Transcript

I found out about the war when I was going to college out in Springfield. We were out at the college café. It was noon on Sunday and news came across that we had been bombed.  Of course, we were pretty sure, most of us, at that age that we were going to get involved sometime before the war was over.  My brother went in right away so I quit school and went home to farm while he was in. I farmed for a year and then I went in.  He was in the navy.  At that time they were starting to draft a lot of people. Instead of getting drafted I enlisted.  That way I could choose my service.  I chose signal core, which is radio and telephone transmission of messages.  I was involved in radio communications.

            Leaving my family wasn’t so hard.  My father had passed away already, and we knew everybody was going, at least who was physically fit, just about went.  So it was just something we had to do.  I was away from home from November of ’42 to April of ’46 so just a little over three years, about three and a half years.  In that time though I was able to come home once in a while. When I was in the states, going to the University of Kansas I was home for Christmas that year, I remember that.  And then when I went from Camp Crowder back out to California I got a delay in route they called it.  If it was on your way you could get off and go to your home for three days or whatever it was. I visited home and then got back on the train and continued on.

            I wasn’t always overseas.  From the beginning to the end of the war I was stationed in many different places.  I was stationed in Cap Color, California, that’s near Sacramento. From there I went to the army, which had a program for potential officer material, and they sent you to different collages around the nation. I went to the University of Kansas. I took a basic engineering course there, and then they discontinued the program after about three months. So then from there I went to Camp Crowder in Missouri, that’s near Joplin.  And then from there I went back out to the same camp in California for more training and then back to Camp Crowder. After that I went to Philadelphia for more schooling for the air to ground communications where you’re supposed to learn how to put up radio towers.  Next I was off to Port of Embarkations. We hung around there for about two weeks. I suppose they were waiting for a ship, and then they sent us over to, from New Port News, Virginia to Naples, Italy.  We got in there about the time of the Battle of the Bulge, so they gave us all a riffle and were going to make infantry men out of us because they were loosing so many at the Battle of the Bulge in Europe.  But then that got resolved, the tide turned about Christmas of that year, and so then we went to our original destination, which was the land in North Africa. We didn’t stay there very long, and then we went to Al Jeers, overland on a train.  Little 40 and 8 train they called it.  It held 40 men and 8 horses.  It was a long trip, from Overland to Al Jeers. At Al Jeers we got some equipment, and went to a little town by the name of Taza. There was a mountain pass there that goes through the border between Algeria and Morocco.  There we sat up a radio tower for air to ground communications for planes going from Casablanca to Italy, and we worked in little towns up and down the north coast of Africa. Taza Pass was the name of the pass. It was a mountain pass.  The war ended when we were there. So we went to Al Jeers and ran our radio station, while we were waiting for the ride home, because there wasn’t much going on that was important.  We stayed there for quite a while and then I got home in April of ’46. It took 14 days to go there on a ship and it took 28 days to come home on a Kaiser ship they call it. They build a lot of those for hauling equipment and cargo.  They weren’t meant for troops, but there were just a few of us that got on that.  It landed in New Orleans.  From New Orleans we went to Fort Sheridan in Chicago and got discharged there. I went home and farmed.

            I was never close enough to the fighting to witness any battle first hand.  Although we were close there in Italy.  We were in a replacement depot, where they were supposed to replace casualties.  We were close enough to get an artillery, but that’s the closest I ever got.  Nothing heroic.  I did though remember seeing two plane crashes.  They weren’t combat related but they were hauling troops.  One was a British plane and I think there were 140 soldiers in it.  They had been in Africa a long time and were headed home. The plane crashed just outside the airport in Al Jeers.  Then we saw at that little town where we were in the mountain pass, a French plane. I don’t know what happened, but it crashed into a groove of trees there.  I don’t think anyone got killed there, but that British plane they all got killed.  Terrible thing.

            When I was in Africa I met some great people. There was an air chieftain of some sort, I don’t know what his title was, but he had a place in the mountains somewhere. He used to come up there and ask us for a ride into town, because we were going back and forth into town.  He appreciated that, and he invited us to have supper with him.  His wife fixed the meal but we never saw her.  We were upstairs and she was downstairs and she would knock on the door and hand food in.  It was couscous, a popular food there. I didn’t like it and where we ate was spooky. It was dark and there were no lights. That was quite the experience.  That’s about the only thing that had to do with the Arabs, but it was French controlled at the time so there were a lot of French around. 

The French are a lot like us Americans. They introduced us to some of the activities we would do. We used to go to this French families place once in a while.  They were pretty decent and you know for our social lives they had dances in the enlisted men’s club, and they’d send a truck in and bring in a bunch of girls so we’d have someone to dance with. So that was interesting.  We also would play soccer, which was big over there. We weren’t very good at it, but they were really good.  And we tried also tried tennis. Those are the only two sports I tried. 

            During the time of the war a lot was going on.  I distinctly remember gas rationing, sugar rationing, and tire rationing. Boy you could hardly get a car that could take you anywhere because the tires were either bad or it needed a battery.  They had coupons for gas rationing. You would get so many a month, and it was the same with sugar.

            When I heard the war was over I was very glad. We had the people and the material to win the war. The material we had unlimited supply.  We would send it to the British and we would send it to the Russians and we still had a lot for ourselves, and I think we just had more nutrition than they did.