said we need this. The Army needs it.
MCGINTY: What did it look like?
WILLS: It was a thing about that long, about
that wide and about that thick of metal. Then it
had a canvas that you had to put over it but you
had to rivet through the canvas, through that
little hole in the top and then you pulled it back
like this. I still don’t know what it was.
MCGINTY: So it was a piece of metal with
canvas riveted to it?
WILLS: Mm hmm.
MCGINTY: Did it have sort of a pocket in it
that you could put something in it?
WILLS: No. That’s all it was. I still don’t know
what it was for because they never did tell me.
You see, things that you do for the Army is not
what you do for other people. Some things you
know a little about. Other things you don’t know
beans about.
MCGINTY: What is Washburn’s? Is that a
company?
WILLS: That was, but that’s not there no more
either. It used to be down herekitchen utensils
they used to make. The baskets, you know, they
�used to make fry baskets and all this stuff. Oh
yeah. I worked there for a long time, too. I like
all kinds of jobs.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
This tape ended here.
Hilda Wills died April 21, 2001 in Rockford.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Midway Village Museum
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Midway Village Museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-2001
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Language
A language of the resource
English
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
John McGinty
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Hilda Wills
Location
The location of the interview
Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Hilda Wills
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
24-Jun-94
Description
An account of the resource
Born December 23, 1920, Hilda Wills became a welder during World War II. She died April 21, 2001.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War 2
World War II
-
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PDF Text
Text
Herman Johnson
Transcribed by Elaine Carlson
For Midway Village and Museum Center
6799 Guilford Road
Rockford, Illinois
Phone 815 397 9112
�Herman Johnson
Today is April 12th, 1994. My name is Phyllis Gordon. I am a volunteer with the Midway Village and Museum Center which is
cooperating with a state wide effort to collect oral histories of Illinois citizens which
participated in the events surrounding World
War II. We are in the North Suburban District Library in Loves Park, Illinois. We are
interviewing Mr. Herman Johnson who
served in a branch of the United States
Armed Forces during World War II. We are
interviewing him about his experiences in
that war.
G: Mr. Johnson would you please start just
by introducing yourself to us.
J: All right. Herman Jerome Johnson. I was
born in Rockford, Illinois, on May 17, 1926.
G: We would also like to have the names of
each of your parents.
J: All Right. My father’s name was Oscar
Johnson and my mother’s name was Molly
Johnson.
G: Did you have any brothers or sisters?
J: No.
G: Are there any details about your parents
or your family that you would like to give at
this time?
J: I was in high school at East High in Rockford, Illinois. I remember the construction at
Camp Grant. I remember going downtown
on State Street and seeing all the army fellows on passes from Camp Grant on the
State Street Bridge. I don’t recall if gas rationing had started then, but I remember my
father had coupons and he would get 5 gallons of gasoline a week to drive back and
forth to work.
G: Well. What thoughts did you have about
the war before the United States became
directly involved in the conflict?
J: Not too much although I was interested in
aviation and the stories and the pictures of
the German and the English airplanes that
interested me a lot.
G: Did you hear about Pearl Harbor? Where
were you and what were you doing at that
time?
J: It was Sunday afternoon at home. My
parents and I were listening to the radio.
They interrupted whatever program was on
and the announcement came on. I know we
were quite shocked and it was somewhat
quiet in the house for a little while. We all
listened to see what was going on.
G: You all knew it meant serious trouble.
J: Right.
J: My parents were both immigrants from
Norway. My father came over in 1913; my
mother came in 1925.
G: Well. What was life like for you before
the war and specifically if you can think
back to 1941?
G: Had you formed any prior opinion or
developed any feeling about what was taking place in either Europe or Asia?
J: I think I felt that the Germans were
wrong. Of course, they did invade my parents’ homeland and that was a dastardly act
and so we didn’t __?__. As far as Asia goes
�I suppose that would be more removed from
my thoughts at that time.
G: Do you recall reading any newspaper
accounts about the German aggression in
Europe?
G: You knew you were going to go, so
J: And I would be drafted. I didn’t have any
reservations abut being drafted, but I just
thought I would prefer the Navy.
G: Have some choice.
J: Not specifically. But I do recall reading
the Rockford paper and the Chicago Herald
American got at that time on weekends.
J: Yes.
G: When and where were you inducted?
G: Did you have any knowledge about Hitler, his speeches, his ideas, his actions?
J: I might have but I don’t recallas a teenager, it wasn’t quite uppermost in my mind.
J: Great Lakes. No. Chicago. No, wait a
minute. I enlisted in Rockford, physical in
Chicago and I suppose the induction center
and the boot camp was at Great Lakes, Illinois.
G: I don’t think we knew too much.
J: No.
G: What is it that led to your entry in the
military service? Were you drafted or did
you volunteer?
G: Do you have any special memories of
that event?
J: I remember all the bodies at the physical
examination in a big building in Chicago
G: How old were you?
J: I was not drafted. In early spring of ’44, a
friend of mine and I took the Air Force mental test, they called it. A knowledge test and
we passed that. Then we went to Camp
Grant for a physical and I did not make that.
I had a broken nose once and I couldn’t be
in high altitudes. I knew I would have to go
because I would be 18 in May in ’44. I tried
the Marine Corp. They didn’t want me because my eyes weren’t quite good enough so
I decided to enlist in the Navy, because I’d
rather be in the Navy so I did that instead in
the spring of ’44.
G: Was your response to entering the Navy
influenced by your family and friends attitudes towards the war or the threat to the
national security or any other consideration?
J: I was 18.
G: What happened after you were inducted?
J: We were sent to Great Lakes and we spent
4 or 5 weeks at boot camp, as they call it,
preliminary training, which was very interesting. Since I had had ROTC in high
school, I knew all about marching and the
rifle and that kind of thing and calisthenics
so that helped me a lot.
G: Where did you take your basic military
training?
J: In Great Lakes.
G: What were you trained to do?
J: I think I knew I would be going
�J: That was basic training, and then again,
tests, ability tests and I was sent with others
to Iowa State College for electrical training,
to be a Naval electrician and that was 4
months of college courses on electricity and
engineering.
G: What did you think of the training?
J: It was very good.
G: Did anything special happen there?
friends you made or your association with
civilians?
J: Coming home on leave in those two instances was very nice, a young sailor in uniform. It was quite fun to see my old friends
in Rockford. Civilians, especially travelling,
on the trains. We would stop at certain stations and the Red Cross, or whatever, the
women would come with donuts and coffee
and we would be leaning out the windows.
The civilians were very nice to us.
J: No, it was a very nice experience, because
I went in the Navy before I graduated from
high school, a half year early. The courses I
took at Iowa State and my grades were
enough to give me credit for high school
graduation with my class and it also gave me
quite a few credits toward college.
G: Sometimes sandwiches they say, too.
G: That was good. Tell us about any other
training camp you attended.
G: Some were assigned to a division or a
certain infantry division.
J: After Iowa State, a group of us were sent
to an Amphibian Training Base. I think it
was Camp Bradford, Virginia outside of
Norfolk and that was to be trained as crew
members on the LST landing ship, naval
landing ship and that was the training I received there.
J: Well, I suppose the NavyCould I take a
few minutes to explain? I suppose the Navy
is different. After this amphibian training in
Virginia, they found they didn’t need any
people for crews for these particular ships.
They did send some of us down to Trinidad.
We kind of waited there for several months.
Then 5 or 6 of us were sent to San Juan,
Puerto Rico. At that place, on the naval
base, 3 of us were trained to be radio teletype technicians repair persons. And so
that’s I was part of an electrician and a radio
teletype station at San Juan.
G: Did you have any leaves or passes? And
if so how did you use them?
J: I think I had a few days after basic training at Great Lakes and then a few days after
the completion of the courses at Iowa State
before going to Virginia.
J: I don’t recall that but it was quite nice.
G: What was your military unit?
J: I don’t quite understand.
G: Where did you go after completing this
basic training?
G: Did you come home then?
J: Stayed in San Juan as a repair technician.
J: Yes, I came home. Yes, I came home.
G: What do you call this period about the
places where you were stationed or the
G: What did you think of the nation’s war
efforts up to this point?
�J: It seemed it was very good. I remember
writing letters about the fact that they had to
save cans and a real effort made at home to
help out.
G: You were never sent into combat?
J: No, I was very fortunate.
G: I should say. Did you write many letters
home?
G: Were you ever entertained by Hollywood
entertainers that sometimes came around?
J: I can’t recall them ever coming to where I
was stationed at that time. Apparently Puerto Rico was kind of off the beaten track and
it was so close to the United States that I
assume they didn’t think it was that important.
G: When and how did you return to the
United States after the end of the war?
J: Probably once a week.
J: My mother would send letters and cookies
and try to send cakes. Of course they were
crumbs but everybody ate them
J: Through the point system. It took me ’til
Junelast part of June 1946. I stayed in San
Juan, Puerto Rico. We were flown back to
Fort __?__ in Brooklyn. We were sent on a
train back to Great Lakes. I remember I
walked into the door at home on 4th of July,
1946.
G: Did most of the other men write and receive letters?
G: Tell about your military rank and decorations.
J: I believe so. Yes.
J: Well, we wereMy rank was what you
called Fireman First Class. I was supposed
to be a sergeant, perhaps. There were no
decorations given out for these stations in
Puerto Rico.
G: Did you receive many letters, and/or
packages?
G: Have you remained in contact with any
of your World War II companions?
J: No, I never heard from them after leaving
the service.
G: Were you aware of any civilian concentration camps at that time?
J: I don’t think so, no.
G: Can you remember what you and the
other men did to celebrate traditional holidays, such as Thanksgiving or Christmas?
J: They would serve a special turkey dinner
is all in the dining rooms and then there
would usually be a movie in the evening.
That’s probably about all. There wasn’t too
much activity.
G: How did you get along with the men with
whom you had the greatest contact?
J: I think we got along fine. We were companions when we went out in the evenings.
The base we were on, there were just 30
people there. They had quite an expansive
USO in San Juan. We shopped __?__ and
[bottomless girls]. From time to time the
base planned picnics at beaches, dances and
so on. We just had a nice time.
G: Have you ever been back to Puerto Rico?
J: No. Never.
�G: Were there any things you would do differently if you could do it once again?
J: Regarding the service?
J: It must not have been that important. I
think we were there, still in the service and
completely involved in that. As I recall,
there wasn’t that much of a celebration on
the base.
G: Regarding the service.
J: No. If I couldn’t fly, which I desperately
wanted to do, I think the Navy is probably
the best place.
G: What was your opinion about the use of
the atomic bomb when it was used against
the Japanese in August of 1945?
J: My thinking at that time?
G: Is there anything that stands out from
your years of military service?
J: Okay. One thing in 1944, April, we were
on a ship going from Virginia to Trinidad.
There were about 5 or 6 hundred sailors and
British soldiers and sailors and we were
headed down toward the Caribbean. In the
Caribbean the engines of the ship stopped.
Dead silence. They announced that Franklin
Roosevelt had died.
G: Oh.
J: There was just dead silence. Nobody said
a word for about 10 minutes. It was just very
quiet. I think they played Taps on the loud
speaker system started talking about what
was going to happen then. We were quite
concerned because our leader was gone.
That was the most outstanding thing.
G: That was an interesting memory. How
did you learn abut VE Day and what was
your reaction to that?
G: At that time.
J: Surprised and shocked but I think we did
it probably a lot sooner than expected. I
talked to a lot of people, a lot of sailors, that
had been over in the Pacific on LST ships
that I had been training for. They would tell
us, coming to the beaches where Japanese
controlled the islands These ships were
being destroyed by the score by mines and
running up and it was complete mayhem
couldn’t make it when they tried to hit
beaches.
G: Has that opinion changed over the last 50
years?
J: No, not at all.
G: When and where were you officially discharged? I think you sort of covered that.
J: Great Lakes Naval Station.
G: The year would be
J: Well, it was a nice evening. We were
watching a movie. They stopped the movie
and they announced it one evening about
what was happening in Europe. That was all.
A lot of cheering and clapping and that was
all.
J: 1946.
G: Do you have any kind of disability rating?
J: No.
G: How did you hear about VJ Day and
what was your reaction to that?
G: Or a pension?
�J: No.
G: Do you have any opinions or feelings
about our nation’s military status today or its
policies?
J: That’s a leading question.
G: I’ve been getting some leading answers,
too.
J: I bet you have. Well I think we should
keep a certain amount of strength and a certain amount of stock, developing and maintaining our equipment in our Armed Forces.
The way the world is today one doesn’t
know and I don’t think we should give away
score yet.
G: It seems to be a war going on somewhere
all the time.
J: I kind of thought we should not have been
in Vietnam. That was kind of a __?__ situation. And I think what we did in Somalia
was kind of a waste because nothing was
accomplished and I’m worried about what is
going to happen Saudi.
service. By giving you moral support by
letters and packages.
J I think so. My parents were quite disturbed
when I left. After being out of state position
and that kind of thing. The last time I saw
them for a long timeI saw them was almost 2 years. They certainly did support me
with letters and pictures from home, cookies
and good stuff. I know my mother belonged
to theShe had a star in the window and all
those things.
G: Navy Mothers.
J: Navy Mothers. Yes, she went to meetings.
Yes, that’s what it was. Navy Mothers.
G: In subsequent years what has that support
meant to you?
J; Well, I had good feeling about having
been in service and it was not a thing I
should not have done. I was lucky to have
been sent where was and not having to see
G: Combat.
G: Right. Do you have any contact with the
Veterans’ Administration?
J: Yeah.
J: No.
G: Is there anything else you would like to
tell us at this time about your years in the
Navy.
G: What is your opinion of the Veterans’
Administration, if you had contact?
J: No, I wouldn’t even make a guess.
G: Have you ever gone to a VA Hospital?
J: No.
G: Would you like to tell us how your family supported you during your years in the
J: I heard a lot about these operations and
work that __?__ teletype organization in San
Juan was interesting. That was theSan
Juan, Puerto Rico was the headquarters for
the Tenth Naval District. The Tenth Naval
District’s job was to put a screen near the
entrance of the Panama Canal to guard it
from German submarines because there
were German submarines in the Caribbean
and even in Chesapeake.
�G: I wouldn’t doubt it.
G: And where did you go to college?
J: That was very interesting. We had direct
radio communications with Washington, D.
C. My job and the others on our staff were
to keep these __?__operating.
J: I started at Bradley University in Peoria
for 2 years; the last 4 years after that, the
University of Oregon.
G: Must have been beautiful there.
G: Did you have any contact with the civilians in Puerto Rico down there?
J: Yes, we had 30 people on our little base
and we had 3 Puerto Rican cooks who were
fantastic and we had, because we were a
small base, we had what we called subsistence, so much extra a month and the cooks
could shop at the public markets. We’d
come for breakfast and you ordered what
you wantfabulous pork roast, beef roast.
The food was absolutely superb. We had
civilian women who did our laundry We
paid, of course, at that time and we had
young women, in San Juan, were very
friendly to the Navy. Some of the civilian
men, younger men, didn’t care too much
about us because
G: Little competition.
J: Little competition, I would say. Otherwise
the shops, the stores, the USO, the bus when
we went on tour, historic things, everybody
was friendly.
G: When you got back to the United States,
when you were discharged, did you back to
school then?
J Yes, it was.
G: Your main work was as an
J: Architect.
G: Can you tell us a little bit about that?
J: Well, after graduation in 1952, I came
back to Rockford. I got my license to practice. After 25 years, I had my own office in
Beloit, Wisconsin. The last few years I
worked for other firms __?__.
G: Is there anything else you would like to
tell us before we end the interview? When
you got home did you find the family life
changed by the shortages of the war? Was
the car put up on blocks?
J: No. Dad still had the same car and drove
it to work. It was the same old car. You
couldn’t buy a new car.
G: You couldn’t get any new ones.
J: I think clothing was hard to get.
G: And shoes, too.
J: No, as I said I finished high school and
graduated. Going to various offices discharge for discharge, one of the people says,
“Are you going to college”? I said, “Oh!”
He said “You know you have 4 years of
college with the GI Bill that is coming.” I
said, “Oh!” He said, “You must sign up
now.” I said, “Okay. I’ll sign up for it. So I
did and that got me a
J: I suppose. I think I did get a job that first
summer in a factory here as I was applying
to the University. I bought a suit. Before I
left San Juan, when I knew I was going
home, I went to a very nice clothing store
and it was a delightful dark brown brand
new suit.
�G: You were all ready.
J: I had to send it home from San Juan.
G: Your transition to civilian life was not
difficult?
J: No, it was not difficult. It was very easy. I
suppose because I hadn’t really been in the
bad areas and being almost in the heart of
the city, it seemed like I hadn’t been too far
away.
G: Well, I want to thank you for taking the
time to share these thoughts with us. We
really appreciate this interview.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Midway Village Museum
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Midway Village Museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-2001
Rights
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Midway Village Museum
Language
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English
Format
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pdf
Type
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Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Phyllis Gordon
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Herman Jerome Johnson
Location
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Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Herman Jerome Johnson
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
12-Apr-94
Description
An account of the resource
Born May 17, 1926, Herman Johnson served as an electrician in the Navy from the spring of 1944 to July 1946. He died December 5, 2009.
Rights
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Midway Village Museum
Format
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pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War 2
World War II
-
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PDF Text
Text
Helen Robertson Williams
Helen Robertson Williams
Served in a WAVE unit in the
United States Armed Forces
Transcribed by Elaine Carlson
Edited and Typed by Margaret Lofgren
Midway Village & Museum Center
6799 Guilford Road
Rockford, Illinois 61107
Telephone 815 397 9112
Page1
�Helen Robertson Williams
Page2
Helen Robertson Williams
Hello today is October 20, 1994. My name
is Marajean Brooks. I am a volunteer with
the Midway Village & Museum Center. We
are cooperating with the statewide effort to
collect oral histories from Illinois citizens
who participated in the momentous events
surrounding World War II. We are in the
home of Helen Williams, 1819 Prestwood,
Rockford, Illinois, 61103. Mrs. William
served in a branch of the United States
Forces. She was with a WAVE with the
Navy during World War II. We are
interviewing her about her experiences as a
WAVE in Washington, D. C. and Virginia.
Her current phone number is 815-877-0620.
She was born April 2nd, 1925. Both her
parents came from Aberdeen, Scotland.
HELEN: My name was Helen Robertson
when I went into the service in April of
1945. Before I went into the service from
the time I was in high school, I attended
Rockford College for a time and also
worked at Woodward Governor in the
defense industry here in Rockford, Illinois.
In April, 1945, just following the end of the
war in Europe, I went into the service and I
left Rockford and left a very heart broken
mother.
MARAJEAN: Why did you wait until then?
H: Because I was not twenty until April,
1945, and you had to be twenty years old at
that timea woman to enter the service. As
I left my tearful motherbeing an only
child, why I think I had broken her heart, but
off I went. So I went to boot camp and
Hunter College in Bronx, New York. It was
kind of rigorous for a gal who wasn’t that
much of an outdoor person, but I made it
through the seven weeks. At the end of the
seven weeks, I went to recruiter school for
two weeks to become a recruiter in the
WAVE. At the end ofI believe it was two
weeks if my memory is holding up on me, I
was sent to recruit in the state of Virginia.
Now, actually where I was stationed was in
Washington, D. C., because the Office of
Procurement was there and WAVE came
under the Office of Procurement in the
Navy. At the time that I west to Washington,
D. C., the weather was very hot and steamy
that summer of 1945 and I lived in an
apartment house that was a converted
barracks just one block north of the white
House. So it was kind of interesting. Every
day I had to walk to go to my office when I
was in Washington, D. C. I had to walk past
the White House and many mornings I saw
President Truman and saluted him. Then
after a few weeks in Washington, D. C., I
was sent out to do recruiting in the State of
Virginia. Well, time was wearing down
about then and it looks like maybe the war
in Japan is going to be over. People are
looking I go out first with an officer who
is supposed to be training me. We were out
for a couple weeks and I went to various
places and I learned the ropes of speaking
before groups, scaring me to death, but I
made it and didn’t recruit a soul, because the
war is coming to an end and the momentum
is gone. Finally, I was sent out by myself to
the various little recruiting stations around
the State of Virginia. The first place I went
was to Bristol, Tennessee.
H: Bristol, Tennessee, it’s on the border of
Virginia. So there I was and the Chief Petty
Officer, who was in charge of the station on
the 13th of August, came in with a notice and
said, “You’ve been called back to
Washington.” So the morning of the 14th of
August, I was put on a train and the Chief
forgot to give me any orders. Luckily
nobody asked me for any papers. As we
came close to Washington, we found out
�Helen Robertson Williams
that the war with Japan had ended. They
came on the train as we got to the outskirts
and told us the war had ended and of course
everybody was just very up. And me with
my two weeks of luggage got off the train
and went over to try to check it because I
looked out on the street and it was just one
sea of people and no transportation. So, I
went over the baggage place to check my
luggage and they just looked at me and said
they didn’t have room for it. Well, I begged
and pleaded and they took it finally because
by this time it was night and I had to walk
amongst these throngs of people up to my
quarters. But I did. I got lots of kisses on the
way. All the service people were out.
Everybody was out. And there was nothing
to eat and I hadn’t had anything to eat in a
long time.
M: Were they noisy?
Page3
for dinner and so forthnot that I had
expected an invitation for dinner but at least
I expected that someone would maybe talk
to me. They also had their former pastor
there who was now a chaplain. During the
sermon he made some rather pointed
remarks about how terrible women in the
Service were and here I sat in my uniform,
the only Service woman in the audience and
I quietly left as quickly as I could. The priest
and the officer were waiting for me down by
the Catholic church and they said, “What
happened?” I told them and they said, “We
were afraid that might happen.”
M: They just didn’t want their southern
women in the Service.
H: They didn’t want the southern women in
the service and I was a northerner. I haven’t
been backthat isn’t true. I have been back.
H: Oh, yes, very noisy. It was a big
celebration. We had a big celebration here.
So, I arrived home and that was the end of
my recruiting career. One thing that was
very interesting, I was in one of the towns in
Virginia and all the time I was still in
training with the office I was with. On a
Sunday morning, she was a Catholic gal and
I was a Presbyterian and we decided we
were going to church and both churches
were up the street a ways. I walked with her
to the Catholic church, and the priest outside
invited me to come to the Catholic church
and I said, “Oh, no. I’m going to the
Presbyterian church.” They tried to dissuade
me from going to the Presbyterian church.
Then I went there to
M: But not in that situation.
M: The Presbyterian church?
M: Many of them couldn’t read at all.
H: To the Presbyterian church. No one
spoke to me. This was upsetting to me
because all during the war, at our home on
Sunday morning, we had invited the soldiers
H: couldn’t read or write because they
hadn’t been to school.
H: No.
M: And did you get anyone coming into
your recruiting office at all?
H: Yes. We got mainly young black women
who came in and wanted to go into the
Service but very often they just didn’t have
enough education to pass the entrance exam.
I don’t know if that’s what they called it, but
some sort of a test.
M: A written test?
H: Yes.
M: No. What did you do after VJ Day?
�Helen Robertson Williams
H: After VJ Day I was in this office with
Officer Procurement and I did mainly
clerical work.
M: In Washington?
H: In Washington. I was right down town in
Washington. I was never in the Navy
Department or anything like that. I was
attached to this office of Officer
Procurement and we spent the rest of the
time sending back documents that people
had. It was mainly men; not too many
women, had applied for Service. They had
sent certain documents, well, like some of
them were birth certificates and some
college transcripts and we were returning
them If we could find them, if we had an
address for hem. So I did that for several
months, plus some other miscellaneous
secretarial.
Page4
M: On the bus?
H: Oh, yes. So they put me in quarters so I
couldn’t eat out any more. And then I
wentI came home to Rockford in
February. And on February 23rd, 1946, I was
married to Al Williams. Allen Williams I
should say and because I married a
discharged veteran, I could get out of the
service. I could be discharged myself, so I
went back to Washington and a couple
weeks after being back, they sent me on a
troop train to Great Lakes and I was
discharged at Great Lakes and I cam home.
That’s the end of my career, March 9, 1946.
M: About eleven months.
H: That’s true. That’s all it was.
M: Did you get acquainted with other
women?
M: What prompted you to get out?
H: Well, I came home in December to be
maid of honor for my cousin who was
almost she and I had grown up together
like sisters. And I being an only child, she
was like my sister. I came home and the
same day that I arrived here a man by the
name of Al Williams was arriving from
overseas in December. And on December 9,
he was discharged at Camp Grant. I was
home for a couple of weeks and then I went
back.
M: Had you known him before?
H: Oh, yes. I met him at West High School.
Our romance was mainly by letter even
though we had dated a few times before he
left. I went back to Washington. My quarters
had been moved and I was moved out to
Maryland. So I had to go back and forth to
work on the bus.
H: Yes, I did, but I moved too many times
and except in boot camp, I was never doing
the same thing they were doing. I was
always kind of off by myself. I did have one
very interesting experience. In January,
1946, I am of Scottish descent. I happen to
be a first generation American and a petty
officer in our office and his wife asked me
to go to the Burns’ banquet in Washington,
D. C., with them and the speaker at the
Burns’ banquet was General Dwight D.
Eisenhower. That was a very interesting
experience and being a little shy in those
years, I didn’t go up an ask him to sign my
program, so I missed that opportunity.
M: Did you get to do anything else in
Washington when you were there? There
were so many important people there.
H: There were so many important people
but you were a __?__. I was fortunate in the
�Helen Robertson Williams
fact that when I was out in Virginia were
some very old friends of my parents who
had been friends of my mother in Scotland
and who had lived in Rockford for a time.
They didn’t have any children, so they took
me under their wing. They took me all over.
I saw many of the sights, because I really
didn’t, at that point, have any friends that
werebecause most of them worked in the
Navy Department and some of the people
who lived in my apartment. By the way, I
should tell you about that apartment north of
the White House. It was what we call, let me
see if I can find the word for itone room,
one bathroom and a little kitchenette.
M: Efficiency?
H: Efficiency! Maybe just a little better.
Well, no. Do you know how many of us
were in there? There were 6 of us.
Page5
M: And they worked those hours? That
made six in a room easier to cope with.
H: Yes. And people came and went. There
was one gal who was much older that the
rest of us. And, of course, most of these gals
I roomed with at that time were older than I
was.
M: How many of these efficiencies were in
this building?
H: I really
M: How many floors. How many on one
floor? How many on each floor?
H: I don’t know. Well, it was just a regular
apartment
building
with
efficienciesmaybe ten on each floor. I
don’t know for sure.
M: In one room?
M: That’s a lot of people.
H: Yes, that was the same way when we
were in boot camp. But some of the
M: Three bunk beds?
H: Three bunk beds and if you can imagine,
I was probably the only one who worked
civilized hours. The rest of them worked for
the Navy Department and they worked
various hours so I really didn’t get too well
acquainted.
H: Mm hmm. But when I moved to
Maryland and then after I went back, I
ended up in Virginia in a barracks, so I was
in several places. They closed this one that
was down town, became actually it was
premium quarters.
M: Sure, premium property, too.
H: Oh, yes. I’m sure, but I don’t know that I
M: By various hours? Was it?
H: Nights. Some of them worked so they
were sleeping during the day so you didn’t
dare move around.
M: What was the name of these people,
your mother’s friends?
H: Their names were Polly and George
Gordon. And they
M: So the Navy Department was really open
around the clock?
M: G-O-R-D-O-N.
H: Oh, yes.
H: Mm hmm.
�Helen Robertson Williams
M: I’m sure they are long dead.
H: Oh, yes.
Page6
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Midway Village Museum
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Midway Village Museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-2001
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Language
A language of the resource
English
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Marajean Brooks
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Helen Robertson Williams
Location
The location of the interview
Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Helen Robertson Williams
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
20-Oct-94
Description
An account of the resource
Born 1925, Helen Robertson Williams became a recruiter for the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, a unit of the U.S. Naval Reserve) in 1945. She was discharged in March of 1946.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War 2
World War II
-
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PDF Text
Text
Helen Kunz
Page
HÃIflN KUNZ
Wife of William
J.
Kunz
Transcribed by Elaine Carlson
For Midway Village andMuseum Center
6977 Guilford Road
Rocldord,IL 61107
!
Phone 399 9112
{
I
�HelenKum
Page 2
Helen Kunz
Wife of WilliamKunz
April 11, 1994-my name is Phyllis Gordon. I am a
volunteer with the Midway Village and Museum
Center which is participating in a statewide effort to
collect oral histories from Illinois citizens who
participated in the momentous events surrounding
World War II. We are inthe Museum Center and we
are talking with Helen Kum who participated as a
civilian on the home front during World War II. We
are interviewing her about her experiences during
that war. Helen, would you please stårt by
introducing yourself to us. Please give us your frrll
name and the place and date of your birth.
HELEN: I'm
Helen Kunz and
I
was born in
PHYLLIS: We would also like the names of each
from that area.
PHYLLIS: Did you have any friends that
were
involved in war related work?
HELEN: No.
PHYLLIS: Duringthe war was there any population
shifts because of the need for workers in cert¿in
of
EELEN: Not in our area
because we
didn't have any
defense areas.
FELEN: My father's name wâs Stanley and
mother's name was
HELEN: Right. The crew of the ships. They would
come in and we would have crew pay day and I
would get to meet a lot of these Japanese and people
industries?
Pattersor¡ New Jersey on May 24,1922.
yourparents.
PHYLLIS: The crew of the ship?
Freda.
my
PHYLLIS:
So you didn't have
to move because of
work?
PEYLLIS: Didyou have anybrothers or sisters?
)
HELEN: No.
nnLDN: No, I didnot.
PHYLLIS: Was there a military camp near you
home community?
PHYLLIS: Are there any details about your parents
or you family that you wold like to give?
HDLDN: Not really. I can't think too much.
PHYLLIS: Okay. At any time during the time were
you employed or a volunteer in a war-related work or
lrELAN:
There was one later on established. BiU had
gone overseas akeady when this was established in a
town nearlry. Called Orange burg, New York and
they put Camp Shanks. In later years being out here
in Rocldord one of my bosses left from that same
camp.
service?
HELEN: No,
I was employed, but not in a war
PHYLLIS: Can you tell us how the service men and
civilians mingled in the community?
related...
PHYLLIS: Would you please tell us about what
yourjob was?
HELEN: Well, we had one of two USO'S FROM
THIS Ca\mp Shanks. The fellows would go there. ln
fact that's how some of my friends met their future
husbands. But tbat was the only activity.
HELEN: Okay. We lived about thirty some miles
from New York City and I commuted every day
about an hour and a half. I worked for a steamship
company and also ¡m insurance company. The
interesting part--when I worked for the steamship
company was-it was Holland
line and they
had to leave Europe because of the war. And their
main office was in Pier side so I got to Meet a lot of
people and we had the crew---+hips' crews----rot the
cruise shipsbut...
_?_
PHYLLIS: Was there a military equipment or supply
factory nearyour home community?
HELEN: No. There
w¿s not.
PHYLLIS: Was there a prisoner of war
camp
nearby?
HELEN: Well, this Camp Shanks-later onthey
�Helen Kunz
',
broughtprisonersback.
PHYLLIS: Can you tell us any experienc.es you or
your ûiends may have had with these prisoners?
HELEN: No, because they were far enough away the
only time we saw them üas when I was on the
commuter trains going back and forth to work and
Page 3
looking fonrard to the day when it would end" And
of course we had two VE days then. We had a false
one that we celebrated on the 7h of May. The
message had come tbrough that it was over with. And
we were let go ftom our office. We were working on
Wall Süeet in New York City and we all went up to
Times Square just like on New Yeat's Eve and then
the next day was the official one and so
they wouldbe waving to us as the trains went by
PHYLLIS: One the home front we lnow you had to
cope with rationing and recycling. Can you tell us
how your family attemptedto cope withthe rationing
rrye
celebrated two days in a row.
PHYLLIS: Two celebrations.
and the control of food, fuel, clothing and housing?
HELEN: Well, we were like everybody else. We had
a few stamps and we made do. Some weeks it went
further and other weeks it didn't and then we had to
watch. We couldn't use the c¡lr very much because
HDLEN: Two celebrations, right.
PHYLLIS: This next question I already know the
answer from your husband's inten¡iew. Did your
interest in the war increase, decrease or remain aboui
the same from 1941 to 1945?
you couldn't get the tires, unless you were.,.
HT'.LEN: It definitely increased.
PHYLLIS: Andthegas?
PHYLLIS:
I trnow that you were faithful letter
writers.
HELEN: And the
gas, right. Unless you were...
PHYLLIS: Did you or your ftiends have victory
gardens?
HELIN:
No.
HELEN: Also, we could only send--you mentioned
something about pækages We only could send a
package that couldn't four pounds. And you try to
figure your box, so we would try to put some candy
bars and some cookies, but it w¿s very little that you
could in those boxes.
PHYLLIS: Didyou save and recycle any household
waste such as grease, paper, and metals?
gf'.LEN: No. They w€ren't into recycling like they
are no'w.
PHYLLIS: When things did not go well for our side
duringthe early days of United States in participation
in the war, particularly in the Pacific, did you ever
fear that the Japanese might bomb or invade the west
coast or the war might eventually come to your
PEYLLIS: Did you participate in any was bond
drives or fund raising efforts to for the war--or
community?
activities?
HELEN: No,
HELEN:: No. My day was pretty much spent in
commutinghck and forth When you spend a couple
hours then you never knew. The trains were coal
driven and sometimes it was a poor quality and I
remember si$ing at one station for almost an hour
one night coming home because they couldn't make
the grade.
PEYLLIS: As the long was
progressed what
thoughts do you recall abut the attitudes you, your
family or your friends may have had toward the value
of the war and the importance of your contribution
and Bill's contribution.
HELEN: Well, we thought it was never going to end
It just seemed to go on and on and on We were
I was pretty confident that we had
excellent service people and that we were hoping it
wouldn't come or we were very very confident it
wouldn't ever.
PHYLLIS: Do you remember if you ever had airraidwarning systems.
HELEN: Oll
yes. We hadblackout drills every day
Yes, we did.
PHYLLIS: Can you tell us anything you remember
about those? Can you tell us anything you rernember
¿bout those?
HELEN: Well, I remember one night a good friend
of his came up to visit me. He lived in this other town
�Page 4
HelenKunz
and we were talking and we heard the air raid signal
go off and apparentþ one of the curtains wasn't
closed. I remember they blow the whistle and yelled
close that curfain. That is when Warren came up to
see me that night. (Laughter)>
PHYLLIS: Were there ever any feelings of hatred o¡
distrust of United States citizens who were of
Japanese descent or German descent in your
community?
HELEN: No. There weren't.
PHYLLIS: No hostile actions ever taken place
against suchpeople? Do you recall the opinion of you
or your family or friends may have had toward our
war time president, Franklin D. Roosevelt?
HELEN: Well, there was the usual pro and con. That
we shouldn't have gotten involved as you have with
every president. Some are for and some against, but I
think the majority of people felt that that was the way
to go in that situation.
PHYLLIS: So you would say that there was general
support inyour community for FDR's involvement of
the united state?
HELEN: Mmhmm. Yes.
PHYLLIS: Was there general support in you
community for FDR's candidacy for a third and
fourth precedent breaking term?
HELEN: Mm. Not too much. The thought we should
have a change, but then they thaought that was not
the right time either.
PHYLLIS: Some have said the war years were "fun
time years for the home front." What did you and
other civilian on the home ûont do for entertainment
and recreation?
HELEN: There was very little to do. As I sai4 I
spent most of my time commuting By the time you
got home at night and hadyour dinner, it was time to
go to bed and you got up early next morning I did
have one circumstance. One time with some of the
girls I worked ìÀ,ith in New York City went to Times
Square for New Year's Eve. And that was entirely
different because it was blackout and very few lights
were onbut there were still crowds there, but nothing
compared to what there is now, but it was a different
experience.
PHYLLIS: I can imagine. How closely did you
follow the progress of the war through newspapers,
magazines, books, radio, and movies? Do you
remember listening to the radio?
HELEN: The radio--{ight. And we followed
everything closely through newspapers and
magazines and I had a feel for where my husband
was stationed at the time and I could tell from his
letters and I figured from what his division was with I
could figure out some things. Some of his letters
there was one in particular. CaÉåin Bailey-that
innocent little things he wrote in would always be cut
out. I would get my V-mail letters with cut out. There
were holes in them. And I always said that at one of
the reunions I would like to meet that gentleman but
he passed on so I couldnever...
PHYLLIS:
So
you could never talk to him?
HELEN: Right.
PEYLLIS: Did you ever feel that any of
the
informationyou received might bc propaganda?
HÍ'.LEN: No, I don'tthink
so.
PHVLLIS: Before the end of the war was you aware
thæ any civilian concentration c:rmps existed in the
enemy nations?
EELEN: Yes.
PHYLLIS: How didyou learn about them?
HELEN: (No repþ)
PHYLLIS: In lookinghck over the past fifty years,
do you feel the social changes that began developing
during the war years have in general been good for
the natior¡ good for people, good for you and your
family? Why or why not? Be as specific and franh as
you want to be.
rrr'.LEN: Of course, we were just talking about how
women were liberated" so to speaþ to go into the
work force. I thhk one thing that change4 people did
more moving around like some of these girls that I
knew that met fellows at the USO and they were
fellows from Texas and Indiana. They manied and
relocated" whereas before the war, you pretty much
stayed in your homefown and also I think the people
became lenient with their children in later years.
They spoiled them because they figured *I didn't
have it.u I don't think that was very good for the
general outlook ofthe younger people.
�HelenKum
Page 5
PHYLLIS: Perhaps you have some other ideas, or
concepts or memories of the $/ar years that are
important to you even if I haven't specifically
mentioned them during this interview. Do you have
other views or memories you would like to share? If
so, we would like to hear about them now. Maybe
about getting Bill's letters or. ..
PHYLLIS: Is there anythinC else that you would like
to share with us about your time during World War
HELEN: Oh yes that was always a highlight. And
thenhe sent some souvenirs home. Thatwas always a
highlight of getting some of those things and we w€re
amazed at how they came through. One thing in
particular, he is still wearing the ring. It was given to
him by his grandmother. It broke and I said return it.
I had an uncle who was a jeweler and I would have it
fixed He just put it in a regular airmail envelope and
it came througlr. How it ever did, I don't ftnow. The
prongs were sticking out of the envelope and it made
visiting and he had been badly wounded. The one
fellow told me when we were up in Boston--¿nd he
told me I di&r't think they'd put him back in again
but they needed the valuable ones witlt experience so
he stayed in rigþt through to the en¿ They said they
diúr't see why he should have ever come back agairl
but when you have the experienced ones you just
have to hang on to them. It was interesting when he
was in the hospital in Naples. Years later a good
friend of our got into service lat€r because he was a
it from
manied man with a child and he was stationed at th¿t
II?
HELEN: No. I think 3we've pretty well hit all the
high spots. It seemed like a long time. It just seemed
to go on and on. I thoiught Bill would be some
sooner. I talkedto some of his buddies when we were
overse¿¡s.
same hospital where he hadbeen in.
PHYLLIS: You would think it would tear the paper
and it would and it would get lost.
PHYIÃIS: That is interesting. Well, thank you for
IIELEN: Right. That was one of the highlights. I
remember that and then trying to get the small
packages down to four pounds. I bought a special
scale and tried to prt everything in. Apparentþ
much.
sharing these remembrances. We appreciate
I had forgotten was when I did mail the
letters. I used to put perñrme on them and at the
reunions, several of his buddies mentioned thât a
highlight was when my letters arrived. I had forgotten
that. fuidalso the packages with cookies inthem.
something
PHYLLIS: That 's interesting. We didn't talk much
about the rationing. Was there any part of the
rationing that you remernber as being particularly
troublesome?
HELEN: No, no really. We just lnew that was what
we hadto d. I think I remember the sugar was a thing
because you couldn't bake. You couldn't do very
much. Sugar and the gas. Those were the two hard
things. Eventually we just had to put the car up on
blocks because we couldn't get the gas for it.
PHYLLIS: Andthe tires.
HELEN: The tires, right. So when he came home the
family car \üås up on blocks.
PHYLLIS: Not exactly ready to
HELEN: No. Right. Exactly
go.
it
very
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Midway Village Museum
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Midway Village Museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-2001
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Language
A language of the resource
English
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Phyllis Gordon
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Helen Kunz
Location
The location of the interview
Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Helen Kunz
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
April 11, 1994
Description
An account of the resource
Born May 24, 1922, Helen Kunz was a civilian and the wife of William Kunz who served in the Army. She died June 29, 2018.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War 2
World War II
-
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2d2d19dcd5648e18dc56d0c038d3707e
PDF Text
Text
Glen Peacock
Transcribed by Margaret Lofgren
For Midway Village and Museum Center
6799 Guilford Road
Rockford, Illinois 61107
Phone 815 397 9112
�Glen Peacock
U. S. Army Engineer
Today is March 26th, 2004. My name is Margaret Lofgren. I am a volunteer with Midway Village and Museum Center which is cooperating
with the statewide effort to collect oral histories
from Illinois citizens that participated in events
surrounding World War II. Today we are in the
office of the Midway Village interviewing Glen
Peacock who was in the engineers of the United
States Armed Forces during World War II.
LOFGREN: Would you please give us your
first name, your complete name?
PEACOCK: My name is Glen Peacock.
LOFGREN: What was the place of your birth
and date of your birth?
PEACOCK: I was born in Rockford, Illinois,
November 25th, 1919.
LOFGREN: We would like to have the names
of each of your parents including your mother’s
maiden name.
PEACOCK: My mother’s maiden name was
Mary Wells. My dad’s name was Charles W.
Peacock.
LOFGREN: Do you have any brothers or sisters?
He worked in a factoryBurson Knitting factory for one week and he couldn’t stand being inside so he quit and he went to work for Parson’s
Lumber Company on North Madison Street. He
worked there for 25 years and he decided he
wanted to be in the lumber business himself. In
1940 he bought the Perryville Lumber Company
and we had that for 8 years, sold it in 1948.
LOFGREN: What was life like for you before
the war and specifically before 1941?
PEACOCK: My life before the war started was
very enjoyable. I loved to be outdoors, I was an
avid hunter and fisherman. In 1941 I had to sign
up for the draft and I was always watching for
my number to come up. That was always on my
mind.
LOFGREN: Had you graduated from school by
then?
PEACOCK: Yes I graduated from Central High
School in 1938.
LOFGREN: What thoughts had you had about
the war before the United States became directly
involved in the conflict? Were you aware of
what was going on in Europe?
PEACOCK: I had a brother and a sister, both
deceased at this time.
PEACOCK: I really didn’t pay much attention
to it although I knew __?__ was happening. I
wasn’t smart enough to be concerned enough to
think what was going to happen.
LOFGREN: Are there any details about your
parents or your family that you would like to
give? Perhaps their place of birth or something
like that or what they did?
LOFGREN: Did you hear the 1941 radio announcement about the bombing of Pearl Harbor
by the Japanese? If so, where were you and what
were you doing at the time?
PEACOCK: My mother was born in Canandaigua, New York. My dad was born right here
in Winnebago County near Perryville, Illinois,
which is just outside of Cherry Valley.
PEACOCK: Yes, I remember that day very
well. December 7th, 1941, was a Sunday and I
was at State and Madison Recreation playing
pool. They had a radio on. Of course, everybody
there heard it and things really kind of quieted
down and you can imagine what the noise was in
a pool hall. It got real calm and serious.
LOFGREN: What was your business?
PEACOCK: My dad worked on the farms when
he was younger and he decided to come to town.
�LOFGREN: What was your reaction and the
response of those around you?
I was sent out to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri,
where I had my basic training.
PEACOCK: The response of other people
around me was kind of sadness and wondering
what’s going to happen now. Of course, my
thought was having had a draft number and now
how long do I have before I’m going to be
called.
LOFGREN: How old were you?
LOFGREN: Have you formed any prior opinion to or developed any feeling about what had
been taking place in Europe or Asia?
PEACOCK: I had just had my 22nd birthday in
November.
LOFGREN: And you said you were sent to
Missouri?
PEACOCK: Yes, Fort Leonard Wood.
LOFGREN: And that was for basic training?
PEACOCK: Like I said before, I wasn’t paying
much attention to it. I didn’t have any opinion as
to what was going on although I knew the Germans were pretty bad people at the time.
LOFGREN: Do you recall reading newspaper
accounts of German aggression in Europe?
PEACOCK: I can’t recall at this time. If I did,
it probably wasn’t good.
LOFGREN: Did you have knowledge of Hitler’s speeches, ideas or actions?
PEACOCK: No, I didn’t. I didn’t pay any attention to that I guess.
PEACOCK: Right. We were told at that time
after our basic training was finished that we
were the first troops in the Army to get our 13
weeks basic training and had it done in 8 weeks.
They had it all planned what we were going to
do.
LOFGREN: What were you trained to do?
PEACOCK: We had all kinds of training for a
lot of infantry stuff. We had to qualify with the
rifle and we had a lot of bridge building and
road work and that was our main goal for the
first year.
LOFGREN: What did you think of the training?
LOFGREN: What events led you to your entry
to the military service? Were you drafted?
PEACOCK: Yes, I was drafted and at the time I
was called up, my dad had just had a stroke and
had been in an auto accident and he was bedridden and couldn’t take care of his business at the
lumber yard so I tried to get a deferment. They
said you can have one week to get your things in
order and then you’re gone.
LOFGREN: While you are waiting you can
look over some of these. There are some things
that This will be about basic training. Do you
have any When and where were you inducted?
PEACOCK: I was inducted at Camp Grant,
Illinois. It was in January of ’42 and in February
PEACOCK: It was real tough at first when you
had to get in the water to build these trestle
bridges.
LOFGREN: Did anything special happen during your basic training?
PEACOCK: I can’t recall anything special that
happened. It was tough work, long hours,
LOFGREN: Tell us about any other training
camps you attended.
PEACOCK: After my first year in the service, I
was on the Elkan Highway when I got [carried]
out and sent back to Fort Lewis, Washington
where I helped organize another combat engineer unit and that was not much easier training
in Washington. The territory was nicer although
�there was a little a lot of rain. But like they say
there in Washington, it can rain all day and you
don’t get wet.
LOFGREN: What do you recall of this period,
the places where you were stationed other than
what you already mentioned?
PEACOCK: Fort Lewis was a good place to be
because if you could get a pass to go into town
you could go to different places, Tacoma, Washington, or Olympia, Washington, just a short
distance away. The people were very good to us
there.
LOFGREN: Can you tell us something about
the friends you made?
PEACOCK: The friends I made were life long
friends. Some of them I still have. Some of the
girls were okay too there in Washington.
LOFGREN: Were there any associations with
civilians like being invited to dinner or something like that?
PEACOCK: There was one family in Spokane,
Washington, no, not Spokane, Seattle, that invited another buddy and I to their house for
Christmas dinner and that was a very wonderful
experience,
PEACOCK: Like I said before we went, after
my first basic training we were shipped to Alaska. We got to Alaska on April, 22nd and on June
1st we left the little town of Skagway, Alaska.
We took a train fifty miles to a little village
called __?__ We got off the train and we had to
start walking following a trail through timber
and tundra to where we picked at the Tazman(?)
River [possibly Teslin?]. Then we were taken to
a little village down the river called __?__,
That’s where we had a base camp
LOFGREN: When were you sent overseas and
how did you get there?
PEACOCK: I was sent overseas, I think that
was in October of 1944. We went over in a convoy on a big re-done luxury liner. It was like
3000 troops on this ship and we left New York
on our own and we rendezvoused out in the
ocean somewhere and we went the rest of the
way in a convoy in November. It took almost 30
days to go across the ocean.
LOFGREN: What were you assigned to do after arriving?
PEACOCK: After arriving there we were assigned houses to live in and then we hadwe
did a little more training keeping in shape and
taking marches and stuff there in Western
__?__, England.
LOFGREN: What was your military unit?
LOFGREN: When did you go to the mainland?
PEACOCK: The military unit was the Corps of
Engineers. My first unit was called General Service Engineers where we built the Alaskan
highway and then the next year it was the Combat Engineer. I didn’t get to stay with them,
thank goodness, because they shipped out and
when they were overseas, they had to get off the
boat fighting. I was cadred to another camp in
Camp Boone, Texas, where they were organizing another Combat Engineering Unit.
LOFGREN: Where did you go after completing
your basic military training? If you were not sent
overseas immediately following basic training
when did you finally leave the United States?
PEACOCK: We left England on New Year’s
Eve day of 1945, went across the channel and
we got off the boat. One scary thing there was
going across the channel, we were out in the
middle of the channel, we had to stop dead still
in the water while a hospital ship was going
from France to England. It was all lit up like a
Christmas tree. It had a big red cross on the side
and it was painted white and we had to stay very
still until it got out of the way because of submarines from the Germans. Then we got underway
again and we finally got to Cherbourg where we
got off the boat and went up to a base camp on
top of the hill in France.
�LOFGREN: What did you think about our nation’s war effort up to this point?
PEACOCK: Well that was a tough one to do
because they were having a hard time with the
Germans. Of course, with the winter being on it
was all more hardships.
LOFGREN: If you did not immediately enter a
combat zone where did you go before entering
combat? I guess you answered that. You were in
England. Tell us about your experience about
your entering your first combat zone.
PEACOCK: There isn’t anytime whereI was
very lucky. I never saw any combat. The only
time I was near a combat zone was when I was
on reconnaissance trip looking for things to do
for our engineers like roadwork, and bridges to
be repaired and stuff. I came upon some other
engineers that were fixing a railroad that the
Germans had dropped on to this road to block it.
I was askingI could hear shelling going on in
the distance and I asked one of the troops there
how far we were from the front lines. He pointed
out to a house across the field from where we
were standing. He said, “You see them fellows
walking around down there? Them are the Germans right there.” It was about a half mile away.
He said, “That’s the front lines.” That is the
closest I ever got.
truck with its brakes set. This fellow hit that load
so hard it moved it five feet. He killed himself
pinned in his truck. That’s the only two casualties I can recall.
LOFGREN: How were they treated? Were they
both killed?
PEACOCK: The one that lost his foot, he survived okay but the one in the truck, he was dead
instantly.
LOFGREN: The one that lost his foot, how
were the hospital facilities? Do you know anything about that?
PEACOCK: I don’t know anything about that.
He was in a different company but in the same
outfit he was in a different company. I just
heard about him and I don’t know how he ever
made out.
LOFGREN: Did your mental attitude change as
combat continued?
PEACOCK: Well we all got to be more serious
as we heard about these incidents and we would
pay more attention about what we were doing
and looking out for our own well being now.
LOFGREN: Did you write many letters home?
LOFGREN: Taking these one at a time in
chronological order please tell us in full detail, if
possible, about the approximate number and
types of casualties.
PEACOCK: I wrote as often as I could. Sometimes we didn’t have very much time to write
and I received many letters from home which
was a big moral booster.
PEACOCK: Well I can only recall two casualties in my outfit. One was a fellow who was out
in the field and he was kind of careless where he
was walking and he stepped on a anti-personal
mine and he lost a foot. Another casualty was
we were working on a bridge over the Rhine
River, the Remagen Bridge. One of the truck
drivers that was hauling gravel on the approach
road, he had been hauling all night. The lieutenant said he had to go back and get one more load
of gravel and it made him mad and he went racing through the company area and he drove his
truck into a bigwe call it tank retriever unit. It
had a General Sherman tank on a trailer and this
LOFGREN: Were you married at the time?
PEACOCK: No I wasn’t married. I didn’t have
a girlfriend yet? I left her behind.
LOFGREN: Did you receive many letters?
How often and did you receive packages?
PEACOCK: One interesting thing about a
package I receivedWhen I left home being 22
years old and, of course, I had been smoking for
8 or 9 years and I didn’t think my folks knew
about it. My first package I received overseas,
there was candy bars and cigarettes. That sur-
�prised me because I didn’t know they knew I
smoked.
LOFGREN: Did most of the other men write
and receive letters from home?
PEACOCK: Yes most of them did. Most of
them wrote like everyday if they could. They all
received letters and packages, too. Mail was
pretty good coming over there.
LOFGREN: Have you remained in contact with
any of your World War II companions?
PEACOCK: I have up until now. There are so
many of them passing away. Of the 3 different
units I was in, we all had reunions pretty near
every year and for the last 40 years we’ve been
having reunions. They’re getting so few now
that no one wants to come any more. The friends
are about all gone.
LOFGREN: During your combat duty, did you
ever capture any prisoners?
PEACOCK: I never had any combat experience, although I did have 2 German prisoners
that gave up to me one time when we were coming back to camp. Two old German couples
came out on the road waving their arms, saw
that we were Americans and they stopped us and
they pointed to their barn over in the field there
and they said, “Bosh, bosh.(?). So we started to
go over to this barn. As we did these two Germans walked out with their arms over their head
carrying their rifles and they gave up to us. Then
we had to take them to our battalion headquarters. They questioned them for a little bit and
then they decided they had to get rid of them
because we had nowhere to keep them. So then
they had to take them to a POW camp which
was some distance away. That was another experience. We had to take them at night and we
was close enough to a combat zone that we had
to drive “blackout” and that was an experience.
Not knowing where we were going or couldn’t
see where we were going. We finally got rid of
them. Then we had to find our way back to our
own camp.
LOFGREN: Prior to the end of the war were
you aware that any civilian concentration camps
existed? If so, please explain how you learned
about and how much you knew at that time.
Peacock: We really didn’t know about any concentration camps so I can’t say anything about
how they were or what they were like.
Lofgren: Did you help liberate any prison
camps at the end of the war?
Peacock: No, I had no help in doing that.
Lofgren: What was the highlight occurrence of
your combat experience?
Peacock: There again, I didn’t have any combat
experience so not much highlight there.
Lofgren: Tell us what you and the other men
did to celebrate America’s traditional holidays
such as Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Peacock: I remember one Thanksgiving, we
were going to have chicken for dinner on Sunday and we got this shipment of chickens and
they were all frozen. They were cleaned but they
weren’t drawn so I helped the cooks draw these
chickens for Sunday dinner.
Lofgren: When or how did you return to the U.
S. after the end of the war?
Peacock: When the war was over I finally had
enough points so I could come home and I went
to one of the camps where they were assembling
enough troops to load up the boat. I was put in
charge of another platoon and I remember this
one fellow, he would rather have stayed there
than go home. He hated to get back on the boat.
He got seasick just going up the gangplank to
get on the boat. He was sick all the way home.
Lofgren: What happened when you arrived in
the U.S.?
Peacock: We got off the boat in New York and I
think it was the Red Cross or the USO. Somebody met us there and they led us right into a big
cafeteria type thing and give us a steak dinner.
�That was a very good meal. I remember that
plainly.
Lofgren: Tell us about your military rank and
your decorations especially any campaign decorations that you might have received.
Peacock: I hadn’t been in no combat. I didn’t
get any medals for that. We did get a citation for
being in the Alaska Highway. I got a ribbon for
that. My military rank, I got up to be a Staff Sergeant.
Lofgren: How did you learn about VE Day?
Peacock: We heard about VE DayWe were
working on a road doing repairs to a road and
the Jeep came down the road and they were delivering the Stars and Stripes, our newspaper,
and they said, “The war is over. The war is
over.” We thought they were all drunk and we
didn’t pay much attention to it until we got back
to camp that night and we had the officially
news.
Lofgren: How did you learn about VJ Day?
Lofgren: How did you get along with men with
whom you had the greatest contact?
Peacock: I got along good with my men. In fact,
that was one of my downfalls. I was too good to
them. The company commanders were going to
break me down to a private again because I was
too lenient on my men.
Lofgren: If there were things that you would do
differently, what would they be? Be not so lenient?
Peacock: I’d be a little tougher on the guys and
which is hard to do because they expect you to
have your eyes on the guys all the time. I’d have
been a little stricter.
Peacock: I can’t recall where I was to hear
about VJ Day.
Lofgren: What was your opinion of the use of
the atomic bomb when it was used against the
Japanese civilians in August of 1945?
Peacock: Well, that was a terrible think I guess
but it sure put an end to the war in a hurry.
Lofgren: Has that opinion changed over the last
50 years?
Peacock: No, I’d do it again, I guess, if things
got bad enough and we may have to do it the
way things go now.
Lofgren: What was the most difficult thing you
had to do during your period of military service?
Lofgren: Do you have any opinions about our
national military status or its policies?
Peacock: I guess the most difficult thing in the
early part of my service was being on the Alaskan Highway. That first winter, we were just
trying to stay warm. When it got down to 72º
below zero it was tough to stay warm. That was
one of the toughest things to do.
Peacock: I have no great opinion about it other
than we have to have it and I think they are a
little lax in some of the waysespecially the Air
Force, the way they’re treating the women there.
That’s got to be corrected.
Lofgren: Is there any one thing that stands out
as your most successful achievement in your
military service?
Peacock: I guess just be made aI wasn’t in the
army very long and I was already a Buck Sergeant and after coming back from Alaska, I went
right to a Staff Sergeant and that was my highest
ranking.
Lofgren: Do you have any contact with the Veterans’ Administration?
Peacock: No I do not.
Lofgren: How did your family support during
your military life?
Peacock: They were all good to me. All they
could do was send me care packages and write.
�Lofgren: I have some other questions that I
would like to ask you. Do you remember Camp
Grant and tell what you can about it?
Peacock: I remember Camp Grant even before
the war. We used to go there during the summer
and watch the National Guard train and especially go to Bell Bowl and watch the boxing matches. When I came back, I was discharged at Camp
Grant also. When I got there I had some kind of
a rash all over my body and I had to stay in the
hospital a week or so before I could go home.
One day they give me a pass so I knew where I
was and I jumped over the fence and I went
home. I had to come back though.
Lofgren: What did you do when you came back
from the service? Did you go right to work?
Peacock: Yes I went right back to work with my
dad and brother and sister. We still had the lumber yard and I stayed there until we got rid of it
in 1948.
Lofgren: After that, what did you do?
Peacock: After that I met this nice lady one time
when I was home on a furlough. She worked at
Woodward Governor Company. We got pretty
when I come home and she encouraged me to go
take the test at Woodward Governor and luckily
I got a job there and that’s where I finished my
industrial works.
member of the Grange, farmer’s organization
and I dropped out of that later.
Lofgren: What is the most significant memory
in your life?
Peacock: I have one memory that comes to
mind right now. After I got out of the service I
started taking flying lessons out at Machesney
Airport. One time I was up solo flying and I’d
been flying around over Lake Geneva and Delavan and I was coming back to the airport and the
engine on the plane started sputtering and spitting. I thought Oh, Oh. I was right over a highway and I thought I'm going to have to land on
the road but luckily I leaned on the throttle and
the engine caught hold and by that time I was in
sight of the airport. I just flew right on in and
landed. Luckily, I made it okay.
Lofgren: Is there anything else you can think of
that you would like us to know about.
Peacock: I can’t think of anything exciting other
than the most memorable experience was the
first year on the Alaskan Highway. There were
so many trees there, like one fellow said, “Look
out there’s opportunity behind every tree out
there.”
Lofgren: I suppose that was a chance for you to
have a little laughter.
Peacock: Oh, yah.
Lofgren: When did you retire?
Lofgren: Is there anything else?
Peacock: I worked there 32 years and I retired
December 5th, 1980.
Lofgren: Did you belong to any social club?
Peacock: At the time I only belonged to the Masonic Lodge, Masons, no social club other than
that.
Peacock: That’s all I can think of now except
that the lady I met at Woodward Governor is
still my wife, 57 years.
Lofgren: There won’t be many married that
long in the future.
Peacock: I don’t imagine.
Lofgren: Did you belong to the VFW or the
American Legion?
Peacock: I did belong to the VFW for a while
and then I dropped out of that. I had been a
Lofgren: Well, Glenn, it has been a pleasure
interviewing you and I hope you have many,
many more years with that nice young lady who
is your roommate.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Midway Village Museum
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Midway Village Museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-2001
Rights
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Midway Village Museum
Language
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English
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Margaret Lofgren
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Glen Peacock
Location
The location of the interview
Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Glen Peacock
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
26-Mar-04
Description
An account of the resource
Born November 25, 1919, Glen Peacock was drafted into the Army infantry in 1941 and discharged in 1946. He died June 16, 2011.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Format
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pdf
Type
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Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War 2
World War II
-
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PDF Text
Text
Glen BarnesPage 0
GLEN BARNES
Midway Village and Museum Center
6799 Guilford Road
Rockford, Illinois
Phone 815 397 9112
�Glen BarnesPage 1
Glen Barnes
My name is Charles Nelson. I am a volunteer with
the Midway Village & Museum Center in
Rockford, Illinois, which is cooperating with the
statewide effort to collect oral histories from
Illinois citizens that participated in the momentous
events surrounding World War II. We are in the
office of Midway Village & Museum Center in
Rockford, Illinois, interviewing Mr. Glen Barnes.
Mr. Barnes served in the branch of the United
States Armed Forces during World War II. We are
interviewing him about his experiences in that war.
Glen would you please give us your full name,
place and date of birth. We would also like to have
the names of each one of you parents.
GLEN: I am Glen Barnes. I was born in Spokane,
Washington, August 1913. My father was James
Barnes. My mother was Bertha Barnes. They
were—had come to the west from North Carolina
and Tennessee several years before I was born in
Spokane.
CHARLES: Are there any details about your
parents or you family that you would like to give
besides this?
were going to have to get into it. I had a lot of
admiration for the English, the way they were
performing. I got some real bad odds and, of
course, when the Japanese did their little number
that made me fairly anxious to get going.
CHARLES: How did you hear of the December
7, 1941, bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese?
Where were you and what were you doing at the
time and what was your reaction and response to
those around you?
GLEN: Well I was in a logging camp up in
Clearwater. It was on a Sunday afternoon as I
recall. About eleven o’clock. I was on an upper
bunk. I had a little Emerson radio which was the
only radio in camp. I heard the news and I was
dumb founded. And it just shocked the whole—we
had about 200 men in the camp and it was a real
shock.
CHARLES: Had you formed any prior opinion or
developed any feeling about what was taking place
in Europe or Asia?
GLEN: Well, my oldest brother, Matt,—there
were six of us boys in the family and two—two
sisters. My oldest brother served in World War I in
France. He was in the Medical Corps over there
and he had some real experiences to tell. Of
course, it was a lot different when we finally got in
there, in 1942.
GLEN: Well, I was very concerned about what
would happen if Hitler and Mussolini was to take
over. I thought it would be pretty rough for the
United States.
CHARLES: The next is entering the military.
What was life like for you before the war and—
specifically during 1941?
GLEN: Yes. I read those. I took Time magazine
and followed it pretty closely.
GLEN: Well, at that time I graduated from high
school in 1933. I got a job up in Idaho in a logging
camp washing dishes and after that I finally wound
up in the Clearwater National Forest, driving truck
and finally driving a cat skidding logs and I really
enjoyed that. I remember when I first heard—
maybe I’m getting ahead of myself.
CHARLES: What thoughts did you have about
the war before the United States became directly
involved in the conflict?
GLEN: Well, I don’t recall. I know I had some
definite thoughts about Hitler and the way he was
taking over Europe and I thought eventually we
CHARLES: Do you recall reading newspaper
accounts of German aggression in Europe?
CHARLES: What events led to your entry into
military service? Were you already in service,
drafted or did you volunteer?
GLEN: Well, my draft number was coming up at
the time I was a “cat” driver for [?] Forest,
Clearwater Timber and as my number was coming
up I decided to jump in and get it over with so I
volunteered. And I was inducted in Spokane; I
think it was in March, the 23rd.
CHARLES: Did you have any special memories
of this event? About the induction?
GLEN: Oh, not really. It was quite simple. It
didn’t take very long. There was about six of us
�Glen BarnesPage 1
and they immediately put us on a train and we
went to Fort Lewis, Washington, for the formal
induction.
CHARLES: How old were you?
GLEN: Well, I got to think. I was 32 or 33 I guess
at the time.
CHARLES: What happened after you were
inducted?
GLEN: Well, we had a week of hell at Fort Lewis.
They were under war time restrictions over there.
They had blackouts. It was on the coast. And it
seemed like everybody was afraid of the Japanese
were going to take over and they even had—Well,
it was pretty strict around there. That’s a very
rainy cold climate around Seattle there especially
in March.
CHARLES: Did you take your basic training in
Fort Lewis?
GLEN: No. After a week of shots and KP and
they sent me down to Logan’s Field for the Army
Air Corps.
CHARLES: What state was that in?
GLEN: That was in Texas. At Dallas
CHARLES: What were you trained to do?
GLEN: Aircraft mechanic
CHARLES: What did you think of the training?
GLEN: Well, it was pretty rough. It was hard. But
it was very thorough.
CHARLES: Tell us about any other training
camps you attended.
CHARLES: Did you have any leaves or passes?
GLEN: I didn’t get a leave until we finally got to
Alfredo, Washington, on our first phase training
and at that time my father passed away in Spokane
so I was given a two week leave at that time.
CHARLES: What do you recall of this period
about the places you were stationed, the friends
you made and your association with civilians?
GLEN: Well, we had a real nice time in Texas. I
got acquainted with a gentleman or a fellow
soldier from Shawnee, Oklahoma. He had a car
and we went up there once or twice to visit his
family and they were very hospitable and treated
me just like a family member. No. I had some very
good experiences with civilians.
CHARLES: Where did you go after completing
your basic military training? This refers to the
conflict over seas.
GLEN: The final—after Alfredo was first phase
then we went to Rapid City for second phase. Then
over to Utah for third phase training; and from
there to Grand Island, Nebraska, and then we were
shipped overseas. We went to Presque Isle, Maine,
overnight. Then we went to Goose Bay, Labrador.
We had our own crew at that time and our own
airplane and we got to Goose Bay at 7:30 in the
evening. This was in January. It was really cold.
At 11:30 that night, we had a favorable tail wind
so they sent us off for North Ireland at 11:30. We
arrived at North Ireland about 7:00 the next
morning and landed at a place called Nuts Corners
about 12 miles out of Belfast and we were there
for two or three days. Then we were sent to our
field at Glatten. We got there about the 20th of
January, I guess.
CHARLES: What group were you assigned to?
GLEN: Quite a few of them. I went from there—
from Dallas—I went to Boeing at Seattle on B-17s
to get better equipped to work on 17s on the line
and from the Boeing factory, I went to Boise,
Idaho, on the line. From there I went to Camp
Luna, Las Vegas, New Mexico. From there to
Gulfport, Mississippi, to a “tech” school on cargo
planes. Then I went to the Ford factory in
Dearborn, Michigan on R-2800 engines. Then to
Jefferson Barracks for overseas training. Then my
order came through of gunnery school at
Arlington, Texas, and from then on I was in the
Air Corps as a flying personnel.
GLEN: 457 Bomber Group.
CHARLES: What squadron?
GLEN: 749th.
CHARLES: And what [were] your duties?
GLEN: I was originally trained for a flight
engineer on a B-17 but we already had a flight
engineer and so they put me in the waist. Our ball
gunner seemed to be having a lot of trouble in
�Glen BarnesPage 2
getting used to the position so the pilot asked me if
I would take over the ball for a while until a guy
by the name of Kegel got straightened out. So I
flew in the [?] for about 13 or 14 missions.
CHARLES: What did you think of the nation’s
war efforts up to this point?
GLEN: It was pretty damn confusing, really. We
were able to hear the German propaganda there in
England. In fact, about the second night after we
arrived we listened to Lord Haw-Haw and he was
telling us all about what was happening at home
with our girlfriends and wives and everything else.
It was a little disturbing to say the least. He
infuriated the English, Haw-Haw did. At one point
he called the Queen fat ass little bastard and my
God that tore them. I mean they was ready to hang
him if they could get a hold of him and I guess
maybe they did, when they did catch him. But the
English were a beautiful people. They treated us
very nicely.
CHARLES: Tell us about your experience of
entering your first combat zone.
GLEN: Well, when we flew from Nuts Corner
down to Glatten they sent a captain up there who
had had several missions and he made it sound
pretty grim. He said you got to load you guns and
fly under combat conditions down to Glatten. So
that kind of put a chill on things, so we did that.
And then it was a month before we ever made a
mission. We did a lot of training flights and we
saw some of the crews would land there. Like we
were in the Pollbrook—I’ve got the map here.
bad. The longest mission we were supposed to go
to Berlin and they sent us on over on a secondary
target to Stettin in Poland. That was eleven hours.
CHARLES: In your missions, were there any
casualties involved in your plane?
GLEN: The pilot and co-pilot got hit by flak. Not
bad. One on the hand. The co-pilot was hit on the
hand and the pilot—I think he got a piece on the
cheek. It wasn’t serious though.
CHARLES: And how were they treated?
GLEN: They were brought back to the—come
back to the base and they took them to the hospital
and patched them up and they had a day or two off
and then they were back flying again.
CHARLES: What did you think of the war so far?
GLEN: It depended on the kind of mission we
had. If it was an easy mission, it wasn’t too bad.
We’d go home and have a few beers down at the
Crown [Wool Pack] which was a pub on the Great
North Road close to where we were stationed and
we’d forget all of our problems. I was fortunate
enough to get acquainted with a girlfriend over
there and we had some very nice times. I didn’t
worry about the damn war. If we was going to get
it we was going to get it. That is the way it was
and enjoy life the best we could.
CHARLES: Did you write many letters home?
GLEN: Yes, I wrote quite regularly.
CHARLES: Can you list for us, in order of
occurrence, all subsequent combat action in which
you were involved?
CHARLES: Did you receive many letters and/or
packages? If so, how often—what type of things
did you receive in your packages?
GLEN: Well, after several training missions on
the 22nd of February, 1944, we went to Muenster
to bomb a [?] plant. There were very few fighters.
Moderate flak. That wasn’t a very tough mission.
Then the next one was on the 24th of February we
went to Schweinfurt. We lost an engine going in
and had contact with a 109 but a P-38 came to our
rescue and we made it home OK. Then things were
pretty calm until the 1st of March when they
started sending us to Berlin. I went to Berlin three
times pretty close together and on the 7th mission
we went to Augsburg. That was a long mission—
nine hours and 35 minutes. There were a lot of
fighters. Then we started getting a few of the no
missions across the channel which weren’t too
GLEN: I know I made a request to my brother
who was a fireman for Potlatch back in Idaho in
the logging camp and asked him if he would have
the blacksmith make us some good knives. We
didn’t have any decent knives. So the logging
superintendent got busy and within about three
weeks we had ten beautiful knives. They made
them out of—I don’t know what kind of steel it
was but it was real nice. They sent them over to us.
We got packages of food, cookies, clothes and
things for the girlfriend.
CHARLES: Did most of the other men write and
receive letters?
�Glen BarnesPage 3
GLEN: Oh, I think quite a few of them did. I
know I was pretty well taken care of in that regard.
CHARLES: Did you forge close bonds or
friendships with many of your combat
companions?
GLEN: Our crew was very close. We had a real
good crew. They were all volunteers. Every one of
them.
CHARLES: Have you remained in contact with
any of your World War II companions?
GLEN: Not really. They’re scattered out all over.
The Bombardier—he’s down in Florida—in bad
shape. He’s had several heart operations and he’s
really the only one that I’ve had contact with.
CHARLES: Prior to the end of the war were you
aware of any civilian concentration camps existed.
If so, please explain how you learned about them
and how much you knew about at that time
GLEN: You mean in our country?
CHARLES: No. In Germany.
GLEN: Oh, yeah. We were informed about that.
In fact several of our missions we were
deliberately instructed to fly over the concentration
camp to give the POWs a morale lift. Of course,
we were flying high—they could hear us but
couldn’t see us. I guess that was a morale builder.
CHARLES: What was your high light occurrence
of your combat experience?
GLEN: The last. We had a milk run for the last
mission and that was the one I really kissed the
ground when we got back.
GLEN: We weren’t—when we were overseas, the
only holiday we had was 4th of July—we were
there 4th of July and there was a lot of gun fire.
We had 45s and we did a lot of shooting up in the
air and that was about it.
CHARLES: When and how did you return to the
United States after the end of the war?
GLEN: We went up to the Clyde Anchorage and
boarded the New Amsterdam and sailed back on
the New Amsterdam.
CHARLES: What happened when you arrived in
the United States?
GLEN: Well we stayed overnight. We got into
New York about 4:00 in the afternoon. We had a
lot of German prisoners on board who—they
thought they would find New York all bombed
because the propaganda had told them that the
Luftwaffe had taken care of New York so they
were astonished, of course, and we had to stay on
board all night. I remember one GI said if they let
him go he could be home, running at top speed,
before he got out of breath. He lived that close to
where we docked but they wouldn’t let anyone off.
And the next morning we went to Camp Shanks, I
think it was and were treated to a nice meal and
put on trains and went home then.
CHARLES: Please tell us about your military
rank and your decorations, especially your
campaign decorations.
GLEN: I was made Staff Sergeant. Of course,
promotions were pretty slow. I was supposed to
get Tech. Sergeant being an engineer at the last but
that never came through. I got the DFC
(Distinguished Flying Cross) an air medal with
three clusters and on the campaign that went with
it. I don’t know what you call those.
CHARLES: Do you remember where you went?
GLEN: Yeah. I’ve got it here someplace. It was
just across the channel on [?] I think Shadow
Down [?] or something like that.
CHARLES: Shannon dun. That’s in France.
GLEN: Yeah.
CHARLES: OK. Tell us what you and the other
men did to celebrate America’s traditional family
holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas.
CHARLES: This is return to civilian life. How
did you get along with the member with whom
you had the greatest contact?
GLEN: I got along OK. I was nervous as a cat. I
about drove my mother nuts. Couldn’t sit still. I
was a nervous wreck for quite a while but finally
got calmed down.
CHARLES: Were there any things you would do
differently if you could do them once again?
�Glen BarnesPage 4
GLEN: Yes, I probably would. After I got back,
they sent me to Chanute Field and I had to go back
up to Boeing again on the B-29 on engine change.
They wanted engine change instructors. So the
civilian head down there that was in charge of the
school wanted me to stick around and take my test
and stay there. That was a big mistake because I
could have made a lot more money than I did it I’d
just stayed there but I wanted out as fast as I could
so I got out.
CHARLES: Is there any one thing that stands out
as your most successful achievement in the
military service.
GLEN: Well, I think we—our crew conducted
ourselves well and we did what was asked of us
and that’s about it, I guess. I don’t know what else
we could have done.
CHARLES: How did you learn about V- Day and
what was you reaction to it?
GLEN: It was about the same. I really can’t recall
too much about it. I had met my wife at this time.
Hadn’t gotten married or anything but she was —
worked in the telegraph office in Decatur and so
we celebrated the usual.
CHARLES: What was you opinion of the use of
the atomic bomb when it was used against
Japanese civilians in August of 1945?
GLEN: I was real glad that it was used because of
the fanaticism of the Japanese soldiers who
considered being was the greatest honor is about
the only thing that could be done otherwise we
would have lost a lot of men over there.
CHARLES: Has that opinion changed over the
last fifty years? If so, how?
GLEN: No, I don’t think so. I just thank God that
we had Harry Truman there with the guts enough
to go ahead and do that.
CHARLES: When and where were you officially
discharged from service?
GLEN: I was at Chanute Field and it was on
October the 6th, 1945, and my wife’s birthday.
CHARLES: Do you receive a disability rating or
pension?
GLEN: No.
CHARLES: Do you have any opinions or feelings
about our nation— (End of side one. There is
nothing more on this tape)
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
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Midway Village Museum
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Midway Village Museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-2001
Rights
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Midway Village Museum
Language
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English
Format
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pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Charles Nelson
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Glen Barnes
Location
The location of the interview
Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
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Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Glen Barnes
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
March 5, 1994
Description
An account of the resource
Born August 1913, Glen Barnes served in the Air Force from 1941 to 1945 as a Ball Gunner. He died November 2, 2013.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Format
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pdf
Type
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Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War II
WW2
-
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PDF Text
Text
Fred G. (Ted) NottPage 1
Fred G. (Ted) Nott
Transcribed by Lorraine Lightcap
Edited by Margaret Lofgren
Midway Village & Museum Center
6799 Guilford Road
Rockford, Illinois
Phone 815 397 9112
�Fred G. (Ted) NottPage 2
Fred G. Nott
Also known as Ted G. Nott
Today is February the 10th, 1994. My name is Charles Nelson. I am a volunteer with Midway Village in Rockford,
Illinois, which is cooperating with the statewide effort to collect oral histories from the citizens of Illinois that participated in the momentous events surrounding World War II. We are in the office of Midway Village in Rockford,
Illinois, interviewing Mr. Ted Nott who lives at 5271 Crestdale Drive, Rockford, Illinois. Mr. Nott served in a
branch of the United States Armed Forces during World War II. We are interviewing him about his experiences in
this war.
NELSON: Ted, would you please start by introducing yourself to us?
NOTT: My name is Fred G. (Ted) Nott. I go by
the name of Ted because that has been a nickname all my life and that’s the way most people
know me.
NELSON: We would like to have the names of
each of your parents.
NOTT: Hazel. My wife’s name was Hazel. Hazel Kraft. I started a potato chip route there before the war. Then when Pearl Harbor came
along, I eventually went down and took the exam for the air corps and passed.
NELSON: What thoughts did you have about
the war before the United States became directly
involved in the conflict?
NELSON: Are there any details about your parents or your family that you would like to give?
NOTT: Well, of course, it was going o and I
had always wanted to fly ever since I was a
small boy. I wanted to get in to it. Then I got
married and thought “Well, that’s the end of
that.” So then the war came along and gave me
another opportunity to get in. Prior to the war
you needed two years of college. But I had one
year and I went down and took the exam, as I
stated earlier, and passed it. That was it.
NOTT: Well, my father and mother were divorced when I was 8 years old. We were living
in North Dakota at the time and that was quite
an unusual happening then. That was about
1928.
NELSON: How did you hear of the December
7th, 1941, bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese? If so, where were you and what were you
doing at the time? What was your reaction to the
response of those around you?
NELSON: What was your life like before the
war, specifically during 1941?
NOTT: I was in Evanston at the time. I was
married. We were listening to the Chicago Bears
football game when it was suddenly announced.
Of course, it took us all by surprise. We were
stunned and that was about it. We didn’t think
much more about it, or say much about it, I
guess, until the next day.
NOTT: Alfred Nott and Rachel Nott.
NELSON: Did you have any brothers or sisters?
NOTT: Yes, I had three.
NOTT: Well, before the war, as I say, I grew up
in North Dakota during the drought and the depression. Things were pretty tough then, of
course. Eventually, I moved down to Evanston,
Illinois, and where I got married. I married an
old girlfriend from North Dakotafrom my
hometown and started a
NELSON: Had you formed any prior opinion or
developed any feeling about what had been taking place in Europe and Asia?
NELSON: What was her name?
NOTT: Not specifically except that it looked
like we’d eventually be in the war one way or
another.
�Fred G. (Ted) NottPage 3
NELSON: When and where were you inducted?
NELSON: Do you recall reading newspaper
accounts of German aggression in Europe?
NOTT: Yes.
NELSON: Did you have any knowledge of Hitler’s speeches, ideas or actions?
NOTT: Vaguely, I remember some of them,
heard some of them and so forth. Some of the
things he said. It wasn’t stated by him.
NELSON: What events led to your entry into
military service? Were you already in service,
drafted or did you volunteer?
NOTT: January 17th, 1943
NELSON: Do you have any special memories
of this event?
NOTT: Yes, the train-ride from Chicago down
to Miami Beach. It was an awful rough ride.
There was no bunks or anything like that. It was
about a three-day trip as I recall. We just took
the backs off the seats and laid them in the aisle
and tried to sleep on those.
NELSON: How old were you?
NOTT: I was twenty-three.
NOTT: No, I volunteered as I stated earlier. I
went down to the loop and took the exam which
took roughly half a day.
NELSON: Was your response to enter military
service influenced by family and friends attitudes towards the war, the threat of national security or any other consideration?
NELSON: What happened after you were inducted?
NOTT: Well, we went down to Miami Beach
and that’s where we had our basic training.
Learned how to march, etc.
NELSON: What were you trained to do?
NOTT: No, It was strictly my own decision and
I didn’t even mention it to my wife that I was
going to go down and take the exam for the Air
Force. I didn’t make any points on that.
NOTT: I wasn’t trained for anything specific.
We were hoping to go into the cadets.
NELSON: What did you think of the training?
NELSON: When and where were you inducted?
NOTT: In Chicago, Illinois
NELSON: Do you have any special memories
of that event?
NOTT: Yes, it was kind of rough in a way because they loaded us on a train in Chicago and
probably one of the oldest trains I’d ever seen
and we were shipped all the way down to Miami
Beach for basic training. There were no bunks or
beds or anything so we just ripped the seats off
of the seats and laid them on the aisles and slept
on those the best we could.
NOTT: It didn’t bother me that much. I had
been to the University of Illinois and I had been
in ROTC down there. I was somewhat familiar
with military traininga little bit.
NELSON: Tell us about some of the other training camps you attended?
NOTT: We went to Maxwell Field where we
were tested and Nashville, Tennessee, also
where we took all the tests to determine whether
we were going to be recommended for fighter
pilots, light bombardment, or heavy bombardment.
NELSON: Do you remember the date?
NELSON: Did you have any leaves or passes?
NOTT: (No answer)
NOTT: No, not at that time.
�Fred G. (Ted) NottPage 4
NELSON: What was your military unit?
NOTT: Eventually it ended up as thewell, the
Air Force, of course. But it waseventually, I
ended up as the 414 Fighter Group.
NELSON: Based where?
NOTT: Well, whenwhen we were organized,
we ended up on Iwo Jima.
NELSON: What were your assigned duties?
NOTT: I was a fighter pilot. I flew P47s. I instructed here in the States in P40s before I went
overseas. When I got over to Iwo Jima, I flew
P47Ns and P51Ds.
NELSON: When you were sent overseas, how
did you get there?
NOTT: By Liberty Ship.
NELSON: What were you assigned to do after
arriving?
NOTT: Kind of redundant. Flying fighter
planes.
NELSON: What did you think of the nation’s
war efforts up to this point?
NOTT: I was impressed.
NELSON: If you did not immediately enter a
combat zone, where did you go before entering
combat?
status for about three months. So it had been
about four months since I’d flown and when our
planes got over to Iwo Jima, another fellow and
I wanted to get up in the air right away and so he
said, “Why don’t we go up and take a look at
Chichijima.” It’s about 100 miles north of Iwo. I
said, “That sounds like a good idea to me.” The
two of us took off. We didn’t even have our
guns loaded. No guns at all. There were guns but
not loaded so we went up to Chichijima and we
circled around about 8000 feet and nothing happened. There was just a bunch of shot up planes
down there in the air field, and so forth so he
said, “Should we go down and take a closer
look.” I said, “Let’s go.” We went right down on
the deck and we were sailing along just at tree
top level and all of a sudden these white streaks
started going over the wings and I said, “Let’s
get the hell out of here” and we did and fortunately neither one of us got hit because if we had
been we’d have been court martialed because
we’d been told to stay away from there. It was as
heavily fortified as Iwo Jima was.
NELSON: Can you list for us in order of occurrence all subsequent combat actions in which
you were involved?
NOTT: Primarily, we got over late in the war. A
good share of the fighting was done. We had
combat patrols was the biggest part of our flying
and an occasional mission up to Japan which ran
about 7 ½ or 8 hours
NELSON: Did your mental attitude change as
combat continued?
NOTT: Not particularly, no.
NOTT: Well, here in the States after I graduated
at Marianna, Florida, and got my wings we were
sent down to fighter school at Punta Gorda, Florida, and after we finished our fighter school
training there, I was made an instructor at Punta
Gorda, Florida.
NELSON: Tell us about your experience about
entering your first combat zone.
NOTT: It was quite a joke and pretty stupid because we hadn’t flown for about four months. I
had been in the hospital, incidentally, off flight
NELSON: What did you think of the war so
far?
NOTT: We wanted to win it, of course. We hated the Japanese. We wanted to beat them, of
course.
NELSON: Did you write any letters home?
NOTT: Oh, absolutely. Almost daily.
�Fred G. (Ted) NottPage 5
NELSON: Did you receive any letters or packages. If so, how often, what types of things did
you like to get in these packets?
NOTT: Well, we got letters quite often. I forget
what they call them. Those little abbreviated
NELSON: Care packages?
NOTT: No, not that. Anyway, occasionally I’d
get a package but it was difficult to get way over
there. But I heard from my wife quite often.
NELSON: Did most of the other men write or
receive letters?
NOTT: Oh, yes.
NELSON: Did you forge close bonds of friendship with any of your combat companions?
NOTT: Oh, yes. Many of them.
NELSON: Have you remained in contact with
any of your World War II companions?
NOTT: Yes. In some cases, yes.
NELSON: Did you ever have to help retrieve a
wounded buddy from a field of combat?
NOTT: No.
NELSON: What was your highlight occurrence
of your combat experience?
NOTT: Well actually, the one that stands out
the most was I was on the last mission of the war
and both of the bombs had been droppedthe
atom bombsand we had a code word that
would be flashed to us if Japan surrendered. If
we got that then, of course, we weren’t to go in
and fire. But we
never got it. We got up to the Empireup to the
islands and there was cloud cover and the group
commander said, “Well, there’s a front here.
We’re going to turn around and go back.” My
flight leader who was an old hand from Sicily
and Italy, he just shook his head at me and just
motioned that we go straight ahead. We went on
in and it was kind of a mistake. We went in and
shot up some shipping and so forth. Then flying
around and looking around for more to do, we
went over an air field that was nothing down
there but burned out planes and hangars and so
forth. The flight leaderelement leadercalled
the flight leader and said, “I think I see something down there”. He says, “Can I take my
wing men and go down?” The flight leader said,
“Yes. Nott and I will stay up here and fly cover
for you.” So we circled up there while they went
in and strafed the airfield. Unfortunately, the
element leader’s wing man made a mistake
when they pulled out of their 180 turn and ended up directly in back of the element leader. Of
course, when they’re being fired on they usually
under lead the lead plane and so everything that
misses him catches the plane in back of him if
he’s right in back of him. They’re supposed to
be side by each. He got hit and he was able to
get back to within about 100 miles of Iwo where
he had to bail out and then as he dropped out the
tail plane caught him and he got compound fractures of both legs. He got his chute open and
landed in the water. He couldn’t get into his dinghy because he was so mangled up. Eventually,
they got to him and fished him out of the water
but he had lost so much blood, they got him
back to Iwo and he died about two or three days
after the war ended. When we got back towe
were the last group to get back to Iwo and as we
called in for landing instructions, the tower said,
“I’m sorry, you’re going to have to circle.
There’s a live bomb on the runway that had
dropped off a Navy plane that had been hung up
and when it hit the runway, why the bomb jarred
loose and was laying out there in the runway.
You’re going to have to circle.” The flight leader
said, “Like hell we will. We’ve got fifteen
minutes of gas left, and we’re coming in.” He
and I went in and straddled the bomb, one on
each side of it. Then as I rolled up and parked
my plane, the mechanicmy mechanic jumped
on the wing and he said, “Sir, do you know the
war is over?” And I said, “Right now I could
care less.” I’d been in that cockpit for eight
hours and hadn’t gone to the bathroom in all that
time and I had to go so bad that my teeth were
floating and that was all I was interested in at the
moment.
�Fred G. (Ted) NottPage 6
NELSON: Tell us what you and the other men
did to celebrate America’s traditional family
holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas.
NOTT: We had whatever they could give us for
the best food they could come up with at the
time. There is quite a fallacy, as far as we were
concerned, about the Air force getting some of
the best food. When we wanted to get good
food, we’d take a bottle of booze and go over to
the Navy officers’ club or the CBs and for that
bottle of booze, we could get almost enough
steaks to feed our squadron.
NOTT: Well, I ended up as a 1st Lieutenant. I
don’t rememberwe got a couple of battle stars
and air medal. That’s basically what it was.
NELSON: How many campaigns were you in?
NOTT: Just the one from Iwo Jima.
NELSON: How did you get along with men
with whom you had the greatest contact?
NOTT: Fine. No problem.
NELSON: Are there any things you would do
differently if you could do them once again?
NELSON: When and how did you return to the
United States after the war?
NOTT: No. I would still try to get into the Air
Force and fly. I dearly loved it. I still do.
NOTT: After things had settled down, we were
still on Iwo. Then they decidedIncidentally, in
the meantime, I had found that there was a
friend of mine flying P51s in the Twenty-first
Fighter Group adjacent to us in another airfield
on the island. I always wanted to fly a P51. I got
myself transferred over there so I could fly with
him. I did get to fly the 51s and I enjoyed it very
much. It was a great plane to fly. Then the powers to be decided that my old 414 Fighter Group
which flew P47s was to transfer down to Clark
Field in the Philippines. They didn’t have
enough pilotssome of the other P51 pilots
were going to be transferred down there, too, but
they had no P47 experience so they pulled me
back into the 4l4 to fly down to Clark Field. So
then we flew down there eventually.
NELSON: What is the most difficult thing you
had to do during your period of military service?
NELSON: What happened when you arrived in
the United States?
NOTT: Well, nothing much really. We got back
to San Francisco eventually. Incidentally, I came
back on a hospital ship and it took us 21 days
from Manila to Seattle. When we got there everything had quieted down and nobody paid any
attention to us. There was no parade or anything
like that at all.
NELSON: Please tell us about you military rank
and your decorations, especially you campaign
decorations.
NOTT: Getting through cadets, without a doubt.
We had to go through primary basic and advanced and they were washing guys out right
and left. It was a tough situation. Everything was
spit and polish. It was just a rough go. I
wouldn’t want to do it again on a bet but I
wouldn’t have missed it for anything.
NELSON: Is there any one thing that stands out
as your most successful achievement in the military service?
NOTT: Well, becoming a fighter pilot as far as I
was concerned was exactly what I wanted to
achieve. And I got that.
NELSON: How did you learn about VE Day
and what was your reaction to it?
NOTT: We were on Iwo when the word came
that the Japanese had surrendered. Oh, VE Day.
That’s Europe.
NELSON: Yes.
NOTT: It was jubilation. The war in Europe
was over. That was it. I had always wanted to go
to Europe rather than the pacific but I had no
control over that.
�Fred G. (Ted) NottPage 7
NELSON: What about VJ Day?
NOTT: VJ Day we were on Iwo Jima when the
word was flashed that the war was over. That
was the end of World War II.
NELSON: What was your opinion of the use of
the atomic bomb when it was used against Japanese civilians in August of 1945?
NOTT: I have a definite opinion on that. It is
this: I have always thought that we could have
forewarned the Japanese and told them that on
such and such a day at so many miles off of the
coast at a certain point there would be a demonstration and be prepared for it. Then detonate an
atomic bomb there and show them that this is
what’s going to happen to them if they don’t
capitulate. I would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives with the two bombs that we
dropped on civilians but as I say, on the other
hand, if we had had to invade Japan we would
have lost an awful lot of our people, too. So it’s
debatable.
NELSON: When and where were you officially
discharged from service?
NOTT: Fort Sheridan, Illinois.
NELSON: When?
NOTT: Yes, I do. I get medical attention from
the Veterans’ Administration because I have a
disability.
NELSON: What is your opinion of the VA if
you have had any contact with it?
NOTT: As far as the Veterans’ Administration
that I go to as far as medical service, I can’t say
enough about them that’s good. They’re tremendous. Tremendous people.
NELSON: Would you like to tell us about how
your family supported you during your military
life?
NOTT: Well, I was married when I went in the
service and after I got through basic and got in
cadets, my wife joined me and she was with me
pretty much along the way until I went overseas.
NELSON: Over the subsequent years, what has
this support meant to you?
NOTT: Well, it was great to know that she supported me. It was a tough time for her, too, because she had to travel, there wasn’t much money and she developed something when she was
down south. Something that was almost like colitis, so she was kind of miserable on the way
but it was a great pleasure having her with me.
NOTT: In 1946.
NELSON: Did you have a disability rating or
pension?
NOTT: Yes, I did.
NELSON: Do you have any opinions or feelings about our nation’s military status or its policies?
NOTT: No. I think it’s important that we maintain a strong force to protect ourselves. I think
that that was to our benefit when we forced Russia to more or less draw back and tear down the
Berlin Wall and so forth.
NELSON: Do you have any contact with the
Veterans’ Administration?
NELSON: Thank you, Ted. Is there anything
else you would like to add to this interview?
NOTT: No. I appreciate the chance to be interviewed. It was nice.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
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Midway Village Museum
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Midway Village Museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-2001
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Language
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English
Format
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pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Charles Nelson
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Fred G. (Ted) Nott
Location
The location of the interview
Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Fred G. (Ted) Nott
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
February 10, 1994
Description
An account of the resource
Born in 1920, Fred Nott (also known as Ted Nott), joined the Air Force from 1943 to 1946. He died May 13, 2000.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War II
WW2
-
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PDF Text
Text
Frank R. Wilson
Frank R. Wilson
Transcribed by Lorraine Lightcap
For Midway Village and Museum Center
6799 Guilford Road
Rockford, IL 61107
Phone 815 397 9112
Page 1
�Frank R. Wilson
Page 2
Frank R. Wilson
Today is March 19, 1994. My name is
Charles Nelson. I am a volunteer at Midway
Village and Museum Center in Rockford,
Illinois, which is cooperating with the
statewide effort to collect oral histories from
Illinois citizens that participated in the
momentous events surrounding World War
II. We are in the office of Midway Village
and Museum Center in Rockford, Illinois,
interviewing Mr. Frank R. Wilson who
served in a branch of the United States
Armed Services during the war. We are
interviewing him about his experiences in
that war.
NELSON: Frank, would you please start
introducing yourself to us. Please give us
your full name, date and place of birth. We
would also like to have the names of each of
your parents. Did you have any brothers or
sisters?
WILSON: My name is Frank Rodney
Wilson. My birth date is October 14, 1923.
My father’s name was Walter Wilson and
my mother’s name Bertha Cragler Wilson. I
have two sisters both of them are married.
NELSON: Are there any details about you
parents or you family that you would like to
give?
WILSON: Well, I guess we were pretty
ordinary for that period of time. However,
my father did build our home in Grand
Rapids, Michigan. (Long pause). There’s a
part of my grandfather’s homestead in a
museum up in Oconda, Wisconsin, where
my father was raised.
NELSON: What was life like for you before
the war specifically during 1941?
WILSON: I was senior that year in high
school. I was having a great time. Except for
the rationing that occurred after December
7th. I was involved in basketball and track
NELSON: What thoughts did you have
about the war before the United States
became directly involved in the conflict?
WILSON: Well, I figured we would get
into it, sooner or later. I didn’t think we
could remain neutral.
NELSON: How did you hear of the December 7th, bombing of Pearl Harbor by the
Japanese? If so, where were you and what
were you doing at the time? What was you
reaction and response to those around you?
WILSON: The football captain and I were
playing a game of touch football with a
coupleabout four other guys. A kid came
running out of a house near the park and
said the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor.
We didn’t believe him. We said, “You must
be joking.” He turned around and went back
in the house. When we got home we found
out he wasn’t joking.
NELSON: What was your reaction?
WILSON: Well, I figured we would get
into it on the side of England and we had a
purpose to stop the Germans and Japanese.
NELSON: Had you formed any prior
opinion or developed any feeling about what
had been taking place in Europe or Asia?
WILSON: Yeah. Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo
were ruthless dictators.
NELSON: Did you recall reading newspaper accounts of German aggression in
Europe.
WILSON: Yeah.
NELSON: Did you have any knowledge of
Hitler’s speeches, ideas or actions?
WILSON: No, I, not reallynot until we
got into the war. I guess being in high school
I didn’t pay too much attention to that.
�Frank R. Wilson
NELSON: What events led to you entering
the military service? Were you drafted or
did you volunteer?
WILSON: I came here to Camp Grant and
volunteered a week after I graduated from
high school.
Page 3
NELSON: Where did you take your basic
military training?
WILSON: In the southeast, three or four
different flight schools.
NELSON: And what were you trained to
do?
NELSON: Was you response to entering
military service influenced by family and
friends attitudes toward the war, the threat to
national security or other considerations?
WILSON: Be a pilot.
WILSON: Well, I wanted to get in, hopefully to fly.
WILSON: Good.
NELSON: This next section goes into basic
training. When and where were you inducted?
WILSON: Camp Grant.
NELSON: Do you have any special
memories of this event?
WILSON: I just came here and took the
physical and mental tests and then went
home and waited about six months for them
to call me to active duty and went to
classification (?) in Nashville.
NELSON: How old were you?
WILSON: When the war started I was
eighteen and when I joined I was eighteen
but I went on active duty when I was
nineteen.
NELSON: What happened after you were
inducted?
WILSON: At Nashville they decided
whether we were going to go to pilot school,
navigation school or bombardier’s school.
NELSON: Where were you sent?
WILSON: Maxwell Field, Montgomery,
Alabama, for pre-flight.
NELSON: What did you think of the
training?
NELSON: Did anything special happen
there?
NELSON: Well, when I was at Maxwell
Field we had an inspection one Saturday. It
was Hap Arnold. He came walking down
our rank and stopped tight in front of me and
asked my name and when I gave it to him he
said, “Where was that hat issued to you?” I
said, “In Nashville, sir.” Then he went down
the rank.
NELSON: Tell us about all the military
camps you attended. Tell us about
WILSON: Well, wait a minute now. I got
another one when I was primary. I was up
solo and on my way back to the home field,
I looked at the windsock and planned my
pattern according to the windsock and when
I was on the approach leg I looked up and
airplanes were coming at me. The wind had
changed on them and they hadn’t changed
their pattern on the ground. I got out of the
way as quickly as possible and there were
three or four military check pilots. All of our
instructors were civilians but the check
pilots were military and one of them said,
“You’re an accident going somewhere to
happen.” I just passed that off and I’m still
here so must not have been too bad except if
I had seen him later after I got back from
overseas I would have said, “Yeah, you sure
were right.” I had thirty-three accidents.
They all happened in Germans.”
�Frank R. Wilson
Page 4
NELSON: Tell us what other training
camps you attended.
WILSON: Get ready for combat, our
crew
WILSON: The primary was at Carlstrom
Field, Arcadia, Florida, BT-13 training was
at Cochran Field, in Macon, Georgia, twin
engine advance was at Turner Field, Albany,
Georgia.
NELSON: What did you think of the
nation’s war effort up to this time?
WILSON: Our war effort?
NELSON: Yes.
NELSON: Did you have any leaves or
passes?
WILSON: Had passes but I didn’t have
enough money to go into town and spend it
so I waited until I had my wings and had a
furlough home.
NELSON: What do you recall of this period
about the places you were stationed, the
friends you made and your association with
civilians?
WILSON: Oh, They were all good. They
knew what we were in training for.
NELSON: What was you military unit?
WILSON: 92nd Bomb Group, 407th Bomb
Squadron and __?__.
NELSON: What were your assigned duties?
WILSON: Co-pilot on a B17. (Long pause.)
NELSON: And this was participation in the
conflict? Where did you go after continuing
military training?
WILSON: Went to Kearney, Nebraska and
picked up a brand new B-17 and our crew
ferried it over to England.
NELSON: When you were sent overseas
how did you get there?
WILSON: I just explained that.
NELSON: What were you assigned to do
after arriving?
WILSON: Well, I thought it was taking an
awful long time to get everything thing in
gear and going.
NELSON: If you did not immediately enter
the combat zone, where did you go before
entering combat?
WILSON: Entered immediately after being
overseas.
NELSON: Tell us about your experience in
entering your first combat zone or missions-.
WILSON: The first mission was to Merseburg (Laughter.) It was very enlightening to
say the least. Flack was so thick it looked
like you could get out and walk on it. The
thing of it is we went back twice more.
About half way through and then on my last
mission. Back to Merseburg.
NELSON: Can you list for us in order of
occurrence all subsequent combat action in
which you are involved.
WILSON: D-day was my 7th mission. Then
some weeks later went to Berlin. Oh, yeah.
There was one mission to central France
shortly after the invasion. Germansit was
an Ozark type of area, mountain, foot hill
type mountains. And we weren’t suppose to
know about the munitions dump but they
weren’t suppose to know that we knew
about it, but when we got there, they were
waiting and the flack was really heavy. We
went in under 14,000 feet. I don’t think we
went on oxygen. The flight surgeon was
required to fly a mission every actual
combat mission once in awhile. This was
supposed to be a milk run. He was on this
�Frank R. Wilson
mission. I saw him later in debriefing and he
couldn’tHe took both hands to hold these
glasses of scotchshot of scotch. (Laughter)
NELSON: Are there any others you would
like to mention?
WILSON: Yeah. They are all kind of
blurred together except for the Merseburg
missions, Berlin and D-Day.
NELSON: Can you tell us
WILSON: We wound up flying for twelve
hours on this mission. We took off before
dawn, flew to what we thought was our
radio beacon. It was not light enough to see
so we were with the wrong formation. We
cruised around looking for our group and we
checked out three or four. Then off in the
distance we saw a formation that was
missing a plain in our position that we were
assigned to. So we went rushing up there
and found out it was not our group. But we
asked them if they minded if we tagged
along. They said, “No, come right along,”
Then we were approaching cruise altitude
near 20,000 feet and the tuning board super
chargers lost the governors, lost the governors and the engines revved way up. We
tried to check them out and feed them back
in but every time we hit a certain point, the
turbots would go out of control and so we
flew up the rest of that mission on virtually
two engines. The pilot asked me, “Do you
think we ought to feather it?” I said, “No,
we’ll be stone cold by the time we get back
below 10,000 feet. We won’t be able to
restart them.” So we just left them running.
We flew our misssion on the two outboard
engines. Then on the way back after we got
out of dangerous German airspace started
heading down. They always picked up speed
and we couldn’t stay with them with our 2 –
4 engines. So we must have been near the
front of the column of bombers coming
back. We slipped under each formation as it
caught up to us. We noticed that the first
group that did that all their guns were
trained on us because there were German B-
Page 5
17s that would go up there who pulled that
kind of a stunt and shoot a bunch of them
down. So we made sure all of our guns were
turned away from the formation. We slipped
from one formation after another caught up
to them. Then we were over England and we
were by ourselves and we passed over B-26
field and asked for a heading to our field.
They gave it to us and we went on and made
our landing. The next morning we were out
there for another mission and the sergeant in
charge of the troops said, “You guys landed
on fumes.” There wasn’t more than about
five gallons for each engine. If we had to go
around, something had gone wrong and we
had to go around we wouldn’t have made it.
We would have ended up in some English
farmer’s field.
NELSON: Please tell us in full detail, if
possible, about the approximate number of
and types of casualties, how they occurred
and how they were treated.
WILSON: Well, I was extremely lucky.
I’ve got to say I was extremely lucky. The
day that we flew a mission we did not suffer
any losses. Airplanes, there were a few that
got wounded with flack. Our ball-turret
gunner received a scratch that took about 6
stitches, a piece of shrapnel came into the
ball-turret, whizzed around and bouncing off
everything and cutting over the eye on one
bounce. We saw 3 enemy aircraft and 2 of
them were enemies chasing a lone 17 that
had aborted and was headed back for
England. As far as I could watch him, he
was still in the air. Then on my last mission
an ME-162 rocket plane attacked our
formation. It put a hole with a cannon shell
big enough in the lead ship’s wing, left wing
for a man to crawl through and in the
process it cut through a control cable. And
we were on the bomb run. We had past the
IP, bomb bay doors were open and he felt
the plane slipping out of control. He hit the
salvo switch and all the other bombardiers
were watching and following the lead plane
and when they saw his bombs hit and so we
didn’t come any where close to the target,
but he got that plane back to England. He
�Frank R. Wilson
couldn’t lead the group. He had to fall out
and go back on his own but he got that plane
back.
NELSON: Were their casualties? How were
they treated?
WILSON: To tell you the truth, I didn’t see
any.
NELSON: Did your mental attitude change
as combat continued?
WILSON: Well, I was just getting gladder
and gladder the closer I got to my last
mission to get it over with.
NELSON: What did you think of the war so
far?
WILSON: Well, like I say, D-Day was our
7th mission and so we were flying missions
while the guys were approaching Paris,
broke out of Saint Lo. Oh, that was one of
my missions, Saint Lo, for the Cherbourg
Peninsula break out.
Page 6
WILSON: I can’t remember the names of
any of the other guys other than my crew
even though I was over there almost a half a
year.
NELSON: Have you remained in contact
with any of your World War II companions?
WILSON: Let me see. October 1992 I went
out to Tucson for the 50th Anniversary of the
formation of the 92nd bomb group.
NELSON: Did you ever have to help a
wounded person in combat?
WILSON: (No answer).
NELSON: What was your highlight
occurrence of your combat experience or
any other experiences you remember?
WILSON: The 3 Merseburg missions, DDay, Berlin. I think one mission was to
Munich and the Saint Lo mission. That one
at 14,000 feet into central France
NELSON: Tell us (Interruption).
NELSON: Did you write many letters
home?
WILSON: Other than that they all seemed
to run together.
WILSON: Oh, yeah.
NELSON: Did you receive many letters or
packages if so, how often?
WILSON: My wife was always writing me
and I was always answering.
NELSON: Did you receive packets?
WILSON: Yeah.
NELSON: Did most of the other men write
home and receive letters?
NELSON: Tell us what you and the other
men did to celebrate America’s traditional
family holidays such as Thanksgiving and
Christmas.
WILSON: We were over there for July
4th.but there wasn’t any big thing made of it
and my last mission was in August and I
was back by the middle of September so I
wasn’t over there for Thanksgiving or
Christmas.
NELSON: When and how did you return to
the United at end of the war?
WILSON: Yeah.
NELSON: Did you forge close bonds of
friendship with many or some of your
combat companions?
WILSON: On a C54, Douglas C54
transport.
NELSON: What happened when you
arrived in the United States?
�Frank R. Wilson
WILSON: We had two weeks leave. My
wife and I went to Miami, Miami Beach, we
spent a couple of weeks there.
Page 7
NELSON: What is your most difficult thing
you had to do during your period of military
service?
WILSON: Getting my wings.
NELSON: Please tell us about your military
rank and decorations especially your
campaign decorations.
WILSON: (Long pause). I've got my
ribbons. My ribbon bar has the DFC, the air
medal with three oak leaf clusters and ETO
ribbon with three bronze battle stars. The
middle one is for D-Day. One of these is for
air offensive Europe and I don’t know what
the other one. It was so similar to the air
offensive Europe that I keep getting them
mixed up but that middle one is for D-Day.
NELSON: How many missions were you
in?
WILSON: Thirty-three.
NELSON: This pertains to your return to
civilian life. How did you get along with the
men with whom you had the greatest
contact?
WILSON: You mean after the war?
NELSON: Yes, after getting back to
civilian life.
WILSON: Oh, didn’t have any trouble at
all.
NELSON: Were there anything you would
do differently if you could do them again?
WILSON: Yes. I would have stayed in
another year and then when I knew more
about the GI Bill I could have gone through
college with the rank of whatever __?__. If I
had been in a year longer, I probably would
have been a captain. I would hope so. But I
could have gone through the GI Bill in
college with the rank of 1st Lieutenant
maybe captain on that pay instead of $95 a
month.
NELSON: Is there any one thing that stands
out as you most successful achievement in
your military service?
WILSON: Well, I did my job and I survived. Wait a minute. There was one little
thing when I was getting my wings. About
the time I graduated from cadets, they had
decided there were too many 2nd Lieutenants
and they began issuingthey created a
position called Flight Officer. There was a
little blue enameled bar with a gold bar
runningit was similar to a Warrant Officer
except that it was blue and gold. We were
supposed to go in there and talk to an officer
and tell him why we thought we ought to be
a 2nd Lieutenant rather than a Flight Officer.
I went in there and the guy said, “Well,
what’s your story?” I said, “is the uniform
the same?” He said, “ Yeah.” Is the pay the
same? He said, “Yeah.” Do I rank a salute
from the enlisted men?” He said, “Yeah.”
“Are those wings the same?” He said,
“Yeah, it doesn’t make any difference.” and
when I looked at the list, I was “2nd Lieutenant.”
NELSON: How did you learn about VE
Day and what was your reaction to it?
WILSON: Oh, let’s see. VE Day was in
May. I was probably in __?__, Texas. Glad
we had defeated them.
NELSON: How did you learn about VJ Day
and what was your reaction to it?
WILSON: Let’s see. That was August.
(Long pause). I think I was maybe in __?__
New Mexico. Well, we were all glad it was
all over.
NELSON: What was your opinion of the
use of the atomic bomb when it was used
�Frank R. Wilson
against Japanese civilians in August of
1945?
WILSON: Well, we were told it would save
literally thousands and thousands of our
guys and I read later that they calculated
something in the neighborhood of two and a
half million casualties with one and a half to
two million being Japanese and the rest of
them allies. As many as possibly four
million with three million Japanese casualties and one million allied casualties. So that
makes the number of casualties that actually
occurred from the bomb and brought the war
to an end. I was all in favor of that.
Page 8
WILSON: No. The only thing is the GI Bill.
I guess that comes under the Veterans’
Administration.
NELSON: I think so. Would you like to tell
us about how your family supported you
during your military life?
WILSON: (Some indistinct discussion) I
had moral support all the way. Oh, sure.
They were all for it __?__.
NELSON: In your subsequent years, what
has this support meant to you?
WILSON: It kept our family close __?__.
NELSON: Has your opinion changed say in
the last fifty years?
NELSON: Well, Frank, is there anything
else you would like to add to it?
WILSON: No.
NELSON: When and where were you
officially discharged from the service?
WILSON: Fort Sheridan. __?__. Just on my
birthday. It was the middle of October 1945.
NELSON: Do you have any feeling about
the nations military status or policies?
WILSON: Well, regardless of the __?__
bombs (?) and its tirade against Grenada, I
was in favor of Grenada and the __?__. I’m
in favor of Desert Storm.
NELSON: What is your op8inion of the
Veterans’ Administration and did you have
any contact with it?
WILSON: Veterans’ Administration?
NELSON: Yes.
WILSON: I don’t have any contact with
them.
NELSON: You have never been in the
hospital, Veterans’ Administration Hospital?
WILSON: I knew by the time I was seven
years old, that I wanted to fly. About that
time I was reading The __?__ and we went
out to Chicago __?__ now called Midway. I
remember and occasion or one Sunday we
were out there watching the planes come in
and they were _____?_____and then all of a
sudden this streamlined of an airplaneit
was probably a DC2, but I knew that was the
wave of the future. No more __?__. No
more __?__ putting the __?__ together flaps
turned powerful enough to keep the plane in
the air. To keep the plane up and you know
there was never any doubt I was gonna try to
do and I volunteered for service. That was
the beginning (Long pause). I have no
regrets of m7 military service. It wasit
made many things that came afterwards
possible and I was able to go to college on
the GI Bill and became a teacher, science
teacher, for nearly 35 years. I think that all
came about because of my military experience.
NELSON: Well, thank you. That was a
good interview.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Midway Village Museum
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Midway Village Museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-2001
Rights
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Midway Village Museum
Language
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English
Format
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pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Charles Nelson
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Frank Wilson
Location
The location of the interview
Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Frank Wilson
Description
An account of the resource
Frank Rodney Wilson was born October 14, 1923. He enlisted in the Army Air Force in 1941 and was discharged in 1945.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War 2
World War II
-
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PDF Text
Text
Floyd Swenson
Transcribed by Lorraine Lightcap
For Midway Village and Museum Center
6799 Guilford Road
Rockford, Illinois 61107
Phone 815 397 9112
�Floyd Swenson
Today is January 31st, 1994. My name is Jim Will
and I’m a volunteer with the Midway Village and
Museum Center which is cooperating with a
statewide effort to collect oral histories from Illinois
citizens that participated in the events surrounding
World War II. We are at the home of Floyd Swenson
who lives at 3681 Blackhawk Road, in Rockford,
Illinois. Mr. Swenson, can I call you Floyd?
S: Yes.
W: What were their first names?
S: I’ll start with the boys. There’s Arthur, Walter,
Eskil, Carl and Philip and Floyd. That’s the 6.
W: How about sisters?
S: The first one was Amy and the second one was
Eldora. Amy was the only one that got married and
she had a son that passed away.
W: He served in a branch of the United States Armed
Forces during World War II and we are going to interview him about his experiences today.
W: So there was what, seven of you then?
S: I was with the, in World War II, that’s true, as a
combat engineer.
W: Including you.
S: There’s 8.
S: There were 6 boys, counting me, and 2 sisters.
W: Okay.
W: You mentioned your folks came from Sweden?
S: The combat engineers were with the one branch of
that unit. I was in 161, Infantry Division.
W: Okay.
S: We built all the roads up to them and went ahead
and built the roads and stuff.
W: Why don’t we start out with your full name.
S: That is my full name. I had a twin brother and my
folks were going to call me Philip Floyd. Well, I was
the afterbirth. (Laughter)
S: My dad was born in __?__, and my mother was
born at Hjo, Sweden. That’s on the Lake [Vattern]. A
lot of storms rise on that lake they used to tell us
about.
W: They came over here about when?
S: The closest I can get it, my dad washe didn’t
like to get into the army and they had compulsory
service and he got to come over here. My uncle was
on my mother’s side, or her uncle rather, Oscar Lindquist, he was the father of Carl E. Lindquist that was
the jeweler on Broadway.
W: Where were you born?
S: In Rockford.
W: Yeah, I’ve heard of that. Just before the World
War II started, do you remember what life was like in
1941 and 1940?
W: What date?
S: My mother’s name was Anna Sophia Johnson was
her maiden name. My dad’s name was Carl Allen
Richard Swenson.
S: In 1960 we moved up here from Stillman Valley. I
was 2 years old when they moved to Stillman Valley
and I was going on five when we moved up here. It
was in 1916 they moved over to Stillman Valley.
That was really cold weather. They mentioned it on
TV now. It stormed so bad that it was up over the
fence posts. The folks took the sled to go around the
fields to get through.
W: Do you have any brothers or sisters?
W: You graduated from high school?
S: Yes, I had 5 brothers and 2 sisters.
S: Yeah, I graduated from Monroe Center High
School in 1927.
S: February 5th, 1907.
W: What was the name of your parents?
�W: Just before the war, what were you doing? Did
you have a job?
S: When I was overseas he got killed bombing the
Ploesti oil fields. He made only 2 trips.
W: He was in the Air Corps there.
S: I hired out to a farmer just across the field and I
went over here by Prairie Hill and I hired out to him.
That was in the summertime when I was in high
school but as soon as I got out of high school my
folks knew Augie Lindquist. We lived right beside
him in Rockford on Highland Avenue and Chicago
Avenue, in that area. Augie was the first county forester and I can honestly say he’s been the only one
that was really a forester that’s had that position.
From then on it was all politics.
S: Ordinarily they kind of ease up on the drafted men
in dangerous situation.
W: This is your wife’s brother.
S: That’s my wife’s brother.
W: What was his name?
S: Harold Stenerson.
W: So you were farming?
W: This one here? (Evidently looking at a picture.)
S: Yes, I was on the farm on Mulford with my folks.
We lived down there after 1916. Then I got to be
caretaker of Kishwaukee Forest Preserve. That was
when it was brand new. One fellow ahead of me, I
was down there but I got in there and I was the boss.
Then we had the WPA came in and I was in charge
of 2 or 3 hundred fellows had come in to work in the
forest preserves. I got the truck drivers in the forest
preserve, too.
W: That farm you were talking about on South Mulford, that wasn’t that one Blackhawk Springs?
S: It was on Mulford Road, about a mile and a half
north of the by-pass.
W: Okay. What were you doing in December of
1941? So you remember Pearl Harbor, what were you
doing?
S: I went into the army March 13th, now wait a minute.
W: Do you remember hearing about Pearl Harbor?
S: Oh yes, My wife and I, we weren’t married yet and
we were sitting at the radio with the family. Her
brother was in the army at that time in the draft. He
was down in Tennessee. Now I says they’ll take
__?__. Sure enough
W: They shipped him out.
S: Anyway he was down south there and he got tired
of being in just the plain Army so he got into the Air
Corps.
S: Yeah. That’s Harold Stenerson. There he is.
W: Good looking guy.
S: He was a __?__.
W: Hm. He was with the 15th Air Force.
S: Yeah. He was a tail gunner in, I forget where, in a
big bomber.
W: So you heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor on
the radio then?
S: That’s right and before I got married, I told Edith,
that’s my wife, __?__ my sister adopted him. That
was Glen Johnson and he got in the Air Corps later
on as a __?__.
W: We are looking at pictures of
S: That’s my brother and there I am. Whoever copied
this down, they got it wrong. They said that he was
the first one in. I was the first one in the family that
got in and he got in and he got in the Medical Corps
down in Texas.
W: That’s your brother.
S: Yeah. That’s my brother Carl. Well anyhow, Carl
came home on furlough and he came into Rockford
or into Camp Grant and he called up, he said, “They
won’t let me out.” I said, “You’re coming home.” I
remember I had Corporal stripes on. “Don’t tell me I
can’t take my brother home,” I says. He’s coming or
I’ll steal him.
W: Oh, okay.
W: Kidnapping.
�S: He came home. He was “tickled pink” to get
home.
W: After you heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor
what was your first thought?
S: I was leading up to that. I told my wife, “If I get
married I’m in the draft right now”
W: Newly married and drafted, right?
S: I was married before I was
W: I say newly married, right?
W: You weren’t married at the time, right.
S: I told my wife, I says if they draft me I’m not going to object. I could have been an objection, because
I was married see.
S: I wasn’t married at the time.
W: What did your wife think about this?
W: This was your fiancé, right?
S: She said, “You go.”
S: That’s right. We got married on January 2nd, 1942,
and you was talking about 1941.
W: How about the rest of your family, what did they
think?
W: Did you hear aboutof course you must have
heard about Hitler and all the troubles that were going on over in Europe.
S: There was nothing they could do about it. That
was the draft. Now my oldest brother, Art, he was in
World War I and he was in the Navy. He got half
way across and he was tickled pink that he was going
to go to Paris. He liked to travel. And then they had
to turn around because the war was over. They had to
turn around and he had to come back. He was really
disappointed.
S: Oh, we heard about Hitler long before.
W: What did you think about that?
S: I was going with another girl into Rockford and
they’d send tobacco or cigarettes or cigars to her relatives in Germany. She said, “You don’t dare to send
too much or they would question it.”
W: When you were drafted, where were you sent?
S: When I was drafted it was over here in Camp
Grant.
W: And she was from Germany?
W: In Camp Grant?
S: No, she was Swedish. But there’s all fancy talk
about that. Well, I shouldn’t bring this up yet according to the story. You better read another question.
W: You remember from the events what went on, did
you realize what he was doing over there?
S: Well, yeah. I was drafted in Camp Grant. We had
to go into Chicago for the test. You know, for our
examination. Then we came back to St. Louis down
to Fort Leonard Wood. That was when there was a
brand newthey didn’t have any hard roads down
there then. It was all dust and dirt.
S: Right. Right.
W: What was life like down there?
W: He was up to no good and so forth.
S: Evidently. They had that on the radio. He was expecting homes and everything else.
S: I didn’t like it down there so I’d never say anything.
W: You didn’t like it down there.
W: What led up to your entry into the service? Were
you drafted?
S: I worked myself up and got to be a corporal and
that was fine. Our sergeant (unintelligible)
S: I was drafted.
W: Was that the 27th Battalion, Company A?
W: You were drafted?
S: That’s right.
S: I was drafted and I got in on my brothers birthday,
March 31st 1942. Then I was drafted.
W: What Platoon?
�S: Fourteen? Fourteen. Yeah. Fourteen.
W: At Fort Leonard Wood.
S: Yeah.
W: Do you have any other memories of your training
down there, basic training?
S: Our Platoon, I was in the First Platoon then and we
built bridges. There’s a bridge building complete.
W: This was at Fort Leonard Wood.
S: That was at Fort Leonard Wood.
S: They wanted me in the medics. I said, “Nothing
doing, I don’t want to be in the medics.” They just
put me through the general stuff and put me in the
kitchen. I said, “I don’t be here, I want to work outside.” So I got into that.
W: What did you think of the training?
S: It was good. I was old enough to know what was
right and what was wrong. I knew how to live then
because I done it during the WPA (Works Project
Administration). I was in charge of groups of
___?___. That’s what I got into and the Captain came
out and ___?___ in peace time and he said, “You
don’t want to bewhat you want to be is in the
__?__ engineers.” I said, “Okay.”
W: Okay.
S: I had a camera and __?__
W: Pontoon?
S: Pontoon. We built bridges across the river there
and it was a big river. Our Platoon was the best in the
country so we got a weekend or a week off down
there to, I forget
W: Where did you go from there? Were you sent to
other camps?
S: The Army would send you all over the country.
We got through with the second ___?___ and when I
got through training that crew, they sent me home on
furlough. As soon as I got back, I knew when I was
in that would be my last trip.
W: You came home to Rockford.
W: A local city down there?
S: Well, there’s a camp in Arkansas. I’m getting so
old I forget it.
W: That’s all right.
S: __?__
W: What did you do during your break, your furlough or your pass?
S: When we were down there, it was Lake of the
Ozarks, that’s where we were stationed.
W: Okay.
S: Sergeants and all we had a good old time. I never
was a drinking man and never will be but
S: Yeah, I came home. My brother, he was married,
E. W. Swenson, at Swenson Spreader down there at
Lindenwood. He came down there. I got home. I said,
I’ll get a ride to Aurora” so he came down to Aurora,
picked me up and took me home and then he had to
take me back. I knew very well then where I was
going. I went back to Fort Leonard Wood. They put
me on a train and shipped me out to Raleigh, North
Carolina, and fixed me up with clothes everything for
a trip to Alaska.
W: Oh my goodness.
S: Then at the last minute they said we’re going to
send us west.
W: Where did you go to Alaska?
W: So you took care of the rest of them.
S: I never got to go to Alaska. That wasn’t a war zone
then. They weren’t doing anything there then but
there were troops there.
S: They didn’t dare to drink much at that time. The
army was really strict. There was no whoring around
either. That was against the law.
W: So they changed their mind and sent you west.
W: What were you, outside of building bridges, were
you trained for anything else? Any other training?
S: They sent me right back to St. Louis, Albuquerque, New Mexico and up to California and I knew
then that I was going overseas down in the South
�Pacific. We went into __?__ a camp there, an army
camp.
S: In the Guadalcanal area. Down in New Caledonia.
That’s an island. That’s French.
W: Where was that?
W: When was this? Do you remember?
S: __?__ California and I was up the Bay in San
Francisco. Then we got on a boat on Catalina.
You’ve heard of that?
S: Huh. What was that?
W: Do you remember what date when you arrived or
when you departed?
W: Yes.
S: The shipNo, I don’t remember the date exactly.
S: Well, we went down on that and then boarded ship
to be shipped out and a lot of fun about it. We got out
about a day and turned right around and come back
and took us right back to the same area.
W: It’s hard to remember dates.
S: I was in the hospital here (Probably showing a
picture). Well, we’ll come to that.
W: A change of plans?
S: No, something wrong with the ship. It was a Belgium ship (This part is inaudible. Laughter)
W: All right. We’ll get to that. Is this the name of the
ship?
S: This was coming home.
W: Now at this time what unit were you in? Do you
remember?
W: Oh, okay.
S: What unit? We were assigned to that group right
there, Company A.
S: That wasn’t going over. We were on that British or
that
W: Was it the 125th?
W: That ship from Belgium.
S: Yeah. That’s the division we were in. There’s my
brother-in-law.
S: That ship from Belgium.
W: You went all the way on that same ship then.
W: Okay.
S: Pretty soon I looked out and it was just a ship sitting.
S: Yeah, we went toon that same ship all the way
to New Caledonia Then one morning we got up. A lot
of us would sleep on top deck. It was dangerous in
one way. We should be downstairs and nobody
would light a cigarette and it was shipping One
morning we got up and we said, “Hey, wait a minute,
we’re not going west any more. We’re heading east.”
The sun was shining on the right hand side. I said,
“We’re going north. What’s happening?” We were
coming into the bay at Noumea. We went to camp
there and then we had to work there for a while loading ships and then we got transferred on to the ship
and when we left one of the presidential liners took
us up to Guadalcanal.
W: Malfunction.
W: Oh, okay.
S: Malfunction. Then it took over 15 days to go down
to Noumea. That’s down there in the South Pacific.
S: They were still fighting when we landed there.
S: My wife’s brother.
W: So anyway you were saying the boat turned
around. The ship turned around.
S: The boat turned around and we came back to camp
__?__ there’s a submarine out there and it hit the
ship. The old Army gig, see.
W: Oh, okay.
W: Where?
W: That was probably the end of ’42
S: That was in 43.’ We got on a ship there and it was
a presidential liner, John Adams. They took us all the
�way up to Guadalcanal. From then on, we landed in
Guadalcanal and I got interrupted __?__. Talk about
mud and rain and mud and more mud.
W: Okay.
W: Were you involved in any of it?
S: And this is our regional officer, __?__ Erickson.
That’s whereSan Manuel. That was one of the biggest battles and that’s when General MacArthur come
by and a buddy of minethe Japs were afraid to fire
at Piper Cubs. It would expose their position. I met
him afterwards. He was one of the fliers over there.
That’s enough about that but
S: They were bombing us and we wanted to get out
of there, get out in __?__
W: You were in the Philippines for 165 days or just
that unit?
W: Bomb shelters.
S: What was this?
S: In Guadalcanal and then we were suited up to
__?__ airport in New Georgia. Then we got up to
New Georgia and one of the fellowsI got talking to
him about taking Guadalcanal. He was one of the
first. I met him in the hospital. He said there was a
hill there and the Marines, before sunset, they had the
Japs off of that hill. They moved that fast.
W: Were you in the Philippines for 165 days?
W: Was there combat going on there?
S: Yeah, oh yeah.
S: Oh, yeah. I was there until they shipped me home.
I could have gone from there to Japan. Nuts to that
__?__ sign it up in the corner and you don’t know
what to do. That was it.
W: How long were you at Guadalcanal?
W: Do you remember any of the individuals you
were friends with over there?
S: I’d say about 2 months, building roads and then we
went to
S: Well
W: Was it secured before you left?
W: Their names? Do you keep in contact with any of
those still around?
S: Well, no. There were stragglers there.
W: It was still going on>
S: There were stragglers and we chased them all out.
Then we went up to New Georgia. New Georgia is
north of New Caledonia. It’s north of Guadalcanal
and I had a picture of that at one time. Any how we
went up to New Georgia and took New Munda and
we got through with that and then we went up to another island
(This ends side 1 of the tape and there is quite a long
silence before it records again.)
S: Yeah, Commander in Chief at the Regional Headquarters Group. This is the last farewell
W: That’s a photo of Fort Leonard Wood
S: That’s our Thanksgiving dinner. Here’s that
S: Here’s a picture and this is Gallagher who was
killed over there. I still write to his widow. She’s in
Georgia. Gallagher’s right here. Wright, I wrote to
him. Strolen was in Guadalcanal. He got shot there
through the shoulder. Him and I were in the same
tent. I had my half on this side and his half on this
side. That was when I killed that snake. (inaudible)
He got a Purple Heart
W: And that’s you sitting there.
S: That’s me. “Hey, Swede, turn around.” I said, “Oh
nuts. I didn’t care if I getI was tuckered out. I was
working.
W: What were you doing here?
S: Just what I said.
W: Okay.
S: (Inaudible)
W: That’s you?
W: This was on Luzon yet?
S: Yeah, that’s me.
�S: Yeah. I’ll show you another picture here. It was at
Christmas.
and he actually threw him right out on the road. He
said, “Don’t you for supper this time either.”
W: Okay.
W: How about smoking over in the Philippines, on
duty or off duty.
S: I started corresponding with him when
W: What was his name?
S: We could smoke any time we wanted to. Of
course, I did smoke. Before we left New Zealand and
we were
S: He was still over inthe Americanshe was in
Japan.
W: Caledonia?
W: Jerry Krump?
S: Jerry Krump.
S: And he lived in
S: It wasn’t New Caledonia. It was New Georgia and
we left therewhen we were leaving we had to move
we had a detail moving all our restaurant stuff and
chests
W: Footlockers.
W: Virginia.
W: In your spare time.
S: Chests and stuff and there were all kinds of beer
cans and Lieutenant said, “Boys, help yourself.” We
ended up with two cans a piece. I didn’t like beer but
that time I drank beer. It was so hot. It was just terribly hot. I drank two cans. I said, “That’s the best beer
I ever tasted but you can have your beer. That was
when we got up in the Philippines and then they
started pushing out more beer and __?__ that way
you’d get a certain amount.
S: Exactly. They didn’t want to play me. I knew how.
W: They’d ration it.
W: You were the best one.
S: One of our buddies, he was a Sergeant second
class. He wasn’t a first or a Staff Sergeant. He got too
much __?__. He told some of the guys “Ever since
__?__ he got any of that beer, he hadn’t ought to
have it. I give it to him. He had several demerits. He
was really a good scout. When we got up in the Philippines all he needed was, I think it was 2 or 3 weeks
before he could be shipped back home. It was my
duty to pick out the crew I wanted to work up at the
front. He said, “Floyd, please don’t take me up to the
front any more.” It was just like my brother-in-law.
Two trips and he would have been safe. There’re men
I know had 2 days.
S: Virginia. Him and Krump or Wright, I taught them
how to play chess. I had learned how to play chess. I
had written to my wife and said, “Send me chess
men.” So she sent the chess men to me. We had
checkerboards over there. I taught them how to play
chess.
S: But then I kidded a couple of years ago about being over there. I says, “Yeah, Krump, he’s turned into
a minister and you to went out playing with the
women. I got a letter from him. I’ll let you read it.
Krump turned into a minister. When I started writing
to him, I said, “ Wow if your wife knew all the things
I know about you” but he was a good sport, too, and
he was older thanwhat other questions did you
want?
W: Well, did youwhen you were over there doing
your duty, what other kind of life
W: What was your rank at the time?
S: Army life then was much stricter than what it is
now. When I was at Fort Leonard Wood “No Smoking in the Dining Room.” One time a little short guy,
he was a Buck Sergeant, come in and this First Sergeant Lusander, he was in the dining room and here
this little Buck Sergeant came in there, a cigarette in
his mouth and he says, “There’s smoking in here.”
He grabbed the Sergeant by the neck and by the pants
S: I was Staff Sergeant at the end. I went right up the
line.
W: So you let him off
S: Yeah, I said, “You don’t need to worry I’m not
going toanybody tries to take you up to the front
tell them to come to my first. He was a friend if there
ever was one. Are you taping this?
�W: Oh, yeah, sure. It’s all for the record.
W: Casualties there.
S: I don’t know if
S: A lot of those Japs. There’s nothing worse than the
smell of a dead body.
W: May I read it or
S: Yeah, if you want to read it
W: I can stop it.
S: You can stop it off and then later, well
W: Were there a lot of bugs and mosquitoes and
whatever
S: Yeah, a lot of mosquitoes. They were terrible. We
landed up here around __?__ that’s where I lived.
Here’s where we got a big laugh out of that. I don’t
know if you noticed that or not but here is __?__
W: I’ll tell you what, I’ll read it later.
W: He had his helmet on backwards.
S: But any how this guy, he got into a fishing boat
that he bought and he got over to Hawaii and that’s
where our company is at Schofield Barracks. I told
him about (inaudible)
W: Did you get a lot of letters from your parents and
you brothers and sister?
S: That came out in the newspapers here in this country after the war.
W: Secretary of the Navy, Frank Knox, had his hat
on backwards.
S: Almost everyday but
S: Here, we’re getting back home and this is kind of
worth seeing
W: Did you get a lot of mail, too, or not?
W: Georgia Island.
S: Yeah, I got a lot of letters mostly from my wife
and immediately family, see, but I’d write to the wife
on that free postage stuff, I got one of them here, every day unless I was in action. Here’s Guadalcanal.
S: That was __?__ Airport.
W: You wouldn’t happen to be in this one?
S: No. No. I couldn’t find but is that it?
W: We’re looking at a book over there, the 25 th Infantry Division.
W: There’s two pages here.
S: Yeah, They’re from Schofield Barracks.
S: There’s some good Japs.
W: Looks like rugged country there.
W: Dead ones, huh.
S: Here’s some
S: (inaudible)
W: Now a road like this, did you, were you involved
in
W: On your gun __?__. You were with the 161 st Engineers?
S: This is Guadalcanal but I don’t know any of these
boys. There’s the galloping horse.
S: Yeah, we were with the 161st.
S: Did I get 2 that time?
W: Shape of a horse.
S: There’s somethat’s where we had to build
bridges across.
W: Well you might have. There we go. There are
engineers at work there. Bulldozing up to the middle
of the track with their soldiers
W: A lot of mud involved.
S: At times I’d even hear a truck, or a car
S: Yeah. And there’s some
W: Or a jeep
�S: Yeah, a jeep and the jeep pulled the tank out.
W: Did you see any Japs at all or any Jap prisoners or
S: Oh, yeah.
W: They didn’t take many Jap prisoners, did they?
S: Oh, yeah, we had a lot of Jap prisoners. Right after
we got out of the 165 straight days, I think it was the
second day after, I was walking down a ditch there
and there were a lot of trees, see. Out came a Japanese officer. I said, “Hey, put up your hands.” A corporal under me said, “Hey, Swede, you haven’t got
your rifle.” I didn’t need it. The Jap came right up.
W: He gave up to you.
S: __?__ My wife had sent me she’d send jokes or
cartoons. One guy was listening to the radio and he
was preaching about the cost of this and the cost of
that. He gets done talking. Well I can’t say how he
worded it but he was all fed up on his cartoon. And lo
and behold I turned that cartoon over and it showed
this island that showed exactly where Kennedy was
shot.
W: On the back of the __?__.
S: We couldn’t write home and I couldn’t tell her in
so many words
W: Where you were at.
S: Couldn’t tell her where I’m at. The letters were
censored. Now they can write and tell them everything.
S: He gave up.
W: Yeah.
W: You took a prisoner then.
S: Yeah and I was closest to him. I wasn’t in uniform
either.
W: Oh, you weren’t.
S: (Inaudible)
W: Do you know what happened to him? You went
back to the rear.
S: Now we come to the picture of a
(Much of this is inaudible as it appears he is looking
through a book trying to find something.)
S: That’s New Zealand.
W: New Zealand Brigade, huh. There’s the Philippines.
S: Yeah. We’re down at New Zealand and “stike and
eggs” see. Stike and eggs.
S: No, there were too many. That same corporal that
told me “where’s your rifle?”
W: Stike and eggs.
W: You were required to carry a weapon then.
S: Let’s see. Now 2 this fellows in there
S: Oh yeah. When the Jap came out, I didn’t have to
have the rifle with me.
(Occasional comments by both as they were looking
at pictures.)
W: What if he hadn’t surrendered?
S: That burned us guys up. We had to march
S: At times, there were more men shot in back of the
front lines then were actually shot up front, of our
men. We went through so fast, there was one place
thereI’ll tell you about that later. Here’s where
__?__ and what’s his name, Kennedy was on
W: In review, huh.
S: Yeah.
W: Having a little fun there? Looks like transporting
vehicles through water.
W: Where he had his PT boat?
S: Yeah. This book is dedicated to
S: He got shot at and sank his boat.
W: How was the food over there?
W: Right in that strait there.
�S: Oh, we had our own cooks and when we moved
out of there we had crappy food.
S: It was an accident.
W: Or goofing off.
W: Cooks couldn’t
S: Our cooks were direct from Washington and when
we got up to New Caledonia the second time, he went
down and actually shot a deer and this cook from
Washington, he actually knew how to boy, we had
a good meal.
W: He knew how to clean a deer.
S __?__ our group, our platoon. Now here’s Charlie
McCarthy visited the area Thursday after __?__ the
corporal fixing the road
(Much inaudible)
S: He had no business digging up Jap mines. He
should have put a charge on it and blew them up.
W: Rather than dig them up, he blew them up.
S: We’d do that with TNT. We could handle that but
dynamite, we were scared stiff to carry that __?__
would set that off.
W: Okay.
S: And when we were down there in New Caledonia
we’d go down to the beach __?__ with a big wire
along and put a fuse to the TNT
S: __?__ the big boys
(A lot of this is inaudible)
W: Company E, the 161st
S: I was company E.
W: You were company A?
S: Here we are. There’s the Lieutenant. That was him
in that other picture.
W: Okay.
S: He told me
S: __?__ he made a law. He was our company commander. He told our officers, “You can’t go down
there and dynamite for fish any more.” We had a 50gallon can, gas drum, see. We had that all shined up
and fry them right there and eat them. He told the
officer “It’s none of your business __?__ supposed to
do that.” He said, “I got a book fellows” __?__ and
parked his carcass on the back of a tree __?__. He
knew his stuff. When you’re going up front sometimes there are guys you didn’t like. It was just too
bad.
W: Beckwith?
W: Did you ever have to clean up all this wreckage
and stuff.
S: Yeah, Beckwith. And this one’s Monks and I forget this fellow’s name. But they’re digging up mines
on their own.
S: No.
W: __?__ them or digging them up?
W: You weren’t involved in any of that.
W: Doesn’t sound like too good a job.
S: We left it right where it was. We’d look through
the tanks and stuff. This is like the work we did.
We’d pull up launch like that. We had a bunch of
natives.
S: No. That’s where that little Irishman got killed.
W: Helping out.
W: Oh, was it?
S: A bunch of workers, Philippine laborers under our
supervision.
S: That LieutenantOne of the guys said, “If I ever
see that guy again in an alley, he’ll never get out
alive.” Just on foolishness.
W: That’s a type of bridge that’s a photo of the
bridge here.
W: It was an accident?
S: That’s where the Japs had __?__, see.
S: Dig them up, too.
W: They wrecked the bridge here.
�S: Yeah. My kid says, “That’s you, Dad.” It could be.
opened up on us the day before. Everybody thought
that they got the Japs up there.
W: You don’t remember that.
W: Got rid of them.
S: We went through __?__ and __?__.
W: By the side of the road.
S: That’s what I’m looking for. Now there’s, we’d
have to build __?__.
W: The Japs destroyed a bridge there.
S: There’s one of the bulldozers of the 165th engineers. There’s one of the roads we made.
S: The next morning, he came back with uswe’d
already walked up the roads and they opened up and
they shot at this grader and instead of turning around,
he give it the gas and went on up the hill. He got a
bronze medal out of it. Us guys, we got shot at and
we didn’t get a bronze medal. Even the guys who fell
down and got a scratch on the knee, they’d claim a
medal for it and they’d get them.
W: Did you get any?
W: Oh, okay. Boy, that’s a long hilly one.
S: I got burned. I had one hit me on the hand.
S: We’d get way up on the top there on “Bonsai
Ridge”. There’s the red __?__. That’s when I got the
Buck Sergeant. On the second or third day we had a
steep hill and they wanted a tree blown out and I dug
a charge down there and put in just one charge. Ordinarily you’re supposed to put 2 charges in. If one
didn’t go off, then you’d hook up the next one. Well,
I just put in one and it didn’t go off. By mid afternoon we got all the trees down. Low and behold, one
of the officers came up and said, “When we leave
you ” I said, “Nothing doing”.
W: What, a medal. I mean
S: Oh, yeah, a bullet, a bomb hit it
W: Shrapnel.
S: Shrapnel.
W: Did you get a commendation for it then or Purple
Heart or whatever?
S: No.
W: After you did all the work.
S: “After we done all this work, I’m going to see
them covered up.”
W: You didn’t bother with it.
W: What were you covering up?
S: No. Some “cotton pickin” __?__ thought it was
funny but anyhow a lot of them earned it and deserved it. That’s for sure.
S: That cave hole.
W: Didn’t sound like too pleasant an area to be in.
W: Oh, okay. You were burying the cave.
S: __?__ many things to recall.
S: They blasted it and they found 12 or 15 bodies in
there. Japs. That’s what I wanted to see the actualwhat we’d been doing. Here we’d been digging
our way up there.
W: Did you get any of your mail? Did you ever get
any packages, you know, food or
S: All this stuff from home. We’d get a small package of cookies or something. We had to pass them
around.
W: Now the Japanese prison camps. Were they empty or were they
S: We didn’t capture
W: They wouldn’t let you, you wouldn’t, you
couldn’t, outside of food and maybe clothing or
something maybe
W: You didn’t see any.
S: We couldn’t have any civilian clothes.
S: We over ran __?__. But going up one time we
took a grader up when all of a sudden machine guns
Japs opened up on them. Well, they’d already
W: Okay.
�S: If we needed a pair of shoes, if they got muddy
and dirty and that, we could throw them and __?__ a
pair of shoes and we’d get them right now.
W: 165 days is like from January to May.
W: Most of the packages from home were food.
W: Okay, these are photos in Japan.
S: Yes, mostly food. Now my brother, he sent some
wine to me and that came through.
S: Is this Japan? I went over on Japan
S: Here’s Japan. Here’s Osaka.
S: (Inaudible).
W: It came through all right.
W: That’s in the Philippines.
S: We celebrated that.
S: __?__ Pass.
W: Passed that around too.
W: You helped build that.
S: It wasn’t too much. I remember that. Everything
was censored coming in. I told my wifeI told my
brother if I have to mention when I was in New Caledonia I said, “If you know __?__ it’s from a town
very similar to what Edith is from. That’s my wife.
She was born and raised in Caledonia.
S: My squad helped build it but they did an awful
poor job on the cement jobs here. I imagine the Filipinos tore that thing down.
W: Looks like Japan there.
W: Illinois.
Both talking at once. Inaudible.
S: It also came out in the paper when the 25 th Division moved. It came out.
W: Here you go, January 17th to June 30th, 1945.
Then they shipped you out.
W: I suppose the civilians knew.
S: About 3 months duration that we’re
S: The civilians, if they knew their map a little bit,
why
W: And you didn’t want to go to Japan so they
shipped you back to where, Hawaii maybe? Back to
the States?
W: Could figure out the general area, I suppose.
S: When I go to Bible class, that was 2 years ago, I
had that map of where I’d with that cartoon on it.
One of the women there in the class was a teacher
over there in Belvidere and I said “Here it is right on
the back and here’s where we were”. She went home
to look up the maps and sure enough she found out
that’s where Kennedy had __?__ with his motor boat.
S: No, back to San Francisco. We just missed Hawaii. We could see Hawaii at night and we had all
kinds of casualties on our boat, on our ship. They
don’t call them boats, they’re ships.
W: Do you remember the name of the ship you came
back on?
S: No. Now that’sit was a brand new ship.
W: With his PT boat. Now at the end of the 165 days,
were you sent back home then?
W: Hard to remember those.
S: Yeah.
S: I’m at that age, forgetful too much.
W: After all your duties?
W: That’s okay, you don’t have tonow when you
were over in the States then, when they dropped the
bomb on Hiroshima, the atom bomb:
S: Yeah. Right away they asked me what I wanted to
do. I said, “I sure as the dickens ain’t going to Japan.”
W: This was about May of 1945?
S: Yeah.
S: Oh, yeah, yeah.
W: What did you think of that?
�S: That’s fine. That’s fine. The officers told us the
day after said that we had to watch our step, it was
dangerous.
W: Okay. Okay. So you were over there when all of
the celebrating in the States was going on at the end
of the war.
W: What was your thought of it? What did you think
of the atom bomb?
S: Oh, Yeah. I wasn’t up in the front with any of the
troops. They took us guys off by ourselves.
S: It was fine, fine. Truman done the right thing. But
a lot of people cussed him out for doing it. That
shortened the war right away.
W: What did you do when you heard the end of the
war when the Japs surrounded?
W: It saved the U. S. troops.
S: Two or three days later the second bomb came and
then the Japs gave up and MacArthur took over. And
MacArthur was in the Philippines, he was in the Philippines before the war started and he had to escape
and go to Australia and when he came back of, I have
pictures of that, too.
W: And he took over in Japan then after that.
S: Yeah. He should have been made President. He
didn’t believe in killing off everybody. He’d surround that island and starve them to death. Starve
them until they’d give up. I got a magazine on that.
Take a look at it.
S: Well I didn’t take my gun out and shoot it like
they did at Camp Grant. When World War I was over
a fellow at Camp Grant shot and killed somebody.
They celebrated World War I. I said, “I hope they
don’t do it in World War II now.”
W: Most of your troops over there were glad it was
over?
S: Oh, sure. You aren’t kidding they were glad it was
over.
W: What was the most difficult thing you had to do
when you were
S: When I was in the service?
W: Yeah.
W: Okay.
S: I got this book in 1979. That’s all about him how
starving had less fatalities.
W: They cut them off, didn’t they?
S: I’d say it was building bridges. That’s heavy work.
W: Harder than those replacements?
S: Oh yeah, that’s solid ground. When you start taking a boat across the river (inaudible).
S: Because he cut them off.
W: This is a newspaper of August 15, 1945. Rockford Morning Star, Second World War ends. Where
were you at, at this time? You were in San Francisco
yet?
S: No, I was overseas. This is 1945.
W: You were still over there?
W: How long would it take? It would depend on the
length of the bridge, I suppose.
S: Oh, yeah. You take the Rock River down here.
Well that’s just a little stream.
W: About how long would it take you to put one
across the Rock River? About 100 yards? A few days
or a week?
S: No, I came back in October.
S: Oh, no. It wouldn’t be a week. You’d get it across
in a day and have troops going across. First we’d
make just small sidewalks and then we’d come back
with the big pontoons and lay them down for the
heavy equipment (inaudible)
W: You were still in the Philippines then.
W: When and where were you discharged?
S: Yeah.
S: In Chicago. October 8th, 1945.
S: Oh, yeah. I spent 3 ½ years overseas.
W: I thought you came back in June of ’45.
�W: 1945. Did you ever
W: Oh, okay. On the back it says “fire bomb attack.”
Bombers bombed that for 3 days do you think.
S: My son’s birthday it turned out to be.
S: I was deaf in my right ear.
S: Yeah, for 3 days. We were sitting up there on the
mountain and lobbed mortar shells down on them and
our heavy artillery was in back of us but then they’d
throw one smoke bomb down and was suppose to
aim for it and then come in blasting.
W: Due to your service?
W: Oh. They never fell short did they?
S: I couldn’t hear good with my right ear but I was
inducted anyhow. But there’s a very prominent baseball player today, he got exempt to play baseball instead of a deaf mute like me and I served my time but
he got to play baseball he’s still in the news today.
S: Well, they didn’t fall short. The artillery knew how
far they could __?__ but there were 4 or 5 guns lined
up and they were shooting and each one, all 4 of
them would go off at different times, just like you
were shooting with a shotgun. A captured Jap said,
“We want to see that automatic cannon you got out
there.”
W: Did you ever have any disabilities in the service
or any connection with the Veterans?
W: Well, all right, now you’re going to stump me
here.
S: That’s nothing new opening up spots to get to the
Japs.
W: Oh, he thought there was only one. Now this picture of all these airplanes, is that San Fernando Valley?
W: This is a picture of a bulldozer?
S: No, that’s “zeroes”.
S: Yeah, that’s a big bulldozer.
W: Jap “zeroes” [Mitsubishi A6M "Zero"]?
W: Did you drive one of those?
S: They’re lined up by __?__ Airport. They set them
up.
S: No, I didn’t want to be on that. I wish I had then I
would have had a good job when I got back.
W: Now these other pictures here. Are these Jap prisoners?
(Inaudible. Both speaking at once.)
S: after the war was over.
W: Who is this one?
S: That’s captured Japs.
W: They didn’t look too healthy, did they?
S: That’s the guy that had the cameras. He’s from
Lexington, Kentucky, Sgt. McCain(?) with a Jap
range finder.
S: But there’s a big __?__ of saws. Now the Japs
when they had there saw or tractor or tank they’re
real quiet. Ours, you could hear them, oh man
W: You captured that range finder.
S: The Japs had that in the back of
W: They were loud.
W: To peek over.
S: That saw took 3 men to really operate it.
S: You couldn’t tell (Inaudible).
W: They used that to cut through the trees.
S: The Japs weren’t so dumb.
S: We cut trees down.
W: What’s this valley again here?
W: Oh, no. Now this looks like the same guy.
McCain?
S: That’s San Fernando Valley.
S: Yeah. (Inaudible).
W: Must be the tank.
�S: But there’s a
W: Mother saves baby from python.
S: I cut that out of the paper. A lot of people say pythons are dangerous. If they’re hungry, they’ll take
care of you.
W: A news clipping from the Rockford Star, January
9, 1972. A woman in Manila took a look at a 15 ½
foot python about to swallow her 3 year old baby.
S: Nobody came up from where I did with stripes,
very few. I was corporal here in training men for two
groups for 3 months and I was corporal most of the
time. When my brother, when he returned out here at
Camp Grant, he called home and said, “I can’t come,
they won’t let me come”. I said, “I’ll be down to see
you.” I had my stripes on and that and I said, “What
do you mean I can’t take my brother home?” I said,
we’re going home”.
W: Do you remember VE Day in Europe?
S: Yeah.
S: Mine was only 12 ½ foot.
W: You were probably in the Philippines, right?
W: Six men in the vicinity wrestled with the serpent
for 20 minutes and slashed it dead with knives. Can
you tell us about the V-mail? What was that?
S: Yeah, we were in the Philippines.
W: What did you think about that?
S: What?
W: V-mail.
S: Then we got instructions about the bomber in the
end. The atomic bomb.
S: Yeah, V-mail, yeah.
W: The atomic bomb, okay.
W: How did they do that? You wrote a letter and then
S: That hastened the rest
W: Did you think that was good or bad?
S: We’d write out the letter and the army had to reduce that down small and then send it home.
W: Like about an 8 x 10 reduced down to 3 x 4 or so.
S: We thought it was good but we had to watch our
step then because we knew the Japs were trying to
get the atomic bomb on us and we were warned about
it but that was over the hill.
S: Yes.
W: Was that for light weight?
S: That was for light weight. And we’d get a lot of
that.
W: What is your opinion now about it now on this
date in 1994?
S: I still got hatred towards the Japs.
W: You do.
W: Interesting.
S: That’s quite a souvenir.
W: I’ll read that later.
W: Getting back to the questions here, is there one
thing that stands out as you most successful achievement while you were in the service?
S: Special? I imagine being advanced from corporal
on up to staff sergeant.
W: You were a corporal and then you were made a
staff sergeant.
S: But right now it isn’t as intense as it was but in
those days you captured a guy they’d go in back of
the lines and one guy said, “If I had my rifle I’d shoot
him again.” I said, “Now wait a minute. That’s not
right. You can’t do that. You got your man. He’s
supposed to be secure.”
W: A prisoner.
S: Yeah. That’s it.
W: What about VJ Day then when the Japs did surrender?
�S: I said, “I hope you guys keep the bullets out of
your guns. Don’t shoot anybody.” Because we heard
about them killing men here at Camp Grant.
W: No.
W: Celebrating.
W: All right. Christmas aboard the USS Adams.
S: Celebrating. That’s down right stupid. That’s no
way to celebrate.
S: Yeah, that
S: That’s in my other __?__.
W: You were over in the Philippines then, too, right?
W: Now this is the menu for Christmas Day, 1944
aboard ship
S: Yeah, we were over in the Philippines then.
S: That was going up to the Philippines, wasn’t it?
W: Was there a lot of celebrating out side of shooting
their weapons off. Parties and stuff?
W: Yes. Tomato juice cocktail, creamed turkey soup,
assorted olives, saltines, sweet pickles, roast young
tom turkey, corn bread dressing, giblet gravy, cranberry sauce.
S: We were over by __?__ Field at that time.
W: Okay.
S: We had seen enough of war that I didn’t think we
had to celebrate like that.
W: Did you get any disability while you were over
there?
S: I had kidney stones and I was in the hospital for 3
months.
W: With the fever
S: with kidney stones first. Then as soon as I got
ready to go back to the service, a nurse come out and
put thermometers in four fellows there and myself.
She got my thermometer and said, “Swenson, you
come over here and get in bed right away.” She put
me in ice cubes. She left those other guys set there
with thermometers.
S: I showed you that camera picture. That was down
at Fort Leonard Wood. That was before I got overseas.
W: That was only half the menu. Mincemeat pie,
fruitcake, Parker House rolls, butter, coffee, bread,
apples, cigars, nuts, candy, and cigarettes. That was
quite a meal.
S: On board ship we really had good food. Does that
answer question.
W: I think so. How about the Veterans Administration? Do you have anything to do with the VA.
S: The veterans, they got these groups and 9 out of 10
of them they get liquored up.
W: Oh, okay. Socialize.
S: And I have no use for that.
W: How did you guys celebrate holidays like Fourth
of July and Christmas?
S: One Fourth of July we were in Clark Field marching for the “cotton pickin” army.
W: For a drill or review or whatever?
S: Maybe it wasn’t Clark Field. That was in New
Caledonia we were marching. I wasn’t in it, the
march, I got out of it. (Inaudible)
W: How about Christmas?
S: Well on Christmas, didn’t I ever show you that
Christmas?
S: Not here in the States. No. Just in the hospital
overseas.
W: You look like you’re in pretty good health.
S: Yes, I am but I when we left New Zealand, we
had to march down to the dock and I said, “Never
again will I get fat.” I was 185 pounds.
W: Put on a little weight there.
S: I said, “Never again.” Here just a week or two ago
I met a guy up at Aunt Mary’s and he said, “You
eating alone?” I said, “I do all the time. My wife
passed away. I don’t get fat. I’ll never get fat again.”
�W: How did your family support during your overseas?
S: A Company. That was overseas.
W: That about does it. Do you want to say goodbye.
S: Just by writing letters. That’s all they could do.
W: Keep in contact.
S: The one that owned the shop down there at Lindenwood, he sent me some wine in a bottle and he
wasn’t supposed to do that. Any how I got it overseas.
W: In past years, looking back, what has this support
meant to you?
S: You mean
W: How your family supported you.
S: I told you that my twin brother wore my winter
coat. When I come home, there I was in my jacket. It
was cold. That was October 15th when I got home. I
said, “Where’s my coat.” My twin brother used it and
left my dad’s and he was a bigger man than either
one of us. That was kind of bad. Then when they sold
Camp Grant, that was a __?__ “bug a boo” They
went against by selling that property. They all went
against me.
W: During the service they were more or less
S: That was after the service.
W: During the service they supported you.
S: Oh, yeah, I’d get cookies and stuff.
W: Well, that about does it, Floyd, all the questions.
Any final comments?
S: I wouldn’t give a million dollars to change places.
W: Wouldn’t do any thing different.
S: No, I mean that I wouldn’t want to go through it
again. I would take a million bucks for me to go
through that again. But now it’s worth a million dollars to know about it.
W: For a final wrap, can you tell us what unit you
belonged to?
S: I was with the 25th Division, 65th Combat Engineers.
W: Any company, platoon and so forth?
S: Well thank you very much for the interview. I’ve
been waiting a long time and there’s 100 things I
could talk about but it’s not necessary.
W: It would take up a lot of tape. Bye now.
S: Bye.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Midway Village Museum
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Midway Village Museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-2001
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Language
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English
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Jim Will
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Floyd Swenson
Location
The location of the interview
Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Floyd Swenson
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
31-Jan-94
Description
An account of the resource
Born February 5, 1907, Floyd Swenson was an Army engineer, drafted in 1942. He was discharged in 1946. He died December 14,1995.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War 2
World War II
-
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PDF Text
Text
Everett Tuttle
Transcribed by Lorraine Lightcap
For Midway Village & Museum Center
6799 Guilford Road
Rockford, Illinois 61107
Phone 815 397 9112
www.midwayvillage.com
Volunteer Editor: Martha Byrnes 11/14/18
�Everett Tuttle
Today is July 27, 1994. My name is Charles
Nelson and I am a volunteer at the Midway
Village and Museum Center in Rockford,
Illinois, which is cooperating with the
statewide effort to collect oral histories from
Illinois persons that participated in the momentous events of World War II. We are in
the office of Midway Village interviewing
Everett Tuttle. Mr. Tuttle served in a branch
of the United States Armed Forces during
World War II. We are interviewing him
about his experiences in that War.
Everett, would you please start by introducing yourself to us? Please give us your full
name, place and date of birth. We would also like to have the names of each one of
your parents.
TUTTLE: Everett Tuttle. I was born in
Grand Forks, North Dakota, 1923. My father
and mother were Clarence and Anna Tuttle.
NELSON: Did you have any brothers and
sisters?
NELSON: Okay. What thoughts did you
have about the War before the United States
became directly involved in the conflict?
TUTTLE: Well, I felt it was a matter of
time even though I was only 18 years old
because of Hitler’s speeches and all the radio talks and the news on the movies when
we went in. We always saw that and we felt
that it was a matter of time.
NELSON: How did you hear of the December 7th, 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor
by the Japanese?
TUTTLE: I was attending Teacher’s College. I was ridiculing or aggravating a guy
that had a gas station. As I walked across the
street, he hollered at me I wouldn’t be here
very long. The Japs just bombed Pearl Harbor. So that’s how I heard about it.
NELSON: What was your reaction and response of those around you?
TUTTLE: I had no brothers or sisters.
TUTTLE: Well, we wanted to sign up right
away.
NELSON: Okay. Are there any details
about your parents and or your family that
you would like to give?
NELSON: Had you formed any prior opinion or developed any feelings about what
had been taking place in Europe or Asia?
TUTTLE: No, they were just common rural people.
TUTTLE: Just that I thought that it would
probably have to be stopped so they couldn’t
begin to come over to this country. Our first
line of thought was that we had to defend
our homeland and our fathers and mothers
and our neighbors.
NELSON: Okay. What was life like for you
before the War and especially during 1941?
TUTTLE: Well we just came out of the
depression and the drought up there in North
Dakota. Getting a job was a rarity. Life was
really struggling before we went into the
War.
NELSON: Do you recall reading newspaper
accounts of German aggression in Europe?
TUTTLE: Yes, I had.
�NELSON: Did you have any knowledge of
Hitler’s speeches, ideas or actions?
TUTTLE: Very afraid
NELSON: How old were you?
TUTTLE: What I saw on theheard on
the radio. We would all listen to it even
though we could hardly understand it. And
then on the movie news they would show
film and hear his speeches and see the
marching of the people and organization of
their military.
NELSON: What events led to your entry
into military service? Were you already in
service, drafted or did you volunteer?
TUTTLE: We were going to volunteer and
they didn’t have enough guns or places for
us. They asked us to stay until we could be
drafted because it would just cause confusion. So I waited until I was drafted.
NELSON: Was your response to entering
military service influenced by family and
friends’ attitudes toward the War and threats
to national security or any other consideration?
TUTTLE: The threat to national security.
TUTTLE: I was 20 years old.
NELSON: What happened after you were
inducted? Where were you sent?
TUTTLE: Well, with basic training I was
in Buckley Field, Colorado. I did basic there
and they lost my records. Then I went to [inaudible] Mississippi for engineering and I
didn't like that. I couldn’t qualify so then I
went to Laredo, Texas, to gunnery school
which I wanted -- machine gun training.
NELSON: What did you think of that training?
TUTTLE: I enjoyed the machine gun trainingenjoyed that.
NELSON: Did anything special happen
there that you can remember?
TUTTLE: Nothing special. Just a routine.
The hardship of Laredo, Texas, in June, July
and August. (Laughter).
NELSON: Okay. Now let’s go to the basic
training. When and where were you inducted?
NELSON: Very Hot! Tell us about any other training camps you attended.
TUTTLE: I was inducted into Fort Snelling, Minnesota. And I took my basic training at Buckley Field, Colorado, outside of
Denver.
TUTTLE: Well, we formed our crew in
Lincoln, Nebraska. We went on to training
in Casper, Wyoming, for overseas duty as a
crew.
NELSON: Do you have any special memories of this event?
NELSON: Did you have any leaves or
passes anytime?
TUTTLE: No, it’s just a whole new life
being in the military. (Laughter).
TUTTLE: I had one emergency leave and I
think I had a 30 day furlough after I came
back from the European Theater when Japan
had not surrendered yet.
NELSON: (inaudible)
�NELSON: What do you recall of this period
about the places that you were stationed, the
friends you made and your association with
civilians?
NELSON: As you arrived, what were you
assigned to do when you first got to your
overseas base?
TUTTLE: Most of the time the relationship
was good. Mississippi was not too good because they had so many service men down
there and they could not take too well to the
Army or the Air Force. They did like the
Navy down there.
TUTTLE: The main thing we did waswe
had to do work around the compound there
with Italian civilians. There was snow over
the mud[we were] wading [in] the mud
almost knee deep. Then when it dried up a
little we just immediately started flying
combat right off the bat.
NELSON: Kind of took over down there,
didn’t they?
NELSON: So you didn’t have any training
missions over there at all?
TUTTLE: Yeah. It was understandable.
NELSON: Your military unit was the Air
Force?
TUTTLE: No justthe only training mission we had was a little gunnery mission
over the Adriatic to see if we could hit
something.
TUTTLE: Army Air Force.
NELSON: What did you think of our nation’s War efforts up to this time?
NELSON: What were your assigned duties?
TUTTLE: Our nation’s what?
TUTTLE: My duties wereI was a nose
clerk under the [inaudible] and I also was an
assistant engineer. I helped on take-off,
sometimes on landings. [Made] sure everything was precise.
NELSON: What did you think of our nation’s war efforts up to this time.
NELSON: Where did you go after completing your basic military training in the United
States? Where did they ship you?
TUTTLE: We picked up our new plane, a
bomber B-24, in Topeka, Kansas. We went
from there [to the airfield in] Newfoundland.
We were in a blizzard there and laid over.
Then we went to the Azore Islands and then
from there we went into the Marrakesh,
North Africa, then into Tunis, North Africa,
and then we were bogged down with mud in
Italy so we couldn’t land for a few days.
Then we went to [inaudible] Italy to the [inaudible].
TUTTLE: I thought it was all out and very
much backed by all the citizens of the United States. It was just wonderful the way they
sacrificed and did everything into production and sacrificed to help this.
NELSON: Tell us about your experience of
entering the first combat zone or your first
mission.
TUTTLE: First mission was one that you
didn’t want. It was in Vienna, Austria. I had
the misfortune of running or going over it
twice. The casualties were very high and the
Russians got over 500 [inaudible] out of
there. The other missions were really terrible. We were in Linz, Austria. The Benzol
[oil] plants there. Herman Goering’s tank
�factories -- and they had a lot of the yellownosed fighter planes there up in Germany.
TUTTLE: No. No. No Sunday school picnicjob that had to be done.
NELSON: Okay. I think you covered the
next question pretty well. Taking these one
at a time, first tell us in full detail, if possible, about the approximate number and
types of casualties, how they occurred and
how they were treated and if you had any
[inaudible].
NELSON: Did you write many letters home
and receive letters?
TUTTLE: We were very fortunate. We returned back with over 200 holes in our ship
but nobody was hit and we received a fourday pass in Rome for going through Vienna
twice and Linz twice plus the other missions. The major casualties was on the combat missions that the guys getting hit, their
airplanes blowing up and the parachutes
coming out on fire and the planes going
down. The flak was so heavy sometimes you
couldn’t see if the other five or seven planes
got through it or not because it was so heavy
from the smoke.
TUTTLE: I only wrote on occasions. I
never received many letters. I didn’t have
any family. My mother wrote me and I think
one aunt did. I had no relatives.
NELSON: So, you didn’t get any packages?
TUTTLE: No, I didn’t get any packages
overseas. They would never get there.
NELSON: How about the other men? Did
they receive letters and send letters?
TUTTLE: A lot of the guys [who] were engaged to their girlfriends and sweethearts
got letters. Most of us gunners weren’t engaged or anything so we got occasionally
letters, usually a “Dear John.”
NELSON: What altitude did you fly?
NELSON: Did you forge close bonds with
many or some of your combat companions?
TUTTLE: We flew at about 25 to 27,000
feet.
TUTTLE: Every [year], since 1990, we’ve
gone to the 461st Bomb Group reunion. The
pilot, the co-pilot, the engineer gunner, the
radial gunner the ball gunner, myself, and
the top turret gunner have been to these conventions and we do see each other once a
year.
NELSON: Did your mental attitude change
as combat continued?
TUTTLE: No, it was just another job. If
you made it, you made it. If you didn’t, you
didn’t. Your family got $10,000 bucks.
NELSON: What did you think of the War
so far?
NELSON: Were you ever involved in retrieving a wounded buddy or that sort of
thing?
TUTTLE: No.
TUTTLE: (Laughter) Wasn’t enthusiastic
about it.
NELSON: Wasn’t like going to Sunday
school?
NELSON: You never got involved in liberating prison camps?
TUTTLE: No, we didn’t.
�NELSON: What was the highlight occurrence of your combat experience or any other experiences you can remember? What
stands out in your mind?
TUTTLE: It just seems like we drew the
tough missions and I’m sure every guy in
combat felt the same way. But it was routine
combat and just something we went to bed a
little early and got a good night’s rest because you may have the luck if you went
down, to be able to walk back, but not too
many did.
NELSON: What time did you have to get
up in the morning when you flew?
TUTTLE: They got us up at 2 o’clock in
the morning. Then they fed us, then they
briefed us, then they took us down to draw
our gear and ammo, and then we loaded the
plane. Then they leveledthey used a slide
rule where the weight all was and we took
off probablywe probably didn’t take off
until about 7 o’clock, so that took about 4 to
5 hours.
NELSON: You mentioned briefing. What
was briefing about?
TUTTLE: Briefing was about where you
were going, where to expect the flak, what
you were probably going to run into, and
then alternate routes where you would bomb
alternate targets. Then you would plan if you
went down, where to head for -- primarily
Yugoslavia, or head near Switzerland to try
to avoid being captured. We had an incident
that so many civilians were working around
[inaudible].
NELSON: Tell us what you and the other
men did to celebrate America’s traditional
family holidays such as Thanksgiving and
Christmas.
TUTTLE: Usually you just lined up and
went to chow and got a little something extra.
NELSON: When and how did you return to
the U.S. at the end of the War?
TUTTLE: At the end of the War we, as
usual, drew some detail, and we had to dismantle the area that our bomb group was in,
and we flew a weather ship back. So we had
it heavily loaded with instruments. Our pilot
was a “number one” pilot and our copilotAny time the company commander
flew a weather mission or a mission, he’d
take our pilot as a copilot. So we felt pretty
good. He’d take half the crew--the engineer,
the navigator and the radio man--but they
really didn’t need a gunner when they flew
that weather because it was usually dark. It’s
a good feeling with a crew of that quality.
NELSON: Now when you arrived in the
United States, what happened?
TUTTLE: When we finally flew through
all the storms back and landed we got our
traditional big steak and a quart of milk.
Where we landed there was a lot of prisoners of the War -- Germans. They were glaring at us and we were glaring at them.
NELSON: What town was that?
TUTTLE: I think it was somewhere in
Georgia. I think we landed in Georgia first
and then went down to Florida, I think. Then
we went on a 30-day furlough.
NELSON: Tell us about your military rank
and your decorations, especially your campaign decorations.
TUTTLE: Well, I went in as a private,
same as everybody else, but I came out as a
Staff Sergeant. I can’t recallI know I had
�the air medal and cluster and we had the European Ribbon. We had the North African
ribbon. I got the good conduct medal. And
through training, of course, I got Sharp
Shooters. There’s some other medal in there
that I got but I didn’t look at my discharge
before I came out.
NELSON: You flew how many missions?
TUTTLE: We had 19 credited missions.
We had some that were scratched. We went
up to hit the jet fields. I saw the first German
jet up over Czechoslovakia. It was something to see. We were trying to hit their.
NELSON [interrupting]: Do you remember
about whether that was in April, 1945?
TUTTLE: I think so, because they didn’t
have fuel so we went up there and this fellow that every so oftenOne squad out of
766th Bomb Squadron, 766th--one of those
guys would have to lead. So to make him
mean we flew around and around up in
Czechoslovakia and the fields were so camouflaged we couldn’t bomb them but a
German jet came up and we had those flak
fighter pilots that were flying escorts. They
jumped on him and he left them standing
still. They just winged over and went back
to Greece. Our seven planes just circled
around until finally my pilot told them they
had enough gas to get back, “We better get
back.”
NELSON: Did you see any other planes?
TUTTLE: Oh, yeah. I saw the British.
They were terrible. They set a course and
they’d just fly right through italmost like
flying through the formation. I had a chance
to shoot down a JU88 but it looked like a
bullfighter of the English. I hesitated shooting because I didn’t want to shoot him down
but I had him in my sights. I should have
shot him. I caught hell for not shooting him
down, you know.
NELSON: The reason I mention that is because I lost my co-pilot. He was flying another crew over Czechoslovakia. They got
hit by ME-210s. I was just wondering if
maybe our group flew on the same mission
that you were on?
TUTTLE: It is very possible, because they
were trying to hit those jet fields up there
where they had them stored. When they took
off, they just left the B51s like they were
just standing still. It was a whole new ball
game.
NELSON: Oh yes, yes, it certainly was.
Now this is in reference to your return to
civilian life. How did you get along with the
men with whom you had the greatest contact? That was the people you were serving
[with]?
TUTTLE: We had wonderful officers and
men. We were close, very close as a combat
crew. I don’t think our pilot and copilot
would even open a candy bar without offering half of it. It was the kind of relationship
we had.
NELSON: Were there things you would do
differently if you could do them once again?
TUTTLE: I don’t think so, because it’s a
job that men of our time should do.
NELSON: What was the most difficult
thing you had to do during your period of
military service?
TUTTLE: KP [Laughter]. I hated K.P. [KP
is short for kitchen police.]
�NELSON: A lot of them say their first mission.
TUTTLE: Yes, [laughter] we did.
NELSON: How about VJ Day?
TUTTLE: Yeah, the first mission would
be, and the training, or it was KP. The first
mission was soyou didn’t know what to
expect. You had no idea, no idea what was
happening.
NELSON: Is there anything that stands out
in your mind as [your] most successful
achievement in military service?
TUTTLE: [Hesitation].
NELSON: Getting your wings?
TUTTLE: Oh, I think getting my wings
was mya personal achievement that I felt
good about because you had to take that machine gun apart and put it together blindfolded. You had to qualify to hit these moving targets and you had to hit these sleeves
that werethat had the [inaudible] parts.
NELSON: Had to shoot the sleeve and not
the
TUTTLE: Not the [inaudible]. You see,
your bullets were all color-coded so they
counted your hits. If you had yellow bullets
or if you had blue or whatever. So your hits
were counted.
NELSON: How did you learn of VE Day
and what was your reaction to it?
TUTTLE: We were in Tampa, Florida, and
[I was with] a new-found buddy, because the
crews were not being reformed for Europe.
We were in a nightclub when we heard
about it. So we were in Tampa, Florida, celebrating it.
NELSON: Celebrating a little bit, I imagine.
TUTTLE: Now wait a minute. I’m sorry,
that was VJ Day.
NELSON: How about VE Day?
TUTTLE: VE Day. I’m sorry. VE Day we
were in Europe and we kept running up to
the command post there to find out if there
was any information yet, because the Russians were really going and then Patton…
We couldn’t bomb because Patton, you never knew where he was! The Russians we
knew where they were, because they were
burning everything. We felt that VE Day we
were over there in our squadron area.
NELSON: What was your opinion of the
use of the atomic bomb when it was used
against the Japanese civilians in August of
1945?
TUTTLE: I felt great about it, to tell you
the truth. They bombed Pearl Harbor without justification. They wouldn’t even have
the War if they had stayed in Japan. I feel if
they had it, they would have used it. No
doubt Hitler would have used it. It was a
matter who did it [first]. I’ve got to commend Harry Truman for dropping that
bomb. How many lives --and ending the
War-- and how much we saved!
NELSON: Has your opinion changed over
the last 50 years? If so, how?
TUTTLE: No, absolutely not.
NELSON: When and where were you officially discharged from service.
TUTTLE: I was officially discharged out
here at Camp Grant in Rockford, Illinois.
�NELSON: Do you have any disability rating or pension?
NELSON: Is there anything you would like
to mention that we haven’t touched on that
you would like to mention on this interview.
TUTTLE: None.
NELSON: Do you have any opinions or
feelings about the nation’s military status or
its policies?
TUTTLE: Yes, I do. I don’t think women
should be in combat jobs. I think they
should be in jobs where they are pretty well
protected. It would be terrible if they were
captured.
TUTTLE: Off hand, I can’t think of anything.
NELSON: Well, Everett, it has been very
nice interviewing you. Thank you very
much.
TUTTLE: Well, thank you.
NELSON: Do you have any contact with
the Veterans’ Administration?
TUTTLE: No, not really. I had some and I
was very disappointed.
NELSON: Have you ever been in a Veterans’ Administration Hospital?
TUTTLE: No, I haven’t.
NELSON: Would you like to tell us about
your family? How your family supported
you during your military life? I think you
mentioned this earlier.
TUTTLE: My family--They were 100%
behind me, you know. They were concerned, the same as any parents, same as the
average American family.
NELSON: Over the subsequent years, what
has this support meant to you?
TUTTLE: Well, it just makes you more
aware what keeps your own family strong.
Then, I believe if the family is strong the
nation is strong.
Editor, November, 2018:
Everett Tuttle died June 29, 2018. Per his
obituary in the Rockford Register Star [legacy.com, published July 3-5, 2018] he was a
veteran of the US Army 765th Bomb Squadron in WWII. He retired from All Rental
Garment.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Midway Village Museum
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Midway Village Museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-2001
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Language
A language of the resource
English
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Charles Nelson
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Everett Tuttle
Location
The location of the interview
Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Everett Tuttle
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
27-Jul-94
Description
An account of the resource
Born in 1923, Everett Tuttle was drafted in 1942 into the Army Air Force, becoming part of a weather crew. He was discharged in 1946. He died June 29, 2018.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War 2
World War II
-
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Ernest Stolp, Jr.
Transcribed by Lorraine Lightcap
For Midway Village and Museum Center
6911 Guilford Road
Rockford, Illinois 61107
Phone 815 397 9112
�Ernest Stolp, Jr.
Today is the 30th, __?__, 1994. My name is Charles
Nelson and I am a volunteer with the Midway Village
in Rockford, Illinois, which is cooperating with the
statewide effort to collect oral histories from Illinois
citizens that participated in the momentous events surrounding World War II. We are in the office of Midway Village interviewing Mr. Ernest E. Stolp, Jr. who
lives at 1212 Comanche Drive, Rockford, Illinois,
61107. Mr. Stolp served in a branch of the United
States Armed Forces during World War II. We are
interviewing him about his experiences in that war.
Ernie, please give us your full name, the place and date
of birth. We would also like to have the names of each
of your parents.
STOLP: My name is Ernest E. Stolp, Jr. I live at 1212
Comanche Drive in Rockford, Illinois, 61107. I was
born in Chicago, Illinois, April 18, 1921. My father’s
name is Ernest E. Stolp; Sr. My mother’s name is Dorothy K. Stolp.
NELSON: Did you have any brothers or sisters?
STOLP: I have one brother and one sister.
NELSON: Are there any details about your parents
and or your family that you would like to give?
STOLP: I don't think so.
NELSON: Okay. What was life like before the war
and specifically during 1941?
STOLP: In 1941, I worked for __?__ Electric in Genoa, Illinois as a multi spindle drill operator and set up
man.
NELSON: What thoughts did you have about the war
before the United States became directly involved in
the conflict?
STOLP: Not much. We knew that the war in Europe
was going on but I didn't pay much to it, being kids.
NELSON: How did you hear about the December 7th,
1941, bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese?
STOLP: Like a lot of other fellows, we said, "We better enlist now and get it over with".
NELSON: Had you formed any prior opinion or developed any feeling about what had been taking place
in Europe or Asia?
STOLP: No.
NELSON: Did you recall reading newspaper accounts
of German aggression in Europe?
STOLP: Yes.
NELSON: Did you have any knowledge of Hitler's
speeches, ideas or actions?
STOLP: Not really; not any definite ideas.
NELSON: What events led to your entering military
service? Were you already in service, drafted or did
you volunteer?
STOLP: Well, I volunteered for the United States Army Air Corp and the reason for it being I didn't like the
idea of the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor.
NELSON: Okay. This goes into basic training. When
and where were you inducted?
STOLP: I was inducted in Wausau, Wisconsin. My
basic training was done at Camp Grant, Illinois.
Whereas I already had National Guard training, I was
moved on to Enid, Oklahoma, right about 30 days after
being stationed out here at Camp Grant, Illinois.
NELSON: Do you have any special memories of this
event?
STOLP: Just that it was colder than heck.
NELSON: How old were you?
STOLP: I've got a tape of that event. I was 21 years
old at the time.
NELSON: What happened after you were inducted?
STOLP: I was in a parade in the City of DeKalb, Illinois National Guard. It was announced over a loud
speaker that we had gone to war with the Japanese.
NELSON: What was your reaction and response by
those around you?
STOLP: We were put on a troop train and shipped to
Camp Grant, Illinois where we were in "tent city" for
our basic training.
NELSON: What were you trained to do?
�STOLP: At that time we were trained to march with a
gun that was a broomstick.
NELSON: When and where were you sent overseas
and how did you get there?
NELSON: What did you think of the training?
STOLP: I was sent overseas in 1944 out of Stoughton.
California, on a Liberty Ship, arriving in Mindanao
Island which is in New Guinea, I should say, about 30
days later.
STOLP: I didn't think much of it at that time.
NELSON: Did anything special happen there?
STOLP: No.
NELSON: Tell us about any other training camps you
attended.
STOLP: Okay. I moved from there to Enid, Oklahoma
with the Air Corp and we went into our training mode
of mechanical engineering, such as repairing and servicing airplanes of the B20.. Wait a minute (on the
PT13 which is a primary basic trainer for the Air Corp.
NELSON: Okay. What were you assigned to do after
arriving?
STOLP: After arriving we were first assigned as part
of an aircrew member replacing some of the fellows
that were lost or gone home.
NELSON: What did you think of the Nation's war
effort up to this point?
STOLP: Up to the point of my starting out, you mean?
NELSON: Did you have any leaves or passes?
NELSON: Where you were at the time.
STOLP: Oh, yes.
STOLP: I thought it was real good. For instance, our
squadron got a citation out there for a raid we put on
over enemy shipping where if we hadn't we would
have lost a whole bunch of people. I don't know
whether they want me to read that or not.
NELSON: If so, how did you use them?
STOLP: Well, I used some of them to go see the girlfriend I had in Oklahoma City. Others I used to come
home to see my parents.
NELSON: Okay. What do you recall about this period
about the places you were stationed, the friends you
made, your association with civilians?
STOLP: Well, I think the association with civilians
was pretty good. The places we stayed were barracks
with the old potbelly stove in the middle of them
which was not too bad. Most all the weather we had in
Enid. If you woke up in the morning and your feetif
your shoes were frozen to the floor, you knew it was
cold.
NELSON: At this time, what were your duties?
STOLP: At that time I was a Crew Chief on the line
on the B13(?) airplanes.
NELSON: Okay. Where did you go after completing
your basic military training?
STOLP: From there to more training on airplane engines at Randolph Field, Texas. From there to Winfield, Kansas, [Storther?] Air Base where I stayed for
some time. Then went from there to, let me see, Eagle
Pass, Texas, and from there to Del Rio, Texas where I
joined the B26 organization.
NELSON: Well, we'll get into that. Tell us about your
experiences of entering your first combat zone.
STOLP: Scare the "living daylights" out of me.
(Laughter). We no more than got off the ship, we got
on land when the air raid sirens went off. We didn't
have foxholes or anything dug yet. We were just setting up our tent and they said an air raid was coming so
I wound up hiding in a big old carryall, a steel-sided
carryall they used to haul dirt in. I stayed there and I
had __?__ cup of water until the warning came that it
was over with.
NELSON: Can you list for us in order of occurrence
all subsequent combat actions in which you were involved?
STOLP: Well, this is 50 some years ago, Charlie.
(Laughter). The biggest one that stands out, of course,
is a raid on the shipping out there. The other ones were
just bombing and photographing the enemies.
NELSON: Did you tell us what island you were on?
STOLP: Yes. On Mindanao in New Guinea from there
to Luzon in the Philippines. From there to __?__ which
is off the tip of Japan. Actually the __?__ of Japan.
Then from there to Nagasaki, then Japan itself.
�NELSON: Do you remember how many missions you
were on?
NELSON: What did most of the other men write or
receive letters?
STOLP: No.
STOLP: Yes, we had a regular call where some of the
guys would get a stack of letters from back home that
were 10 to 13 letters in a stack.
NELSON: What airplane did you
STOLP: B-25. Mitchell, B25, Model D.
NELSON: Did you forge close bonds of friendship
with many or some of your combat companions?
NELSON: What was your job on the B25?
STOLP: No.
STOLP: I was Top Turret Gunner and Crew Chief.
NELSON: Can you tell us in full detail, if possible,
the approximate number and types of casualties, how
they occurred and how they were treated?
STOLP: Oh, boy, that’s hard.
NELSON: Did you have any casualties on your airplane?
STOLP: Yes, we did. Had a couple fellows that were
shotI can’t say casualties because they were wounded and survived, patched up and back to work again.
NELSON: Did your mental attitude change as combat
continued?
STOLP: No.
NELSON: Have you remained in contact with any of
your World War II companions?
STOLP: No. I’ve lost track of them.
NELSON: Did you ever have to help retrieve a
wounded buddy from the battlefield in combat?
STOLP: No. No.
NELSON: Except the flying crew.
STOLP: Except the flying crew. As long as we got
back on land where the Medics took care of them right
quick like.
NELSON: What was the highlight occurrence of your
combat experience and any other experiences you can
remember?
NELSON: What did you think of the war so far?
STOLP: I didn’t like it but I knew it had to be done. It
was something we had to do to get things back the way
they should be.
NELSON: Did you write many letters home?
STOLP: Yes I wrote at least once a week or maybe
once a month.
NELSON: Did you receive many letters and/or packets, if so, how often?
STOLP: No, I didn’t. I received quite a few letters but
not many packets.
STOLP: The highlight one is this one right here. I
know this is quite worn to put on tape.
NELSON: Can you briefly tell us what it is?
STOLP: Yes. It was the 17th Reconnaissance Squadron B of the 77th Reconnaissance Group, on December
26, 1944, it became imperative to launch all available
aircraft on Mindanao The task force from the Japanese
consisting of a heavy cruiser, 1 light cruiser and 6 destroyers approaching an American Air Base on Mindanao. If we hadn’t bombed them out, they would have
taken us out for sure and captured the whole island.
NELSON: Were there any casualties lost?
NELSON: If you did receive packets, what were they
like?
STOLP: One was wrecked on take-off. One was shot
down. Two had to be ditched and one was reported
missing. That was out of 13 airplanes.
STOLP: Well, they were usually stuffs. Of course,
being out in the South Pacific food stuffsthe cookies
were fine. They were kind of crumbly by the time they
got to us.
NELSON: Are there any other things you recall about
that mission?
�STOLP: No. Except it was a heck of a go around. We
came back in, reloaded, refueled and took off again as
fast as we could.
NELSON: Okay. Tell us what you and the other men
did to celebrate America’s traditional holidays such as
Thanksgiving and Christmas?
STOLP: Yeah, I’d keep track of them. Most all of our
crewwe were a replacement crew. We were replacing guys that put there time in and they were ready to
go home. So most all of our crew was assembled from
whom we didn’t go overseas with.
STOLP: You mean during wartime?
NELSON: What was your most difficult you had to do
during your period of military service?
NELSON: Yes, during your time in the service.
STOLP: Most difficult? KP (Kitchen police).
STOLP: Well we didn’t.
NELSON: Is there any one thing that stands out as
your most successful achievement in the military service?
NELSON: When and how did you return to the United
States at the end of the war?
STOLP: No. Just getting us there and back again.
STOLP: I came back to Fort Lewis in Washington
state by boat, on the US Aircraft __?__.
NELSON: What happened you arrived in the United
States?
STOLP: We were quite well welcomed home. We
went to Fort Lewis and there we staid for about a
week, saw a little bit there then transported back to
Camp Grant, Illinois and I got out at Camp Grant, Illinois.
NELSON: Please tell us about your military rank and
your decorations especially your campaign decorations.
STOLP: Okay, I wasmy rank was a Staff Sergeant
and campaign decoration, 3 bronze stars, Philippine
Liberation. I have the Asiatic Pacific Liberation medal
and, of course, the ruptured duck (discharge decoration) good conduct medal and flight engineers wings.
NELSON: How many missions were you on?
STOLP: About 35 as I remember.
NELSON: Coming home alive. How did you learn
about VE Day and what was your reaction to that?
STOLP: We celebrated that on Iwo Jima by using our
__?__ flare pistols and firing our __?__ flares into the
air (inaudible, laughter).
NELSON: How did you learn about VJ Day and what
was your reaction to it?
STOLP: VJ Day was a bigger thing for us because the
surrendered airplanes brought the Japanese people to
Iwo Jima in white airplanes. We were all up on the
ramp to see that thing come in.
NELSON: What was your opinion of the use of the
atomic bomb when it was used against Japanese civilians in August of 1945?
STOLP: We didn’t know about it until we got to Japan and then we were told about how we flew over it
because we were mapping Japan. We didn’t know a
heck of a whole lot about it. We knew it stopped the
war.
NELSON: Now this goes into the return to civilian
life. How did you get along with men with whom you
had the greatest contact?
NELSON: Did you have an opinion of it at that time?
STOLP: You mean civilians?
NELSON: So your opinion is about the same now as it
was then?
NELSON: I imagine the people you were with in the
service.
STOLP: In service. Oh I got along fine.
NELSON: Are there things you would do differently
if you could do them again?
STOLP: No.
STOLP: Oh, yeah.
NELSON: It hasn’t changed? When and where were
you officially from service?
�STOLP: Discharged from service, December 13,
1945, at Camp Grant, Illinois.
STOLP: No.
STOLP: Well, I found thoseyou asked me about
service stripes and stuff. I had one Service Stripe, one
Overseas Service Bar, American Campaign medal, the
Asiatic Pacific Theater ribbon with four bronze battle
stars, Philippine Liberation ribbon with one bronze
battle star, Good Conduct medal and the World War I
medal. Why that World War II don’t know.
NELSON: Do you have any opinions or theories about
the nation’s military status or its policies?
NELSON: Is there anything else you would like to add
to this interview?
STOLP: No, I’m too old to worry about it.
STOLP: No, I don’t think so Charlie.
NELSON: Do you have any contact with the Veterans’ Administration?
NELSON: Thank you very much Ernie. That was a
good one.
STOLP: Yeah, I did through the Veterans’ Administration I did get my medicalArmy Medical Records
we couldn’t get before. They were through a fire some
place as you can see by this. The Illinois Veterans’
Assistance here in Rockford helped me get those.
STOLP: You’re welcome.
NELSON: Do you have any disability rating or pension?
NELSON: What is your opinion of the Veterans’ Administration at this time?
STOLP: I think it’s good.
NELSON: Have you ever gone to a VA Hospital for
medical services?
STOLP: I have but only for a visit.
NELSON: So you haven’t received medical care.
STOLP: No.
NELSON: Would you like to tell us about how your
family supported during your military life?
STOLP: Very well. My mother and my dad were both
very supportive, of course. They followed us around
made sure while we were in the states that wemy
brother and I both were in. He was in the paratroops.
They made sure we knew what we were up against as
much as they could.
NELSON: Over the subsequent years what has this
support meant to you?
STOLP: Well, I think it was good training so we could
do the same for our own family after we got married.
NELSON: Is there anything you would like to add to
this interview?
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Midway Village Museum
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Midway Village Museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-2001
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Language
A language of the resource
English
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Charles Nelson
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Ernest S. Stolp, Jr.
Location
The location of the interview
Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Ernest S. Stolp, Jr.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
circa 1994
Description
An account of the resource
Born April 18, 1921, Ernest S. Stolp joined the Army Air force in 1942 and was discharged Dec. 13, 1945. He died November 19, 2006.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War 2
World War II
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Text
Elmer L. Wilt
Transcribed by Lorraine Lightcap
For Midway Village and Museum Center
9766 Guilford Road
Rockford, Illinois
Phone 397 9112
�Elmer L. Wilt:
This is February 18, 1994. My name is
Charles Nelson. I am a volunteer with the
Midway Village & Museum Center in Rockford, Illinois, which is cooperating with the
statewide effort to collect oral histories from
Illinois citizens that participated in the momentous events surrounding World War II.
We are in the office of Midway Village &
Museum Center interviewing Mr. Elmer L.
Wilt: at 310 North Cherry, P. O. Box 273,
Cherry Valley, Illinois. Mr. Wilt was born
October 5, 1924. Mr. Wilt served in the
branch of the United States Armed Forces
during World War II. We are interviewing
him about his experiences in that war.
NELSON: Wilt, would you please start by
introducing yourself. Please give us your
full name, the place and date of birth?
WILT: Well, my name is Elmer L. Wilt. I
was born in Atwood City, Missouri, October
5, 1924.
NELSON: We would also like to have the
names of each of your parents.
WILT: My dad’s name was Charles Elmer
Wilt and my mother’s name was Flora
Green Wilt.
NELSON: Did you have any brothers or
sisters?
WILT: I have two brothers, younger.
NELSON: Are there any details about your
parents or your family that you would like to
give?
Wilt: My great grandfather died of small
pox in a Civil War prison camp in Johnsonville, Virginia. My grand dadnever did see
himhe diedhe was born at __?__ ser-
vice and he died before my granddad came
home. That was before he could get
outand before my granddad.
NELSON: What was life like before the
war, specifically during 1941?
WILT: I was in high school. Then and you
don’t care a whole lot about things but I
know my friend and I had considered we
wanted to get involved. We had considered
either joining the British-American Ambulance Corps in China. You only had to be
16, which is a good thing it didn’t happen
because we would have been Japanese prisoners very young. The other thing we considered was going to Canada to the RAF. At
that time you still had to have two years of
college to get in the Air Force. But anyway,
by the time I got out of high school we were
involved. We graduated in June of ’42 and
we were already involved then so going to
Canada to enlist was out of the question.
NELSON: What thoughts did you have
about the war before United States became
directly involved in the conflict?
WILT: Well, I was positive we were going
to be involved, I guess and beyond that with
the gas rationing and all that, it did curtail
my activities. We were living out in a suburban area and there was no transportation
and I had to have my own car to go to high
school in Rockford. There was no bus service.
NELSON: How did you hear of the December 7th, 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor
by the Japanese? If so where were you and
what were you doing at the time? What was
your reaction or response to this those
around you?
�WILT: I was at home and I was kind of
shocked. My parents were really concerned
because I was a little over 17. They knew
that we were going to be going because it
was going to be not over in a short time.
That night we met down at the Cozy Inn. All
the guys and girls that used to ride to school
with me sat around talking. We were mostly
just looking at one another wondering what
the next year was going to bring and who
wouldn’t come home from the war because
we all knew that we were going to be involved in the war in some way or another.
NELSON: This next one is on basic training. When and where were you inducted?
WILT: I enlisted at Camp Grant and then I
reportedI was sworn in out there then put
in standby reserves for almost two months
before I was called to active duty. Then I
went to downtown Chicago and five hundred of us got on a train for Sheppard Field,
Texas. Feeling kind of lost, aloneeighteen
years old, among five hundred guys. I didn’t
know a soul. I wished I were home at that
time.
NELSON: Had you formed any prior opinions of developed any feelings about what
was taking place in Europe or Asia?
NELSON: What happened after you were
inducted?
WILT: Being idealistic as high student you
know, we knew it was wrong and I guess we
all felt sure that war was going to happen
and it should have happened before that.
WILT: We went thru basic training down
there in the panhandle in February, ate a lot
of dust, march until we got blisters on and
learned how to use a gun.
NELSON: Do you recall reading newspaper
accounts of German aggression in Europe?
NELSON: What did you think of the training?
WILT: Yes.
Wilt: It was very thorough for the time
frame we had and for what they were trying
to do for the massive amount of people they
were putting in the air
NELSON: Did you have any knowledge of
Hitler’s speeches, ideas or actions?
WILT: No.
NELSON: What events led to your entry
into military service? Were you drafted or
did you volunteer?
NELSON: Did anything special happen
there?
WILT: In Texas?
NELSON: Yes.
Wilt: I enlisted because I wanted to be in
the Air Force.
NELSON: Was your response in entering
military service influenced by family and
friends attitudes towards the war, respect for
national security; or other consideration?
WILT: No, strictly on my own.
WILT: No, not that I can think of. I know
we werethe barracks were so crowded, we
had one hundred twenty guys living in barracks basically designed for sixty-five.
NELSON: Tell us about any other training
camps you attended.
�WILT: When we were ready to ship out we
lived in a hangar. We had fifteen hundred
guys under one roof waiting for shipping
orders. That’s how busy the base was. I went
through a lot of training bases in the States
there, college training, and preflight training
in Santa Anna. I jumped in all over the
country.
NELSON: Did you have any leaves or
passes?
WILT: I had one leave before I went over
seas. I had a sick leave when I was in advanced flight training I come down with virus pneumonia. It was just a month before
graduation. I got back to class to go to night
school so I went down and talked to my captain and he said my grades were high
enough and I told him why don’t I have a
sick leave instead and go home. He said it
sounded like a good idea so I bought a round
trip ticket for $21 from Texas and come
home for a week.
NELSON: What was you military rank?
WILT: Eighth Air Force, First Bomber
Group, 612th Squadron.
crew together. But we didn’t know each other. Each one to work as a unit and then they
shipped us overseas via New Foundland and
Ireland. I mean Iceland and then to England.
Finally we got to our base there about seven
miles north of London.
NELSON: What were you assigned to do
after arriving?
WILT: Our first week was kind of indoctrination. We checked out a plane and flew
around the area and then met our commanding officer, the squadron commanding officer and the flight personnel that we would
be involved with.
NELSON: What did you think of the nation’s war effort up to this point?
Wilt: It was very much involved I worked
as a heat treat apprentice that first summer
out of school and I was really doing so much
at Woodward Governor. We had clout because Woodward Governor had a lot of
clout. The wanted something, they got it.
NELSON: If you did not immediately enter
the combat zone, where did you go before
entering combat?
NELSON: What were your assigned duties?
WILT: I was a copilot on a B17.
NELSON: If there were any transfers to
other units please give the details There
probably wasn’t . . .
WILT: When I went to finish my training
and was shipped to England after we had a
week in a base there we did go into combat
and start flying missions.
NELSON: Tell us about you experience of
entering your fist combat zone.
WILT: No. No.
NELSON: Where did you go after completing basic training?
WILT: Well, we went to LasVegas to I
learned to fly B17s. Then we went to a base
training center in Tennessee to get a full
WILT: My first one? At that time they
would train copilots A green copilot went up
with an old experienced crew The experienced copilot was a sportsman He had to go
up with eight guys who didn’t know what
they were doing, on their first mission and
scared witless On our first mission we got
�hit just at bombs away over Cologne and we
lost both one and two We had a devil of a
time getting back to our base. I was a fatalist
because at that time the Eighth Air Force
was losing more people than anybody else
was, you know. All of us expected not to
come home I just put that in my mind and
didn’t worry about it. Then after that the
crew looked at me as a good luck piece because usually you only had one bad mission
and I had mine.
WILT: Something we probably should
have been involved in earlier although we
weren’t ready for it. Might have saved a lot
of innocent peoples’ lives and a lot of damage to England, France and Germany and
the low land countries, Russia but we
weren’t prepared any sooner and it took
something like that to shock the nation into
a massive effort
NELSON: Did you write many letters
home?
NELSON: How many missions did you fly?
WILT: Actually thirty we got credit for. We
went out almost thirty-five times but if you
didn’t drop a bomb on target, it didn’t count.
NELSON: How did your mental attitude
change as combat continued?
WILT: Well, when we first started flying
combat, like I said, we really didn’t expect
to make it through because the losses were
quite heavy. So we were rather nonchalant
about when the flack started coming in the
area, waiting ’til it got close to us before we
put our flack suits on. Well, I’ll never forget
the day we were getting like twenty-five
missions and we thought we were going to
make it. The war was winding down There
was one burst of flack about three miles
ahead and Steve and I bumped heads trying
to grab that flack helmet. We thought we
was going to make it so we weren’t going to
take any chances, you know. The whole
crew became that way. Before that, you
know, put the flack suit on when we got in
close to the area. No, boy, we put the flack
suits on the moment we took off. They
thought we were gonna home.
NELSON: What did you think of the war so
far?
WILT: Yes I did. I wrote probably once a
week or so.
NELSON: Did you receive many letters or
packages and if so, how often? What types
of things did you like to get in packets?
WILT: I never received much. I could get
most of whatever I needed. I was a young
guy withwhen I went out, I would go out
looking for girls or have a few drinks with
the guys. Drink for today or we’ll all be
dead or something like that. That was our
attitude. The only thing I couldn’t get was
film I liked to take pictures and I couldn’t
get the film for that purpose. __?__ sent me
cigarettes once in while if they could get
them The Post Mistress in Cherry Valley,
Mrs. Hyland, she’d get the names and addresses of all the boys in the service in Cherry Valley. She sent them all cookies at least
once a year or more so she must have been
baking all the time. (Laughter).
NELSON: Did most the other men write
and receive letters?
WILT: Yes, We were in a smalljust a pilot, copilot and navigator shared a cabin
room at least by ourselves over there. Steve
was married and Bob was engaged and I had
met a lot of girlfriends in the States at different bases so I wrote to all of them be-
�cause I didn’t know where I was going to be
after the war. I wrote a lot of short letters
and I received quite a few letters and I received quite a few letters. For the guy who
was married why you could tell what his
wife was doing by his face when he was
reading the mail.
NELSON: Did you forge close bonds of
friendship with many or some of your combat companions?
WILT: Some. Steve, the first pilot and I are
going to a reunion in England this summer.
We get together once in awhile. Last year
we had a reunion in Norfolk He came out
and picked me up and we flew into Chicago
down to Northbrook.
NELSON: That’s good. Have you remained
in contact with any of your World War II
companions?
WILT: Yes.
NELSON: Besides your pilot.
WILT: Oh, yes, the engineer and both turret
gunners. I talked to them. We have another
reunion in Omaha this summer and we expect to see a number of them. The first pilot
worked for United Airlines and he got all
around the country free He has kept in contact with every member of the crew but the
tail gunner. He had never been able to get
ahold of him.
NELSON: What was the highlight occurrence of your combat experience?
WILT: (Long pause). I remember one day
we hadwe got bombed through by our
own squadron and looking up to see those
bombs coming down. They missed me, I
guess. (Laughter). It did hit one plane
thoughknocked the engine off.
NELSON: Tell us what you and the other
men did to celebrate America’s traditional
family holidays such as Thanksgiving and
Christmas
WILT: You mean in the service?
NELSON: Yes, in the service.
WILT: Christmas of ’44 I was in Section K
getting a new plane, going overseas. Steven’s wife was there and we weren’t that
well acquainted yet so I had known some
friends in town because I had been there before. And there was another pilot I had been
trained with so he and I ran around together.
It was really laid back. We were kind of apprehensive. We were separatedJoe and I
were from these in friends in town. We
didn’t know what was going to happen and
we were going into the unknowninto
combat. It was kind of a melancholy time.
The USO, some of the colleges had parties
and dances for us butit was kind of hard
to unwind and loosen up We were all tense
NELSON: When and how did you return to
the United States after the end of the war.
WILT: Just like we went over. We flew
back.
NELSON: What happened when you arrived in the United States?
WILT: Well, we got intolet’s see, Boston. We flew into there, turned the plane
over and spent a night at Miles Standish
Army Base. We got on a train and came
back home for thirty day leave. I was the
only guy home.
NELSON: Please tell us about your military
rank and your decorations especially your
campaign decorations.
�st
WILT: I became a 1 Lieutenant while I
was overseas. I had the Air Medal with six
oak leaf clusters. That’s all with my active
duty.
NELSON: How many campaigns were you
in?
WILT: Just thirty missions. That waswe
were on our way to China. Our Commanding Officer was just made full Colonel. He
was taking the whole group to China. We
got our leave and we were regrouping in
Sioux Falls, South Dakota. We knew something was up because the base kept getting
more and more people returning from England. We couldn’t find out anything going
on. One day we were standing in line to go
to a movie, eleven o’clock in the morning
this major, who was in our barracksI
didn’t know who he was before that time
and he came over the speaker, “They
dropped the bomb, you know”. I can remember we went and got a beer. We were
sitting on the running board of a car and
looked at each other and we knew the war
was over. Who knew what was going to
happen after that but we sat there for about
15 minutes, nobody said a word
NELSON: How did you get along with the
men with whom you had the greatest contact?
WILT: We got along great.
NELSON: Were there things you would do
differently if you could do them once again?
WILT: Probably stay in the service
NELSON: What was the most difficult
thing you had to do during your period of
military service?
WILT: I don’t know When you are 18
you’re pretty pliable. I don’t know if there is
any one thing more than another challenging. I wanted those wings and that commission so I eat whatever they told me to eat,
you know We were all in the same outfit
there
NELSON: Is there anyone thing that stands
out as your most successful achievement in
the military service. Probably your wings
WILT: That was myI figured I had two
things that mean, or three thingsmy
wings, my wife and my kid. That was my
big achievement, you know. There is one
other thing. When it was my turn to take a
green crew out to war, I hoped my crew
wasn’t as screwed up as they were because
we didn’t think we could go the whole doggoned eight hours in the air. They were bugging the heck out of me. Well, then what
was uniqueit didn’t happen to me but on
their 7th mission they got shot down. Five of
them were injured No They didn’t get shot
down, they got shot up. They landed behind
the lines in Germany. Put the boys in the
hospital and they were captured. Three days
later they escaped and their story is rather
amazing. They wound up driving across the
lines in one of Goring’s personal cars.
That’s when Patton was on the way to Berlin
Get out of my way __?__. They drove that
car direct to Paris
NELSON: How did you learn about VE
Day and what was your reaction to it?
WILT: I hadLet’s see, VE Day Well, I
guess we were in line down at the mess hall
or something and I knew it was getting close
I had come down with dysentery so I
couldn’t move around much. We hadAfter
every mission we got a two ounce slug of
medicinal rye. We put that in a bottle. We
were going celebrate when we got our 35th
�mission in. I had this dysentery and the war
was over and I watched these guys drink
every dog gone bottle and never saved me a
drop.
NELSON: I asked you about VJ Day. What
was your opinion of the use of the atomic
bomb when it was used against Japanese
civilians in August of 1945?
WILT: I think it was well put to use and
probably saved a million Japanese lives and
probably a half million or two hundred thousand American and Allied lives.
NELSON: Has that opinion changed over
the last fifty years?
WILT: No. It has been reinforced.
NELSON: When and where were you officially discharged from the service?
down to Grenada there was some of these
general that got left out. Everybody wanted
to get in on the act so they had thing split up
more than they should have been instead of
having one supreme commander and this
was because there isn’t enough action and
their jealousy. They want the glory, you
know. Like in Iran over there or Iraq, they
want the glory or the Desert Shield of being
involved in becoming a hero because well
it’s like even back in the Indian wars. If you
don’t be in combat well you’re not going to
get the top promotion
NELSON: Do you have any contact with
the Veteran’s Administration?
WILT: No, only when getting my GI Insurance.
NELSON: What is your opinion of the Veterans’ Administration if you have had any
contact with them?
WILT: Dayton, Ohio.
NELSON: When?
WILT: Other than that I have not had any
contact with them? As far as I know they’re
all right.
WILT: That was in
NELSON: Never gone to a VA Hospital?
NELSON: Approximately.
WILT: No.
WILT: Well my terminal leave was up the
5th of December of 1945.
NELSON: Do you have any disability rating or pension?
WILT: No.
NELSON: Do you have any opinions or
feeling about our Nation’s military status or
its policies?
WILT: I think some of the generals that
chiefs have tried to create little __?__ and
they’re overlapping like when they went
NELSON: Or had medical services?
WILT: No, never had occasion to.
NELSON: Would you like to tell us about
how your family supported you during your
military life?
WILT: One thing when I enlisted I thought
my Dad was on cloud nine because he liked
the Air Force and wished he could have
been in. When I went out there to take the
test, he took the day off. He was going to sit
there with me and they said “No, you can’t”
�I’ll never forgot that day. He was so proud
he was walking on air. He couldn’t have
been any happier unless he was in there. He
reallywhen I got my commission he was
on cloud nine, he was so proud of me. My
mother, of course, she was turned the other
way around. She wanted me home and everything else.
NELSON: Over the subsequent years, what
has this support meant to you?
WILT: Well, it was a feeling of security, I
guess and continuity. Growing up all my life
except for a few years in a small town And
I,our family has always been involved in
serving their country all the way back to the
Revolutionary War, the Civil War, SpanishAmerican War. My son was in Vietnam. He
was in combat. Both my brothersone was
in the Korean War. The other was in the Navy, World War II, you know. So it’s a tradition. When the world has something come
you go in and serve your country
NELSON: That’s good. Well, thanks a lot.
That was great.
WILT: Okay.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Midway Village Museum
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Midway Village Museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-2001
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Language
A language of the resource
English
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Charles Nelson
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Elmer L. Wilt
Location
The location of the interview
Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Elmer L. Wilt
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
18-Feb-94
Description
An account of the resource
Born October 5, 1924, Elmer L. Wilt enlisted in 1942 as an Army Air Force pilot. He was discharged December 5, 1945. He died August 4, 2015.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War 2
World War II
-
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PDF Text
Text
ElmerHooper-Page
)
EITNAEßHOOPEß
AirForce CrewMember
OnBlT-
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)
Transcribed by Lonaine LightcaP
For Midway Village & Museum Center
6799 GuilfordRoad
,/
Rockfor{ Illinois 6 I 107
Phone 8I5 397 9Il2
1
�2
Elmer Hooper
-Page
Elmer Hooper
Hello: Today is January 24, 1994. My name
is Charles Nelson. I am a volunteer with the
Midway Village & Museum Center which is
cooperating with the statewide effort to collect oral histories from Illinois citizens that
participated in the momentous events surrounding World War II. We are in the offrce
of Midway Village and I am talking to
Elmer F. Hooper who lives at 1507 Kay
Avenue, Rockford, Illinois. Mr. Hooper
served in a branch of the United States
Armed Forces during World War II. We are
interviewing him about his experiences in
this war.
NELSON: Mr. Hooper, would you Please
start by introducing yourself Please give us
your full name and place and date ofbirth?
HOOPtrR: My name is Elmer F. HooPer. I
was born in Eldora,Iow4 on July 12,1924.
NELSON: Would you like to-we would
also like to have the names of each of your
parents.
NELSON: What was life like before the
war, especìally before l94I?
HOOPER: I was a high school student. Life
was all fun and games. I was worried about
basketball, football, band and girls and having a good time being a teenager.
NELSON: How did you hear of the December 7, l94l bombing of Pearl Harbor by
the Japanese. If so, where were you and
what were you doing at the time?
HOOPER: I heard about it over the radio. I
don't remember where I was or what I was
doing. That's all I can remember.
I\{ELSON: What was your reaction and response ofthose around you?
I really didn't quite understand
what was going on. I was kind of mad about
the whole thing of the sneak attack. But due
to the age it really didn't sink in what was
happening at the time until later.
HOOPER:
NELSON: So you hadn't any oPinion on
HOOPER: My father was Elmer F. Hooper,
Sr. My mother was Alice Louise Hooper.
war in Europe and Asia?
NELSON: Did you have any brothers or
HOOPER: No, I didn't know
sisters?
HOOPER: No. I am the only child
NELSON: Do you recall reading newspaper
accounts of the German aggression in
Europe?
NIELSON: Are there any details about your
parents andlor your family that you would
like to give?
I
had an uncle that was retired
from the United States Navy and during the
war he was the commander of Mare(?) Island in the army. He retired as a Lieutenant
Commander.
IIOOPER:
HOOPER: No, I don't.
NELSON: Did you have any knowledge of
Hitler's speeches, ideas or actions?
degree> on what I
read in the newspapers, I knew about
would
Britain being in it and the troubles they were
having over there. But due to the young age,
HOOPER: To a small
�ElmerHooper-P€ge
it wasn't really sinking in or that I was really
concerned about it.
3
HOOPER: Just basic training. Learning
how to drill, chain of command and this type
of stuü prior to going into cadet training.
NELSON: What events led to Your entry
into the military service? Were you already
NELSON: What did you think of the train-
in the service, drafted or did you volunteer?
ing?
I
volunteered for the Air Force.
I was always interested in airplanes. I made
model airplanes as a high school student and
had flown with some of my friends that had
light aircraft at the time and there was aB17
bomber base at Sioux City, Iowa. They used
to fly over my hometown, which was about
sixty miles east of Sioux City. They fasci-
HOOPER:
nated me so much that I decided that I
wanted to go in the Air CorP and flY. I
wanted to be in one of those big bombers.
That's when I became interested in the Air
Corp, watching them fly over.
'Well, I think you anÌI{ELSON: Okay.
swered the next question so I'll go to the
basic training. When and where were you
inducted?
HOOPER: I enlisted in Peoria, Illinois, in
December of '42.I wasn't called up until, I
think it was February of '43. They sent me
to Santa Ana. First of all, they sent me to
Fresno, California, for Air Force basic and
from Fresno I went to Santa Ana because I
enlisted in the Cadets.
NELSON: How old were you
at the time?
HOOPER: Eighteen.
NELSON:
'Where
did you take your basic
training?
HOOPER: Fresno, California.
NELSON: What were you trained to do?
HOOPER: Well, some of it I thought was
kind of stupid. Some of it I thought was kind
of harsh. Some of it I could understand so
that's about all I remember ofthat.
NDLSON: Did anything special
happen
there?
HOOPER: No, nothing really special happened. The only really thing I can remember
about basic was they gave us a canteen and a
mess kit, sent us out to a gravel pile and we
had to scrub it out with sand and put sand in
the canteen and shake it all up. We used to
sit out there for an hour or so scrubbing
them 'Cotton pickin"' mess kits and canteens so we could use them. That's about all
can remember of basic. I thought it was
kind of stupid.
I
NELSON: Tell us about any other training
camps you attended.
HOOPER: Well, in the course of Cadet, I
sent me to Tempe, Arizona
went to
-They
for four months of college. They called it
CTD, College Training Detachment, to improve my skills to be an ofÏïcer, I guess. We
took English, mathematics, physics, and a
lot of physical education (P E.) After four
months of college in Tempe, Arizona, went
back to Santa Ana, California, and took up
Cadet training, radio, navigation, military
bearing, discipline, discipline, discipline.
You got gigs for not having belt buckles
shined, for not having buttons buttoned and
Lord only a number of other things. Then
you had to walk your tour, which was a form
of discipline to condition you to, I guess, for
�ElmerHooper-Page
the battle what you were going to face to
come up.
4
HOOPER: Oh yes. Bloody Hundreds. The
Bloody l00th'Station 139 Four Abotts, England, and 351$ Squadron.
NELSON: Did you ever lose your
passes?
II{ELSON: Okay. Good. What were your
HOOPER: Yes, sir. Yes, I walked a tour of
duty due to demerits on weekends to w¿lk
off the demerits. Didn't get too many trips
into town because they didn't allow us very
many in those days but when we did get into
town we had a good time at the Hollywood
Palladium and all the sights around Hollywood.
NELSON: Did you have any associations
with civilians?
assigned duties?
HOOPER: .I was a tail gunner. I had to
protect the rear.
NELSON: If you there were any transfers to
other units, please give us the details.
HOOPER: I never transferred to any other
unit. When I left after my training in California I went overseas. I stayed in the Hundreds.
IIOOPER: Oh, yeah. Girls. Girls. Later on
as I moved to another base, I had more relations with civilians than I did in Santa Ana. I
want to digress for a minute. When I was in
was going with a girl in
Tempe I met
the college there. We couldn't talk to the
girls during the day so we'd slip notes to the
girls on the chow line to have our girlfriends
meet us in the evenings and weekends. I was
going with a girl I remember who had a sister who lived in London. Her sister was married and had a baby and later on in my career I wound up in England and I went to see
this girl's sister and I visited them several
times frequently in London. That \¡/as one
civilian acquaintance that I made through a
a-I
girlfriend.
NELSON: What was your military unit?
HOOPER: The Eighth. United States Army
Force in the beginning and later on...
NSLSON: Okay. This is the participation in
the conflict. Where did you go after completing your basic training?
HOOPER:'Where did I go?
I\IELSON: In your combat area.
HOOPER: Combat area. We landed ... We
flew a new Bl7 over from Lincoln, Nebraska, the whole crew and we landed in
Valley, Wales. They took the aircraft from
us at Valley, Wales, and went on to an assignment center in Stone, England. From
Stone we were assigned what bomb group,
and Squadron we were going to be in and
that's the only bases or outfits that I was
ever in outside the 100ú which being assigned from Stone, England.
NELSON: What did you think of our
na-
tions war effiorts up to this point?
NELSON: What group were you with?
NELSON: In what group? Do you remem-
HOOPIR: I thought they were great. We
were turning out in great qualities of war
materials. We had a good morale. The ci'
vilian population was behind us and I think
ber the group number?
we were doing real great.
HOOPER: Eighth Air Force
�ElmerHooper-Page
NELSON: Tell us about your experience in
entering your fïrst combat zone.
HOOPER: First combat zone. First mission
for a flyer was to Merseburg, Germany.
NELSON: Oh, God.
5
HOOPER: Well, I thought it was a just war.
I thought we were justifïed in what they
were fighting for. I thought it was sometimes a cruel war in terms of civilian population. The civilians in both England and
Germany suffered considerably. This at
times bothered me. But we had a job to do
so we just went ahead and done it and put
HOOPAR: Merseburg was an oil hnery
station field, synthetic oil. Merseburg to an
Air Force man was a death trap. And the
first mission I went to Merseburg was recalled. We didn"t make it. We didn't get
those things out of your mind.
credit for the mission and the next day they
sent us back to Merseburg and it is a rough
target for any Air Force man.
did you receive in these packets?
NELSON: Did you write any letters home
and did you receive many letters or packages. If so, how often, what type of things
places in the aircraft. Luckily nobody was
ever injured on our aircraft.
HOOPER: Oh, yes, I wrote letters very frequently. I had a girlfriend. I was engaged to
when I left. I received letters from her almost daily. I wrote an average probably of
three or four letters a week to her. My parents wrote me letters. I received letters from
other people I knew in my hometown to
boost my morale. Received packages cookies, candy, marshmallows, fudge. The
sweets, the things we couldn't get in England was what we requested. I can remember
a strange incident. At least I thought was
strange. My volunteer gunner liked anchovies and he was always getting anchovies
from his folks.
NELSON: Did your mental attitude change
NELSON: Did most of the other men write
as combat continued?
and receive letters?
HOOPER: You bet it did. I got scared. I got
sometimes depressed. The old saying is
"There's no atheists in foxholes" and I believe that to be very true. I've seen a few
times when I thought they was going to have
to put a gun at my back and march me out to
that airplane to get me back in it to go again.
HOOPER: Yes. Being in the Air Force and
always coming back to a permanent base
and never moving around, we didn't have to
viorry about our mail getting lost. We had
regular and prompt mail delivery of packages and V-mail.
NELSON: What they're asking is casualif you ïvere involved with people who
ties,
had become casualties and how did they occur and how were they treated?
HOOPER: Oh, we were luckY. We never
had any casualties on our aircraft. There
were nine men on the aircraft and nobody
v/as ever wounded. We had plenty of battle
damage.
I
have seen battle damage in my
tail rudder was astronomical and other
NELSON: What did you think of the war
far?
so
IIIELSON: Did you forge close bonds of
friendship with many of your combat companions?
�ElmerHooper-Page
HOOPER: Yes, we had nine men on a
crew. Your life depended on those friends
and you had to work as a team and you were
close to them. We weren't as close to the
offrcers because they were in their own
elique but the enlisted men on the crew, we
all went out together. We all run around to'We
were
gether, went on pass together.
quite close because we depended on one another an we had to.
NELSON: Have you remained in contact
with any of your World War II companions?
HOOPER: Yes. My bombardier is in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I talk to him occasionally on the phone. He has come by mY
house. I was in close contact with my engineer, the top turret gunner, until he died.
Most of my crew is deceased. I think out of
nine, there is four of us left. One, I don't
know where my copilot is. The bombardier
is in Minneapolis. Pilot is in Nevada and I'm
here. So that's the four ofus.
NELSON: Prior to the end of the war were
you aware of any civilian concentration
camps existed,
if
so, please explain how you
learned about them and how much
know like ...
You
HOOPER: I read through army publications, the magazine Stars and Stripes and
newspapers about the interment of the Japanese in Califomia, sent them to Arizona. I
thought at the time it was the thing to do but
then I was far away from home and I really
never thought too much about it after you
learned about it.
NELSON: What \ryas your highlight occurrence ofyour combat experience?
HOOPER: I
guess
I
-
highlight of what?
NELSON: Well, say experience
6
of Your
combat experience. What was your top experience that you can remember
HOOPER: That's kind
of-I
don't know
whether you should tell these kind of stories
or not. It goes into history. I'll give it to you
anyhow. The last Friday night of the month
the Sergeant's Club had free beer. After
every mission we got a double shot of whiskey. We used to take turns drinking other
crew members whiskey. After a mission you
could wind up, conceivably with 5 double
shots of whiskey. It happened to be my turn
to have the rest of the crew members double
shots so I drank 5 double shots and didn't go
to the mess hall for supper. I'd been on oxygen for 8 or t hours. I went to the Sergeant's
Club and started drinking beer and got
bombed
Snorkeled. out. They quit selling
beer at 11 o'clock at night so I closed the
Sergeants' Club up, went to my barracks. I
was pretty well bombed and went to bed.
They woke me up at I o'clock in the morning to go on a mission. I had had about 2 or
3 hours of sleep and I was still drunk. How I
got to the aircraft and put my guns in it, I
still don't remember. I did eat some fancy
powdered eggs for breakfast, which I don't
remember. Got up over Germany at 25,000
feet or so on oxygen and I got sick. I had to
take my oxygen mask off and throw uP.
Well, knowing there is no air up there,
you're on oxygen and it's pretty rough. So I
throw up in a tin can,- a fuse can. It would
freeze because it was about 30 below zero.
I'd open the window on the side of the aircraft, bang it on the side of the ship to knock
the ice out and then I'd bring it inside and
I'd fill it up again. Well, I did this 3 times.
The third time I got the dry heaves as \rye
call if and I'm sucking the oxygen and there
is not oxygen because it's coming out of my
mask and I'd got my mask off. How I kept
from not passing out and killing myself that
I"ll never know. When I finished the mis-
I
-
�ElmerHooper
-Page7
sion, the whole German army could have
jumped me and I don't think I'd ever seen a
one of them. I was out in the back of that
aircraft, in that tail, and I really wasn't doing
my job protecting the rest of the fellows because I was too sick. I never done that again.
I will never do that again. And that is one of
the highlights of my experience in the Air
was on board ship when the Japanese capitulated after the two atomic bombs had
been dropped. So the war-all wars was
over then. \ffe had a big celebration on
board ship. I remember we landed in Boston, got on a train. I went to Santa Anna,
California.
Force.
NELSON: Please tell us about your military
rank and your decorations, especially your
NELSON: Tell us what you and the other
men did to celebrate America's traditional
family holidays such as Thanksgiving and
campaign decorations.
Christmas.
HOOPER: Well, we didn't do much for
Thanksgiving. The base gave us a good feed
on Thanksgiving. We stayed around the air
base. We had packages from home for
Thanksgiving. Little special extra things and
we would have some ale that we could bring
to the barracks and we'd kind of party
around in the barracks. Christmas-{hey had
a Christmas party for the British children
give them goodies and they would have us
sing Christmas carols. We wold have a
Christmas tree in the Red Cross Club. So we
kind of celebrated the Christmas with the
British children on the base. So actually as
far as having a big party by ourselves, we
didn't have. We shared everything with eve-
-
rybody.
NELSON: When did you return to the
United States after the end of the war?
IIOOPER: I came back to the United States
in August. I believe it was of 1945.
NELSON: What happened when you arrived in the United States?
HOOPAR: Ah,I might say I came home on
a Kaiser liberty ship with air crew and
ground crew members. And why I
- It took
us about l0 days, I think, to get over here. I
I
achieved Staff Sergeant, had
the European Victory medal. I had the European Theater medal. I had the Air Medal
with 5 oak leaf clusters.
HOOPER:
NELSON: How many campaigns were you
in?
HOOPER: Just one, the European.
NELSON: Then we returned to civilian.
How did you get along with the men with
whom you had the greatest contact?
HOOPER: Fine. Fine
NELSON: Were there any things you would
do differently if you had to do them again?
HOOPER: (Hesitation). No
I don't believe
so.
NELSON: What was the most diffrcult
thing you had to do during your military
service?
HOOPER: I guess really it was getting up
every morning, get in that aircraft and go
again. I think that was the hardest thing I
did. I didn't mind leaving home. I was
young and eager to experience but, man,
getting back in the aircraft every morning,
was really rough.
�Page 8
Elmer Hooper
NELSON: Is there anyone thing that stand
out as your most successful achievement in
military service?
wouldn't say that I would be sorry about
it but I would now. I wouldn't want to drop
HOOPER: Just surviving! Surviving was
the big thing. I'd seen too many of them die.
NELSON: When and where were you officially discharged from the service?
NELSON: How did you learn about VE
Day and what was your reaction to it?
HOOPER: I was discharged in Santa Anna,
California, in September of 1945.
HOOPER: VE Day I was on the air base in
NELSON: Which month did you
England. It came over the radio. It came by
It just
word of mouth, by papers and the
spread like wild fire. You heard it and everybody was happy. We didn't have to go
back out and finish our tour. If we had more
mission to do we didn't have to worry about
death any more at that particular time.
-
NELSON: How about VJ Day?
HOOPER: VJ Day was like I said. I was on
a boat coming home and we figured was
coming home from B-17 training to go into
transition to B-29s and hit the Pacific Theatre. We were all just happy as a lark when
we find out Japan had quit; because we
wouldn't have to go to B-29s and do any
more bombing.
NELSON: What was your opinion of the
use of the atomic bomb when it was used
against the Japanese civilians during August
of 1945?
IIOOPER: After reading of the atrocities
that the Japanese military inflicted upon the
servicemen and the civilians, I felt no remorse about it. I'm glad they did.
NELSON: Has your opinion changed after
the last 50 years. If so, how?
No, it hasn't changed. I
it now but at the time when you
wouldn't do
look back in history. It was the thing to do
HOOPER:
so I
one now.
say?
HOOPAR: I think it was around September,
1945.
I\{ELSON: Okay. Did you have any disability rating or pension.
HOOPER: Nope.
I\IELSON: Do you have any opinions or
feelings about the nation's military status or
its policies?
I don't think that
HOOPER: No. I think
- troops into some
they should be sending
countries. Like, for instance, Haiti. I don't
think they should send them to Somali. We
should stay out of Bosnia. I can't see losing
American lives for the good of some politician or ruler trying to rule his people and it's
a struggle for power and I don't believe that
we should be involved in their struggle for
power. We should try and talk peace; we
should and negotiate but I don't believe we
should send American troops over there to
lose their lives for those people.
NELSON: Okay. Do you have any contact
with the Veterans' Administration?
HOOPER: No, sir, I don't
NELSON: Would you like to tell us about
your family's support during your military
life?
�Page 9
Elmer Hooper
IIOOPER: Well, my family suPPort was
great. Like I said, I was engaged. My girlgot a'Dear John"' letters. My
friend was
- very supportive. My father was
mother was
kind of a silent support but I didn't have any
brothers or sisters to support me but other
than that, it was great.
NELSON: In the subsequent years, what
has this suppofr meant to you?
HOOPER: Well, it has been a support that
is hard to really express. They appreciated
what we done. They understood our problems. We were welcomed home. In context
to the Vietnam ftasco, the support was absolutely fantastic. It made you feel good
about what you'd done and you were proud
of what you'd done. Sometimes now days
that's not true.
I{ELSON: This is a question that I would
like to ask. Elmer, what can you tell me
about the 100ft Bomb Group in England?
IIOOPER: 100û Bomb Group came up
with moniker of the "Bloody Hundred".
This was kind of tacked on to the outfìt as a
"hard luck" outfit because of so many casualties we had. The reason why they claimed
we had a high amount of aircraft losses was
because we flew such loose formations. In
talking with other Air Force members from
other groups, they would say "The Bloody
100th" is next to us. We don't have to worry
because the German aircraft box formation
of aircraft is to join together to have a more
concentrated fire from machine guns that are
mounted in your aircraft. If you fly a loose
formation the enemy fighters are able to fly
in and out and it makes an aircraft much
easier to shoot down. Because we were
guilty of such lousy, sloppy formation plans
we lost a lot of aircraft and became the
"Bloody 1001h-. Later that was rectified
through leaders, officers of the group in
tightening up the flying formation. We still
maintained the moniker of "The Bloody
100th". The 100ü did fly 1906 missions. We
were about the 2nd' I think, group in England
with the most casualties. We was.... The
100ù flew only the famous raid to Schweinfurt and Regensburg. They flew on the shuttle missions to Russia.
IIELSON: Can you describe to me one of
your missions that you remember vividly?
HOOPER: Oh, yes. On April 7th,1944 ,we
went to Buchen, Germany. We had a bomb
load of 6 one thousand RBXs, high explosives and the flying time was 8 hours. We
attacked at an oil storage from 15,000 feet.
Cloud cover but we were bombing by radar.
Attacked at 1300 by ME2l09s that lasted for
28 minutes and during this battle I saw one
M8109 ram into the wing of a 817 in C
Squadron. I saw it out my window and the
fort went down in flames. A little while later
another fighter rammed the tail of a Bl7. It
broke off the horizontal stabilizer plus bad
damage to the vertical fin. But believe it or
not the ship came back okay. The takeoff
time was at 9 o'clock. We landed at 1700.
"Bombs Away" was at 1327. flack, or antiaircraft fire was light and accurate. The temperature at that altitude at the time was minus 25 below zero. Our group got... shot
down 6 aircraft and it was the 106ú mission
on my old Skipper Two the name of my aircraft. I'd like to describe one more mission
to you that sticks out as quite memorable
This one was on December 31, 1944. We
went to Hamburg. Germany. The bomb load
was twenty 250-pound general-purpose
bombs. Time of the mission was 8 hours.
The target was an oil plant. Today day was a
big show. The target was visual and flack
was heavy and accurate. After leaving target
we were hit by 30 to 40 fighters mostly
FVf190s. I was damned scared but I did my
job. Claimed one FW, picked up two holes
�ElmerHooper-Page
in the ship quitting time. \Ve lost 12 ships
today and some buddies, 26,000 feet, 46
below zero. Our group got 23 of the 26 enemy aircraft destroyed. I got one destroyed
on our crew and 4 damaged on our crew.
That was quite a day seeing 12 or your
friends go down beside you.
(This was the end ofthe tape).
10
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Midway Village Museum
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Midway Village Museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-2001
Rights
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Midway Village Museum
Language
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English
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Charles Nelson
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Elmer Hooper
Location
The location of the interview
Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Elmer Hooper
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
January 24, 1994
Description
An account of the resource
Born July 12, 1924 , Elmer Hooper was trained as an Air Force tail gunner. He died February 14, 2008.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War 2
World War II
-
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PDF Text
Text
Earl Vogelpohl
Transcribed by Lorraine Lightcap
Midway Village & Museum Center
6799 Guilford Road
Rockford, Illinois 61107
Phone 397 9112
�Earl Vogelpohl
Aviation Radio Operator with
Navy Bomber Squadron
Today is February 8th, l994. My name is
James Will. I am a volunteer with the Rockford Museum Center which is cooperating
with a state wide effort to collect oral histories from Illinois citizens that participated in
events surrounding World War II. Today we
are in the home of Earl Vogelpohl who lives
at 4325 Harvest Trail in Rockford, Illinois.
Mr. Vogelpohl served in a branch of the
United States Armed Forces during World
War II. We are going to interview him today
about his experiences in that war.
VOGELPOHL: I had two brothers who
were quite a bit older. They had a son and
about a year and a half later another son then
thirteen years separated the youngest son to
a daughter and she was about fourteen
months older than me.
WILL: Earl, would you please introduce
yourself to us. Give your full name, place of
birth and date of birth.
WILL: What were their names?
VOGELPOHL: Earl John Vogelpohl. I was
born in Washington County near Okawville,
Illinois on a farm. It’s about forty-five miles
east of St. Louis, Missouri. My birth date
was July 18th, 1924.
WILL: No. Your brothers.
WILL: Can you give your parents names
including you mother’s maiden name?
VOGELPOHL: My father’s name was
Henry Christopher Vogelpohl and my mother’s name was Anna Dorothea Austendorf.
This was a German settlement obviously and
in an area when I was small they still had
100% German services in the church that
my parents attended. A lot of people spoke
German and we were suspect of anyone especially the Irish at the time. For what reason, I don’t know.
WILL: Were they born over here in the
United States?
VOGELPOHL: Yeah. Both of them were.
WILL: Okay. Did you have any brothers or
sisters?
WILL: You’re the youngest?
VOGELPOHL: So my mother had me
when she was forty so they’re quite a bit
older then.
VOGELPOHL: Henry and Anna.
VOGELPOHL: Oh, the names of the
brothers. The oldest one was Harvey; the
second one was Eugene; my sister was Bernice. We went to a rural school, one roomer.
I think all of us did.
WILL: Are there any other special events
that happened in your family’s history before World War II that you’d care to share
with us?
VOGELPOHL: Well, I had a great grandparent that almost got into the Civil War. He
lived back in the woods and a bunch of fellows wanted to leave the little town of Addieville and walk into St. Louis which is
about forty-five miles and during the night it
rained and he couldn’t get across the creek
to meet the boys. He went back home, got
an axe and his little brother to go with him.
He chopped down a tree over the creek, sent
the kid back with the axe, the younger
brother, got into town. The ones leaving had
already gone so he went to the next town
that was about four miles. They had gone
from there so he chased them to the next
town in [Mascoutah] and they were still
�ahead of him. He decided he was going to
try to catch them before they got to Belleville. After that the world became too complicated and he knew he wasn’t going into
St. Louis by himself. He never found them
in Belleville so he turned around and went
back home. He must have walked a total of
forty some miles that day and he never did.
WILL: Never made it. What were you doing just before World War II? I mean what
year did you graduate and where did you
graduate?
VOGELPOHL: From an elementary school
called Plum Hill and it was in Washington
County.
WILL: You never went to high school?
VOGELPOHL: No one in our immediate
vicinity. Very few went to high school. We
weren’t even in the high school district that I
know of. Some went to a three year high
school in the town and so I never got a GED
or, I finally got a Bachelor of Music on the
GI Bill.
WILL: What were you doing, what was
your job just before the war in 1940 – 1941?
VOGELPOHL: Just living on the farm.
WILL: Doing farm work.
VOGELPOHL: Doing farm work.
WILL: Okay. What thoughts did you have
about the war before the United States became directly involved?
VOGELPOHL: A lot of young people now
get into dope and mind expanding things
and I didn’t know too much about that. I
wanted to see the world and I wanted adventure. I read some books --three books in particular stand out about World War I. Two of
them were concerning air groups. One was
Wings. That was, I think, a Columbia or
Paramount picture--Buddy Rogers and Clara
Bow. The other one was--I’ve never been
able to find another copy was called Lilac
Time and then, of course, I read All Quiet
on the Western Front, a German infantry
man, and I knew I wanted to get into combat. There was actually two things I wanted
to really do and was to play a violin well and
the other one was to go into combat and I’m
still working on the violin. I’m in the Junior
College Community Chamber Orchestra at
Rock Valley.
WILL: Good enough.
VOGELPOHL: I was at the right age at the
right time unmarried and no responsibilities
when the war came along but I stayed with
the folks on the farm until they could get
things sort of packed in. My dad was in his
sixties at this time. They retired from farming and I left for the Navy. I was near being
drafted any way I think.
WILL: You were about what--Seventeen or
eighteen?
VOGELPOHL: But I volunteered. I was
nineteen. Just turned nineteen. I volunteered
when I got the next--you know, about every
six months you were reclassified. So I just
told them I was ready to go. They sent me to
Chicago for a physical exam and found out
could get in any of the services--Coast
Guard, Army, Navy or Marines. I had a
friend that was in the Navy. He told a lot of
pretty good sea stories so I decided to go to
the Navy. Hoping to go by degrees, I was
hoping I would get boot camp at Great
Lakes but instead they put us on a train. I
could look out and see license plates on cars
that said Wisconsin so I knew we were going somewhere else.
WILL: This was in ’43 or something like
that.
VOGELPOHL: ’43.
WILL: But before the war now, when the
Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, what were
you doing. Where were you? Do you remember this?
�VOGELPOHL: Well, we had a radio but
we had company that Sunday. Being out on
a farm, you’re kind of isolated. I turned the
radio on in the evening for some Sunday
program. I think Jack Benny was one of
them we always listened to and we found
out Pearl Harbor had been bombed. Actually
we didn’t know too much about it. Both of
my parents at this time had only been in two
states so they never traveled widely
WILL: They didn’t know where Pearl Harbor was.
VOGELPOHL: They had no idea but I had
seen in the movietone [newsreel] or one of
those March of Time [films] that we were
going to be ready regardless at Pearl Harbor
so I knew where it was but I didn’t really
know where the Hawaiian Islands were. It
surprised us but it was a long way away so
you really didn’t get too excited in the midwest.
VOGELPOHL: No.
WILL: Did they have feelings toward you
after this?
VOGELPOHL: No. We did have a kid that
I graduated from grade school with became
a minister. He sort of leaned toward the
Germans and he was kind of unpopular and
he became a minister and he died early. I
don’t know what this means exactly but he
was kind of unpopular at the time.
WILL: What were your thoughts on Hitler’s
speeches or anything?
VOGELPOHL: Well, we could hear some
of them on the radio and my parents both
spoke German. I just barely got by on it.
They listened to his speeches. My mother
couldn’t believe that this was happening.
WILL: That he was doing what he was doing?
WILL: You didn’t have much reaction then.
VOGELPOHL: No. Not having come from
a military family. I don’t think I knew more
than two or three people that were in the
service before the draft in 1940, I guess it
was.
WILL: Have you formed any opinion or
beliefs about what was taking place in Europe and Asia.
VOGELPOHL: Yeah. We were following
the war in Europe, being Germans, I guess.
Not having sympathy for the Germans part
of it but it’s kind of, we only took the paper
in the winter time. In the summer time you
didn’t have time to read the paper so in the
winter you’d take it for a few months, you
know. Yeah we knew there was a war going
on and there was rationing and this type of
thing and tires were hard to come by.
WILL: You say you were of German heritage. Were there any people against you personally or anything like that?
VOGELPOHL: Yeah. Later on but in the
first part they knew that Germany was in,
had financially problems. They weren’t very
adamant about it.
WILL: What events led to your entry in the
military service? Were you just waiting to
be drafted?
VOGELPOHL: Yeah. I’d been wanting to
go all along and when your buddies keep
going so then I decided I wanted to leave
that fall. I probably could have gotten another.
WILL: Fall of ’43.
VOGELPOHL: ’43.
WILL: What was your response, what was
the response from your family and friends
about you going into the service?
VOGELPOHL: There were an awful lot of
people going at that time. Almost every fam-
�ily had somebody in the service and even
though your parents not really enjoy seeing
you go into the service that that will eventually or possibly lead you into warfare, I
think they were proud of me. My two older
brothers, the second oldest was physically
unfit and my oldest brother was past the age
at that time when they were drafting.
WILL: Talking about your basic training
here, when and where were you inducted?
VOGELPOHL: I was inducted in Chicago.
We went to Farragut, Idaho, for, it’s right on
Lake Pend Oreille in the upper stem of Idaho. When ever they were building bases,
Eleanor Roosevelt flew across this area,
looked down and saw this beautiful pearl of
a lake, Lake Pend Oreille, and she said, “My
that would be a nice place for a naval training station.” Lo and behold, she must have
told “Frankie” and they built a boot camp
there along with some training school in
Idaho.
VOGELPOHL: They said in the aptitude
test that they wanted to send me to school so
they just put down what they thought looked
good. It was machinist mate and motor machinist mate and I don’t know. You know
these are all strange things to me. At boot
camp one day someone from the office came
through and got four of us out of a company
out of about one hundred and thirty and said
we would like to know if you would consider flying in the Navy? I think we all volunteered right on the spot. He said, “You’ll
have to take another physical and we’re going to give you some more tests. If you qualify for this, chances are you can fly. We
took the tests and whenever I got back, I had
a leave after boot camp, came back home
and then back to boot camp. Then one night
my name was on a list to go to Naval Air
Technical Training Center at Memphis,
Tennessee, as an aviation radioman , They
had me down as an aviation ordinance man,
machinist mate and aviation radioman. Radioman came up. I guess they needed people
there.
WILL: I never heard of that.
WILL: This is a choice they gave?
VOGELPOHL: Oh, yeah. Farragut, Idaho.
VOGELPOHL: No.
WILL: Now you were what, nineteen at the
time?
WILL: You qualified for all.
VOGELPOHL: Nineteen.
VOGELPOHL: Yeah.
WILL: Do you have any special memories
of your training or,
WILL: What did you think of the training?
Was it adequate enough?
VOGELPOHL: The first time I had ever
been this far away from home and I thought
this is it. I’ll never find my way back. It was
beautiful country up in the mountains and
the elk and deer running around everywhere.
It was absolutely beautiful.
VOGELPOHL: We went to Memphis,
Tennessee, and we had eighteen weeks of
radio and two weeks of super secret radar. It
was a pretty hush, hush thing at the time and
actually, I think possibly if it hadn’t been for
the radar in World War II there was a very
good chance we would have had an awful
time. I mean that. We would have probably
messed up in the Battle of Midway by cracking the Japanese code and being able to find,
England would most certainly would have
had some problems if they hadn’t had a radar net at the coast in the Battle of Britain.
During this time I got the German measles
WILL: This is where you had basic.
VOGELPOHL: Basic.
WILL: What were your trained in?
�so they sent me to the hospital for two
weeks not knowing exactly what was wrong
with me.
WILL: This is in Memphis?
VOGELPOHL: In Memphis. So they put
me in a ward with people with Scarlet Fever.
Whenever I was okay after two weeks they
sent me back to duty for one day and then I
had to go back to the hospital for four more
weeks with Scarlet Fever.
WILL: Your unit wasn’t designated yet.
VOGELPOHL: No. I was in radio school.
They had ordnance school. They had Marines there that were in the same training.
We had a lot of swimming and combat training, hand grenades, bayonet and all this type
of happy stuff. We had eighteen weeks of
that.
WILL: Do you remember the name of the
camp in Memphis?
WILL: What next, huh.
VOGELPOHL: At this time, what we were
learning basically was codeInternational
Morse Code because at this time you had no
way of communications of voice of this distance. We had to learn the code, be able to
take coded groups at twenty words a minute
and plain language at twenty-two words a
minute. You had to be able to make up messages. This is kind of a tricky thing because
just looking at a message you know who
sent it, who it was going to, the time,
Greenwich Civil Time, the urgency of the
message and some other particulars about it
that, so just making up a message was really
,
WILL: Can you explain Greenwich Civil
Time?
VOGELPOHL: Yeah. We were beyond the
one hundred eightieth parallel which is
where the day starts. Greenwich Civil Time
is a hundred and eighty degrees some place
in Scotland where it is noon whenever it’s
midnight.
WILL: On the other side.
VOGELPOHL: Right. On the zero parallel
opposite.
WILL: Now in this training, what unit were
you in. For the record, we have to have this.
Was it strictly training in a group?
VOGELPOHL: Yeah. Naval Air Technical
Training Center and it was at Millington
which was about twenty miles northwest of
Memphis, make that northeast of Memphis.
West would have been in the river somewhere.
WILL: Missouri or Arkansas. During your
training or after your training did you have
any leaves or passes?
VOGELPOHL: Well, just one from boot
camp up to this time and graduating from
the Naval Air Technical Training Center.
The next step was you had to learn gunnery
because in the Navy everyone has two
things that they have to be able to do. One is
you have a specialist rate. I was going to be
an aviation radioman and radar operator and
you also have a battle station. We can talk
more about that later. But a battle station
you have to know something about guns
even though it may not concern guns. It may
be damage control. It could be any number
of things. We did have to learn gunnery,
basically machine guns, thirty and fifty caliber. The next place we went was Naval Air
Gunner School, NAGS, which was near
Jacksonville, Florida, in some swampy land.
At night all creepy crawly creatures would
come out and crawl across the road, some
had legs, some slithered and it was a lot of
mosquitoes but it was a gunnery school
down in the swamps near Cecil Field.
WILL: This is still part of your training.
VOGELPOHL: We had classes.
�VOGELPOHL: Yeah. And you got, at that
time, if you flew you got half again as much
pay. In other words I was Seaman Second
Class at this time getting $54 a month. This
meant I would get what, seventy something,
you know. They took us up for the first time
in a little SNJ, a two engine Beechcraft, to
see how you could handle flying. I suppose
there were some people saying I don’t want
to get in it but up to this point before they go
any further.
WILL: How’d you do?
VOGELPOHL: No problems there. Then
after that we went to Jack’s Municipal No. 1
which is north of Jacksonville, Florida. It
was an old CCC Camp so they had barracks
out in the beautiful little piney woods. They
build an airstrip there and this is where the
Navy was training its PB4Y1s which is the
same as the Army’s B24. I was too heavy to
get into some of the, too big, to get in some
of the planes ship-board plane, this is what
the PB4Y1 is. It needs a runway to take off
and land. Some of the smaller ones, I was
one of the two biggest ones in our group
down there. To get into a, like a radio gun
station in the back of a SB2C, which would
be a scout bomber by Douglas which is a
dive bomber or to crawl down into a TBF
that President Bush flew, for example. It
was kind of a bad spot because every time
they crashed the radioman if anybody got
hurt the radioman always got killed because
he was down in the part that would always
get smashed. There were SBD Scout Bombers by Douglas. There were also other flying
jobs like flying the big cargo planes, the
Coronados and this type of thing. This is
what came up and this is what I took.
WILL: After your training was over
VOGELPOHL: We were still in training.
Jackson Municipal #1 is where the crew got
together. The Navy tried to keep people in
combat in our type of work, in combat area
no longer than six months. After six months
they would send a crew home for more
training the people then became the senior
people in the next crew. We had three people that had been out before at Guadalcanal.
Our plane captain which was an aviation
machinist’s mate had been out before. Our
first radio man had been out before and our
pilot had been out before. Here’s where the
crew got together for the first time. You
flew together and of course I was always the
baseball fan of the St. Louis Cardinals and
we got together just as the Cardinals and
Browns can you believe it. It was the only
time the Browns ever played in a play off I
guess. They were playing in the World Series. I think this was about six weeks we
flew together. We learned inter-plane communications getting familiar with each other
and each oneswe dropped smoke bombs
on targets. I’m not sure whether we had
gunnery. We probably did but I don’t remember it. This would be like a ship or a
boat towing a spar on a long cable. We
would shoot at the spar to see how close we
came.
WILL: Target practice.
VOGELPOHL: Yeah. Then after this we
went for more training across the country to
San Diego. We went to Camp Kearney that
is across from the main gate of Camp Pendleton, the big Marine base. It was another
B24 thing and we hadwe went to different
fields around there for different things. We
had a lot of combat plane identification and
we had mock-up models where a film would
show you being attacked by planes and you
would be in a turret and it would show you
when you pressed a trigger where you
should be aiming to hit this plane.
WILL: It was hi-tech in those days.
VOGELPOHL: Yes. It was pretty hi-tech
stuff in those days. I’m surprised at this time
you had a lot of unsophisticated people and
to get an outfit that can go out and do the
things that we did in as good a fashion as we
did, it just amazes me to this day. Here’s a
farm kid, you know, that hadn’t even been to
high school and another one just like it from
Oklahoma. Our pilot was from St. Louis.
�We had two junior officersone from Ohio
and one from Long Island. Basically the rest
were from the east, Elizabeth, New Jersey;
one from Indiana; a couple more from Ohio,
Pennsylvania.
WILL: These crew membersdo you keep
in contact with them today?
VOGELPOHL: A lot of them have died
off. My pilot I met here in Rockford. He
moved to Rockford. He told me he was going to start ahe was from St. Louis so he
told me he was going to start a wholesale
beer distributorship so he came with a real
winner, Falstaff. Anyway the last I heard he
was still over here on North Central and he’s
pushing Canada Dry. I don’t know if he’s
still1 alive or not. I haven’t seen him for
about ten years. I went over to see him several times. He didn’t seem very interested
I’ve had several of the old crew membersa fellow from Pittsburgh come over.
He had a brother in Eau Claire, Wisconsin,
and as he came around the bottom of the
lake he would stop past and see me on
WILL: A few of them you haven’t forgotten. Do you remember their names?
VOGELPOHL: Oh yeah. I remember the
names of all of the men. Sure.
WILL: Can you name a few of them maybe, just for the record?
VOGELPOHL: Well, there wasthe skipper was Frank Carlem(?). The two junior
officersthe one from Ohio was Vogelstein
(?); the one from Long Island was Langman.
The plane captain was from Pittsburgh at the
time. Later he moved to Chicago. I saw him
out here at some air shows a –number of
times. There was Whitey Compton and the
fellow from Oklahoma was a machinist’s
mate. He was TommyThomas and the one
that I saw several times after the war was
Robert M. Bennett. He was from Pittsburgh
and later moved to Michigan some place.
And the radio man we had Willy Williams.
He was from __?__. Osling was from Boston, myself and we ended up with a guy by
the name of Sitaro who came from Elizabethtown, New Jersey. He replaced a kid
from Texas that had gotten a venereal disease and they didn’t feel that they could treat
him out in the islands so he had to stay in
Hawaii. That’s where we picked this guy up.
He had gotten that far and some time earlier
and he replaced.
WILL: You have a good memory. After all
of your training, you’re out in San Diego for
final training.
VOGELPOHL: Yeah. We were out there
for little over a month.
WILL: Did you get a furlough? Did you
ever get back to Illinois?
VOGELPOHL: Yeah. I had a little short
leave after Naval Air Gunners’ School in
Florida. That was, I don’t know, maybe a
week. Then I had leave in transit. In other
words they said we’ll give you four days to
get from Florida to California and so being
not that far away I stopped in for a day.
WILL: On your way.
VOGELPOHL: Yeah. St. Louis. But a poor
buddy of mine from Pittsburgh at that time,
Long Island, or wherever it was, I can’t remember who it was now. They only had two
hours and they had to get on another train.
They couldn’t get any plane. They didn’t
have a high enough priority so they were
only home two hours. They took off again.
This is a long way, chair car all the way
from St. Louis to California. Promised a
sleeper. They said it would get better at
Kansas City. At Kansas City they said we’ll
have one for you at Ogden, Utah. At Ogden,
Utah, they said forget about it. It won’t happen here. So we got to, finally on the night
after Christmas night we had the plane loaded down with gas, all of our gear in it and
we took off for Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii.
�WILL: This was Christmas must have been
of ’43?
VOGELPOHL: ’44. Before this whenever
they would fly planes over, they would just
take about five crew members and the rest
would come by ship. The pilots would say
we want to stay together. We were overloaded and kept topping off the gas tanks
and we had two bomb bay tanks instead of
bombs or anything you put two big huge
tanks and I think they have about two hundred and eighty-five gallons apiece. They
were locked into the bomb bay so you had
an extra five hundred gallons of gas. It took
us I think fourteen, twenty-two hours to fly
from __?__ to __?__. We flew over there in
a little over four hours when my wife and I
went in 1980.
WILL: Times have improved.
VOGELPOHL: Then we had more training
in Hawaii. We trained there for about a
month. We had air to air firing __?__, air to
ground bombing and so on and so forth.
They sent us out at the end of January in
1945. At this time we were, I suppose we
were ready. We had been flying together
since September through the end of January.
I ran into Army people up there, Army Air
Force people that had never fired a machine
gun in the air; that had never seen a smoke
bomb dropped or a water bomb. He was just
a gunner and he was on his way. He said,
“The Army communicates in one way. If
you want to call the pilot this is the way we
do it. We have a number system. The pilot
was 1, the co-pilot 2, the navigator 3; the
radioman 4, the bow turret gunner and so
on.” Numbers all the way back so you
would call a number. For example, I was 5
in the bow. It wasn’t a battle station. It had
two fifty- caliber machine guns. You could
cut grass with two fifty-caliber machine
guns. If I wanted to call the guy in the tail
for example, maybe looking at something I
couldn’t quite figure out what it was say ten
from five, “What do you see out there?”
Everybody knew that the nose turret was
calling the guy in the tail turret to look at
something he wasn’t able to determine what
it was. You see something on the water, we
would go on patrols. Most of them were
eight, nine, ten hours and you’re just out
there. Sometimes you see nothing but water.
Water starts to look a like after six or eight
hours.
WILL: Get kind of dizzy looking at water.
VOGELPOHL: But you see something and
it could be a whale spouting or your looking
for submarines and this type of thing so you
have to communicate back and forth.
WILL: This is out of Hawaii then?
VOGELPOHL: Well, from Hawaii, we
were supposed to take a plane, a new plane,
to the Marshall Islands in [Eniwetok] so we
left there near the last of January and we
took off in the afternoon. We flew to Johnson Island which is hardly much bigger than
about two flat tops put end to end. It’s just a
little rock. We staid there overnight. The
next morning we took off and we flew ’til
about three in the afternoon to [Eniwetok]
and we delivered the plane. Then they put us
in transit barracks and we had to wait for air
service to come along. The Army, Navy and
Marine stopped there, the different services
stopped there moving people around by
plane. While we were there, it’s a big shipping area, a lot of ships in the harbor and we
had submarine scares and not allowed to
make a light, not allowed to light a cigarette
at night. Sometimes no cooking fires so you
ate cold Spam the next morning and this was
a pretty introduction to what come later. Finally we got a ride out of there after three or
four days and we flew to Guam and we were
just there over night. Pretty primitive in
Guam at this time. The next morning we got
a flight with the Marines again to Tinian
which was basically our home. Tinian became the island with, I think, five-eleven
thousand foot runways and a B29s base. Of
course, they had one at Saipan and they had
one at Guam. Guam was a few hours flying
time from Tinian so they had to load less
bombs and more gas to go to Japan and fly
�past Tinian to do it so figured the islands
down there were better. They were still
building these runways. The Naval Air Station we only had an old fifty-five hundredfoot strip up on top of the hill. It was a Naval Air Station. They worked around the
clock, day and night any kind of weather,
hauling coral, smashing it, putting down the
runways for B25s so what they could do, if
they only needed half the runways but if you
got five of them here you can have five
planes come in here. Five planes come in the
middle. They all set, they all take off ten at a
time. As soon as they clear you have five
more coming in and five the same way with
landing. Set this one down had to cross,
WILL: Saves time and,
VOGELPOHL: Yeah. And they had B29s
up, this is where the Enola Gay came from
that carried the atom bomb Anyway we got
to Tinian and we were in the squadron
VPB116 V means heavier than air; PB
means patrol bombers and 116 was the unit.
WILL: That was your unit from the beginning.
VOGELPOHL: That was our combat unit.
We had eighteen crews and fifteen planes so
the junior group never had a plane to take up
which was kind of good in a way because
you did have to have somebody on guard
duty there at all times, twenty-four hours a
day.
WILL: They didn’t rotate.
VOGELPOHL: No. The senior people had
their own plane. We would fly this plane
this time and this plane the next time so you
never
WILL: Superstitions about the planes?
VOGELPOHL: Yeah and a little of that.
Well we managed to hack it out for six
months. Shortly after we got therewe got
there I think the first of February or the second of February in 1945, the last year of the
war and the Japanese were pretty well beaten down. They didn’t have a lot of stuff. We
only had a couple air raids while we were on
Tinian and I don’t know whether we everI
don’t remember any bombs falling. I remember air raids going out at night, getting
into bunkers and stuff. But they had an interesting little thing. I have a picture of me
holding a little goat. Ernie Pyle was on Tinian at this time and he wrote about a goat in
his dispatches back here and it’s the goat
that I’m holding. About three days after the
picture was taken the goat disappeared. The
Marines had a barbecue one night. Nobody
knows where they got the meat. Anyway the
big thing that was happening was Iwo Jima
was about to be stroked. I think they landed
on there about the 14th or the 16th something
like that.
WILL: Were you involved in that?
VOGELPOHL: We were later. It was a real
toughy. I have some pictures of it. To try to
pin down thesee if we could find any
remnants of the Japanese fleetwe knew
they still had tis big battle ship with the
eighteen-inch guns. So we took off from
Tinian and another plane had done this two
days before. We flew in the Japanese islands
up here and all around, sneaking and poking
our nose around. Didn’t see too much of
anything but then we didn’t have enough gas
to fly back to Tinian so we were going to set
her down on the old Japanese airstrip number two which was right along side of the
south beach.
WILL: Never had the same one.
WILL: On Iwo Jima.
VOGELPOHL: That was kind of bad because some people kept their guns in good
shape; some people kind slip shod on them.
Some planes were dirty.
VOGELPOHL: On Iwo Jima. This was the
first time I would see combat close up. At
the end of the strip they had a ridge and it
�had the Marines on our side and the Japanese were on the other side. Two days before a B24 had tried the same thing, came in,
set down and whenever he got to the end of
the strip the Japanese saw him come down
and they put up a bunch of trench mortars
and blew him all to pieces. They smartened
up a little so whenever we tried it they had
two light cruisers and about four destroyers
plus some field artillery around Suribachi.
They were firing and getting everybody to
put their heads down before we came in and
they started firing right over the top of us
over the ridge. At the end of the strip we
whipped it around and came back to the other end of the strip so we weren’t hit. But
when we took off we still had to fly out this
way but they kept hammering in there and at
this time there were
WILL: What were your feelings then?
VOGELPOHL: Well it was rather strange.
You were up on the wing gassing up and
you could here the shells going “fof fof fof
fof” and singing and ran into a guy there.
Everything was bad. Everything was torn
up. There was junk everywhere. You would
not believe the things that you see in a battlefield. Comic books, you know, bandages.
Here’s a place where they had a trench mortar and they still got about fifteen, twenty
cases of ammo they just popped open, just
sitting there waiting. You find a wire with a
little red flag on it. Here’s an unexploded
shell that had come in but nobody wanted to
mess with it. And food cans and clothing,
you know, some nice looking stuff, bottles
and cans. God it was awful.
WILL: Stuff you wouldn’t expect to see
VOGELPOHL: Yeah. It took so long to
take the island. The first night we were only
there a short time. The next time we went
we stayed over there three or four days and
we built our own tent. Everybody slept with
there head toward the middle of the tent because there were still Japs running around
sticking bayonets through the side of the
tents. We were there the night but were on
plane watch, another fellow and I, the night
that over a hundred Japanese came marching
four abreast right up the beach road. And
they had a new Army guard up there or a
Marine or somebody that didn’t give the
word and they got in among the P51 pilots
that they were just bringing in. They killed
over one hundred and seven pilots in one
night just by throwing grenades in the tents.
Take a bayonet, cut a hole in there and stick
a percussion grenade in there. The Japs had
good pyrotechnics. They had stuff that
would go off. You’re probably familiar with
our torpedoes that never went off.
WILL: Oh, yeah.
VOGELPOHL:
You
hit
a
ship
squareyou hit it at an angle, it might explode. But there stuff always seemed to go.
It was kind of touchy. But anyway we
hadwe finally got them calmed down and
on Easterno, on the first of Julyfirst of
April that year, we invaded Okinawa. It was
April Fools’ Day and it was Easter Sunday.
There wasn’t much going on. They thought
there would be. The Japs decided at this
time on Okinawa, they weren’t going to
fight them on the beach. They were going to
let them come to us where we were set up
and we would handle them. Of course we
didn’t really help them. After that it was just
__?__ patrol. We eventually sank eleven
Japanese ships in just our group. We damaged eleven. At least we get the credit for it
and we shot down one Japanese plane. At
this time the Navy was kind of “gung ho” on
medals. For every five combat patrols, you
got an Air Medal up to five of them. I had
thirty-nine combat patrols so I only got five
Air Medals but I did get a Distinguished Fly
Cross on the sixth of May. We went out and
sank four ships and shot down this one plane
in about an hour and a half, I guess.
WILL: This was off of Okinawa then?
VOGELPOHL: No. This was down in the
Nansi Shoto (?) group somewhere. I don’t
know exactly where it was. It waswhich
�would be south of Honshu, I think. I think
the Nansi Shoto (?) Group is south of Kyushu. It would be not too far from Okinawa.
WILL: In all these adventures, how about
casualties.
VOGELPOHL: We just had our first radio
man had his second brother killed in the service. They sent him home. If you had two in
the family killed, any other service personnel were sent home because they figured
that was adequate after the Sullivan boys,
five of them we had. The only one that really got wounded was our first radio man, a
kid from Boston. He had a bullet come
through the Plexiglas on the top turret and it
broke up a bunch of Plexiglas that stuck in
his face right near his eye. Other than
thatwe got hit a number of times, bullet
holes
WILL: Your plane did.
VOGELPOHL: Yeah. We had one that
could almost be a comedy. A bullet came in
through the side from a fighter and hit exactly in a spot no bigger than a wire that closed
a parachute. Just as the tail gunner was having trouble with his gunsas he was coming out of his turret; he shouldn’t have been
out of his turret no matter what He thought
there was something stuck underneath and
he was going to fix it because he couldn’t
reverse his guns. Just as he got out, we had
hatch guns here on the side __?__ and this
was all open __?__. You got an area as big
__?__ fifty stuck out of the side and on each
side was a para, we never wore our parachutes because they are harnesses because
we always flew so low we didn’t have a belly turret, had a raid dome down in there for
radar. We’d fly so low we didn’t want anybody to get in under us. That was a no, no
you couldn’t defend. At the height we flew
there was no point in wearing a parachute
because you didn’t have time to, I mean
you’d be so close by the time you thought
about it jumping out why it wouldn’t even
open. A bullet came and hit the mechanism
of this wire through these two pegs sticking
up and you pull on the wire and you popped
your chute. With all this wind coming in the
back the slug hit this parachute and it
opened up.
WILL: The parachute opened up?
VOGELPOHL: Yeah. He thought it was
smoke. He thought we were on fire. By this
time the chute got over him, enclosed him
and he couldn’t get out and he didn’t know
for five minutes what was going on. He
thought we had bought the big one, bought
the farm.
WILL: Your crew more or less came
through it.
VOGELPOHL: Yeah. You also had little
things like standing guard on the planes. The
Japanese on their New Year were supposed
to come out in a Kamikaze attack on Tinian
on their New Years so we doubled the plane
guards. All the people out on the strip and
what it amounted to , . I don’t think anybody
even saw a Jap, although there were Japanese still running around on the island. We
shot a chief and it was an ordinance man
who was driving a truck pulling these little
bomb “dealies”, you know, little four
“wheeler” where you have the bombs loaded
on.
WILL: This was an U. S.
VOGELPOHL: Shot a chief and one guy
that was a CB, maybe deserved to be shot
and another one. Anyway a guy came to relieve a CB who was not used to guarding out
on an airfield and the guard challenged him
whenever the CB came up to replace the
man and he said, “Halt. Who goes there?”
The guy said, “So “solly”. No Jap. Me a
CB.” The guy cut loose and killed the guy.
Dumb stuff. The first night that they were
under combat conditions there on Iwo Jima
was bad. We were away from the fighting
but there were flares going up constantly
and just a roar of ammunition going off and
it had to be tough.
WILL: How was the medical treatment?
�VOGELPOHL: I thought it was good. Of
course, I never needed a lot of it.
WILL: Top of the line at that time.
VOGELPOHL: Yeah. We had good treatment. They did. It’s kind of hard to, there
was one time in there where we never really
got out of our clothes for about a week or
ten days. Everybody had like a fungus of the
feet, athlete’s foot type of thing and some on
the hands and the back and the ears but it
wasn’t all that bad. Food was kind of “iffy”.
We would get Ten-in-One rations if we
could which is a whole lot better than Krations. Your mouth would get so sore from
eating K-rations after a couple days you
couldn’t even swallow water. We ended up,
the tour of duty got back to Tinian and we
took a plane that had been, they were going
to throw in the junk pile and we said, “Hey,
let us fly back to Tinian. Give us gas.” We
had two other crews fly with us so we had
eleven in a crew. We had ten, so there were
thirty-two guys with no place to sit and it
was about a four hour hop from Iwo Jima
back to Tinian. We fooled around there because we figured the longer we fooled
around to go back to the States to make up
another crew and come back because at that
time they thought Japan would not surrender
until the last one was. . .
WILL: What were your thoughts on that at
that time, how the war was going?
VOGELPOHL: This was what we were
told they were going to fight to the last man
but we had people coming out there. We
saw some British ships. The war was over in
Europe. The British were out there. We
came upon Task Force 58 not knowing it
was there just in a routine patrol and I was
absolutely amazed. We came out of a cloud
bank and here is this fleet spread before us
and it was devastating. Could not believe, I
mean it’s a proud feeling. God, they must
have had twenty carriers, battleships; they
had the Missouri out there and Iowa, I guess.
As far as you could see from being up several thousand feet, as far as you could see in
three directions nothing but ships. There
were a couple of fighters just waiting for us
as soon as we popped out of the cloud even
though we had the IFF on which is Identification Friend or Foe they should be able to
pick you up on the radio as being a friend,
we heard on the radio, “Check them out. See
who the hell they are.” That’s what the guy
said. Here’s a couple of __?__ sitting there
and pulling right up along side of us, six
feet between the wing tip, hot pilots. A day
later we had a guy get too close. They fired
tracers in front of his nose to get him out
there. You’re too close. Back off. They
didn’t want anybody messing around with
them. God, they were rough.
WILL: So you figure with that many ships,
you knew that the U. S. was,
VOGELPOHL: Yeah. They had been up
bombing Japan with the [terrier] plane, you
know, with a TBS and SBDs and SP2Cs.
We never really ran into, we did silly things
like one day we wanted to go up and bomb
a, we had a lot of freedom to do what we
wanted to do. There was a Japanese airstrip.
It was really an auxiliary airstrip up at Honshu. We wanted to go up there and get there
right at daylight and make a bombing run
right down the middle of their field. Blow
them up. Catch them in the chow line. This
is something we wanted to do. It just never
worked for us. Foggy. We couldn’t find the
place. Finally it’s about eight o’clock. __?__
The mist is clearing up and the guys were in
the chow line true enough, I guess. Anyway
the planes are turning up. Trucks driving
around even with the gas hose on them and
they’re filling gas in the planes. You know
it’s too late to make, the pilot said, “You
want to go in and take them on”? I said,
“No. Better not”.
WILL: __?__ at night.
VOGELPOHL: Nothing in the air. But
there were several planes turned up so we
took off and flew up the coast ten or twelve
miles and saw a little freighter sitting out
there. We started making runs on it. First
�thing we know there are four fighters on our
back and they chased us out quite a bit and
then they went back. We figured they went
back in, so we decided we were going to go
back in and get this freighter because,
said, “What kind of crap is this, a bomb
that’s bigger than all the bombs that have
been dropped in the whole war.
WILL: You had enough fuel to turn around
and go back?
VOGELPOHL: Then, of course, whenever
we found out the next day or two, how the
Japanese were thinking about quitting then
we wanted to get home as fast as we could.
No point of, so we came back on a Jeep carrier. It took a week. It was the only time I
spent aboard ship in just about two and a
half years in the Navy. Well it wasn’t two
and a half it was twenty-eight months, something like that.
VOGELPOHL: Yeah. We go back in and
this time they’re waiting around and man the
hammered this time. This was the time after
May the 6th when we had all the good luck.
Going in on a ship, you try to come in from
after the quarter. In other words, this is the
bow here, come in this way and rake him
with bow guns, top guns and as you’re
swinging away tail guns. Just shoot up his
armament where he can’t bother you too
much. Then you can go in and make the
drop. We had planes that were so bad electrically the bombs wouldn’t fall. We’d go
over a ship six or eight times and the bombs
would absolutely not fall so we kept an ordinance man to stand on the catwalk with
the bomb bay doors open. The catwalks
about a foot wide with a screwdriver in the
shackles and when the pilot drop, he twisted
the screwdriver and out the bomb fell.
That’s a bad way to bomb. Crazy thing. We
got back to Hawaii. We stopped at the Marshall Islands again overnight at Kwajalein.
Flew back with the Army I think it was. We
got to Hickam Field. The pilot put us in for
rest and rehabilitation. At this time there
were only three hotels on Waikiki Beach,
the Royal Hawaiian was one of them. The
Navy had it for “sub” men and for air crews.
They put us in for three days. Beautiful,
food you would not believe, milk, fried eggs
(after powdered eggs), ice cream, all the
good stuff. The only bad thing was you had
to wear whites to go down and eat. The last
night we were there they had Ted, no, let’s
see, they had Bing Crosby’s brother, Bob
Crosby and the Bob-Cats there as a USO
show out in the gardens with the waves
coming in and everything. A beautiful sight.
The next day we found out that an atom
bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima but at
that time it was called Hiroshioma. And we
WILL: You couldn’t believe this.
WILL: Twenty-eight months on a ship?
VOGELPOHL: No, it only took us seven
days to come back. That was the only time
out of my time in the Navy that I spent
aboard ship.
WILL: In all this time overseas did you
write a lot of letters home? Did you receive
a lot? Packages, letters, did it take a long
time for them to get there.
VOGELPOHL: Well, airmail would take a
week, five days sometimes. That’s pretty
good, not bad at all.
WILL: How often did you write home?
VOGELPOHL: I would write on the average of five to seven letters a week. I had a
large family at that time. I’m the only one
left now.
WILL: What kind of packages would you
get?
VOGELPOHL: They would usually be
hammered up, you know. Cigarettes. It was
really silly to send cigarettes out because
you could buy them for fifty cents a carton.
On Tinian we had a beer ration of twelve
cans a month. You had a card and you’d get
your card punched. You wanted to get a
hold of people who didn’t drink.
�WILL: Use their card.
VOGELPOHL: We got twenty-four cokes
and twelve cans of beer, that you could steal
from the Army. And that was easy.
WILL: Do you remain in contact with any
of your . . .
VOGELPOHL: Not now I don’t. My buddy that used to come see me here died. The
one in Chicago, we used to exchange
Christmas Cards and I haven’t heard from
him for two years. I don’t know whether
he’s alive or not. I did kind of keep in touch
with a guy from Oklahoma for a year or two.
He got married and got a family and a business of his own and he got too busy to mess
around with it. The pilot here doesn’t seem
interested in, I think I was at his place of
business about three times and he never
even offered me a beer so,
WILL: (Laughter) Or a cup of coffee.
VOGELPOHL: After the Jeep carrier got
back to San Diego, I flew home with American Airlines a DC2 or something like that.
Thirty day leave and I was hoping to get on
some field in the mid-west somewhere instead they sent me back to California to San
Francisco. They didn’t really know what to
do with us. They had need for about six radio men and finally there was fifty some of
us. You could volunteer and I volunteered to
get out of there and got into the shore patrol.
Then again there’s other places, you know
you had different places where you could
apply for. You could take a train that just ran
back and forth between El Paso and, but
then the train were sitting all this business,
so I put in for San Mateo. There was a race
track here. I didn’t now it at the time but we
put in __?__ for the whole racing season.
Show up at noon. You’re living on the
beach. You’re getting subsistence because
you’re not living on the base. You’re getting
food allowance. Show up at noon and the
races are over by five o’clock and that’s it.
WILL: Some time for yourself.
VOGELPOHL: They race five days a week
and you only get one day off so you had to
come in on Sunday and walk the beat or
paddy wagon or something like that and
that’s how I ended the war. I didn’t have
enough points to get out but if you had the
Distinguished Flying Cross at that time you
could get out on request. Just before Christmas they called me in and told me I got the
Distinguished Flying Cross. It was so close
to Christmas I didn’t want to be in transit on
a receiving ship somewhere over Christmas
so I just stayed in the Shore Patrol until I
think the second of January. I went to the
Federal Building and requested out and it
took about two weeks to, we were on a train
that was so old and decrepit, it had a coal
fired stove on it. Going north, we had it on
the front, you know the stove was on the
front. We kept it fired up pretty good. Had
buckets of coal there to do it with. At Ogden, Utah, where they make up a new train,
they turned us around some way or other.
Now the stove was in the back and up in the
front it was freezing, it was cold. When I
stepped off the train at Great Lakes, it was
right around zero, and a high wind coming
off of that lake. I had missed two winters in
a row and it was fierce. I thought it was pretty bad.
WILL: So you were eventually discharged ,
VOGELPOHL: At Great Lakes, yeah.
WILL: Great Lakes in Chicago. Stepping
back a few months, how did you hear about
VE Day?
VOGELPOHL: We had Stars and Stripes.
WILL: Okay.
VOGELPOHL: We had little papers and
some people were getting papers through the
mail. They would be late but we knew about
it. We knew it within hours when President
Roosevelt died. It wasn’t really all that remote, __?__ was a big place.
WILL: Because you were in there.
�VOGELPOHL: It’s still, you know. Communicate, you have planes coming through
all the time and air service ___?___ move
on. They would bring mail and passengers,
and people around, this type of thing. People
had radios. You could listen to Tokyo Rose
and get all the information you needed about
what was going on in the world and hear
good music at the same time.
WILL: You mentioned you were on Hawaii
when the atom bomb was dropped, right?
WILL: When you heard about the atom
bomb, what was your opinion?
VOGELPOHL: We didn’t, we had no idea
what it was.
WILL: You didn’t know what,
VOGELPOHL: No. The only thing that we
liked about it was that it was going to end
the war. I had a real strange reaction when
they, on VJ Day. It seemed like the saddest
time I could remember.
VOGELPOHL: Right. On the way back.
WILL: On VJ Day?
WILL: So you must have been there, VJ
Day?
VOGELPOHL: No. Two VJ Days were
aboard ship coming back. Everybody was
raising hell and,
VOGELPOHL: Yeah. I don’t know why. I
mean here you’re just focussed on something for so long and when it’s taken away,
you’re just at a loss.
WILL: That’s a different reaction.
WILL: Celebrating?
VOGELPOHL: As much as you can on a
Jeep carrier. We had the whole hangar deck
which is the deck below the flight deck with
cots strung across. You had to remember
where your cot was. Rescue gear was under
the cot. It was like 26-52. You had to remember your cot was twenty-six rows back,
or fifty-two rows back and then twenty-six
over from the right side. It worked pretty
good. There always was,
WILL: I suppose it was the best at that
time.
VOGELPOHL: Yeah. Anybody that was
Second Class and I was Second Class Petty
Officer at that time, Anybody below Second
Class had to work in the chow line. Chow
line, you’re feeding all the time, going up
the ladders and,
VOGELPOHL: But I was glad it was over,
to get out of there.
WILL: How about your opinion of the atom
bomb being dropped on Japan?
VOGELPOHL: Today?
WILL: What’s your opinion of it looking
back fifty years?
VOGELPOHL: I think it was a wake up
call. We were going to have to go in there
and take this a foot at a time from the Japanese. On Iwo I think there were only about
four hundred that ever came out. The only
ones that I ever saw were nurses and doctors
and they looked like drowned rats that came
out of the holes. Iwo Jima is a stinking
place, a lot of sulphur and fumes and mist
coming out of the ground and its not a very
nice.
WILL: So many people.
WILL: Isn’t that kind of a volcano island?
VOGELPOHL: All these people aboard,
they had a number of different kitchens and
feeding areas.
VOGELPOHL: Yeah. It’s one of the three
volcano islands that’s in the volcano group.
�The other two are just mountain tops sticking out of the water.
WILL: What was your rank when you were
discharged?
VOGELPOHL: Aviation Radio Man Second Class, Petty Officer.
WILL: Okay. And you just mentioned your
decorations. You had,
VOGELPOHL: Yeah. I got a Distinguished
Flying Cross, five Air Medals, Philippine
Liberation, the Asiatic Pacific American
Theater, and that’s the Air Medal Bar. For
each medal, you use the bar as one then you
get four stars for five air medals. Like I say
they gave them for five missions. This is the
baby that got me out. I kind of keep him
separate.
WILL: How many total? You were in thirty-nine flightscombat flights.
VOGELPOHL: Yeah. Thirty-nine.
WILL: How’d you get along with the men
that you had the greatest contact with? Pretty good?
VOGELPOHL: Yeah. We got along pretty
good. Everybody had his duty. It didn’t
seem right all the time. Like for example if
you get a couple of good USO shows and
you’re on plane guard on both of them but
this is just little “tinker” stuff. It’s not worth
We had a real good skipper of the squadron. When we got therehe was relieved,
came back for his rest and rehabilitation,
came back with his crewbut our Exec at
that time was kind of a hard nose. Then we
got an Exec that was pretty good but the
skipper of the squadron was kind of a jerk
He wanted us to march out to the planes two
abreast, all this kind of happy stuff. (Laughter). Mostly ignored him but he didn’t
lastOnly had to put up with him maybe a
month or so. Living conditions werewe
went on rest and rehabilitation for a week to
Palilote. God what a place that is! The sand
fleas started attacking about two o’clock in
the afternoon. From your knees down you
can hardly see any skin. They were just one
right on top of the other. Just take your fingernails, you knowall these little creepy
crawly things. You sleep under a mosquito
net and laying there usually with just a pair
of shorts on or something. The best thing to
do is get yourself a little lizard about this
long. Keep a couple of those in there with
you. They’d run across your chest but they
caught mosquitoes
WILL: They got fat on mosquitoes. (Laughter)
VOGELPOHL: There are some strange
places.
WILL: I don’t think youHere’s the question. You didn’t have anything to do with.
You never saw any prisoner concentration
camps on your flights.
VOGELPOHL: No. They had the natives
of the islands who were Korean probably on
Tinian that did things like that.
WILL: Japanese prisoners.
VOGELPOHL: No. They were Koreans
that lived there and they were farming. They
had sugar cane and this type of thing. They
had them dumping barrels, you know, of
waste. Want something to drink? Francie,
you want to get us a couple of cokes?
WILL: What is the most difficult thing you
had to do during your military service? Is
there anything that stands out.
VOGELPOHL: Well, I knew I wanted
tothere was a time to do it and when it’s
done, it’s time to get out. I enjoyed the last
month the least probably because at this
time I felt thatYou know the war had been
over since August. Here it is December and
all
these
people
are
coming
throughcoming back to the States and you
�were like war surplus. It’s a little different
whenever there’s a war going on, everybody
gives you a ride and everything, you know.
You put up your thumb, you’re gone. After
the war, things kind of tighten up like they
were. Almost like around Norfolk. Dogs and
sailors keep off the lawn type of thing. I just
wanted to get out. I didn’t want to make a
career out of it. I just wanted toI got taken
in by this far away places with strange
sounding names. I had the song. You remember it probably. I’d done all of this. It’s
time to do something else.
WILL: You were never disabled then.
VOGELPOHL: No.
WILL: You ever have any contact with the
Veterans’ Administration?
VOGELPOHL: I belong in my hometown
to the American Legion for a few years.
VOGELPOHL: Oh, yeah. Different times
whenever I’d be in a crunch for money just
call my oldest brother. For example we were
supposed to live on the beach now. You
don’t have a place to stay and you don’t
have enough money to feed yourself. You
don’t know where to go to get money to take
you for the next six days because that is
when the next payday is. You don’t have
any housing or food allotment at all so I’d
just call him up and say, “Hey I need fifty
dollars or a hundred dollars” or whatever
and Bingo it was there. Telegraphed. This
made it easier. A time or two I had to do that
whenever I got, I was travelling. For example if you only get $54 a month and $6 of
that goes for insurance, try buying a $60
railroad ticket some where. It’s tough. So
you just pay it back when you can.
WILL: One last question here. Is there any
one thing that stands out as your most successful achievement during your military
life?
WILL: What’s your opinion of the VA?
VOGELPOHL: I’m not a club type. Some
people like the Moose. They go down and
drink beer and play cards and Bingo or
whatever. I just was never into that.
WILL: You’ve never gone to any VA Hospital? You look pretty good and healthy to
me.
VOGELPOHL: I’m not that great really.
WILL: How did your family support you
during your military life?
VOGELPOHL: It was 100%. You know
they were.
WILL: Your brothers and sisters?
VOGELPOHL: I would get, hear from
some of the family probably twice a week. I
had a sister, three brothers and my mother
wrote. My dad may have written a couple.
WILL: They supported you.
VOGELPOHL: No. It was the greatest adventure. It was exactly what I was looking
for. Without it I think I’d, knowing what I
know now, at least, I think I would have enjoyed life a whole lot less. So many things
that refer back to, you know about something whenever you read a story of a different war, you know how people feel and how
people react and it made life a whole lot
more interesting. Because of the service,
there was the GI Bill that allowed me to try
to fulfill the other ambition that was to play
violin reasonably well. I got a degree in music. I taught in the public schools in Illinois
and in the high school for four years and in
the junior high for three years.
WILL: Here in Rockford. You didn’t do
this right out of the service, did you?
VOGELPOHL: No, I fooled around. I just
taught for seven years and ended up working
at Camcar-Textron, supervisor there. I
worked there a little over twenty-five years
totally.
�WILL: Where did you teach in Rockford?
VOGELPOHL: The first three years at
Wilson Junior High was open in the west
end. Little different now than it was then.
WILL: Music teacher?
VOGELPOHL: (Inaudible)
WILL: Thank you very much Earl. I guess
that about winds it up. Do you want to say
good-bye?
VOGELPOHL: Good bye.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Midway Village Museum
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Midway Village Museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-2001
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Language
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English
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Jim Will
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Earl John Vogelpohl
Location
The location of the interview
Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Earl John Vogelpohl
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
8-Feb-94
Description
An account of the resource
Born July 18, 1924, Earl John Vogelpohl was drafted in 1943 and served as a Navy radio operator. He died April 30, 2002.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
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Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War 2
World War II
-
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PDF Text
Text
EARL Hutchinson Page 1
EARL HUTCHINSON
Transcribed By Elaine Carlson
Edited by Margaret Lofgren
Midway Village and Museum Center
6799 Guilford Road
Rockford, IL 61107
Phone 397 9112
�EARL Hutchinson Page 2
Earl Hutchinson
Today is March 8, 1994. My name is Phyllis
Gordon. I am a volunteer with Midway Village
& Museum Center cooperating with a statewide
effort to collect oral histories from Illinois
citizens who participated in the momentous
events surrounding World War II. Today we are
in the North Suburban District Library and we
are interviewing Mr. Earl Hutchinson who
served in a branch of the United States Armed
Forces during World War II. We are
interviewing him about his experiences in that
war. Earl, would you please start by introducing
yourself to us. Please give us your full name, the
place and date of your birth. We’ll start with
that.
EARL: Okay. I was born in Winnebago County.
We lived on Ralston Road up here and I’ve been
a Rockford area resident all my life. My name is
Earl Hutchinson.
EARL: In 1941 I was a large radial drill
operator for Greenlee Bros. & Co. They
anticipated the war then and they were making
transfer-line machines that were able to produce
a lot of aircraft engines.
PHYLLIS: What thoughts did you have about
the war before the United States became directly
involved?
EARL: Well, my thoughts are on any war is that
the people fighting the war don’t want the war.
It’s the leaders of the different factions, or
different countries that want the war. They can’t
seem to agree with each other so they start a war
and they put all the men __?__ even since the
dawn of history.
PHYLLIS: Did you hear the December 7, 1941,
radio announcement about the bombing of Pearl
Harbor by the Japanese? If so, where were you
and what were you doing at that time?
PHYLLIS: Your birth date?
EARL: I was born December 4, 1921.
PHYLLIS: We’d also like to have the name of
each of your parents.
EARL: My dad’s name was Orson and my
mother’s name was Vinnie.
EARL: That is one I don’t have a good memory
on like most people do because we lived out
here in Loves Park in what was like country
then. I was doing something out in the yard. I
was working on my caror whatever I was
doing and one of my brothers come out and told
me that they had just bombed Pearl Harbor.
PHYLLIS: Did you have any brothers or
sisters?
PHYLLIS: What was you reaction and the
response of the others around you when you
heard that news?
EARL: There were seven kids altogether.
EARL: that I can’t remember.
PHYLLIS Are there any details about your
parents or your family that you’d like to give at
this time?
PHYLLIS: Do you recall reading newspaper
accounts of German aggression in Europe?
EARL: My dad was in World War I and several
of my brothers were in World War II alongnot
with me but at the same time.
PHYLLIS: What was life like for you before
the war and specifically if you can think back to
1941. What were you doing before the war?
EARL: Oh, yes. The first one I remember was
that I was coming back from Minnesota to
Rockford. I was hitch hiking all the way and on
the radio of the cars that I rode in it was telling
that Hitler had invaded Poland which I didn’t
think was the right thing to do. I thought Hitler
should have stayed in Germany.
�EARL Hutchinson Page 3
PHYLLIS: Did you have any knowledge of
Hitler’s speeches or ideas?
EARL: No. I never read or studied up on that. I
heard what was in the newspapers or heard what
was on the radio and that was as far as I got.
PHYLLIS: What events led you into military
service? Were you drafted or did you volunteer?
EARL: No, I was drafted a year later. They
didn’t want me at first because I was working at
a production facility that helped the war effort.
But a year later they decided that I was a young
fellow and they could use me after all.
PHYLLIS: When and where were you
inducted?
EARL: I wasI guess I was sworn in
Rockford, but I was then inducted in Fort
Sheridan just north of Chicago.
PHYLLIS: How old were you? Do you have
any special memories of being inducted?
EARL: Well, I got one that is a different one. I
went in for my physical into Chicago and it took
all day. They took us in by the train load and I
got side tracked during the examination and I
didn't get my lunch like everybody else. Finally,
when I complained about it, they said, “We’ll
give you some lunch.” They took me to a room
and they had hot dogs and sauerkraut and I
thought, “Oh, what a meal” because I had never
had sauerkraut in my life because my mother
hated it. I started to eat and the more I ate the
more I liked it. I’ve eaten sauerkraut ever since.
EARL: That was in Camp Hood, Texas.
PHYLLIS: What were you trained to do? And
what did you think of the training?
EARL: They called the Camp Hood, Texas, a
“tank destroyer unit” but that just happened to
be their specialty down there but that jus like
being in another branch of the infantry.
PHYLLIS: And so what were you specifically
trained to do?
EARL: We didn’t get any specific training
there. It was just basic training there.
PHYLLIS: all right. Did anything special
happen there?
EARL: Well, I know that one of the fellows in
our barracks got spinal meningitis and we were
quarantined for several weeks. So I got into
town once the whole time I was there for
thirteen weeks.
PHYLLIS: Tell us about any other training
camps that you attended.
EARL: Well, from there we went over into
Pennsylvania. I forget the name of the camp for
a minute, but I got on KP (kitchen police) duty
there and there were several of us there who had
to actually peel and cut up fifty pounds of
onions.
PHYLLIS: I’ll bet you were crying before that
job was over.
PHYLLIS: That’s an interesting story.
EARL: After that physical then they gave us
seven day leave to go home and get our papers
all straightened out. And that was right at
Christmas time. And I went in between
Christmas and New Year’s to Fort Sheridan and
we didn’t do much there for a few days because
of the Holidays, but then things started to move
after that and I went from there to basic training.
PHYLLIS: Where did you take you basic
training?
EARL: Well, we had a good bunch of fellows
so we made a bunch of jokes about it. We had
quite a time.
PHYLLIS: Did you have any leaves or passes
during this and if so, how did you use them?
EARL: I had one evening pass while I was in
Texas for the thirteen weeks and I had one
evening pass in Pennsylvania for the few days
that I was there. Other than that, the next thing I
�EARL Hutchinson Page 4
knew we were on board ship heading overseas
on the Atlantic.
did not immediately enter a combat zone where
did you go before entering combat?
PHYLLIS: What was your military unit?
EARL: Well, I landed at North Africa. We took
a little bit of training. Before the training was
completely over andwell we were all called
out one morning into a big field. There were
hundreds of us there and our physical that day
amounted to the doctor or officer coming along
saying, “Well, good morning, soldier. How are
you today?” And if you said fine, that was your
physical. In my case, I said, “I’ve got a bad side
ache that’s really bothering me,” so what’s he
sayyou’re out in this big open field with
nobody aroundWell, drop your pants,
soldier.” And he checked and I had a hernia and
he said, “Well, you can’t make this trip. You go
back to the tent and report to first Aid and
they’ll send you to the hospital tomorrow.” And
the odd part of that was, I didn’t know until after
the war was completely over. A couple years
later and I was on my way back home and I got
my hands of all of my records. We all did that
and I was going along reading them and I
happened to notice one page in there and there
was a big rubber stamp across it “void”. So I
read the page and I found out that the time I was
in North Africa I was actually assigned to the
First Division, which was in Sicily at the time
and because I went to the hospital it was marked
“void”. I didn’t go to the First Division. I went
to the hospital and stayed in Africa all summer.
Where other fellow went to Sicily and some of
them never returned?
EARL: I was in the 36th Division which was
known as the Texas Division.
PHYLLIS: And what were your assigned
duties:
EARL: Well, I started out as a line rifleman, but
just before we got back into battle, I was sent up
to Headquarters Company to be a Jeep driver
and then I did all types of Jeep driving.
PHYLLIS: So then you were sent overseas.
How did you get there?
EARL: Well, we’re going to have to back track
a little bit then. After I left Pennsylvania, we
went to Norfolk, Virginia, where we all boarded
ships and we headed for North Africa. We had a
nice interesting stopping point on the way. We
stopped at Bermuda and we all had a chance to
visit the town there.
PHYLLIS: Pretty nice.
EARL: Some of them went to a couple of towns
before the ships actuallywell that was an
assembly for the whole convoy from the United
States. They all met there and took off in a
convoy. When we left Bermuda we headed for
North Africa and we had forty ships in the
convoy. And from there we went through the
Strait of Gibraltar and we could see land on both
sides. The first land we had seen in thirty days
and we landed at Oran which is in North Africa.
PHYLLIS: What did you think of our nation’s
war efforts at this point?
EARL: I thought everybody was doing a great
job. People that didn’t even know what a
machine was were going in and operating
machines.
PHYLLIS: I don’t think we had ever had that
kind of spirit before and determination. If you
PHYLLIS: What happened then after you time
in the hospital?
EARL: Well, then I went backI had a little
interesting experienceI went back to the
company and by that time I was a veteran in
North Africa so we were assigned to these tents.
There happened to be a group of what they
called non-coms. They were higher sergeants
who had volunteered to go overseas. They didn’t
give them the same duty as the privates so they
gave them some job to do and the sergeant who
was in charge of our company said, “As long as
you are a veteran why don’t you go with the
sergeants today?” So I went out with the
�EARL Hutchinson Page 5
sergeants and when I did they had to go out and
put some tents up and things like this. Fairly
easy work instead of marching around and all
the sergeants looked at me and said, “Well,
you’re the only odd ball.” I’m not to pick up
anything. “You can’t do that. You’re the leader.”
(Laughter)
PHYLLIS: What happened next? When did you
enter combat? Or were you in combat?
EARL: Let’s take another one on North Africa.
That was in September. I was being scheduled to
be shipped over to Italy and they had just made
the Italy invasion just a week before that. Or
they were just making the Italy invasion because
when I landed in Italy it was D-Day plus 8. We
went all the way across North Africa. That was
kind of an interesting experience.
people crawled underneath these tents, probably
made of goat or [game] skins or something and
that was their way of life. They were Nomads.
PHYLLIS: That was interesting.
EARL: That was a little interesting point. We
finally got to the shipping point where we were
going to ship off to Italy from North Africa. We
were at the dock there and I asked some of the
sailors there about a ship by a certain number,
which I can’t remember, but I went over the
Atlantic on it. “Oh yeah, that ships right here.
Why don’t you go over and see the fellows?” so
the ships were docked side by side so instead of
going down and going across the dock, I just
started crawling over from one ship to the next
until I got there.
PHYLLIS: I would think you would fall in.
PHYLLIS: I can imagine?
EARL: We got on this train. Some of you may
recall, they were called 40 and 8 trains from
World War I.
PHYLLIS: Yes.
EARL: They didn’t have any beds in there.
They had two seats facing each other, so you
could sit just like on a streetcar facing each
other. So then for night time, some of the
fellows laid under the seats, some laid on the
seats and some of the fellows took their blankets
and tied them up to the coat racks and used them
as hammocks. And in the middle of one night
one fellow had to get up and wouldn’t you know
his hammock broke loose and he came tumbling
down.
PHYLLIS: doesn’t sound to cozy. That’s
American ingenuity.
EARL: something that was a little
differentthat
is
we
thing
of
as
differenttravelling out through the edge of the
desert we could look out across the desert and
here was a tribe out there and it’s just like in the
Bible days. These tents were put up on poles and
I suppose just taking a guess, that they were four
or five foot off the ground and that’s where the
EARL: Oh, they were close enough together, we
could touch. When I got there I found that the
ship I had come over on had actually helped in
the Italian invasion and the captain was directing
things from the unloading ramp and a shot or
something went off and he was killed with
shrapnel. Several of the sailors I had met on the
way overwe got to exchange notes on what
they had done and so on. The boat that we went
over on, by the way, was the smallest troop
carrying ship that they used in World War II for
troops. They had smaller ships but this was the
smallest one that carried troops and that was
called and LST. An LST isI forgot the initials
right at the minutebut that was a flat bottomed
ship and the bow of the ship opened up like
doors and the ramp would come down flat and
they could pull up right on the beach and the
tanks could drive out of the hold of the ship and
drive right up on the beach. And the reason it
was quite a ride over the Atlantic was, being a
flat bottomed ship without a keel, it would rock
back and forth and it was so easy to get seasick.
PHYLLIS: Were you seasick?
EARL: I was seasick a good way over, but I
finally got used to it. But going over, I had
another little experience. All the soldiers and
�EARL Hutchinson Page 6
sailors had to pullwe had rotary guard
stations. They were called battle stations, but
you pulled guard for four hours and my tour
happened to be from twelve midnight to four in
the morning and while I was on guardI was
way up on what they call the bridgethat’s the
high point of the shipand I looked over the
side and here was another little ship going
beside us which I thought was what we called
one of our sub chasers. You have to keep in
mind we didn’t have lights with the war on there
and it was dark out that night. I just see this
small ship going by. I didn’t think much of it.
Four o’clock I went down and got in my bunk. I
had no more got in my bunk and the sound came
on the lour horns and everything. “Go to you
battle stations.” I just got in my bunk, so I went
up there as it turned out then we had to post
guard then there until a certain length of time
went by. And it turned out the ship that went by
there going through the middle of our convoy
got way up to the headit was a German sub.
PHYLLIS: Oh, no. Oh, EARL. That was quite
an experience.
EARL: We laugh abut it now, but
PHYLLIS: It was a pretty dangerous thing.
EARL: When the convoy was going over, you
could see pretty much all forty ships. Oh, they
were 2, 3, 4 miles apart from one end to the
other probably. The next morning when daylight
finally came after we were relieved from our
guard duty and we discovered that somebody
had told the convoy to change direction. Instead
of going east, we started going straight north and
in doing that the ships spread so far apart, it was
all you could do to see the nearest ship which
was 15 miles away. The reason being if he
started shooting he’s not gong to get very many
ships. He’s only going to get one or two instead
of a lot of them.
PHYLLIS: So it was a wise move. Back to
Africa. Were you then sent to Italy?
EARL: From there I went to Italy. I can’t
remember what kind of a ship. They just loaded
us up there, just like you’d take a ferry across
Lake Michigan. They just loaded us all upit
might have been over a day. We landed down on
the beaches when they where they had actually
made the invasion.
PHYLLIS: Where was that?
EARL: That was, I think it was the town of
Paestum which is just a little bit of a village.
Everybody is going to remember it as Salerno.
That’s where the invasion was made. We were
just south of Salerno at the town of Paestum and
we didn’t have any real leadership. They just
hadwe were what they called “replacements.”
We weren’t organized and they even had
officers as replacements so as long as they were
officers, they put them in charge and they led us
up to a pasture where we staid over night. Had
another little interesting experience there. We
were told we could go up to the creek and wash.
The officer told us to be sure to wash ourselves,
take your bath downstream because you are
going to get your drinking water from upstream.
While we were there getting washed, there was
this guy taking a bath upstream and I climbed all
over him, said “You didn’t follow instructions
very well.” He said, “You’re not going to be
allowed to drink this water anyhow. There’s
dead cows in the creek up stream here a ways.
You better just leave the water alone.” And
afterward we visited a little bit and hew was
getting his clothes on and it turns out here I was
chewing out an officer. I was just scared stiff.
Without his clothes on you couldn’t tell what his
rank was.
PHYLLIS: But weren’t disciplined for that?
EARL: Not for that.
PHYLLIS: Well, then did you immediately
enter combat?
EARL: Well, let’s see. I’ll have to scratch my
memory. No, we went from there up to a little
town just north of Naples. Here again, I forget
the name of the town. A few years ago I could
remember all these names and we stayed there.
Had a few interesting experiences there. There
was a small mountain between our little town
�EARL Hutchinson Page 7
and Naples and we lived in the middle of an
orchard and that ground was so rich and firm
from being an orchard all those centuries, I
suppose, that we could dig fox holes with no
trouble whatsoever. You just dug down like
digging into black dirt and the first night there
we had an air raid over Naples. The Germans
came down and we all jumped into our foxholes.
We didn’t feel real secure about that because we
didn’t have them very deep. The next day then
everybody was digging fox- holes six feet deep
so that we could get down in them for
protection. We’d be down in the fox holes and
we’d be cheering our anti-aircraft fire from
Naples, shooting at the planes, trying to get them
knocked down. Of course, nobody got hit
because the planes were too high and the guns
didn’t go that high. But there weren’t any
casualties or anything from that. The planes
must have just been going over to spot what we
had. We stayed there for probably week or so. It
seemed like a long time, but a week is a long
time when you are over there.
know, but he came back and I was kind of
shivering. He had a coat; somebody threw a coat
over me. And that was my first night in combat.
Now, in combatit wasn’t actually like you
think of shooting guns at each other. I was back
in what we might call the rear part of the front
and they could have thrown artillery shells in
there, but none came in at that particular spot.
They were a couple miles down the road where
they were coming again.
PHYLLIS: In a foxhole.
EARL: I wrote a lot of letters home. I like to
write and I still do let’s back track to Africa
for just a few minutes.
EARL: We didn’t live in the foxholes all the
time. Come to think of it, I even got a tour to go
into Naples and I got a chance to tour Naples a
little bit. I saw the palace of Naples and we got
to buy a few things and could eat whatever we
could scrounge up in town instead of eating
regular rations we had at camp.
PHYLLIS: Did you proceed into actual combat
after this?
EARL: No. From there we moved up further
yet. Maybe we did go into combat, but being a
jeep driver the captain picked me then to lead
the convoy of our companynot our division,
but our companygoing up. He knew where we
were going. We went up the highway. It was
scary. It was the first time I had ever driven in
black out. In black out you drive with no lights
whatsoever. You just have to go by what ever
you can see and follow the jeep ahead of you.
Well, I was the lead jeep up there then. It was a
kind of a rainy night. We pulled up and he said,
“Go ahead and rest up for awhileyou’re tired
out from your drive. Where he went, I don’t
PHYLLIS: Did you mental attitude change as
being near combat continued?
EARL: Well, it sure got scary. Especially, well
they had a commentthat’s the wrong word for
itbut they would mention if you lived the first
few days in combat you’re pretty good at going
all the way through. Those that got killed usually
got killed when they’re brand new in combat.
PHYLLIS: I hadn’t heard that. Did you write
many letters home?
PHYLLIS: Sure.
EARL: I had that operation and then I went to
what they called a convalescent hospital, which
was just a group of tents and along the
Mediterranean. I had a couple of experiences
there. One was that after that operation you’re
not allowed to do anything except walk around.
You can’t do any work. I got bored. I sat down
one day and I decided to write a letter home. I
wrote a nine page letter, keeping in mind that it
had to be censored and I the whole letter was
just on what we do from the time we got up to
what we do when we go to bed at night.
PHYLLIS: I hope someone kept that.
EARL: I’m curious as if I’ve still got it home in
my garage. I’m going to have to look it up this
summer to see if I can find that.
�EARL Hutchinson Page 8
PHYLLIS: That would be a good letter to
include with this interview. Did you receive
many letters or packages? And what kinds of
things did you like to get if you got any packets?
EARL: Well, that’s another story. When I was
in Texas, my mother sent me a package of
donuts. They went to Texas. I had already left
for Pennsylvania. She didn’t know that, of
course. They didn’t catch up with me in
Pennsylvania because we were only there a
couple days and we took off for Africa. Then we
went over to Africa and the package still
followed me.
PHYLLIS: What was that?
EARL: You know they’re jelly candies that are
sugar covered and they come four to a package?
PHYLLIS: I don’t know.
EARL: You can still buy them today.
PHYLLIS: Wow.
EARL: They were different fruit flavors. I am
not in love with them but I still like them today.
PHYLLIS: What were the donuts like by that
time? (Laughter).
PHYLLIS: That’s interesting. Did most of the
other men write and receive letters?
EARL: They were home made donuts and they
were greasy and stale so we had to throw them
out.
EARL: That was the big issue with soldiers
overseas. They all wanted letters. Some of them
weren’t great at writing, but they really wanted
to receive letters.
PHYLLIS: Oh, dear. Did you receive many
letters?
EARL: I got quite a few letters. Another little
experience I had then because of going to
hospital and moving around like this, was, my
records couldn’t keep up with me very well. I
was going all this time without getting any pay
check. They didn’t have pay checks. You got
paid in actual money but I didn’t get any pay all
that summer and I wanted to buy candy like the
other guys were buying and I couldn’t do it and
then I discovered you get a certificate or ticket
whatever you want to call it where you could
buy so much candy, so much cigarettes, so much
toothpaste and all this and so I would trade all
my cigarettes coupons with somebody else.
(Laughter).
PHYLLIS: Give you the candy.
EARL: Then I was able to get the candy.
PHYLLIS: What kind of candy? Do you
remember? What was popular or what was
available?
EARL: They didn’t have chocolate candy,
naturally. But they had one that I still like today.
PHYLLIS: did you forge any close bonds of
friendship with some of you companions?
EARL: Well, back to Africa again. I went to the
hospital and at that timeit’s not like
todaybut back at that time when you had a
hernia operation you had to stay in bed for ten
days. You couldn’t get out. And there was a
fellow laying right next to mehe was from the
swamps of Louisiana. We got to be pretty good
friends. We compared a lot of notes. He was the
intellectual type, not the crude type and he said
he was writing articles for the newspaper back
home. He sent an article home every week
telling about some of the things that happened.
Articles that would clear the censor that are. He
couldn’t tell where he was at in this town or we
were here or how many fellows we had or
anything like that. He could just tell generalities
after we left. He was from a whole different
outfit then I was. No connection because I was a
replacement and I don’t know what he was, but
we some how kept in touch with each other. We
corresponded all through the war and after the
war. So then after the war, I went down to
Louisiana, New Orleans, and I thought I would
do down to see him, another 85 miles down to
this town where he was from and it’s way down
�EARL Hutchinson Page 9
in a swamp. I mean way down. I got down in
there and I had written him a letter telling him I
was coming, so I went to the bank to get
directions and they said he was there, but he’s in
a meeting right nowmeeting with the
insurance people out of New York. While you’re
here, we’ll tell him you’re here. So he came out
and he was glad to see me and said, “I didn’t
know you were coming.” And I said, “I wrote
you a letter.” “Oh my cousin probably got it and
he’s on vacation.” His cousin’s got the same
name. So he says, “You wait a little bit.” So he
went back to the meeting and cancelled his part.
He gave us a tour then. It turned out he’s the
banker. He owned the bank building, he owned
and auto agency, he owned two oil wells.
PHYLLIS: Wow.
EARL: And by some coincidence, that was the
night that the Rotary Club was having ladies
night so he said, “You’re going to be our guests
tonight.”
PHYLLIS: You came at the right time. That
was interesting.
EARL: The name of the town he was from was
called Golden Meadow. It’s a fair sized little
town but down in the swamps there, you have a
town and if you go two or three blocks off the
main road, that’s it. If you go any further, you’re
into the swamp. There all narrow towns right
along the highway.
PHYLLIS: Back to Italy. Were you aware there
were civilian concentration camps? Were you
aware of their existence?
EARL: I don’t know if I ever thought about that
in Italy. I can’t remember.
(End of side l of tape).
EARL: And I could pick a half a dozen things
because to me war isn’t all fighting. You aren’t
always shooting at somebody or coming out of a
foxhole or going out of a trench. These will just
be at random. I was up near Mount Casino and
we never did really take Mount Casino, but our
planes were bombing it and I was up near the
front then and I went over to the edge of the
cliff. I could sit right on the cliff, just a balcony
and I could sit and watch the planes all coming
over. You could see them without binoculars.
They were coming over dropping bombs on
Mount Casino. So I had a front row seat for that.
Right in that very same area there, we had a
shortage of tires. For some one reason or another
they’d be damaged and we couldn’t get them
fast enough. They were making them in Naples
but they were still short. My jeep was up to the
front. They took all the wheels off my jeep and
just let it set there at the front, so I had to stay
there with the jeep while they took my tires back
for somebody else and a couple days later they
came up with tires and put them back on my
jeep and I was able to get out of there.
PHYLLIS. It’s hard to imagine what you had to
do.
EARL: That was near a town called San Pietro
which was another valley. We lost a lot of men
there and there was another one right up in that
area which was interesting. This was at
Christmas time. In 1943 would that bed, I had
met a fellow from Rockford there. He was in H
Company and I was in Headquarters Company
and we would visit once in a while. Had a
couple little experiences there. OneI was
trying to write a letter home one night. I was
using a candle inside the tent to write by. Just a
hundred yards back away from the front, behind
our tent was our big guns shooting over the
mountains into the German lines. And every
time that gun would go off, the muzzle blast
would cause a rush of air and blow my candle
out.
PHYLLIS: So that was a difficult letter to write.
EARL: So then right at the top of the mountain
from where I was which wasn’t very far, we
were near the top, it was foggy up there one day
and it was soldiersI suppose soldiers from
both sides. I know some American soldiers that
were injured up there. Our medics wanted to get
them so the medics went up with a Red Cross
flag thinking that would protect them so they
could bring our wounded soldiers off the top of
the hill. But both sides sawthe American
�EARL Hutchinson Page 10
Infantry and the German infantry both saw the
flap go up there and being foggy, they thought it
was a surrender flag from the other side. So the
two sides went up there and started
arguing”You’re going to be prisonersno
you’re going to be prisoners.” They couldn’t
decide who was going to be prisoners so they all
went back to their own sides and started fighting
again.
PHYLLIS: Unbelievable. (Laughter). That is an
occurrence to remember.
EARL: I wasn’t in on that. I just heard about it.
PHYLLIS: Can you tell us what you and the
other men did to celebrate some of our
traditional family holidays such as Thanksgiving
and Christmas?
EARL: That was at Christmas in 43. We were
up at the front. We didn’t do much then. We
always had a special treat and a special meal for
that day. What we had, I don’t remember. But
they made it a point some how to get the good
food over for that one day. Speaking of food,
there was another one down there in that same
general area. I had a lot of experiences in that
general area. I was a driver now for the kitchen
and we took hot food right up near the front with
this trailer and we had large thermos containers
that would keep the food hot and the fellows
right up in front would get hot pancakes. To get
there, we didn’t use the highways. The
Americans, with all of their big powerful
bulldozers, went in where there use to be a
railroad. The railroad was ripped up by the
Germans, but we were able to make a highway
out of it just by leveling it off, but when you
came to the valleys, the bridges were knocked
out so our big bulldozers had steep slopesyou
go down one side , up the hill on the other side
and you were back on level ground again.
PHYLLIS: Did you have to do that with your
jeep or truck?
EARL: I had to do that with my jeep and the
trailer with the food behind it. What I am
leading up to is we had to go through three of
these. After I got by the third one, it was a little
dark and foggy in the morning and we saw
fellows standing along side but we kept going
looking for the next dip. We were supposed
toI didn’t know where I was going
exactlythe sergeant knew. All of a sudden I
slammed on the brakes because I was going to
step on the gas and zip down the next dip and
come to find out there wasn’t any dip there that
was where the bridge was knocked out. And we
stopped with the front of the jeep just almost
hanging over the edge where the bridge should
be. So he told me to back it up. I said, “I’m not
taking my foot off that brake. You get out and
push this jeep back.” So the sergeant got out
and he pushed and I put it in gear then, backed
up and we got turned around and we got up to
where we were supposed to where these fellows
were standing along side. They should have
stopped us. So w drove off there and went down
through the farm-yard and down around the
trees. I didn’t know it at the time, but down
toward the Rapido River, we went down around
the trees and pulled up in another little farmyard down there. I sort of wondered at the time
the sergeant and I were serving the food, I don’t
know if anyone else was helping us or not, but
all the front line soldiers came up one at a time
to get their food. They didn’t come up in a line
as hungry as they were. Only one came up and
when he left another one came up. When I got
back to the kitchen again, back in the rear again,
I found out why. As it turned out, when I was
going around that end of the trees, the sergeant
and I and the jeep and the trailer, we were just a
hundred yards from where the Germans were.
They had been watching us at the Rapido River
where we lost hundreds and hundreds of
soldiers.
PHYLLIS: Well, that’s an experience. When
and how did you return to the States after the
war? Or when did you come back to the United
States?
EARL: Okay. By being over there as long as I
was, by making this southern France invasion,
we got so many battle stars and all this sort of
thing, so many ribbons, whatever, we got points
for each one and I ended up in Germany and I
staid there all summer. In September I headed
for home. I had to leave my girlfriend behind. It
�EARL Hutchinson Page 11
was a girl I went with for five weeks. She
wanted me to stay there but I said if I wanted her
I would come back and get her. I never did.
Then coming home in September, we went over
near Rheims which you staid in these certain
camps until you got new assignments. Then we
went down to Marseilles and from Marseilles we
sailed out through the Rock of Gibraltar and
back home again.
PHYLLIS So you covered a lot of territory.
there and I went up in Anzio which was quite a
place to have an experience with and then I was
in southern France that’s another one, and the
European theater that was another award you
might say.
PHYLLIS: How did you get along with the men
with whom you had the greatest contact?
EARL: Well, I got along good enough. I am still
writing to several of them.
EARL: I always say I covered Africa, Italy,
France, Germany and Austria.
PHYLLIS: That’s good. Were there things
you’d do differently if you could do them once
again?
PHYLLIS: Could you tell us about your
military rank or your decorations or your
campaign decorations?
EARL: That’s the game of life. Hindsight is
always better than foresight.
EARL: Well, I got the Good Conduct ribbon; I
got the Southern France Invasion ribbon; I got
theI forget the name of it right nowbut the
European Theater ribbon and I got so many
stripes for the amount of time I was over there.
They called those gold stripes or gold bars on
your sleeve and I got some shooting award
whatever that was. Anybody who could shoot
half way good at all got an award of some kind.
PHYLLIS: How many campaigns were you in?
EARL: Well, I missed the African campaign.
That ended a few days before I got there. I
missed the Italian invasion because I hadn’t been
assigned to a unit yet, but I was there right
afterward. I didn’t get credit for the invasion but
I go credit for being there in that theater. I was
there and I went up in Anzio which was quite a
place to have an experience with and then I was
in Southern France that’s another one, and the
European theater that was another award you
might say.
PHYLLIS: How many campaigns were you in?
EARL: Well, I missed the African campaign
that ended a few days before I got there. I
missed the Italian invasion because I hadn’t been
assigned to a unit yet, but I was there right
afterward. I didn’t get credit for the invasion but
I got credit for being there in that theater. I was
PHYLLIS: What was the most difficult thing
you had to do during you period of military
service?
EARL: Let’s back track there for that hindsight.
I’ve often wondered what would have happened
when I was in Chicago at Fort Sheridanin
high school I was not a good typist. I took
typing for two years. I could type fifty words a
minute but I wasn’t a good typist. I wasn’t going
to tell them I knew how to type. I found out later
that they had so many people from the other end
of the scale that couldn’t do anything like that. If
I’d told them I could type, I would probably
have stayed right in Chicago for the whole tour
of duty.
PHYLLIS: For heaven’s sake. That’s
interesting. What was the most difficult thing
you had to do during your period of military
service?
EARL: Well, it’s all how you want to interpret
“difficult” so I’ll interpret it one way. One
experience, being a jeep driver, I kept track of
my miles on something or other, so I knew that I
drove about 25,000 miles in Europe. Out of the
25,000 miles, I estimated from the experience I
had that I drove 5,000 miles in what they call
“blackout” driving. That is driving with no
headlights whatsoever. No lightsyou couldn’t
see where you were going. Now in Italy that’s
�EARL Hutchinson Page 12
not too difficult because a lot of the country
roads in Italy have rows of trees down both sides
of the road of the road so all you got to do is be
like a tunnel at night time and stay between
those trees. Then you have to watch out for is a
jeep coming at you with have a head-on
collision or you might catch up with one that’s
going away from you. So you had to keep
watching closely for those jeeps. I had a few
accidents but nothing real serious.
PHYLLIS: So probably that difficult driving
would be one of your most successful
achievements. Are there any others? Things you
look back on as an achievement in this service?
EARL: Well, I could look back and think of all
kinds of things. I was offered to be a sergeant
after the war was over. I was so close to going
home, I turned it down. Telling me I would be
head of a message center. I can think of another
one for combat. I had one over in France that
was somewhat different. There was a little town
that had maybe a population of 100 to 200
people in it, but at that time we didn’t see
anybody. We had our telephone lines going right
through the town. At that time, I was the driver
for the telephone wireI forget the name of it
for the minutefor laying telephone wires and
we got word then that our telephone might have
been knocked out in the middle of town some
place. I took three fellows with me who were
wire men and I was just the driver. Got to the
edge of town and we checked our line and sure
enough there was a break, so we fixed it. Boy,
we got it made. We tried to check going forward
to reach the forward battalion and we couldn’t
reach them. We just reached the rear. So we
drove on through town, to the other aside and
picked up another wire which they usually send
the fellows out that laid the wires because you
remember where you put them. So we picked up
the wire now we got forward to the battalion but
we couldn’t get to the rear. So now we knew
there was another break some place, so we went
into the middle of town. This town only had two
roads in it, like a cross. We got in the middle of
the town and sure enough there was some wires
broken there. We thought maybe some of the
trucks or tanks knocked out the wires, so I went
up the pole on one side to fasten the wire up and
run it across the top of the road instead of on the
road. I got down from the pole and went over to
a garage where the sergeant was going to check
the lines to see if we could reach front and rear.
We heard this shell coming in so we all grabbed
the phone and ran inside the building, of garage
or barn of something right there. He set the
telephone down between his legs, just to have a
place to put it and it was still attached to the
wires. We all waited until the shell hit out on the
cornet and stones and shrapnel were flying every
which way. So then after it got all quiet he
reached down to pick up the telephone and
found a hunk of shrapnel had come right
between his legs and smashed the telephone.
PHYLLIS: That was a close call, Unbelievable.
EARL: So this is how your get your experiences
over there. You don’t actually sit there and shoot
at each other. You’ve got a lot of this artillery,
bombs coming in and all these shells coming in
and that’s what does the damage.
PHYLLIS: How did you learn about VE Day
and what was your reaction to it?
EARL: Got to stop and think. Where was I on
VE Day? That was overI had been doing a lot.
We were really moving back then. This was
down in Bavaria. I got to see a beautiful part of
Germany. People pay good money to go there
today. I had some interesting experiences there,
too.
PHYLLIS: Do you want to tell us about those?
EARL: Well, there were two or three that were
kind of interesting. You’ve all heard of the book
Mein Kampf. Hitler wrote that when he was in
prison. Well, the prison is in Landsberg and I
lived across the street from that prison for seven
days. The strange thing about it was that every
morning and only in the morning, every morning
I went out and my jeep had a flat tire on it. One
time it was a horse-shoe nail, next time it was a
bullet clip, next time it was something else and I
got so I could change tires in a hurry.
PHYLLIS: Did you ever find out what was
happening?
�EARL Hutchinson Page 13
EARL: Well, we left town and that was the end
of it. No more trouble., Then we went from there
to a place called Tegernsee which is Teg-ern-see
in English and Tegernsee is like the Hollywood
of United States and all these wealthy homes
down in there. In fact, one home where Himmler
had his home, we set up our kitchen there.
EARL: No, I have nothing like that. I was one
of the fortunate ones. I came back the same way
I went over. In fact, I might be little better off.
PHYLLIS: Was it pretty nice?
EARL: I would still like to see a lot of these
differences settled by arbitration and not by
shooting at each other but if we listen to the
Bible, the Bible says there will be wars and
rumors of wars, so I have mixed emotions on the
part of it.
EARL: Oh, that was a bigjust like you see in
picturesbig chalet, big balcony on the front. It
was situated across the road from the lake so you
could look out over the lake. It was a pretty
place in there.
PHYLLIS: How did you learn about VJ Day?
Do you remember that?
PHYLLIS: Do you have any opinions or
feelings about our nation’s military status or its
policies?
PHYLLIS: Do you have any contact with the
Veterans’ Administration?
EARL: None whatsoever.
EARL: I suppose it might have come up over
the radio because I was in Germany at the time.
Or it might haveI know we got it by the Stars
and Stripes, which was the weekly newspaper
that we always got. But I am sure the radio
picked it up from some place.
PHYLLIS: What was your opinion of the use of
the atomic bomb when it was used against the
Japanese in August of 1945?
EARL: Well, I still have mixed emotions on
that. It was nice that it ended the war but I hated
to see all those civilians that were slaughtered.
PHYLLIS: When and where were you officially
discharged from the service?
EARL: I was discharged from the same place I
went in, Fort Sheridan. We spent just two or
three days there and then we were given all our
belongings, whatever we had. And we had a
final physical.
PHYLLIS: What year was that? Do you
remember?
EARL: That was in November, 1945.
PHYLLIS: Do you have a disability rating or a
pension?
PHYLLIS: What is your opinion of the
Veteran’s Administration?
EARL: I think it’s good for what they are doing
but I haven’t had any real use for it.
PHYLLIS: Have you ever gone to a VA
Hospital for medical services?
EARL: No, I haven’t.
PHYLLIS: Would you like to tell us how you
family supported you during your military life
with letters and encouragement.
EARL: Well, I don’t know how my mother did
it but she managed to write to us. There was
three of us boys that was in the service. One was
in the navy over in the Pacific, the other brother
was over in Brittany He went over to the
Netherlands, I guess it was. He was one of the
ground crews of the Air Force. She managed to
keep writing us letters. Somehow she managed
to get film, which was real hard to get and she
did send us film and it came all the way through.
I had to laugh one time getting the mail. It was
in Africa, too. I was helping to sort the mail out
one time. They had big sacks of mail just like
you’re familiar with sacks of mail here. And as
one fellow threw the bag off the truck, “clank”
�EARL Hutchinson Page 14
the thing went on the pavement and it turned out
somebody from over here in the States had sent
a bottle of shampoo over there but the shampoo
happened to have whiskey in it instead of
shampoo. That was a way of sending whiskey.
But the fellow didn’t get his whiskey.
PHYLLIS: Did it break?
EARL: It broke.
PHYLLIS: That was before we had plastic
bottles isn’t it?
PHYLLIS: Did that help the morale?
EARL: Oh, I think that was a big help. Because
it gave the fellow a little closer touch to home
and after he got to see, what you might say,
civilian women instead of women that were in
uniform of some kind, such as the Salvation
Army, or the Red Cross I meant to say. The Red
Cross girls were in their uniform as such and we
had nurses and that.
PHYLLIS: What did you do after you were
discharged at Fort Sheridan?
EARL: Oh, yes.
PHYLLIS: Is there anything else you would
like to recall before we end the interview?
EARL: I should have brought some thoughts
with me. I’m should have had them written
down. But we did have a certain amount of
religion over there. We went to church in
Germany in a beautiful house over there. It was
three stories high and that’s where I met my
German girlfriend.
PHYLLIS: Was there a chaplain for these
churches?
EARL: Well every outfit always had a chaplain
and I remember even down in Italy. Not at the
front, but back off the front and Sunday came
and the Chaplain would have Sunday services.
Anybody was welcome to come. It was nondenominational.
EARL: I didn’t go straight home as I had a great
aunt in Chicago and she said, “You’ve got to
stop here before you go home or you’ll never get
back here again.” At that time Chicago was a
long ways from Rockford. So I said, “Okay, I’ll
stay overnight and go home the next day then.”
And that was an interesting experience. I left c
amp. Why they didn’t let us go in the daytime, I
don’t know. By the time I got to the middle of
Chicago it was dark and I went to what was then
the old Union Station and I asked directions on
how to get down to her home, which wasn’t too
hard. It was all new to me. He told me what train
to get on, so I went out and got on the train and
sat down and I thought, I’ll have to watch real
close so I’ll know where to get off at. I turned
around and looked and right across from me was
a fellow sitting there and this fellow happened to
be in our outfit over in Germany.
PHYLLIS: Oh, no.
PHYLLIS: Were they well attended?
EARL: He was discharged three months before.
EARL: I thought they were well attendednot
heavily attended. No, but they were well
attended.
PHYLLIS: What a coincidence.
PHYLLIS: In your experiences, did you ever
have any entertainers come over?
EARL: I can’t remember their names now, but
yes, we did have some. We didn’t have any big
entertainers that I would remember but they had
some that were still name entertainers back then
that came over. We say them a few times.
EARL: But the thing about it ishow small the
world is.
PHYLLIS: Yes.
EARL: Not only was it in Chicago, which is a
big place, but we happened to be on the same
train, the same car, the same end of the car.
�EARL Hutchinson Page 15
PHYLLIS: That is amazing. Then what did you
do after you came home?
PHYLLIS: Didn’t have the same effect. Is there
anything else that you remember that you want
to share with us today?
EARL: I went with my Dad and we were setting
up a general repair business in the middle of
Loves Park and he had, had a part of it set up
while I was gone and I helped get it organized
when I first cam back.
EARL: Give me a second here. Why don’t you
shut it off for a second. Hold itshut it off for a
minute. . . . Now we are going again.
PHYLLIS: Did you have any difficulty in your
adjustment back to civilian life?
EARL: Well, there were a couple of little
things. One wasat least in our outfitI don’t
know if it was in all of Europe or notbut at
least in our division, or our company or our
battalion whatever it waswe had an expression
that we used without thinking of it and that was
the words “Just some” and all of us over there
knew what it meant. If I went up to the front and
I would come back, they would say, “How were
things up at the cross roads up there?”” And I
would say “just some hot up there” meaning that
it was really hot and “Just some” meant an awful
lot or very much. If you came in from outside
into an enclosure some place and they would
say, “How’s the weather out there?” “Just some
raining out there.” and they all go the message
that it was really raining.
PHYLLIS: That’s interesting.
EARL: Another one I came home withby the
time you go through all these countries your
everyday languageone sentence may have
three different languages in it. One that took a
while to drop was “beaucoup” which means “a
whole lot”. And two or three others that we used
all the time while we were over there and when
you came back home you had to drop those.
PHYLLIS: No one was into these special
expressions.
EARL: No. You had to explain them, but they
still weren’t going to use them or remember
them.
PHYLLIS: Earl is remembering an incident
with the jeep.
EARL: This was innorth of Rome in Italy.
Stop to think for a minute that in Italy a lot of
those small towns are built up on a hillside or up
on top of a little hill. The reason being that they
saved the low lands then for farming. And we
drove up to the one town, [Rapadieppa], and it
had a wall around it so people wouldn’t fall off
the hill you might say. We were eating our meal
along the wall. It was evening time and we could
look across the valley. There was another town
over there about two miles away, maybe three
mile and we were stopping to think. “Here we
are standing here and watching all this and to
think that yesterday the Germans were here”.
Nobody knew anything ahead of time so after
we finished eating they said, “Get your things all
packed up. We’re pulling out”. We pulled out in
a convoy. We couldn’t use the highway because
the highway bridge had been blown up. There
was a river there. They routed us down across
the farmland, up the bank to the railroad track
which had all been torn out and used that for a
road way. The bridge was still in for that, but
bombs had been dropped all over that and there
were craters all along there and it was just so
dark at night you just couldn’t see the jeep ahead
of you. They had white tape along the sides for
you to follow and they had army engineers at
every chuck hole or every bomb crater, I should
say, to tell you to stay to the right or the left a
little bit. When he said a little bit, he didn’t
mean a long ways. He meant just a little bit, so
we managed to get over that and got back on the
highway again. We went just a half a mile and
pulled off on a country lane. I hadn’t gone very
far, maybe a city block, when all of a sudden my
jeep went off in the ditch to the right and put it
in low gear, low range, and pulled back on the
road. No problem. There were six of us on that
jeep heading for the top of the hill near the front.
�EARL Hutchinson Page 16
Like I said before, it was so dark, it was one of
those during the new moon when it is dark out
and it was cloudy out and you couldn’t see the
jeep ahead of you. You might see a dark blob it
you were lucky and I had a big truck behind me
with maybe fifteen fellows on it. So I’m going
along here and my left wheels go off into the
ditch. Just as they went off in to the ditch, I put
it in low range again and as soon as I did, that
wasn’t a ditch. That was a bank. The jeep rolled
down the bank. Arms and legs went flying every
which way. Well as the jeep stopped, I was the
only one left underneath it. I was hanging on to
the steering wheel. I had what they called a wire
catcher on the front, which was a safety device. I
had a wire reel on top because I was in the wire
section. The two of them kept the jeep off of me.
The big truck behind mehe saw that the dark
blob disappeared and he didn’t know if I went
off into the valley or where I went so he stopped
and everybody jumped off and came to find me
and they found me under the jeep. There were
enough fellows there, they rolled the jeep back
on its wheels again. My sergeant then drove the
jeep up the bank because you could feel around
when you were on your feet. He got it back on
the road again. “Why don’t you drive it the rest
of the way?” “Oh no. He’s not driving that
thing.” They all trusted me to drive and it was
probably another half mile to the top of the hill
and we pulled into the town. And no one got
seriously hurt.
PHYLLIS: That’s just what I was going to ask.
That’s quite an experience. (EARL was also
remembering abut his operation when he was in
Africa.)
EARL: This is just something on the
personalit has nothing to do with the war
really, but it is just something I never forgot.
They sent me into the hospital, nice hospital
right down in Oran. We had taken it over for the
Army. The fellows there by the way, were doing
eight and ten hernia operations a day. So the
doctors had a lot of experience, but at the
operation, I was given a spinal injection instead
of which freezes you from the waist
downputting you to sleep. They took me into
the operating room and put a hoop over my
waist line and put a sheet over that so I wouldn’t
see down or anything. Then they put a little
metal shield over my eyes so I couldn’t see that
way. But I started to wiggle my eyes and the
nurse said, “Hey, you can’t do that, you’ll get
sick.” And I said “No, that’s alright.” So she
took it off then and I got just a little bit sick and
that didn’t bother her much. I looked up at the
reflectors where the lights were and as it turned
out, the reflectors over there in Africa were all
mirrors. They didn’t have chrome and all that. I
was able to watch in that mirror and see the
whole rest of the whole operation. It was
interesting. Each nurse had some little special
job to do.
PHYLLIS: Did you feel that the medical people
did a good job?
EARL: Oh, they did a good job.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
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Midway Village Museum
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Midway Village Museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-2001
Rights
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Midway Village Museum
Language
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English
Format
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pdf
Type
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Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Phyllis Gordon
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Earl Hutchinson
Location
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Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Earl Hutchinson
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
March 8, 1994
Description
An account of the resource
Born December 4, 1921, Earl Hutchinson was drafted into the Army. He died November 8, 2001.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Format
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pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War II
WW2
-
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PDF Text
Text
Dwight W. Conrad Page 1
Dwight W. Conrad
Transcribed by Lorraine Lightcap
Edited by Margaret Lofgren
Midway Village & Museum Center
6799 Guilford Road
Rockford, Illinois
Phone 815 397 9112
�Dwight W. Conrad Page 2
Dwight Conrad
Hello! Today is March 1st, 1994. My name is Phyllis Gordon. I’m a volunteer with the Rockford Museum
Center which is cooperating with a state wide effort to collect oral histories of Illinois citizens that participated in the momentous events surrounding World War II. We are in the home of Dwight Conrad, 3404
Pioneer Drive, Rockford, Illinois. Mr. Conrad served in the army during World War II. We are interviewing him about his experiences in that war. Dwight, would you please start just by introducing yourself to
us. Please give us your full name and the place and the date of your birth.
CONRAD: This is Dwight Conrad of 3404 Pioneer Drive, Rockford, Illinois. I was born May
7th, 1919, on a farm in Calvin County, Iowa.
GORDON: We would also like to have the
names of each of your parents.
CONRAD: Wallace and Jennie Conrad.
GORDON: Did you have any brothers or sisters?
CONRAD: Yes, I had a sister, Phyllis, who died
the end of last April. Then I have a brother,
Duane, who lives in St. Charles, Missouri, and
he is still with a generating components industry
near St. Charles near St. Louis, too.
GORDON: Are there any details about your
parents and your family that you would like to
give at this time? Or what was life like for you
before the war?
CONRAD: Well, my life started on a farm and I
learned a number of things having to do with
that. I was always interested in farming and farm
life and then we moved into town just before I
was five years old. I started It was a town
called Litton Iowa and it’s on U. S. 20. I went to
grade school and high school there.
GORDON: What thoughts did you have about
the war before the United States became directly
involved in the process?
CONRAD: The main thing is that I was in the
army. I went into the army in April of 41. April
15th, I believe it was and we were on maneuvers
and we had both what it would be like to fight
the Germans and what it would be like to fight
the Japanese. Who knew when a war might start
as far as the United States was concerned? We
practiced both of those on the maneuvers. On
our way back in December December 6th we
got as far as Camp Pickett in the southern part of
Virginia. Then on the 7th, we were eating lunch
there before we went on to Fort Meade, Maryland. At that time then we picked up the broadcast that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. So we
knew that it was going to be quite different. I
was supply sergeant and I was thinking ahead,
“Oh no. I’m going to have to issue ammunition
and new rifles and machine guns and the whole
bit. We went through Washington, D.C. the
night of December the 7th. Everything was dark
and we were using __?__ over the lights so that
the lights shown down, just ahead of the army
vehicles. It was a 6 x 6 army truck. Then when
we got to Fort Meade, Maryland, everyone knew
the next morning was going to be busy as could
be. Well then the __?__ and I started cleaning
rifles and everything else. Clean off Cosmoline
which is real greasy and we had a big job ahead
of us. Finally, then, we got the new weapons
issued.
GORDON: That’s a wonderful account of Pearl
Harbor Day. What event led you to enter military service?
CONRAD: I was drafted. Now they had started
the draft I was among the first people drafted.
I think I have the same number only a different
area of the country as Jimmy Stewart. Jimmy
Stewart ended up going to Officers’ Training
School. He became I know he was at least a
colonel. He mighta been a Brigadier General
before he was through. But I think he had the
1548 which was my last four numbers and that
represented the number of people that had been
drafted at that time.
�Dwight W. Conrad Page 3
GORDON: When and where were you inducted
or did we cover that already?
CONRAD: No. I was inducted in Baltimore,
Maryland, where I had been working with about
15 months with the Social Security Board which
had just started in 1936. I did things like checking out for the Internal Revenue Service. Some
of the people who had Social Security under different names so that they couldn’t be traced and
things like that. All of this was with IBM machines [which advances to what] I ended up doing in the Pacific.
GORDON: How old were you when you were
inducted?
ready to go and it turned out it was a Matsonia
and there 12 ships in the convoy. We left there
around the 5th of May of 42.We started out.
There was a couple of ships that were going to
go to the Philippines but they didn’t. They
changed their mind. They had a last minute
check and found out that the town had fallen and
Corregidor probably would be next. Meanwhile,
I guess MacArthur was leaving the Philippines.
We went between North and South Islands of
New Zealand through Cook Strait. We landed
outside of Melbourne, Australia, at a place
called Williamstown. Then we bivouacked in a
park called Royal Park. They had a zoo there
and early in the morning, about five o’clock,
you’d hear the lions roaring and you hear sheep
bleating
CONRAD: I was 22 years old.
GORDON: What happened after you were inducted? Where were you sent and where did you
take your basic training?
CONRAD: I took my basic training at Fort
Meade, Maryland, which was with the 175th Infantry Regiment of the 29th Division.
GORDON: What were you trained to do?
CONRAD: At that time, I was training to be an
infantryman. I wasn’t real happy about that. I
didn’t like to think that I was actually going to
kill people. When I was a kid, I used to go hunting but that was different. They were squirrels
some things like that. Anyway I got to thinking
about it and I heard that there was organizing
going on for people who had experience with
IBM machines and they would be using them in
trailers and they would go to different divisions
to keep records of those particular soldiers. So
that way then, I ended up leaving my job as a
supply sergeant and joined this other __?__ as a
First Machine Records Unit they called it. About
the first of May of 42, we went out to California
aboard a troop train. That’s another interesting
thing. We ended up in the cupola in the last car
of the train, you know, on guard and everything
else and whenever the train would stop in different places, we’d have to get out and guard.
When we got out to San Francisco, we bivouacked for a few days until the troop ship was
GORDON: I don’t want to hear this, I don’t
think.
CONRAD: They were sending the sheep to
market and the lions would roar because they
could hear the sheep bleating. Then we left Melbourne by truck convoy and there were a couple
of cars, too, and went up to Sydney. We bivouacked outside of Sydney at a place that is now a
race track, believe it or not. It was there to see
when we went back in 88. We trained there and
I was I kind of led I had been also involved with chemical warfare being a noncom from that. We had different little samples of
things that would decide whether it was mustard
gas or different I can’t think of the others at
the moment. Anyway we went on up to Brisbane. We did some training there and got acquainted with some of the people that were
going to be up in New Guinea. By that time we
knew we were going to New Guinea. We went
to New Guinea later on in 42 and on the way we
got a message that we should pull into Townsville Harbor which is on the northern part of
Australia, that they were bombing Port Moresby
where we were headed. So then we had to wait
for that. Then we finally crossed the what’s
the name of the sea I can’t think of it now
and landed in Port Moresby. The first night we
put up tents. We didn’t realize we were on a
hillside by the time we got through pitching the
tents. It rained and all the water run down
�Dwight W. Conrad Page 4
through some of our belongings were down the
hill. Then we found out that we were going to
keep records for what was called the Fifth Army
Air Corps, General George Kinney. We had to
get acquainted with that and they were setting up
an airfield there outside of Port Moresby. It
turned out we were right next to I can’t think
of the word now where they shoot down
planes. Anyway, that was a lot of loud noise,
too. One of the things I remember about that was
that we got out into the countryside out in the
out really out back of us. There was [coony
grass] which is about 6 or 8 feet tall sometime.
You could hide in it even. We went on up to a
place called __?__. That was the start of the
people going over the Owen Stanley Range to
Buna and __?__ which were the two places
where they were trying to drive out the Japanese.
Well, they didn’t do that. I remember being under that mosquito netting and then I seen this
mosquito on my arm. Its head was down and
standing up. I said, “Oh, oh. A mosquito. Then I
got malaria. I spent 15 days back in Sydney at a
army hospital and then came back again. I didn’t
know what was going to happen next. I rejoined
the same machine records unit and later on we
got plane loaded along with the trailers that had
all this IBM equipment and we went on up to
Hollandia. We went over the Owen Stanley
Range which is probably somewhere around 15
or 18 thousand feet. We landed at Hollandia
which is now called [Sakarn], I think. It’s part of
the Netherland East Indies. We went 20 miles up
onto a plateau which is about 8400 feet up. One
of the first things that happened up there was we
met Lanny Ross and Lanny Ross was trying to
get people to practice for the Easter of 45. As it
turned out, we were also it was just before
Christmas we were also practicing some
Christmas music so that he could move us
around to make us blend better. This was in
__?__. Some of the Japanese up in the mountains and up as high as 15,000 feet heard all of
the singing and I would guess as many as 50,
before it was over, came down and surrendered
to us as we were in what we call a chow line.
CONRAD: Yah. They wanted to hear beautiful
music and they came into surrender. That’s funny. They had their weaponry with them. They
had their gun loaded. Then finally, we get the
word that they have taken enough of Leyte to
prepare to go up to the Philippines. They were
starting to well, just ahead of us the First
Calvary Division to land and we got on board a
Liberty ship where everybody was in a hammock. When we got up into the South China
Sea, we hit part of a typhoon. It was pretty serious they were banging their head on the
bulkhead and saying, “Oh, no . And things
like that. Then we finally got to the Philippines
and we got into Manila right after the First Calvary Division. Temporarily, until they could get
Clark Field cleared of some of the bombed out
American planes about three years before
that. We stayed bivouacked in the tents at Jose
Rizal Stadium. That was interesting, too, because that area was for the 1940 Olympics. They
had an auditorium; they had a baseball field; a
track field and they had all of those different
things. Another thing I remember about that was
that these poor people, the Filipinos when we
had a chow line they were just in there with a tin
can and maybe a spoon or something they had
got from somewhere and we shared our meals
with them. Things started changing after an army truck was blown up on a bridge over the Las
Cruces River. Then the Japanese were driven out
of Manila and up into the mountains. Well, it
turned out they were there [Novaliches] Dam but
we didn’t have to worry about that for a while.
[Novaliches] Dam is a water reservoir for Manila. We started putting up lister bags because
the water mains were all blown up. We put up
lister bags which hold water. They’re canvas
bags. Then the next thing, MacArthur got there
and he was making a speech welcoming everybody and saying, “It’s good to be back. Thanks,
fellows, for putting up the lister bags around.
Nobody’s going to get thirsty anyway. By the
way, speaking of thirsty, we’ve opened the
brewery and we’re going to reopen the distillery
in three days.”
GORDON: So your singing caused them to surrender.
GORDON: First things, first.
CONRAD: Later on they had Walter Cronkite
�Dwight W. Conrad Page 5
with one of these things with public broadcasting, there was MacArthur saying the same things
again over here on MacArthur’s right, there I
was with a __?__ carbine across my shoulder,
you know.
GORDON: You saw yourself.
CONRAD: Yah. I couldn’t believe it. I said, “It
can’t be me. It is.” That is where I was standing.
So that was a surprise. In Manila there is what
they called Los Muros that is the old walled city.
We went in there and cleared it out. There was a
place where there was a bank. Inside that bank,
there was a big vault with Japanese occupational
money. That’s another thing. He was kind of
surprised. We got in on a number of things. One
of the things that I remember about New Guinea
was there was a Japanese pilot with a little zero
and he come flying over and we called him Russian Machine Charlie because he didn’t do anything. He just flew over. Nobody shot at him or
anything. They said, “Here comes Russian Machine Charlie. Don’t anybody shoot.” I think
he was all by himself somewhere. Where he was
getting gasoline to keep that flight going, I don’t
know. We saw him for over a year. In New
Guinea, also, we had a short wave radio. We
would listen to Tokyo Rose and she would say,
“Hello, you Yankees down in New Guinea. Do
you know what your wives and girlfriends are
doing while you’re out there sweating?”
GORDON: Did this change your mental attitude?
CONRAD: No, it didn’t bother us. We thought
it was funny. There was another thing, too. We
ran across Lew Ayres. He had been a conscientious objector and he was working in grave registration with a chaplain, as a chaplain assistant.
The chaplain’s name, if I remember correctly
was Father Albert. Another interesting thing that
we ran across somebody, people like Lew Ayres,
Lanny Ross and MacArthur, of course. We had
real close contact with him. Just outside of Port
Moresby where this airfield was, Charles Lindberg,everybody was saying, well, he’s probably gone to Germany to become a Nazi, but he
wasn’t. He was down there in the Pacific and he
was taking up these P38 Lightnings and testing
them for different distances because they wanted
to fly the P38s as escort for the bombers. They
finally got to where they got the gas tanks all set
and everything so that they could carry extra gas
to fly further than they had before. And Lindberg, from what we learned because we were
close to the airfield itself, shot down something
like five Japanese planes while he was there.
That was interesting, too, because they were saying he was a spy and a traitor and everything
else. It turned out that this was a war secret and
they weren’t going to say anything about it. It
came out in 1946 it was the best kept secret of
World War II. It wasn’t because when I got
home May 17th of 1942, I was telling everybody
in this little town of Litton about watching Lindberg just about every day I was in New Guinea
and then a year later have them say it was the
best kept secret.
GORDON: It’s something I didn’t know. What
did you think of the war so far?
CONRAD: You mean observing iteverything
that went on? It was frightening. I got to the
point where didn’t care about or I couldn’t see
the reason for all the killing. There was a lot of
that. I mean where some of us got the other side
of the picture was when the Japanese surrendered outside of Hollandia in Dutch New Guinea. As it turned out, we got acquainted with
them and out of about 45 to 50, I’m not sure exactly, there was about ten of them who spoke
English. That was surprising.
GORDON: Sure is.
CONRAD: In May of 45 they let me go home
on furloughat least I thought it was. I went out
to what they called the troop carrier command
where they had the planes that were the C54s
that were flying back to the States with some of
the people that served three years or so overseas.
We flew to Tacloban and Leyte. We were outside the city itselfup in the mountains. The
next morning, I woke up, there was the travelling troop of Oklahoma and we could hear
somebody yelling down the road. They had a
microphone apparently and it was Joe E. Brown.
�Dwight W. Conrad Page 6
GORDON: Oh my.
CONRAD: So there was things like that. A day
or two later we got clearance to fly to Guam. We
flew to Guam and then after evening meal and
seeing the first B29s, we flew on to Kwajalein
and that was really spot because there was all
what is that stuff that starts with a “C” (Coral). Anyway this is an island that is just about
like rock.
GORDON: Atolls or whatever.
CONRAD: Yah. It was an atoll. Then from
Kwajaleinwe just landed there and gassed up
and then we flew on to Johnstown Island, which
is south of Hawaii and stayed all night there. No,
we just stayed and evening there and then we
flew on to Hickam Field in Hawaii just outside
of Honolulu. We went to bed and along about
10we got there about 5:00 in the morningwent to bed and woke up about 10 because
people was talking. That, of course, is an air
force base and so they said, “Hey, they’re going
down into Honolulu. Let’s go, too.” Then we
find out, “You guys are on orders, you can’t go.”
We got the fly out orders, well, we waited the
whole day drinking a lot of pineapple juice and
that evening, we took off for San Francisco area.
Trying to think of that famous market in that
area. It starts with “H”.
GORDON: Oh. I should know that, too. We’ll
think of it later on as we go along.
CONRAD: We flew there and landed and then I
had to go to Presidio where they checked for my
malaria and they said, “You’re okay to go home
on furlough.” I waited another day and took off
by train for the St. Louis area. We got into Jefferson Barracks outside of St. Louis. They were
working on the first people who could get out on
the point system. I had 105 points fromthat’s
just regular service and overseas service and
some combat service, too. They said, “Well,
we’ll get you out.” I was in the second group to
be discharged. I signed up for reserve.
GORDON: We are continuing our conversation
with Dwight Conrad. He’s remembering his time
in the Pacific and especially some thoughts
about combat and General MacArthur.
CONRAD: When we were in New Guineathe
150th, I’m not sure of the number nowthey
were the early parachute troopers. They were all
engineers and they were dropped near [Lae]
Peninsula in a place called __?__. They were
building airstrips to move the Air Force on up
and MacArthur flew in his own B17. When they
got over to where they were supposed to jump
and their machinery and everything had been
parachuted down first. Then they found out they
were only 500 feet up and MacArthur told them
to jump. There was a couple of dozen of the fellows that were kind of banged up after that.
Some of them had broken legs. That was about
the time I went into the field hospital for the first
time with malaria. I got to talk with all of them.
They were all very upset with MacArthur for
making them jump at that low altitude.
GORDON: They couldn’t have time to get their
parachute out.
CONRAD: No. Speaking of combat, though, we
were bombed a number of times and that is
scary. If you were on the beach which I was one
time, you just kept hoping they didn’t spot you
or anything.
GORDON: No protection.
CONRAD: There were machine gun bullets
flying around, too. Anyway, I didn’t get hit. I
was very lucky.
GORDON: Did you write very many letters
home?
CONRAD: Yah. I have some of them upstairs
but, of course, there’s a lot of it was censored,
too, because you couldn’t tell about any of the
war.
�Dwight W. Conrad Page 7
GORDON: Did you receive many letters or
packages? What kind of things did you like to
get in the packets?
CONRAD: Everybody would always ask when
anybody opened the packages, “Oh, you got
cookies? Maybe they’re good yet.” You know
and all that. It didn’t take too long. They flew in
a lot of that. Of course, then the Navy was moving around and the Navy brought in some of the
packages, too. When we got to New Guinea for
the first time, we ate with a Navy 52nd Bombardment Squadron I guess it was called. They
had all these PBYs which were real slow, 109
miles an hour plane. I got a ride one time when
they were testing out some of them that had got
shot up a bit. We flew on up to Rabaul. I could
look down and see this little town. Rabaul is in
New Britain and it’s north of New Guinea.
When I got back though the company commander says, “Don’t ever do that again. I’m going to put you on probation. I’m not going to
take your sergeant stripes from you. Just going
to put you on probation.” Anytime I had to go
anywhere for anything at all, I had to go to him
to get permission to do it.
GORDON: Did you ever have to help retrieve a
wounded buddy from a field of combat? Did you
ever have to capture any enemy prisoners?
CONRAD: Christmas is the only one that we
really celebrated. Usually some of us would get
packages by that time depending upon when
they were sent out. APO 29 was something else
because they could get all jammed up. Quite a
few had the same addresspostal number.
GORDON: Have you remained in contact with
any of your World War II companions?
CONRAD: There was one in Chicago the last I
knew, John Rex Fry, and I went in to see him
one time, he and his she was a New Zealander. He met her in Australia and did get to go to
the wedding before we went up to New Guinea.
I went in to see him. She was working for the
telephone company then. She was a telephone
operator but I can’t remember what Rex was
doing.
GORDON: You told us about your military
rank about being a sergeant. Is there anything
else about your military rank or decorations?
CONRAD: We got a bronze star medal. I guess
that would be the main thing. The usual things
for different places you served, trying to think of
the name.
GORDON: Campaign decorations?
CONRAD: Yah. We got some of those, too.
CONRAD: No, only the Japanese that gave up.
That was an interesting thing on that plateau
though. Any movement at all that we made, we
moved at night and we would have these lights
and everything. I sat on the front, one of the
front fenders and looked down and I could see
nothing down there but what you could see at
the bottom and then down the mountain. I
don’t recall ever helping take care of prisoners
although I saw some of that.
GORDON: You told us how you were ready for
music for Easter. Were you in a combat area?
Do you remember anything about traditional
holidays such as Thanksgiving or Christmas?
GORDON: Do you remember those campaigns?
CONRAD: Mostly it was a case of just being at
the right place at the right time. I remember gunfire and that. There was some of that in Manila
yet.
GORDON: You told us how you were sent
home on furlough and then you had enough
points to stay home so now you’re back in civilian life. How did you get along with the men
with whom you had the greatest contact when
you were in the army?
�Dwight W. Conrad Page 8
CONRAD: I got along fine. As soon as I got
home and out of the service, I wrote back to the
company and told them what the whole situation
is, how you get out and all that sort of thing. The
company commander then wrote and said, “This
is crazy. I wish I had known that you were going
to get out, I would have made you a Staff Sergeant.” So I was thinking maybe I should go
back.
GORDON: Is there anything that you would do
differently if you could do it over again.
CONRAD: I don’t think so. I’ll tell you about
the infantry was Company C of the 175th Infantry Division which landed at Normandy Beachhead, at Omaha Beachhead I guess it was. When
the war was over I ran into this one fellow who
said there was 21 of them out of the 189 that was
in the company that we’re alive including me he
says. He says, “I’m very lucky to be back.” He
got wounded. He went through the Normandy
landing and then the Battle of the Bulge, too, so
I was thinking how lucky can you get. And the
fellow that was our Staff Sergeant, in fact, I remember when he was corporal, ended up as the
company commander. You could see how things
changed going to Europe.
GORDON: Very much.
CONRAD: I was thinking I was very, very
lucky.
GORDON: Yes, you were.
CONRAD: The one thing I felt kind of bad
about at the time, the girlfriend that I had, we
were engaged and she broke the engagement. I
don’t know why and married this fellow who
was in the Merchant Marineshe was about to
have a baby. That didn’t make me feel good either but that’s the way it was. Then I thoughtI
was staying in Washington D. C. for a while. I
knew a fellow that was in the Navy. He was as-
signed to office duty or something you call
itheadquarters duty, I guess you call it. I visited with him a while and then I decided maybe I
should go to college. I didn’t have a chance to
go to college. I went to business college and
took accounting and that’s probably how I got
into Social Security Board. My sister and brother-in-law were expecting their first child in 45
in Columbus, Ohio, so I went to Ohio State.
While I was studying, I would have this little
girl who was Diane giving her her bottle and
everythingthey went outand studying at the
same time. Diane became a special person. She
lives in Fort Dodge, Iowa, now because she had
gone to high school there. My sister and brotherin-law lived all over. They lived inbesides
Columbusthey lived in Des Moines, Iowa,
Columbus, went down to Springdale, Arkansas.
She worked there. My sister did all the IBM
workcomputer workfor Tyson and then
they went to a couple places in Texas and then
they come back to Fort Dodge, Cedar Rapids
and then they went out to the Denver area,
Golden, Colorado.
GORDON: They did move around.
CONRAD: Yes, they did.
GORDON: How did you learn about VE Day or
VJ Day and what was your reaction? Do you
remember those instances?
CONRAD: I was in Baltimore on VJ Day and
we already knew that they dropped the atomic
bombs in a couple of places in Japan. They had a
rally down town and I was in on that rally. They
really hooped it up for a while. I had one drink.
My malaria started coming back and I had to go
over to Walter Reed Hospital in Washington to
get that taken care of.
GORDON: What was your opinion of our use
of the atomic bomb when it was used against the
Japanese in August of 45?
CONRAD: I think at that time it was mostly
just a celebration that the war was over. I didn’t
reallywell, some Japanese I hated mostly of
the way they treated the Filipinos. The Filipi-
�Dwight W. Conrad Page 9
nosI’ve never seen anybody so poor living
inthey just set up a board and got in behind it.
That board would be against a building or something and they got in behind it and wrapped a
blanket around them and things like that.
GORDON: They had terrible living conditions.
CONRAD: They did have. And some of the
things I saw during the Marcos deal, when they
were focusing on Marcos and everything, just
hadn’t improved that much.
GORDON: We would like to know when and
where you were officially discharged from the
service.
CONRAD: At Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, on
the south side of St. Louis.
GORDON: Do you have a disability rating or a
pension?
CONRAD: No, except the only thing that the
government did pay for one-halfI got from
malaria I had this stomach disease and that
caused cataracts. When I had the cataract operations in 1959, at the VA research hospital in
Chicago, the government paid half of it and my
insurance paid the other half.
GORDON: What’s your opinion of the care you
received in the VA Hospital?
CONRAD: I thought it was very good. I had a
chance to go to a chapel and talk things over and
pray talked to a lot of people who were wounded
and everything wasa lot of things were happening to them similar to what had happened to
me. One fellow had a plate in his head from going over a bomb that was buried.
GORDON: The mines?
CONRAD: The mines, yah, in Europe. I met a
lot of people and it was very good just to talk
over some of the things because it cleared my
mind of a lot of deals.
GORDON: So that was one good thing about
the VA Hospital. Do you have any contact with
the Veterans’ Administration now?
CONRAD: No except for when somebodyI’m the Commander of Daniel American
Legion Post #864 and we’ve had a few people
trying to seek help I recommended contact the
VA for that.
GORDON: Would you like to tell us about how
your family supported you during your military
life? Did their letters keep your spirits up?
CONRAD: My mother’s letters did. She was
the one that wrote most of the time. My father
just once in a great while because he was busy.
He went from farming and he started a radio
shopbattery radios in those days. Later on I
think he was ready to get into television because
television was really coming to here and he was
blown off a ladder putting up a second story
storm window for the winter. He was blown off
a ladder and broke ribs and ruptured spleen. That
was in 1957. It was on Thanksgiving Day. That
was a sad thing.
GORDON: Is there anything else you would
like to tell us.
CONRAD: Let’s see.
GORDON: Thank you, Dwight. This concludes
our interview with Dwight Conrad unless he
thinks of something more he would like to say.
Is there any highlight of your service that we
haven’t mentioned?
CONRAD: I can’t think of anything at the moment. I might remember later. I do remember
coming in behind the First Cavalry Division and
seeing some of that and seeing the mortars were
shooting the Japanese out of theThat’s when I
decided war is not for me. People were jumping
out of windows and everything else and they
were shooting up those beautiful buildings. Ma-
�Dwight W. Conrad Page 10
nila was a beautiful place before the war.
GORDON: I’ll bet it was. Would you like to go
back and see it?
see us at Santa Thomas?” and I says, “Well, I
saw some of you.” All I thought of at that time
was what a terrible shame and it turns out he
was one of them.
GORDON: He was a prisoner of war there?
CONRAD: I might some day although I don’t
know how soon. I talked tothere’s a woman
who married a former priest here in Rockford
and he wasI think he probably still works in
the library, I’m not sure now. She and I have
talked about some of the things in the Philippines. She didn’t come from Manila. She came
from somewhere elseLuzon, I believe. The
people that were at Santa Thomas, that was a
very sad situation because they didn’t half feed
them. What was surprising is that this one fellow
in Columbus that lived next door to my sister
and brother-in law were living, He says, “I remember you from somewhere. Were you in the
war?” I says, “Yah” And he said, “Were you in
the Philippines?” And I said, “Yes.” “Did you
CONRAD: Yah. He had got down to about 60
pounds and he had weighed about 150. He had
put on quite a bit of weight. I think he weighed
135 at that time, by the time I had met him
again.
GORDON: Pretty severe conditions.
CONRAD: I should say. That’s why everything
about war kind of turns me off any more
GORDON: This has been a very interesting
interview. This concludes our interview with
Dwight Conrad.
�
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Dwight W. Conrad Page 1
Dwight W. Conrad
Transcribed by Lorraine Lightcap
Edited by Margaret Lofgren
Midway Village & Museum Center
6799 Guilford Road
Rockford, Illinois
Phone 815 397 9112
�Dwight W. Conrad Page 2
Dwight Conrad
Hello! Today is March 1st, 1994. My name is Phyllis Gordon. I’m a volunteer with the Rockford Museum
Center which is cooperating with a state wide effort to collect oral histories of Illinois citizens that participated in the momentous events surrounding World War II. We are in the home of Dwight Conrad, 3404
Pioneer Drive, Rockford, Illinois. Mr. Conrad served in the army during World War II. We are interviewing him about his experiences in that war. Dwight, would you please start just by introducing yourself to
us. Please give us your full name and the place and the date of your birth.
CONRAD: This is Dwight Conrad of 3404 Pioneer Drive, Rockford, Illinois. I was born May
7th, 1919, on a farm in Calvin County, Iowa.
GORDON: We would also like to have the
names of each of your parents.
CONRAD: Wallace and Jennie Conrad.
GORDON: Did you have any brothers or sisters?
CONRAD: Yes, I had a sister, Phyllis, who died
the end of last April. Then I have a brother,
Duane, who lives in St. Charles, Missouri, and
he is still with a generating components industry
near St. Charles near St. Louis, too.
GORDON: Are there any details about your
parents and your family that you would like to
give at this time? Or what was life like for you
before the war?
CONRAD: Well, my life started on a farm and I
learned a number of things having to do with
that. I was always interested in farming and farm
life and then we moved into town just before I
was five years old. I started It was a town
called Litton Iowa and it’s on U. S. 20. I went to
grade school and high school there.
GORDON: What thoughts did you have about
the war before the United States became directly
involved in the process?
CONRAD: The main thing is that I was in the
army. I went into the army in April of 41. April
15th, I believe it was and we were on maneuvers
and we had both what it would be like to fight
the Germans and what it would be like to fight
the Japanese. Who knew when a war might start
as far as the United States was concerned? We
practiced both of those on the maneuvers. On
our way back in December December 6th we
got as far as Camp Pickett in the southern part of
Virginia. Then on the 7th, we were eating lunch
there before we went on to Fort Meade, Maryland. At that time then we picked up the broadcast that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. So we
knew that it was going to be quite different. I
was supply sergeant and I was thinking ahead,
“Oh no. I’m going to have to issue ammunition
and new rifles and machine guns and the whole
bit. We went through Washington, D.C. the
night of December the 7th. Everything was dark
and we were using __?__ over the lights so that
the lights shown down, just ahead of the army
vehicles. It was a 6 x 6 army truck. Then when
we got to Fort Meade, Maryland, everyone knew
the next morning was going to be busy as could
be. Well then the __?__ and I started cleaning
rifles and everything else. Clean off Cosmoline
which is real greasy and we had a big job ahead
of us. Finally, then, we got the new weapons
issued.
GORDON: That’s a wonderful account of Pearl
Harbor Day. What event led you to enter military service?
CONRAD: I was drafted. Now they had started
the draft I was among the first people drafted.
I think I have the same number only a different
area of the country as Jimmy Stewart. Jimmy
Stewart ended up going to Officers’ Training
School. He became I know he was at least a
colonel. He mighta been a Brigadier General
before he was through. But I think he had the
1548 which was my last four numbers and that
represented the number of people that had been
drafted at that time.
�Dwight W. Conrad Page 3
GORDON: When and where were you inducted
or did we cover that already?
CONRAD: No. I was inducted in Baltimore,
Maryland, where I had been working with about
15 months with the Social Security Board which
had just started in 1936. I did things like checking out for the Internal Revenue Service. Some
of the people who had Social Security under different names so that they couldn’t be traced and
things like that. All of this was with IBM machines [which advances to what] I ended up doing in the Pacific.
GORDON: How old were you when you were
inducted?
ready to go and it turned out it was a Matsonia
and there 12 ships in the convoy. We left there
around the 5th of May of 42.We started out.
There was a couple of ships that were going to
go to the Philippines but they didn’t. They
changed their mind. They had a last minute
check and found out that the town had fallen and
Corregidor probably would be next. Meanwhile,
I guess MacArthur was leaving the Philippines.
We went between North and South Islands of
New Zealand through Cook Strait. We landed
outside of Melbourne, Australia, at a place
called Williamstown. Then we bivouacked in a
park called Royal Park. They had a zoo there
and early in the morning, about five o’clock,
you’d hear the lions roaring and you hear sheep
bleating
CONRAD: I was 22 years old.
GORDON: What happened after you were inducted? Where were you sent and where did you
take your basic training?
CONRAD: I took my basic training at Fort
Meade, Maryland, which was with the 175th Infantry Regiment of the 29th Division.
GORDON: What were you trained to do?
CONRAD: At that time, I was training to be an
infantryman. I wasn’t real happy about that. I
didn’t like to think that I was actually going to
kill people. When I was a kid, I used to go hunting but that was different. They were squirrels
some things like that. Anyway I got to thinking
about it and I heard that there was organizing
going on for people who had experience with
IBM machines and they would be using them in
trailers and they would go to different divisions
to keep records of those particular soldiers. So
that way then, I ended up leaving my job as a
supply sergeant and joined this other __?__ as a
First Machine Records Unit they called it. About
the first of May of 42, we went out to California
aboard a troop train. That’s another interesting
thing. We ended up in the cupola in the last car
of the train, you know, on guard and everything
else and whenever the train would stop in different places, we’d have to get out and guard.
When we got out to San Francisco, we bivouacked for a few days until the troop ship was
GORDON: I don’t want to hear this, I don’t
think.
CONRAD: They were sending the sheep to
market and the lions would roar because they
could hear the sheep bleating. Then we left Melbourne by truck convoy and there were a couple
of cars, too, and went up to Sydney. We bivouacked outside of Sydney at a place that is now a
race track, believe it or not. It was there to see
when we went back in 88. We trained there and
I was I kind of led I had been also involved with chemical warfare being a noncom from that. We had different little samples of
things that would decide whether it was mustard
gas or different I can’t think of the others at
the moment. Anyway we went on up to Brisbane. We did some training there and got acquainted with some of the people that were
going to be up in New Guinea. By that time we
knew we were going to New Guinea. We went
to New Guinea later on in 42 and on the way we
got a message that we should pull into Townsville Harbor which is on the northern part of
Australia, that they were bombing Port Moresby
where we were headed. So then we had to wait
for that. Then we finally crossed the what’s
the name of the sea I can’t think of it now
and landed in Port Moresby. The first night we
put up tents. We didn’t realize we were on a
hillside by the time we got through pitching the
tents. It rained and all the water run down
�Dwight W. Conrad Page 4
through some of our belongings were down the
hill. Then we found out that we were going to
keep records for what was called the Fifth Army
Air Corps, General George Kinney. We had to
get acquainted with that and they were setting up
an airfield there outside of Port Moresby. It
turned out we were right next to I can’t think
of the word now where they shoot down
planes. Anyway, that was a lot of loud noise,
too. One of the things I remember about that was
that we got out into the countryside out in the
out really out back of us. There was [coony
grass] which is about 6 or 8 feet tall sometime.
You could hide in it even. We went on up to a
place called __?__. That was the start of the
people going over the Owen Stanley Range to
Buna and __?__ which were the two places
where they were trying to drive out the Japanese.
Well, they didn’t do that. I remember being under that mosquito netting and then I seen this
mosquito on my arm. Its head was down and
standing up. I said, “Oh, oh. A mosquito. Then I
got malaria. I spent 15 days back in Sydney at a
army hospital and then came back again. I didn’t
know what was going to happen next. I rejoined
the same machine records unit and later on we
got plane loaded along with the trailers that had
all this IBM equipment and we went on up to
Hollandia. We went over the Owen Stanley
Range which is probably somewhere around 15
or 18 thousand feet. We landed at Hollandia
which is now called [Sakarn], I think. It’s part of
the Netherland East Indies. We went 20 miles up
onto a plateau which is about 8400 feet up. One
of the first things that happened up there was we
met Lanny Ross and Lanny Ross was trying to
get people to practice for the Easter of 45. As it
turned out, we were also it was just before
Christmas we were also practicing some
Christmas music so that he could move us
around to make us blend better. This was in
__?__. Some of the Japanese up in the mountains and up as high as 15,000 feet heard all of
the singing and I would guess as many as 50,
before it was over, came down and surrendered
to us as we were in what we call a chow line.
CONRAD: Yah. They wanted to hear beautiful
music and they came into surrender. That’s funny. They had their weaponry with them. They
had their gun loaded. Then finally, we get the
word that they have taken enough of Leyte to
prepare to go up to the Philippines. They were
starting to well, just ahead of us the First
Calvary Division to land and we got on board a
Liberty ship where everybody was in a hammock. When we got up into the South China
Sea, we hit part of a typhoon. It was pretty serious they were banging their head on the
bulkhead and saying, “Oh, no . And things
like that. Then we finally got to the Philippines
and we got into Manila right after the First Calvary Division. Temporarily, until they could get
Clark Field cleared of some of the bombed out
American planes about three years before
that. We stayed bivouacked in the tents at Jose
Rizal Stadium. That was interesting, too, because that area was for the 1940 Olympics. They
had an auditorium; they had a baseball field; a
track field and they had all of those different
things. Another thing I remember about that was
that these poor people, the Filipinos when we
had a chow line they were just in there with a tin
can and maybe a spoon or something they had
got from somewhere and we shared our meals
with them. Things started changing after an army truck was blown up on a bridge over the Las
Cruces River. Then the Japanese were driven out
of Manila and up into the mountains. Well, it
turned out they were there [Novaliches] Dam but
we didn’t have to worry about that for a while.
[Novaliches] Dam is a water reservoir for Manila. We started putting up lister bags because
the water mains were all blown up. We put up
lister bags which hold water. They’re canvas
bags. Then the next thing, MacArthur got there
and he was making a speech welcoming everybody and saying, “It’s good to be back. Thanks,
fellows, for putting up the lister bags around.
Nobody’s going to get thirsty anyway. By the
way, speaking of thirsty, we’ve opened the
brewery and we’re going to reopen the distillery
in three days.”
GORDON: So your singing caused them to surrender.
GORDON: First things, first.
CONRAD: Later on they had Walter Cronkite
�Dwight W. Conrad Page 5
with one of these things with public broadcasting, there was MacArthur saying the same things
again over here on MacArthur’s right, there I
was with a __?__ carbine across my shoulder,
you know.
GORDON: You saw yourself.
CONRAD: Yah. I couldn’t believe it. I said, “It
can’t be me. It is.” That is where I was standing.
So that was a surprise. In Manila there is what
they called Los Muros that is the old walled city.
We went in there and cleared it out. There was a
place where there was a bank. Inside that bank,
there was a big vault with Japanese occupational
money. That’s another thing. He was kind of
surprised. We got in on a number of things. One
of the things that I remember about New Guinea
was there was a Japanese pilot with a little zero
and he come flying over and we called him Russian Machine Charlie because he didn’t do anything. He just flew over. Nobody shot at him or
anything. They said, “Here comes Russian Machine Charlie. Don’t anybody shoot.” I think
he was all by himself somewhere. Where he was
getting gasoline to keep that flight going, I don’t
know. We saw him for over a year. In New
Guinea, also, we had a short wave radio. We
would listen to Tokyo Rose and she would say,
“Hello, you Yankees down in New Guinea. Do
you know what your wives and girlfriends are
doing while you’re out there sweating?”
GORDON: Did this change your mental attitude?
CONRAD: No, it didn’t bother us. We thought
it was funny. There was another thing, too. We
ran across Lew Ayres. He had been a conscientious objector and he was working in grave registration with a chaplain, as a chaplain assistant.
The chaplain’s name, if I remember correctly
was Father Albert. Another interesting thing that
we ran across somebody, people like Lew Ayres,
Lanny Ross and MacArthur, of course. We had
real close contact with him. Just outside of Port
Moresby where this airfield was, Charles Lindberg,everybody was saying, well, he’s probably gone to Germany to become a Nazi, but he
wasn’t. He was down there in the Pacific and he
was taking up these P38 Lightnings and testing
them for different distances because they wanted
to fly the P38s as escort for the bombers. They
finally got to where they got the gas tanks all set
and everything so that they could carry extra gas
to fly further than they had before. And Lindberg, from what we learned because we were
close to the airfield itself, shot down something
like five Japanese planes while he was there.
That was interesting, too, because they were saying he was a spy and a traitor and everything
else. It turned out that this was a war secret and
they weren’t going to say anything about it. It
came out in 1946 it was the best kept secret of
World War II. It wasn’t because when I got
home May 17th of 1942, I was telling everybody
in this little town of Litton about watching Lindberg just about every day I was in New Guinea
and then a year later have them say it was the
best kept secret.
GORDON: It’s something I didn’t know. What
did you think of the war so far?
CONRAD: You mean observing iteverything
that went on? It was frightening. I got to the
point where didn’t care about or I couldn’t see
the reason for all the killing. There was a lot of
that. I mean where some of us got the other side
of the picture was when the Japanese surrendered outside of Hollandia in Dutch New Guinea. As it turned out, we got acquainted with
them and out of about 45 to 50, I’m not sure exactly, there was about ten of them who spoke
English. That was surprising.
GORDON: Sure is.
CONRAD: In May of 45 they let me go home
on furloughat least I thought it was. I went out
to what they called the troop carrier command
where they had the planes that were the C54s
that were flying back to the States with some of
the people that served three years or so overseas.
We flew to Tacloban and Leyte. We were outside the city itselfup in the mountains. The
next morning, I woke up, there was the travelling troop of Oklahoma and we could hear
somebody yelling down the road. They had a
microphone apparently and it was Joe E. Brown.
�Dwight W. Conrad Page 6
GORDON: Oh my.
CONRAD: So there was things like that. A day
or two later we got clearance to fly to Guam. We
flew to Guam and then after evening meal and
seeing the first B29s, we flew on to Kwajalein
and that was really spot because there was all
what is that stuff that starts with a “C” (Coral). Anyway this is an island that is just about
like rock.
GORDON: Atolls or whatever.
CONRAD: Yah. It was an atoll. Then from
Kwajaleinwe just landed there and gassed up
and then we flew on to Johnstown Island, which
is south of Hawaii and stayed all night there. No,
we just stayed and evening there and then we
flew on to Hickam Field in Hawaii just outside
of Honolulu. We went to bed and along about
10we got there about 5:00 in the morningwent to bed and woke up about 10 because
people was talking. That, of course, is an air
force base and so they said, “Hey, they’re going
down into Honolulu. Let’s go, too.” Then we
find out, “You guys are on orders, you can’t go.”
We got the fly out orders, well, we waited the
whole day drinking a lot of pineapple juice and
that evening, we took off for San Francisco area.
Trying to think of that famous market in that
area. It starts with “H”.
GORDON: Oh. I should know that, too. We’ll
think of it later on as we go along.
CONRAD: We flew there and landed and then I
had to go to Presidio where they checked for my
malaria and they said, “You’re okay to go home
on furlough.” I waited another day and took off
by train for the St. Louis area. We got into Jefferson Barracks outside of St. Louis. They were
working on the first people who could get out on
the point system. I had 105 points fromthat’s
just regular service and overseas service and
some combat service, too. They said, “Well,
we’ll get you out.” I was in the second group to
be discharged. I signed up for reserve.
GORDON: We are continuing our conversation
with Dwight Conrad. He’s remembering his time
in the Pacific and especially some thoughts
about combat and General MacArthur.
CONRAD: When we were in New Guineathe
150th, I’m not sure of the number nowthey
were the early parachute troopers. They were all
engineers and they were dropped near [Lae]
Peninsula in a place called __?__. They were
building airstrips to move the Air Force on up
and MacArthur flew in his own B17. When they
got over to where they were supposed to jump
and their machinery and everything had been
parachuted down first. Then they found out they
were only 500 feet up and MacArthur told them
to jump. There was a couple of dozen of the fellows that were kind of banged up after that.
Some of them had broken legs. That was about
the time I went into the field hospital for the first
time with malaria. I got to talk with all of them.
They were all very upset with MacArthur for
making them jump at that low altitude.
GORDON: They couldn’t have time to get their
parachute out.
CONRAD: No. Speaking of combat, though, we
were bombed a number of times and that is
scary. If you were on the beach which I was one
time, you just kept hoping they didn’t spot you
or anything.
GORDON: No protection.
CONRAD: There were machine gun bullets
flying around, too. Anyway, I didn’t get hit. I
was very lucky.
GORDON: Did you write very many letters
home?
CONRAD: Yah. I have some of them upstairs
but, of course, there’s a lot of it was censored,
too, because you couldn’t tell about any of the
war.
�Dwight W. Conrad Page 7
GORDON: Did you receive many letters or
packages? What kind of things did you like to
get in the packets?
CONRAD: Everybody would always ask when
anybody opened the packages, “Oh, you got
cookies? Maybe they’re good yet.” You know
and all that. It didn’t take too long. They flew in
a lot of that. Of course, then the Navy was moving around and the Navy brought in some of the
packages, too. When we got to New Guinea for
the first time, we ate with a Navy 52nd Bombardment Squadron I guess it was called. They
had all these PBYs which were real slow, 109
miles an hour plane. I got a ride one time when
they were testing out some of them that had got
shot up a bit. We flew on up to Rabaul. I could
look down and see this little town. Rabaul is in
New Britain and it’s north of New Guinea.
When I got back though the company commander says, “Don’t ever do that again. I’m going to put you on probation. I’m not going to
take your sergeant stripes from you. Just going
to put you on probation.” Anytime I had to go
anywhere for anything at all, I had to go to him
to get permission to do it.
GORDON: Did you ever have to help retrieve a
wounded buddy from a field of combat? Did you
ever have to capture any enemy prisoners?
CONRAD: Christmas is the only one that we
really celebrated. Usually some of us would get
packages by that time depending upon when
they were sent out. APO 29 was something else
because they could get all jammed up. Quite a
few had the same addresspostal number.
GORDON: Have you remained in contact with
any of your World War II companions?
CONRAD: There was one in Chicago the last I
knew, John Rex Fry, and I went in to see him
one time, he and his she was a New Zealander. He met her in Australia and did get to go to
the wedding before we went up to New Guinea.
I went in to see him. She was working for the
telephone company then. She was a telephone
operator but I can’t remember what Rex was
doing.
GORDON: You told us about your military
rank about being a sergeant. Is there anything
else about your military rank or decorations?
CONRAD: We got a bronze star medal. I guess
that would be the main thing. The usual things
for different places you served, trying to think of
the name.
GORDON: Campaign decorations?
CONRAD: Yah. We got some of those, too.
CONRAD: No, only the Japanese that gave up.
That was an interesting thing on that plateau
though. Any movement at all that we made, we
moved at night and we would have these lights
and everything. I sat on the front, one of the
front fenders and looked down and I could see
nothing down there but what you could see at
the bottom and then down the mountain. I
don’t recall ever helping take care of prisoners
although I saw some of that.
GORDON: You told us how you were ready for
music for Easter. Were you in a combat area?
Do you remember anything about traditional
holidays such as Thanksgiving or Christmas?
GORDON: Do you remember those campaigns?
CONRAD: Mostly it was a case of just being at
the right place at the right time. I remember gunfire and that. There was some of that in Manila
yet.
GORDON: You told us how you were sent
home on furlough and then you had enough
points to stay home so now you’re back in civilian life. How did you get along with the men
with whom you had the greatest contact when
you were in the army?
�Dwight W. Conrad Page 8
CONRAD: I got along fine. As soon as I got
home and out of the service, I wrote back to the
company and told them what the whole situation
is, how you get out and all that sort of thing. The
company commander then wrote and said, “This
is crazy. I wish I had known that you were going
to get out, I would have made you a Staff Sergeant.” So I was thinking maybe I should go
back.
GORDON: Is there anything that you would do
differently if you could do it over again.
CONRAD: I don’t think so. I’ll tell you about
the infantry was Company C of the 175th Infantry Division which landed at Normandy Beachhead, at Omaha Beachhead I guess it was. When
the war was over I ran into this one fellow who
said there was 21 of them out of the 189 that was
in the company that we’re alive including me he
says. He says, “I’m very lucky to be back.” He
got wounded. He went through the Normandy
landing and then the Battle of the Bulge, too, so
I was thinking how lucky can you get. And the
fellow that was our Staff Sergeant, in fact, I remember when he was corporal, ended up as the
company commander. You could see how things
changed going to Europe.
GORDON: Very much.
CONRAD: I was thinking I was very, very
lucky.
GORDON: Yes, you were.
CONRAD: The one thing I felt kind of bad
about at the time, the girlfriend that I had, we
were engaged and she broke the engagement. I
don’t know why and married this fellow who
was in the Merchant Marineshe was about to
have a baby. That didn’t make me feel good either but that’s the way it was. Then I thoughtI
was staying in Washington D. C. for a while. I
knew a fellow that was in the Navy. He was as-
signed to office duty or something you call
itheadquarters duty, I guess you call it. I visited with him a while and then I decided maybe I
should go to college. I didn’t have a chance to
go to college. I went to business college and
took accounting and that’s probably how I got
into Social Security Board. My sister and brother-in-law were expecting their first child in 45
in Columbus, Ohio, so I went to Ohio State.
While I was studying, I would have this little
girl who was Diane giving her her bottle and
everythingthey went outand studying at the
same time. Diane became a special person. She
lives in Fort Dodge, Iowa, now because she had
gone to high school there. My sister and brotherin-law lived all over. They lived inbesides
Columbusthey lived in Des Moines, Iowa,
Columbus, went down to Springdale, Arkansas.
She worked there. My sister did all the IBM
workcomputer workfor Tyson and then
they went to a couple places in Texas and then
they come back to Fort Dodge, Cedar Rapids
and then they went out to the Denver area,
Golden, Colorado.
GORDON: They did move around.
CONRAD: Yes, they did.
GORDON: How did you learn about VE Day or
VJ Day and what was your reaction? Do you
remember those instances?
CONRAD: I was in Baltimore on VJ Day and
we already knew that they dropped the atomic
bombs in a couple of places in Japan. They had a
rally down town and I was in on that rally. They
really hooped it up for a while. I had one drink.
My malaria started coming back and I had to go
over to Walter Reed Hospital in Washington to
get that taken care of.
GORDON: What was your opinion of our use
of the atomic bomb when it was used against the
Japanese in August of 45?
CONRAD: I think at that time it was mostly
just a celebration that the war was over. I didn’t
reallywell, some Japanese I hated mostly of
the way they treated the Filipinos. The Filipi-
�Dwight W. Conrad Page 9
nosI’ve never seen anybody so poor living
inthey just set up a board and got in behind it.
That board would be against a building or something and they got in behind it and wrapped a
blanket around them and things like that.
GORDON: They had terrible living conditions.
CONRAD: They did have. And some of the
things I saw during the Marcos deal, when they
were focusing on Marcos and everything, just
hadn’t improved that much.
GORDON: We would like to know when and
where you were officially discharged from the
service.
CONRAD: At Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, on
the south side of St. Louis.
GORDON: Do you have a disability rating or a
pension?
CONRAD: No, except the only thing that the
government did pay for one-halfI got from
malaria I had this stomach disease and that
caused cataracts. When I had the cataract operations in 1959, at the VA research hospital in
Chicago, the government paid half of it and my
insurance paid the other half.
GORDON: What’s your opinion of the care you
received in the VA Hospital?
CONRAD: I thought it was very good. I had a
chance to go to a chapel and talk things over and
pray talked to a lot of people who were wounded
and everything wasa lot of things were happening to them similar to what had happened to
me. One fellow had a plate in his head from going over a bomb that was buried.
GORDON: The mines?
CONRAD: The mines, yah, in Europe. I met a
lot of people and it was very good just to talk
over some of the things because it cleared my
mind of a lot of deals.
GORDON: So that was one good thing about
the VA Hospital. Do you have any contact with
the Veterans’ Administration now?
CONRAD: No except for when somebodyI’m the Commander of Daniel American
Legion Post #864 and we’ve had a few people
trying to seek help I recommended contact the
VA for that.
GORDON: Would you like to tell us about how
your family supported you during your military
life? Did their letters keep your spirits up?
CONRAD: My mother’s letters did. She was
the one that wrote most of the time. My father
just once in a great while because he was busy.
He went from farming and he started a radio
shopbattery radios in those days. Later on I
think he was ready to get into television because
television was really coming to here and he was
blown off a ladder putting up a second story
storm window for the winter. He was blown off
a ladder and broke ribs and ruptured spleen. That
was in 1957. It was on Thanksgiving Day. That
was a sad thing.
GORDON: Is there anything else you would
like to tell us.
CONRAD: Let’s see.
GORDON: Thank you, Dwight. This concludes
our interview with Dwight Conrad unless he
thinks of something more he would like to say.
Is there any highlight of your service that we
haven’t mentioned?
CONRAD: I can’t think of anything at the moment. I might remember later. I do remember
coming in behind the First Cavalry Division and
seeing some of that and seeing the mortars were
shooting the Japanese out of theThat’s when I
decided war is not for me. People were jumping
out of windows and everything else and they
were shooting up those beautiful buildings. Ma-
�Dwight W. Conrad Page 10
nila was a beautiful place before the war.
GORDON: I’ll bet it was. Would you like to go
back and see it?
see us at Santa Thomas?” and I says, “Well, I
saw some of you.” All I thought of at that time
was what a terrible shame and it turns out he
was one of them.
GORDON: He was a prisoner of war there?
CONRAD: I might some day although I don’t
know how soon. I talked tothere’s a woman
who married a former priest here in Rockford
and he wasI think he probably still works in
the library, I’m not sure now. She and I have
talked about some of the things in the Philippines. She didn’t come from Manila. She came
from somewhere elseLuzon, I believe. The
people that were at Santa Thomas, that was a
very sad situation because they didn’t half feed
them. What was surprising is that this one fellow
in Columbus that lived next door to my sister
and brother-in law were living, He says, “I remember you from somewhere. Were you in the
war?” I says, “Yah” And he said, “Were you in
the Philippines?” And I said, “Yes.” “Did you
CONRAD: Yah. He had got down to about 60
pounds and he had weighed about 150. He had
put on quite a bit of weight. I think he weighed
135 at that time, by the time I had met him
again.
GORDON: Pretty severe conditions.
CONRAD: I should say. That’s why everything
about war kind of turns me off any more
GORDON: This has been a very interesting
interview. This concludes our interview with
Dwight Conrad.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Midway Village Museum
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Midway Village Museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-2001
Rights
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Midway Village Museum
Language
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English
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Phyllis Gordon
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Dwight W. Conrad
Location
The location of the interview
Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Dwight W. Conrad
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
March 1, 1994
Description
An account of the resource
Born May 7, 1919, Dwight W. Conrad served in the U.S. Army from 1941 to 1945. He died January 15, 1998.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War II
WW2
-
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PDF Text
Text
Doctor Robert Heerens Page 1
Doctor Robert Heerens
Interviewed by Lorraine Lightcap
Without a tape
Midway Village & Museum Center
6799 Guilford Road
Rockford, Illinois 61107
Phone 815 397 9112
�Doctor Robert Heerens Page 2
Doctor Robert Heerens
LIGHTCAP: My name is Lorraine
Lightcap and I am a volunteer with the
Midway Village & Museum Center in
Rockford, Illinois. Along with my covolunteers
we
have
transcribed
approximately 50 tapes of interviews of
World War II veterans. This was a project
begun by the State of Illinois on the 50th
Anniversary of World War II. The project is
almost completed and I have wanted to do a
few more interviews of Rockford citizens
for the research library at the museum, who
participated in the catastrophic events in the
European and Asian Theaters.
Today is October 4th, 2001, and my
interview is with Dr. Robert Heerens who
lives at 5664 Spring Brook Road. His
military service took him to the Asian war
areas from Saipan to the islands in the
Pacific and briefly to China. My first
question, Bob, is to ask you to tell us about
your family, place of birth and your
educational opportunities.
HEERENS I was born in Evanston, Illinois
in July of 1915. My father was Joseph
Heerens and my mother was Karen Larson
Heerens. I had one brother and two sisters.
One sister died at an early age. I attended
high school in Evanston. To earn money for
college I worked for one year at the Abbot
Laboratories in their Chicago branch. After
that I went to the college in Kalamazoo for 4
years. After college I worked a year at
Abbott Laboratories in North Chicago in the
biological-testing lab. Then I attended 2
years at the University of Alabama at
Tuskaloosa and then graduated from
Northeastern Medical School. M6 internship
was at the Great Lakes Naval Hospital. My
mother had been a receptionist for an
obstetrician and I suppose because I knew
the doctor she worked for, it was a key to
my interest in the medical field.
LIGHTCAP: Tell us a bit about your life
before entering college.
HEERENS I believe I was and average
young boy with a close family living in
Evanston. I was proud to be associated with
a Boy Scout Troop and eventually achieved
the Eagle Scout award. Classical music was
a favorite. This is something I picked up on
my own not particularly something my
parents was interested in.
LIGHTCAP: Were you aware of Hitler’s
Actions and speeches at the onset of the war
in Europe? What about the bombing of Pearl
Harbor?
HEERENS I remember hearing on
September 1, 1939, that Hitler had invaded
Poland. I was headed to medical school in
Alabama and was wondering how it would
affect my future. The Sunday the Japanese
bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7th,
1941; I was home with my parents listening
to a symphony concert. At first I thought it
might be another Orson Welles “scare”. The
radio resumed airing the concert and it
wasn’t until later that I realized that Pearl
Harbor had really been bombed by the
Japanese. By then I was furious.
LIGHTCAP: Tell us about your decision to
enter the Navy and about the hospitals you
were at in the United States.
HEERENS After internship at Great Lakes,
I was medical officer at the midshipman
school in Chicago, then ordered to Fleet
Marine Force at Camp Pendelton,
California. From there I was shipped to
Saipan. Actually I had applied for admission
to the Navy as a medical officer as I did not
want to be part of the army. I chose the
Navy because I loved ships. I did not need
any basic training as I enlisted as a doctor. I
spent 9 months at the Great Lake Naval
Hospital. I was commissioned as a 1st
Lieutenant, Junior Grade, and became a full
lieutenant after serving in Okinawa. In May
of ’43 I received orders to proceed to Camp
Pendleton and assigned to the Fleet Marines.
�Doctor Robert Heerens Page 3
From there I was assigned as a replacement
which ended up in Saipan. Then I was
detached and flown to Pelew [Palau] Island
in the Mid Pacific. On December 7th I
entered combat with the 1st Battalion, 5th
Regiment, 1st Marine Division.
LIGHTCAP: What were your parents’
feelings about a son serving in the Navy?
HEERENS They were happy I was going as
a M.D. and trusted my judgement. They did
not overtly show that they were worried. By
this time I had been married for about a year
(August ’43) and had to leave a pregnant
wife. This was in 1944.
LIGHTCAP: Tell a bit more about your
experiences I the South Pacific.
HEERENS From Saipan I was flown to the
Pelew Islands which is an atoll island along
with 3 other doctors. We were titled
Battalion Surgeons and became part of the
1st Marine Division, 1st Battalion. We were
in the combat zone in the center of the
Pacific. There we put up and aid station
where we were abler to take care of the
wounded. I incidentally, one can’t dig a “fox
hole” on these islands but we did secure the
island in 2 months. After many days we
finally were prepared a good meal otherwise
we existed on K-Rations. It really was
“scary” being at the “other end of the
world”. In April of ’45 we were with a
marine infantry group that invaded
Okinawa. We had no opposition from the
Japanese when we landed. By then I was
supplied with a 45 revolver but I never had
to use it. I think I would have preferred to
hit the enemy on the head rather then to
shoot him but I never had to make that
decision. The first day after the landing we
still had no opposition. Something of
interest is that in the year of ’45, Easter and
April Fool’s Day were the same day. We
moved across this island in 3 days and
finally reached Yontan Airfield which the
Marines were to protect. There was not
much combat around us until about May 1st.
Our group was actually the last to be in
combat at Okinawa ending June 21, 1945.
LIGHTCAP: Where were you when the
atomic bombs were dropped on Japan?
HEERENS I was in Okinawa for training
when the bomb was dropped, training for the
invasion of Japan. The bombs more or less
ended the conflict with the Japanese. Along
with my battalion, I was sent to China. After
landing at Tanku, China, we boarded a train
to Peking. We even celebrated a holiday (on
the Hi-o River). “The triple 10th”, 10th day
10th month, 10th year, with [Kuomintang
political party]. . . [We] stayed in China
from October to February. I then returned
home via Hawaii.
[Heerens is referring to the Double Tenth
Agreement signed October 10, 1945
recognizing the Kuomintang as the
legitimate ruling party of China and the
Communist Party as a legitimate opposition
party.]
LIGHTCAP: Was it possible to correspond
with your wife and parents regularly? Were
you able to received packages of things you
would like to have?
HEERENS I wrote letters but mostly to my
wife, Marty. I especially liked Limburger
cheese and she would send some to me.
Being surrounded at times with dead
Japanese, I finally decided they smelled
alike, cheese and dead Japanese, and I have
no desire for it anymore.
LIGHTCAP: Do you still keep in touch
with the men you served with? Have you
attended any reunions?
HEERENS The men who were in my
battalion have not had a reunion but there
are several that I do keep in touch with
frequently and have had the opportunity to
visit. One man in my battalion I knew from
my Boy Scout Troop in Evanston. He was
Alex Agase who later became a coach of the
Northwestern football team. Incidentally,
�Doctor Robert Heerens Page 4
two doctors were assigned to a battalion and
my partner is still living.
LIGHTCAP: Did you have to treat
wounded Japanese prisoners?
LIGHTCAP: How long did you serve?
What medals or citations did you received?
HEERENS: No. We killed them all. If I had
to, I would have because they were also
human.
HEERENS I was in the service from
December of 1941 to 1947. When I was
retired, I was a full lieutenant, which
corresponds to a captain in the army. If I had
remained a little longer I would have
become a Lieutenant Colonel. I received two
combat mission citations, presidential
citation, good conduct medal and the
Asiatic/Pacific Theater medal.
LIGHTCAP: Was it difficult to adjust to
civilian life?
HEERENS No! I had no problem adjusting
to civilian life. At first I was in orthopedics
at the Great Lakes Hospital. I was told that
there was a need for doctors in the Rockford
area and my wife and I made the decision to
begin a private general practice here. I had
that practice for 40 years and was associated
with Swedish-American Hospital. I retired
in 1987.
LIGHTCAP: Did you have any doubts
about whether our country could be
successful fighting a war in the European
and Asian Theater?
LIGHTCAP: How many were in a
battalion? How many battalions were you
with? How many servicemen and marines
were you with? How many doctors?
HEERENS: Three battalions each, 1200;
Regiments, 5000; and Divisions 10 to
12,000. There were 2 M.D.s to a battalion, 2
at regiments, 8 M.D.s. The Division had a
company hospital and 4 M.D.s. The division
hospital had many M.D.s. our battalion aid
station was sited 500 to 1000 yards behind
the front lines. The other M.D.s and I would
“leap frog” with our aid stations and
personnel as the troops and the front line
moved.
LIGHTCAP: Wars have just never
accomplished lasting peace. Do you fear that
our technology and weaponry will deter
large-scale wars? Do you think we can
control terrorism in this country?
HEERENS Our present technology and
weaponry will only be good for large-scale
wars. As far as terrorism, we can fight it but
probably never counteract it.
HEERENS: No, because the enemies made
more mistakes.
LIGHTCAP: Did you think the allies were
“doing a good job?”
HEERENS They won but with much waste
and mistakes.
LIGHTCAP: How did you cope with
seeing such devastation with many
wounded, dying or dead?
HEERENS I did my job as humanly as
possible and efficiently as possible. Feelings
were for civilian life.
IN ADDITION: Dr. Heerens and his wife
Martha met in Evanston, Illinois, where she
was in nurses’ training and he was working
as a [? M] and medical student. They
actually met in the operating room. They
moved to Rockford in 1947. They have been
blessed with 5 daughters. Bob has been very
active in the Rockford community serving
on the board of Community Chest. The
Board of Visiting Nurses founded the Board
of Health in 1960. He has also been
President of the Chamber of Commerce,
Winnebago County Medical Society, Illinois
Academy of Family Physicians and Swedish
American Medical Staff, and a member and
�Doctor Robert Heerens Page 5
former president of Northwestern Area
Agency on Aging from 1970 – 19 __. Was a
member of Board of Directors and the Vice
President of American Academy of Family
Physicians. He was also active with
Rockford’s Center for Learning in
Retirement (C.L.R.) and can often be found
talking to retirees at local retirement centers.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Midway Village Museum
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Midway Village Museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-2001
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Language
A language of the resource
English
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Lorraine Lightcap
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Dr. Robert Heerens
Location
The location of the interview
Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Dr. Robert Heerens
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
October 4, 2001
Description
An account of the resource
Born July 1915, Dr. Robert Heerens became a hospital doctor with the Marines. He died October 19, 2014.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War 2
World War II
-
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5fcd60033f7bbd89e7b026468d18c0c5
PDF Text
Text
Donald W. Owens
4 ½ years in the Army
Mostly in Pacific Jungles
Transcribed by Lorraine Lightcap
For Midway Village and Museum Center
6799 Guilford Road
Rockford, Illinois
Phone 815 397 9112
�Donald W. Owens
Interviewer: Charles Nelson
Date: March 23, 1994
My name is Charles Nelson and I am a volunteer at Midway Village and Museum
Center in Rockford, Illinois, which is cooperation with the statewide effort to collect
oral histories from Illinois citizens that participated in the momentous events surrounding World War II. We are in the home
of Mr. Owens in Roscoe, Illinois. Mr. Owens served in the United States Armed
Forces during World War II. We are interviewing him about his experiences in that
war.
NELSON: Would you please start this interview by introducing yourself to us?
OWEN: My name is Don Owens.
NELSON: Okay. Please give us your full
name and date of birth.
OWEN: My full name is Donald Owens. I
was born in Beloit, Wisconsin, on the 4h of
February 1919.
NELSON: We would also like to have the
names of each of your parents. Did you have
any brothers or sisters?
OWEN: Yes. My dad was Ward Owens and
my mother was Gertrude Owens. I have one
brother, Stanley Owens, and two sisters Kay
Lockwood and Marion Heady.
NELSON: Are there any details about your
parents and your family that you would like
to give us?
OWEN: No, other than my brother was in
World War II He was with the 104th Timber
Wolves over in Europe in the Battle of the
Bulge and some of those. So we both went
through the war.
NELSON: What was life like before the
war specifically during 1941?
OWEN: During 1941, I was assistant manager of a shoe store in Beloit and then they
started the draft thing and selective service
so rather than wait to be drafted, I was going
to be one of these heroes and sign up. So I
volunteered. I didn’t wait to get selected. So
I went into the army on April 14th, 1941.
NELSON: Okay. What thoughts did you
have about the war before the United States
became directly involved in the conflict?
OWEN: Well, I wasn’t too sure what was
going to happen like everybody else but then
I knew that if it did happen why I was going
to do my part. So that’s exactly why I signed
up.
NELSON: How did you hear of December
7th, 1941, bombing of Pearl Harbor by the
Japs? If so, where were you and what were
you doing at the time? What was your reaction to it?
OWEN: I distinctly remember that and I
was “teed” off because where I was atI
was in the train station in Alexandra, Louisiana, with my furlough; waiting to go on
furlough. All I was doing down there at the
depot was waiting for my train to come back
home. That’s when the news came on that
Pearl Harbor had been attacked. So the MPs
came in the depot and said, “Soldier, where
are you from?” I said, Camp Livingston,
Louisiana, and he said, “Well, that’s where
you’re going back to right now” So I got a
�Donald W. Owens Page 3
refund on my railroad ticket. So that’s why I
knew exactly where I was when that happened.
where you were inducted?
OWEN: No, I hadn’t.
OWEN: I was inducted in Milwaukee,
Wisconsin, April 14th, of 1941. That night
we came back by train through Beloit and I
got put in Camp Grant in Rockford, Illinois,
and the next day I got out of there and they
put us on a train and went Camp Livingston,
Louisiana.
NELSON: Do you recall reading newspaper
accounts of German aggression in Europe?
NELSON: Do you have any special memories of this event?
OWEN: Yes, I do.
OWEN: Yeah, probably. All the guys got
into Camp Grant and after our first meal full
of saltpeter, as you well know, I don’t have
to explain to anybody that has been in the
military the results of getting a dose of saltpeter. That’s what I remember about Camp
Grant.
NELSON: Had you formed any prior opinion or developed any feeling about what had
been taking place in Europe or Asia?
NELSON: Did you have any knowledge of
Hitler’s speeches, ideas or actions?
OWEN: From what I read, somewhat, yes.
NELSON: What events led to your entry in
the military service? Were you already in
the service, drafted or did you volunteer?
NELSON: How old were you?
OWEN: I was twenty-two.
OWEN: I was already in the service when
the war started. Like I said, just a few
minutes ago, I was ready to come home on
furlough on Pearl Harbor Day so I had been
in for quite some time, April of that year, in
fact.
NELSON: Was your response to entering
military service influenced by family and
friends attitudes toward the war, the threat to
national security or any other consideration?
OWEN: Well, I think probably the threat to
national security. Like I said, I was willing
to do my part. That was probably the biggest
thing, along with the fact that the Selective
Service going and I didn’t wasn’t to wait for
that. I was going to volunteer. So I would
say, yes, that national security was probably
the biggest reason.
NELSON: Did you mention when and
NELSON: What happened after you were
inducted? Where were you sent and where
did you take your basic military training?
OWEN: After I was inducted I was sent to
Camp Livingston, Louisiana, and that’s
where we took our basic training. Our basic
training was followed by the, I suppose you
could say, famous Louisiana maneuvering
which was participated in so that was well to
be remembered, too.
NELSON: What were you trained to do?
OWEN: We were trained to I went into
the Field Artillery Unit and then they
formed us into an anti-tank battalion which
we eventually became a tank destroyer battalion.
NELSON: Was this by choice or
�Donald W. Owens Page 4
OWEN: No, this wasn’t by choice. They
just assigned us there. We were they just
put us there. I was a fill inone of the fill
ins. As a selectee they filled us into the
Wisconsin-Michigan famous 32nd Red Arrow Division which was all National
Guards. So they put us in and we were
trained by Wisconsin National Guard people
in our basic training.
NELSON: What did you think of the training?
OWEN: It was good training. It wasn’t the
best conditions in the world but it was good
training. The weather was badhot and
humid all the time and __?__ tents with
seashells for sidewalks and that type of
thing. So we weren’t in the worst place in
the world but it wasn’t the best either. You
don’t forget anyway.
NELSON: Can you remember anything
special that happened there?
OWEN: Yes, I can remember one thing. I
never forgot because after our basic training,
you know, we were scared if these high
ranking officers. I remember one of our guys
in our outfit, his name was Russ Rinesmith.
He worked in the Beloit Iron Works in
Beloit and also the commanding general of
the 57th Field Artillery Brigade was General
Bill Woods who was Vice President of
Beloit Corporation in peacetime. So we
were going down the street one night to the
movies and we saw this General up there
and so we were getting ready to throw him
the best salute we had, you know. Break
your arm off if you had to. Russ Rinesmith
saw the general and he recognized him as
Bill Woods so Russ says, “Hi, Bill.” Geez, I
thought we were both going to get court
martialed. What happened? The general says
“Hi, Les” and he invited him into his quarters there and sat and drank for a while. I
went to the movies by myself.
NELSON: That’s interesting. Tell us about
any other training camps you attended.
OWEN: Well we went by convoy, moved
all of our equipment, all our trucks, everything, from Camp Livingston, Louisiana, to
Fort Devens, Massachusetts. I was one of
the drivers. I drove all the way and we got
there and, of course, we thought we were
going to the European Theater winding up in
Massachusetts. We were there a short time
and one-day we started loading up all our
heavy equipment on railroad flat cars which
we thought was very funny. Jeez, we drive
all the way from Louisiana and then they’re
going to put us on railroad flat cars to take
us over to the Brooklyn Navy Yard and ship
us out to Europe. That seemed crazy. Well,
where we wound up was in San Francisco.
We shipped out of Frisco to the South Pacific, to New Guinea or Australia. That’s
where we went.
NELSON: Did you have any leaves or
passes?
OWEN: I had passes, yeah. The leave, that
furlough I had cancelled on Pearl Harbor
Day; I never did get that back. I got paid
eventually for it when I was discharged. I
got a good chunk of “dough” because we
never got any furlough time to speak of.
NELSON: You didn’t get enough time to
come home?
OWEN: Oh we had enough time but they
wouldn’t let us come home. I don’t remember. Remember they had rotation points,
something like, what was it 84 points or
something like that. I had something like
128 or something like that when I finally got
to rotate. But that was up in Hollandia, New
Guinea. A year or two later after this __?__.
�Donald W. Owens Page 5
NELSON: What do you recall about this
period about the places you were stationed,
the friend you made and your association
with civilians?
OWEN: You mean stateside, in the United
States?
NELSON: Yeah.
OWEN: I don’t think we made any friends
outside of the military area. We went to
some of those big cities. We went to Boston,
Massachusetts, and some of those cities
around, Worcester and some of those cities
just for a weekend. We’d go to a dance or
something like that. But we never made any
fast friends. Actually we didn’t have that
much time there to make any friends. By the
time they got done deciding to ship us elsewhere, that didn’t last long. Of course, we
got to the West Coast we went right to Angel Island so we never saw anybody.
NELSON: You were with an anti-tank unit?
OWEN: Yeah. When we left it was called
the 32nd Division Anti-Tank Battalion and
then later on it was formed into the 632nd
Tank Destroyer Battalion. It stayed like that
all through the war.
NELSON: What was your job with this
unit?
OWEN: I was reconnaissance sergeant.
NELSON: Where did you go after you
completed your basic military training? This
is the training that you had in the United
States. You said you were shipped out of the
West Coast?
OWEN: Yeah. Okay. We went on a ship for
a 22-day boat ride and we landed at Fort
Adelaide, Australia. That’s where we land-
ed. We went out in the woods to a camp out
there called Sandy Creek.
NELSON: Do you remember the ship that
you went on?
OWEN: Yes. Hugh L. Scott was the name
of the ship. That ship got sunk in the African
Campaign later on and then when I did get
to come home, to rotate. I came home, and
sure enough, I got on the brand new Hugh L.
Scott, same named ship 2 ½ years later.
NELSON: That’s unusual.
OWEN: It sure is. Difference in the ships,
too, I’ll tell you!
NELSON: I’ll bet. Well, what were you assigned to do after arriving overseas?
OWEN: Overseas? I was assigned to help,
go out and locate and set up camps. I went
out with the captain and the exec officer. We
had to go out into the wood and find an area
which was suitable and then we would have
to plan where all our equipment would go
and that sort of thing. Reconnaissance nothing to do with the enemy at that time but just
set up. Then after we got set up, of course,
then we trained for reconnaissance, amphibious training and all that stuff because
we were going to make a lot of landings. So
we went into that later on.
NELSON: What did you think of our nation’s war efforts up to this point?
OWEN: Very good, very good.
NELSON: If you did not immediately enter
a combat zone . . . I think we answered that
question.
OWEN: Yeah. We went to jungle training
and amphibious training because the Japa-
�Donald W. Owens Page 6
nese were experts in the jungle and we
didn’t know beans about it and the amphibious training. We went down in South
Hampton in Australia and we made landing
after landing, you know, with the amphibious ships. We’d come up and hit the beach
and all that stuff. We did that over and over
and over so we got quite proficient at it finally.
NELSON: Tell us about your experience of
entering your first combat zone.
OWEN: The first combat. We went up to
New Guinea, landed in Milne Bay and then
after that we went around to __?__ Island to
a staging area. Then we got ready and then
on New Year’s Day of ’43, we made an
amphibious landing and we landed at Saidor, New Guinea. This was Douglas MacArthur’s Hedge Hopping. In other words, we
went up the coast to make a landing and pin
them in between us, the Japanese. Then
we’d go up the coast to make another amphibious landing and put the squeeze on
them. We went all the way up the coast of
New Guinea that way. We made landings at
Saidor, [Galhall(?), Mod(?) River] and
Aitape and Hollandia right up the coast like
that.
NELSON: I would suppose, during this
time you would have casualties? Can you
tell us the number and types of casualties,
how they occurred and how they were
treated?
OWEN: I remember our first guy that got
killed. His name was Jimmy [Heason]. He
was on the third platoon and they were out
setting up a gun because we expected counter attacks. They were setting up guns along
the coast and all of a sudden out of nowhere
came a whole bunch of Japanese bombers
and they started ? . We could see the
bombs coming down. Of course, we all hit
the dirt. Jimmy got hit and he got killed and
a couple of other guys. One guy had his leg
taken off and a couple others badly hurt. I
was fortunate because I had laid in one of
the tracks that the trucks had made. All I got
out of it was my butt was sticking up in the
air and the old army saying about having
sand pointed up your ass, well that’s what
happened to me. I got peppered and later
they took me to the doctor. He put me over
his knee and he was picking the sand out of
my butt with a needle. Then he covered me
with that purple stuff you know. Remember
that purple stuff that they used to use? I forget the name of it. God, they put that on
everything so there was a little humor to it
too but it wasn’t very funny when we got hit
because when you lose your first buddy,
why it’s devastating; you just never forget,
never.
NELSON: Did your mental attitude change
as combat continued?
OWEN: Yeah. I think so. It made you all
the madder and more determined that we
were going to wipe those suckers out of
there and you knew you had something to
fight for then. You were really “teed” off.
That’s what happened. It made me very,
very much more determined to win this
thing.
NELSON: What did you think of the war so
far?
OWEN: I like civilian life a lot better. The
living conditions were terrible because it got
up to about 130 and when you’ve got to
fight a war besides that and then you’re
fighting the elements and fighting disease as
well as the enemy, it’s quite miserable. We
lived in foxholes. You dig a hole where it’s
so near the beach the darn thing would fill
up with water. So you stay there all night on
your knees in a foxhole with your chin
�Donald W. Owens Page 7
above water with the leeches sucking on to
you. Those type of things. The living conditions weren’t good.
NELSON: Did you forge close bonds of
friendship with many or some of you combat companions?
NELSON: Did anyone have tents to sleep
in?
OWEN: Oh, yeah. To this day we are still
very close. In fact next month I’m the host
for the reunion of Company C 632nd Tank
Destroyer Battalion. This will be our 49th
consecutive meeting that we’ve had with
Company C ever since 1945. We get together every year without fail.
OWEN: Not there. No. Well they did back
in the rest areas. They put up tents. Every
once in a while they’d rotate you back to the
rest area. Let you rest up because my outfit
had the longest combat record ever of any
United States military outfit. We had 654
days of combat. That’s the greatest total of
any outfit in the military service in the
United States.
NELSON: That’s great. Did you ever have
to help retrieve a wounded buddy from the
field of combat?
OWEN: Yes.
NELSON: Did you receive many letters and
or packages, if so, how often? What type of
things did you get in these packets?
OWEN: Well, we would receive them like
everybody else. I suppose in bunches. We
wouldn’t get any for a long time and all of a
sudden we’d get a mail call and we’d get a
whole bunch of dated letters, a whole bunch
of papers and some boxes. I remember we
got boxes of food and we’d open the things
up. I especially remember things like Baby
Ruth candy bars. They were so green with
mold, you know. They looked like the grass
out in front so we’d scrape that mold off and
ate them and we’d thought they were great.
Back home they’d throw the damn things in
the garbage. But, boy, over there that was a
treat. We just scraped off the mold and ate
them.
NELSON: About the rest of the men. Did
they write and receive letters?
OWEN: Yeah. I think most of them did.
Then when we did get a box we’d share it.
You shared whether you wanted to or not.
They came in and put the grabs on it. But
everybody was real about it.
NELSON: Would you tell us about that?
What you can remember.
OWEN: Well, I like to pass on that one.
NELSON: Okay, fine. During your combat
duties did you ever catch any enemy prisoners? If so, please describe the circumstances.
OWEN: Well, the first two that we captured
were a couple of Japanese
?
you
know before you go in on a landing you get
the bombardment from the ships. You get
the bombing from the Air Force. Then you
get the strafing with the fighter planes. After
all that you hit the beach and in fact as we
hit the beach, why the liberator bombers,
B26, I guess they call them B24. They were
still dropping and the whole ground was
shaking when we hit the beach. We stayed
in there the first night and nothing happened.
We had expected a counter attack by sea but
the gosh darn white phosphorous you know
on the ocean out there, it makes you imagine
things. You think it’s a ship coming in, you
can imagine this and that and all it is, is the
gosh darn foam on the ocean. The phosphorus is bright at night. In the morning we had
�Donald W. Owens Page 8
put in a machine gun at the base of this coconut tree. We were taking a break and one
of the guys just happened to roll over on his
back and was going to take a break and he
looked up and up to the top of that tree and
he says, “I think there’s some guys up
there.” Sure enough, there were two Japanese up there, crawled up that tree, survived
all that Navy blasting and they were so
scared that they defecated all over their legs.
It was running down their legs. They come
down and, of course, it was real tricky. So
the first thing we made them do was strip.
We had them strip butt naked because
they’d hide stuff on them like grenades or
whatever. So we stripped them down and
then we took them over to the headquarters
and they had an American who was a Japanese interpreter. He started questioning them
and when he got done, he started laughing at
one point and says, “Well, one of the things
he told me, “They told us you might get
Texas back but you’ll never get California.”
They had those guys buffaloed into thinking
that those Japs thought they were in California.
NELSON: You were never involved in any
type of concentration camps? Did you know
if they existed?
OWEN: No, not in the area I was in. They
didn’t have any such things.
NELSON: What was the highlight occurrence of combat experience or any other experience you remember?
OWEN: The highlight?
NELSON: Yes. I suppose the thing that had
the most tension to it.
OWEN: I suppose your first landing. When
you make your first landing you’re going to
hit the beach, you know. You’re a
wide-open target. You’re not ready to check
out, of course, and I remember when we hit
the beach this Major says to me. I don’t
know where we came fromhe wasn’t our
guys. I shouldn’t say that because a lot of
times being the “recon” sergeant I went with
the first wave of the infantry. Then I’d have
to shop around to find places to bring in the
heavy tank because we had these 30-ton
tank destroyers and you just couldn’t bring
them in anywhere. They’d go any place
where a man could walk because of the
buoyancy. But this one Major hit the beach
just about the time we hit the beach, the
machine guns opened up and boy, you
know, we hit the deck needless to say. This
one Major says to me, “Sergeant, you go in
and silence that machine gun.” And I said,
“The hell with you, Major, after you.” He
said, “God damn it, I’ll have you court martialed. I said, “You go ahead, but I’m not
going in there right now.” And I never heard
any more from the guy but I thought that
was a ridiculous command.
NELSON: Sounds resolved right there. Tell
us what you and the other men did to celebrate America’s traditional family holidays
such as Thanksgiving and Christmas.
OWEN: Well, even up there that’s about the
only good meals we had. It seems that no
matter where you were, the American troops
always managed to get some turkey and
trimmings and stuff for Christmas and I’ll be
darned if they didn’t figure out a way to do
that. And that’s what we had. We had turkey
a couple times and then we got the Christmas presents from back home. Some of
these stores __?__ funny. We had our cigarette rations. We got them for nothing, of
course. We got them for nothing so this one
time, this was at Christmas time, too. I got
my cigarette ration which was a carton of
Old Gold cigarette and I opened up the carton, took the wrapping off of it and it said
�Donald W. Owens Page 9
inside “Compliments of McNeeny’s Department Store, Beloit, Wisconsin.” This
was a store that was (interruption) born and
raised, and they were sending, you know,
giving money to get these things for the
troops but I thought it was quite coincidental. Here I am, a guy from Beloit and I
get a present from the store in Beloit.
NELSON: That’s great. How did you return
to the United States after the end of the war?
OWEN: I got the word to rotate because my
turn had come so they gave us a half an
hour. They said, “You’ve got one half hour
to get down to the __?__ airdrome which is
an airport, another area field in New Guinea,
to get down there and get on that ship. I said,
“Okay. Goodbye.” The old man tried to talk
me [into] a 1st Lieutenant Field commission.
I said, “No thanks, Captain. I got this far and
no thank you. Thanks, but no thanks.” So I
dropped everything and the supply Sergeant
said, “Hey, you’re charged for all that stuff.”
I said, “Send me the bill, Boss, because I’m
gone.” I didn’t stop for nothing. So we went
down there and we got in this old C-47 and
the guys, the Air Force guys, they didn’t put
a big door on the sidebig open door. They
took it and threw it in on the floor. We took
off and away we went. The damn door was
flopping because of the wind coming in
there. We got to Hollandia and landed and
they took us with the boat and we got on that
boat and I’ll be darned that boat sat there for
30 days. It never moved. They took us off
the boat and put us to work every day. First
they gave us a half an hour to get there and
then we sat for 30 days.
NELSON: Maybe they were waiting for a
convoy or something?
OWEN: No we came home all by ourselves.
NELSON: Is that right?
OWEN: Nobody. Just us.
NELSON: Well, now when you arrived in
the United States what happened?
OWEN: We came back to the same place
we left from, Angel Island. We got in there
and boy, talk about the royal service. Everybody was hopping and waiting on you and
they’re measuring you up for clothes. “Here
you want this? You want that?” God, they
were treating us like kings. I’ll tell you. So
they measured us all up, issued this stuff.
Got everything, put us on a ship and went
across the bay. They put us on a train. They
put us on the car so and so and said, “Now
when the car that you’re in gets to Chicago,
the train is just going to drop that car off,
just let it set there. That train is going all the
way to the East Coast. They drop them off
and pretty soon a switch engine hooked on
to us and took us down to Fort Sheridan.
They processed us there and it wasn’t but a
couple of hours. Man, we were on our way. I
mean we really got the treatment. They
side-trackedthey even side tracked passenger trains for us coming home. We just
breezed us right on through. I think it was 39
hours from the West Coast to Chicago.
That’s better than the fastest passenger train.
NELSON: When was this? Do you remember what month?
OWEN: I sure do, Yessiree. I got home in
November ’44. I got married in December of
’44 and got discharged in July of ’45. It took
me that long to get out of the system.
NELSON: Please tell us about your military
rank and your decorations especially your
campaign decorations.
OWEN: Well, I didn’t get any Congressional Medals or anything like that. I just got
the usual ones, combat, the Asiatic, South
�Donald W. Owens Page 10
Pacific campaign, American Defense Medal,
three bronze battle stars on it and that is
about it. Usual one, you know.
NELSON: Can you remember some of the
islands that you landed on during the invasion?
NELSON: Expert medal?
OWEN: Well, mostly in New Guinea and
Good Enough Island. See New Guinea is the
2nd biggest in the world. New Guinea is
1500 miles long and is 12,000
OWEN: Yeah. I got all those. I had the
highest score in the entire division. I was top
man in the division and I wound up eventually as a in the reserves I wound up as
1st Sergeant. That is about it.
(Other side of tape is blank).
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
World War II Veterans and their Stories
Description
An account of the resource
In the mid-1990s Midway Village Museum interviewed World War II veterans about their military experiences. The interviews were recorded on cassette tape and then transcripts were typed up. Those written transcripts are available here. In some cases parts of the interview were inaudible. These sections have been reflected with question marks or the use of square brackets around a word or phrase that is the transcriber's best guess. No audio files have been digitized.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Midway Village Museum
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Midway Village Museum
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1993-2001
Rights
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Midway Village Museum
Language
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English
Format
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pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Charles Nelson
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Donald W. Owens
Location
The location of the interview
Rockford, Illinois
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Cassette Tape
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Donald W. Owens
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
March 23, 1994
Description
An account of the resource
Born February 4, 1919, Donald W. Owens joined the Army Anti Tank Battalion in April of 1941. He was discharged in July 1945. He died September 27, 2009.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Midway Village Museum
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Rockford Illinois
Veterans
World War 2
World War II