Location: Oregon
Time: 1927
She had a big round kind eye, somewhat of a long nose, sorrel colored, and a heart that never stopped trying. In the early 1900's many buildings like cabins were built with horses. My Grandpa and Grandma built their home out of logs with horses. And they told us grandkids the story of Trixie over and over again. They used Trixie for many things, but this time she was pulling logs off the hill to the cabin site. My Dad was riding and guiding her off the hill, with one log behind her. She slowly leaned into the pull, lowering her head and dropping her upper lip out and over her lower lip with heart and try. The log began slowly sliding. It was not a steep slope down hill, but was still down hill when something happened, Trixie lost her footing throwing my Dad off and running a large stick into her stomach. Dad was ok but Trixie was not. Grandpa and Grandma did everything they could to save her, cleaning the wound regularly, feeding her mash, doing what they could and had in those days. Horses pick up infections fast, and infection set in .Grandpa and Grandma told us where Trixie stood close to the cabin waiting for what care and love she could get. Grandpa did the best he could to keep the would clean, and Grandma fed her warm mash. She died in 10 days. But for generations was remembered as the wonderful horse that was a big part of my Grandpa and Grandma's family. They always talked of Trixie's never ending try. Because horses were used so much in those days, many became a part of a family, and Trixie was a big part of my Grandparents life and family.
Friday, January 10, 2014
Dave Tindle Transcription
I joined the navy there (Portland), and it was still about a month and a half before I went to boot camp for basic training in Farragut, Idaho. From August until January I took some of my training. And then I had some work that had to be done on my teeth so I was held over for about three weeks while the rest of those that I was in boot camp with went on. Then in February I got a five day leave before I went on board ship.
When I enlisted, since I was 17, they said I would get about anything I wanted [branch of service]. I put down aviation. There were three different options you could select, and I put down all for aviation. And they [still] put me on a destroyer. I was shipped to San Francisco for training; [I was] based on Treasure Island in San Francisco for about six weeks before I went back to Washington again to wait until a brand new destroyer (the USS Rowan, DD782) was commissioned in March. So we spent a lot of time in Bellingham, Washington at Pacific Shipyards (where we were stationed) until the ship was completely done, loading and getting equipment on board on the bay there in Seattle, Washington.
We loaded ammo and all kinds of equipment (except the torpedoes, which we would load later). We went to sea for a little while in what they call a shake down, just off of San Francisco, where they did some target practice. I was what they call a trainer on a quad forty gun. A quad forty is pretty large, but not ultra large; it was then the next to largest gun we had on board. I was there on that quad forty while we worked [trained] down off the coast of Point Montero, which is actually off of Highway 101 down south of San Francisco.
We went down and fired onto the beach where they had big targets. We (our ship) had the small guns - a 20 millimeter (a small machine gun) and a forty millimeter. It (the twenty millimeter) would fire, and then we (the forty millimeter) would fire. The one we had, the forty milliliter, was four barrels, four different guns, and we fired all of those for training. Afterward, we went back to Seattle, where we loaded the torpedoes. Shortly after that, we left Seattle and went to sea.
The first stop was in Hawaii. Pearl Harbor was over when I got there, but the ships were there; some of them had been removed, but most of them were still there in the water (sunk and all different things). We were there for two days. We went on from the ship to the beach (which they called White City; [it was] actually a marine base) on a motor boat and then into Honolulu. We just fooled around there. I had a brother who was stationed there at Kaneohe Naval Air Station. I went over there to see him, to spend the night with him, but he was on duty, so I just got to visit with him. He was a bombardier instructor. His job was inside, in a building that had platforms that moved along on the concrete (with bombardiers-in-training on the platforms), and when they (the bombardier) thought they were where they were supposed to be; they would push a button and a bomb would release onto a little ship below on the concrete; they would hit it or they didn’t and that was the training for the bombardiers.
I went back to Honolulu then and spent the night in a USO; a big government building that had been changed over so we could stay there. The next night was spent on board ship. We loaded a bunch of stuff there (Honolulu). We went to sea out from Honolulu, (Pearl Harbor) and just stayed out there for a while. We didn’t know where we were going, and evidently the skipper didn’t know where we were going either at the time, until a Navy Blimp came over the ship from, (I suppose) Pearl Harbor, and dropped a rope down with a briefcase [attached]. That briefcase had our orders in it. The officers picked up that briefcase and the blimp went back (I suppose), to Honolulu. Our orders were then in that briefcase.
Then next day we found out we were headed for Japan. We were not in a hurry to get to Japan, but we were on our way to Japan to intercept other ships that we would escort for a while (like oilers or one that had fuel on board); occasionally we would refuel from those. There were several destroyers in a group; we were one of them (about five others). We would hook up with a convoy going over; escorting other ships carrying ammo or fuel or whatever (just in case subs were around or something like that).
There was a schedule [on board ship]; we had to fit those times. I would say ninety percent of the meals were powdered; dried (not very good meals). When we were anchored or when we were in San Diego, they would bring us fresh food and stuff every once in a while. It wasn’t very good [the food on board ship], but you were hungry enough and you ate it. And powdered ice cream; we had an ice cream maker and about once a month, we’d get ice cream.
We never worked with anything knowing what a torpedo looked like when it was fired at your ship. So we went through a training program to show us what it was like. A submarine came through and fired us with a dummy torpedo. We stood at the side of the ship and watch it go under the ship, just far enough below us that we could see it, but deeper than the ship so that it didn’t hit us. It would go on by, stop, and pop on up out of the war. The head would come up and a fire would light. It would bob up and down in the water, burning, and then after the sub came up out of the water; (which is eerie, seeing a submarine coming up out of the water). We would go over, pick up the torpedo and put it on our ship. When we went back in (shore), we would take the two torpedoes we had off and leave them at a marine base, where they would fix ‘em up and reuse them. Then we left there and headed more direct to Japan.
The war was still going on; but we were fortunate that it was just before they [the U.S.] dropped the atomic bombs (so we didn’t get involved with that). Then we went on, traveling slow; we were a fast destroyer; we just traveled slow (we could go about30-35 knots in the water; full speed would be in the 40’s). Our ship was 365 feet long, with a crew of approximately 350 people on board. Each one had a duty and mine happened to be on this gun crew with the quad forty. At the time we had two quad forties, two twin forties, and I couldn’t tell you right off how many twenty millimeters we had.
We went back [to a base] and had work done (they took all the stuff off, reloaded with all the ammo we had fired; we had fired quite a bit of ammo because for our training; they would fly a twin engine airplane towing a target that looked like a wind sock that you would see at an airport. They towed it on a cable, and then we would fire at it. The 20’s would fire, and see if they could hit it, and then we would fire at it, and try to hit it, and then the five inch would fire at it, and try to hit it. We had two sets of fives) and reloaded, but with torpedoes of our own.
We had two torpedo mounts, and each one had four torpedoes. So we were carrying eight torpedoes on board the ship. When we went into San Diego, they took one set of torpedoes back behind it off and added another five inch-38. Our ship had two smoke stacks; two engine rooms. One set of torpedoes was between the smoke shacks, and would rotate and fire off the side of the ship. They took one of the sets of torpedoes off and added another five inch-38. So then we had three five inches. Two forward, one aft. And so just beyond us [the quad forty gun crew]; we had a five inch that would fire as far around forward as possible - just so it wouldn’t hit the ship when it fired. Well, our quad forty was mount forty-two but when they would fire that five inch, there were times it was close enough that we would get hit with the cork that held the powder in. It was that close. We had no hearing protection of any kind, not even cotton. Most of us had hearing problems after that.
[Anecdote] Fact is I had an ID card when I was in the navy but because I was too young, I couldn’t go into a bar. So I got a new one that said I was two years older. One time in San Diego I decided I was going to get drunk. I didn’t know what to drink, so I drank whiskey and beer and mixed them all up, you know. I didn’t get drunk, but boy did I get sick. I was in a hurry to the bathroom and I threw up all over a sailor in the bathroom. He didn’t kill me but he said, “Sailor, you’d better get back to ship.” And I said, “I’m on my way.” And I caught a water taxi back to ship.
When headed back for Japan, the war was over, but the Japanese hadn’t signed the surrender yet, because it was done at Tokyo Bay on the Battleship Missouri. We went into the harbor on this Kyushu island hoped that they would let us go up to where they were signing, but they wouldn’t let us. We were too small, I guess. So we had duty there when there was a real bad hurricane.
There was a barge at sea that was loaded. We thought it was loaded with ammo, but we didn’t really know. We had to stand-by (because it had broken free) until a seagoing tug came and hooked on to it to take it in. Then we went back into the harbor. There was a Japanese battleship that had been sunk in the harbor, but there was still room for us to get by. We loaded up with a bunch of Japanese paint, and oil (and things like that -anything that was there that was Japanese, we could have). That’s what we used to paint our ship. Afterward, this typhoon came through; a real strong one - and we wanted to leave the port to go out to sea because we felt it would be safer out at sea (there were quite a few ships in this harbor; we called it Sasabo).
Some of the ships were just anchored [once]; we were anchored on the front and back, and then we had to run the engines to keep from being pushed around (because it would drag the anchors we had on the bottom). We had to watch a small ship, a minelayer, - with two anchors out and the engines going full speed; move back onto the beach and onto its side.
After that was over [the signing of the Japanese surrender], in February, we went back out to sea and to Pearl Harbor for one day to refuel and everything. (While we were at sea, we refueled from a tanker. They would throw a rope from the tanker to our ship and pull on this rope that had a round ball on it for weight, {the rope was probably about four or five inches around}. We’d pull that over to our ship and then we’d pick up a hose that was probably at least six inches around and stick it in a big hole that we had there; they’d turn on the fuel and transfer fuel from their ship to our ship. They would transfer personnel {medical personnel etc.}, in what they called the boson’s chair. We were close enough that we could keep it [the rope] pretty tight, but every once in a while, we’d get a big wave and it’d push us toward each other, and the guy would be headed toward the water. We never did drop one, but I don’t know that we’d have cared at the time). When we’d meet a ship for refueling, usually they were carrying our mail. So we’d get mail maybe once a month. You’d never know.
We then returned to Japan and picked up a lot of guns and things like that as souvenirs (I had one of those); we went into a real big Japanese storage area with barracks and everything, below which they (the Japanese) had stacks and stacks of guns. We picked up all these guns with the Japanese as labor and store and stack them (bayonets and scabbards for the bayonets and lots of things that they told us we wouldn’t get home with anyway…course I got home with two bayonets and a rifle).
We went into this one bay and with about ten scientists (of some kind), and anchored in this little harbor where there were a lot of fishing vessels; some sunk (the temperatures and pressures set off by the atomic bomb had traveled through an opening where this road went through to the fishing area. The explosion had gone through and set some [boats] on fire; they were all wooden - and sank some of them). So these scientists went into the area where the bomb had exploded and spent several days in there trying to figure out what had gone on.
We went over on the beach and went to some of the areas where they [the scientists] were. We didn’t have any idea about nuclear power. We didn’t know it would cause cancer or anything like that. We had no protection. Well, they found out [later] but we didn’t know [at the time]. It (the bomb) destroyed a lot of things [in Nagasaki] but there was this structure that they called Shinto Shrine that still stood. Everything around it was leveled, but this shrine stood there. Why, I don’t know, but it had withstood the pressures of that bomb.
Well, the bunks in our ship were stacked in threes and when you got to bed, you [would] let them down, one on top of the other. We stored our clothes underneath that bottom bunk; [in a space] not very big but big enough to hold the clothes we had. Some of the people had brought back pieces of rock from on the beach. It looked like glass – [but] it was highly radioactive molten sand; we didn’t know that and there it was, right below us.
After that we went back to the U.S.; Pearl Harbor first, then San Diego (we were going to have some work done). The captain of the ship was going to get off as soon as we docked and go play golf. As we were targeting alongside the dock, (to tie it up and leave the ship), we pulled up alongside this aircraft carrier. As we backed the ship (the captain controlled this) we’d back in between two ships. Well, we hit the aircraft carrier on their gun tab, which sticks out the side of the ship – (where they had their guns). We had quite a bit of damage to our radio room. He [our captain] was then transferred off the ship, and another came on. I don’t know what happened to our captain; we sure hated to lose him. But you don’t make mistakes like that. That was when they took the torpedoes off the back and put a twin fifty back there. When I was turned loose, it was in San Diego and they put us on a train back to Bellingham, where I was discharged.
After I left, the USS Rowan was decommissioned and sold to Taiwan. They were towing it to Taiwan to refurbish and reuse it. It sank – so [now] it is at the bottom of the ocean somewhere. I went home to Hillsborough [when I was discharged]. [I] lost track of a lot of the guys. We went home on a series of numbers. When they got to your number, then they discharged you. I was number 29. And I was the only one on the train that I knew as I went back to Hillsborough.
(War Cruise of USS Destroyer Rowan)
(Dave Tindle, Left)
Dave Tindle enlisted in the U.S. navy in 1944 in Portland, Oregon. He was stationed on the USS Destroyer Rowan until 1946, where he was honorably discharged in Bellingham, Washington. On the Rowan, Tindle traveled to Japan, Pearl Harbor, and the mainland U.S several times during World War II. Tindle was a seaman 1st class when discharged. This is his story.
(USS Destroyer Rowan)
After the war, Dave Tindle worked for a mining company before becoming a city policeman Hillsborough, then an Oregon State Policeman in McMinnville, where he trained for and received his private pilot’s certificate. Later Tindle received his flight instructor’s certification, becoming a pilot examiner for ROTC at Oregon State. One of his students flew a OV10 twin-engine airplane ‘the warthog’ in Korea before becoming a fighter pilot and flying an F-4; one of the top airplanes at the time. Tindle’s student, Bob Altus, returned to Korea (after training to become a fighter pilot) before getting a direct hit with a SAM missile and being listed as MIA. Bob Altus was the only pilot (that Tindle trained) that he lost. Tindle maintains that those men he taught were some of the sharpest young people he ever worked with. Dave Tindle has lived in Burns, Oregon for seventeen years.
(Tindle on board the Rowan)
When I enlisted, since I was 17, they said I would get about anything I wanted [branch of service]. I put down aviation. There were three different options you could select, and I put down all for aviation. And they [still] put me on a destroyer. I was shipped to San Francisco for training; [I was] based on Treasure Island in San Francisco for about six weeks before I went back to Washington again to wait until a brand new destroyer (the USS Rowan, DD782) was commissioned in March. So we spent a lot of time in Bellingham, Washington at Pacific Shipyards (where we were stationed) until the ship was completely done, loading and getting equipment on board on the bay there in Seattle, Washington.
We loaded ammo and all kinds of equipment (except the torpedoes, which we would load later). We went to sea for a little while in what they call a shake down, just off of San Francisco, where they did some target practice. I was what they call a trainer on a quad forty gun. A quad forty is pretty large, but not ultra large; it was then the next to largest gun we had on board. I was there on that quad forty while we worked [trained] down off the coast of Point Montero, which is actually off of Highway 101 down south of San Francisco.
We went down and fired onto the beach where they had big targets. We (our ship) had the small guns - a 20 millimeter (a small machine gun) and a forty millimeter. It (the twenty millimeter) would fire, and then we (the forty millimeter) would fire. The one we had, the forty milliliter, was four barrels, four different guns, and we fired all of those for training. Afterward, we went back to Seattle, where we loaded the torpedoes. Shortly after that, we left Seattle and went to sea.
The first stop was in Hawaii. Pearl Harbor was over when I got there, but the ships were there; some of them had been removed, but most of them were still there in the water (sunk and all different things). We were there for two days. We went on from the ship to the beach (which they called White City; [it was] actually a marine base) on a motor boat and then into Honolulu. We just fooled around there. I had a brother who was stationed there at Kaneohe Naval Air Station. I went over there to see him, to spend the night with him, but he was on duty, so I just got to visit with him. He was a bombardier instructor. His job was inside, in a building that had platforms that moved along on the concrete (with bombardiers-in-training on the platforms), and when they (the bombardier) thought they were where they were supposed to be; they would push a button and a bomb would release onto a little ship below on the concrete; they would hit it or they didn’t and that was the training for the bombardiers.
I went back to Honolulu then and spent the night in a USO; a big government building that had been changed over so we could stay there. The next night was spent on board ship. We loaded a bunch of stuff there (Honolulu). We went to sea out from Honolulu, (Pearl Harbor) and just stayed out there for a while. We didn’t know where we were going, and evidently the skipper didn’t know where we were going either at the time, until a Navy Blimp came over the ship from, (I suppose) Pearl Harbor, and dropped a rope down with a briefcase [attached]. That briefcase had our orders in it. The officers picked up that briefcase and the blimp went back (I suppose), to Honolulu. Our orders were then in that briefcase.
Then next day we found out we were headed for Japan. We were not in a hurry to get to Japan, but we were on our way to Japan to intercept other ships that we would escort for a while (like oilers or one that had fuel on board); occasionally we would refuel from those. There were several destroyers in a group; we were one of them (about five others). We would hook up with a convoy going over; escorting other ships carrying ammo or fuel or whatever (just in case subs were around or something like that).
There was a schedule [on board ship]; we had to fit those times. I would say ninety percent of the meals were powdered; dried (not very good meals). When we were anchored or when we were in San Diego, they would bring us fresh food and stuff every once in a while. It wasn’t very good [the food on board ship], but you were hungry enough and you ate it. And powdered ice cream; we had an ice cream maker and about once a month, we’d get ice cream.
We never worked with anything knowing what a torpedo looked like when it was fired at your ship. So we went through a training program to show us what it was like. A submarine came through and fired us with a dummy torpedo. We stood at the side of the ship and watch it go under the ship, just far enough below us that we could see it, but deeper than the ship so that it didn’t hit us. It would go on by, stop, and pop on up out of the war. The head would come up and a fire would light. It would bob up and down in the water, burning, and then after the sub came up out of the water; (which is eerie, seeing a submarine coming up out of the water). We would go over, pick up the torpedo and put it on our ship. When we went back in (shore), we would take the two torpedoes we had off and leave them at a marine base, where they would fix ‘em up and reuse them. Then we left there and headed more direct to Japan.
The war was still going on; but we were fortunate that it was just before they [the U.S.] dropped the atomic bombs (so we didn’t get involved with that). Then we went on, traveling slow; we were a fast destroyer; we just traveled slow (we could go about30-35 knots in the water; full speed would be in the 40’s). Our ship was 365 feet long, with a crew of approximately 350 people on board. Each one had a duty and mine happened to be on this gun crew with the quad forty. At the time we had two quad forties, two twin forties, and I couldn’t tell you right off how many twenty millimeters we had.
We went back [to a base] and had work done (they took all the stuff off, reloaded with all the ammo we had fired; we had fired quite a bit of ammo because for our training; they would fly a twin engine airplane towing a target that looked like a wind sock that you would see at an airport. They towed it on a cable, and then we would fire at it. The 20’s would fire, and see if they could hit it, and then we would fire at it, and try to hit it, and then the five inch would fire at it, and try to hit it. We had two sets of fives) and reloaded, but with torpedoes of our own.
We had two torpedo mounts, and each one had four torpedoes. So we were carrying eight torpedoes on board the ship. When we went into San Diego, they took one set of torpedoes back behind it off and added another five inch-38. Our ship had two smoke stacks; two engine rooms. One set of torpedoes was between the smoke shacks, and would rotate and fire off the side of the ship. They took one of the sets of torpedoes off and added another five inch-38. So then we had three five inches. Two forward, one aft. And so just beyond us [the quad forty gun crew]; we had a five inch that would fire as far around forward as possible - just so it wouldn’t hit the ship when it fired. Well, our quad forty was mount forty-two but when they would fire that five inch, there were times it was close enough that we would get hit with the cork that held the powder in. It was that close. We had no hearing protection of any kind, not even cotton. Most of us had hearing problems after that.
[Anecdote] Fact is I had an ID card when I was in the navy but because I was too young, I couldn’t go into a bar. So I got a new one that said I was two years older. One time in San Diego I decided I was going to get drunk. I didn’t know what to drink, so I drank whiskey and beer and mixed them all up, you know. I didn’t get drunk, but boy did I get sick. I was in a hurry to the bathroom and I threw up all over a sailor in the bathroom. He didn’t kill me but he said, “Sailor, you’d better get back to ship.” And I said, “I’m on my way.” And I caught a water taxi back to ship.
When headed back for Japan, the war was over, but the Japanese hadn’t signed the surrender yet, because it was done at Tokyo Bay on the Battleship Missouri. We went into the harbor on this Kyushu island hoped that they would let us go up to where they were signing, but they wouldn’t let us. We were too small, I guess. So we had duty there when there was a real bad hurricane.
There was a barge at sea that was loaded. We thought it was loaded with ammo, but we didn’t really know. We had to stand-by (because it had broken free) until a seagoing tug came and hooked on to it to take it in. Then we went back into the harbor. There was a Japanese battleship that had been sunk in the harbor, but there was still room for us to get by. We loaded up with a bunch of Japanese paint, and oil (and things like that -anything that was there that was Japanese, we could have). That’s what we used to paint our ship. Afterward, this typhoon came through; a real strong one - and we wanted to leave the port to go out to sea because we felt it would be safer out at sea (there were quite a few ships in this harbor; we called it Sasabo).
Some of the ships were just anchored [once]; we were anchored on the front and back, and then we had to run the engines to keep from being pushed around (because it would drag the anchors we had on the bottom). We had to watch a small ship, a minelayer, - with two anchors out and the engines going full speed; move back onto the beach and onto its side.
After that was over [the signing of the Japanese surrender], in February, we went back out to sea and to Pearl Harbor for one day to refuel and everything. (While we were at sea, we refueled from a tanker. They would throw a rope from the tanker to our ship and pull on this rope that had a round ball on it for weight, {the rope was probably about four or five inches around}. We’d pull that over to our ship and then we’d pick up a hose that was probably at least six inches around and stick it in a big hole that we had there; they’d turn on the fuel and transfer fuel from their ship to our ship. They would transfer personnel {medical personnel etc.}, in what they called the boson’s chair. We were close enough that we could keep it [the rope] pretty tight, but every once in a while, we’d get a big wave and it’d push us toward each other, and the guy would be headed toward the water. We never did drop one, but I don’t know that we’d have cared at the time). When we’d meet a ship for refueling, usually they were carrying our mail. So we’d get mail maybe once a month. You’d never know.
We then returned to Japan and picked up a lot of guns and things like that as souvenirs (I had one of those); we went into a real big Japanese storage area with barracks and everything, below which they (the Japanese) had stacks and stacks of guns. We picked up all these guns with the Japanese as labor and store and stack them (bayonets and scabbards for the bayonets and lots of things that they told us we wouldn’t get home with anyway…course I got home with two bayonets and a rifle).
We went into this one bay and with about ten scientists (of some kind), and anchored in this little harbor where there were a lot of fishing vessels; some sunk (the temperatures and pressures set off by the atomic bomb had traveled through an opening where this road went through to the fishing area. The explosion had gone through and set some [boats] on fire; they were all wooden - and sank some of them). So these scientists went into the area where the bomb had exploded and spent several days in there trying to figure out what had gone on.
We went over on the beach and went to some of the areas where they [the scientists] were. We didn’t have any idea about nuclear power. We didn’t know it would cause cancer or anything like that. We had no protection. Well, they found out [later] but we didn’t know [at the time]. It (the bomb) destroyed a lot of things [in Nagasaki] but there was this structure that they called Shinto Shrine that still stood. Everything around it was leveled, but this shrine stood there. Why, I don’t know, but it had withstood the pressures of that bomb.
Well, the bunks in our ship were stacked in threes and when you got to bed, you [would] let them down, one on top of the other. We stored our clothes underneath that bottom bunk; [in a space] not very big but big enough to hold the clothes we had. Some of the people had brought back pieces of rock from on the beach. It looked like glass – [but] it was highly radioactive molten sand; we didn’t know that and there it was, right below us.
After that we went back to the U.S.; Pearl Harbor first, then San Diego (we were going to have some work done). The captain of the ship was going to get off as soon as we docked and go play golf. As we were targeting alongside the dock, (to tie it up and leave the ship), we pulled up alongside this aircraft carrier. As we backed the ship (the captain controlled this) we’d back in between two ships. Well, we hit the aircraft carrier on their gun tab, which sticks out the side of the ship – (where they had their guns). We had quite a bit of damage to our radio room. He [our captain] was then transferred off the ship, and another came on. I don’t know what happened to our captain; we sure hated to lose him. But you don’t make mistakes like that. That was when they took the torpedoes off the back and put a twin fifty back there. When I was turned loose, it was in San Diego and they put us on a train back to Bellingham, where I was discharged.
After I left, the USS Rowan was decommissioned and sold to Taiwan. They were towing it to Taiwan to refurbish and reuse it. It sank – so [now] it is at the bottom of the ocean somewhere. I went home to Hillsborough [when I was discharged]. [I] lost track of a lot of the guys. We went home on a series of numbers. When they got to your number, then they discharged you. I was number 29. And I was the only one on the train that I knew as I went back to Hillsborough.
(War Cruise of USS Destroyer Rowan)
(Dave Tindle, Left)
Dave Tindle enlisted in the U.S. navy in 1944 in Portland, Oregon. He was stationed on the USS Destroyer Rowan until 1946, where he was honorably discharged in Bellingham, Washington. On the Rowan, Tindle traveled to Japan, Pearl Harbor, and the mainland U.S several times during World War II. Tindle was a seaman 1st class when discharged. This is his story.
(USS Destroyer Rowan)
After the war, Dave Tindle worked for a mining company before becoming a city policeman Hillsborough, then an Oregon State Policeman in McMinnville, where he trained for and received his private pilot’s certificate. Later Tindle received his flight instructor’s certification, becoming a pilot examiner for ROTC at Oregon State. One of his students flew a OV10 twin-engine airplane ‘the warthog’ in Korea before becoming a fighter pilot and flying an F-4; one of the top airplanes at the time. Tindle’s student, Bob Altus, returned to Korea (after training to become a fighter pilot) before getting a direct hit with a SAM missile and being listed as MIA. Bob Altus was the only pilot (that Tindle trained) that he lost. Tindle maintains that those men he taught were some of the sharpest young people he ever worked with. Dave Tindle has lived in Burns, Oregon for seventeen years.
(Tindle on board the Rowan)
Robert Moss Transcription
This is September 17, 1940. I was enlisted in the Idaho National Guard, and they were called into federal service on that date. So we as a group went to Fort Lewis, Washington, and we spent a year in Fort Lewis, training, and camped out - we had tents, and everything was in a tent. Cook shack, everything. In May of 1941 we went to California down to King City, and Hurst Ranch, and had artillery training down there. When we came back they had a new camp built for us across the highway from Fort Lewis; they called it Camp Murray. But we had, believe it, barracks, buildings - everything. And we trained around there until October, and then they decided that those of us who had enlisted September 17, 1940, were only in for a year. So, we were discharged and put on reserves. So I spent a year and a couple of months on reserves. And then I was called into service in December of 1942. And I reported to Fort Douglas, Utah and was sworn in again and they put me on a train; I went from Salt Lake to Oakland and back up the coast until I got to Camp Adair over at Corvallis. And I went into the 104th division there.
Well, really the reason I was there, and many of us; they had decided they were going to make a new division. So they singled a bunch of us out, and nearly all of us were from Oakland. And then we went to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, Camp Shelby and started the 65th division in July of 1943. We trained there and at Fort Sale, Oklahoma until Dec 1944. Then we were shipped overseas. We went from Hattiesburg, Mississippi to Camp Upton New York, which is just across the Hudson from the main city. We loaded on a ship there, the USS John Ericsson, which was a Norwegian ship that the United States had taken over since the beginning. It had been the Norwegian ship Kunsholm. (The US basically commandeered the ship, although the Norwegians were very acceptable to it). It took us thirteen days to get to France. We unloaded at Caen (France) but there were no piers – nothing, everything was blown up. So we unloaded in the Bay, climbed down the outside of the ship and loaded into trucks, what they called ducks; they were trucks that had been built to run in water. The wheels acted as propellers, and the bed was waterproofed. So we landed from them, and camp Lucky Strike they called it. This was in the middle of December, and it was cold. Snow was (deep) and we had tents to sleep in, tents pitched in the snow. It was very cold, and we couldn’t sleep because all we had was a blanket, an overcoat, and a shelter half. What they call two shelter halves make a tent to sleep two people. So the first sergeant and myself decided that we didn’t like that. So we got us a jeep and got out into the country a bit and we found a bale of straw. We brought that straw back and made us a bed, right on the snow. You’d be surprised how warm we slept then. Other people started doing it right away.
While we were there, General Patton called all the officers and non-commissioned officers down to Paris. And they told us that he had asked for us and he said “I can have any s.o.b. I want but I chose you.” So we got attached to Patton there, and everybody loaded up, and we got in the trucks to Mets, France. That’s nearly on the border between France and Germany down on the southern end of Germany. And we were there just all of that one day and then that night we loaded up and at a blackout we went up and relieved another outfit that had been in placement at Saarlottern, Germany, and took up positions there, while there wasn’t any really fighting, or battles going on. My job – I was supply sergeant. I had to take care of any people that needed medical attention, what food we had to have for the proceeding week or next day, and what ammunition we needed. And then our HQ was back on a mesa, and I had, instead of a jeep to go in, I had purloined a little, kind of a motorbike. Not really a motorcycle, but bigger than a bicycle. And I would motor back to HQ every morning at about nine or ten o’clock, and turn in my report, and pick up what reports they had to give me. And then I’d go back and was mostly free the rest of the day. But this particular morning I had motored back, got my work done at HQ; on my way down I had to go down a hill about a mile and a half long and just as I got to the edge, you might say hell broke loose. They were shelling the road all the way down. They shelled our positions and ruined the road that I was using, but I got through there all right. I got down and they had torn up our outfit pretty bad. The ambulance was just leaving with two people; my first sergeant and another boy that we had just got in as a replacement. And so they took them off and we kind of straightened up and fired a few shots back at them, of course. Course we had artillery and it was a 105 millimeter, which is a four inch shell that packed quite a wallop. We were about (I suppose) three miles from the front lines. That was just medium range for our guns. But as soon as things settled down the Captain called me in and said, “Sergeant, you’re my First Sergeant now.” And I was kind of taken aback by that, and I said, “Okay, sir, I’ll do the best I can.” He said, “I know you will.” And so I was first sergeant then. And it wasn’t very long till we hooked up our guns and took off. And we went right down to Saarlottern and crossed the bridge, which we had been doing our best to keep open, keeping the Germans from blowing up. We crossed the Saar River into Saarlottern and then took off to the northeast.
It didn’t take very long for us to get to the Rhine, and we had to break there. The army engineers were building pontoon bridges and the Rhine is a big river, like the Columbia. So it took a lot of pontoons to go across that thing with enough safety in them for our trucks and guns and, really, everyone that had to cross. And so we crossed then into, really, Frankfurt. It was Kaiserslautern, but it was just a suburb of Frankfurt, Germany. And then from there we didn’t have any resistance then. From there we went northeast. (Insert map of Germany and France with details, Frankfurt to the north, Rhine to the west of it.) And then from Frankfurt we went northeast toward Berlin. There were many, many little towns as we went up north, with not too much resistance. We would travel through the day and every evening we would go into civilization and sometimes we would have a little trouble, sometimes not.
On the way once, we heard that we were surrounded and so we went into position right next to maybe a five acre forested area. And the captain put our HQ radio and everything right in the edge of the timber there and we were coming around the nose of it. Then I put out outposts - guys went out and dug their fox-holes, with two people here, two people there, around, you know. And around midnight I decided well, I better go check on them. So I went around here and found these people, went back there, and finally found these people. They had radios, so of course they knew I was coming, so it was all right. Then I said, well why do I walk way around that (the forest)? Why don’t I go right through the forest? So I did. I came right through (and even as a kid I never had any trouble telling where I was going. I never got lost in the forest or anything). So I come right through and hit the radio jeep right on the nose. The radio operator was kind of a fellow who, well, shouldn’t have been there. He was just so nervous; he was too nervous. And I just called him, and I said “I’m comin’ in.” And I took a step and his gun hit me right in the belly. And it put near put me down by itself. But he didn’t pull the trigger. So he and I had a good little talk, then.
And that was the end of that, but the next morning we got up and took off again. We got up to a town by the name of Fulda, and between Fulda and Gotha – and that’s where Hitler had his gold stored in some mines there – caves. And right next to that there was a concentration camp named Mauthausen. And that was the first concentration camp I’d seen. And I tell you, that would floor you. But anyhow, right there, we got orders to go south. The Russians had convinced Roosevelt that they needed Berlin, and we didn’t. So we went south and went down through Bamberg, to Regensburg, which means Rainy City. That was – what an experience there. We were most of the night getting through that town but they had a Regensburg Cathedral; beautiful, beautiful place. And luckily, it hadn’t been touched.
But that was where we had the first real airplane protection we had. P-47’s and P51’s. And they made a way through for us. And the next morning, another German decided well, they’re on the road, we’ll strafe them. So he sent a lone plane; he come strafing, and I was in the back vehicle except for the anti-aircraft gun, which was a quad fifty caliber machine gun with twenty millimeter shells. And course they stopped right on the street, houses on both sides, stopped right on the street, and I was in the back of this mechanics truck. They stopped and I bailed out, and here come the plane. I ran around, and just as I got behind that twenty millimeter anti-aircraft gun, they let off a round and knocked me flat, just flat. And I lay there on the pavement and watched this airplane that I could see coming right up the street, little sparkles (strafing, a double line). And it went on both sides of me; never got a scratch, and then I rolled over to the curb and lay there and shook for a while. I was scared, very scared. And I looked and that plane come back, let off another round, and then smoke came from the plane, and he went straight in the air, you could see him bail out, and the airplane just fell. I don’t know who picked the pilot up, but it wasn’t us. We loaded up right then and got out. But that was the end of that.
Then we went from Regensburg, crossed into Austria, and went down to Lentz, Austria. Lentz -beautiful town, but going into to Lentz, we came in from the, well, to me, it appeared like it was from the south side. We came down a hill and there were trees and woods you know, and stuff like that. I was riding with the captain then. There was the driver, the Capt., the artillery officer and myself, and we came down this road – we were going ahead to find a place to set up our guns, and as we went by this barn looking structure, I see green uniforms running, and so I told the driver to stop, and I leaped out, grabbed his carbine out of his scabbard on the windshield, grabbed it out and hollered at these guys. And here they come, thirteen of them. And I told ‘em to disarm themselves, and they threw their pistols down on the ground, and jabbered and jabbered. They had their hands up like this (fingers linked on the crown of the head). And so I told them, I said “You wait here, and someone will pick you up.”
And the captain said, “Come on, sergeant, we have guns to place.” So I told the guys, “All right, get on up the road, and they’ll pick you up, somebody will pick you up.” We picked up their guns, loaded back in. I handed the driver his carbine, he reaches in his jacket pocket, pulls out the clip, and shoves it in. So we had another doo doo. Yeah, he never carried that gun again without it being loaded. But the captain, he was pretty perturbed, but the driver and I, we got things settled pretty quick. And we took Lentz without much trouble, then we went on from there, down the Danube, and Willmar was the name of the town next, and that was kind of where we were when the war ended, just before you get to Vienna. Wien, they called it. But we got word then that the Germans had surrendered. So, of course, everyone, me included, decided to have a party. And we had a company of Yugoslavian soldiers we picked up, course they were German fighters, but their heart wasn’t in it, so we let them camp there, and course we had them all disarmed, and the guys decided well, maybe we can get some chicken and have a good chicken party. So we sent a bunch of these Yugos out and they raided the country and came back with chickens. Chickens and whatever wine - everything.
But I was really smart, you know. I had in my trailer, on the mechanics car, a whole crate of Benedictine. And everyone else was doing their thing. so I got mine, and I’m telling you, for two weeks, I couldn’t eat anything but canned peaches. Oh, I was sick.
But anyway, while this was going on, the Cpt. sent word down. He said, “Sergeant, we’re going to go meet the Russians,” and we crossed the Ems River, to meet the Russians, but I wasn’t along because I told the Cpt. that I couldn’t do it. And so the rest of them, the Captain and his officers, went to cross the bridge to meet the Russians, and there they come driving Chevrolets and GMC’s and, just like a mad people, you know. And the way they treated their equipment. Anyway, that was it. And then immediately after that, we were put on detail to haul Displaced Persons from Vienna back and delouse them and get them sent to various refugee camps, where they could get sent back home. But we always unloaded them at the airport, and we had tons of DDT; everyone that went through there got sprayed. Because coming out of concentration camps they were lousy, really lousy. But they didn’t mind it. They knew what it was for. And there were a lot of Displaced Persons and really, slave labor is what they had been.
I had also been to Dachau, after we left Regensburg and went toward Lentz. (Dachau on map) All I saw there was bodies. We called them hutments; they were buildings, long and narrow, room enough for cots on each side and an aisle in the middle, and the one I went through had bodies right to the ceiling. It was just so many they couldn’t take care of them in their furnaces.
After that, along about the middle of July, I was transferred to Salzburg, and to the 79th division. And I was first Sgt. of Battery B. 693rd Field Artillery Battalion. And they had guards all around Salzburg, just to make sure everybody behaved themselves, and everybody got food and things like that. And our barracks was on the Salzburg airport. And I was there until November, when our whole battery was transferred out and we went to a staging area to get ready to come home. This was six months after the war (ended).
The obituary of Lieutenant General David Ewing Ott and eulogy of Private Lloyd G. McCarter, Medal of Honor Awardee are included per the request of Mr. Moss.
Lt. Gen. David Ott; Authority on Field Artillery
By Patricia Sullivan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 1, 2004; Page B06
David E. Ott, 81, a retired Army lieutenant general who served in combat in the field artillery during three wars, and who in retirement worked to help military families, died June 21 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.
He had contracted Legionnaire's disease at his class reunion at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., in late spring.
Lt. Gen. Ott, who wrote "Field Artillery, 1954-1973" (1975), was an expert on field artillery tactics in Vietnam. He was the chief of field artillery and commanding general at Fort Sill, Okla., and commanding general of VII Corps in Germany during the 1970s.
In retirement, as board president of the Army Distaff Foundation, he initiated an expansion of life-care retirement facilities, including homes for military couples, such as the Fairfax at Fort Belvoir and the Army Retirement Residence in San Antonio.
At the time of his death, he lived at the Fairfax.
David Ewing Ott was born at the Army's Schofield Barracks in Honolulu. His father was a brigadier general in the field artillery, and the family lived on Army bases across the country.
He attended Western High School in the District and graduated from West Point in 1944. He received a master's degree in international relations from George Washington University in 1962. He also had a certificate in advanced management training from Harvard University.
During World War II, Gen. Ott was a forward observer and provisional battery commander with an infantry division in Europe.
He served in the Korean War as a battalion executive officer and later commanded an artillery division in Vietnam during the war there.
"All three times he was in combat, he was in command -- at whatever rank he was, he had the toughest jobs with the most responsibility," said Pat Hollis, editor of Field Artillery Journal.
Artillerymen, known as "redlegs" for the red stripe on their uniform pants, are required to be good with detail and yet have a wide perspective. Their job requires them to work with most of the specialties in the Army, Hollis said.
Gen. Ott was considered to be among the best. Along with retired Gen. Tommy Franks, former commander in chief of U.S. Central Command, he raised the profile of field artillery within the Army.
Walter "Dutch" Kerwin, the retired four-star general who was vice chief of staff of the Army in the mid-1970s, said Gen. Ott was "very highly respected as one of the good leaders, one of the real leaders of the redlegs. He really made a tremendous contribution to the profession . . . not only because of his knowledge of artillery. Both he and his wife will be missed because they were viewed as a very fine team."
In Washington, Gen. Ott became chief of the artillery branch at the Army personnel office and was the architect of the separation of the field artillery and air-defense artillery.
As a brigadier general, he commanded U.S. Army forces in Thailand, followed by an assignment as the Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence at the Pentagon. Later, he became the director of the Vietnam Task Force, an agency that was created to coordinate the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam.
From 1973 to 1976, Gen. Ott served at Fort Sill as the chief of field artillery, commandant of the field artillery school and commanding general of the field artillery center.
He was promoted to lieutenant general for his final assignment as commander of VII Corps in Germany in 1976.
At the time, he spoke about the improved combat readiness of the 200,000-man U.S. 7th Army in Europe. "It hardly seems like the same Army" from the post-Vietnam War disarray, he told The Washington Post.
"Racial tensions today are as low as I've ever seen them in the Army since it was integrated in 1951," he added. "The potential, however, is there. We do have an occasional flareup . . . like a barroom brawl . . . but these are very limited, and we've developed programs to prevent this and keep each other aware."
After retirement in 1978, Gen. Ott worked for Teledyne Systems and, later, served as a consultant for a wide range of military equipment and development programs.
He was active in volunteer work, supporting his late wife with her work organizing the first Army Family Symposium. He also helped form the Field Artillery Association chapter in the Washington area, the Capital Cannoneers. He was the chapter's first president and served on the board and as an adviser.
Gen. Ott was a former president and board chairman of the U.S. Field Artillery Association. In 1986, the association honored him with a musical tattoo.
His military decorations included three awards of the Distinguished Service Medal for his service in Thailand, at the Pentagon and in VII Corps; four awards of the Legion of Merit; the Distinguished Flying Cross; two awards of the Bronze Star; six awards of the Air Medal; and the Army Commendation Medal.
His wife of 54 years, Joyce Helmick Ott, died April 2.
Survivors include four children, David E. Ott Jr. of Vicenza, Italy, Judy Griebling of Golden, Colo., Nancy Leah Dunn of Panama City, Fla., and Leiza Johnson of Anchorage; and 13 grandchildren.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19366-2004Jun30.html
Name: LLOYD G. McCARTER
Rank and organization: Private, U.S. Army, 503d Parachute Infantry Regiment
Place: Corregidor, Philippine Islands
Date: 16-19 February 1945
Entered service at: Tacoma, Washington.
Born: 11 May 1917, St. Maries, Idaho.
G.O. No.: 77, 10 September 1945.
He was a scout with the regiment which seized the fortress of Corregidor, Philippine Islands. Shortly after the initial parachute assault on 16 February 1945, he crossed 30 yards of open ground under intense enemy fire, and at point blank range silenced a machinegun with hand grenades. On the afternoon of 18 February he killed 6 snipers. That evening, when a large force attempted to bypass his company, he voluntarily moved to an exposed area and opened fire. The enemy attacked his position repeatedly throughout the night and was each time repulsed. By 2 o'clock in the morning, all the men about him had been wounded; but shouting encouragement to his comrades and defiance at the enemy, he continued to bear the brunt of the attack, fearlessly exposing himself to locate enemy soldiers and then pouring heavy fire on them. He repeatedly crawled back to the American line to secure more ammunition. When his submachine gun would no longer operate, he seized an automatic rifle and continued to inflict heavy casualties. This weapon, in turn, became too hot to use and, discarding it, he continued with an M-l rifle. At dawn the enemy attacked with renewed intensity. Completely exposing himself to hostile fire, he stood erect to locate the most dangerous enemy positions. He was seriously wounded; but, though he had already killed more than 30 of the enemy, he refused to evacuate until he had pointed out immediate objectives for attack. Through his sustained and outstanding heroism in the face of grave and obvious danger, Pvt. McCarter made outstanding contributions to the success of his company and to the recapture of Corregidor.
http://corregidor.org/heritage_battalion/moh/mccarter
Robert Moss was enlisted in the Idaho National Guard when World War II began and was called into federal service on September 17, 1940. After preliminary training, he was put on reserves until December of 1942. In 1944, Moss was sent overseas with the 65th division, fighting in France, Germany, and Austria. He was honorably discharged at the rank of 1st sergeant. Moss received a Good Conduct Medal and a Bronze Star Medal. This is his story.
While he was in the service, Moss knew Lt. Reim Ott and Medal of Honor awardee MacArthur. The obituary of Lt. Reim Ott, and the eulogy of Pvt. McCarter follows per the request of Mr. Moss. After the war, Moss worked at Edward Hines Lumber Mill before moving to Idaho for two years and then returning to Burns, where he continues to live today.
Well, really the reason I was there, and many of us; they had decided they were going to make a new division. So they singled a bunch of us out, and nearly all of us were from Oakland. And then we went to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, Camp Shelby and started the 65th division in July of 1943. We trained there and at Fort Sale, Oklahoma until Dec 1944. Then we were shipped overseas. We went from Hattiesburg, Mississippi to Camp Upton New York, which is just across the Hudson from the main city. We loaded on a ship there, the USS John Ericsson, which was a Norwegian ship that the United States had taken over since the beginning. It had been the Norwegian ship Kunsholm. (The US basically commandeered the ship, although the Norwegians were very acceptable to it). It took us thirteen days to get to France. We unloaded at Caen (France) but there were no piers – nothing, everything was blown up. So we unloaded in the Bay, climbed down the outside of the ship and loaded into trucks, what they called ducks; they were trucks that had been built to run in water. The wheels acted as propellers, and the bed was waterproofed. So we landed from them, and camp Lucky Strike they called it. This was in the middle of December, and it was cold. Snow was (deep) and we had tents to sleep in, tents pitched in the snow. It was very cold, and we couldn’t sleep because all we had was a blanket, an overcoat, and a shelter half. What they call two shelter halves make a tent to sleep two people. So the first sergeant and myself decided that we didn’t like that. So we got us a jeep and got out into the country a bit and we found a bale of straw. We brought that straw back and made us a bed, right on the snow. You’d be surprised how warm we slept then. Other people started doing it right away.
While we were there, General Patton called all the officers and non-commissioned officers down to Paris. And they told us that he had asked for us and he said “I can have any s.o.b. I want but I chose you.” So we got attached to Patton there, and everybody loaded up, and we got in the trucks to Mets, France. That’s nearly on the border between France and Germany down on the southern end of Germany. And we were there just all of that one day and then that night we loaded up and at a blackout we went up and relieved another outfit that had been in placement at Saarlottern, Germany, and took up positions there, while there wasn’t any really fighting, or battles going on. My job – I was supply sergeant. I had to take care of any people that needed medical attention, what food we had to have for the proceeding week or next day, and what ammunition we needed. And then our HQ was back on a mesa, and I had, instead of a jeep to go in, I had purloined a little, kind of a motorbike. Not really a motorcycle, but bigger than a bicycle. And I would motor back to HQ every morning at about nine or ten o’clock, and turn in my report, and pick up what reports they had to give me. And then I’d go back and was mostly free the rest of the day. But this particular morning I had motored back, got my work done at HQ; on my way down I had to go down a hill about a mile and a half long and just as I got to the edge, you might say hell broke loose. They were shelling the road all the way down. They shelled our positions and ruined the road that I was using, but I got through there all right. I got down and they had torn up our outfit pretty bad. The ambulance was just leaving with two people; my first sergeant and another boy that we had just got in as a replacement. And so they took them off and we kind of straightened up and fired a few shots back at them, of course. Course we had artillery and it was a 105 millimeter, which is a four inch shell that packed quite a wallop. We were about (I suppose) three miles from the front lines. That was just medium range for our guns. But as soon as things settled down the Captain called me in and said, “Sergeant, you’re my First Sergeant now.” And I was kind of taken aback by that, and I said, “Okay, sir, I’ll do the best I can.” He said, “I know you will.” And so I was first sergeant then. And it wasn’t very long till we hooked up our guns and took off. And we went right down to Saarlottern and crossed the bridge, which we had been doing our best to keep open, keeping the Germans from blowing up. We crossed the Saar River into Saarlottern and then took off to the northeast.
It didn’t take very long for us to get to the Rhine, and we had to break there. The army engineers were building pontoon bridges and the Rhine is a big river, like the Columbia. So it took a lot of pontoons to go across that thing with enough safety in them for our trucks and guns and, really, everyone that had to cross. And so we crossed then into, really, Frankfurt. It was Kaiserslautern, but it was just a suburb of Frankfurt, Germany. And then from there we didn’t have any resistance then. From there we went northeast. (Insert map of Germany and France with details, Frankfurt to the north, Rhine to the west of it.) And then from Frankfurt we went northeast toward Berlin. There were many, many little towns as we went up north, with not too much resistance. We would travel through the day and every evening we would go into civilization and sometimes we would have a little trouble, sometimes not.
On the way once, we heard that we were surrounded and so we went into position right next to maybe a five acre forested area. And the captain put our HQ radio and everything right in the edge of the timber there and we were coming around the nose of it. Then I put out outposts - guys went out and dug their fox-holes, with two people here, two people there, around, you know. And around midnight I decided well, I better go check on them. So I went around here and found these people, went back there, and finally found these people. They had radios, so of course they knew I was coming, so it was all right. Then I said, well why do I walk way around that (the forest)? Why don’t I go right through the forest? So I did. I came right through (and even as a kid I never had any trouble telling where I was going. I never got lost in the forest or anything). So I come right through and hit the radio jeep right on the nose. The radio operator was kind of a fellow who, well, shouldn’t have been there. He was just so nervous; he was too nervous. And I just called him, and I said “I’m comin’ in.” And I took a step and his gun hit me right in the belly. And it put near put me down by itself. But he didn’t pull the trigger. So he and I had a good little talk, then.
And that was the end of that, but the next morning we got up and took off again. We got up to a town by the name of Fulda, and between Fulda and Gotha – and that’s where Hitler had his gold stored in some mines there – caves. And right next to that there was a concentration camp named Mauthausen. And that was the first concentration camp I’d seen. And I tell you, that would floor you. But anyhow, right there, we got orders to go south. The Russians had convinced Roosevelt that they needed Berlin, and we didn’t. So we went south and went down through Bamberg, to Regensburg, which means Rainy City. That was – what an experience there. We were most of the night getting through that town but they had a Regensburg Cathedral; beautiful, beautiful place. And luckily, it hadn’t been touched.
But that was where we had the first real airplane protection we had. P-47’s and P51’s. And they made a way through for us. And the next morning, another German decided well, they’re on the road, we’ll strafe them. So he sent a lone plane; he come strafing, and I was in the back vehicle except for the anti-aircraft gun, which was a quad fifty caliber machine gun with twenty millimeter shells. And course they stopped right on the street, houses on both sides, stopped right on the street, and I was in the back of this mechanics truck. They stopped and I bailed out, and here come the plane. I ran around, and just as I got behind that twenty millimeter anti-aircraft gun, they let off a round and knocked me flat, just flat. And I lay there on the pavement and watched this airplane that I could see coming right up the street, little sparkles (strafing, a double line). And it went on both sides of me; never got a scratch, and then I rolled over to the curb and lay there and shook for a while. I was scared, very scared. And I looked and that plane come back, let off another round, and then smoke came from the plane, and he went straight in the air, you could see him bail out, and the airplane just fell. I don’t know who picked the pilot up, but it wasn’t us. We loaded up right then and got out. But that was the end of that.
Then we went from Regensburg, crossed into Austria, and went down to Lentz, Austria. Lentz -beautiful town, but going into to Lentz, we came in from the, well, to me, it appeared like it was from the south side. We came down a hill and there were trees and woods you know, and stuff like that. I was riding with the captain then. There was the driver, the Capt., the artillery officer and myself, and we came down this road – we were going ahead to find a place to set up our guns, and as we went by this barn looking structure, I see green uniforms running, and so I told the driver to stop, and I leaped out, grabbed his carbine out of his scabbard on the windshield, grabbed it out and hollered at these guys. And here they come, thirteen of them. And I told ‘em to disarm themselves, and they threw their pistols down on the ground, and jabbered and jabbered. They had their hands up like this (fingers linked on the crown of the head). And so I told them, I said “You wait here, and someone will pick you up.”
And the captain said, “Come on, sergeant, we have guns to place.” So I told the guys, “All right, get on up the road, and they’ll pick you up, somebody will pick you up.” We picked up their guns, loaded back in. I handed the driver his carbine, he reaches in his jacket pocket, pulls out the clip, and shoves it in. So we had another doo doo. Yeah, he never carried that gun again without it being loaded. But the captain, he was pretty perturbed, but the driver and I, we got things settled pretty quick. And we took Lentz without much trouble, then we went on from there, down the Danube, and Willmar was the name of the town next, and that was kind of where we were when the war ended, just before you get to Vienna. Wien, they called it. But we got word then that the Germans had surrendered. So, of course, everyone, me included, decided to have a party. And we had a company of Yugoslavian soldiers we picked up, course they were German fighters, but their heart wasn’t in it, so we let them camp there, and course we had them all disarmed, and the guys decided well, maybe we can get some chicken and have a good chicken party. So we sent a bunch of these Yugos out and they raided the country and came back with chickens. Chickens and whatever wine - everything.
But I was really smart, you know. I had in my trailer, on the mechanics car, a whole crate of Benedictine. And everyone else was doing their thing. so I got mine, and I’m telling you, for two weeks, I couldn’t eat anything but canned peaches. Oh, I was sick.
But anyway, while this was going on, the Cpt. sent word down. He said, “Sergeant, we’re going to go meet the Russians,” and we crossed the Ems River, to meet the Russians, but I wasn’t along because I told the Cpt. that I couldn’t do it. And so the rest of them, the Captain and his officers, went to cross the bridge to meet the Russians, and there they come driving Chevrolets and GMC’s and, just like a mad people, you know. And the way they treated their equipment. Anyway, that was it. And then immediately after that, we were put on detail to haul Displaced Persons from Vienna back and delouse them and get them sent to various refugee camps, where they could get sent back home. But we always unloaded them at the airport, and we had tons of DDT; everyone that went through there got sprayed. Because coming out of concentration camps they were lousy, really lousy. But they didn’t mind it. They knew what it was for. And there were a lot of Displaced Persons and really, slave labor is what they had been.
I had also been to Dachau, after we left Regensburg and went toward Lentz. (Dachau on map) All I saw there was bodies. We called them hutments; they were buildings, long and narrow, room enough for cots on each side and an aisle in the middle, and the one I went through had bodies right to the ceiling. It was just so many they couldn’t take care of them in their furnaces.
After that, along about the middle of July, I was transferred to Salzburg, and to the 79th division. And I was first Sgt. of Battery B. 693rd Field Artillery Battalion. And they had guards all around Salzburg, just to make sure everybody behaved themselves, and everybody got food and things like that. And our barracks was on the Salzburg airport. And I was there until November, when our whole battery was transferred out and we went to a staging area to get ready to come home. This was six months after the war (ended).
The obituary of Lieutenant General David Ewing Ott and eulogy of Private Lloyd G. McCarter, Medal of Honor Awardee are included per the request of Mr. Moss.
Lt. Gen. David Ott; Authority on Field Artillery
By Patricia Sullivan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 1, 2004; Page B06
David E. Ott, 81, a retired Army lieutenant general who served in combat in the field artillery during three wars, and who in retirement worked to help military families, died June 21 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.
He had contracted Legionnaire's disease at his class reunion at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., in late spring.
Lt. Gen. Ott, who wrote "Field Artillery, 1954-1973" (1975), was an expert on field artillery tactics in Vietnam. He was the chief of field artillery and commanding general at Fort Sill, Okla., and commanding general of VII Corps in Germany during the 1970s.
In retirement, as board president of the Army Distaff Foundation, he initiated an expansion of life-care retirement facilities, including homes for military couples, such as the Fairfax at Fort Belvoir and the Army Retirement Residence in San Antonio.
At the time of his death, he lived at the Fairfax.
David Ewing Ott was born at the Army's Schofield Barracks in Honolulu. His father was a brigadier general in the field artillery, and the family lived on Army bases across the country.
He attended Western High School in the District and graduated from West Point in 1944. He received a master's degree in international relations from George Washington University in 1962. He also had a certificate in advanced management training from Harvard University.
During World War II, Gen. Ott was a forward observer and provisional battery commander with an infantry division in Europe.
He served in the Korean War as a battalion executive officer and later commanded an artillery division in Vietnam during the war there.
"All three times he was in combat, he was in command -- at whatever rank he was, he had the toughest jobs with the most responsibility," said Pat Hollis, editor of Field Artillery Journal.
Artillerymen, known as "redlegs" for the red stripe on their uniform pants, are required to be good with detail and yet have a wide perspective. Their job requires them to work with most of the specialties in the Army, Hollis said.
Gen. Ott was considered to be among the best. Along with retired Gen. Tommy Franks, former commander in chief of U.S. Central Command, he raised the profile of field artillery within the Army.
Walter "Dutch" Kerwin, the retired four-star general who was vice chief of staff of the Army in the mid-1970s, said Gen. Ott was "very highly respected as one of the good leaders, one of the real leaders of the redlegs. He really made a tremendous contribution to the profession . . . not only because of his knowledge of artillery. Both he and his wife will be missed because they were viewed as a very fine team."
In Washington, Gen. Ott became chief of the artillery branch at the Army personnel office and was the architect of the separation of the field artillery and air-defense artillery.
As a brigadier general, he commanded U.S. Army forces in Thailand, followed by an assignment as the Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence at the Pentagon. Later, he became the director of the Vietnam Task Force, an agency that was created to coordinate the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam.
From 1973 to 1976, Gen. Ott served at Fort Sill as the chief of field artillery, commandant of the field artillery school and commanding general of the field artillery center.
He was promoted to lieutenant general for his final assignment as commander of VII Corps in Germany in 1976.
At the time, he spoke about the improved combat readiness of the 200,000-man U.S. 7th Army in Europe. "It hardly seems like the same Army" from the post-Vietnam War disarray, he told The Washington Post.
"Racial tensions today are as low as I've ever seen them in the Army since it was integrated in 1951," he added. "The potential, however, is there. We do have an occasional flareup . . . like a barroom brawl . . . but these are very limited, and we've developed programs to prevent this and keep each other aware."
After retirement in 1978, Gen. Ott worked for Teledyne Systems and, later, served as a consultant for a wide range of military equipment and development programs.
He was active in volunteer work, supporting his late wife with her work organizing the first Army Family Symposium. He also helped form the Field Artillery Association chapter in the Washington area, the Capital Cannoneers. He was the chapter's first president and served on the board and as an adviser.
Gen. Ott was a former president and board chairman of the U.S. Field Artillery Association. In 1986, the association honored him with a musical tattoo.
His military decorations included three awards of the Distinguished Service Medal for his service in Thailand, at the Pentagon and in VII Corps; four awards of the Legion of Merit; the Distinguished Flying Cross; two awards of the Bronze Star; six awards of the Air Medal; and the Army Commendation Medal.
His wife of 54 years, Joyce Helmick Ott, died April 2.
Survivors include four children, David E. Ott Jr. of Vicenza, Italy, Judy Griebling of Golden, Colo., Nancy Leah Dunn of Panama City, Fla., and Leiza Johnson of Anchorage; and 13 grandchildren.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19366-2004Jun30.html
Name: LLOYD G. McCARTER
Rank and organization: Private, U.S. Army, 503d Parachute Infantry Regiment
Place: Corregidor, Philippine Islands
Date: 16-19 February 1945
Entered service at: Tacoma, Washington.
Born: 11 May 1917, St. Maries, Idaho.
G.O. No.: 77, 10 September 1945.
He was a scout with the regiment which seized the fortress of Corregidor, Philippine Islands. Shortly after the initial parachute assault on 16 February 1945, he crossed 30 yards of open ground under intense enemy fire, and at point blank range silenced a machinegun with hand grenades. On the afternoon of 18 February he killed 6 snipers. That evening, when a large force attempted to bypass his company, he voluntarily moved to an exposed area and opened fire. The enemy attacked his position repeatedly throughout the night and was each time repulsed. By 2 o'clock in the morning, all the men about him had been wounded; but shouting encouragement to his comrades and defiance at the enemy, he continued to bear the brunt of the attack, fearlessly exposing himself to locate enemy soldiers and then pouring heavy fire on them. He repeatedly crawled back to the American line to secure more ammunition. When his submachine gun would no longer operate, he seized an automatic rifle and continued to inflict heavy casualties. This weapon, in turn, became too hot to use and, discarding it, he continued with an M-l rifle. At dawn the enemy attacked with renewed intensity. Completely exposing himself to hostile fire, he stood erect to locate the most dangerous enemy positions. He was seriously wounded; but, though he had already killed more than 30 of the enemy, he refused to evacuate until he had pointed out immediate objectives for attack. Through his sustained and outstanding heroism in the face of grave and obvious danger, Pvt. McCarter made outstanding contributions to the success of his company and to the recapture of Corregidor.
http://corregidor.org/heritage_battalion/moh/mccarter
Robert Moss was enlisted in the Idaho National Guard when World War II began and was called into federal service on September 17, 1940. After preliminary training, he was put on reserves until December of 1942. In 1944, Moss was sent overseas with the 65th division, fighting in France, Germany, and Austria. He was honorably discharged at the rank of 1st sergeant. Moss received a Good Conduct Medal and a Bronze Star Medal. This is his story.
Robert Moss
While he was in the service, Moss knew Lt. Reim Ott and Medal of Honor awardee MacArthur. The obituary of Lt. Reim Ott, and the eulogy of Pvt. McCarter follows per the request of Mr. Moss. After the war, Moss worked at Edward Hines Lumber Mill before moving to Idaho for two years and then returning to Burns, where he continues to live today.
Lloyd Larson Transcription
Let’s start at the beginning. The reason (I enlisted) was because I was at Oregon State when war was declared, and our whole fraternity enlisted. It was Theta Zei fraternity, and we all enlisted. Every one of us. That was in ’42; I think that’s when I went in. There’s no reason why; the war was declared. The Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. We sat in the fraternity house the day that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and (the day) that Oregon had played (in the Rose Bowl). The U of O hadn’t gotten chosen to go to the rose bowl, but Oregon State did, and they chose Texas (too). Texas was a big strong team. But anyway, Oregon played Texas that day, December 7th. And they got beat seventy-something to nothing. So anyway we were all sitting around the fraternity house listening to it, and all of a sudden war was declared. That’s why we all went.
I was in the army, and in those days, everything was under the army. It wasn’t like it is today, separate. I went in and I went down to California to take basic; and then I went to Wichita Falls, TX for more basic training and then I located to Yuma, Arizona. It was a brand new base and I was shipped there, and I was in Arizona for two years. And I hated it. My commanding officer was out of Pendleton, Oregon, and he asked me one time, he said to me, “You don’t like it here.”
And I said, “No, I don’t.”
And he said, “Would you like to get out of here?” And I said,
“Absolutely would,” I said “Anything - I don’t care what it is.”
The first thing that came up was gunnery school in Las Vegas and he said “Do you want to go there?” and I said absolutely. And I went to gunnery school, but I had been in Arizona two years. I went to several schools in the service. I went up to New York to go to school for inline engine school.
Most people had maybe, say, four qualifications. I had seven; I went to every school they had because I wanted to get out of Arizona. So that’s why I went. But that’s about it and when I went from gunnery school, I was in charge of thirteen guys, and when we left Las Vegas, the first place train stopped was Green River, Wyoming, and I don’t know why, but some (men) left; they just left, and when I got to North Carolina, I didn’t have anybody. I had started out with thirteen men, and when I handed this packet to this major (in North Carolina), he looked at it, turned it over and he says, “Thirteen men, where are the others?” and I said “I don’t know, they all left me.” And he said, “They went AWL?” And I said, “that’s right, and it’s just me and a kid from Philadelphia.” We were the only two. And the last kid that came in [brought in later], when I left to go to Miami, he was from Texas, a great big tall kid. They had him in chains, and he said ‘Swede, I made it’ and we all laughed. But he was in the guardhouse; he wasn’t going to go anywhere.
I went to training there in Greensborough, North Carolina, to go overseas and I didn’t know at the time where I was going or what I was going to be. But anyway then I went to Miami, Florida. And we hit there just on the end of a hurricane, so we set there for about three or four days before we flew out of there to North Africa; we went to Casablanca, and then to Cairo, Egypt. We decided to stay there about three or four days, but the only way we could do it was to redline our airplane. In other words, we couldn’t fly if the thing was redlined. So they had to fix it, but we were there for about a week in Cairo, Egypt.
And we saw everything; we went everyplace. There was a museum there where they had these relics from the crusades, and they had a big museum there in Cairo, and they had everything in there, and it was wonderful. And we went out to the pyramids and had a camel race - it was real nice.
My rank, (when I got out of gunnery school), was a corporal. They made you one grade above what you had; I had been a private first class. They raised me to a corporal, and then they put me in charge of those thirteen guys that left me.
So we stopped at Casablanca and then went over to Egypt and up through the Holy Land, and we stopped there in Aiden and then flew on over to India, and that’s when I knew I was in the First Air Commandos, because they had chosen me because I had many qualifications; I had gone to too many schools, I was well qualified, and that’s what they wanted; they wanted somebody that had gone to at least three or four AM schools, and I had gone to six or seven. But anyway, (I didn’t know that I was gonna fly, I really didn’t) when I got there, they said, “Well, we’re going to bring in some B-25’s. Do you want to fly?” and I said yes, I sure did. They said “Well, you went to gunnery school,” and I said “Yep.” They said “Do you know anything about the airplane?” and I said absolutely; I had worked a long time on the B-25.
So like I said, they asked me “Do you want to fly?” And I said, “You bet.” And Captain Merchant [the pilot] asked me, he said, “Do you want to go home?” and I said, “Sure.” And he said, well, he said, “I’m not one of these guys that like to show off,” he said, “I fly, because I want to go home.” But I flew one mission with a captain Wagner, and he had seen Doolittle’s planes down there in Florida flying so low they would cut the grass, and he saw that, so that only time he flew on my airplane, we had a great big hump in our field, and we were coming in, and he was below that hump, and when he pulled up, I saw that he had lost air, and so he was kicking the rudders and the ailerons trying to get control, and finally he got control, and we circled around and lived. And so when we got down on the field, I said to him, I said “Major, I don’t want to fly with you again.” I said, “I don’t want you on my airplane, because,” I said, “We came pretty close to auguring in, and there was no need in it. You wanted to show somebody that you could fly low enough so that you could cut some grass, but when you pulled up, you lost air.”
You see, when you pull up real steep, you lose your airflow over the wings, and the ailerons and the elevators, that control the plane, and you lose all that, so you’re lucky if you get them back. And we did, but I told him I didn’t want to fly with him again, ever. And I flew with that Major Sineski and he was real nice. I flew with him a couple, three times.
I think altogether there were probably two distinct sections in Burma that we flew to. We always flew at night, when there was a full moon, and we flew into Burma; we were helping the British; they had gone clear up the full length of Burma, they [had] chased the Japanese up there, and one of our missions was to bring supplies to Wingate, who got caught with the Japanese, and we had to fly some supplies into him, anyway there was probably three or four, I think three distinct battle divisions in Burma at that time, and we took place in all three. Our airplane, the one I flew on, we knocked out four railroad engines - you could see ‘em – they were old engines with the firebox, you know – they tried to hide them among the trees, so we couldn’t see them. But we headed down the railroad tracks, so we could see them.
What Captain Merchant would do; we would fly one mission down the river, or down the road or down the railroad and we flew down the railroad three or four times. But anyway we got these railroad engines, because they tried to hide in among the trees along the railroad track, but we headed down the railroad tracks. And what the Captain would do, (Captain Merchant was our pilot), he’d swing completely around and go right straight down the railroad and you could see the engine sitting there and he’d say to me, “Load me one.” And I’d load up; we had a seventy-five millimeter cannon in the nose of that thing, and whenever he wanted it, he’d say ‘load me one’ and when I loaded it up, I’d touch him on the shoulder and he’d know it was loaded, and he’d fire that thing, and it would just blow that engine completely up.
One time, there was a troop train in the station, and we caught that one, and strafed that station for about fifteen or twenty minutes. The airplane had two fifty millimeter machine guns along the side of the ship [airplane] and along the front of the ship, there was a seventy-five millimeter cannon. This British Major-General that we were going to fly down to Rangoon to look at the terrain looked at that cannon field piece and when we were coming back, he said to Captain Merchant, “Can I see you fire that cannon?” and he [Captain Merchant] said “Sure.” And he said to me, “Load me one.” And so I did, and I tapped him on the shoulder. And he leveled that plane off; he had a sight on the windshield, and there was a bull’s eye, and he was looking, and I knew damn well what he was gonna do. And there was a bigota, a big one, and he hit the top of it, and it just lifted up and bang. And the general, Slim was his name, said, “Oh my, that was something, wasn’t it?” Well, the shell was about that long (1 ½ feet). I had to load it; we had a rack of ‘em above [the gun]. I had to stand to one side because it had a twenty-six inch recoil; bang, bang, and it’d eject that shell, and I’d throw another one in there, and tap him [Captain Merchant] on the shoulder. The most we could fire was four rounds in 2,000 yards. One night we’d shot six or seven, and when we got home, I noticed that there was hydraulic fluid all over the front of the airplane. Firing that gun had loosened all of the fittings in the nose. I liked it [being in the nose], because I could see it too, just as well as they [the pilots] could. I kind of enjoyed it, when we were strafing a train or something because he’d [Captain Merchant] put that airplane up on one side so Smitty [the waist-gunner] and I could shoot at ‘em. He did that for us.
So anyway when you fired that thing, it would blow up everything. When we’d go down the tracks - of course, they were shooting back at us too; that’s another thing – you know – every time we went someplace, unbeknownst to us, there would be somebody shooting at us. One night we were going down the river, and we looked over on our right and going north on us was an airplane. We didn’t know who it was, ‘cause it wasn’t ours, and we wondered who it was that was out there in the middle of the night going north; we were going south, and everybody saw it, and everybody on the ship said, “did you see that?” and everybody said, “yeah who was that?” and well - we didn’t know. It was somebody; it wasn’t ours, cause we only put out three airplanes at a time. (One would go down the road, one would go down the river, and one would go down the railroad tracks). Three ‘25’s would go out at one time. I flew thirty-six missions, and I think I flew the most of any of ‘em.
The only time we flew in the daytime, our commanding officer, Gaty, Colonel Gaty, had been flying a P-51 down further south, and somebody said that he headed east, and they didn’t know why he headed east; we went out to look for him [in the daytime], but we couldn’t find him. We didn’t know where he was, and he probably didn’t know either. He might have gotten hit. We got hit too. They always ask you – were you scared? Well, you don’t have time to be scared, really. You think about it - things are happening so quick, you don’t have time. When we got hit, and [the shell] knocked out one engine, we couldn’t get home, because we had to get over a range of mountains to Chittagong, where our base was. India comes around the Bay of Bengal, and Chittagong sits right out of the far side, and that’s where we flew out of; Chittagong. Our base was out of India, Asansol, India, but we had a base in Chittagong.
Anyway we couldn’t make it over the hill, that’s all there was to it. We couldn’t climb; we only had one engine. So he [Captain Merchant] went north as far as he could, and when he finally said, ‘well, we got to bail out,’ he talked to the tail gunner first, Baker, and he said, ‘you’re first’ so Baker bailed out, and then Smitty, the waist-gunner and radio-operator, and then I was the third to go out. I had a chest pack on me, I didn’t have a backpack, I had a chest pack, and when those shrouds lines go up, you have to protect yourself, else they’d play havoc with you.
We bailed out and it just so happened that I come pretty close to a road, and I walked at night and then I hid during the day. I hid in the brush; I didn’t know how far [I was]; there was Japanese all around us, or I thought they were. So anyway, I walked at night, and hid in the daytime. One day, [after] about three or four days, I heard people talking, and I listened, and I knew it wasn’t Japanese and it sounded kinda familiar. It was British, coming down the road, so I stepped out into the road and I said “American.” And when they got up to me close enough, I said, “Call my base at Asansol and tell them to send an L-5 for me,” which they did, and I flew home.
What I was scared of, after five days, they classify you as being lost, and I didn’t want my mother to find out, so anyway, it wasn’t five days that I was gone, it was about four days. So they came and got me, and flew back to the base, and we got another B-25 and started flying again. Every one of the guys on my plane got back. I never met up with any of them; they were strung out all over. As a matter of fact, Captain Merchant, he fell in the river and got picked up by a san-pan, a Burmese guy, so consequently, he wouldn’t’ let us shoot at those san-pans, even though they were hauling supplies up to the Japanese, he still wouldn’t let us shoot at them; he’d say “nope.”
But anyway, we all got back, then we all got another airplane. They had seven; and we started flying again. Like I said, I went thirty-six missions. I got an air medal; I think it was for flying 30 missions. And if I’d a flown fifty, I’d have gotten another air medal and a distinguished flying cross. But I didn’t get that. But when we got all through flying missions into Burma, when the Japanese got pushed clear down south as far as they could go (to Rangoon), we quit flying missions. Then I flew on what they called a Norseman, it was a high wing monoplane, and its job was hauling casualties. That’s what I did then for about three or four months. We could put three stretchers, and maybe two or three sitters in the airplane. And we flew all day long hauling casualties.
One time, they had a bunch of West Africans the British did, in their outfit. Anyway, this one was sitting by this tree, and he had his hand like this [tucked against his side]. And I went over to him, and I could see that he had been wounded. But they had a loincloth on, so they didn’t bleed very much, but it was bleeding. And I said to the British officer that was putting these casualties on our ship, “There’s this West African sitting right over there, and he’s got a hole in his stomach.” And he said “Oh really?” and I said “Yeah, get him over here and put him on.” So he did, and we hauled him to the base, to the hospital, and that’s what we did all day long. There was a big British base, a big army base that the British had, it was close to Mandalay, so that’s where we flew. I don’t know how many times I flew on that ship, and of course, that didn’t count as far as my flying [missions] and so forth; it just gave me more experience.
Like I said, we flew several day missions, but [that was when] we were looking for our commanding officer [Colonel Gaty]; the rest of the time we all flew by moonlight, by the full moon, so we flew every month. That moon was full enough for maybe two weeks, and we’d fly every night. We’d go down the river, or we’d down the road; one of us would go down the river; we’d rotate. There weren’t too many guys who wanted to fly. See like I said, we had seven B-25’s, but only three ever flew at one time. They always had pilots and co-pilots, but not engineers, so I flew all the time. I was an engineer; well I was a top gunner. What they did was they would get different pilots and co-pilots; Smitty, the waist-gunner and Baker, the tail-gunner, maybe they wouldn’t fly with me every mission. So, like I said, I flew probably more than [most]; well, actually, this kid from California, Wilke, he and I were together, and he and I were the ones that went every time, because he was an engineer too, and he and I flew just about all the time.
A lot of guys just didn’t want to fly; they maybe wanted to sit out on a mission or two, but the pilot or co-pilot, they’d always sit out. But if somebody was on my airplane, we would fly all the time, but some of those airplanes never flew hardly any, cause they didn’t have hardly enough crew, so I would always have a pilot and co-pilot that wanted to go with me on my ship; I don’t know whether it was me, or the ship that I was on. So I didn’t have Captain Merchant and Mackay (the co-pilot) all of the time; I had them most of the time, but not all of the time. (So I flew with Sineski and Wagner and others).
We had a fighter pilot; it’s funny. You take a fighter pilot, and he wants to be a bomber pilot. And a bomber pilot, he wants to be a fighter pilot. So consequently, we let a fighter pilot take our ship up one time, and Captain Merchant told him, “When you come in for the landing, don’t touch the brakes, leave the brakes alone. Just go right straight down the runway.” Well, he didn’t do it. When he hit and was going along, he touched the brakes, and we went wooosh, right off of the runway and over the top of a big pile of rocks; tore the underside of that airplane all to hell. And well, that was the end of that airplane, and then we got another one, but when we got down and done and everything, Captain Merchant said to him, “I told you,” he said, “Don’t touch the brakes.” Because what they did, they [the brakes] could be a little uneven, and if you touched one harder, it [the plane] would go off that way, and so that’s exactly what it did – went right off over the pile of rocks.
So anyway, like I said, over there, I flew thirty-six missions and two, maybe three were daylight, and the rest were night. I flew all the time if I could. They liked it cause I would fly all the time. They didn’t have to ask me, they would just say, “We’re gonna go.”
It was alright (over there). Once in a while you’d run into someplace where somebody was shooting at you. Well - it’s pretty hard to hit anything going, say, about 200 miles an hour. But that one time they did, they hit an engine and knocked it out, and when that happened, we could maintain our altitude, but we couldn’t go home to our base (we had to go over 15,000 feet to get there). We couldn’t get over those mountains just off of the coast of India. We couldn’t get over there to go home, so we had to bail out. Like I said, it was eerie as far as I was concerned, because I didn’t know where I was or what I was going to do or anything. I hid in the daytime and walked at night. It was moonlight, so I could see everything. Walking up the road, I could see everything. When I heard those voices, I thought Oh, Boy. But when they were closer, I knew they weren’t Japanese. I had bailed behind enemy lines, although I don’t know how far [away] the Japanese were at that time, because the British were coming down and fighting everywhere.
At one time, the Japanese had pushed everybody clear out of Burma, in fact, they were just about to go into India. And that’s when we [the U.S.] came in, that’s why the 1st Air Commando Group was formed. So anyway, then the British and the Chinese and the Indians and the Gurkhas from the Himalayas, they pushed the Japanese down, clear down into Rangoon, which was right at the end of the way in Burma, and the Japanese left and went through Thailand and home. I say British -everything was British, but they had West Africans, they had Gurkhas, they had Indians from India, but the British were their officers. Their [the British] army was a bunch of people from all over the world, and that’s what they did. Those West Africans were mean. They scared the stuffin’ out of me one time; they come crawling through some grass; I was on top of the airplane, and I looked over, and they came through there; I don’t know how many there were, there was quite a few of them. They were barefooted; they had two pair of paratrooper boots slung over their shoulder, but they never wore shoes, they had leggings, but bare feet, and they were huge, they were big. And their teeth were filed, like sharks’ teeth, and they had tattoos all over them. But they were big, I mean they were all over 6’6, 6’5, somewhere in there, but they were huge, big men. And they loved to fight, and the Japanese were scared of ‘em; they had to be, because if they [the West Africans] ever caught them, they showed no mercy whatsoever; they killed them, and loved to kill them. That’s what they said, you know.
They [the British] told those West Africans that they would be the first ones into Rangoon. ‘You’re going to be the first ones into Rangoon, you’ll get everything, you know, you can have it, it’ll be yours.’ And so that’s why they fought. And, oh, they were mean. Like I said, they were nice, but they were mean looking, and mean fighters, they were.
So anyway, that’s about what took place. We flew just about every full moon, and we flew two or three missions looking for our commanding officer. We flew on Christmas; it didn’t make any difference when. When somebody says, ‘did you have turkey on Christmas?’ Well, yeah, we had turkey; it was canned. So it was all right; it was better than nothin’. But an interesting thing; I used to go into the mess tent, you know, and get my food. I’d get two pieces of bread and I’d put marmalade on it (what they called butter was just like axle grease, it was no good, so I never put that on my bread, I put marmalade on it). One time, I didn’t put anything on my bread, and I was sitting there, and this great big kid from Iowa, Snider was his name, I’ll never forget him. I was sitting there picking stuff out of the bread, and he said, “What’s the matter, Swede?” and I said, “Well, did you see this?” I said, “There’s bugs, all over in the bread.” And he said, “Yeah, did you ever watch them make it?” and I said, “No.” and he says, “Well, the British make it; they’re down the road about twenty miles. You wanna go down there and watch ‘em?” and I said, “Sure.” We went down there and watched them. They had a great big squadron tent; it was huge, but up in the middle of it was a big lantern and you can imagine, how over there, there’s something flying or crawling all over the place. Now the bakers, there was this great big gas lantern up there and they were kneading the bread, you know, and those bugs were falling down in it, and they just kneaded it and made the loaves out of it. It was full of little bugs, and it took me about a week till I went back eating bread again. And that Snider, he said, “What’s the matter? Didn’t you ever see that?” And I said, “No. I always put marmalade on it, so I didn’t pay much attention.”
But anyway, it wasn’t that bad. Everybody says, was it really that bad? But no, it wasn’t that bad. Sure, once in a while, something would happen, but to be real frank, it wasn’t really that bad over there. In fact, I liked it better overseas than I did in the States. Well, it was just too tough; they had too many regulations and stuff. It isn’t like it wasn’t overseas; you’d do as you damn well pleased. You could dress how you wanted to, or you know, do anything, but you couldn’t in the States; you had to be a soldier, and over there, why they didn’t care. Like I said, I wore a pair of shorts, and shoes, and maybe a shirt and a cap but that’s about all, you know. When I was in the States, I wasn’t a very good soldier, I really wasn’t. You can say, you know “Maybe you’re thinking that, but maybe you were,” but I say, no I wasn’t, I wasn’t a very good soldier. I told that major, Hertz, was his name; (he was out of Pendleton) I told him, “Don’t turn me loose; I won’t come back.” And he said, “You really mean it.” And I said, “Yes I do.” And he said “You wanna get out of here, don’t you.” And I said, “Absolutely. I’ll go anyplace, and do anything, but I don’t like Arizona.” I was there when they formed the base, and I was there two years, and that was more than I could bear; so anyway, I didn’t like it.
When we were done flying missions into Burma, Major Sineski was our operations officer, and I said to him, “I want to fly; there’s an A-20 airplane outfit in China; I want to go there.” He said, “Okay, when an opening comes, I’ll send you over there.” So when the war was over, why he come up to me and says, “Oh by the way, Swede,” he said, “your transfer came through.” And I said, “What transfer?” and he said, “To go to China with that A-20 outfit.” And I said, “No, no, major, I’m going home.” Well, he said, “Well, I was just foolin’ with you, nothing came through on it, but you could if you wanted to.” And I said, “No, I’m going to go home.”
I had flown with our colonel, Colonel Hall was his name, he was a West-Pointer, so after the war, why, we fixed up a B-25 after I got through with flying casualties, I was his engineer, and I flew with him, and so when the war was over, he said, “Do you want to stay with me?” He said, “We’ll fly all over, we’ll go over to Japan,” and so forth, and I said “Well, I don’t know Colonel; I think I’ll go home.” And he said, “Well, I don’t blame you. Do you want to fly home?” And I said, “No, I flew over – I think I’ll take a boat home,” I don’t know why I did – but I did, and it was a big tub that had 5,000 guys on it. Henry J’s made these freighters, or whatever you want to call them; they were just tubs. It took 22 days to get home, and we went through the Mediterranean, and when we hit the Atlantic, we hit the tail end of a hurricane. There was a Swedish freighter breaking up; we could see him out there, but we didn’t go to him; the Coast Guard went out of Spain and went after him, to help him. But anyway, we hit the tail end of that hurricane, and all they were doing was just barely enough speed; those waves were higher than the boat, and everybody was sick. I stood fire watch about the third hall down, and one time I was sitting there, they had a little-bitty bulb, and I was sitting there reading a book, and I was reading and I was going like this (chin tucked), and I thought, I’d better go upstairs. I went upstairs to get some air, then I had to go back down, but I felt like I was getting seasick. But [otherwise] it never bothered me to have that ship rock like that. And I stood up there on the deck, and the bow would go down, and all you’d see was ocean, and it’d go back up again, and boom! So anyway, in all of the heads – the bathrooms – they were on the forward end of the ship, so you couldn’t go to the head, ‘cause everybody was there; they were sick; they were laying in them. And they’d say “What’d you have for breakfast, Swede?” and I’d say, “Oh, nothing but greasy pork,” (There weren’t too many guys going to breakfast down there, you know). But it didn’t bother me at all to go on that ship on the rough seas; I thought it was all right. Nothing really bothered me.
When I started out, I had what they called a B-4 bag; it was just a big bag, and all I had in there was shirts and pants and stuff, and as it [a piece of clothing] got dirty, I threw it overboard coming to the United States; I wouldn’t wash it or do anything. When I got to Camp Kelmer, New Jersey this guy said, “Well, where’s your gear?” And I said, “Over there someplace, I don’t know where it is; it’s over in India someplace.” And he said, “Do you want us to issue you some new gear?” and I said “No, no. I don’t want anymore. I’m going home. I’m through.” (And the same thing [happened] when I got to Fort Lewis). And I said to the guy, “Which is the fastest? To get a discharge, or to go on a 30 or 60 day leave?” and he said, “A leave. It’s just a matter of getting it.” And I said, “Give it to me. I’m gonna go home.” And he said okay.
When I got home, I was there for about a month when I got a letter that said I had to go to Santa Ana California to get discharged. And there was a brigadier general, and he said to me, (I didn’t have any insignias or anything on me), and he said, “You’re a sergeant?” and I said, “Yessir.” And he said, “How do you like it here?” and I said, “If you’d a started this four years ago,” I said, “I’d probably still be in because the food is good and the place is wonderful.” And he said, “You don’t want to re-up?” and I said, “No I sure don’t. I’m all through.” And he said, “Do you want some gear?” They’d give me two barracks bags full of stuff. And I said, “No. I don’t want any of it.” And so what I had on, that’s all I took with me. So anyway, they thought it was funny I didn’t want my army gear, but I wasn’t going to wear it. I had a lot of clothes at home, you know, and I wasn’t going to wear no army stuff. When I got my air medal while I was down there at Oregon State, these guys that I knew, they came out of the service, Bob Barney, and a few other guys, they said, “Why don’t you have the guys from ROTC fall out ‘n go in review when they give you this air medal?” And I said, “Oh, I don’t want that. I’ve got the medal; that’s it.” I didn’t want any of that stuff; I just wanted to be left alone. If the war hadn’t been over, I know I wouldn’t have gone home. I would have gone to China or something.
Lloyd Larson enlisted at the age of twenty in December of 1945 after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He took basic training in Yuma, Arizona before being shipped out to Burma, where he was a bombardier in the 1st Air Commandos Group, an all-American group under British command in the China-Burma-India Theater during World War Two. Larson was a top gunner and an engineer in a B-25 bomber. This is his story.
Lloyd Larson was born in Iowan, Washington, and lived in Prineville, Oregon when he was enlisted. After the war, Larson continued his education at Oregon State and was a sales manager for Blue Lumber Mills at John Day. Other than one year spent working for Boeing on B-52’s, Larson remained in lumber sales. He married in 1949 and had ten children; five boys and five girls. Today he lives in Burns, Oregon.
I was in the army, and in those days, everything was under the army. It wasn’t like it is today, separate. I went in and I went down to California to take basic; and then I went to Wichita Falls, TX for more basic training and then I located to Yuma, Arizona. It was a brand new base and I was shipped there, and I was in Arizona for two years. And I hated it. My commanding officer was out of Pendleton, Oregon, and he asked me one time, he said to me, “You don’t like it here.”
And I said, “No, I don’t.”
And he said, “Would you like to get out of here?” And I said,
“Absolutely would,” I said “Anything - I don’t care what it is.”
The first thing that came up was gunnery school in Las Vegas and he said “Do you want to go there?” and I said absolutely. And I went to gunnery school, but I had been in Arizona two years. I went to several schools in the service. I went up to New York to go to school for inline engine school.
Most people had maybe, say, four qualifications. I had seven; I went to every school they had because I wanted to get out of Arizona. So that’s why I went. But that’s about it and when I went from gunnery school, I was in charge of thirteen guys, and when we left Las Vegas, the first place train stopped was Green River, Wyoming, and I don’t know why, but some (men) left; they just left, and when I got to North Carolina, I didn’t have anybody. I had started out with thirteen men, and when I handed this packet to this major (in North Carolina), he looked at it, turned it over and he says, “Thirteen men, where are the others?” and I said “I don’t know, they all left me.” And he said, “They went AWL?” And I said, “that’s right, and it’s just me and a kid from Philadelphia.” We were the only two. And the last kid that came in [brought in later], when I left to go to Miami, he was from Texas, a great big tall kid. They had him in chains, and he said ‘Swede, I made it’ and we all laughed. But he was in the guardhouse; he wasn’t going to go anywhere.
Lloyd Larson
(Back, Center)
Arizona
I went to training there in Greensborough, North Carolina, to go overseas and I didn’t know at the time where I was going or what I was going to be. But anyway then I went to Miami, Florida. And we hit there just on the end of a hurricane, so we set there for about three or four days before we flew out of there to North Africa; we went to Casablanca, and then to Cairo, Egypt. We decided to stay there about three or four days, but the only way we could do it was to redline our airplane. In other words, we couldn’t fly if the thing was redlined. So they had to fix it, but we were there for about a week in Cairo, Egypt.
And we saw everything; we went everyplace. There was a museum there where they had these relics from the crusades, and they had a big museum there in Cairo, and they had everything in there, and it was wonderful. And we went out to the pyramids and had a camel race - it was real nice.
My rank, (when I got out of gunnery school), was a corporal. They made you one grade above what you had; I had been a private first class. They raised me to a corporal, and then they put me in charge of those thirteen guys that left me.
So we stopped at Casablanca and then went over to Egypt and up through the Holy Land, and we stopped there in Aiden and then flew on over to India, and that’s when I knew I was in the First Air Commandos, because they had chosen me because I had many qualifications; I had gone to too many schools, I was well qualified, and that’s what they wanted; they wanted somebody that had gone to at least three or four AM schools, and I had gone to six or seven. But anyway, (I didn’t know that I was gonna fly, I really didn’t) when I got there, they said, “Well, we’re going to bring in some B-25’s. Do you want to fly?” and I said yes, I sure did. They said “Well, you went to gunnery school,” and I said “Yep.” They said “Do you know anything about the airplane?” and I said absolutely; I had worked a long time on the B-25.
So like I said, they asked me “Do you want to fly?” And I said, “You bet.” And Captain Merchant [the pilot] asked me, he said, “Do you want to go home?” and I said, “Sure.” And he said, well, he said, “I’m not one of these guys that like to show off,” he said, “I fly, because I want to go home.” But I flew one mission with a captain Wagner, and he had seen Doolittle’s planes down there in Florida flying so low they would cut the grass, and he saw that, so that only time he flew on my airplane, we had a great big hump in our field, and we were coming in, and he was below that hump, and when he pulled up, I saw that he had lost air, and so he was kicking the rudders and the ailerons trying to get control, and finally he got control, and we circled around and lived. And so when we got down on the field, I said to him, I said “Major, I don’t want to fly with you again.” I said, “I don’t want you on my airplane, because,” I said, “We came pretty close to auguring in, and there was no need in it. You wanted to show somebody that you could fly low enough so that you could cut some grass, but when you pulled up, you lost air.”
You see, when you pull up real steep, you lose your airflow over the wings, and the ailerons and the elevators, that control the plane, and you lose all that, so you’re lucky if you get them back. And we did, but I told him I didn’t want to fly with him again, ever. And I flew with that Major Sineski and he was real nice. I flew with him a couple, three times.
I think altogether there were probably two distinct sections in Burma that we flew to. We always flew at night, when there was a full moon, and we flew into Burma; we were helping the British; they had gone clear up the full length of Burma, they [had] chased the Japanese up there, and one of our missions was to bring supplies to Wingate, who got caught with the Japanese, and we had to fly some supplies into him, anyway there was probably three or four, I think three distinct battle divisions in Burma at that time, and we took place in all three. Our airplane, the one I flew on, we knocked out four railroad engines - you could see ‘em – they were old engines with the firebox, you know – they tried to hide them among the trees, so we couldn’t see them. But we headed down the railroad tracks, so we could see them.
What Captain Merchant would do; we would fly one mission down the river, or down the road or down the railroad and we flew down the railroad three or four times. But anyway we got these railroad engines, because they tried to hide in among the trees along the railroad track, but we headed down the railroad tracks. And what the Captain would do, (Captain Merchant was our pilot), he’d swing completely around and go right straight down the railroad and you could see the engine sitting there and he’d say to me, “Load me one.” And I’d load up; we had a seventy-five millimeter cannon in the nose of that thing, and whenever he wanted it, he’d say ‘load me one’ and when I loaded it up, I’d touch him on the shoulder and he’d know it was loaded, and he’d fire that thing, and it would just blow that engine completely up.
One time, there was a troop train in the station, and we caught that one, and strafed that station for about fifteen or twenty minutes. The airplane had two fifty millimeter machine guns along the side of the ship [airplane] and along the front of the ship, there was a seventy-five millimeter cannon. This British Major-General that we were going to fly down to Rangoon to look at the terrain looked at that cannon field piece and when we were coming back, he said to Captain Merchant, “Can I see you fire that cannon?” and he [Captain Merchant] said “Sure.” And he said to me, “Load me one.” And so I did, and I tapped him on the shoulder. And he leveled that plane off; he had a sight on the windshield, and there was a bull’s eye, and he was looking, and I knew damn well what he was gonna do. And there was a bigota, a big one, and he hit the top of it, and it just lifted up and bang. And the general, Slim was his name, said, “Oh my, that was something, wasn’t it?” Well, the shell was about that long (1 ½ feet). I had to load it; we had a rack of ‘em above [the gun]. I had to stand to one side because it had a twenty-six inch recoil; bang, bang, and it’d eject that shell, and I’d throw another one in there, and tap him [Captain Merchant] on the shoulder. The most we could fire was four rounds in 2,000 yards. One night we’d shot six or seven, and when we got home, I noticed that there was hydraulic fluid all over the front of the airplane. Firing that gun had loosened all of the fittings in the nose. I liked it [being in the nose], because I could see it too, just as well as they [the pilots] could. I kind of enjoyed it, when we were strafing a train or something because he’d [Captain Merchant] put that airplane up on one side so Smitty [the waist-gunner] and I could shoot at ‘em. He did that for us.
So anyway when you fired that thing, it would blow up everything. When we’d go down the tracks - of course, they were shooting back at us too; that’s another thing – you know – every time we went someplace, unbeknownst to us, there would be somebody shooting at us. One night we were going down the river, and we looked over on our right and going north on us was an airplane. We didn’t know who it was, ‘cause it wasn’t ours, and we wondered who it was that was out there in the middle of the night going north; we were going south, and everybody saw it, and everybody on the ship said, “did you see that?” and everybody said, “yeah who was that?” and well - we didn’t know. It was somebody; it wasn’t ours, cause we only put out three airplanes at a time. (One would go down the road, one would go down the river, and one would go down the railroad tracks). Three ‘25’s would go out at one time. I flew thirty-six missions, and I think I flew the most of any of ‘em.
The only time we flew in the daytime, our commanding officer, Gaty, Colonel Gaty, had been flying a P-51 down further south, and somebody said that he headed east, and they didn’t know why he headed east; we went out to look for him [in the daytime], but we couldn’t find him. We didn’t know where he was, and he probably didn’t know either. He might have gotten hit. We got hit too. They always ask you – were you scared? Well, you don’t have time to be scared, really. You think about it - things are happening so quick, you don’t have time. When we got hit, and [the shell] knocked out one engine, we couldn’t get home, because we had to get over a range of mountains to Chittagong, where our base was. India comes around the Bay of Bengal, and Chittagong sits right out of the far side, and that’s where we flew out of; Chittagong. Our base was out of India, Asansol, India, but we had a base in Chittagong.
Anyway we couldn’t make it over the hill, that’s all there was to it. We couldn’t climb; we only had one engine. So he [Captain Merchant] went north as far as he could, and when he finally said, ‘well, we got to bail out,’ he talked to the tail gunner first, Baker, and he said, ‘you’re first’ so Baker bailed out, and then Smitty, the waist-gunner and radio-operator, and then I was the third to go out. I had a chest pack on me, I didn’t have a backpack, I had a chest pack, and when those shrouds lines go up, you have to protect yourself, else they’d play havoc with you.
We bailed out and it just so happened that I come pretty close to a road, and I walked at night and then I hid during the day. I hid in the brush; I didn’t know how far [I was]; there was Japanese all around us, or I thought they were. So anyway, I walked at night, and hid in the daytime. One day, [after] about three or four days, I heard people talking, and I listened, and I knew it wasn’t Japanese and it sounded kinda familiar. It was British, coming down the road, so I stepped out into the road and I said “American.” And when they got up to me close enough, I said, “Call my base at Asansol and tell them to send an L-5 for me,” which they did, and I flew home.
What I was scared of, after five days, they classify you as being lost, and I didn’t want my mother to find out, so anyway, it wasn’t five days that I was gone, it was about four days. So they came and got me, and flew back to the base, and we got another B-25 and started flying again. Every one of the guys on my plane got back. I never met up with any of them; they were strung out all over. As a matter of fact, Captain Merchant, he fell in the river and got picked up by a san-pan, a Burmese guy, so consequently, he wouldn’t’ let us shoot at those san-pans, even though they were hauling supplies up to the Japanese, he still wouldn’t let us shoot at them; he’d say “nope.”
But anyway, we all got back, then we all got another airplane. They had seven; and we started flying again. Like I said, I went thirty-six missions. I got an air medal; I think it was for flying 30 missions. And if I’d a flown fifty, I’d have gotten another air medal and a distinguished flying cross. But I didn’t get that. But when we got all through flying missions into Burma, when the Japanese got pushed clear down south as far as they could go (to Rangoon), we quit flying missions. Then I flew on what they called a Norseman, it was a high wing monoplane, and its job was hauling casualties. That’s what I did then for about three or four months. We could put three stretchers, and maybe two or three sitters in the airplane. And we flew all day long hauling casualties.
One time, they had a bunch of West Africans the British did, in their outfit. Anyway, this one was sitting by this tree, and he had his hand like this [tucked against his side]. And I went over to him, and I could see that he had been wounded. But they had a loincloth on, so they didn’t bleed very much, but it was bleeding. And I said to the British officer that was putting these casualties on our ship, “There’s this West African sitting right over there, and he’s got a hole in his stomach.” And he said “Oh really?” and I said “Yeah, get him over here and put him on.” So he did, and we hauled him to the base, to the hospital, and that’s what we did all day long. There was a big British base, a big army base that the British had, it was close to Mandalay, so that’s where we flew. I don’t know how many times I flew on that ship, and of course, that didn’t count as far as my flying [missions] and so forth; it just gave me more experience.
Like I said, we flew several day missions, but [that was when] we were looking for our commanding officer [Colonel Gaty]; the rest of the time we all flew by moonlight, by the full moon, so we flew every month. That moon was full enough for maybe two weeks, and we’d fly every night. We’d go down the river, or we’d down the road; one of us would go down the river; we’d rotate. There weren’t too many guys who wanted to fly. See like I said, we had seven B-25’s, but only three ever flew at one time. They always had pilots and co-pilots, but not engineers, so I flew all the time. I was an engineer; well I was a top gunner. What they did was they would get different pilots and co-pilots; Smitty, the waist-gunner and Baker, the tail-gunner, maybe they wouldn’t fly with me every mission. So, like I said, I flew probably more than [most]; well, actually, this kid from California, Wilke, he and I were together, and he and I were the ones that went every time, because he was an engineer too, and he and I flew just about all the time.
A lot of guys just didn’t want to fly; they maybe wanted to sit out on a mission or two, but the pilot or co-pilot, they’d always sit out. But if somebody was on my airplane, we would fly all the time, but some of those airplanes never flew hardly any, cause they didn’t have hardly enough crew, so I would always have a pilot and co-pilot that wanted to go with me on my ship; I don’t know whether it was me, or the ship that I was on. So I didn’t have Captain Merchant and Mackay (the co-pilot) all of the time; I had them most of the time, but not all of the time. (So I flew with Sineski and Wagner and others).
We had a fighter pilot; it’s funny. You take a fighter pilot, and he wants to be a bomber pilot. And a bomber pilot, he wants to be a fighter pilot. So consequently, we let a fighter pilot take our ship up one time, and Captain Merchant told him, “When you come in for the landing, don’t touch the brakes, leave the brakes alone. Just go right straight down the runway.” Well, he didn’t do it. When he hit and was going along, he touched the brakes, and we went wooosh, right off of the runway and over the top of a big pile of rocks; tore the underside of that airplane all to hell. And well, that was the end of that airplane, and then we got another one, but when we got down and done and everything, Captain Merchant said to him, “I told you,” he said, “Don’t touch the brakes.” Because what they did, they [the brakes] could be a little uneven, and if you touched one harder, it [the plane] would go off that way, and so that’s exactly what it did – went right off over the pile of rocks.
So anyway, like I said, over there, I flew thirty-six missions and two, maybe three were daylight, and the rest were night. I flew all the time if I could. They liked it cause I would fly all the time. They didn’t have to ask me, they would just say, “We’re gonna go.”
It was alright (over there). Once in a while you’d run into someplace where somebody was shooting at you. Well - it’s pretty hard to hit anything going, say, about 200 miles an hour. But that one time they did, they hit an engine and knocked it out, and when that happened, we could maintain our altitude, but we couldn’t go home to our base (we had to go over 15,000 feet to get there). We couldn’t get over those mountains just off of the coast of India. We couldn’t get over there to go home, so we had to bail out. Like I said, it was eerie as far as I was concerned, because I didn’t know where I was or what I was going to do or anything. I hid in the daytime and walked at night. It was moonlight, so I could see everything. Walking up the road, I could see everything. When I heard those voices, I thought Oh, Boy. But when they were closer, I knew they weren’t Japanese. I had bailed behind enemy lines, although I don’t know how far [away] the Japanese were at that time, because the British were coming down and fighting everywhere.
At one time, the Japanese had pushed everybody clear out of Burma, in fact, they were just about to go into India. And that’s when we [the U.S.] came in, that’s why the 1st Air Commando Group was formed. So anyway, then the British and the Chinese and the Indians and the Gurkhas from the Himalayas, they pushed the Japanese down, clear down into Rangoon, which was right at the end of the way in Burma, and the Japanese left and went through Thailand and home. I say British -everything was British, but they had West Africans, they had Gurkhas, they had Indians from India, but the British were their officers. Their [the British] army was a bunch of people from all over the world, and that’s what they did. Those West Africans were mean. They scared the stuffin’ out of me one time; they come crawling through some grass; I was on top of the airplane, and I looked over, and they came through there; I don’t know how many there were, there was quite a few of them. They were barefooted; they had two pair of paratrooper boots slung over their shoulder, but they never wore shoes, they had leggings, but bare feet, and they were huge, they were big. And their teeth were filed, like sharks’ teeth, and they had tattoos all over them. But they were big, I mean they were all over 6’6, 6’5, somewhere in there, but they were huge, big men. And they loved to fight, and the Japanese were scared of ‘em; they had to be, because if they [the West Africans] ever caught them, they showed no mercy whatsoever; they killed them, and loved to kill them. That’s what they said, you know.
They [the British] told those West Africans that they would be the first ones into Rangoon. ‘You’re going to be the first ones into Rangoon, you’ll get everything, you know, you can have it, it’ll be yours.’ And so that’s why they fought. And, oh, they were mean. Like I said, they were nice, but they were mean looking, and mean fighters, they were.
So anyway, that’s about what took place. We flew just about every full moon, and we flew two or three missions looking for our commanding officer. We flew on Christmas; it didn’t make any difference when. When somebody says, ‘did you have turkey on Christmas?’ Well, yeah, we had turkey; it was canned. So it was all right; it was better than nothin’. But an interesting thing; I used to go into the mess tent, you know, and get my food. I’d get two pieces of bread and I’d put marmalade on it (what they called butter was just like axle grease, it was no good, so I never put that on my bread, I put marmalade on it). One time, I didn’t put anything on my bread, and I was sitting there, and this great big kid from Iowa, Snider was his name, I’ll never forget him. I was sitting there picking stuff out of the bread, and he said, “What’s the matter, Swede?” and I said, “Well, did you see this?” I said, “There’s bugs, all over in the bread.” And he said, “Yeah, did you ever watch them make it?” and I said, “No.” and he says, “Well, the British make it; they’re down the road about twenty miles. You wanna go down there and watch ‘em?” and I said, “Sure.” We went down there and watched them. They had a great big squadron tent; it was huge, but up in the middle of it was a big lantern and you can imagine, how over there, there’s something flying or crawling all over the place. Now the bakers, there was this great big gas lantern up there and they were kneading the bread, you know, and those bugs were falling down in it, and they just kneaded it and made the loaves out of it. It was full of little bugs, and it took me about a week till I went back eating bread again. And that Snider, he said, “What’s the matter? Didn’t you ever see that?” And I said, “No. I always put marmalade on it, so I didn’t pay much attention.”
But anyway, it wasn’t that bad. Everybody says, was it really that bad? But no, it wasn’t that bad. Sure, once in a while, something would happen, but to be real frank, it wasn’t really that bad over there. In fact, I liked it better overseas than I did in the States. Well, it was just too tough; they had too many regulations and stuff. It isn’t like it wasn’t overseas; you’d do as you damn well pleased. You could dress how you wanted to, or you know, do anything, but you couldn’t in the States; you had to be a soldier, and over there, why they didn’t care. Like I said, I wore a pair of shorts, and shoes, and maybe a shirt and a cap but that’s about all, you know. When I was in the States, I wasn’t a very good soldier, I really wasn’t. You can say, you know “Maybe you’re thinking that, but maybe you were,” but I say, no I wasn’t, I wasn’t a very good soldier. I told that major, Hertz, was his name; (he was out of Pendleton) I told him, “Don’t turn me loose; I won’t come back.” And he said, “You really mean it.” And I said, “Yes I do.” And he said “You wanna get out of here, don’t you.” And I said, “Absolutely. I’ll go anyplace, and do anything, but I don’t like Arizona.” I was there when they formed the base, and I was there two years, and that was more than I could bear; so anyway, I didn’t like it.
When we were done flying missions into Burma, Major Sineski was our operations officer, and I said to him, “I want to fly; there’s an A-20 airplane outfit in China; I want to go there.” He said, “Okay, when an opening comes, I’ll send you over there.” So when the war was over, why he come up to me and says, “Oh by the way, Swede,” he said, “your transfer came through.” And I said, “What transfer?” and he said, “To go to China with that A-20 outfit.” And I said, “No, no, major, I’m going home.” Well, he said, “Well, I was just foolin’ with you, nothing came through on it, but you could if you wanted to.” And I said, “No, I’m going to go home.”
I had flown with our colonel, Colonel Hall was his name, he was a West-Pointer, so after the war, why, we fixed up a B-25 after I got through with flying casualties, I was his engineer, and I flew with him, and so when the war was over, he said, “Do you want to stay with me?” He said, “We’ll fly all over, we’ll go over to Japan,” and so forth, and I said “Well, I don’t know Colonel; I think I’ll go home.” And he said, “Well, I don’t blame you. Do you want to fly home?” And I said, “No, I flew over – I think I’ll take a boat home,” I don’t know why I did – but I did, and it was a big tub that had 5,000 guys on it. Henry J’s made these freighters, or whatever you want to call them; they were just tubs. It took 22 days to get home, and we went through the Mediterranean, and when we hit the Atlantic, we hit the tail end of a hurricane. There was a Swedish freighter breaking up; we could see him out there, but we didn’t go to him; the Coast Guard went out of Spain and went after him, to help him. But anyway, we hit the tail end of that hurricane, and all they were doing was just barely enough speed; those waves were higher than the boat, and everybody was sick. I stood fire watch about the third hall down, and one time I was sitting there, they had a little-bitty bulb, and I was sitting there reading a book, and I was reading and I was going like this (chin tucked), and I thought, I’d better go upstairs. I went upstairs to get some air, then I had to go back down, but I felt like I was getting seasick. But [otherwise] it never bothered me to have that ship rock like that. And I stood up there on the deck, and the bow would go down, and all you’d see was ocean, and it’d go back up again, and boom! So anyway, in all of the heads – the bathrooms – they were on the forward end of the ship, so you couldn’t go to the head, ‘cause everybody was there; they were sick; they were laying in them. And they’d say “What’d you have for breakfast, Swede?” and I’d say, “Oh, nothing but greasy pork,” (There weren’t too many guys going to breakfast down there, you know). But it didn’t bother me at all to go on that ship on the rough seas; I thought it was all right. Nothing really bothered me.
When I started out, I had what they called a B-4 bag; it was just a big bag, and all I had in there was shirts and pants and stuff, and as it [a piece of clothing] got dirty, I threw it overboard coming to the United States; I wouldn’t wash it or do anything. When I got to Camp Kelmer, New Jersey this guy said, “Well, where’s your gear?” And I said, “Over there someplace, I don’t know where it is; it’s over in India someplace.” And he said, “Do you want us to issue you some new gear?” and I said “No, no. I don’t want anymore. I’m going home. I’m through.” (And the same thing [happened] when I got to Fort Lewis). And I said to the guy, “Which is the fastest? To get a discharge, or to go on a 30 or 60 day leave?” and he said, “A leave. It’s just a matter of getting it.” And I said, “Give it to me. I’m gonna go home.” And he said okay.
When I got home, I was there for about a month when I got a letter that said I had to go to Santa Ana California to get discharged. And there was a brigadier general, and he said to me, (I didn’t have any insignias or anything on me), and he said, “You’re a sergeant?” and I said, “Yessir.” And he said, “How do you like it here?” and I said, “If you’d a started this four years ago,” I said, “I’d probably still be in because the food is good and the place is wonderful.” And he said, “You don’t want to re-up?” and I said, “No I sure don’t. I’m all through.” And he said, “Do you want some gear?” They’d give me two barracks bags full of stuff. And I said, “No. I don’t want any of it.” And so what I had on, that’s all I took with me. So anyway, they thought it was funny I didn’t want my army gear, but I wasn’t going to wear it. I had a lot of clothes at home, you know, and I wasn’t going to wear no army stuff. When I got my air medal while I was down there at Oregon State, these guys that I knew, they came out of the service, Bob Barney, and a few other guys, they said, “Why don’t you have the guys from ROTC fall out ‘n go in review when they give you this air medal?” And I said, “Oh, I don’t want that. I’ve got the medal; that’s it.” I didn’t want any of that stuff; I just wanted to be left alone. If the war hadn’t been over, I know I wouldn’t have gone home. I would have gone to China or something.
Lloyd Larson
(Far Left)
Lloyd Larson enlisted at the age of twenty in December of 1945 after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He took basic training in Yuma, Arizona before being shipped out to Burma, where he was a bombardier in the 1st Air Commandos Group, an all-American group under British command in the China-Burma-India Theater during World War Two. Larson was a top gunner and an engineer in a B-25 bomber. This is his story.
Lloyd Larson was born in Iowan, Washington, and lived in Prineville, Oregon when he was enlisted. After the war, Larson continued his education at Oregon State and was a sales manager for Blue Lumber Mills at John Day. Other than one year spent working for Boeing on B-52’s, Larson remained in lumber sales. He married in 1949 and had ten children; five boys and five girls. Today he lives in Burns, Oregon.
Kenneth Eldridge Autobiography
Autobiography of a civilian that was drafted into the Army and was made an infantry foot soldier during World War II. For those that weren’t born yet, or those that just don’t know.
We, the US, were at war over in the European Theatre, where the weather was cold and snowy. At the same time, the US was at war in the South Pacific Theatre, where the weather was extremely hot.
I have started this story many times and messed up, rewrote pages, then started over. I have scrapped and burned more pages than I have written. Since the war, I have tried the best I know how to not say one word about it, thinking that one day I could forget it all. I don’t like to go to town. I don’t like to be around people. I think in my own mind that if I am around other people they will down-grade me because of what happened to me in the war. I avoid neighbors as much as I can. I was known before I went into the service, and while I was in the service, as Mr. Clean. Now I am just the opposite.
I was drafted into the US Army. The papers read, “Your friends and neighbors have selected you.” My induction date was November 27, 1943, and date of active service: December 18, 1943. I took basic training in Camp Roberts, California. After basic training, I was given a short two-week furlough, then my orders were to report back to Ft. Ord, California. At this base we were given all of the required shots, haircuts…I remember having to take the small pox shot twice because the first one didn’t take…but when it took, I had a really sore arm. There was typhoid, tetanus, and typhus. They checked out teeth, eyes, and hearing. I guess if they could look in one ear and couldn’t see out the other – you passed. They gave all of us short arm inspections. They issued all of us O.D. wool uniforms, wool socks and new boots, and a new duffel bag. We were to fold everything neatly and pack everything we could into that duffel bag. Each morning after that we fell out early for breakfast. After breakfast, right away they called us out. They had us bring that duffle bag and everything we were going to take with us.
We fell in and stood by a large loading platform. There we had a spot inspection of everything in that duffle bag. We fell in at attention and had a roll call. We stayed there for a while, and then were ordered to take the duffel bag and all belongings back to our barracks. We did this, as I remember, four days in a row. On the next day we fell in the same as we had been instructed, and stood at attention, as we had been trained to do every morning at roll call. We knew where and who we were to stand by, according to the alphabetical order of our last name. On this particular morning there was a train standing there by that large loading platform. We all loaded, carrying our duffle bag and belongings, same as at roll call each morning, only this time I think I remember we had to sound off with our Army Serial Number also.
We were transported, at night to a Camp Anza. This camp was located down in a valley and was so secretive that most of the people living around it didn’t even know where or what it was. We were treated a lot better than usual here.
On about the third day we were instructed to fall in with all our Army-issued belongings. They marched us around to a quarter master affair platform and they took about fifteen of us at a time and had us remove everything that was in that duffel bag and lay it out in stacks, so they could recover it in an orderly manner.
Then we were instructed to take our duffel bag and go around to another quarter master building. In this building they issued all of us khaki suntan wearing apparel.
Can you imagine what we were talking about and what we were thinking about traveling from Fort Ord in that train with wool clothing in our duffel bags, going to Camp Anza? None of us knew where we were going.
When we were issued these suntan clothes we all at once figured out how important our position was. We were all assembled together and were told that we would get to go out on a pass, if we would keep secret our mission. We were not issued a tie for the uniform so when we went out on the pass we would be out of uniform. We were issued a card by the U.S. Army with a telephone number on it. We were told that if we were stopped by the M.P’s or anyone else, we were to show them the card and have them call the phone number on the card.
My brother Jessie L. Eldridge was stationed a short way off in the Air Force at March Field, California. I made a “B” line to that base to see him. When I got to the entry gate the guards made me go into that small building at the gate. They were telling me how I was out of uniform, with that missing tie. I gave them the card with the phone number on it. After they called the number on it, they assigned a commissioner officer to escort me right over to my brother’s barracks. When we got there and after we met the officer told my brother to suit up for a pass. While he was doing that, the officer went to his company headquarters and brought back a pass. In short order, we were on a bus going to town. In the early part of the evening, we were stopped a few times. But with that whole camp in town the word was out early. The night ended with the M.P.’s helping some of the G.I.’s to the bus and showing them which way to go.
At Camp Anza we had an early breakfast. Then we fell in with that duffel bag in a hurry, then marched over to another loading platform by a railroad track we waited there for a couple of hours. Then we fell in and marched back to our barracks, then were dismissed. The rest of the day was more or less to our selves. Showers, shaves and regular clean up to keep us neat.
We did this I think, two more days. The next day as before, at Fort Ord, the train was there. We loaded and gave our Army serial number, also like before. This time was more important than the others; because they wanted to make sure we had no hidden weapons (etc.).
We rode in that train directly to a ship docked at San Pedro or Wilmington California. I don’t remember which one. We got out of that train, in the same order as the roster sheet was typed out and entered that ship by way of that gang plank carrying that duffel bag and all belongings.
They escorted each one of us to our assigned bunk. After this was completed, they pulled up that gang plank.
During the night of June 8th, 1944, they eased out that ship through the long beach harbor and were on the high seas and out of sight of land come sunlight the next morning.
We headed to parts unknown to us. That ship zigzagged most of the time and some days that ship zigged the whole day into a complete circle. I guess it went closer to its destination each circle it made. A lot of the soldiers got seasick; they were not used to their body going up and down and being tossed around from side to side at the same time. This causes their mind or brain and their stomach to not be in sync, which causes a churned up and upset sour stomach. The smell of this was just about more than you can stand.
At this point I hadn’t gotten sick yet, I thought to myself. I’ve really got it made. I got up for breakfast the next morning; when I got to the galley and smelled that food I couldn’t make it to that outside rail. If you haven’t been seasick it’s hard to explain, but take my advice – don’t try it. We rode in that ship, played cards, and took calisthenics and miscellaneous other things.
We kept zigzagging and going in circles until early on the morning of June 29th, 1944, we looked out and saw the edge of this island which turned out to be New Guinea. If you have never seen a South Pacific Island of jungle; it looks like (from a ways out in the water) one giant green tree.
I want to backtrack a little here to tell about some things that we saw traveling on that ship. As we traveled we crossed the International Date Line and somewhere along here the ship scared up some fish at the bow and these fish had wings and some of them flew up into the wind current and sailed up on deck. We all got to have a close up look at them.
We also had porpoises swimming at or by the bow. No matter where or which direction the ship went these porpoises stayed right there. We crossed the equator, and these flying fish and porpoises just got more plentiful.
As we came closer to the shore we could see where the edge of the island had been bombed and the trees were all torn to shreds. We all wanted to unload and get on that land. We unloaded, and then were carried in trucks to a camp. We were known as replacements.
During our stay here we pulled “stevedore detail,” which was unloading ships. I want to say here something about the heat and then say more later. As we were unloading these ships we worked ten minutes then rested one hour. At the end of ten minutes you could wring water out of any part of your clothing. We were told it was okay to remove our shirts and upper part of our underwear. Back at the camp we slept on cots and issued mosquito bars or nets that went completely around that cot that had a frame around the top. The net hung down far enough to tuck under our blanket.
We had two uses for that blanket; number one was to fold that mosquito net under, and number two was to use it as a soft something to sleep on.
I remember one day while on stevedore detail we were unloading one gallon cans of crushed pineapples. One of those gallon cans fell out and hit the deck. It bent the rim so it leaked so I put it aside. When my ten minutes was up, I tried to eat that whole gallon by myself. That’s why, to this day, I can’t seem to like pineapple any more.
At the lower end of that camp we dug a long trench in the ground to be used as a latrine. Back by the kitchen, on a large tripod affair hung a large water satchel (I’m guessing) about fifty gallons, I don’t remember whether it was treated with water purification pills or what here. The pills were there for us to treat our canteens but there was a container there holding Atabrine tablets. Anyway, the US had a shortage of quinine which was used to combat malaria, from the anopheles mosquito.
We had a free hand to carry these on our person, from then on in the South Pacific near the center of that camp was a low spot where the water from rains could run through.
I want to say here, they didn’t measure the rain per year in inches; they measured it in feet per year.
Some of the trees, mostly mahogany, had roots down under the trunks sticking down into the ground that reminded you of a large spider. A man could walk under them and touch no part of it, because of the rain. During our stay in this camp there was a break out of dysentery just about sundown time. That long trench, our latrine, was lined up on both sides. The G.I.’s were aiming at that trench, and some didn’t make it that far. I thought to myself I’ve overcome this mess. I went to bed and got to sleep, during the night it started raining very hard. Just about midnight the urge struck me and I fought my way out of that mosquito net in my shorts I ran down that alleyway between those tents going towards that trench the water ran through the alleyway – the water was about six or eight feet wide. I made a long leap for the other side. I don’t want to elaborate on this too much. But let’s just say when I landed I wasn’t Mr. Clean any more.
At midnight when it was raining hard, it was 120 degrees. In the day time it really got hot.
This time was about the time we were going to be transferred to the outfit to go into the action.
One day as we were doing our thing, one soldier had found an axe. He took the axe out into the woods. He found a tree stump then placed his foot and leg over the stump, then chopped his own leg off. A bunch of us saw when he was brought in. I think he started yelling for help.
Reassignment
After this I believe is when they began reassigning us to our outfits. I landed in the Alabama National Guards 31st Division, 167th Infantry Regiment, Company “B” second platoon, 2nd squad. This division was known as the Dixie division.
I haven’t mentioned the coconut trees or the natives yet. Where we were located, we had no place to eat out of the rain or sunshine. So someone in our outfit found some sort of way to communicate with one of the natives. We had a tent for the mess sergeant to cook in. Anyway the deal was made for these natives to make a bush arbor kind of like the ones they lived in, except a lot larger with no sides on it.
Next morning a bunch of these natives showed up to build the arbor. We had the ground marked off where we wanted it. These natives got their heads together and a lot of jabbering, the next thing we knew they all scattered out. Some went for posts, some went for poles, some went for boughs or long, leafy limbs to shed the water off of the top.
These natives could climb the trees something like a monkey would. They would wrap their arms and hands around the trunk of the tree and sort of walk straight up that tree; they would be to the top of that tree as fast as we would walk. Some would bring back long posts. Some brought back long poles for the roof, some brought back limbs or boughs for the roof. And some stayed there and dug holes for the posts. When they all came together again with all of this building material, (oh yes! They brought with them from their village a lot of hemp which they had shredded from long banana leaves. I don’t remember whether the hemp shreds were twisted or braided, but I kind of believe it was braided) they tied the posts, poles, limbs, or boughs together with that hemp. As I remember there were approximately twenty of them. In short order that arbor came together. We could see that it was going to take them until a short time after lunch to complete the arbor, so we all waited until they completed it, to eat lunch. When we ate lunch about 1:30 p.m., we invited them to eat with us under that arbor.
After lunch that fellow that made the deal with them told the natives that we were going to give them something that would feed their whole village for a feast. The fellow, a G.I., took a couple of natives and went around to the mess sergeant and he dug out a five gallon sealed bucket of macaroni, and then presented it to the natives. The fellow that made the deal with them explained to them about how to prepare the macaroni for eating. This one native seemed to be the one that could communicate best with the G.I. The native explained to the soldier that they would bring their whole family and every one that lived in their village to the beach close to where we were camped the next night for a feast and celebration.
The next night just a little while before dusk, we looked and there was the whole village; women, children - I’m guessing about fifty or sixty in all. I think now they were dressed in their finest. Both the women and the men had rubbed some kind of root over their teeth that tarnished their teeth from light brown to nearly black depending on how old they were. We had found out that their average life span was thirty five years old.
A couple of these natives were carrying a big black pot kind of like the one that my mom used to wash and boil water in, to wash the clothes, before running water was available on the farm. And another couple was carrying those five gallons of macaroni that we had traded to them for procuring the building materials and constructing the arbor for us. They continued on down to the beach, they found a wide place on the beach. Some of them went out into the edge of the jungle then brought back large arm loads of wood that they used to make a kind of solid place to place that big black pot on. I don’t remember just how they did that.
We the G.I.’s followed them down to the beach, and then formed a large semicircle around them, to watch and protect them, with our rifles, from the enemy.
As close as I can remember some of those natives had some kind of smaller containers and a group of them went out of our semicircle perimeter then went to a small fresh water running stream and brought back those containers full of water. They started pouring that water into that black pot until it was a little over three quarters full of water.
While the native were gone after water, some of the others broke small sticks and large ones and packed them around that black pot. When they were finished pouring the water in the pot, they started the fire, when the water got fairly hot, they broke open those five gallons of macaroni and proceeded to pour that whole five gallons of macaroni into the black pot. This nearly filled the black pot to the brim. As soon as it got hotter a few of the women got up and started tasting the macaroni and started jabbering something and one of the men got up and found one of those water containers, then swam out in the ocean where the water was cleaner from the tide going back and forth then filled the container full of that salt water and brought it back to the women. She kept pouring it into the pot while another woman kept stirring the macaroni and some more tasted it. When the flavor got to what they wanted, they all sat down to wait for it to cook for a while.
We soldiers, sitting around the semicircle, knew in our own mind what was about to take place we started talking to one another and laughing amongst ourselves. About this time the macaroni started to swell up and we could see it beginning to rise in that pot. The natives had never seen macaroni before.
That macaroni kept swelling and rising up in that pot. The natives looked over and noticed it just as it started running over the sides. Right about this time, pandemonium effect among the natives took place. They didn’t want to lose one particle of that macaroni; they all got up at the same time and formed a circle around that black pot. I heard and watched everything that went on, but I couldn’t understand one word of what they were saying, but if it was possible to interpret it, and write it into words, many books could have been written.
Now these natives were in each other’s way and were stumbling over one another and the stuff that was lying on the ground over there, trying to save every bite.
We soldiers were out away from them, laughing our heads off, and down rolling on the ground, some were laughing and beating one another on the back. We were approximately seventy-five yards away.
That macaroni was running over the rim of that black pot all the way around. They were trying to catch all of it in the containers that they were going to eat out of. They were stumbling and spilling it on one another.
I am now trying to write about this and I am laughing so much I am making a mess out of this writing. The night finally ended and the natives went home. I just don’t remember how they took the balance of the macaroni home.
You have to remember that this happened more than sixty years ago, and I can remember most of the highlights that you couldn’t forget if your life depended on it.
The next morning a couple of squads of us went out on patrol, they, the 2nd platoon 2nd squad appointed me first scout of the patrol. We went out through that village where the natives lived to find out if they got home okay the night before. When we approached the village I recognized some of them from the night before and their dress was different. That is why I believe now, that they were dressed in their finest the night before. We could recognize some of them and remember some of the incidents that happened to them. We all had another laugh.
As you know, you don’t laugh at other people, you laugh with them. These natives got to laughing with us and I don’t believe they ever figured out why the laughing occurred, I surely hope not. At this time I think I was only nineteen years old, and green as new fertilized grass. I was scared as a young jack rabbit running down the road in front of a vehicle going forty-five miles per hour.
We all had been issued machetes, to clear the way to make a trail through the jungle where no one had passed before. As we moved out, we would chop with those machetes for a while, then all stop to listen and take a break, while we were on break we had a “get away” man at the rear end of the patrol. His job was to keep watch to our rear, in case we had been fired on or penned down. He would immediately backtrack our trail at double time going back to our head quarters for help. (His job was also to yell “down” if he spotted the enemy).
We would listen to find out if the enemies’ voices or anything else could be heard. The patrol made it back to camp that day without incident, I believe today, that patrol was for us replacements to get our feet wet, so to speak, and get used to the outfit we had been assigned to.
I haven’t mentioned this before but all those native men with some age on them, carried bolo knives on their person, this bolo knife was their most treasured possession. It was sharp enough to shave with and it glistened bright enough to use as a mirror. In fact, it is what they used to chop those trees down, get the poles and limbs for making our arbor. That bolo knife looked wicked enough to us that we all left them alone and gave them plenty of space. Those natives realized that we were there to clear out those Japs that had been giving them trouble for a long time.
We stayed in the camp for a few days, while other patrols went out in different directions. While they were doing that, the rest of us took turns pulling stevedore detail and resting. We had those cots to sleep in and those mosquito nets to protect us from the mosquitoes. We all talked about the size and sound of those mosquitoes. The saying got around, that those mosquitoes were big enough and fast enough to form squadrons, then peel off and dive bomb one at a time. The sound was like a buzzzzzzzz…and just before they got to one of those mosquito nets, they would fold back their wings and sail through that net, unfold their wings and come to a screeching halt, just in time to get a hold of our dog tags, check it for blood type. If it was the wrong type, they would go out the same way as they came in, with that buzzzzzzzzz, then try for another until they came up with the one that was compatible to their taste and type.
We stayed here a few days longer then the higher echelon, so to speak, made a decision to move us out to build a radar early warning system down at Cape Sansapore. I don’t remember now how we got down there but we made it down there. We dug in, in the sand. I think our pill box or fox hole was a six-man, deeper than usual hole in the ground. We filled sand bags and placed them in front then kind of circled them around both ends. We stacked them up approximately two feet high and about three feet thick. We left a shelf at sand level so we could place our machine guns on the shelf and sides. We also left small openings in the sand bag for machine guns and rifles to fire through. We completely covered the whole thing with tarps to shed the water completely out of the whole thing.
We installed or placed two fifty caliber machine guns in all of the pill boxes around that whole perimeter except two. There were two thirty caliber machine guns in those. When we had this completed, some of us stayed in the pill box and guarded while the others made about one hundred and fifty yard clearing around the whole perimeter. For a field of fire we took turns doing this because of the heat.
When we were completely through with this, they started bringing the radar and equipment in and assembled it. A short time later they had it in operation. They had dug down and sort of buried the diesel generators and the major parts of mechanism, then stacked plenty of sand bags around the whole thing and their sleeping quarters also.
After a night or so, we couldn’t see a thing out there. We had telephones in operation in each of those pill boxes. The officer in charge, made some sort of deal with the radar officer, to install some bright lights up in some trees out in front of our pillboxes with reflectors on them to shine out in our field of fire clearing. The electric wires were connected to the radar generators.
We had someone on guard in each of those pillboxes twenty-four hours a day. A few of us at a time went over to the beach and went swimming every day. The sun was very hot and our faces, arms and whole body got sunburned and sort of scorched. I believe this was approximately three degrees off of the equator and it was actually hotter here than on the equator. We peeled off then burned again and again. My nose, face, back and arms became very sore. It never got well from the stevedore details before we moved down to the radar outpost.
We watched and stood guard around this outpost, and exercised every day. Then one night the enemy snuck in to the edge of our clearing and was hiding behind those trees at the perimeter. They started shooting at those bright lights. They couldn’t see where we were (because of the bright lights).
We opened up with those fifty caliber machine guns, they were criss-crossing one another, rifle fire and thirty caliber machine guns. The firing lasted about two hours. All of a sudden they quit shooting. We also quit shooting; about thirty minutes later some of us walked out there and took a good look around.
Those Japs, some of them were lying behind those trees. Those fifty caliber slugs went through those trees into their heads and out their buttocks area. There was quite a slaughter. No more shooting took place the rest of the night.
They only managed to shoot out one light, and it didn’t affect our visibility very much. None of us received a scratch. The next morning, we walked out there and they had come back in a removed all of them. That day we watched and rested. But the following day, we were sent out on patrol. You guessed it. I was the one to be first scout. We were to use their trail, the one they carried their dead and wounded out on to try to find out where their camp was located.
We strung out down that trail one on one side then one on the other side. Every two hours we fell out still scattered out to rest. We had a “get away” man in the rear.
Along fairly late in the evening, the “get away” man yelled ‘down’ and we all melted away in the brush on the side we were walking on, just as the shot rang out immediately we located and destroyed the enemy.
We went on then came to a high hill. We climbed that hill; when we got on top we stopped and ate our rations. The officer in charge had us form a large circle then put our poncho down so we could sleep on it. Our feet were lower than our heads. I want you to remember this because I think this might just be where I got injected with the anopheles mosquitoes.
We kept sliding down that hill on that slick poncho and the mosquitoes like to have eaten us alive. Here was one of the most miserable nights I ever had. The next morning we moved on across that hill and came to a place where we could see their camp down by a stream by the beach. If you remember our mission was just to locate where they were. And there was a bunch of them.
When the officer found some landmarks where their camp could be located by, he made his notes and we returned to our outpost. I just cannot remember, the time we got back but it was quite a bit faster than we came. When we got back they got word to the headquarters to Colonel Mendenhall, I think his name was, (I remember this about him because I was told his pin-up gal was Marjorie Maine and for most of us G.I.’s, it was Betty Gable). Our captain co, commander I don’t remember his name and some more officers were invited to go on a reconnaissance flight in a B-25. I guess so they could map out and bomb them. Our company commander never did come back.
We kept on guard at the outpost and kept on exercising, push-ups, swimming etc. One day someone spotted a speck that was moving a long way down the beach. He notified the rest of us and we took cover, because it was sort of to our rear.
Someone put the spot in the center of a pair of binoculars and he reported to us that it was a human being. We kept watch on it until it got up close to us. Before he got up to us, we had determined that he was a soldier. When he got there you could see that he was about past going and nearly starved. First thing, we got him something to eat and drink. When he started feeling better he began to telling us what had happened. This man was a commissioned officer I do not remember his rank, but he was one of the ones that got invited to go on that reconnaissance mission in that B-25.
They were flying over or by that camp that we had located on our patrol, to locate. They, the Japs, had shot down that B-25; the plane had crashed in the jungle. This man was as it happened, some place in the tail section. A gun turret or something. Anyway, his position helped him come through this with fewer injuries than the rest. When he got clear he took a quick look around and found out that all the rest of the occupants of that B-25 were dead. He had made a quick departure to keep from being captured.
He got as far away as he could, as fast as he could. He said he climbed up that hill and went over the top. He had no rations or anything else for self protection. With his injuries he was limited to do whatever he was physically able to do. He couldn’t travel fast or far at a time. He found a stream and stayed with it, he ate whatever he could find going down that stream. (I can imagine in my own mind, how he spent the nights from my experience on that patrol). He said he knew if he followed that stream that he would eventually come out at the ocean. (Note: They crashed on the opposite side of the island than where we were) When he eventually came out at the ocean, he had already made up his mind as to what direction to turn (I guess from the stars and the Southern Cross). You cannot see the big dipper down there; it’s the Southern Cross you can see.
I think we were moved by LST’s back up the island to where we first landed. May have been the camp where we were when we came in as replacements. We didn’t know whether we were there to rest or what.
We began pulling stevedore detail again, only this time it seemed to us that we were loading ships instead of unloading them. We worked at this for a few weeks. I will say here a little more about the natives. As you know, in the states the G.I.’s sent out our laundry to have the cleaning done or have someone we knew do it for us, over here in New Guinea; we would not let them touch us or our clothes. After a while we got the feeling that something was about to happen.
The best friend I ever had came into this outfit at the same time I did. We were both from California. I think he was about a year younger. When we were off duty we were together kind of like Siamese twins. Most of this outfit was natives from Alabama and literacy was almost non-existent. The friend’s name was Everett L. Farquhar. We nicknamed him “Zeke”. I can remember his family’s address living in California after all these years; 9844 Malison Ave, South Gate California.
We, Zeke and I, wrote letters home for a lot of those Alabama soldiers as they dictated to us what to write. We also read letters to them that came to them from their families and friends. I don’t know whether it was from where we came from, or our intelligence or what but they made us first scouts as soon as we were attached to their outfit. They shunned us like we were carrying the bubonic plague. It wasn’t long until our new captain was doing the same thing. If there was a dangerous mission or patrol that came up, one of us as first scouts lead out first for that patrol.
We caught the less liked details. I’m not griping about this now because of the heavier responsibility, because it just made us better soldiers. What I’m saying is, I don’t understand why they picked the youngest and least experienced soldiers to do the most complex jobs. About this time our outgoing mail got censored, we could not say where we were, what we were doing, or where we were going or anything that would give the enemy any information even if they sank a ship or shot down aircraft with mail on them that they could gain information from.
We were about to make an invasion. We didn’t know it then, but I or we learned later. General McArthur and troops were chased out of the Philippine Islands, Corregidor, forced march, starvation diets and a lot of other incident that happened.
General MacArthur’s most famous statement:
“I shall return.”
Well, we were the first outfit to start returning. 31st division, 167th infantry regiment. We were instructed by our company commander of “Baker Company” to leave any or everything behind that would identify us in any way, to leave it in our duffle bag, the duffel bag was to be brought later by another vessel, after we made the invasion and everything was secure. I want to say here that I do not – I say again; I do not remember whether this incident happened on this invasion of Moratai Island or our next invasion of Mindanao Island.
We were loaded into LCIs (landing craft infantry). Small ship with a large gang plank affair that let down as soon as the craft or ship ran up on the beach, we soldiers ran down that gang plank at double time. We ran through the shallow water as it happened to be, and then up on the sand and into the woods. As it happened we met no opposition at this time or place (the shore).
As the soldiers all left this LCI, the weight of the soldiers as they went off caused this vessel to rise just enough for them to throw the propeller in reverse and get out on the high seas for a fast escape. I want to make this statement. We were scared, scared, scared and we were in a vulnerable situation, but I want you also to know, that the crew and operators of that LCI were just as vulnerable as we were and maybe more so. We had half a chance to dig in on land, but those sailors, if they dug in, the sides would surely as I am writing this, would cave in on them.
We pushed on in. This island was, as I can recall, approximately twenty-one miles to the Halmahera Island, which was much larger. This island was Moratai Island and located about three degrees north of the equator, and was H-O-T. We pushed on inland until we came to a village affair, where the Japs had set up a temporary camp. They had seen us coming, but had all left the area. We looked all around the area. I found a walking stick, that someone had carved out of a piece of mahogany, at the top was a carved out fairly small dog head. The head had two diamond like eyes on it. I took the walking stick as a souvenir. We left the area and soon met up with the enemy. We had a small arms confrontation for about an hour then we left there. As we were walking along this double tracked trail, we came upon a dead Jap that was lying on the ground right beside a one man foxhole; the foxhole was fairly deep but there was no evidence of any kind that the dirt was removed or scattered out. The hole was exactly between those tracks on the trail.
We went on and later in the day, the lieutenants and the company commander had a short confab. The first lieutenant in our platoon came back to our platoon where we were scattered out. I remember that a couple of G.I.’s and I were sitting on some logs I had leaned the dog stick souvenir over on my right against the log and I was sitting on that log with my MI rifle between my legs holding it with both hands.
The lieutenant was out in front of us giving us orders as to how we were going to form a large circle and we were all going to dig in for the night.
The first knee mortar hit my MI rifle direct and it vanished. I immediately went down on my hands and knees (when I came to my senses) and I started crawling and scrambling fast towards a tree. While I was scrambling toward that tree a second knee mortar hit between my legs.
The pressure from that mortar went down, up, and out. My legs took fragments from that. The front of me took fragments from the one that hit my MI rifle, plus the ones that hit some of the soldiers direct and meant immediate death. I do not know how many explosions took place. But if it wasn’t for that MI rifle, I would be no more.
When I got to that tree our red headed medic was working on some of the wounded. I started helping him. I was too scared to do anything else. When we got through, he said that I was next. I said help someone else; I didn’t get hit. I noticed the blood on front of me but I thought it was from someone else. He said, “What’s all that blood on the ground from?” I pulled up my pant legs and my boots were full of blood and running over. The medic gave me a shot of morphine then started to bandage up the wounds. By this time I was getting so weak I had to have help to get to the ambulance that finally made it up there. A bunch of us that were wounded piled into that ambulance, and then started back to that field hospital (a tent) that wasn’t completely set up yet. When we were going back, we met some more going up to where the action took place. When we settled down we found out our platoon was all wounded or dead, except two. I found out later that a couple of Japs were up in that same tree where we were working on the wounded G.I.’s (and my self). Zeke told me later, that he was one of the two that didn’t get wounded.
They didn’t have time to handle all this and they left a lot of the smaller fragments in us. I believe I had twenty-eight wounds from my eyes to my lower legs. I had some of these fragments removed later at sick calls over in the islands that were bothering me; when I bent my legs and arms, they pulled tight against my skin. My wife and I have removed some that have worked out. We have saved some and lost some. I believe last year some came out, in my upper right leg, we removed some of it, but gave up on the rest so I had a doctor remove it, over in the Boise Hospital in the specialty clinic. I have something in my left leg calf part that is major. I also have some in my right arm that is visible.
WHILE IN HOSPITAL ON THE BEACH
Someone was out a ways on a big caterpillar tractor leveling the ground for an air strip, I think. All of a sudden three 90 mm rounds were fired for an air raid signal. I seem to think it was dark because the tracers could be seen like a fourth of July firework. Any way it seems that that tractor had its lights on, and he didn’t hear the air raid signal. But a little farther on he had seen the fireworks, then stopped. When daylight came, someone looked out there where the tractor was and saw a body. They determined that this guy knew all the lights went out but the tractors, so this G.I. ran out there to warm him and just as he got there the operator put the tractor in reverse and backed over the G.I. I think this air raid was the start of “Piss Call Charlie.”
Every morning just at day break this Jap airplane just popped up over the mountain or high hill. Radar didn’t pick it up until it was right on them. Shooting started. It looked like the bullets were crossing right at that airplane but never got a hit.
Those Jap zeros sounded like an old Maytag washing machine that had a gasoline engine running it.
Every morning here came “Piss Call Charlie,” we knew that we had the only airstrip around, and they couldn’t figure this out, so we sent out reconnaissance planes to try and locate the source, but to no avail.
Next morning, here comes “Piss Call Charlie.” We sent out reconnaissance planes, and they took photographs of everything around.
This went on for several days (82) then one day one of these pilots put down all his photographs from the day before on this big table. Then he displayed all his photographs for this day down beside the ones the day before. He got to comparing them with one another. He discovered or noticed; one of the small islands had turned around slightly from the day before. They got their heads together and sent bombers out there and bombed this island. That was the end of “Piss Call Charley.”
The Japs had slipped a camouflaged aircraft carrier out there and anchored it there. The wind had changed slightly and that carrier changed also by the wind. Along about here I think I was sent back to my outfit and as time went by we had a pay day. We all lined up out at the captain’s quarters to get our pay when my name was called out. I sounded off with my army serial number. The captain asked me for my pay book. I told him it was in my duffel bag and it wasn’t here yet.
As I said before, I do not remember whether this was this island, or the next one. He said you were to keep it with you at all times. I told him that you told us before we left to put any and everything that would identify us in any way in that duffel bag.
He stood up and had me stand at attention, then proceeded to break me of my rank and forfeit my pay until my duffel bag came and I had possession of it again. When my best buddy Zeke came up, the same thing happened to him. Now I want to say Zeke and I were still first scouts and buck privates. I don’t know this for sure, but I believe first scouts were supposed to automatically be corporals, but I never was a corporal, and didn’t get it because they made me an outcast of the company.
We secured the whole island of Moratai. One night a large boat was coming over to Moratai. The radar picked them up and sent word to us troops that they were coming. We set up for them. When they got closer, we discovered there were three boats (from Halmahera Island).
When they got close to shore, we opened up on them. When it was all over, there wasn’t even an oil slick left. Halmahera Island had a troop Garrison of thirty-seven odd thousand. We had a mission to let nothing enter that island, also to not let anything leave it. As you know, with no farming going on, and no way to get food to over 30,000, it doesn’t take long to destroy the whole garrison without firing a shot. We guarded the outposts all around, and the air force saw to it that nothing bothered us and nothing entered the Halmahera Island.
In the day time we ate coconuts and stood guard, in the night we stood guard and fought mosquitoes. This island, as I can remember, was approximately 27 miles long; the width was something like three to five miles. I don’t remember how long we stayed there. I don’t remember when we left, I don’t remember what we left in, I don’t remember making our next landing invasion. The first thing I can remember is all those vessels that kept coming out of the water from LST’s, CT’s, and other crafts that I can’t remember now. Tanks, halftracks, trucks, jeeps, six wheelers, and ducks. This vessel was a motorized tank that had wheels with tires on it that started rolling when it touched bottom or land then pulled itself out and drove like a truck on land. It also had a propeller on the rear end that pushed it along in the water. It looked like a boat while it was in the water.
This island was Mindanao, the southern part. While I am writing this article I have begun to realize that my injuries that I received in Moratai Island were the start of my mind disorder, from the explosions and afflictions of all the injuries. I laugh sometimes; I cry sometimes, I think sometimes of the afflictions. I have nightmares; I jump at any kind of strange and close noise. This makes me so nervous I have to put down the pin and take a day or so break.
We set up perimeters and guard areas of importance to the U.S. military. We had orders to shoot anything that moved at night. One night it was raining and this one guy that was on guard heard something out in the woods move. He was quiet to wake up his partner that was in his pill box then they notified all the pill boxes by telephone, with the wires that went all along the perimeter, pill box to pill box. Then everyone was watching and listening.
Finally one of the guys could see movement out there. He opened up at the movement, and then the whole perimeter started firing. We had a one sided war for about one half hour. Then we decided we were not receiving return fire, but we all stayed up and watched the rest of the night. Finally, when daylight came, we looked out there and saw a large caribou (water buffalo); the Filipinos pronounced it “caribow.”
This big animal reminded us of a large hunk of ground beef, from all that ammunition that hit the target. What I am saying here is we were a bunch of trigger happy soldiers trying our best to save our own lives. The Japs finally realized that they were outnumbered, and also outgunned. So as we started up this trail, the enemy started shooting us, one at a time. They strung out along this trail. Some in bushes, some in trees, and hid out in all different kinds of things. They decided that in order to get the two garrisons down to more equal they would shoot the G.I.’s one at a time to wound them only. They knew we would carry our wounded back to safe quarters and medication. They knew it would take a large squad of men to carry them back through deep mud and also to guard the ones carrying the G.I. on the litter (they took turns carrying and guarding). They kept picking us off one at a time. We had men strung out all down this back trail, carrying and guarding.
Some of the G.I.’s that got killed instead of being wounded we buried in shallow graves, then marked where they were buried, so we could come back for them later. We finally got tired of this, then dug in. We waited them out in places. As you have learned already in this autobiography we, the G.I.’s were ordered and trained to shoot any and all things that moved outside of our pill boxes. At night anyway during this particular night, all kinds of shooting took place. It seems as though our mess sergeant must have thought he was indestructible, because he climbed out of his pill box and went behind our line to his or the kitchen for something he forgot or something to eat. Anyway come morning we found him dead.
It seems to me but I’m not, sure, our Co. Commander got killed in this episode also. It might have happened later. When we parked it seems to me that these hideout Japs saw a change in our tactics and they went to the hills. I don’t know how this group of Japs was located. But someone had located them and mapped out their approximate location. I think this was the day my friend Crites was appointed scout of his patrol.
Their mission was to go up this hill and locate and or destroy the enemy on that particular hill. My friend located the enemy and was very close to them in the jungle. He pulled the pin out of a grenade. He threw the grenade at the enemy, but he failed to throw the grenade high enough to give the fuse the delayed time required before it exploded. When it landed, the enemy picked it up and tossed it back at Crites; the grenade exploded and my friend Crites immediately died.
During this transaction the platoon leader in some way laid down or dropped his walkie-talkie radio. Then they retreated back to headquarters. Next day I was first scout to go up that same hill to retrieve that walkie-talkie radio.
We, the U.S., could not afford to let the enemy listen in on our walkie-talkie radios. We got very close to the enemy again. I could see them and I could see the walkie-talkie radio also.
My platoon leader was at my rear, my squad sergeant was at my left, and the 2nd scout was to my right. His name was Jack West. He got shot through both sides of his jaws and mouth. The sergeant got shot in his shoulder. The 1st lieutenant told me to get the walkie-talkie radio. But I could see the booby trap. I told the lieutenant about the booby trap.
The only thing I can think of, as to why they didn’t shoot me, was they must have thought I was dead or they must have thought we would all come up to investigate the booby-trap and they would set it off and kill us all. I was issued a Tommy Gun back in Moratai Island and after my MI Rifle was blown up. I had no training with the Tommy Gun or how to clean it up or anything else.
When I located the enemy here I fired one shot and the Tommy Gun jammed on me. There I was, lying out there trying to hide myself behind a few twigs, as still as a mouse. My platoon leader made the decision to ask for “Long Tom” artillery which was located a few miles behind us.
They immediately sent a plane in the air, to direct artillery from the air. We on the ground set off phosphorus grenades in the jungle for smoke, so the pilot could see where we were located. The pilot directed the artillery so it would zero in on the enemy, from the rear of the enemy. He had the artillery to keep creeping up on the enemy, when he had the enemy zeroed in, they blew them to bits.
Some of these shells landed short of their target. And this is when I was hit by concussion. I remember flying up in the air. But I don’t remember coming back down. At this time, I got my knees and elbows burned in the phosphorus. I do not remember anything for the next thirty days, except there was two men by my cot one day, one of them kind of shook me and said,
“Soldier, what makes you so restless.” I said,
“I don’t know.” I don’t remember how I ate. I don’t remember how I went to the bath room. I don’t remember when I went back to duty. I don’t remember how I got back to the outfit. I didn’t know what I was in that hospital for or how I got there. I don’t think that doctor in that field hospital knew one thing about why I was in that hospital then.
We moved on up a few miles then some of us got picked off one at a time. We were on the Kibawe-Talomo trail, I think. Then we got tired of them picking us off one at a time, and our company started making Banzi attacks on the Japs at miscellaneous places. We had started up this high hill and then my nerves broke up. I was 1st scout on this trail until I broke down. There was a stretch of time I don’t remember anything.
I want to back track here a little to tell of an incident a few weeks back in the story. The states sent over a bunch of cold storage eggs. We had been eating “K” and I think “C” rations for some time. Anyway, they sent these egg cases up on some caribou backs, one case on each side of a caribou. There was a bunch of caribous in the lineup. Filipinos were the caribous’ handlers and a bunch of G.I.’s were guarding the flanks of them. Mud was about six inches deep. When they got up to us they divided these eggs evenly between all the soldiers.
Remember these are cold storage eggs and the temperature is approximately 110 to 125 degrees. They were brought up to us on caribou backs that had the eggs all shook up. We had nothing to prepare them in but our steel helmet. This helmet was used for everything from soup to nuts in the pill box at night. By the way we had plenty of experience in keeping that helmet clean. Washing self, face, shaving, hands, etc. and the like.
They had each one of us to come up to the H.Q. area and take off our steel helmet. As we passed by they put three dozen eggs in each helmet. Now cold storage eggs, shook up on these animals’ backs for two to three days in the mud and heat, they have to be eaten pronto. Here I’m speaking for myself. I didn’t have time to gaze around at the others. I proceeded to build me a fire. I made a stable place for that steel helmet with rocks. Then I thought it best to scramble those eggs. We had our choice, I started cracking eggs and stirring; I don’t know if you can imagine how much volume three dozen eggs are in a steel helmet or not, but it’s quite a sizeable meal. I got them just about how I like them. Then I started eating, they tasted a lot better than the “K” rations that we had been eating. Boy they was good. Until they started coming up. They came up with a lot of extra stuff I won’t mention here. But it took a considerable amount of time to get straightened out again. Along about here we were sent back down to the beach, to take a thirty day rest.
We somehow had captured a Jap, but we had no stockade or any kind of detention area for keeping this prisoner, so we put him on a cot and gave him a mosquito bar just like ours and he slept in the tent with us. We posted a guard by him twenty-four hours a day. When we received him, his clothes were dirty and ragged, so we issued him some of our military fatigues. When they got soiled we sent them out and had the Filipinas wash and do them up for him. You notice the end letter in this Filipina…this letter indicates the person is female, if it ends with and “o” it means male, in the vesican dialect.
We allowed these women to do our laundry also, for the first time since we came overseas. We let this Jap go around the area and do a lot of things for us. But the guard was with him. Finally some of us went and helped him on these details. Oh yes! I forgot we issued him mess gear, a canteen, belt and everything that we had except a weapon. He got in line with the G.I.’s and ate with us just like we did. Finally we let him go around on his own; we also removed the guard. He volunteered to do things that needed to be done. When night came at first us G.I.’s kind of slept at first with one eye open.
Finally it got to where we could communicate with him fairly well. And he broke down one day and told us some things. He said when he first came to us, he kept wanting to kill a bunch of G.I.’s, then escape back to his side and tell how bad we treated him etc. But as time went on, we treated him so good he didn’t want to go back to his side. So he made himself have a change of heart and stayed. We all clapped our hands and stood up for him. From then on while he was with us, he was one of us.
I think it was along about this time the Filipino men ran up the coconut trees. Don’t think I’m crazy. I said ran up the coconut trees; they kept us supplied with green ones for water and dried ones for coconut meats. We had been on “K” rations so long, and no fresh meat of any kind, and the monkeys were so plentiful over there that we started killing them and eating them for fresh meat. One day I saw this monkey sitting out on this limb and I took good aim and shot. This monkey had a small monkey clinging to her somewhere. She stood up and gathered this small monkey in her hands then sat it down on the limb by itself before she fell. That was the end of eating monkeys for me. I guess they are not human, but that day she had enough brains and intelligence about her to want to save her baby.
Another time there was this big dog that got out amongst the monkeys. Then this one monkey ran out and jumped on the back of this big dog. He grabbed a hold of the loose skin on this dog’s back with three feet, and then he started beating this dog in the face with his right front free hand. The dog ran and ran; he couldn’t grab hold of the monkey any place. The last I saw of the dog and monkey was when they turned around a curve then went out of sight. But that dog was making quick steps and kicking up dust.
When we first landed on Mindanao Island, we hit them so hard they all scattered to the peaks of the hills for an advantage, in groups of from a dozen to maybe thirty. When we dug in we would go on patrol every day - we had to climb up these hills and destroy the enemy. These are too gory to talk about.
When we went back to the front line, we pushed on up this trail and came to a place where we could see this big river. We could see the enemy on the other side of the big river. The new company commander and his lieutenants had us dig in with, I think, six man pill boxes so we could protect ourselves out in the open. By the way I want to mention here that our new captain, turned out to be a cracker Jack Jim Dandy of a man and also a good leader. I don’t recall anyone that didn’t like him.
We stayed in this place for a few weeks as I remember. I have mentioned before in a few places, that we were trained to shoot at everything that moved at night. What we were staying here for, was for our captain and lieutenants to figure out what was the best way to attack and when to attack in crossing that river, with the least amount of casualties. They debated this all the time we were here. They didn’t want to die either.
So finally, they had settled on making the crossing at night. They decided to tell all the troops what they decided, so we could make plans for it ourselves because this was a complete about face from how we were trained. I’m speaking for myself. I didn’t know whether I would be first scout or not. We stayed here a couple weeks more, we all talked about it and finally decided they had made the correct decision. At least they couldn’t see most of us at night; we weren’t going to do much shooting because we might just be shooting at our own troops. The commanding officer set the date for the crossing. We went to work cleaning our weapons and equipment and going on patrol every day up in the hills.
To this day I don’t know what kind of a weapon I was carrying. I don’t remember much of anything, but I was like the rest of them; I was scared half to death. All the officers were just as scared as us. The time came to when we had one week until the crossing, then six days, five days, then four days, then three days. By this time we had all aged at least ten years, then on the second day before the crossing, we got word that the Japs had surrendered, and the war was over. This day was the happiest day for us since the war began.
On the next day after the surrender, the red headed medic, Zeke Farquhar and I got our heads together and we decided to try to get this company commander to let us go ahead of the other troops, back to the beach headquarters, because we knew we could make the trip about three times as fast as the massive group of troops. (We were anxious to get off of the front line).
Highlight
Along about here I had added up the number of days I had been on front line combat. It would be impossible to figure this out today. The figure was 329 days. I only remember this, but it would also be impossible for me to forget it.
Back to Story
We went to the co. commander and gave him our story. The co. commander gave this a considerable amount of thought. After a while he stated to us, that there was a bunch of Japs out there yet, that did not know the war was over yet, because of no communication, and also a bunch of die-hards that would take out their grudge on a small group such as this.
He stated that if we still wanted to make the trip alone, that we would have to take our weapons and plenty of ammunition for our own protection. He also stated that we could travel much faster than the Japs, and we might just be successful in outrunning the malnutrition and rundown condition of the enemy troops; but that we would have to keep our eyes open for any activity any place. (We had a medic with us).
He said if you guys make it that would make it easier and faster for the troops to move behind you. Do you still want to go? We all said yes. He said get your things together today; get plenty of rations, and water pills, and anything that you can think of that you might need. Go to bed early tonight, then leave early tomorrow morning.
We were up early and ready to go before daylight. The co commander was up also. He gave us a hand shake and a goodbye with tears in his eyes. We took off down that muddy trail at a fast walk when daylight came we were quite far down that trail. We usually took a break every two hours, but the rules got broken; we even ate our chocolate bar and rations on the move. We finally took a break; it seems now that it was around two o’clock in the afternoon.
During this time we had to cross a river by cable and a moving dock that we stood on and pulled ourselves across with. Two of us stood guard while the first one went across. Then two of us stood guard, one on each side of the river while the second one went across. Then two on the other side stood guard while the last one pulled himself across.
It seemed to us then, that it took almost an hour to do this. But it only took ten minutes or less, and then we vamoosed away from that crossing. We went on in to headquarters, where we had taken the thirty day rest from frontline combat before. When we got there it was way after dark and we were three exhausted hombres, with sore feet and legs.
Someone brought us something to eat and some person started asking us questions, but we were so tired and sleepy they gave up until the next morning. Next morning we told them the whole story, about where we were when we were about to cross that river going right into the enemy’s front dug-in line, at night. Right on to where we came into their camp.
We waited there and ate with them and slept there with them, until our outfit came in about three days later. By then we had rested up and healed up enough so we could get around fairly well. Our outfit stayed there until it was safe to move around freely.
SURRENDER OF THE JAPANESE ON MINDANAO ISLAND
(The following is a transcription of a document entitled the Dixie Doodle News, detailing the surrender of the Japanese forces on Mindanao Island.)
167th Infantry Regiment of the (?) was the Alabama National Guard
Dixie Doodle
Souvenir Edition
Mindanao 167th Infantry Regiment
JAP FORCES SURRENDER TO 167TH INFANTRY
In a formal surrender ceremony at Tamogan, near Dava on the afternoon of September 7th, Lt. Col. Leon L. Mathew of Birmingham, Alabama, commanding officer of the 31st division’s 167th infantry regiment, accepted the unconditional surrender of beaten remnants of the Japanese forces in southern Mindanao.
At the ceremony the American officers wore the bright red and white double shoulder patch of the Dixie Division on their khaki uniforms, facing them was the Japanese surrender delegates, headed by Major General Tomechika, chief of staff of the thirty-fifth army. It was a proud day for the men of 167th infantry, the climax of 18 months of service overseas, and the official ending of their hard month’s campaign in Mindanao.
Col. Mathews addressed Gen. Tomochika,
“Are you willing to accept and to comply with the unconditional surrender terms which have been offered to you, and to carry out any further orders which we may make in order to execute those terms? Are you willing to make such a statement in writing over your signature?”
General Tomochika answered in the affirmative and at the request of Col. Mathews, handed over his sword and pistol as a token of his willingness to surrender each of the other five Japanese officers, in turn, handed his weapons to the colonel.
Asked by the Japanese if their swords would be returned to them, Col. Mathews replied,
The decision as to whether your swords will ever be returned to you will be with General MacArthur alone.”
The official surrender document was signed by Major General Tomochika, commander of all Japanese forces in Mindanao and by Major Yoshihiro One, who represented Gen. Herada, commanding general of the 100th division.
The statement to which they affined their signature in English and with the Japanese seal reads:
I do hereby unconditionally surrender myself and all troops under my command to Lt. Col. Leon L. Mathews, 167th infantry, acting on behalf of Brig. Gen. Joseph C. Hutchison, commanding general of the 31st division. U.S. Army and I further agree to lend full assistance in all matters pertaining to the surrender and to issue such orders and directives as the American commander may direct.
After the two Japanese officers had signed the paper, Col Mathews added his signature of acceptance. During the surrender ceremony the colonel was firm in his insistence on full compliance with all the terms of an unconditional surrender, but did not refuse any reasonable request. The Japanese asked;
“When our men became prisoners will you permit them to be grouped according to the organization to which they belong?”
That request will be granted because I believe that such an agreement will assist us in handling your men, but it will be granted on one condition. You will instruct your noncommissioned officers that they will carry out all orders from the American commander and do nothing to influence their men in any way that will lend to any unpleasantness, Col. Mathews replied.
(Page 2) Dixie Doodle Saturday 8 September 1945
Surrender of Japanese to 167th infantry (Cont. from page one)
Continuing, Col. Mathews said, “I consider that you made our course easier. Now, are there any promises which I have made which have not been fulfilled by me?”
Major Takahashi stated that he had received a complaint from Japanese civilians that they had been robbed of their money and jewelry by Filipino Bogobos.
“I know that to be true,” Colonel Mathews said.
“It has happened on several occasions, but I want you to know that we regard those who committed the acts as outlaws. As such, our forces have already hunted some of them down – and will continue to hunt them down. It is not the purpose of the U.S. Army to pillage or destroy personal property. We will take away from you military equipment, but nothing else.”
The surrender document was signed after a week of discussions between a Japanese delegation headed by Major Takahashi and Col. Mathews. The surrender arrangements proceeded smoothly and without friction, with the Japanese (displaying) the extreme politeness of their race while trying to bargain for face-saving terms.
Major Takahashi expressed great pride in the past glories of the Japanese Army and asked that the surrender terms be such as to preserve the dignity accorded Japanese officers by Japanese military traditions. They stressed the value they attach to their swords as a symbol of rank and spared the humiliation of giving them up and of having their generals placed in a stockade behind barbed wire.
Col. Mathews reminded the Japanese delegates that they represented the remnants of a defeated army and that they were not in any position to bargain for terms. He made it clear that generals as well as privates…(?), but assured them that their rights as such under the Geneva Convention would be respected and that officers would be segregated form enlisted men.
The surrender ceremony took place, fittingly at company E headquarters near one end of the Kibawe-Talomo Trail, on which the 167thInfantry drew their most difficult assignment of the Pacific War. (Pushing twenty-five miles up the “Purple Heart” trail the infantrymen scattered and hunted down die-hard Japs entrenched in steep hillside positions. Driving the remnants of the enemy force high into the mountains between the highway and vehicles could not follow the foot soldiers through the deep mud and up the steep slopes, making it necessary for all supplies to be parachuted to “drop strips” and pack-carried to front lines through deep mud, intense heat and torrential rains. Carrying the wounded back was an even more grueling job.
The Dixie Division was already battle tested in the Wakde-Sarmi sector of New Guinea and the Invasion of Moratai before they landed at Perang 150 miles up the Sayre Highway to capture Cotobato, Kibawe, Maramag, Velincia, and Malaybalay, the capitol of Bukidnon Province.
The invasion of Moratai Island on September 15, 1944 placed the 31st division closer to the Philippines than any other U.S. forces until the invasion of Leyte one month later. Following the seizure of Moratai, a battalion combat team, formed form the second battalion and men of the 3rd battalion, and commanded by Col. Mathews, invaded Mapia Islands and destroyed the Japanese Garrison which manned telltale radar and radio stations on the islands.
The men of the 167th infantry who came overseas with the regiment, or who joined it in New Guinea or Moratai, hold the Southwest Pacific and Philippines liberation ribbons, the battle starts, the bronze service (invasion) arrowhead, and the combat infantryman badge.
Japanese language edition of the Dixie Doodle
Copies of the Japanese language edition of the Dixie Doodle, 1500 copies of which were dropped to Japanese troops to notify them that their supreme commander, General Yamashita, had surrendered, and copies of the souvenir edition can be obtained at the Public Relations office, opposite personnel section.
The Dixie Doodle is published by and for the men of the 167th Infantry Regiment. I & E officer, Captain Harry J. Woodman, P.R.O. officer, 1st Lt. Robin K. Shore.
Doodlemen PFC Vernon Mayo, T/5 Joseph Evans, and PFC John Harks. Censorship regulations have been rescinded and this issue can be mailed.
Back to Story
We stayed here on Mindanao and rested. Then we went back up that muddy trail with litters to carry the dead back out. It took from one to two squads to carry one out with guards. We dug up the shallow graves that we marked on the way up the trail.
If you can images what this was like in the mud. What we had to go through and put up with. You just multiply it ten times and you just might come up with an answer. But you know what: I would do it again. Because I know they would do it for me. I still have nightmares about this and I can still smell the smell. Sometimes it makes me sick at my stomach, then I cry the rest of the night. As of now, 2012, I am eighty-eight years old.
We had to spend the night going both ways. It seems now that we spent two nights coming back. We stayed here on Mindanao for a while cleaning up the island and resting. We moved on up to Mindoro Island, to clean up the island. I do not remember what we went in or how we got there. I do remember the natives were very poor, they always wanted chocolate bars and clothing, just to the point of what you would say they weren’t begging. I felt sorry for them.
We stayed here and worked on cleaning up this island, waiting to go home on the point system. We, “the U.S.,’ had a large dry dock, platform affair with a big tug boat, that pulled and pushed it around. We loaded this big platform, with big six wheel trucks, jeeps, ambulances, four and six wheel smaller trucks and all kinds of equipment (all of these pieces of equipment were brand new). The tug pulled this dry dock out in the ocean a mile or more from shore. Then us G.I.’s pushed them overboard. We did this day after day.
These new trucks and equipment were destroyed, while the motor pool G.I.’s were driving the old trucks, jeeps, (etc.) around on the island hauling stuff in, to be destroyed also.
The U.S. was using large caterpillar tractors to dig huge trenches in the ground. The old trucks were hauling new uniforms, shorts, t-shirts, socks, boots; all kinds of burnable gear out to those trenches and setting them on fire. Guards were out there, keeping the Filipino natives away from all of this. They were standing back with tears in their eyes. When the trenches were nearly full of ashes, we the U.S. would take those big caterpillar tractors with the dozer blades on front and push dirt back in those trenches, pack it down, and level them off.
I learned a few words of Tilog or Vecian dialect, from these Filipino natives while we were there. Where we were located, it wasn’t far from Manila. Of all the time I was in the Philippines, I never got to see a town. The natives lived in what I call shacks. You have to climb up stairs about eight feet off of the ground. They sleep on the woven mats some way, out of banana leaves. It is hot there the year round.
The outside of these shacks have banana leaves overlapping one another and the roof is similar except it goes down in a slanted direction, so the water will keep going down the grade until the water drips off the ends about one foot out from the upright walls (overhang).
Trip Home
Finally a troop ship came in for the group; I was in on the point system. We loaded up on that troop ship, then we sailed away towards the U.S.A. on that ship. There was night and day watch up on the bow. One day the watchman spotted a mine that had been planted there by the enemy. This guard notified the ship’s captain and the ship slowed down (I don’t know whether it was anchored to the bottom or hooked to a buoy or what) but the crew started shooting at it until a shell finally hit it and blew it up.
We played cards, did gymnastics, and tried to clean ourselves up so we would be presentable when we reached the U.S.A. One night I came down with a fever; the fever was so high I was out of my head ‘so to speak.’ Someone found me and they took me to the ship’s medical officer (I do not remember this – none of it) but they got my fever down somewhat. I stayed there until we docked in San Pedro or Wilmington.
They carried me off of that ship with Malaria. I was the first one that was unloaded. They had my fever under control enough that I remember them loading me in a G.I. ambulance. They transported me to a barracks like a military hospital, located in (then) Torrance California. Between 220th street and Carson. The town where the hospital was located is now a newly created town, by the name of Carson, California.
I stayed in this hospital until they released me. They scheduled me to go to Fort McArthur, California for discharge a few days later.
________________________________________________________________________________
Kenneth (Kenny) Eldridge was drafted into the U.S. Army in November of 1943. He took basic training in Camp Roberts, California before being shipped to New Guinea in the South Pacific Theater. He fought on several islands in the South Pacific during the war. Eldridge was a private 1st class when he was discharged. This is his story.
Kenneth (Kenny) Eldridge was honorably discharged in Fort MacArthur, California in February of 1946. After the war, he worked for Douglas Aircraft (later Boeing) for several years. He now lives in Burns with his wife.
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