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TRANSCRIBER: Heather Tijerina - January 27, 2011
INGRAHAM: 4/29/2007. It's approximately 1:40. I'm here at the home of Mr. Franklin Johnson.
My name is Shawn Ingraham. I'll be conducting the interview. Introduce yourself.
JOHNSON: Well, I'm Frank Johnson. I'm a World War II Veteran. My outfit was in all five
major campaigns in Europe, and I myself think I have quite a story to tell. But let me just
go back a little bit and tell you that I was also a teacher, a coach, guidance counselor,
and administrator for 38 years in Naugatuck High School. This the second or third time
that I've done something like this. So I feel quite comfortable doing it, and I also feel
it's very important that things like this should be done because I honestly believe
what World War II Veterans did you know, back in 1941 to '45 that, you know, we probably
saved the world from a horrible experience under the Nazis and the Japanese. They had
some strange designs on the world on the world and young people would find it hard to believe
what might have happened to them, but later on in my story I can tell you some of the
things that make me feel the way I do. Right after I graduated from Naugatuck High School
in 1942, I went into the service. Many of my classmates went in prior to that because
Pearl Harbor was bombed my senior year. And a lot of them left almost immediately. The
whole country was angry at the treachery of the Japanese. Patriotism was at an all time
high, but my mother made me wait longer than I wanted to. In those days if you went in
under 18, you needed your parent's signature and my mother wouldn't give it. Probably because
there were four from her family already in the service, including her husband, and my
sister, and brother. So she had even tried to get a deferment for me. But shortly after
I turned 18 in October, I went into the service. And I was sent up to Camp Edwards, Massachusetts
in an antiaircraft artillery unit. When people say, "is that what you asked?" And I tell
them that during wartime, what you asked for was not listened to very often. You were put
in a unit that needed people. So you went in probably in blocks. I would say the group
of us maybe six or seven hundred of us went together. We were in Devens at the place that
we were inducted and we went as a group to Camp Edwards and formed the 110th. So even
though I had asked for a different assignment, that didn't make any difference. Well, the
first thing the military does when they get you in the service I don't know if it's
like that now, but I imagine that it is is that they have to get the civilian out
of you and they have to get you used to obeying orders, knowing what the ranks are, who was
superior to whom. For an inductee like myself, it doesn't make any difference because anybody
from one stripe to a star, you obeyed, you know, without question. And that was one of
the first things that they try to do is get you used to taking orders. The thing then
was that if somebody of rank told you to do something and you didn't like it or you couldn't
understand why, you were told to do it and complain later. Now, I wonder how many young
people, you know, could adhere to that. Do it first and then complain. Most of the people
today complain complain and try to get out of it, but that doesn't go in the military
because some day an officer is going to tell you to do something extremely dangerous or
do something you don't want to do and without hesitation you're going to do it. So that
was the first thing we learned military discipline. The next think, of course, was to get your
strength up and they did that by multiple exercises every day, marches, runs, all types
of physical activity. And then, of course, was to understand the makings of the gun that
you were going to be on. And that was training on a (coughs). Excuse me a 90 millimeter gun.
A very versatile weapon. Had a range of about five or six miles and basically used for high
flying airplanes. It's very intricate piece of equipment. Sixteen men on a gun crew and
we all had to learn our jobs so that we could do them in pitch dark or pouring rain or any
type of weather. We learned each other's jobs in case, you know, someone was taken out of
action and that was the extent of basic training. First of all, to learn military discipline.
Secondly, to get yourself into physical shape and to learn the intricacies of your weapon.
Now, after that was accomplished, we were ready to, you know, get into action. And about
November, we left Camp Edwards and went down to Skillman, New Jersey and, you know, there
we started to get ready for deployment. We learned all kinds of things to do on the high
seas, how to store our equipment properly. And then a couple of days before Christmas
in 1943 Yeah, 1943, we were taken by truck and when we got off the truck, we saw this
huge ship. We hadn't seen the likes of anything like that in our lives. It was The Queen Mary,
the largest ship in the world at that time, and we were told later that there were about
18,000 troops on board and a couple of thousand of English personal because Mary was a British
ship and run by the British. So we sailed out of New York Harbor passed the Statue of
Liberty, and the first strange voice we heard was from the captain. And the captain came
over very loud and clear and introduced himself to us and told us, in no uncertain terms,
my job is to get this ship safely to port. I'm not interested in your comfort or safety,
but you better take care of it yourself. Should you fall over board, forget about it. We don't
stop. It wouldn't do us any good to stop anyway because to stop a ship that size would take
a couple of miles and you'd be shark bait by then. So if you are sick or had other problems,
your company officers will take care of it. I'm not interested in that. I'm interested
in my ship. So that was a rather rude awakening. There were a lot of other rude awakenings
that were to follow. It was not at all comfortable on board that ship, as you can imagine. A
ship with 18,000 __ 20,000 plus people. In peacetime that ship accommodated probably
less than 2,000 people comfortably. We had we were billeted in a room that we were told
was a former library and there were probably 30 of us in there. Crowded into bunks made
from pipe and canvas and rope, six or seven high. You rolled into your bunk. The guy above
you, his rear end was about two inches away from your nose. So you couldn't move around
too much. And then there were two men assigned to each bunk. Not at the same time of course,
but you were to be in your bunk area 12 hours a day and then you were to be out on the deck
or having your meals for the other 12 hours and that was strictly enforced. Now, it took
you most of 12 hours to get fed twice because the lines were long. You had your mess kit,
you walked to the cafeteria line and there the guys with these big spoons would just
slop something on your mess kit. If they were serving desert, don't be surprised if that
was served first and your mash potatoes went on top of it. They said you didn't get on
board to eat. You got on board to get to your destination. The cafeteria was just a series
of long troughs. You didn't sit down, you stood up in front of one of these troughs
and put your mess kit down and started to eat. Now, when the ship would roll, sometimes
your mess kit would slide two or three men in either direction and you'd have to wait
for the ship to right itself to get your mess kit back. And more than occasionally down
the line somebody would upchuck. So you can imagine what that did to your appetite. Again,
fortunately, it was only four days. Probably five five and a half if you count the time
that it took to get off, but the trip itself, I think, was about four days. It went without
escort because we were told the ship was faster than any German submarine and it would take
several torpedos to sink it. Well, we arrived in Glasgow, Scotland, the only place that
The Queen Mary could dock and we were greeted by a bunch of American and English Red Cross
workers who did the best to greet us and make us comfortable with coffee and donuts and
these little bags of goodies: Cigarettes, toothbrushes, stuff like that, candy bars.
And then we were put on board these trains. The blinds were drawn tight so you couldn't
see anything, and I don't know how much days or how long we were on this train, but it
seemed endless. We finally reached our destination and, again, we disembarked. We had to wait
hours for our bags, you know, to catch up with us because we had nothing but the clothes
on our back during all that trip, but finally things came together and we found ourselves
billeted in this old English home. So many of the English people gave up their homes
for the American troops and it was quite a gesture on their part. The home we were in
was a real fancy estate and there must have been, I don't know, 15 or 20 of us there.
And the gardener of that estate was the only person left. The people who owned it and their
family had moved into the country side someplace. And there we made ourselves comfortable and
got down into the routine business of being retrained again on the weapons that had been
provided for us. And that went on, again, for several months. When we arrived in England
it was I'd say early January and, if you recall, the invasion was in June. So during that six
month period of time, we trained, learned about the English customs, later on about
the French customs when we found out that was our probable destination. But there was
much more intense training. Everybody was much more serious and before too long we disembarked
again and went down to this loading station in Exeter, England were there were thousands
and thousands of American troops and vehicles of all types, sizes, and shapes and there
we practiced amphibious loading and landing. Our guns were big and pulled by a tank. So
since we were going to be deployed in three or four feet of water and make our way toward
shore, everything had to be waterproofed, but in such a way that it could be stripped
very quickly. So, again, it was a tedious task and we became more efficient on it each
time we tried it. We were put on board ship twice, maybe three times, each time thinks
maybe this was it but then after a day or two out a few miles out in the ocean, they
just returned us for more training at our campsite. Everything was very hush hush there.
Security was unbelievable. You couldn't talk to anybody outside of your outfit. Of course,
there were no passes. Finally, we got on board our LST, that's a landing ship, tank. That's
the type of vehicle that we were going to go across the channel on. It's a large ship
and ironically, the LST 510 the ship we went on is now a ferry boat out of New London.
So if any of you people want to see what my ship looked like that took me to battle, it's
still there in New London and it's about a two hour ride over to Long Island. My wife
and I have taken the trip a couple times. You know, just for nostalgia. And one time
several of my buddies that are in the area together we went together and were treated
loyally by the crew. If you go, you'll see a plaque up in the captain's quarters with
the name of the 110th, all of us, and you look for Frank Johnson, you'll see him, he's
there. A very proud momentum . But anyway, it was pitch dark when we rolled out and our
officers were being briefed by the higher commands away from us and early in the morning
they got us all together and gave us whatever information we needed to get ready to do our
job. Now, when people ask me about the war in general, I tell them you'll know more about
it if you read books because World War II was only like a couple of football fields
in front of me. I was never asked for any advice or anything else. So whatever my task
was, that's what I did for the whole war and I never really knew the overall picture, but
that's all I had to do. To do what I was told and to take care of business in front of my
field of vision. I'd say about halfway across the channel we knew something big was going
on because there were thousands of ships. There was hardly a space in the water without
some type of craft, and when you looked up at the sky, you couldn't really see too much
sky because of the planes, thousands of them flying back and forth. We said, boy, somebody's
taking an awful pounding over there and we began to hear it the sites and sounds of war
as we approached the coast of France. Again, the time was June 6, 1944. We were told that
we were supposed to land early afternoon that day. The infantry and __ units started to
land around 6 o'clock that morning and they were supposed to secure the beaches and secure
a path to the designated area where we were supposed to set up our guns, but on Omaha
Beach, where we landed, that wasn't done until the next day. So we spent the first night
probably about a half a mile into the I can't call it a harbor because there really
was no harbor, but just about a half an hour away from land and that was a eerie shaky
feeling because all night long small enemy fire could be heard not just in the distance,
but you could hear it bouncing off the side of your ship. You looked around and saw ships
exploding all about you and you were wondering when that was going to happen to your boat.
You looked out in the water and there were just filled with debris, blown up ships. And
then you saw all kinds of bodies, floating bodies already starting to be bloated. One
of the thoughts I had is every one of those American soldiers trained just like I did
for months and months and maybe years and went through all that training and hard times
and here they were dead in the water without even a chance to fire their weapon. But as
you'll see in my story later on, that's what makes war such a terrible thing. Well, in
the morning, our ship was supposed to get in close to the shore, drop us to the front,
and we're supposed to ride off in a couple of feet of water, but they couldn't do that.
There was so much debris in front of it that they couldn't get any closer than they were
the night before. So they had a floater they called a "rhino" which is a large platform.
It looked like a board strapped to 50 gallon oil drums with an out back motor on the back
of it and they loaded one tank and gun and one truck and our crew. Probably, you know,
20 25 men took the that's all the rhino could take care of and we put putted to shore.
Again, we could hardly wait to get to shore which was strange because that's where the
enemy was, but we felt so vulnerable right out there in the open and we couldn't do anything
to fire back. When we get to shore as we were going to shore, we were taking the cosmo
in the grease and covers off our weapons because it looked rather obvious that it wasn't
going to get too wet. The rhino took us right up into the sand. Then when we hit the beach,
we were directed by beach masters and by flagged coded flags. Some of them had our outfit name
on it. So you could see the name that had to be done by combat engineers during the
night. And we were hustled up this very small path. I think is was a makeshift path. Certainly
didn't look like any road that had been established. We were right at the top of the hill was the
replacement where we were to setup our guns. Now, normally, a battery excuse me. The
battalion consist of four gun batteries and a headquarters battery. So we usually fire,
you know, in cooperation of the other three gun batteries. I was in Battery D and Battery
C was in seeing distance, but the other two batteries, for one reason or another, either
hadn't made it or were sent some place else. It wasn't to many many days later that we
became a complete unit again. But, anyway, I would say within an hour after we landed
and setup, we were firing at the enemy and doing an awful lot of damage and they in turn
were doing some damage to us. One of the first things I remember is my gun officer saying
to us, "remember, if you can see the enemy, they can see you." So, you know, watch your
butt. So, again, it wasn't too long before, you know, we were missing people and we were
beginning to realize what war is really about. Now, the effectiveness of our gun, the 9 millimeter,
usually takes place out of your site your vision. We were firing at targets that we
most of the time couldn't see. We were being directed by spotters or by the radar and the
hot fly finders for planes. But in the early part of the war, we did fire at tanks. We
could see them. And boy, you better get to them because if you don't, they were going
to get to you. So beach fighting went on for, I don't know, a couple of weeks, I guess.
And then we moved, not very far. The whole battalion regrouped. So we were one body again,
four gun crews. That's 16 guns because each battery had four 90 millimeters. So that's
a very potent force and we were called upon by everybody and his brother for support.
You know, an infantry rifleman shoots one bullet, but that 90 millimeter could take
out a building or a tank and when you have 16 of them, you can imagine that our infantry
and supporting groups were happy to see us. And conversely, the enemy was very anxious
to get rid of us. As I say, it was quite an eventful process. After a couple of weeks,
the Germans withdrew. When they knew they lost the beach, they withdrew to a large town
called St. Lull, and St. Lull was the second major battle of the war. It was a town probably
the size of Waterbury, I imagine. And we were there four or five days just firing shell
after shell after shell into the city. Airplanes were coming over around the clock dropping
all kinds of ordinance. As I look back now in hine site, I think of the civilian population
that was in that city. A few days later we rode through St. Lull. I was sitting on the
top of my tank and one of the highest structures I saw was a chimney of the house. The whole
town was just leveled. It was a very very scary site for us. Then after St. Lull we
moved from site to site, a lot of open space. As we started clearing the western front of
France, small airfields were being built so the planes wouldn't have to fly the English
channel. They could land and reload and refuel and take off for their targets much more conveniently,
but we were given the job of guarding those airfields. So that was our assignment for
I'd say probably 50 percent of the war. We were guarding something, ammunition dumps,
railroad crossings, airfields, headquarters. Things like that that were vulnerable targets
and I'm very happy to say we did our job. One night in particular there was a flight
of German bombers. The Germans only flew at night when they felt a little safer, but there
was a flight of German bombers that came over. And again we were told there were about 17
German planes in this flight and we accounted for 11 or 12 of them. So our gun was really
something. That's the way it was all during the war. People used to brag about the German
88 how accurate and destructful it was and we later on found out that it wasn't the gun
was better it just that their orientations were better. We captured a German pillbox
one time and inside the fortifications was the __ and elevations of all the sites around:
Trees, bridges, houses. So all they had to do was read the projectory already established,
put that on a gun, and they could knock off a tank coming up off a bridge with one shot.
Whereas, we often had to fire two or three to get a way in. But, anyway, that went on
for quite a few weeks. The next major battle was the Liberation of Paris. That's major
battle number three. We were told, again, afterwards that we were one of the first American
units that came in on the north side of Paris. And we came in with the French Second Armor
Division. And we as we moved into the city of course the major the bulk of the German
army had left, but there were snipers, there were all kinds of even French civilians that
had learned to side with the Germans. Remember, the Germans had occupied France for seven
years. So sniping had become the thing we had to worry about.
INGRAHAM: Were there any French snipers? JOHNSON: Huh?
INGRAHAM: Were there any French snipers that would
JOHNSON: Yeah. Well some of them were Frenchman, yes, but had kind of became quasi Germans
during that seven year period. But also the French __, the French underground, they did
a lot of clean up. They knew the area. They knew where these Germans were and we had to
be careful because, you know, they didn't have uniforms. The French army did, but these
were civilians who had been harassing the Germans all during the occupation. They just
had regular clothes and when they confiscated weapons, they just went wacky. You know, they
were so happy they'd shoot up in the air and once or twice they had confiscated German
trucks and everything, even a German tank, a small tank. And they'd be riding down the
street with it and celebrating it and we would see it and, again, that's an enemy piece of
equipment. So we had to be doubly careful and make sure that it wasn't just some French
__ celebrating. One of these strange sites that we saw was one day there was a street
demonstration. I didn't see it but some of my buddies did and there were a half a dozen
German women who had been stripped naked and their head shaven and we were told that these
were women who fell in love with German soldiers in order to lead a better life. Because the
Germans had everything they, you know, became part of the German effort. And when the Germans
left and everything, the citizen, the French citizens were so angry at them that that's
how they treated them. That was one thing. Others we were told some of the men were hung.
Again, we didn't have any part of the policing of Paris. Our job I don't think I told you.
Our job when we moved in, the Germans had set up this anti aircraft unit in the park
and our job, we had to pull their guns out and put our guns in. So we became the established
protection for Paris from the air and from afar. The American MP's and everything were
the ones who were trying to bring some type of peace and order to the city. We were there
seven days and it was quite an experience. We had to put up a barbed wire fence around
our unit to keep the French civilians out they were so happy to see us. Especially the
young girls. They wanted to meet some of these young American guys. I tell you, it was quite
a site. I was 19 years old and people used to ask me what country had the best looking
women and I would tell them the country I was in at the time. It was a very happy time,
but all good things have to come to an end and after seven days, we thought we were going
to stay because we had heard General Eisenhower and his staff were going to move into Paris
and that was going to become their headquarters rather than London. But one day we heard the
rumble of trucks and all these 2 and a half ton trucks came rolling into our outfit with
loaded with fresh American soldiers, nice new uniforms, they jumped off the truck and
we were told to move out. That these guys were going to take over our positions, and
we were moved to Marseille where we had to learn some new equipment. They had made some
modifications in the old 90 millimeter, and we spent a couple of weeks familiarizing ourselves
with this new equipment and then off again we went again into battle and those guys that
just got off the boat, we were told, spent the rest of the war in Paris. But that's the
kind of luck I've always had. Anyway, that was battle number three. Now, battle number
four, people all know about it. It's called the Battle of the Bulge and one of the most
horrifying things about that battle is it was in the dead of winter. You know, war is
bad enough in good weather, but if you could imagine trying to fight it in below zero temperatures
where you couldn't change your underwear or socks. You get up in the morning and brush
the snow off your blankets. Sometimes your equipment would freeze, and you'd have to
spend time, you know, getting the frost off it and so forth, especially the vehicles.
Very little very little anything hot. Hot water to bathe, hot water to have a cup of
coffee with. It was the most uncomfortable and unbelievable. Many of the troops had frostbite,
their toes froze. They had to be evacuated. Invariably, their toes would be cut off and
they'd be no good for the military, they were sent home. I could go on and on and talk about,
you know, the seriousness of it. I avoided several weeks of it because I came down with
pneumonia and that developed into what they called yellow jaundice which is an infectious
disease. I was evacuated all the way back to London for a couple of weeks. I was very
fortunate of getting back to my own unit because after you left the hospital over there, they
put you in what they call a replacement depo. In there, any organization that needed men,
they just sent you to, but luckily my outfit was not too far from where the "repo depo"
was in and when I found out where it was, I had the chaplain, you know, contact them
and tell them where I was and they sent a jeep for me. So the Battle of the Bulge was
long and hard and horrible and few people have read the story of Bastone and General
McAuliffe telling the German General when they were asked to surrender, he said "nuts."
General Patton marched his troops through stormy weather a hundred miles or so and saved
the day. The weather was in favor of the Germans for the first week. Cloudy overcast, the planes
couldn't fly, and that's what gave the Germans the break they needed, but once the weather
cleared, they were sitting ducks. Our air superiority just flew over in droves and picked
them off. It was a slaughter. So that was the forth battle. The last battle was The
Remagen Bridge which was the last bridge across the Rhine River, the main entrance into the
heart of Germany. And the Germans tried to protect that bridge and try to keep the Americans
from it. We were sent right up on the highest point overlooking that bridge to protect it
from bombers and, you know, situations like that. Can you turn that off for a minute?
(Audio Interruption). So our last major assignment was the fifth battle of the European war,
the Battle of the Remagen Bridge. And Germans were trying to destroy the bridge, slow our
progress. We were there defending it it. Down below us were infantry and tanks and the Germans
were shelling it and they were sending planes over trying to bomb it and that was our major
objective. For about three days we had heavy fighting and the Americans crossed the bridge,
were able to protect it, we kept the Germans away. The planes the Germans had developed
a jet planes by then. The first time we ever saw one and it was unbelievable the difference
in speed, but the thing was the Germans had developed the plane but they didn't have time
to develop the pilots and the pilots were not that good at flying that plane. There
was something that was just too good for them. So right after we crossed the Remagen Bridge,
we went into a German town __, and there was a big German hospital there. And our first
assignment was to guard this hospital because the Americans became very interested in finding
German officers and German civilian people who were directly responsible for all the
atrocities that happened during the war. And they were sure that there were some of them
in that hospital. So we had to guard everybody going in or out and making sure nobody escaped.
But the thing that I remember about that particular duty is when we moved into that town, we were
standing outside the building and the captain came by and said to each gun crew again,
a gun crew is 16 to 18 guys. You take that house there, you take this house there, and
you give the people two hours to get out and so we did. Captain's orders. So we went over
and knocked on the door and told them in broken German, you know, out, raus whatever the words
were we're taking over your house as long as we're here. I want you people to think
about that because I think about it quite often. As I'm sitting here with Shawn and
we're looking at all my souvenirs supposing that it happened here, how many of these souvenirs
would be left when I came back? They'd all be on their way home to become somebody else's
souvenir. And the house itself, we didn't make beds or we weren't careful about, you
know, cleaning the floors. It was really horrible. That's a nonmilitary thing, but war is just
as bad for the civilians as it is for the military. I used to watch lines of civilians
going through our garbage cans after the war trying to salvage food. All the infrastructure
of those cities were destroyed. No sanitation, no transportation, no way to get food accept
what was brought in to them by trucks from the USO's and so forth. It it was horrible.
But, anyway, that was our first assignment and after that we moved out. And the second
assignment was watching roads. The Germans during the war if they would capture a country
or a town, would take most of the able bodied men and women and bring them into the heart
of Germany to work for them either in the fields or the factories, any type of work
that would free a German to fight and they were called DP's or "displaced persons" and
after the war they wanted to get home. And they were supposed to wait until they were
interrogated and checked for health problems and then they would be offered transportation
to get back home if there was a home. Invariably, many of those homes or cities were destroyed
too, but a lot of them were impatient and they were going to walk, hundreds of miles
maybe. So we would be stationed at major intersections and we would have to stop these groups. They
always traveled in groups. Maybe, you know, a group of three or four, maybe fifteen, and
we would have to stop and interrogate them and see if they had the proper papers and
whatever was necessary. So we would stop them and one of the things we did was we would
delouse them. We had these spray cans full of filled with DDT because they had been living
in deplorable conditions for years and we would spray them to try to kill any lice or
bugs they might have. And there are two funny stories I remember there. One about a group
of them down in a pond that were trying to fish with whatever they could muster to fish
and my buddy and I went down and we took a German hand grenade that we had and we moved
them back and we threw it in and every fish that was in the pond came floating to the
top and these people were jumping in with their clothes and grabbing them and smiling.
So that was one of my heroic efforts for the DP's. The other one, of course as you can
imagine, is interesting to us and kind of devious but whenever there would be a young
young lady, a young girl going through the line, we'd make sure we'd give them an extra
spray of DDT. You know, tell them to open up their clothes. We used to get a big kick
out of that. We were waiting to be amused. The war weighed heavily on our hands. As I
say, when the war was over, we kept busy. And then we were sent to Marseille. The war
was over in April. I think in July we were sent to Marseille which is on the Riviera
which is on the Mediterranean Sea. And we were told we were going to be you know,
get ready to go back home to be discharged, but all of a sudden they started retraining
us: Exercising, going through manuals, and all kinds of stuff that didn't sit very well
by us. And rumor told us that we were now getting ready to be shipped to Japan. Germany
was gone and now Japan had to be taken and Japan was hundreds of islands. Each island
had to be taken separately and as each island was taken, they needed air protection anti
aircraft protection. And so we were told we were a need, a great need. And, again, you
can imagine that didn't set very well with us. You know, how lucky can you be? But they
say that was in July and August. The middle of August my good friend Harry Truman gave
permission to drop the atomic bomb and after two bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese
surrendered. Of course, we weren't deployed to Japan. We probably had another month of
training before we would have been. You can imagine what I tell people when they tell
me should we have dropped the bomb. I tell them I don't think I'd be here if they didn't.
But, anyway, my military experiences started to close about then. I think in September
it was September before we were given a ship. We were discharged by a number system. You
get so many points Actually, the point system they call it. You get so many points for each
battle you were in. So many points for each metal you win, so many points for this is
that. And the people with the highest points were discharged first. Our unit was high up
there. We had accumulated quite a few points. We were, you know, pretty much from that high
group from Marseille, but one of the things they did before we got on board ship, they
gave us back pay. In the military, you're always being paid behind. Not that you can
do anything with the money anyway and we hadn't been paid for a couple of months. And so before
we got on board ship I think they gave us about two months pay that they owed us and
what a stupid thing that was because what do you do on board a ship for six, seven,
eight days? I don't have to tell you but it's gamble. So some of those guys walked off that
ship multimillionaires and guys like myself walked off broke. When we talk about it with
my buddies, well, why in the world did they have to pay us then? Why couldn't they have
paid us when we hit the States so we'd have a couple hundred bucks? But, anyway, we landed
at Camp Kilmer. The same place we embarked from. There were these enormous mess halls
and on the wall were all the menus you could choose from. You could get anything you wanted,
and I mean anything. And you know what the most requested thing was fresh milk because
we hadn't had fresh milk. We weren't allowed to drink any of the milk over there. We had
powdered milk. So fresh milk or steak, anything you wanted and the thing they told us to be
careful of was the waiters were German prisoners. They had been working things like that for
maybe a year or two. They were the happiest bunch of guys I'd ever seen in my life. Nobody
was shooting at them. They all looked well fed and many of them had picked up rudiments
of the English language, but we were told not to speak with them about anything. We
were given a piece of the paper to check off what we wanted. And we weren't even supposed
to say hello or anything else because they were just worried that perhaps, you know,
some American who had seen a buddy killed would grab one of these guys or stab them
with a steak knife or something. But, anyway, that was a wonderful experience. Within a
couple of days we were sent back to Fort Devens where I was inducted and divided into groups
to get discharged. So sometime in November of '45, I was a civilian. I don't like to
use the word civilian. I like to use the word veteran because I'm very proud to be a veteran.
I'm very active in veteran's affairs. I received a lot of high honors for my work with veterans.
I like to use the word patriot. When you people study U.S. history, you read a lot about patriots:
Patrick Henry, George Washington. You know, all the first Presidents, the signers of The
Declaration. You remember each man that signed The Declaration of Independence became a trader
to the English king. Their houses were confiscated, their families, if possible, were imprisoned.
If they were caught, they would have been hung. So they did a very very noble and dangerous
thing. In the last sentence in The Declaration of the Independence, "we pledge our lives,
our fortune, and our sacred honor." How many people would do that today? So that's what
our country was built on. And our country is built on the sacrifices and deeds of the
United States veterans. We like to think of ourselves as a peace loving country, but no
generation since the Revolutionary War has not seen some war going on some place in their
lives. To you young people, I hope you appreciate the military, I hope you have love and respect
for the flag. That flag is almost human to me. When I see it wave on certain days, I
can see Washington, I can see Eisenhower, I can see all these former figures in our
past. People think I'm nuts, but I have no trouble standing when I'm watching a parade
when I'm watching the flag go by. Saluting it in uniform. I enjoy standing and singing
the national anthem at ball game or pledging allegiance in classes. Whenever I give a lecture
in a class, I always ask if they will stand with me and join with me in a pledge. It's
very very important to me. Respect I learned in the service respect for my government.
I firmly believe that our democracy is the best form of government ever devised in the
history of the world. Our problems are not with the form of government. They're with
some of the people that we have elected to run it. All the more reason to be careful
in whom you elect. So I could talk another half an hour about flag waving. I'm the world's
greatest flag waver, but I'm going to stop there and let Shawn ask me if there's anything
that I haven't talked about that he'd like to know.
INGRAHAM: Could you tell me about growing up before you joined the military?
JOHNSON: Hmm? INGRAHAM: Growing up.
JOHNSON: Oh, Okay. Well, growing up, of course, was much different. There was no television.
Very few people had telephones. My whole neighborhood, I don't think there were five automobiles.
Your whole world was your neighborhood and you got to know everybody. The kids, you know,
your peers, and also their parents. And most of your amusement took place in the neighborhood.
Occasionally you'd go downtown to meet people or go to the theater. There was one theater
in town which, you know, which changed maybe once or twice a week. So it was a very slow
pace thing. I don't think I ever left Naugatuck until maybe I was in high school. Maybe went
to Waterbury. I might have been out of Connecticut once or twice before I went in the service
but that's the way it was. It wasn't just me, it was everybody else. And it's hard for
people, you know, in your vantage to understand that and that's why it's hard to understand
what our early up bringing was. School was a great social center as well as a learning
center. Discipline, I think, was much easier to maintain because parents exercise a great
deal more control over their kids. It was an embarrassment for parents if their kids
misbehaved. You know, such thing as promiscuity, teenage pregnancy. A family would be likely
to move out of town if their daughter were to become pregnant. Today, it's more commonplace.
You know, I'm not going to dwell on that. I can't make statements about it because my
up bringing is much different, but if somebody was ever arrested in the neighborhood, it
was a whole cast of negative spell over the whole neighborhood. And if Mrs. Jones down
the street saw you smoking a cigarette, she wouldn't hesitate coming down and telling
my mother. She probably would have to come down to tell her that because for a while
we didn't have a telephone. The first telephone we had was a party line. Two or three people
would be on the same line and if you picked it up and someone else was on the line talking,
you could listen to their conversation. And if it was sort of an emergency, you could
say, you know, Mrs. Brown, could you get off? I need to call my doctor. The best way to
community with somebody across town was with a letter or a postcard. You brought it to
the corner postbox and the mailman would pick it up, bring it downtown, sort it, and it
would be delivered to __ the next day. And they'd answer you, write a postcard, and same
thing because you couldn't talk on the telephone. Where would people be today without a cell
phone? So when you study history, you have to study history in the same context. When
you see the Civil War where men marching shoulder to shoulder into enemy fire, you say, wow,
that's suicidal or it would be today, with machine guns, but remember if you could get
off two shots in three minutes, that was rapid fire. You had seven or eight different things
you had to do. And the enemy would get very close to you by the time you got two rounds
off. So you lined up four or five or six deep. In the European battles, if you were fighting
your first battle, you were in the first wave. If you lived through it, you would be in the
second wave. If you lived through five or six battles, you had good chances of surviving.
But, again, the context. The early Indian War, the Indians would get off six or seven
arrows before you could get your second shot off. But, anyway, in my young life, everything
was very simple. Movies were probably 5 or 10 cents, ice cream, same thing. Most parents
made their own. My father made root beer. My older sister could make good ice cream.
Everybody had something growing in the backyard. Very little refrigeration. So my parents almost
had to shop every day. A lot of backyard baseball, and football, basketball, swimming in the
old pond. You know, which now would be ruled out of order for being polluted. Walking up
in the mountains to pick berries. You know, a two or three mile walk was nothing.
INGRAHAM: What did your father do as a job? JOHNSON: Well, my father really had two jobs.
He was a Reserves Officer which meant me was gone for at least two months every year in
training. He was in World War I and World War II. And then he worked in the chemical
which was part of the __ complex then. He worked in an office. He was a purchasing agent.
A little bit high, probably in the middle strata of jobs. So probably by the time I
was 10, 11 years old, we had a car and we had to take trips here and there. To do that,
gasoline was 12 cents a gallon. So he You know, he tried to provide, but The Depression
came along. Everybody lost their jobs. Even people like my father who had a fairly responsible
job probably was told to work one or two days a week. Eventually, just about everybody lost
their homes. Homes were foreclosed, they couldn't pay mortgages. But the good thing about it
was the bank couldn't sell the homes because nobody had any money. So the bank was sitting
on hundreds of foreclosed homes and it limited the amount of business that they could do
because they didn't have any money either. No money was coming in, but we were never
forced out of our homes. I guess some people were. Some unscrupulous people that had money
of some source. They were able to buy up beautiful homes and estates for less than nothing. Boy,
they could hire men who had been unemployed for less than nothing an hour to build stone
walls and all kinds of structures. So these people had You know, had an advantage. But
growing up was altogether different. INGRAHAM: Now, you said your sister was involved
with the war effort. What did she do? JOHNSON: My sister was a nurse. After high
school she went to a three year nursing program in Waterbury Hospital and as soon as she got
her RN papers she joined the military. My father was already gone. Our family had a
very heavy military orientation. So she joined the Army Nurse Corps and became a Second Lieutenant.
Before too long I think even before I was out of high school, she was overseas and working
in some hospital. She stayed quite a while, 10 or 12 years. As a matter of fact, she met
her husband. A wounded 82nd Airborne Officer and she met him in the hospital. So I never
really remember too much about her. Accept she graduated from high school and went to
Waterbury Hospital. At that time, they stayed at Waterbury Hospital and didn't come home
at nights because after a couple of months they worked the hospital. The hospital was
getting free training nurses but they were fed and housed at the hospital. So I didn't
see too much of her and once she graduated she was gone. My older brother, I don't even
think he graduated. I think he left. My father was very very strict. My mother had the toughest
job. You know, helping us grow up and then during the war, can you imagine can you
picture yourself as a mother having five of your family during the war living in harms
way? All of us were not too far from danger. So I think she had a very tough time with
it, but we all came back. I came back and I took advantage of the GI Bill of Rights.
The United States Government would give you a year of higher education a month of higher
education for every month in the service you had. So if you had three years, that's equal
to four years of college because a calendar year is 12 months and a college year is 8
or 9. So I went to Spring Field College and had my room, board, tuition, books paid for,
plus, $75 a month __. So when I got my check, I went over to the cafeteria and bought about
50 bucks worth of meal tickets so I wouldn't starve. And then I blew the rest of the 15
bucks a month or whatever it was. But, again, it was a wonderful opportunity for me. Plus,
I think it was a good move for the government because I'm sure they got all that money back
through taxes and work I did for 38 years. It's very hard for me to comprehend the world
that I'm living in now. I have an 8 year old grandson who I can call over to fix my VCR.
___ I got rid of the clock. You see that? I don't like the flash so I just that's
improvising; right, for an 83 year old old. I sometimes wish I had learned the computer
but it just happened at a very inconvenient time. When it became almost mandatory, I was
ready to retire and that's what I wanted to do. I had two offers to teach in junior college
and I told them, well, let me take a year off. I'm a little tired and by the time the
year ended, I wasn't ready to do anything. I was still tired. I just pick up a few bucks
here, I tutor. I used to, I don't anymore. I do an awful lot of volunteer work. I've
been chairman of the Honored Vet's Counsel for 20 years, run the parades, and all the
other stuff. So it's been a very eventful life. I consider myself very lucky in many
ways. I don't want to get too philosophical on you, young guy.
INGRAHAM: It's Okay. When you enlisted, were you hoping to fight in the Pacific or fight
in Europe? JOHNSON: I don't know if that was anything
I really, you know, felt was important. I think I told you earlier on, what your wishes
were didn't make any difference anyway. I wanted to be an infantry man like my father.
They must have thought I was nuts, but I wound up in artillery. Why? I don't know. Except
that it's a little bit more sophisticated maybe or maybe that's what they needed at
the time. So they got a six or seven hundred guys that just came in. Camp Edwards needs
six or seven hundred guys to fulfill their batteries up there and so boom, that's where
you went. And once you were in, you have no control over your life. The good and the bad
thing is you don't have to worry about what time you go to bed, they told you. You told
you what time you were getting up, what you were going to wear, what you were going to
eat. All that was taken care of for you. On the other hand, you lose your choice. The
undemocratic something about the United States is the military and it has to be that way.
You're not going to take a vote to see who's going to charge their machine gun. So choices
are not important, today it is. I used to do some recruiting when I was a guidance counselor
and kids today, if their grades are commencer to what they want, they have a good chance
to gain. You know, and if if an opening for what you want isn't there, they tell you
to wait. Wait a couple of months so something opens up. Not during war time. They didn't
call you a GI for nothing. You were government issued and you were part of the equipment.
When it rained the sergeant would say "don't get your rifle wet." He didn't give a damn
about you. That's the way it has to be. Again, that's Again, why I say war is horrible.
It should be avoided at all cost. Except for surrender and capitulation. If we ever surrender,
that's the end. You'll never get anything like we had now back. There's so many people
out to destroy us that if they ever get control of this country, that's the end. To capitulate,
I feel we have done that already. I don't feel we ever should have compromise Vietnam
or Korea. Right now what they're talking about over there in Iraq is very hard to We should
avoid war as I said, but if you're in to it, you're into it to win at all cost, no matter
how long it takes. And you should have the country behind you. Unfortunately, today our
country is getting more and more away from that. And that's the fault of our leaders.
And political parties, I think now are more interested in themselves than they are their
country. So, I think I don't ever see ourselves being destroyed militarily, but I can see
ourselves falling apart internally. So with that I'll end my conversation because don't
get me started on that. I'll get my banners out and show you my battle scars. But, again,
as I said before, I appreciate this opportunity. I hope a lot of people have the opportunity
to hear it. I hope it's been a learning experience. And I hope many young people will give some
thought of joining the military. Not everybody can hide behind the military. Some people
have to become military. Young college men have a chance to become officers which what
I wanted to do but never worked out. When I graduated from Spring Field College I wanted
to. I had a chance to go to Officer Candidate School for seven weeks and come out a Second
Lieutenant, but I also was engaged at the time and my wife and I had made plans to get
married in August and she said, "I'm not marrying a military man." She probably saved
my life. So it's interesting. I envy you young people. You're at a very exciting age. Take
your profession of your job seriously but not yourself.
INGRAHAM: Well, I thank you for this opportunity. ( Audio stops working at 1:16:32 )