Oral History Interview with Richard Reedle, October 11, 2003 Page: 1

                                
ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW
RICHARD REDLE
This is Cork Morris. Today is October 11, 2003, I am interviewing Mr. Richard Redle
and this interview is taking place in the Bush Gallery in Fredericksburg. Usually I like to
start with a little background, where you grew up, who your folks were, what they did for
a living.
MR. REDLE: Well, I was born in Columbus, Montana, the 10th of September, 1922.
I've lived there most of my life except when I was in the navy during World War II, from
January of '42 until November of '45. I went through the Naval Training Station in San
Diego. Part of my boot training was up in one of the buildings of the Balboa Park that
was built for the World's Fair previously. I can still remember being on the mess crew
there and cutting six hundred pies in six pieces for a meal. I went from there to the
destroyer base for nine weeks schooling on electra hydraulics which was used in
controlling the gun mount of a five-inch gun. I was shipped from there to Norfolk,
Virginia, and placed aboard the USS MC KEAN. That was an old four-stack destroyer
that had two forward boilers taken out to accommodate bunks for troops. This was, in
fact, transport that was equipped with four landing craft to land troops that came down
from Norfolk headed for the Panama Canal and off the coast of North Carolina. We
picked up the crew of a merchant ship that had been sunk by a German U-boat. The crew
was from India and the officers were English. They were difficult to communicate with
because they couldn't speak English but they were very grateful for our help. We left
them in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and proceeded through the Panama Canal and north to
San Diego. From San Diego we went to Pearl Harbor and picked up Marines and

practiced landing there for our landings in the Solomons at Midway Island. This was
shortly after the battle of Midway and there were bomb craters all over the island yet. As
I was saying I just found out now that our mission there was to land the marines that we
had picked up and leave them there at Midway to reinforce the troops and stuff that were
there in the case another Jap attack there. I didn't realize it at the time.
MR. MORRIS: Can I interrupt you for just a minute? What month is this?

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