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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?
The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Richard Reedle. Reedle joined the Navy in January 1942. He served as a boatswain’s mate on the USS McKean (APD-5). Reedle describes how his ship landed Marine Raiders throughout the Solomon Islands. He also discusses being critically hit by an aerial torpedo and being the last man off before it sank. Reedle then joined the crew of the USS Preston (DD-795) and became a captain of one of the five-inch guns. He describes providing gunnery support at Okinawa and screening carrier task groups. Reedle also discusses kamikaze attacks and going through a typhoon. He left the service in November 1945.
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