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TRANSCRIBER: Elizabeth J. Gross - January 12, 2011
EILEEN HURST: Today is January 23rd, 2010. I am interviewing Joseph
Hatala at his home in Canton, Connecticut. Interviewer is Eileen
Hurst from Central Connecticut State University. Also present is
Joe's wife, Josephine Hatala, and Sean Drake (ph).
HURST: What war did you serve in, Joe?
HATALA: World War II.
HURST: And what branch of the service?
HATALA: Army.
HURST: Where you drafted or did you enlist?
HATALA: I was drafted.
HURST: Where were you living at the time?
HATALA: In Burlington.
HURST: Burlington, Connecticut?
HATALA: Yeah, but that's about-- we call Collinsville
because--you know where the Catholic church is?
HURST: I do.
HATALA: Well, past the Catholic--the Catholic church is in
Burlington, and we lived back to the Catholic church, and
the--and the rectory is in Canton, so I already lived over at
the--over the line about 200 yards.
HURST: You recall what year you were drafted?
HATALA: What's that say? My Army discharge.
HURST: All right, we'll check your--we'll check your
discharge papers.
HATALA: Forty--Forty-one.
HURST: '41?
HATALA: I don't know. Forty-two.
HURST: 1942? And where did you go for your basic training?
HATALA: Cape Cod. Camp Edwards.
HURST: And can you describe what that was like?
HATALA: Yeah, well, we had to take our--all our--what's
that--basic marching and all that, and then going out to the
Cape and firing the guns, and then hiking from Camp Edwards
right into ? Wall Street (ph)? Which is 25 miles one way and
then come back. It was in the winter. I was in a--in a
40-millimeter outfit anti-aircraft.
HURST: Do you recall any of your instructors?
HATALA: No, no, none of them. I forget their names. I got a
story to tell you after we finish this here.
HURST: That's okay. I know you'll remember a lot when we're
done. Where did you go after you finished your basic training?
HATALA: Well, they sent us into Camp Myles Standish. No.
Yeah, Camp Myles Standish, Taunton, Massachusetts.
HURST: And how long did you stay there?
HATALA: A week, week and a half, whatever, 'til we got into
the train. And then they shipped us into--shipped us out and we
landed in Staten Island, right into the ship.
HURST: What ship did you sail on?
HATALA: I don't know.
HURST: You didn't have a chance to go home in between? They
shipped you right overseas?
HATALA: No, I was home--you know, like a pass, you know, from,
you know, you get a weekend pass, you know--a couple times I
came home and go back to Edwards, you know.
HURST: When they put you on the ship, where did you land?
HATALA: North Africa.
HURST: So you went right from Staten Island to North Africa?
HATALA: Yup, yup. It took us 14 days to get there.
HURST: What was the trip like?
HATALA: Well, the--it was in March, so, one thing, the ships
up there--you don't see nobody. {Laughs} 'Til you get up there,
you see everybody. I mean, you get seasick and everything else.
HURST: Did you get seasick?
HATALA: Yeah. You know, what they used to do? They used to put
us in a ship, and then you have one ?light? Over there and one
over there, in your quarters, and you were supposed to be on
watch for fire. But everything is swaying and rocking--and do
you know what I mean? ___+ guys just don't get sick, get sick.
HURST: So that was a long 14 days. When you landed in North
Africa, what did you do? Did they--
HATALA: Well, we came in through the Strait of Gibraltar. The
Spitfires were all over top of us. ___ that convoy, and it was
dusk when we were coming in, porpoises were jumping. First time
I ever saw porpoises. Thought they were like big pigs.
Jumping all over the place. I used to stand up in front of the
bulk and just watch 'em. 'Cause, you know, how big they were,
you know what I mean? And we landed, and we had to get off the
ship quickly, and they took us out, and it was getting dark
already, and the next thing you know, we were in an air raid, a
German air raid. So we're out in the field, and the Navy's
shooting, and we don't--we sure just stand out there watching,
everything like a Christmas tree.
HURST: Wow. So you were in the middle of a field? You weren't
even in barracks or bunkers or anything?
HATALA: Nope, nope, nope, nope. How could ?she (ph)? You
didn't have nothing. All you had was your rifle or your coat or
your--you know.
HURST: And when you landed in North Africa, what unit were
you with at that time?
HATALA: I was--
HURST: The anti-aircraft unit?
HATALA: Yeah, yeah, it was the anti-aircraft. What's that,
HURST: 406th Anti-Aircraft?
HATALA: Yeah, yeah.
HURST: And what was your job? What were you trained to do as
part of that unit?
HATALA: Well, I was a heavy machine gunner. A 50-caliber. See,
what it was, you had four big--each company had 200,000. And you
had four big guns that were 90s. You know what a 90 is, but
their shells are like this {gesturing}, all right? They'll
shoot five miles. But then they had to have machine guns to
protect their guns, because the big guns couldn't shoot air
planes coming in fast. You had to have machine guns around it,
so I was a heavy machine gunner. But if to substitute--you'd
have to go over to the big gun, you know what I mean. But--
HURST: So you actually were trained that you knew how to
shoot the machine gun and the big 90s?
HATALA: Well, I used to help out now and then, you know, I
mean, just to, you know, just to learn a job, you know what I
mean.
HURST: No.
HATALA: If something happens. Because what it was, was all the
90s were controlled by your radar. And when the radar went out,
then the fellows--the squad on the 90s would have to take over
manually, see?
HURST: Can you tell me about the machine gun that you--you
were trained on?
HATALA: It's a 50-caliber. It's just a 50-caliber machine gun.
HURST: Well, what kind was it? Was it a Browning or--
HATALA: Well, I guess, I don't know.
HURST: You don't know?
HATALA: I imagine probably Colts made it, or somebody.
HURST: Right. So once you landed in North Africa how long did
you stay there before you shipped out to someplace else?
HATALA: Well, we shipped out to--I think it was the second
day or the third day--we had all our guns in the LSTs. The big
guns were in the LSTs, and we come under another German raid. I
this one was a beauty.
HURST: Can you tell me about it?
HATALA: I--I--the Navy opened up, because all our guns are
already on the ships. We have nothing, only our rifles and we're
out in the field, you know, and by ___ there, and the German
planes are coming over, and this was the first time a saw a
search light outfit. They have search lights--they have search
lights all around that place. The search light would pick up a
German plane, and you could see the German plane coming right
down the search light. They shut it off--say the other ones
would pick them up, you know. But it wasn't only one plane. I
mean, you know, so we're watching the show, but what can we do?
We have got nothing.
HURST: Wow.
HATALA: So then, after the raids was over, you know, took
about an hour or whatever it was, you know, they were really
shooting there, you know?
HURST: So that was probably your first time you had actually
seen action?
HATALA: Well, I saw action soon as we landed over there. ___+
but I mean, do you know if a shell is going to drop on your
head? Or do you know if a bomb's going to drop, or shrapnel, or
what? You don't know anything. I doubt you even know how far way
from the base they took us.
HURST: Wow. So when you left North Africa where did you go?
HATALA: Sicily.
HURST: How did you get there?
HATALA: By LSTs.
HURST: And what happened in Sicily?
HATALA: Well, we landed in, I think it was Sciacca--
S-c-i-c-something. Right outside Agrigento. And then we set up
all our guns again. All our anti-aircraft guns.
HURST: And then how long did you stay there?
HATALA: 'Til the campaign was over in Sicily.
HURST: Are we talking weeks, months?
HATALA: Well, I don't know how long it lasted. What, lasted a
month, month and a half, whatever--whatever it lasted.
HURST: So for that time that you were in Sicily, what would
you do every day for your job?
HATALA: Well, we had to be on--we had to be on protection, you
know, you just couldn't walk off and lay down, you know. You had
to--you had to stay on your guns all the time.
HURST: Can you tell me what a typical day would be like for
HATALA: Well, you had to pull guard duty and everything else,
you know. You know. You branch off, you know.
HURST: So how early would you get up in the morning?
HATALA: Well, as far as the morning goes, I didn't think there
was any time for getting up in the morning. 'Cause you'd be out
and go on guard duty. You was up all night, you know, different
things.
HURST: And when you would man your gun, what did that entail?
What would you do? Would you just wait there and with your gun
be ready for--
HATALA: Well, that's what you had to do.
HURST: So you would just--how big a group were you with, that
would be manning the guns?
HATALA: Well, there's only me and another fellow. On the
50-caliber.
HURST: So you would stay there at your post and--
HATALA: Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. You stayed at your--what are
you going to do all day? That's your job, right, to stand around
or, if the fellow went and got a ration or something, you got to
go over there and ___ while you're there. But there always had
to be somebody. And then everything had to be coded, because
there are what they call dead area, you know what I mean? No
plane could come in. If you come in through a dead area, he was
going to be shot at, you see what I mean?
HURST: So--
HATALA: And then there had to be--then there had to be a code,
like blue and yellow or, you know what I mean.
HURST: And what would the code mean? If you knew the code,
that meant it was okay?
HATALA: Yeah, yeah. If it was American planes by the codes,
come in. Not--not an enemy plane.
HURST: When you were on your anti-aircraft guns and on duty,
did you ever have enemy aircraft coming in that you had to shoot
at?
HATALA: What, they're always out of our stupid range. But they
were reconnaissance planes. German reconnaissance planes. Just
one day when they opened up, you know, our battalion had, I
don't know if headquarters had--there were 16 or 20
90-millimeter guns, and they would shoot five miles. And you
didn't have to hit that plane. It would burst, hear me? But, the
radar was controlling it. But, the battalion would have gone
scattered--probably from here, maybe, I don't know, say I was
here, right here, and probably in Collinsville there would be
another four guns. Avon probably have another four guns.
Simsbury have another four guns, hear me? So they had the whole
area controlled, you know what I mean?
HURST: And so was your job that if any aircraft that didn't
know the code, you shot at?
HATALA: Yeah, but my job was to protect the big gun. See what
I mean.
HURST: Uh-huh.
HATALA: Because the big gun, if some plane come in low,
he'd--the big gun couldn't get him.
HURST: Did you shoot down any aircraft while you were there?
HATALA: No, not that I know of. Well, they shot at them, but I
HURST: Yeah.
HATALA: --You know, I don't know. Matter of fact, the radar
opened up on more than--there was, I guess, two Frenchmen
chasing the German plane. Are you kidding, none of them got hit.
HURST: Wow. Were there any casualties in your unit?
HATALA: No, no, no.
HURST: After Sicily where did you go?
HATALA: Well, we went back to North Africa. The Bizerte.
They changed us to Fifth Army. You see, we were Seventh Army.
They took our patches away. They changed us to Fifth Army. We
were supposed to go to Salerno, Italy. They took the patches
away, they turned us around again, and they shipped us back to
Bizerte, North Africa.
HURST: Why did they change you to the Fifth Army, do you
know? The Fifth Army needed more men?
HATALA: Well, the war in Sicily was over, so they're going
to--that's for my brother--was in the Fifth Army, you know. So
they turned us--turned us around. They went back to North
Bizerte, North Africa, and then they put us in railroad
trains. And--lay down on the stupid ammunition for ten days to
get to back to Algiers.
HURST: So you went then from North Africa to Algiers by
train?
HATALA: Yeah. On you--sleeping on ammo. You know, they had
them little trains and it took us, I think, a week to get back
there, because, you know, some of the railroad tracks they had
to fix. Of course their trains are a lot smaller than ours. And
then we stayed there, and then we're waiting for our--for our
shipment to go again. So they--so they sent us--we went by plane
from Algiers Maison Blanche Airport, all the way--they flew us into
Ajaccio, Corsica. You know where that is.
HURST: No, but I'll look it up. So they flew you? What kind
of planes did you go on? ___ did you___ big airports?
HATALA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We took about 300.
HURST: Oh.
HATALA: No, no, 18 guys. {Laughs} 18 guys, fully loaded.
You're a DC-3, that's the best we had.
HURST: Wow. All right, so--
HATALA: So our whole company went by plane. Do you--do you--I
don't know about the other battalions, but some of the
battalions went by ship. They landed in--Bastia, Corsica. Then
they set up all the anti-aircraft guns again, because the
Germans were flying from southern France across--into Salerno,
Italy, see what I mean.
HURST: Yup.
HATALA: So then they had to break up their flights or whatever
they were doing, you know.
HURST: So how long did you set up your guns in Corsica?
HATALA: Well, then they got--then they decided they got
airport--air superiority, so they don't need the anti-aircrafts
no more. So all the anti-aircraft in Italy, they took them out,
put them in the infantry.
HURST: So did you now become an infantry soldier?
HATALA: No. They changed our outfit, our battalion--battalion,
you know, into combat engineers.
HURST: So then they--so you weren't anti-aircraft any longer?
HATALA: No, no.
HURST: They changed you to combat engineers?
HATALA: Yeah.
HURST: Had you had any training in combat engineering?
HATALA: Yeah. About two months or two and a half months.
HURST: So now, you're a combat engineer, what was your job?
HATALA: Our job was fixing the roads, putting in the bridges,
you know, stuff like that, you know, anything they wanted. I
don't want to jump the gun yet, you know.
HURST: Yeah?
HATALA: So as soon as we got through training, then we had to
go in--they had to put, well--they had all kinds of bridges, you
know. The bridges came in sections. You could pick up one
section and put a couple pegs in there. Already, you had a half
a row there, you know. If a small--a small ravine where you go
across, you put two or three and you were going, you have a
bridge in an hour or two hours. But if you had to do a Bailey
bridge like we did, it was under smoke screen for seven days on
the Rhine River. It was 200 and something feet long, you know.
It had to carry a tank and a tank retriever back so they could
use the other tanks for parts.
HURST: So you helped build that Bailey bridge on the Rhine River?
HATALA: Yeah.
HURST: So you said you had to use the smoke screen. Can you
tell me what that was like, what was that? Explain what that is?
HATALA: Well that's just so the enemy doesn't know where the
bridge is.
HURST: The whole time you're working on it, they're covering
it with smoke so the enemy can't see it?
HATALA: When we got up there--when we got up there, the
infantry was laying on the road and we were on the water. We're
going out on the water. Every no and then you'll see a yellow
burst come out over there, a burst over there, or somewhere to
try and--of course there was an island like that. And the
Germans were holding out, out on that island, you know. They
would string ropes across the river and put wedges like that. So
when the mines came down, they would get caught, and the thing
then would only hit the bridge, all right? There's a lot of
stories going on.
HURST: Well, feel free to tell me any stories that you can
think of, of things that happened. Now, Joe, go back to Sicily.
When you were stationed in Sicily with the anti-aircraft, what
were the living conditions like? Like, where did you sleep? Did
you have barracks or did you sleep in tents?
HATALA: I didn't sleep in no barracks. We had no barracks.
HURST: Did you sleep in tents?
HATALA: We--I came in the first night and just threw the
bankroll down and right on it, just sleep on the raincoat.
'Cause it was warmer then, you know, but--but, you know, a lot
of times it would rain like heck over there, you know what I
mean.
HURST: So the whole time you were in Sicily, you didn't have
any--
HATALA: Most of the time I slept on the trucks, in Africa
even, instead of sleeping on the ground. I sleep on the truck
bed, you know, where the--they had folded them down like that,
you know, when the guys ride in the back, and you sleep there,
you sleep there.
HURST: What did you do for food?
HATALA: Well, the cooks used to--we have cooks that cooked our
food.
HURST: So did you have three meals a day?
HATALA: Yeah, yeah.
HURST: So what did you do?
HATALA: Well, if we went out, we had K-rations or C-rations or
whatever there was then, you know.
HURST: Otherwise, did they have, like, a mess hall, or did
they just have a chow line?
HATALA: Well, they had a mess hall. They had a--they put up a
mess hall about two hours or whatever it is. Because they had a
couple trucks that had four by eight sections and then all they
had to do was put them together. And they had to put a canvas
over the top, and they had a mess hall.
HURST: When you were overseas, how did you stay in touch with
family?
HATALA: Still write, you know.
HURST: And the mail got through pretty regularly?
HATALA: Yeah, not too bad, not too bad. Used to do a lot of
reading. Reader's Digest.
HURST: Yes. Did you always have enough ammunition and enough
supplies and clothing and that kind of thing?
HATALA: Yeah. We never had no problem there. No problem there.
HURST: All right, so now that you've become--go back to when
you became a combat engineer--you left Corsica and, and--
HATALA: We got--no, we got our training in Corsica.
HURST: And after that, then you left Corsica?
HATALA: Then we went to southern France.
HURST: Then did you--did they send you on trains or trucks?
HATALA: No, we flew but--no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We went
by LS--a French ship, a French ship. I think it's--I think from
Corsica, the southern France was a hundred miles or something
like that. And I remember this Arab. I call them Arab, you know
what I mean? This were a big pontoons, you know, and the ship is
going. Of course, these Arabs, they never been on a ship anyway,
but he'd be hollering and the guy is throwing up. He walked
around a lot, a lot ___.
HURST: Now, why did you have Arabs with you? Were they
fighting with your unit?
HATALA: Yeah, yeah. The Arabs, well, you know, they had to
load the ship to get guys over there, didn't matter who they
were. I mean, certain units I can--there was an infantry
regiment on there, that, you know, the ship took a couple
thousand guys, you know when I mean? So they put you wherever
they--you could land, you know.
HURST: So once you landed in southern France, where did you
go? Did you stay there at all, or did you head right out?
HATALA: No, we--we, well, we had to keep moving. We had to
keep moving and then we had to come back. We had to do
everything. Because then you were trying to unload the ships
because the ships--too much in the harbor, too many in the
harbor, they don't want the Germans to blow it up. So then they
pack the ships with these trucking outfits, and then we have to
get on the truck to ride with--on the truck wherever these going
with this shipment. They had a big field where they put our
stuff out, you know, because what they were doing, they were
hijacking the trucks. So then we have to sit on the back with a
rifle. If anybody hijacks it, they got shot.
HURST: Wow.
HATALA: See what I mean?
HURST: Yeah.
HATALA: That's what happening in southern France. The French
were hijacking the trucks.
HURST: Okay, so where did you go after that?
HATALA: Well, we just kept moving.
HURST: Just kept moving from France towards Germany?
HATALA: Yeah, yeah.
HURST: Building roads and bridges as you went?
HATALA: Yeah, yeah, whatever, you know, sometimes we had to
fix the road. Right where George Patton got killed, there
was--we fixed that whole highway from old Germany all the way to
Munich. So the trucks could get in, and I'd have--a lot of times
I'd have prisoners working, you know, fixing the roads so the
trucks could go, because they'd blow all them bridges out and
who could fix all them bridges in no time flat.
HURST: What was your rank?
HATALA: First class private.
HURST: So you would have prisoners? German prisoners? And you
used them as labor so you would take them with your unit where--
HATALA: Well, you know, it would probably be a week or so, and
then you would do something or go somewhere else, you know,
whatever the orders were. Now, when the--when the invasion with
southern France, the invasion of Normandy, we had to go and drag
the prisoner of war camp.
HURST: Where?
HATALA: I don't know where. I don't know what the name of the
town is. All I know is, this was Christmas Eve or New Year's
Eve, I can't remember. And there were something like 40,000
prisoners in the camp. They were afraid the German paratroopers
were going to drop, and it was cold, so we had to be out on the
field, way out surrounding. And they had guys inside the camp,
they had half tracks running around outside the camp, and then
they had all of us guys all around the camp. I mean, you know,
you're looking down, say, probably quarter of a mile or an
eighth of a mile down into the--if somebody shot I think they
would have shot all the prisoners.
HURST: Wow. So nothing happened and all--everyone lived
through that?
HATALA: Yeah, so they were--so they were sure that--and this
was--we had to stay up all night, hear me? So make sure that,
you know, none of them escaped, because they--the ones that were
guarding the prison, they couldn't handle everything. 'Cause
what they had was women in there and they're sleeping in pup
tents and it's muddier than heck, ___+ sleeping in it.
HURST: When you had prisoners working on building the bridges
and fixing the roads, did you ever have any problems with any of
them trying to escape?
HATALA: No, no, no, no. I'd give them a cigarette if they
wanted it, what the heck.
HURST: Were you awarded any medals or citations?
HATALA: Well, only when I got the ribbons.
HURST: So what was it, good conduct and European Theatre?
HATALA: Sharpshooters and all that stuff.
HURST: Joe, before--off-camera, you had told me that your
brother John was also in the Army during World War II and there
were two occasions where you had a chance to meet up with him.
Can you tell me about those two times? Because, you're over in
Europe, your brother's over in Europe. But what are the chances
that you're coming across him? Tell me about the first time that
you met up with your brother.
HATALA: I met him in Sarburg--Sarburg--Sarburg, I don't know
if it's Alsace-Lorraine or--it's France and on the German border
there somewhere, you hear me? You hear?
HURST: So how did that happen? How did you even know he was
in the neighborhood?
HATALA: Well, like I said, the truckers used to send engineer
outfits here, as the trucks were going, and I'd tell the guys,
you know, you see that Third Division batch, I said, let me
know, you know. So one day the guy come back and said, "Hey, I
think your officer is up the road here a way." And sure
enough, it was. I went up, and I just stayed up, just for that
half a day or something, that's about it, you mean, and come
back. But, but then--
HURST: Your brother must have been surprised--
HATALA: Yeah.
HURST: --to see you.
HATALA: Then when I met him over the other place, then I
stayed overnight. In that outfit.
HURST: So when you first--that first meeting with your
brother, you only stayed a half a day?
HATALA: Yeah, something like that, yeah.
HURST: Did you get to meet all his friends and everything?
Did you get to spend any time together?
HATALA: Well, I met his buddy for years. He died. He was from
out west. He was a good friend, they always wrote together and
talked, you know, Christmas cards and stuff.
HURST: Yeah.
HATALA: But he's passed away.
HURST: So, tell me about the second time you met him. So how
much longer, how--how many was it, like, months or years later
than you met him another time?
HATALA: No, it wasn't--it wasn't that long. I don't know.
Maybe a couple months--two, three months, whatever that was. I
can't--
HURST: And where were you that time?
HATALA: Well, I was in Germany. He was in Germany, too.
HURST: And how did you know he was nearby?
HATALA: Well, the truckers come by, "Hey, Third Division is up
here somewhere."
HURST: Again the truckers told you. So how did you--how did
you get over there to see him?
HATALA: I went up to the captain. You know, they said, the
captain said that--this was already--the war was over.
HURST: Okay, so the war had ended and you were both nearby,
so what, you went to your captain?
HATALA: Yeah, the captain says, "Now you guys, we're going to
send a truckload or two trucks to Berchtesgaden where Hitler had
this thing in the Alps? Who wants to go can go." So I went up to
the captain, I says, "Hey. Can I go up and see my brother? He's
up the road here, you know, instead of going up to
Berchtesgaden" he says, "Sure. I'll have a Jeep driver take you
up--no, no, I'll have a truck driver drop you off, you know, and
then I'll pick you up on the way back." You know, I stays up
there a day or a day and a--well, I don't know what--I can't
remember now, but, because where my brother was, I ate and
everything else with them guys, you know what I mean, you know?
HURST: So then you slept overnight?
HATALA: Yeah, yeah.
HURST: What, so they got you the next day on the way home.
Well, that must have been pretty exciting. Your brother must
have--
HATALA: Yeah. Well, he had, he had--
HURST: --been shocked to see you--
HATALA: --he had, what they call that, jumping up, like shell
shock, what is that, don't they call that--they got a name for
it now.
MR. DRAKE: Post-stress disorder.
HATALA: Post-stress. So they took him out of there. They took
him out of there. Out of the infantry. And they assigned him to
a unit which--the guys came out of the hospital, and they came
into his unit. He had to get their names and what unit they were
from, to get them back to their unit. That was his job. So I
talked to his captain, there, and his captain says, how do you
know about this? His captain was telling me about everything,
and how they put him in for a Congressional Medal of Honor. They
said that Washington wrote back, that he didn't do just quite,
quite enough. That's how he put it, quite enough. So they give
him the next one, the Distinguished Service Cross. So there
aren't too many guys around here that got that.
HURST: Right. All right, so tell me about your combat
engineer, what things you saw as you went across Germany. I know
you told me that you were close to Dachau at one time?
HATALA: Well, that's where I met my brother. That's where I
met my brother.
HURST: And what did you tell me about Dachau? You hadn't
actually gone into the camp, but what?
HATALA: You could smell--you could smell burnt flesh. You
could just smell it, you got it. And I've seen people over there
in Sicily, well, they were burned, when this--when this--all
these joints here were like butter and just, all this skin was
just hanging, like this. All over the place, hear me? You
can't--you know? I never--never thought that when you got burnt
it was that way, but you know.
HURST: What did you do for entertainment, Joe? When you
weren't building roads or bridges or manning an anti-aircraft
gun, what did you guys do for entertainment?
HATALA: We always had girls come over and talk to us. No, no.
{Laughs} I'm kidding.
HURST: You might have wished, Joe.
HATALA: You read, you talk, you do this and do that. Sometimes
they let you go on a pass down--downtown, you know what I mean?
You go on a pass--
HURST: Do you ever get passes to go--
HATALA: Yeah, yeah.
HURST: Where else did you go?
HATALA: Why I went to Sicily. You go on passes into town.
Africa you go on passes into town. Let's see, and when I
was--when I was in Corsica, I was in, what they call that--when
the people get all, like a riot in the city--what they call
that. The French Marines came in. The French Marines came in and
the Italians. The Italians owned an island, and the French
Marines--the Italians took it away from the French Marines,
didn't he? You know what I mean? I always fought over that
island. Then you got a big--you didn't know who was who for who,
because then a fight broke out. We had--of course the Americans,
we had stayed. They let the French and them fight, fight it out
themselves.
HURST: Did you see any USO shows while you were overseas?
HATALA: No. But the girls--the girls were nice in Africa that
I knew of. You know, the WACs, they were very nice. You know,
they didn't even want to talk to you, because you had mud on
your boots. All they wanted to talk to were those officers.
HURST: You lost out on that. Did you do anything special for
good luck?
HATALA: No, just say my prayers and that's it. What else can
you do.
HURST: Well, you know, some people have a rabbit's foot or a
good luck charm, or medals or something.
HATALA: Yeah, my machine gunner drowned right in front of me.
HURST: Can you tell me about that? What happened?
HATALA: I--I--it was on the Rhine River when we putting on the
big bridge in. And what happened was, theirs slams into a boat,
and this was for the newsreel in the United States. I don't--I
don't--they had three or four boats on that river. On that Rhine
River, and putting that big bridge across. And up above that
bridge we had big ropes stuck, sort of, mines would get caught
in the thing. Now, these guys, these new movie guys here, they
were photographers for the newsreel, you know what I mean? And
my--my assistant machine gunner, he was one of the guys that was
driving the boat. Well, there were other boats there, too. I
don't know how many tipped over. Because they went up and hit
the--they went to go up further to hit the stupid rope and the
propeller got caught and flipped the boat and they're all in the
water. And this was in March. So, all of a sudden I heard this
commotion, and it sounded to me like the Germans were coming. I
run for my rifle , and that wasn't it. How I got--how I got on
the other side of that river, I don't know. But anyway, that
river was just--the banks were like this, and they had all
rocks, you know, so the ___ wash it away, and them rocks were
just slippery as heck. And I came running over there. He's got a
big stupid overcoat on, and he's laying in the water with
no--and he's trying to swim up. He was a good swimmer, too. And
he's trying to swim up the water, he goes up the water, comes
back, down he went. I didn't even have the chance--I--I--I
didn't even have the chance to try to help him or anything. I
tried. I hollered to him, "Turn around." If he turned right
around, he could get to shore. So then you could pull him out,
you know, hang on to him. The captain comes running over, says
to me, "Start a fire." They're trying to start a fire, do you
think I could start a fire?
HURST: Why did he want you to start a fire?
HATALA: Keep somebody warm. I don't know. There were other
guys in the water, too, you know. But he was from ___, Maine,
and he--I felt sorry I never went up to see his parents, but--
HURST: Can you remember any humorous stories from your time
overseas? Did you guy every play jokes on each other?
HATALA: Not really, not really. I remember one, when I was on
Le Havre--Le Havre, France. Coming home, we were supposed to
come home on the Queen Mary. If we ever did come home.
HURST: Why? What happened?
HATALA: Well, it was Second Armored Division, and they put
them on the boat instead of us. So I came home on a liberty
ship. It only took seven days. But I'm walking down. I'm in a
coffee line, nothing, no guns, no nothing, you know, and I'm
walking up to the coffee line. And I come up, there must be a
couple hundred guys in that stupid line, you know what I mean? I
look at this one guy and I took about five steps further and I
come back, I says," Hey, are you Roy from Collinsville?" And he
says, yeah. I went to high school with him.
HURST: Oh my God. And you ended up on the same liberty ship
coming home--
HATALA: No, no, no. He came home with the Queen Mary. So when
he got to Boston--when he got to Boston or New York, wherever
that Queen Mary docked, I don't know. Because we docked in east
Boston, you know? And he called my mother and father that I was
coming.
HURST: Isn't that something. Once you crossed the Rhine and
built the bridges across there, where did you go? How did you
end up the war? Where were you when the war ended?
HATALA: I don't know where the heck I was. I'd have to look at
a map to bring some of those memories back.
HURST: Do you remember hearing that the war was over?
HATALA: Yeah.
HURST: What was that like, where, you know, what was your
reaction?
HATALA: Well, the war was over, so we're laying on a stupid
lawn. We're laying on a lawn. The war was over.
HURST: And then how long did you stay there before you
actually shipped home?
HATALA: I came home September 30th or something like that.
HURST: Joe, what did you think of the officers?
HATALA: The officers were all right. I didn't think about too
many of these--but the only thing that I didn't like was, after
the war was over, they got you putting pup tents, they got you
picking up rocks and making the streets fit for like playing
with kids, you know what I mean? Instead of training you for
something, you know what I mean? They got this junk. I call it
junk.
HURST: Probably just trying to keep you busy.
HATALA: Just like in the old--in the officers' school. Soon as
the officer came in, you know, and you got stupid bags with sand
all over the place. The guys are dragging sand in and out. All
they're doing is sweeping, like in--up Camp Edwards, you know,
and then you got this guy that comes in, he's an officer, and he
goes up on top of the stupid beam, and he puts his glove on. You
guys got dust up here, so you're not going on pass. What, is
that Army style? That's not Army. That's chicken stuff. Chicken
stuff, as far as I was concerned. I don't mind training, but,
you know, or teach you another job or something like that, you
know what I mean? But don't, you know--
HURST: What did you think of your fellow soldiers?
HATALA: I think they were all right.
HURST: Did you stay in touch with any of your buddies after
the war?
HATALA: No, no, no, not really.
MRS. HATALA: You know, you tried to, with one.
HATALA: Well, yes, I started--I started--I was coming up from
Scranton. I was coming up from Ohio, so I stopped in Scranton
to see my buddy down there, but he was down on a lake
somewhere, you know, so I never got to meet him. ___+ that was
ten years ago, though.
HURST: Wow. So when you came home on the liberty ship and you
landed in Boston, were you immediately discharged from there?
HATALA: No, no, no, no, no.
HURST: What did you have to do then?
HATALA: Turn in all the stuff you had, you know, and then they
give you a two-week pass, and then you had to come back in two
weeks.
HURST: So you could go home for two weeks? So you went home
to Burlington for two weeks and then went back to Boston?
HATALA: Yeah, no, I went back to Camp Edwards--what's other
one? Devens. To get discharged.
HURST: So did you have to stay at Camp Devens for any length
of time or just go there to get the discharge?
HATALA: Just get the discharge. You know, after they take in
all your information now, well, anyway, when we pulled into
Boston, they sent us back to Taunton, Massachusetts. They put a
big steak at first. You'd think the guys could eat it? No way.
That you had your stomach shrunk like crazy.
HURST: That must have been something though, after--
HATALA: Yeah, it was. But the guys couldn't eat a steak.
HURST: Wow. So what did you do? You couldn't eat the steak.
How long did it take you to get back in shape?
HATALA: Well, you know, have a few beers here and there, you
know what I mean?
HURST: ___+ should you break. All right, so when you got
discharged, what did you do?
HATALA: I--I was banging around for awhile.
HURST: Back in Connecticut?
HATALA: No, Pennsylvania, Ohio, you know, banging around.
Staten Island. Had a girlfriend in Staten Island, went down to
see her. She was married to a lieutenant so I's says, well,
that's it. Married a lieutenant.
HURST: And then when did you get back to Connecticut?
HATALA: I was in Connecticut, but I went, you know--
HURST: But you were gone--
HATALA: I was--see we had a three months before you could go
back to your job, you know what I mean? You could *** around
for three months.
HURST: And then you went back to your job? What was your job,
what had you been doing before--
HATALA: Well, I was, I worked at Pratt Whitney.
HURST: So you went back to Pratt and Whitney?
HATALA: Yeah, yeah.
HURST: How long did you stay with them?
HATALA: For, I don't know, 42 years.
HURST: Wow. And I know that you got married and you have how
many children? Two daughters?
HATALA: Yeah, two daughters, yeah.
HURST: Did you go back to school at all on a GI bill?
HATALA: No, no, no.
HURST: Did you join any veteran's organizations?
HATALA: No, no, no, no, no. I have too much going on, and I
built the house here and everything else.
HURST: Joe, how did your military experience influence your
thinking about the war, about military in general?
HATALA: Well, I think the military is all right. I think the
military is all right, I'm a hundred percent military, but, you
HURST: How did your military experience affect your life and
influence your life?
HATALA: Well, I think it makes you smarter, but, you know me,
but, as far as affecting my life, it didn't affect me.
MR. DRAKE: When the war ended in Germany, was there every
any talk of you being shipped to Japan, was there ever any
talk--
HATALA: No, I had enough points to come home.
MR. DRAKE: You did.
HATALA: I had--I had--I had enough points to come home.
MR. DRAKE: Was there talk about your unit being deployed
in the Pacific?
HATALA: No, my whole unit come home.
MR. DRAKE: Okay. So--
HATALA: 'Cause they had the same amount of time as I did, see?
MR. DRAKE: Okay.
HATALA: My unit came home.
MR. DRAKE: When did you leave Corsica? Do you remember
what year that was?
HATALA: Yeah, well, it was before you made the invasion of
southern France, a week or two, perhaps a week or two. I was--I
was there at the harbor, you know, I was an airplane spotter.
You know, I had to go to school to be an airplane spotter. Spot
enemy plane. If there was an enemy plane there, you know, a lot
of times the enemy planes were out of range and the guns weren't
shooting at all. Because they ain't coming, you know, those guys
knew what they were doing, but all they're doing is taking
pictures. But anyway--forgot what I was going to say. What was I
saying, anyway?
MR. DRAKE: You were talking about when you were in port
in southern France.
HATALA: Yeah. I'm on guard, hear me? I'm on the machine gun,
I'm a little below, looking in the harbor. The ships in there,
all of a sudden, of course, at that time, you know, you didn't
have these walkie-talkies, you know? You know, like you guys had
over in Iraq, you had the GPS that tells you where you are, you
know what I mean?
MR. DRAKE: Yup.
HATALA: Otherwise you had to use a compass. ___+ but, and that
time they had communications. And the communication guys had to
string a wire. Big rolls of wire, you know, so one telephone
could talk to the other telephone, all right? All right? Well,
all of a sudden I see this thing here, I'm looking down at the
harbor. I'm about a half a mile away, looking down at the
harbor, you know, and all of a sudden I see this ship come in,
and that stupid ship went up in the air just like this. The
right straight up in the air like that and come right back down.
They ?beasted (ph)?.
HURST: What happened?
HATALA: Hit a mine, hit a mine. It was a French ship. Right
away you called in, and on that thing, "Hey, ship in distress."
You hear me? Right away headquarters called somebody, I don't
know who they called, hear me? But that is the honest truth. I
saw a big ship coming here like that, comes out.
MR. DRAKE: Did you hear an explosion or did you just saw
the ship come out of the water?
HATALA: No, I heard the explosion, but it takes about a minute
later to hear the explosion.
MR. DRAKE: It was so far away.
HATALA: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yup.
HURST: Joe, when they trained you to be an airplane spotter,
what kind of training is that? Do you have to be able to tell
the difference between all the different kinds of airplanes?
HATALA: Yeah, as best as you could, you know. Because, you
know, a Messerschmitt 109 was probably almost like a DC-3, you
know what I mean? But you're high up in the air. You know, it's
just for so--you know, so that if you--if you had to try to have
mistakes if they comes in close, then they don't try to shoot
your own guy down, you hear me?
MR. DRAKE: Were you given spotter cards?
HATALA: Huh?
MR. DRAKE: Were you given spotter cards?
HATALA: No, no, we had films. It was all films, you know.
Then they--there was the giving out, like, a paper with
different planes on it. Which plane it is and which, you know,
and you check off which is the enemy plane, you know what I
HURST: Joe, do you recall any other stories from your time
overseas? Any incidents or things that happened?
HATALA: Well, I was trying to tell you about that Corsica,
about the French. That was a riot. It was riots. You see me, I
couldn't get the word out, I've been trying to figure out if
it's the French who are rioting with the--with the--with the,
you know, Italians. Now it's the controlled by France again.
MR. DRAKE: Yup.
HURST: That must have been pretty scary to see the riots
going on?
HATALA: Yeah, yeah. They were in taverns, they were smashing,
smashing beer bottles, you're gonna--you know what I mean. For
protection and all--you know what I mean, they're going to jab
to the face with a beer bottle, you know what I mean, with
jagged ends, and cut you, cut up. So we clear out, we clear out.
Let them fight it out.
MR. DRAKE: When you were in Africa, how hot was it?
HATALA: It was about--about 115.
MR. DRAKE: Had you ever experienced--
HATALA: It was so darn hot that one day with--we stopped the
convoy trucks. This is no lie. And there was a brook coming
down, a light brook. There was two kids in that water. They were
drinking that stupid water. I got out of that truck, I says, I
can't stand it no more. I gotta have something to drink. I went
over and took a drink, and the guy says, yeah, you gonna get
sick. I says, if those kids drinking water, they don't get sick,
I'm not getting sick either.
HURST: Did you get sick?
HATALA: Nah.
HURST: Do you recall any other memorable events?
HATALA: Yeah.
HURST: Well, tell me about them.
HATALA: We're working on this bridge. We're working on the
bridge, you know, and all of a sudden, probably, I don't know,
in the afternoon--two, three, four o'clock, whatever it is--all
of a sudden, the officers are hollering, you know. We had to
come running off the bridge. And down just a little way was a
railroad track. It was all loaded up with gasoline. With
five-gallon cans. And we had to go and separate that train,
because the snipers put it on fire. I never saw gasoline cans
going half a mile up in the air, and you don't know where that
stupid gasoline can's coming down to hit you on the head, but we
had to separate the trains. There was--the cars--if this car was
burning, let it burn, but don't let that one burn, or don't let
this one burn, you hear me, you know? Because they needed the
gas. When we finished that bridge, we had gasoline
stash--stashed on both sides of the road. With cans--gasoline
cans. Do you know, next morning it was gone? And I mean gasoline
cans probably from here to Canton somewhere.
HURST: What happened to them?
HATALA: Huh? Patton needed them up front. The trucking outfits
took them right across. That bridge, we had it put up with--had
to carry eighty ton. Had to carry a tank and a tank retriever.
Just shake like this. {Laughs} And then we had to--had to put
barbed wire and everything and explosives all around it, so if
the Germans did come across, you just blow it, you know.
HURST: So Patton use that bridge?
HATALA: I don't--I don't think so. I don't think so. But he's
coming across this ___+ for the fifth time he's coming down.
Seven times he's coming this way, so he needs the gas. ___+
well, what they did at the end, they were having--they were
having--there's another story. They were having these pipes.
They were long pipes. Probably from here to your car. Aluminum
pipes. And what they were doing--they were from--from the Port
of Marseilles they were putting them into the tanks. And they
were running a pipeline. I don't know how many miles. A hundred
miles, up through France, instead of having trucks hauling it
can by can. So hauling it for Patton.
HURST: Did you help build that--at that pipeline at all?
HATALA: No. No, well, indirectly yes, indirectly no. So all of
a sudden, hey, you're going to be on the night shift tonight
from twelve--from, I don't know, six--six to six, six to six.
And the other guy was going to be from--from--to make the other
half, you know what I mean?
HURST: Uh-huh.
HATALA: So the--the guy--okay. You're going to be a crane
driver. You're going to be the crane driver, you know, the
crane, hear me? So I go to the crane. The guy showed me how to
do the crane, you know it? So I'm doing pretty good. I do one
load, you know, and you had to take a whole stack of pipes, you
know. Had to put, like, the bail (ph), you know, and then you
had to put them in a certain place, you know, because they
had--there was a Reppel-Deppel--there had to have--you had to
be--every ammunition paint, you had to be so many feet apart. So
if anything blew over, you couldn't get--catch, you know? So
they did the same thing with the pipes. So this--they said to
me, you're a--you're a crane driver. Well, a crane driver? So I
get in with the crane driver, you know, the guy's a ___, because
he knew how to run it. So of course, my shift was the night
shift, you know what I mean? Six to six in the morning. You get
a proper (ph) couple cups, probably two hours sleep, but
anyway--so he shows me how to run it. So then, okay, run it, you
know. So I did a few loads. So that was all right. So he left. I
did a couple more loads, you know what I mean? And I think I got
a little bit cocky. I let the thing go down too fast. The cable
flew all over the place. {Laughs} I couldn't get them back
again, so I don't know ever straightened it out. So that's
right. I let it down too fast, you know what I mean? If I let it
down slower, but I said--oh well, you know, I figured two, three
that I did are--were pretty good, you know what I mean? ____+ I
got the feeling that, you know what I mean, I let it too fast
and jumped out of the boom, and the cable got flying all over
the place. I don't know who straightened it out.
HURST: So did you quit after that or did you keep going?
HATALA: I don't know. I never saw the crane no more. {Laughs}
HURST: So that's why you indirectly helped build the
pipeline. What other stories could you recall?
HATALA: I got a story, but it's not for this--for this.
HURST: Okay. You can tell me off-camera.
MR. DRAKE: Do you--do you remember when you heard when
Patton passed away? What was your reaction on that?
HATALA: Well, from old Germany all the way to Munich, we fixed
that road.
MR. DRAKE: Sure.
HATALA: So I know where Patton got killed, you know. That was
a highway which--our whole regiment fixed that whole highway all
the way to Munich, because that's where you were blowing a lot
of bridges and, you know, the trucks had to get off the roads
because of big craters. And that's where I was having the
prisoners tarring, too. You know how they patch work here?
That's what we're doing, you know what I mean? But we had them
little stinky gadgets, you know what I mean?
HATALA: You know? I don't know if you've seen them or not, you
MR. DRAKE: Did you--did you--was Patton your leading
general? Or who was your general for your division? The 63rd
Division.
HATALA: I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. I never saw
a general from all the time I was over there. Well, like Patton,
you wouldn't see Patton anyway, because he was--he was hooked
with the armory, so he was--he was--the guys that would see
Patton were the guys with the tanks, hear me? No, the guys back
wouldn't see him. No. And that's--and not only that, but what
is--what is--most wanted thing a general would want? Tell me.
What is the most important thing a general would want?
MR. DRAKE: The safety of his men, I would hope.
HATALA: Huh?
MR. DRAKE: The safety of his men, I would hope.
HATALA: No.
MR. DRAKE: What's that, then?
HATALA: It's that Congressional Medal of Honor or that
Distinguished Service Cross, and you ain't going to get it,
because you're too far behind. They got all kinds of medals, but
they ain't got that one. I don't know, maybe, one or two have,
but I don't know, but that's the one that--that's the most
important one that they want. I imag--imagine probably Patton
got it, I don't know. I think he should deserve it, but--
HURST: Was there anything else, Joe, that you can recall that
I haven't asked you about?
HATALA: The sarge, he was a truck driver, he says, he says,
"Okay, you guys get in the back and and we're going back into
town. We had to go back into Sciacca, Sicily. Name of the town,
Sciacca. We were in Agrigento. Of course, of course, you're
picked, so you go. So you get in the back of the truck. About
four or five of us guys, you know. I don't know what we were
going for. I can't remember. But anyway, he's driving that
truck, and we're going and going. And the next thing I know,
we're going off the stupid road--we're going off the stupid road
through a field, come back on the highway. With the guys in the
back. And we go down aways, and there's this guy coming with a
stupid donkey. If he goes and whack that donkey with that truck?
The donkey flew off the bridge.
HURST: So you were in the truck?
HATALA: Yeah, yeah. The guy didn't know how to driver a truck.
And he's a sergeant. I didn't know he didn't know how to drive a
truck. And he got us guys in the back.
HURST: Wow. Any--any other stories you can recall?
HATALA: I don't know. Yeah, when we had the anti-aircraft out
there, we were outside the Palermo, Italy, Sicily. And we're on
guard duty, and next thing we see is this big cloud of smoke is
coming like this, you know, it's coming. And it kept coming down
toward us, and we were aside of a brook, probably from here to
that garden away. There was a--through a big walls like that,
you know what I mean, like walls, probably eight, 10 feet high,
whatever they were. And the brook was bun running down the
middle. And this thing is coming down that brook, and we can't
figure out what it was. Well, in the meantime, the air corps
dumped a bunch of gasoline into the brook, and this, and it
caught on fire. In the meantime, the--this Italian and his son
are in that--in that, you know, with the sheep and the goats.
You know that, when he saw the fire coming, he picked up the kid
and he threw--tried to threw him up over the wall, and the kid
fell back in. So he jumped back in. They both got burned. That's
when I see all this flesh hanging like that, you know what I
mean? This is all yellow, you know, and that's what I seen. The
captain says to the guys, "Go shoot all the goats and calves and
the sheep. They're all screaming at them. The sheep and
everything, they couldn't move. Shot 'em all. Terrible.
Then--and the fellow--and the Italian shouted, "Agua." Water,
water, water. They only lived an hour. And both of them died.
There no help. The stupid air corps set out dumping--dumping all
the gasoline into the brook. And the brook was running pretty
fast. And that--and that--I'm telling you, the flames were high,
too. But we couldn't figure out what's happening, because this
thing is coming, you
know what I mean? Well you know, a lot of
stuff goes on, you know.
HURST: Well, Joe, I'd like to thank you for the interview,
and I'd like to thank you for your service to the country.
HATALA: Well, I'd like to thank you for coming.
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