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TRANSCRIBER: MICHELLE G. SPENCE, CCR, RPR
TRANSCRIPTION DATE: 4/27/2010
(No audio at beginning of DVD)
(2:02) KILGORE: -- for about a year and a half's training,
and they were one of the 29th division and I was part of the very
first ones on Omaha Beach. At that time, I lost an awful lot of
my friends and acquaintances because they took some real tough
fighting on Omaha Beach. So I like to brag more about my service
in the infantry out of respect for those people than I did about
my service in the ordnance department. My ordnance department
service was primarily repair trucks, provide guns, ammunition for
one heavy bombardment group. I came to rank of Captain in the
ordnance department, and I commanded a company of approximately
75 men. Our job was to serve the ordnance needs of one heavy
bombardment group. That included repairing their guns, supplying
the bombs and ammunition, and looking after their vehicles.
HURST: This was in the U.S. Army?
A. Yes.
Q. Can we go back way to the beginning of your career
in the military? Were you drafted, or did you enlist?
A. I certainly -- I certainly wasn't drafted, no,
ma'am. I was -- went in as a part of an activated National Guard
unit.
Q. Had you enlisted in the National Guard?
A. Oh, yes.
Q. Where were you living at the time?
A. My home was in Delta, Pennsylvania, but I joined the
Maryland National Guard. Delta, Pennsylvania, is a border town.
It's right on the Mason-Dixon line, and the nearest Guard unit
was in Maryland, so I joined that unit and it was the 29th
Division.
Q. Do you remember what year that was?
A. I believe it was in 1937.
Q. Why did you join?
A. That's a very good question. I was young at the
time, a little adventure involved, I suppose. It certainly
wasn't the pay. As I recall in those days, we got two or three
dollars a week for showing up for drill. But -- and my friends
did it, so it's one of those things a young man does.
Q. Do you recall your first days in service?
A. First days? Yes, I do. We were -- I think the
first two weeks that we were called up we spent in the local
armory at Bel Air, Maryland.
Q. When was it that you were -- your Guard was actually
called up?
A. I believe it was January 1st, 1940. We were part of
a -- at that time, it was supposed to serve one year and then be
released, but, of course, Pearl Harbor put a cinch on that so we
were not released. Of course, we stayed for another four or five
-- I stayed for another five years.
Q. When you were called up initially in 1940, what was
that like when -- your first days in service for that call up?
A. What was it like?
Q. Yep. Do you remember where you went in your basic
training?
A. Well, basic training was at Fort Meade, Maryland.
We were terribly short of equipment. I site -- like to site one
example. I was assigned as a sergeant in charge of the mortar
platoon. I was handed a field manual on the 81 millimeter mortar
and told that I was in charge of the mortar platoon. We didn't
have an 81 millimeter mortar. We had broom handles and things of
that nature to use for aiming sticks. So the first three or four
months, that was the kind of equipment we had. Our helmets were
World War I helmets. We were awful short of just about
everything. We got a lot of close-order drill and things that
normally go along with basic training, although in the National
Guard, we had also had that, so it was not -- it was -- it was
interesting but not too exciting.
Q. Now, before, you were telling me that you had
actually had some previous experience. You were at Penn State _?
A. I had -- I was at Penn State for one semester in
1936. I was 16 years old. It was the end of the Depression, and
I came from a poor farm family. There just wasn't money for me
to continue schooling, so I had one semester, and during that
semester, I took reserve officer training program that they had
at the school.
Q. So when you were called up, why were you a sergeant
right off? Because of your training?
A. In the National -- in the National Guard, I had been
promoted to Corporal, but when we went into Federal service,
nearly every enlisted non com, as we called them, was promoted
one rank, so I was Corporal, but I -- overnight, I became
Sergeant. That was just that simple. From that point, of
course, I was promoted to -- and this came along real fast. I
don't know how many months later I was promoted to First
Sergeant, and of course, First Sergeant in our company in the
infantry, I think we were supposed to have around 200 men, but we
never had more than 150 because again, it was the beginning of
things and their -- the Draft was just getting under way. But
then, as I told you earlier, I went off -- I was taken out of the
unit to go to officer candidate school, and during the time I was
in officer candidate school, the 90-day wonder school, as we
called it. I was promoted to -- again to Master Sergeant, but I
only drew one month's pay as a master sergeant because six or
eight weeks later I was commissioned to Second Lieutenant. So I
did go through all the ranks from Private through to and
including Master Sergeant.
Q. Pretty quickly, too.
A. Well, I -- I did what I was told when I was told and
I insisted that those served under me do the same thing and it
worked. I didn't have the brain associated with a college
education, but when I was given a job to do, I did it.
Q. Where did you go to officer candidate school?
A. Aberdeen, Maryland.
Q. How long were you at Fort Meade before you went to
OCS?
A. Well, it was about a year and a half, I think. I'm
not sure. I have a -- a bundle of, we called it our 201 file, a
bundle of papers about yea thick. I could trace this if need be,
but I'm not sure of that, but I have -- I have those papers.
Q. So your duties at Fort Meade, then, were practicing
and getting ready for the --
A. Well, we had drills, of course, that I told you we
-- broom handles and rocks and everything else to duplicate this
_ equipment. We eventually got the equipment we were supposed to
have, and of course, during the course of time that we had it, we
actually had some practice on the firing range using the real --
real missiles. And the unit, of course, was the D Company, which
is the 4th company of the battalion that were called the heavy
weapons company. We had the machine guns and mortars, one
platoon of the mortars, and the rest were machine guns. So we
all had training in the use of the weapon, training of the -- on
the field, actual range practice.
Q. Do you remember any of your instructors during basic
A. Well, I remember some of the officers of our
company, of course. I remember one in particular, Lieutenant --
Lieutenant Grant Hankins. He was -- he came with us from the
National Guard, too, and I believe he was -- had a rank of a
Sergeant in the National Guard and he was commissioned to Second
Lieutenant when we were called up. He turned out to be an
excellent instructor, and I think later on in the conflict, he
became part of General Eisenhower's staff on the invasion of
Europe. I'm not too sure about that. But our company
commander's name was Archer. He was formerly a lawyer from
Aberdeen, Maryland. But we had many instructors, of course, and
I -- I don't -- I -- that's a long time ago.
Q. When you went to OCS in Aberdeen, what did they
teach you there?
A. Well, it was ordnance -- ordnance training. We had
bombs and ammunition, we had motor mechanics, we had public
speaking, of course, we had the usual physical training. I
recall that the -- the close-order drill associated with the
military for me was a laugh because I -- I taught it in -- myself
in the -- in the infantry and when we were at OCS, the
instructors would pick on an individual, call them out to lead
the platoon in drill. Well, I knew that close-order drill book
by heart and I had one session of it and they never called me
again because I could have well taken over in that -- that
department as the instructor, I'm sure. But there's the things
that come along and we took it as it came, you know. But we had
very extensive training in bombs, the makeup of bombs, the
numbers -- I remember a lot of the fuses were M10, M20, M30 and
so forth and we used to go M happy trying to remember all those
numbers. But we had to handle them later and we shouldn't -- we
had to know their qualities and what they could do and what they
couldn't do.
Q. And where did you go after OCS?
A. I was transferred to -- I can't remember the unit
number again, but I was transferred to a unit at Tucson, Arizona,
and there, I think there was only about five or six people
assigned to what was supposed to be a 70-man company. The
ordnance units that I associated with, each one -- each heavy
bombardment group had one of these so-called ordnance maintenance
and supply companies. In other words, their duties were to
provide the things that I mentioned to you, the bombs, repair the
guns, repair the trucks. In fact, we even had a watch repairman.
And our little shop was on wheels. We had a little machine shop,
a welding shop. But we could do -- take care of all those needs
and we did. Well, when I went to Tucson, Arizona, again because
of the early part of the war and the shortage of personnel and
equipment, there were -- the unit had been designated, but there
was only three or four men and myself were there for about, I
think, maybe two or three months. I don't want to trick myself
in here filling in the time because my military service covers a
lot of space for the short time I was there.
During the time I was in Tucson, I was promoted to
First Lieutenant, and I got the idea that I might like to fly
these things, so I applied for flight training and was accepted.
In those days, to be into the flight training program, you had to
have two years of college, of course, I didn't have that, but
they waived it because the need was so great and -- so I went off
to preflight school in Santa Ana, California. I don't know how
long that lasted, but a relatively short time. And then from
there, I was back -- sent back to a little airfield near Tucson
way out in the desert where we took -- called primary training
with little bits of airplanes. I think I remember the name of
the thing. It was a Ryan, open cockpit, I think it was a
five-cylinder. I remember the engines because those engines
always intrigued me. It was a ?Kerner? five-cylinder engine.
And the -- that was the very beginning of the flight training.
And our instructors there were civilians. It was a two place
plane. I don't think I lasted more than about two or three weeks
there because I just positively could not get along with my
civilian instructor. He insisted each morning that we line up
and salute him, and that just -- I just wouldn't do it. I
wouldn't salute a civilian. I was gung ho -- gung ho military.
I wouldn't do it. And this one -- one thing led to another and I
wind up being dropped from the flight training program. It
didn't hurt my military career because I continued to be a first
lieutenant, and shortly after that, I was assigned some kind of a
research project that was initially in the B-24 airplane, I think
it was, the waist gunners. They had a -- they could slide a door
open in the side of the plane, and if -- if they weren't careful,
they could hit their own wing tips with the machine gun. And I
was assigned to a research project to try to do something that
would prevent them from hitting that wing. So to make it, I
guess, militarily legal to fly, they sent me off to aerial
gunnery school, and I was there for, I think, three or four weeks
and I was given --
Q. Was that still in Tucson, Arizona?
A. That was in Las Vegas, Nevada. And they -- that
gave me a, what they called an air -- air crew member, I think it
is. I'm qualified to wear the wings of an air crew member. And
here again, you -- you -- we -- it was -- it was child's play for
me because in the infantry, I knew what -- used to know every
name, every part in that machine gun. The aircraft machine guns
are basically the same. And as far as the shooting is concerned,
I grew up on a farm when I had my first rifle when I was nine
years old and I rarely missed what I aimed at.
In any event, then from that point on, I was sent, I
believe, to Venice, Florida, and again, I was given command of a
company which comprised two or three enlisted men and a tent full
of equipment. These things were all forming at the time. There
was no --
A. The war had broken out, but we just didn't have the
people and equipment to provide all this overnight, but the --
the administration part of it had already set up. The companies
were designated. From there I transferred -- went on from there
to Italy, and I spent, I don't know, 20 -- 23 months, I think it
was 23 months in Italy.
Q. Do you remember the time frame on that?
A. I -- well, I could kind of figure it backwards. I
was officially -- I was at home December, latter part of December
in 1945, and I was about 21 months over there and there, of
course, I served in the capacity of the company commander of this
unit that served a heavy bomb group. I forgot the designation of
the bomb group, but again, this 201 file that I have would --
would give that.
Q. Do you remember the name of the company commander?
A. When I went there, the company commander's name was
Cowen, but he was transferred out -- Ralph Cowen, and he was
transferred out, of course, and then I was put in his position,
so I was the company commander.
Q. You were the company commander over in Italy?
A. In Italy, yes.
Q. Do you know where that was located in Italy?
A. We were located near Foggia. Foggia was, I believe
it's sort of -- it's more or -- it's not in -- really in the
south. I'd say it's a little south of the -- the mid half of the
-- of Italy, and there were several airfields around Foggia.
There was one --
Q. Did we have a United States base there, or did we
just use their --
A. Well, of course, the Germans had been pushed out a
short time before, but Foggia had a main airport, and there were
several satellite airports around, and so we -- our -- our people
moved in, and of course, took over.
Q. Foger, F-o-g-e-r?
A. F-o-g-g-i-a.
Q. And how long were you in Italy?
A. About 23 months.
Q. That's a long time. Well, what was your job
assignment there?
A. My job? I told you, the company commander of the
ordnance supply and maintenance company.
Q. As the company commander, what kind of things would
you be responsible for?
A. Well, sort of like a father and son arrangement. I
was the commander of the company, I had to maintain discipline, I
had to oversee the operation of the normal administrative details
of a company. We -- we, of course, had our own kitchen. We had
-- we had to provide our own sanitary facilities, look out for
the men. And when I use the word men, I'd like to change that a
little bit. I think I would have, over the years. None of us
were men. We were all boys, and I quote ?Brokoff? on that. We
just thought we were men. And during the time we were there, I
lost one man. His death was not combat related. And aside from
that, I didn't -- we had no particular health problems or any --
any -- any particular real problems. I had few disciplinary
problems. I was, of course, involved in censoring letters and
things of that nature. I remember a couple of times I had to
administer company punishment because of someone trying to send
word home that they were in such a spot. Typical kid stuff. I
mean, they were -- I didn't consider them to be any enemy,
aliens, or anything -- any such thing, but we had regulations,
and you were not allowed to tell -- write home and say I'm in
such and such a spot. I remember this one case, I called the man
-- young man in and pointed out to him that that couldn't go and
he would have to be punished for it. Well, his punishment was
changing truck tires for a week. It didn't hurt him, but it let
him know and the others around him that we did mean business when
we said something. And of course, just -- you know, to be a
commanding officer, you have to be -- you have to use a lot of
common sense, you have to be one of the boys and, yet, you have
to let the boys know that you are the boss. It's just that
simple.
Q. What rank were you at this time when you --
A. Captain.
Q. Oh, really? Were you a tough commanding officer?
A. Certainly I didn't consider myself to be tough. I
never asked my men to do anything that I hadn't done or wouldn't
do myself. That was my theory, and it works. And I -- as I told
you, I had no disciplinary problems. We got our job done.
That's the important part of the whole issue. We had an
assignment and that was done and we did it the best of our
knowledge. And proof of the pudding in that respect was that we
rarely got a visit from higher -- higher headquarters, and of
course, if things weren't happening according to plan, higher
headquarters would soon be on my neck, but they rarely came out
to see us because our job was being done. We were part of a
machine. When the Air Force needed a hundred
five-hundred-pounders or whatever, they'd get in touch with us
and our boys would load them on the trucks and run them over to
the airfield. We had a bomb dump, you know. I don't know how
Q. Is that what your main job for your --
A. Well, like I told you --
Q. -- company was --
A. -- the main job was to check -- repair the machine
guns, provide them with ammunition, provide them with their
bombs. They'd call us and say they want a certain size bomb and
so many, but we had the trucks and the people to do it and we --
Q. So then you would take your -- those bombs _+?
A. We'd go to our bomb dump which was over in another
field a hundred -- quarter of a mile away, perhaps. We had piled
the bombs all over the place. And they'd want different size
bomb and they'd call for the fuses. Some fuses were the type
that explode when they contact. Others were fuses that would go
off ten seconds later or -- for example, if you're going to blow
up 1 building, you will hit the building first, let the bomb go
down through, and then blow -- then blow up. The instantaneous
model would blow up when it touched the building, things like
that.
Q. Sounds like a pretty dangerous place to work. Did
you have any incidents of ordnance blowing up?
A. No. And, of course, there was very little -- very
little possibility of that if we followed the rules that we were
taught. The bombs themselves -- I -- I got a fractured leg. Two
bombs rolled together, like five-hundred-pounders and my -- I
fractured my leg. No danger of the bomb going off without the
fuse. It takes a fuse to set the bomb off. It -- this case
where I hurt my leg, the tailgate of the truck was open and the
bombs began rolling out and I ran over to try to stop it and I
got my leg between two bombs. Not much danger of the thing
blowing up. But as you point out, it sounds dangerous to you,
but if you get to work with these kind of things, you get to
understand them. That's -- that's the important issue.
Q. While you were in Italy, do you have any memorable
experiences?
A. Well, we all had memorable experiences.
Q. Can you think of one or two that you could tell me
about?
A. I always like to commend the ingenuity of the people
I worked with. You know, our little company, we had tools, all
kinds of tools, and it would never cease to amaze me, even the
young age that I was, it _ cease to amaze me of how people could
dream up ways of providing personal comfort. We lived in tents.
The city of Foggia had been heavily bombed during the war. Some
of -- they'd take -- our guys would go there and scavenge a sink,
for example, out of a bathroom and rig up a wooden platform to
hold it, and then they'd get hold of tank -- I don't know what
kind of tanks they would use, but they'd have a small tank they
got out of some junk yard or something and put -- for water.
They had a homemade water truck that they built themselves using
an English Ford truck and they got a half of an Italian tank car
out of a railroad yard, cut it in half with the torches and
rigged this thing up to cart water. And they'd come around --
every day they'd go get a tank of water and fill these little
things up with a tent so you could have a sink to wash. They had
stoves that they made from five-gallon paint cans, a brick, and
some copper tubing. It's so simple that it's -- almost sounds
funny, but they used -- for five gallons of gasoline, you could
keep -- keep warm all night with this gasoline stove. With the
brick, with the gasoline dripping on the brick, when it gets hot,
the gasoline doesn't explode, it ignites into a roar. And for a
smokestack in a tent, they took expended artillery shells, cut
the ends out of them, and weld them together to make a stove
pipe. I mean, these kind -- these guys were ingenious and that
helped a lot because to keep the trucks rolling, sometime it took
some little ingenuity. I know we had -- it was a no-no to have
what we call a dead line, the trucks that aren't being used,
they're sitting out back because we need parts that hadn't come
in or we can't get them. There was one part in one of the trucks
we call a weapons carrier and the front steering mechanism that
had two tapered roller bearings, and they would wear out and you
just couldn't steer the truck. And my machinist, he says,
Captain, if I could get some brass, he says, I could make
bushings that will do the same job. Well, they scavenged the
brass rods from the Italian shipyard and he made these bushings.
Well, the truck wouldn't steer as well, it was hard to steer, but
it would go. It kept the truck on the road. That helped us do
our job. It kept that dead line down to low. These are the kind
of things they could do, but using their ingenuity, and I -- I
always thought that was the greatest asset we had.
Q. Wow.
A. We had to dig a pit by our kitchen to take the
kitchen swill, similar to our modern-day septic systems, and the
soil where we were was terrible to dig. Well, one of them come
up with the idea, and it worked, bury a hundred-pound bomb and
then set it off. It loosened the dirt up and blowed up that
hole. There's the start. I mean, you give them -- give them the
tool, they'll find their way out.
Q. Very resourceful. Let me back up for a minute.
Where were you when Pearl Harbor was hit? Do you remember where
you were?
A. I definitely do. I was at Fort Meade, Maryland,
hoping to go home in two weeks. That was at the end of our
initial one-year call up period.
Q. And do you remember your feelings at the time when
you -- and how you heard about Pearl Harbor?
A. Well, first of all, I don't think I even knew Pearl
Harbor existed. I -- just, it was a name, that's all. How I
felt at the time, you're talking sixty plus years. I don't know,
Dear.
Q. How did Pearl Harbor change your plans? Obviously,
you didn't leave the service then. You were going to go home in
two weeks --
A. Well, I was --
Q. -- before Pearl Harbor?
A. I was scheduled to be released in two weeks, but as
I mentioned earlier, I was a gung ho soldier. I was right now,
I'm ready to go to --
Q. Did you just stay right on? Did you get any leave?
A. Oh, no, I didn't get any -- I didn't get any
official leave in four and a half years. When I was released
from the service, I think I got 90 -- 120 days. I was -- I came
home from the service the very end of December and I came to
Hartford on, I believe, a Thursday, I got a job on Friday, bought
working clothes on the weekend, and went to work Monday morning
and I got paid for four months military pay while I was working
because this is the accrued leave that we were entitled to. I
had several what they call delay en routes that -- all that
moving around. I would get orders, and I have them in that 201
file. I would be sent to a certain location, but I'd be given
two weeks to get there. It might take two days, so the rest of
it I could do as I wished. A couple of times I managed to get --
swing home and stay a couple of days and still reach my point of
military designation.
Q. When you were in Italy, did you get to see any parts
of Italy?
A. Oh, yes. I was in Rome sight-seeing on a so-called
rest leave. This is after the war was officially over. Because,
again, to be released, sent home, they had a point system that
was based on -- one of the big way of accumulating point -- the
more points you had, the sooner you were sent home. Well, the
Air Force boys that flew the planes, every time they were
involved in a combat setup, they'd get a battle star, a battle
star for certain battles and certain -- each one of those
counted, I think, five points. Well, of course, I never left
that location and I -- I -- I only had one battle star. I was
given credit for the battle of Rome -- the Rome-Arno Campaign.
But they would build up these big points, so gradually, we were
sent home on that basis. So I was over there -- I think the ***
surrendered around the 19th of August, and I didn't get home
until December. And I was -- reached a point in my company, had
sent my men home, _ myself and one sergeant left in the company.
I mean, this is how -- how they were breaking things down. But
-- but the boys that flew the airplanes, the ones that did the
actual flying got these battle stars and so did the ground crew
because their unit got the thing. Well, I always thought that
was an unfair arrangement because the guy that was up in the
airplane being shot at, he deserved the battle star, but the guy
that was down on the ground cutting the grass didn't really --
shouldn't have it, you know. But you can't have everything.
Q. Where were you when you heard about the end of the
A. Drinking warm French beer in Cannes, France. I was
Q. How did you get to France?
A. Rest leave. We -- they sent -- they flew us up
there on a rest leave in a C-47, we called them. They were the
airplane that the paratroopers used. They had wooden seats with
flat boards and they landed the thing on the beach at Cannes,
France, the hard -- hard-packed sand. And we were -- that's
where I -- where I was when I heard all this. I was in this
French hotel that the Army had taken over really living it up on
powdered eggs and Spam.
Q. You were really celebrating.
A. Yeah.
Q. And then you had several months back in Italy. What
A. Well, again, when the company dwindled down to the
point where there were no people left, I was --
Q. _+?
A. I was assigned to -- the ordnance work maintenance
work is based -- was based on an echelon, the word I think they
used, and for example, the truck driver that drives the truck,
first -- his -- his maintenance is first echelon. He checks the
pressure in the tires, he checks the oil, and a very limited
amount of repair work. The next stage was a little bit more
complicated. We were what they called third echelon. Our job
was to do unit replacement. We were supposed to, for example, if
a truck needed a carburetor, we were to take one of out the stock
-- stock box, put a new one on it, and send the other one in for
repair. This didn't always work in our case because here again,
there was the system, but we -- we did a lot of it ourselves,
like that carburetor that's needing repair, repair it right in
our own shop. But theoretically, we would change the part. And
when the war was over, I was assigned to what they called, I
believe, the fifth echelon shop. I can't think of where it was
now. It was somewhere just north of Naples, but there we did
complete overhaul from the ground up, and I was assigned to that
shop. And what they were doing primarily was preparing vehicles
to be sent to Japan. They were being reworked, rebuilt, painted,
sealed for over-the-water transportation. And I was there until
the Japanese surrendered. And then I think for about two or
three weeks, they assigned me as an air engineering officer.
Don't -- just a -- on paper. I spent a lot of time reading
technical manuals on P38s, but I didn't do anything on a P38.
Q. You had told me before that you did not see any
direct combat but that you heard -- what was it you heard from a
distance?
A. Well, I put it this way: I -- I never saw any
direct combat, but I did see a lot of the horrors of war. For
example, when I was in Rome, just after the Krauts moved out,
they had -- there were -- I think there were ten Italian -- ten
Germans were killed in a -- somebody threw a bomb in Rome, and
they rounded up 300 men and boys, took them out to a sand pit,
and machine gunned them. I was there. I saw that. I saw their
bodies, of course. I was there when they dug them out. They
took a bulldozer and covered them up in a hurry. I think that
case just recent -- within the last four or five years, perhaps,
that person responsible was still up for trial on that -- on that
count. But any event, the -- and I see in -- when we landed in
Naples, to get on shore, we had to walk over the upturned hull of
a ship and then walk on a homemade catwalk to get on shore. I
spent my first night in a church with no roof sleeping on the
stone floor. I remember that quite well. I remember the kids in
Naples. There was a lot of little kids that were, I guess most
of them were homeless as a result of the war. This one boy, we
had about an inch of snow on the ground, had a crutch made out of
an old broom, his leg was off at the knee standing in our chow
line with a gallon can with a wire handle begging for the food we
had left over. I never forgot that. I took my allotment of food
and gave him the whole thing and walked away without breakfast
myself. But Naples was running wild with gangs of kids, most of
them were homeless as a result of the war and things of this
nature.
And, of course, I've been to Cassino. Cassino was a
little village at a road intersection south of Rome. Well, more
than a village. I don't know what the population was, but quite
a town. And, of course, their buildings were all masonry. But
one of the biggest battles of Italy was fought at Cassino. We
were -- that's the battle that I got the battle star for, and
that's the place that I got to see right after the fighting when
they broke through -- our boys broke through there, the next stop
was Rome. But up on the mountain above Cassino was a monastery
that dates back -- way back in history, I don't know, year 1100
or something like that. The top of the mountain was a monastery.
The Germans utilized that area for gun emplacements and for
observation purposes, and they made it almost possible to -- to
take the thing. It eventually was taken by frontal attacks, but
it was repeated attacks that a lot of boys died there. And the
town itself just didn't exist. It looked like a pile of rubble
that you might see at the city dump after all this shelling.
Q. Earlier you told me you didn't get any medals or
citations, but you actually got that battle star. Is that
considered a citation?
A. Well, if you were -- if you were in an area
designated as a battle area, you were entitled to the battle star
whether you were pushing the bayonette or whether you were
cooking the pancakes. In my case, I was cooking the pancakes.
Q. And that was for the battle of Cassino?
A. That was -- the battle star was what they called the
Rome-Arno Campaign, and that included the -- the town I referred
to, Cassino.
Q. Arno, A-r-n-o?
A. I believe so. It's the name of a river in Italy.
See, our troops landed at Anzio, that's up the coast of Naples,
and fought their way into the center of the country at this road
intersection with the main route into Rome. And, of course, Rome
was the -- I believe General Mark Clark was in charge of the
?fare?. That was the idea was to get to Rome. Fortunately, Rome
was declared an open city and didn't get subject to all the
horrors of war. But there's one thing about the -- the --
amusing incident. When we -- after the Germans had been driven
north into the Apennines, we got an opportunity to send, I don't
know, two people each week to a rest leave in Rome. And one of
the boys in our company was not too bright, but a good kid, but
he's not too bright. When they took him into Rome, went by the
Colosseum, and he says, boy, they sure bombed the hell out of
this place.
Q. Did you get any of your leave time in Rome?
A. Huh?
Q. Did you get a turn at getting some leave time in
Rome, too?
A. Oh, I got to see -- tour in Rome. I got to the
Appian Way, I got to see the aqueducts, I got to see the
catacombs. I even had an opportunity to talk with Pope Pius the
twelfth.
Q. Really?
A. Quite an accidental thing. We had a -- he had an
audience, velvet ropes keeping everybody back, and there's
probably 2000 GIs around there. And he came along, and outside
the place they -- vendors were selling all kinds of religious
articles. Well, you hold them out for him to bless. And he --
he said to me, he said -- I've forgotten what it was now, but he
said he had a good friend in Boston and he spoke to me a few
minutes in broken English, so -- I didn't -- didn't excite me a
great deal, but it's always something to brag about, I guess.
Q. Yeah. A little bit about living conditions. How
did you stay in touch with your family while you were in Italy?
A. How did I stay in touch? By letters only.
Q. And were you married at that time?
A. Yes.
Q. How long had you been married?
A. I was married in 1942.
Q. So just before you left, or when?
A. Just before -- just before I went to officer
candidate school. I was a sergeant at the time, first sergeant
at the time.
Q. So it was only letters, but you still couldn't tell
where you were?
A. Oh, no, you weren't allowed -- that was a no-no.
Q. What was the food like? You told us a little bit.
Powdered eggs and Spam?
A. That was the basic idea. I know when we returned,
they had us -- we came back to Virginia someplace, I forgot,
Hampton Roads, I think, but anyhow, they had a big mess hall and
had these German prisoners of war waiting on tables and every
table had a -- in front of their plate was a quart of milk, real
milk . I remember pulling the top out of that thing and drinking
the whole thing before I sat it down and that *** had another
one there in five minutes. And steak. We never heard of --
heard of such a thing.
Q. No? What was the best meal you had in Italy?
A. Kind of hard to say. I don't know. We -- I don't
know. We -- we ate well, of course, because none of us starved
to death, but.
Q. But not steak and real milk?
A. No, Dear. Powdered milk. You get used to that
after a while, but it's hard to get used to.
Q. Did you feel pressure or stress as -- as the company
commander?
A. Feel what?
Q. Pressure or stress, or you just considered it as
part of your _+?
A. Well, I don't know. I was too young to feel stress.
Was always something to do, and I told you, I had a good bunch of
people. We had a job to do and we were doing it, that's all, and
we were all proud that we were doing it. There's something there
that -- that's kind of a spirit you don't see too much of today.
Q. Did you do anything special for good luck?
A. Good luck?
Q. You know, like rabbit's foot or --
A. No, we -- I don't know what you mean by good luck.
I used to play quite a lot of Blackjack, but I never had any
luck.
Q. What did people do for entertainment?
A. Card games. We had -- I think we had a radio.
Yeah, the Army issued us a radio. See, we had had power problems
there because of voltage change constantly. But we had a radio
that had a series of places that you could plug it in like 100 --
you could plug it in for 90 volts or 100 volts or whatever. If
it wasn't coming in properly, you'd try a different setting. We
had that thing, and it was one source. We had -- weather
permitting, we had athletic equipment for baseball, horseshoes.
I remember, again, after the war was over, I used to let part of
the guys go to the beach with the truck. They'd take the truck
and -- and the portable kitchen unit and some ammunition, some
rifles, have target practice in the surf, things like that. We
had ammunition to throw at the cat after the war was over. The
guys used to take five hundred rounds down to the beach with
their rifles, throw milk cans in the water and shoot at them, you
know, just for something to do.
Q. Did you stay in touch with any of the -- your fellow
soldiers or officers after the war?
A. I did with this one sergeant that I -- my friend in
-- back in the infantry, and he's the one that kept me posted on
what happened at Omaha Beach.
Q. Do you remember his name?
A. Name was Robert Wilson, Robert C. Wilson, and I kept
in touch with him for quite a few years and lost count of him. I
don't know. I tried recently, tried to locate him. One of my
friends is pretty good on the computer, but didn't -- no luck.
Of course, I -- he's passed on by now, I guess, but he was -- he
was my assistant when I was Platoon Sergeant with the mortars and
a very good soldier. He -- very spit and polished. And he
survived the Omaha incident with a minor -- a minor wound, but he
was also, I believe, took part in the Battle of Saint-Lo. But
after that point, I lost contact with him.
Q. After the war when you finally got rotated back to
the United States, where did you go?
A. We were -- we came in in Hampton Roads, Virginia,
and were sent back, I believe, to Fort Meade again to be
released. We were released from service at Fort Meade.
Q. Do you remember the date?
A. Sometime the end of December 1945. That was the --
at that time, I was given the option and took it of joining the
Reserve, and then the Reserve was very inactive after World War
II and I didn't -- did nothing but forgot about it. In the
meantime, we began to have a family, and when I was called back
in 1950, I had already started a new business, we had three
children, a fourth on the way, and boom, I get a letter you need
me.
Q. So you actually only had a lag time of about five
years that you were a civilian --
A. Yeah.
Q. -- before the Army called you back?
A. And --
Q. When you -- when you were back in Italy in World War
II, did you keep a personal diary?
A. No. Should have, but I didn't.
Q. When you came home and discharged from Hampton
Roads, where did you live?
A. Here --
Q. When you became a civilian?
A. We came here to -- I came back here to Hartford,
Connecticut.
Q. And that's where you had your three children and --
A. Well --
Q. -- and your business?
A. -- coming -- after World War II, of course, we had
no children when I came back here, and we built our first home
about, oh, about a mile from here and that was -- I built it
myself, of course, because that was my business. I built this
one.
Q. Your business was construction, house building?
A. Started that before the -- that was my life work
before, so. I built that home and I was self-employed as a
builder for 30 -- 32 years.
Q. Wow. And can you tell me how, then, you were
re-called up in 1950, was it?
A. Called up in the fall of 1950 and released sometime
in the spring of '51. It was an eight-month spread. I'm not
sure the dates on that.
Q. Okay.
A. But I was called up and all I did for eight months
was warm a swivel chair. I was put in charge of an installation
at Fort Dix, New Jersey, that had over 100 civilian employees and
their job was to maintenance military vehicles. I had two very
capable civilian supervisors, and like I say, about all I did was
sign requisition forms and warm that swivel chair. And after
eight months, I went to my commanding officer and I said, look,
if you're going to use me in this war, let's get it over with, I
want to go. Either that, or send me home. He sent me home just
like that, dependency, because I had three children and one on
the way. And it was tough. My wife was home with those three
little kids and --
Q. Were you able to get home at all during that eight
months?
A. Yes, two or three times while I was down there.
Q. When you were in World War II, do you recall your
last day in service?
A. Last day in the service? Not really, no.
Q. And you had said earlier when you got out of the
service in World War II, you came back to Hartford, Connecticut
on a Thursday, had a job on a Friday and started work on a
Monday?
A. That's right.
Q. And was that in construction?
A. Yes.
Q. Did you go on to further education?
A. That again, please?
Q. Did you go on to higher ed?
A. No.
Q. So Penn State was your --
A. That -- that one semester.
Q. -- your only _?
A. That was it.
Q. Did you join any veteran's organization? I know
A. I joined the VFW in 1948, I think it was.
Q. And that's the VFW that you're a member of now
here --
A. Yes, yes.
Q. -- in Avon, Connecticut?
A. Yeah, yeah.
Q. And you've been a member since 1948?
A. Yes.
Q. Did your military experience influence your thinking
about war or military in the general -- in general? I'm sure it
did because you had a lot of military experience.
A. I'm trying to think how to answer that
intelligently. I -- I just certainly hope and wish there are
other ways to settle the differences the world has than by war,
but I -- I don't know what -- how to answer you. Hear a lot of
peace movements and a lot of them are good, but peace at any
price in my mind is no good. I don't know. That's not a very
intelligent answer, but it's the best I can come up with.
Q. That's fine. In the VFW, what kind of activities
have you been involved with?
A. We recently built a memorial. I was -- my job, they
officially called me the clerk of the works. My job was to
supervise the construction of the foundation and the actual
*** of the monument. We have a very nice monument downtown.
We --
Q. That was in Avon, Connecticut?
A. Yes, down the center. We set out as the goal 50,000
dollars to build this thing. We had a lot of -- a lot of -- an
awful lot of community help. A landscape architect did the
drawings for it, the -- the town maintenance department allowed
us to use their -- their equipment to do grading and digging and
so forth, the cement people donated the cement base for the
foundation, and the crane people donated a crane to erect it in
place and all this. My job was to coordinate these people and to
get it put together and so forth. It turned out very well, and
I'm quite proud of that. Our goal of 50,000 dollars, we exceeded
that by about 7,000 dollars. We set up a fund basically just to
maintain the thing so that years to come when it needs cleaning
or resetting or anything, we have funds to do it. Very nice
monument, very -- very unique. Not this --
Q. What year was that completed, do you know?
A. 6, '96.
Q. Do you attend any reunions?
A. No.
Q. How did your service and experiences affect your
life? Had your life have been different?
A. Well, that would be a -- I don't know how to give an
intelligent answer to that. I always was very patriotic, and I
still am. I feel sorry for the people that are over there now,
but I imagine they got pretty much the same feeling we had. We
were doing something we were -- I think patriotic is the word to
put. I don't know.
Q. Did any of your children go into the military?
A. No. Two -- two of the daughters married military
people who are now retired. One retired as a major, one retired
as a colonel.
Q. For children, how many girls and how many boys did
you have?
A. Three girls and a boy.
Q. And how long did you work in your business after you
were retired from the service?
A. I'm trying to think. About 32 years I was
self-employed. I never had more than three or four employees,
and I worked with them every day. One unique part of my work was
that I worked all those years and never signed a contract.
Q. You never signed a contract?
A. Shake hands and go to work. I built some nice
homes. I had nice people to work for.
Q. And you never got burned?
A. Huh?
Q. You never got burned by any of them?
A. I've got burned, yes, but not -- not seriously. But
after I gave that up, I took up inspecting homes for people who
are buying homes. That was before we had licensed inspectors.
And I did that for -- I inspected somewheres near 4,000 homes, I
guess, for people who are buying homes.
Q. Holy cow.
A. And I -- even now, I have -- my basement is a mess.
It's a workshop. I do a lot of work for handicapped children,
church, friends. I build furniture. I take care of my wife, of
Q. But you're officially retired?
A. I don't like to say that. I like to keep busy.
Q. Have you gone back to Italy or any of the places
where you --
A. Yes.
A. Yes, we've been back to Italy.
Q. In modern times?
A. Yes. I don't know how long ago, but the two girls,
their husbands I told you were both military, we went to visit in
Germany and they drove us in the car down to Italy. We were at
Venice, Bologna, I don't know. But anyhow, I've been back to
Italy. Not to the part that I was in, though. We were back in
northern Italy. I was in central and southern Italy.
Q. So you haven't seen that place that you served at?
A. I was impressed when we landed in Italy. I told you
about that boat bit but also ?standing? two big sign boards up in
the Naples harbor. One said Singer sewing machine and the other
said Bayer aspirin.
Q. In English. Is there anything else that you'd like
to add that we have not covered?
A. I think you've done a thorough job. I have nothing
else to add.
Q. I would like to thank you very much, Charles, for
your time and your service.