Drew: Which war were you involved in?
Oliver: I was involved in World War Two.
Tom: How old were you when you entered the war?
Oliver: 24
Drew: What were your feelings about going into war?
Oliver: Well I was drafted 6 weeks after Pearl Harbor. I tried to get into air force but I was too late. I was a little nervous like anyone else would be, but I never imagined I would go through what I did.
Tom: How did your family feel about you going into war?
Oliver: They were pretty sad. My dad wished he could go in my place.
Tom: Where were you stationed?
Oliver: I was sent down to FRT. Jackson
Drew: When you got to where you were stationed, what did other troops think about what was going on with the war?
Oliver: A lot of young people all were worried about dying in the war.
Tom: Would you please tell us the story of when you were captured?
Oliver: We left out of Norfolk, Virginia and set sail for North Africa. There were subs chasing us all the way across. I was on a flagship that landed in Italy. We were being shelled heavily while we marched 15 miles. The next morning we were surrounded, so we ran into a little building and hid. Then someone in building ratted us out and told the Germans we were in there. Then, the Germans said, “If you don’t come out, we’ll blow you out!” We came out and there was young fellow that walked up to me and put his gun to my head and had his hand on the trigger then with his other hand he pulled the New Testament out of my pocket. He handed it back and said come with me. We visited along the way. He was the only German who spoke perfect English. He said that he didn’t like this war any more than I did. Then they turned us over to a couple of soldiers. They just slaughtered our troops. There was one young boy who crawled out of a ditch, with his legs just dangling. As we walked on, we stopped and one of our young men who was captured with us was a Jewish boy. One of the German soldiers said, “You’re a Jew” in German. The Jewish boy spoke in German and told the soldiers he wasn’t German. That was the first time we realized that he spoke German. So we told our comrade to make a deal with these guys that they could come with us to America as our prisoners and have it made, good shelter, food and everything. They didn’t believe us and figured we would just capture them and not let them come back, so they said no and marched us up to Italy. I road in a tiny boxcar for 4 days and 3 nights. I was put in Stalag 2B in Poland. They then took several of us to villages to work as slaves. There, we were locked in a barn. We ate the same thing we fed to our hogs. I was there for two Christmas’s. They then started marching us in 1945. We marched 6 weeks. We slept on the ground and had horrible body lice. Then finally the American’s were coming in from the other side. After marching six weeks we finally heard the clatter of American machine guns. Our captures took off and we just took over. We heard a little plane flying overhead. He landed and he said the fifth armor was only a little distance away; we’ll be right back to rescue us. Then more Germans came and marched us into the woods. They had us kneeling over ready to shoot us, when the plane came back in and circled around and screamed the tanks are coming. So our capturers ran off again, knowing that if they stayed, they would be killed for sure. Then the tanks got there and surrounded us and threw us loads of food and clean clothes. We ate like pigs. Eating food when you’re starving can kill you, you know, but we managed not to kill ourselves. So when we finished eating, we got in the tanks and headed back to an American camp. That’s how we were saved.
Drew: How long were you a prisoner?
Oliver: 19 months 2 days