My name is Richard Meisheimer, and today is May
16, 2007.
I'm interviewing Mr. Zedick, Z-D-I-C, Colbert, C-O-L-B-E-R-T,
at my brother's home at Russellville, Arkansas.
His address is 1314 East L Street,
Russellville, Arkansas, 72801.
His phone number is 479-890-6257.
This interview, in support of the National
Endowment for the Pacific War,
Center for Pacific War Studies for the
preservation of historical information related
to World War II.
Zedek, I want to thank you for taking time to
do this interview today,
and I want to thank you for your service to our
country during World War II.
Let me ask you first.
A lot of times we find out down the way, we try
to get back in touch with a veteran, something
happened, he moved or something.
Is there someone that would be an alternative contact,
a daughter or a son or someone that would know
where you were in case you moved or something?
Yeah, my daughter. What's her name? Tammy.
Tammy. Tammy Pease. I'm sorry? Pease. P-E-A-S-E.
P-E-A-S-E. You happen to know her phone number
or address? No, I don't. She's living there in Atkins.
In Atkins, okay. She's in the phone directory?
No, I don't think she is. Okay, we'll find her. Okay,
Okay, good. Okay, fine. Let me ask you first.
What is your birth date?
April 5th, 1922.
1922, okay. And where were you born?
Well, I was born in Whitesboro, Oklahoma.
What town is that? Whitesboro.
Okay, yeah.
Yeah, that's fine. I'll look it up in the map
and get the right spelling.
Okay, and did you have brothers and sisters?
Yeah, but I had one sister. She lived in Phoenix.
She was younger than I was, but I lost contact
with her.
I mean, did you have brothers and sisters when
you were born?
How many were there in your family?
There was two, three, four, counting me.
Were any of your brothers in World War II? No.
You were the only one? Yeah.
Now, you grew up during the Depression.
How did the Depression affect you and your family?
Well, it didn't bother us too much.
I mean, we had plenty to eat, and we worked at
a little old farm.
Of course, we didn't have a whole lot of money,
but we had plenty to eat.
We'd do a lot of trading.
Wanted something at a little country store.
If you wanted something at the store, you'd put
chickens up on trading.
or eggs or whatever, right?
Yeah, or butter, whatever.
But it was really good.
I don't know, I'll just put it this way.
I didn't ever go hungry while I did the project.
Tell me about growing up.
How was it when you grew up?
Well, it was just kind of a normal life.
Where did you go to school?
I went to school at Munster. Munster?
Munster, M-U-N-S-T-E-R.
Oh, Munster, okay.
In Oklahoma.
I left there and I went to Goodland, Oklahoma.
Where did you go to high school?
I didn't go to high school.
You didn't go to high school.
What was your last grade? Eighth.
Eighth grade?
And what did you do when you finished going to school?
I went around to these little farms, the little
farms are still going, and I went around to
these little farms, I worked a day or two here
and a day or two there, a week there and a week
there, just for room and board.
I went to just a place to sleep and then I'd
move on to the next one.
At that point, that was about 1936, you were
about what, 13 or 14 years old? Yeah.
What was your father's occupation?
I really don't know.
He wasn't around.
Oh, he wasn't?
Oh, okay.
You were on your own then?
Yeah, I was on my own.
Well, after that, I went to work for another
guy down there at
Mercer named Willie Tom Guthrie, and I guess I
said a couple of years.
He worked in town at a store that drove school
bus, and he
He asked me one time if I wanted to work for him.
I come home with him from town, and at a
separate table, he asked me if I wanted to work for
He said, I'll just let you-farmer had about
twenty acres.
He said, you just run this farm, Mark, you
won't pay.
Of course, he was driving a school bus and
working in town, and he didn't have a town farm.
So I just took over our little farm and worked
there a couple of years.
And then I went to the C.C. camp in 1940.
Did what?
Went to the C.C. camp.
Oh, okay.
In 1940.
So, the Civilian Conservation Corps. Yeah.
Some people call it the Tree Army. Is that the same?
I guess. I don't know.
What all did you do with them?
Well, I worked on...
In there, in the safety camp, I worked on road construction,
on building construction,
fighting forest fires. I went on that forest
fire, I think it was in July,
And I was there on that plane for about three
weeks, and they brought us back from afar
for a rest.
And there were a staff sergeant there from the
Army, and he was looking for recruits.
Boy, them guys just come back off that far,
everybody wanted to join, join the Army.
But anyway, he took me and I think three other
guys, he just had a smaller van, and he took
four of us and took us up to Grand Junction,
Colorado, and spent all night there, and the
And the next day we went through the procedure
of getting into the Army, physical and everything
else that goes with it.
Two of us passed and two didn't, and I got
assigned to Fort West, Texas.
That sergeant told me, he says, I asked him
what all he had, you know, he run off a long
line there and he says, I've got a mechanized
Calvary there in Fort Blessed, Texas.
I said, that's what I want.
I got to Fort Blessed, Texas, I've never seen
so many horses in my life, and it was Calvary.
But I got in that, and I really enjoyed them horses.
I had a lot of fun with them, but after the war
broke out, then we got rid of the horses and
made infantrymen out of us.
Let me back up and ask you a few questions.
According to this, the date you were in was
August 20th of 1940, is that right? Yeah.
And you went to Fort Bliss? Yeah.
What kind of basic training did you take there?
Did you have any rifle training or anything
like that? No.
Not with the horses, but after the war broke
out, that's when they took the horses away
from us.
And that's whenever we started to have infantry.
Tell me about your working with the horses.
What all did you do with the horses?
We went over what they call problems.
We'd go out on the boonies, stay for a week,
two or three days, or a week.
They called it problems, going on with problems.
We'd camp out there.
We'd take the pup tents and everything there,
just like a bunch of boy scouts, go out camping.
We'd stay out there for two or three days or a
week, whatever they wanted to stay, you know.
Then we'd come back in.
Now, what kind of problem was this? What did
you do on the problem?
Oh, they, they, uh,
fired artillery at us the first one time or the other.
We'd run out and maneuver tanks and trucks and
stuff like that.
And what weapon did you carry at that point?
Uh, fifty caliber machine guns and
eighty-one millimeter mortars.
Oh, okay. Now, were these on a wagon you were
pulling or what were they on?
No, they were on horseback.
They weren't horseback. You put those on the horse?
Oh, okay.
Pack horses.
Oh, pack horses. Okay. Yeah.
They're pack horses, smart.
Pack horses or mules? Horses.
They get smart. After...
Fort Gris,
they had these sand dunes.
A lot of them things had those...
They had grease wood
But they also had a little old bush, I don't
know what it was, that had thorns on it.
Them horses could tell the ones that had thorns
on them, and they'd go around them, instead
of jumping over them, they'd go around them.
They'd pull you out of that saddle if they got you.
And you rode a horse, right? Yeah.
And you rode a horse before you got in the Army?
Not very much.
I rode one of them where I was working, but not
like the Army won't give a rattle.
Are they pretty good horses? Mm-Hmm.
They were. Boy, they had some good horse blood.
They had one guy, that's all he done, well, he
worked with the stable crew and he drove
the manure wagon.
We cleaned the stalls out in the morning, he'd
come by in his wagon and we'd pitch
our manure on his wagon.
He was the guy that they would send to El Reno,
Oklahoma, to the Remark Stables to pick
out the horses and boy he picked some good ones.
I mean he didn't get no dead heads or anything
like that, he got some of that, had some scurries
on him.
You ever get thrown off your horse?
Oh yeah, got pulled off, thrown off, kicked,
stepped on, that was an old horse in there
they called him Baron. He was a tall horse and
I don't think he could put an
ounce of fat on him and fed him 24 hours a day.
But boy I mean he was really lively
and smart and made a pack horse out of him one
day and he didn't like it.
This guy was leading him, he was in front of me
and I was watching
old barrel and we was going at a charge, I
figure I'm saying now, come to one of those
thorny patches of brush, he could have jumped
it, there wasn't no water in this table, he
could have jumped it, he went around it, he
pulled that guy out of that saddle, I mean
Then run off a little ways out there and sit
there and look at you.
To come in, the first thing you do is take the
saddles off, un-saddle them, tie them
up, picket line, un-saddle them, and groom them.
Then when you get through grilling them, you
take them up to the watering trough for a
drink, and then you put them in a stall.
This guy, that old bearer, he took him up for a
drink, and that horse deliberately stepped on
that guy's foot.
I mean he was standing there, and he couldn't
wait to get from that water trough, just die
in the first.
Got up there and he didn't even drink, but he
stuck on that guy's foot.
He's standing there close to him, he just put
his foot over him.
That was one horse I don't think anybody will
ever forget if it had anything to do with him.
Boy he was some horse.
But he was just honored that way, he wasn't
mean, he was just honored.
I had another one they called Chico, a little
mouse called him that.
He walked through the stables, a lot of times
they'd turn them loose, take them off the
picket line,
I mean just turn them loose and let them
meander around in the corral.
He'd follow behind you, he'd come up behind
you, catch you walking through there.
If you crossed that oak cart, he'd cut his nose
and push you over toward that oak cart.
He wanted to give you a handful of oaks.
Go over and give him a handful of oaks, he'd
leave you alone and go on until the next guy
comes through there and moochs them off.
Boy, there's something else on horses. horses.
Horses are smart.
Oh yeah, they get smart.
I had another one in there.
He belonged to Sergeant Gergel.
He was a pretty little thing.
They called him Fox.
He had a coal butt, had a bald face, and a tail
that dragged the ground, and little old
Bitty teeth.
And he wouldn't let nobody ride him but
Sergeant Gergel.
You could saddle him up.
He'd let you do that.
You'd rather not get on him.
You'd want to have a rodeo.
There ain't nobody riding but Sergeant Gergel,
and he'd take him out on a problem if he didn't
want to go.
He'd get out there about a mile and a half, two miles.
The man on that horse gets so lame he couldn't walk.
Limp, you know?
Really limp.
On there.
He'd get word up to the first sergeant.
Sergeant Gerber's horse is lame.
The first sergeant told him to go back into the stables.
He headed that horse back.
Man, that horse parked right up.
He didn't want to go.
He knew how to get out of it, huh?
He knew how to get out of it.
A sergeant group would come by there one time.
He was one of these guys that would get on the
bender once in a while.
And he'd get his booze and he'd go in his room
and he'd stay in that room until he got
too drinking.
He'd probably be in there maybe three or four
days or a week.
They'd go and learn Chuck on him once in a while.
He figured, you know, he was able to get up and
get around and he'd come out.
He was going to go and take Fox out for
exercise one time, we had horse exercise in the morning.
He was going to take him out to ride and he put
the saddle on him and he didn't tighten
that cinch tight enough.
He got in that stirrup and put his weight on it
by the side of it and turned over.
That horse never made a move.
If it had been anybody else, he'd have stomped
him to death.
But he never made a move, as long as there was
a certain girl.
Well, a horse will swell himself up, so you
can't tighten the girt, right?
I know it, but that was the deal.
The horse swelled itself up when he tightened it.
And then when he got through, he relaxed, it
was loose.
And when he stepped on it, it just turned over
on him.
Did you ride the same horse all the time?
Yeah, that was my horse.
What was his name?
I think I called him Virgil.
He was a little mouse colored horse.
Were all the horses about the same size or
different sizes?
Oh, they were different sizes.
And different colors? Uh-huh.
Oh yeah.
But they all had about the same get up and go.
He didn't pick any horses, wasn't kind of high spirited.
Some of them really had a little too much.
Once in a while they'd be going out to the yard
to crop,
and they'd give the word charge.
Well, that's when you'd just open them up.
You'd see pikes fly, eels in the air, guys
leading them pike horses coming off the saddle.
Boy, I'll tell you what, it was fun to be there.
But you didn't carry a rifle or any kind of
arm, right? No.
No, we didn't carry, we carried a, yeah, we
carried a sidearm.
Oh, a .45? Yeah.
We didn't carry no rifle.
We didn't have any rifles right then, except
maybe a dozen or so in the supply room that
guys used to walk and guard at the guard post.
But we didn't have no suppliers off us.
Now, when you go on these problems with these
machine guns and mortars, would you take them
off and fire them from time to time?
We took them off.
We never did fire them.
Didn't fire them.
Now, what caliber machine gun was it?
These were 30 caliber, water-cooled.
Water-cooled or air-cooled? Air-cooled.
What do you call them? Water coo or air coo?
Water coo. Water coo, okay.
Now you had to break it down to put on the
horse, right? Uh-huh.
Could one horse carry a whole machine gun?
Oh, yeah.
Okay. It didn't take several horses to carry a
machine gun?
No, just one horse carried a tripod on one side
and a receiver on the other side.
Okay. And how about the water? How did you
carry the water?
It had a little can about like that, about a
foot square, put on there, it was flat.
It was about that deep.
But it was enough to fill that machine gun up.
I guess it was made for that.
Yeah, it was.
And what size mortar was it?
Eighty-one millimeter.
Oh, yeah. But I never did stay in that mortar
platoon very long.
They put me in a .50 caliber platoon.
After they converted over to the infantry, we
got all kinds of rifles in, and then we
had to study the nomenclature of them, learn
how to
We'd pick them apart, put them together.
They may even want to just know them well
enough to put them together in the dark.
We had to.
They blindfolded us, mix the parts up, put
machine gun parts in every other thing you
know, and put them together.
Of course, some guys could do it, some guys couldn't.
Now back to the horse, when you were in this
horse, were you in a particular unit, a certain
cavalry unit? Uh-huh.
What was that?
7th Cavalry.
7th Cavalry, okay. Uh-huh.
And that was the regiment, 7th Cavalry Regiment? Yeah.
What company?
Uh, Special Weapons Troop.
Okay, Special Weapons.
And about how long were you with them?
I was with that, I took, well even after I was
in the infantry I was still in the same office.
What did you live in when you were there in
Fort Bliss?
We were in the barracks, they had big stucco barracks.
What part of Fort Bliss was that on?
I was over close to Bigg's Field, I imagine,
see Fort Bliss sit like this, and there was
a parade ground about a mile and a half or two
miles, well I say about a mile wide and
about three miles long, as flat as this table,
and Bigsfield was past that, the airport.
And these big stucco bags, I think they only
held eighty men, but I wouldn't know what
it looked like now.
I imagine all that parade ground and everything
is probably pulled out to probably field clear
out to Bigsfield. Yeah.
Well, there used to be big barracks, stucco
barracks out in front.
There used to be a polo ground. Right.
I've seen our troop commander out there playing
polo a lot of times.
About how many men were in your outfit there?
You mean in the 7th Cavalry?
Yes, uh-huh.
Well, there was F Troop, B Troop, that was
about 600.
What troop were you in?
Special Weapons.
Oh, yes.
You told me that.
I'm sorry.
Now, December 7, 1941, when Japan attacked
Pearl Harbor, where were you and how did you
hear about it?
I was a saddler for the troops, and I was in my
saddle shop, and I had the radio on.
next door was a blaster shop where they shot
the horses.
I was working on a saddle when the news came
out that Franklin Roosevelt declared war on Japan.
Well I went next door and told Earl Cox, he was
a horseshoe over there, well him and Kelly
and Bill Leidy, the three horseshoes over
there, I went over and told Earl, I said,
Roosevelt just declared war on Japan." He said,
huh? I said, Roosevelt just declared war on Japan.
I said, come over here and listen to it.
And all three Quachuan horses come over and
listen to the radio. Yeah, I was in a saddle shop.
It was on a Sunday afternoon, right?
And how did you think that would affect you?
I didn't have any idea.
Because I didn't like it.
Were you all expecting to go to war? Did you
all think there was going to be a war?
You didn't, okay.
I had no idea. I thought war was just as far
away then as it was last week.
Then did they put you all in any kind of a
special alert at that point or anything
Well, yeah Hey
Like tighten down on everything
What I mean the security and everything now
And they give us well we had a lot of lectures
and stuff, you know about saboteurs and
Watch what you're saying in these honky-tonks.
Just be a little bit more, just be on the alert.
You know, peace time is over and we're in war.
And they wanted everybody to kind of watch
their mouth and watch what they do.
So we got a lot of lectures on the war.
Then when did they train you over to the infantry?
Well, that was in December.
I think around February or March.
There wasn't any horses left.
We got rid of them.
And then that's whenever we started getting
infantry training.
Well, we started getting infantry gear.
Oh, okay.
Packs, rifles, and everything that goes with
the infantry, and we started getting it.
We had to turn in all of our satellite
equipment back down to the supply sergeant.
And everything concerning the horse had to go
to the supply room.
What they done with it then, I don't know.
What did they do with the horses, do you know?
No, I don't.
They got rid of him, I imagine.
Well, you could buy your horse if you wanted him.
I see.
I wanted mine, but I couldn't.
I didn't have no place to keep him.
Some of them guys did, they bought him.
They give the Army just what they gave for it.
They shipped him home.
Of course, it was on their own expense. Yeah.
Shipped him home.
They thought enough of them horses though that
if you bought him you had to have a place to
keep him.
I mean a good place, pasture and stuff like that.
You couldn't just buy him and put him out in a
corral somewhere and forget him.
Tell me about some of this, what all you did
when you got to infantry.
Did you go in the rifle range and shoot a rifle
then or anything?
Oh, yeah.
We were continually on that rifle range.
And then we were just taking hand-to-hand
combat practice, you know. Bayonet?
And what rifle did you have?
Well, we started out with the Springfield
and then
The O3 with a bolt-action, okay
But later on
We got the M1. Yeah before we went over
Overseas, okay
Now did you still live in the same place or did
you move to a different place? No, we still
live the same place
You mentioned tanks, did they give you tanks or something?
Not there.
We didn't have any tanks then.
I forgot who had the tanks.
I think the reconnaissance had a lot of the
tanks, and they had a lot of these headcrops.
I think the reconnaissance had a lot of the
tanks, and they had a lot of these headcrops.
But we didn't have any.
I know they made some of the cavalry units into
reconnaissance units.
I know they did some of them that way.
And that's where some of the tanks come from.
Yeah, but you didn't. You went to infantry. Yeah.
After I got over into the war, I tried to stay
away from the tanks.
I get scared. Yeah.
We were talking about it one time in South
Pacific and this tank, I forget, we was up
in front and they called this tank up, it was a
pillbox up there, and they called this
He got up there pretty close, close enough to
blast him out, but before he did, the spill Box
had a machine gun in it, and then his guys
hovered around that tank, and that Jaffa put
that machine gun up and hit that tank.
Those bullets ricocheted off that tank, man,
those guys, I mean, he got about three or
four of them.
He wounded them.
He didn't kill them, but he wounded them.
I was right there.
I didn't stay away from that thing.
It would get you hurt.
Did the tank get the pillbox there?
Oh, yeah.
It got the pillbox.
It blowed his eye off.
Let's go back to your training there.
training there. Did you have the infiltration
course where you had to crawl?
Did they shoot the live ammunition over?
Oh yeah.
How was that?
Well, I tell you, it was kind of scary in a
way, because if that guy wasn't watching
what he was doing, I'd have to tip that barrel
a little bit and get you. I crawled
After that, I was a little bit nervous about it.
I imagine everybody who crawled under that was.
But I learned later that that machine gun was fixed.
I mean, they had it set at a certain height and
they had it buckled down.
I mean where it couldn't go up or down.
Yeah, but you didn't know it at the time.
I didn't know it at the time.
I've just taken it deep,
just like it beats sitting up there on the
front lines,
you know, where you could, it's flexible.
I would have felt better crawling under that wire.
Of course, I guess everybody else did,
but they didn't want you to feel good.
They want you to feel like you're getting shot at.
Let's learn what it was like. Yeah.
Anything else from your training you recall? No.
Now, when you finished your training, then
where did you go?
Some more training.
Okay, where was that?
Man, we trained for three years over there at
Fort Bliss before we ever went left.
Oh, okay.
We turned there, and we left there, we went
to-I was going overseas-we went to Pittsburgh, California.
We stayed there for, I think it was about a
week or ten days.
It wasn't very long.
Then we went to San Francisco and got aboard the
troop ship, the USS Monterey.
I don't know whether it was or not, but they
said it was a
converted luxury liner.
But I'll tell you one thing, it could sure travel.
It helped.
There was 10,000 men on there, plus the ship's
company, which was 3,500.
That's 13,500 men. Right.
He did left San Francisco and was in Brisbane,
Australia, two weeks later.
I mean, he'd zigzag in the daytime and at
night, boy, he'd open my thing up and go straight.
We got into Brisbane, Australia, it was the
first week in July of 1943, and we got there
There were trucks there to pick us up, and they
took us out to Strathpine.
I never did see Strathpine as a town, because
it's just like, you know, this place here,
it's called Russellville, but you're not in the
park, and that's where that was.
He was in Strathpine, but we was way out in the country.
Of course, they already had the tents and
everything set up for us.
We moved in.
They let us have about three or four days off
after we got to camp to get straightened
out, get our tent straightened out, and who was
going to be where and all this and that.
We had a bunch of more training.
I'm able to tell you, night problems, day problems.
They wake you up at one, 2:00 in the morning.
Tell you to get up, 4:00.
I had a 15 or 20 mile problem, a walk.
I tell you, we stayed there for, ah, it must
have been about six months, and we went from there.
Well, while we was there, we took some more
training and we went to a place called Turbo
point in Australia. Took landing craft. I mean,
we went out on a boat, got on a ship
or LCI. They took us around, come back, put us
on a barge, that barge took us to
We done that for a while, and they trained us
so much that the men was getting tired
to train them, and whenever it come time for us
to go to combat, them guys was gung-ho.
They were ready.
They said, you ought to have heard some of the
remarks that they made.
You know, they trained us so much that they
were getting so tired of it that they wanted to
go to Combat.
I did. I mean, I was just fed up with training.
Let me go back and ask you a few questions.
When you left Fort Bliss to go to California,
how did you travel? Train.
How was that train trip?
Atencio How was that train trip?
Atencio It was good.
Cooper Did they feed you on the train?
Atencio Oh, yeah.
I forget how many days it took us.
It was a troop train.
And they fed us on there.
They had a kitchen car.
Of course, you walked through, you know. 11
Slap it on your plate. 12
Of course, you had another place, another car
you could eat in, but you had to eat,
get out of there, because there was a lot of
people coming through, you know, you're
hanging around in there. 14
Did you have a place to sleep on the train?
Or just set up in a chair? 15
Just set up in the chair. 16
Some of them guys had Pullman's, some of them
had daycars, I mean they just had a train,
it was just a train, they weren't too
particular on how they got it together, except
for the
kitchen car and the dining car, but the rest of
it, the daycars and the pullman's, they
It didn't make too much difference where they
put them.
You got in a Pullman, you was lucky.
You got a big car, that's all that.
Now when you got on that ship going over,
pretty crowded that many people, right?
Oh, Gosh.
How many bunks high? Three.
Was there much room between each bunk and the
next one?
About 18 inches.
Of course, the first one was right on the floor.
It probably stayed about that high off the
floor, and then the second one was about that
high from the next one, and the third one was up.
I think that ship, it fed all them, that whole
bunch of men, got fed.
It took them about two hours to feed that whole
bunch, about 10,000 troops.
They'd run them through there, boy, Wham, Wham,
Wham, they had them trays.
And you was eating below the water line, the
mess hall was way down below the water line.
You'd go down them stairs.
Of course it had elevators on it too.
But G.I.s would use that elevator, just the big rigs.
What rank did you have then?
I think I was T corporal. I had two stripes and
a T under.
Now, much sea sickness on that boat going over? No.
Wasn't it? No.
Did you get sea sick?
I did one time, I come up from the stairs, I
think I come up too fast, but I didn't really
get sick, I just got sick in my stomach for
about two minutes or five minutes and then it
was gone.
Did it throw up?
No, it didn't throw up, just kind of got dizzy.
Now when did you get your M1 rifle?
Oh we got that before we left. Yeah.
Always taking all that training.
Did you take your rifle with you when you went overseas?
Carried it with you?
Yeah, you bet.
Better hang on to that.
Do you remember your rifle serial number? Uh-uh.
How about your own serial number? Yeah.
Well, what is that?
That's 1-8-0-1-8-1-5-2.
Well, nobody forgets that, do they? No.
Now, tell me about when you went overseas.
Nobody forgets that, do they?
Now, tell me about when you got to Australia,
and you went through a lot of
training there then.
Then when did you first go into combat?
Well, we got to New Guinea first, more training.
More training, okay.
We made a lot of beach landings.
had just secured that island, and I guess it
had been
secured maybe a month before we got there.
We took some more training there, about two or
three months, okay.
And then old Major Finnegan, he's a little fat guy.
He got all the troops together, and of course
he had a PA system that he was up by.
He got all troops together and blowed him out
of the ball.
He said, now, men, he said, now, I know you're
anxious to go.
This is side two of tape one with Zedek Colbert.
Okay, now, the colonel blew in the mic, and
then what did he say?
He said, Ben, I know you're anxious to go, but
after we leave here it's going to be the real McCoy.
And everybody just roared, throwing up their
hats, just like they do at these West Point graduations.
I would wear my hats up and holler, that's the
way it is.
I would work from there.
We worked to Las Negras.
And that is an island, Manus Island is the
biggest island.
Manus, M-A-N-U-S, okay.
And Las Vegas, the only thing that divides Las
Vegas from Maines is the river that runs
between them.
We got there, it was around 4:00 in the afternoon.
We made it up Beach Head.
And out in front of us was an airstrip for
fighter planes,
jets out of the airstrip.
And behind that airstrip was a jungle.
And that thing was just as clean as this table, boy,
there wasn't nothing.
And you couldn't dig in.
It was just like trying to dig in that asphalt,
I caught an old coral rock, I flew around
there, I went down to the beach to see what I
could find, I found an old coconut log, about 7
or 8 inches,
It was about seven or eight feet long, but it
was water-soaked, heavy.
I finally tumbled that thing up there to where
I wanted it.
I said, man, it beats nothing.
I laid down behind it, and I stayed right there.
And, boy, that night, I mean, we really caught
it, but we was ready for them.
They had guns of 50 calibers and 30 calibers on
each end, a couple of them in the middle,
and everybody fired crossfire.
I forget how many they killed, it was close to
a thousand, they pulled the bandage off.
They were hollering and screaming.
Of course, as far as we were here, that pine
tree down there, that airship was that wide.
They started to cross it, hollering and screaming.
We had all that area to clean them out in, but
we did, we cleaned them out.
And what weapon did you have at that point?
I just had my rifle.
M1, okay.
Did you have plenty of ammunition for it?
Oh gosh, yeah, I kept ammunition.
I got short of that one time, and that was when
I was in the Philippines.
And I was down to my last fifty rounds.
What it was, I was on patrol where I was
guarding some Filipinos that were carrying rations.
That's the only way they could get rations, is
to be carried up there.
And they hired these Filipinos.
I don't know if they hired them or not, but
anyway they had these Filipinos carrying these
rations and ammunition up to the front line up there.
Because it was in the mountains.
There wasn't no roads.
The jeep couldn't even get through there or a
tank or nothing.
They just locked up.
Up and down, huh? Yeah.
And, uh, we were Jap infested. Yeah.
And we run into them once in a while.
And coming out of there, we made it up to the
front lines all right without any trouble.
But coming back, we run into a bunch of them.
We fought around there for, oh, just an hour
and a half, two hours.
Of course, in them jungles, you couldn't see
anything anyhow.
But I ran out of ammunition for just about,
right down to my last 50 rounds.
And there was a guy with a radio and he was on
the same frequency as that little observation plane.
A little plane just happened to fly over and
this guy contacted him and told him we was out
of ammunition or just about out.
And that little plane flew by, we got some
ammunition and flew it in there and dropped
it, and a little parachute was open.
We dropped it about a hundred yards from where
we was at, but we got the ammunition.
I said, man, this ain't ever going to happen no
more, from that moment on I carried enough
ammunition for two guys.
Let's go back to this island.
Now what island again were you on? Mainus.
Mainus, okay.
And you went in there on a landing craft?
How did you go into there?
LCVP or what?
Oh, on a Higgins boat.
Higgins boat, okay.
That's called the LCVP, right.
ramp on the front that drops down? Yeah.
That was on Las Vegas.
Oh, okay.
After we got to Las Vegas, we didn't have to
make any more landings because there was
a bridge that went from Las Vegas-
Oh, over to Manos, Huh?
Over to Manos.
We secured that island and they sent me and I
think it was sixteen men on a patrol the length
of minus.
Well, Mainus was 80 miles long and 16 miles
wide at the widest place.
It took us two weeks to get from where we
started to the end of it.
But in the meanwhile, we were running into a
few jobs, I imagine about altogether, about
forty or fifty.
There wasn't very many on the earth, or wasn't
very many left, but either way, after we got
out to the end they declared that island
secured. We got to the end of it, there was an L.C.I.
waiting to pick us up.
Now you had mentioned that one banzai charge.
Did you have any more banzai charges on that island?
That was the only one?
That was the only one. I thought we just about
washed them out. Of course there was more
even after that, but I think we got the
majority of the first night.
Because I mean to tell you, it was hot and
heavy though.
Many guys hollering and screaming and machine
guns going.
We had two guys, one guy fired his pistol, it
was .45, and I don't know how in the world
it happened, but this one guy just happened to
poke his head out there just right, and
And that bullet hit that helmet right here in front.
It was coming this way, crossways there, okay?
And it went all the way around his helmet,
between the helmet and the liner, and never
touched his head.
It just went around, just left a crease on that helmet.
old Reedus. He didn't hurt him. He was the one
that was always talking about the commandos.
He wanted to get the commandos. He talked about
it so much they just nicknamed him commando.
He was something else.
Now during that banzai charge, were many of
your people killed or wounded?
There was a few of them that got wounded, but
none of them killed.
The only reason they got wounded was because
them guys, them Japs, I bet there wasn't over
a hundred rifles in the whole bunch, and the
rest of them had bamboo sticks.
Well, hand grenades, and the ones that got
wounded was mostly from hand grenade shrapnel.
Hand grenades they had.
I don't think any of them guys hardly even
fired a rifle.
They claimed they was on dope.
I had to be or something, charge the machines
on this.
Then where did you go from there?
Off from there.
Was that when the Bismarck Archipelago?
Okay, all right.
Off from there we went to the Philippines.
I was with this, I think it was an L.S.T.,
yeah, it was an L.S.T.
I think they're so slow, man. I stand up there
on the deck. When that ship was coming in, I
remember it was so slow.
I could see them, see the town, see them
planes, the jet planes flying, that black smoke
coming up.
I told that guy sitting next to me, I said, I
don't think I want to get off here.
I want to go on down to the next island.
We're late with all this stuff going on."
He said, don't you wish.
I said, yeah.
Well, we got to where we wanted to go, pulled
up so far and then stopped.
And word come over the PA system.
to get in a water buffalo, them old water buffaloes,
the one, the tank, you know, that swims on the water.
You had the tracks on it and stuff? Yeah.
We called them water buffalo. Yeah.
I said, everybody, get in your water buffalo.
Everybody got mounted up.
And he opened them old doors up, you know, and
that ramp fell.
Boy, them things started out.
I put that water in. Yeah.
And them things opened from the back, so the
ramp opens at the back.
Hit the beach.
beach. That driver, he hadn't a more got on
that beach about 25 yards. Not even that.
He almost stopped in front of the other one. He
let that ramp down. Boy, I took out of
come around. When I did I seen some sand
jumping up in front of me. I jumped back. I got behind
that thing for a minute. The one guy on there,
he was about to come off. They had to drive
off. But he finally came off. But in the
meanwhile, somebody had knocked that machine
gun out.
It was safe to get away from there. Well, I
started out through there. And we went on
I went on to Lady that evening, but I think the
name of the town was Lady, I don't know.
But anyway, we went on to town. It was about,
oh, I guess ten miles.
That one guy on there, he was a poppy old
Indian, and he liked his booze.
And he found one of the Japs stored their
booze, and he got one of them big old bottles.
It was that high.
About two feet, huh?
A little more? Yeah.
And he got him a rope or something and tied
that top and that bottom and slung that thing
on his shoulder and on his back and took off.
That thing was full of booze.
He threw his pipe down and said, Roar!
He sure did like that stuff, I don't know.
I think he got killed later on, I mean he
probably did, got drunk and got killed, but
that was a poor place to be drinking.
Now when you went in there, were you in the
first wave or what wave were you in?
I was in the first wave.
First wave. Yeah.
Was there much opposition?
Not right to start with, but after we got in
there a little ways, they were waking us.
But on the beach there wasn't a lot when you
landed on the beach, okay.
Now one machine gun nest, the others I'm assuming.
Any artillery hitting on the beach or mortars? No.
Well, yeah there was, there was a little bit of
mortar fire, but, you know, they didn't
try to drown us with it. Yeah.
There were just, there were nine of them.
Now were many of our ships bombarding them? Uh-uh.
They was bombarding the town, but there where
we made the landing there wasn't anything
around there too, too bombarded, but the L.S.T.
didn't have, I don't think it had anything
on there but twenty millimeters.
But I mean, usually there were cruisers or
battleships fitting out there bombarded.
No, there was nothing like that.
Now, when you went up from New Guinea to the
Philippines in this LST,
were you in a big convoy with a lot of ships?
Oh, yeah.
Boy, I mean, it was slow.
I think five or six knots is top speed on it.
I'd hate to.
And the whole convoy couldn't go any faster
than the slowest ship.
Oh, man.
Tell me more about your experiences there. What
else happened? Some things on that island? Lati.
Once we got the lady, well, we had a little bit
of a fight in there with a few Japs in town,
and we got rid of them.
And the next day, we just stayed there that
night and the next day we were still doing a
little fighting and the Japanese fighters come
over and they're doing a little strafing.
We had ships in the harbor, LSTs and LCIs and
stuff like that, but we boarded an LCI
and went from there up to another little town.
It was still on Lady Island, but the little
town was named Center Luon.
We went up there.
And we secured that place.
And then from there,
after we got that secured, we was there about
about a month.
Of course, I wasn't in town,
I was out on the bridge, bridge guard.
And I said, I got
this little town secured. Well, we left there
and went on foot up to Olmoc Valley, up in the mountains.
That's when I got on this detail to guard the
Filipinos that was carrying them rations up in
the mountains.
That's when I about ran out of ammunition.
Of course, all this time I was fighting, I kept
plenty of ammunition, but then I forgot to
resupply when I had a chance to.
Then when I went on that patrol, I mean that
detail, the guard detail, I was low to start with.
I was down to about three or four boxes, but
then when I got down to one box, man that
was it.
That was too low.
And you had your M-1 at that point?
No, I had a carbine.
A carbine at that point, okay.
at that point. Ok.
Because the little carbines were more handy
there in the jungle than the M1, I mean for
the length. Yeah.
I tried to carry about, I think it was between
six and eight hundred rounds of ammunition.
They come in little boxes, fifty to a box. Ok.
I loaded up a backpack of mine and I loaded it
down with ammunition.
I carried two tons of coffee, misted coffee,
cigarettes, and ammunition.
A heck of a rush load.
On that carbine you had to reload the clip
before you could use it, is that right? Yeah.
How long did it take to reload a clip?
You learn to load them pretty fast.
It would take you about half a minute to reload one.
How many rounds in a clip? Sixteen.
How many clips did you have?
Well, I had, I think I had five extra besides
the one I carried in my gun.
6 total. Of course, they were full when you
started out.
Atencio Oh, yeah. I kept them for as long as I could.
Atencio So you could reload a clip in about
half a
minute then. That's pretty quick.
Atencio You learn the road fast. I remember going
up like to the old Rock Valley.
I forget who that outfit was that was in front
of us, but there was an artillery, some artillery
people giving us overhead fire.
We was going up this little old road, not much
wider than the cow trail, boy I heard
this gun go off, and then I heard this missile,
whoosh, whoosh.
That thing was going in to over in, it was
going straight, it was going in to over in.
About a hundred yards up that road, there was a
big old tree, about as big as this table.
And that thing just went like that in that tree.
Flat against it, huh?
Flat against it, buried up in it.
It was a little bit sticking out about that
much, but boy, it just buried up in there.
And before that happened, though.
Let me ask you, was that an American round or a
Japanese round?
It was an American round.
Was it from a mortar or artillery? Artillery.
Was it going end-over-end?
It was going end-over-end.
I haven't seen one like that before.
It didn't explode when it hit? No.
Then you started to say, then what happened
after that?
We were going down the road and there was, I
don't know who that was, or what company
that was.
We're going down the road a little ways, I
don't know who that was, or what company that
was in front of us, but anyway they had a tent,
a cook tent, right alongside the road.
And I seen this guy pour something out of a
box, a little box about like that.
He just poured it out.
I don't know if I've ever seen anybody pour it
out, and would you know it, it was coffee.
He poured out a little blisters, you know, that
had a cup of coffee in it.
About that big of a squirt and had a little
coffee in the middle.
He poured out a whole box of that stuff.
I just pulled my pack off, unzipped it, and
started scooping up stuff.
I said, man, there's something wrong with him,
pouring out coffee.
Boy, I couldn't see that.
I got a bunch of coffees, I always kept coffee
in, but I was, you know, I was just extra.
I had plenty, but I just got some more.
What rations did you have to eat over there?
Kelly rations and seed rations, but we had more
Kelly rations than we did seed rations.
And then we had ten and one.
About ten in one come in a box about like that.
At least one man ten days, or ten men one day.
They was good rations.
They had canned chicken in there.
The chicken was already cooked, was in a can
about that big.
About that high.
was already cooked. All you had to do was open
it and eat it. Put it in your mess kit and it
was right there.
Could you get any hot meals?
Oh yeah, we got hot meals.
As long as we got troops, we got hot meals up there.
Well, we had one guy, we was in this place, and
we'd been there, I don't know, it seemed
like a week or two, and the crypt tent was
about a half-mile behind, and we got up there,
We had a guy, he drove us weapons to our old
God's powerhouse, and we'd drive out up there
and go to Ejecta, but he was going across the
rice paddies, but he had to go slow.
A couple of Japs jumped on there and killed him.
Well, we didn't know it because he done fed us
that he was going to the mortar platoon.
And between us and the mortar platoon there was
a bamboo thicket.
He went behind that bamboo thicket and had to
go across this rice paddy.
And he had to go across it slow on account it
was a rub board.
And while he was slowed down, there was a
couple of Japs jumped over him and stabbed him.
They didn't shoot him, they stabbed him.
And the guy at the mortar platoon called out on
the old two-way radio to see if he'd been there.
He said, yeah.
He said they hadn't made it here yet, but we
got to looking until we found his weapons cart.
And he was dead.
He went looking for them jets and he never did
find them.
If we had found them it would have been too
bad, but we didn't find them.
Did they take any of the food? No.
We just killed him.
What are some other things that happened?
We left there, and what's the place, I forgot
where we went, but about a week later we come
back to that same place, and I went over to
that little slick trench that I dug, and I
going to use it. I looked in there and there
was a Jap on it. I just killed him. I said
somebody else can cover him up. I don't know
where he come from, but I imagine he was lost.
But it didn't make any difference whether he
was lost or not, he could still kill.
Did he try to shoot you or anything?
No, I just killed him while he was asleep.
Oh, he was asleep, I see, okay.
Did you ever hear of a town called Tacloban there?
That's the town that we went to, the first one
we went to. Atencio.
Now, that's on Leyte there. Salazar.
That's the time we went to it. Atencio.
So I just couldn't work every minute. Atencio.
Now, you landed there amongst the first, right?
First wave or so? Salazar.
I understand on about the second or third day, the
Japs had a parachute landing on the airport there.
You know anything about that? Salazar.
I don't know anything about that.
May have been the thirty-fourth day that the
Japanese dropped a bunch of paratroopers on the
airport, which is about two miles inland from
the beach.
Well, if they did, I wasn't there.
Because, like I said, the next day, we got on
this LTI and went on up to another little town
called St. Louis.
We just spent one night and a half a day
talking over it, so if they tried that, it was gone.
It could be because it was two or three days
after the initial invasion, and they had quite
a firefight, but they wiped them all out.
Because there was an airport about a mile or so
up from the beach, right? right?
A. Yeah.
Q. Okay. What else happened?
Well, that's where I got on that, come back
from that
them Filipinos. Yeah. I was just around my last
days up there. Okay. I come back to
camp and I cut my foot or ankle with a machete.
Not very bad, just enough
to make it bleed a little bit, and that thing
never did.
It just kept getting worse, and worse, and I
finally went to the dispensary
with it, and the doctor there, he put me in the hospital.
And I was in the hospital for about three days
with a bandage around my foot, because
you just don't heal up over there like you do
over here, and I was laying there on my
or about 2 or 4:00 in the afternoon, and the most
shortened to come over was that.
There was a jeep, a John Giladucci.
He said, you're going home.
I said, you better not be Lyin' to me, John, or
I'll shoot you.
He said, I ain't lyin' to you.
So I'm out. Man...
I mean, they got me out of there
in a hurry. The next day.
They took us on to some other place, I don't
know where, I don't know, Tancre.
It took thirty-three days to get from Manila to
San Francisco.
I got out of the port system.
I had a hundred and eighteen ports.
But now back up, you went to Manila, you went
into Luzon then, right? Yeah.
When was that?
January of 44, January of 45 is when they
invaded Luzon, and then Geyen-Gulf.
It was either January or February when I went
in there, of course.
Atencio And when you were, when these Filipinos were
taking that stuff up there, was that on Luzon
or was that on Leyte?
Salazar I was on Luzon.
Atencio That was on Luzon?
Salazar Uh-Huh.
Atencio I thought that was.
Yeah, that was on Luzon, that's what I, yeah.
You mentioned, it sounded like it was on Leyte
when you were talking, but I was pretty sure
that was Luzon.
Now, when you went into Luzon, you didn't go in
the first wave there, right?
You went up kind of the north part of the
island, is that right? Yeah.
And that's where you cut your ankle was on Luzon?
Now did you help to take back Manila?
I don't remember whether, I think I was pretty
close to Manila.
I don't know whether that hospital was in
Manila or not.
But it was close to some little town or some
town, but I remember now I did leave out of Manila.
Now let me back up to Leyte.
On October the 23rd and 24th of 1944 they had a
big sea battle there at Leyte called
the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
Did you hear anything about that at the time or
see any of that? No.
It was a very big sea battle, and the Japanese
almost came in and took our ships there.
I know one thing, there was a shore battle or
whatever, whenever we went to make up land
landed on Tuckaloban. I tell you what, black
smoke coming up everywhere, planes, I've seen
planes get knocked down, went off fire. They
were shore battling.
Did you see MacArthur way to shore on Leyte?
Did you see MacArthur way to shore? No.
Say, I have returned?
No, I didn't see that.
Did you see many dogfights between our planes
and Japanese planes?
Atencio Oh yeah. 11
Reginald How was that to watch those?
Atencio I used to like watching P-38s go after them.
I watched a few all the way off in the distance.
He'd go in there once in a while. 11
Up on Luzon, what else happened up there
besides taking those supplies up? 12
I was, after I got back, that's when I went home.
Yeah, okay. 14
I never did get to finish there. 15
I wasn't there long enough to finish the
campaign on Luzon.
Then coming back on that tanker, how crowded
was it?
Pretty crowded.
Quite a few of the people bringing back?
And what were your accommodations there?
What did you have to sleep in?
Well, I believe it was just slept on the floor.
A lot of them slept up on the deck, I know.
Well, yeah, people didn't know anything was
going on.
It wasn't storming or anything like that, but I
wouldn't go up there if it was storming.
Come a shower, well they had a big old canvas
that they spread out for guys half-shade.
come a shower there one afternoon. Boy, I tell
you what, there wasn't nothing down there for a
shower except salt showers.
I don't like that salt water shower. So I went
up there when it was raining. I went up there
and got in one corner of that canvas.
Took me a shot and I got water coming off of
it, boy that was good.
It says here you were wounded on Luzon on
February the 9th of 1945.
Were you wounded or just when you cut yourself there?
I got a piece of shrapnel right up there.
Tell me about that, what happened?
Here's up on the front line, and what it was,
it was either from artillery or mortar, but it
was a piece of flak that had already died.
I mean, it didn't have no force behind it.
Just falling?
Just falling.
And I had on one of them little caps, and it
come down and hit me there.
But I had a helmet on, I wasn't even a pilot.
Why didn't you have your helmet on?
I don't know, it just didn't work.
Did you wear it most of the time? No.
Why not?
It seemed like when I did it over my ears, I
couldn't hear enough.
You know how I felt?
Oh yeah.
A little bit of wind blowed, you couldn't hear
like you want to.
I wore a little cap most of the time in combat.
I kept my helmet to shave in,
to cook in,
or to boil water or something.
But I wore that little cap most of the time.
Now when you got that shrapnel hit on your head,
did you go to the medic or somebody? Yeah.
I went to, they were bleeding pretty good,
so I went to see.
I wanted to get it stopped because it was
breaking down my face, of course,
they were the ones who recommended the Purple
Heart, so I didn't turn them down.
I didn't argue with them.
Now since you got a Purple Heart, do you get
some kind of payment every month, something for that?
Then when you got back to the States, you came
in to San Francisco, what all did you
do there?
Atencio I got on a bus or a train, I think it was,
I really don't know whether it was a bus or a
train I got on, but then I come down to
Pedro, Fort MacArthur. Okay. I got discharged.
Okay. It says here you left the
Philippines on July the 6th of 45 and arrived
United States 9th of August of
45. So a month and three days to get back. 33
days you'd say it right? Mm-Hmm.
Okay. And you were discharged at my Fort
MacArthur. It says 13th of August of 45
discharged. For just a few days after you got
back, they
discharged you. You had enough points.
Then after you got out, what did you do? Come
back to
Texas or Oklahoma or where?
Atencio I went to California for it.
I bought them up. And then I went to Detroit,
Michigan. I had a brother, this guy, this
horseshoer that I told about the war. He wrote
to me and told me to come up out of Michigan
because I could go to a machine school under
the G.R. Bill if I wanted to go.
So I went up there, and whenever I got up
there, the steel workers went on strike.
Therefore I didn't go to school, so I got a job
in a brickyard.
Hagerty Brick Company, and I worked there until
the next spring, I bought frozen
And then, actually next spring, I come back
down to El Paso, then I went back out to California.
Let me go back and ask you some questions.
What would you consider your most frightening
time, when you were the most scared?
When we first hit Manus Island, I mean Los Negros.
This is side one of tape two with Zedek Colbert.
Okay, you say most frightening was on Manus
when you landed there, Los Negros? Yeah.
I've been scared for a while for that, but that
was the worst one.
We knew they was out there, and we knew we
couldn't dig in.
I mean, we were just about to set in dust.
What was behind us was the ocean, and we
couldn't get in,
couldn't dig in or anything like that.
You just had to get something laying in front
of you to protect you.
That's when you got that log, huh? Yes.
Of course, some of them other guys, they found
them something, a stump or a log or something.
But a lot of them didn't have anything.
They went a little bit further down and dug in
in the sand on the beach, but I didn't have
that much sense.
I was going to say where I was at in five days,
still backing up.
What did you think of the officers you had over you?
We had some pretty good officers.
Did you have some that weren't quite so good? No.
They were all pretty good.
Now, when you were in Australia, you were there
for quite a while, right?
Did you have any contact with the local
Australian people, the civilians?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, they were real good to us.
Well, all of their men was over in North
Africa, and most of the young people were just as
nice as they could be.
I mean, they didn't bite you in the house.
I've heard that girls are pretty friendly too,
is that right?
Oh, yeah, well, I did find them anyway.
Now, it says here you were born January 30th of 21.
You told me April 5th of 22, which is right?
April 5th, 22.
22, okay.
Did you have to...
I found out after that, that the people that
raised me when I was a kid, that's what they
said my birthday was, but I found out later on,
years later, that that over there is my right.
April 22 is the right date.
What all ribbons and medals did you get?
I don't know.
It's a here. It says good conduct medal got a
good conduct. Huh? Well, okay
American Defense Service medal
Philippine Liberation medal with two bronze
stars. That's two battle stars
the Asiatic Pacific Campaign medal the Purple
Heart and
It says you were in the when I general orders
29, okay
Headquarters, you were in the 1st Cavalry
Division, but the 7th Cavalry Regiment, right? Okay
And when you were down there in New Guinea and
all, any trouble with malaria?
No, because they gave us some Atterburn tablets.
Atterburn, right.
There's 500 of them to a bottle.
And I always kept three bottles.
It took two a day, and I took two a day for
twenty-seven months. 11
Atencio Will they make you turn yellow? No.
Oh, I might have been a little bit yellow, but
I mean it wasn't that bad. 11
Atencio I've heard people say that had to make you
turn yellow.
I didn't know. Right.
But I made it sure
Many people get malaria around there. Yeah,
there's quite a few of them. Yeah, that's
because they didn't take that tablet, right?
And it says here that you had foreign service
two years one month and 14 days and
Service in this country two years ten months
and ten days
So you were in for four years eleven months
Quite a while.
And your highest rank was sergeant? Uh-huh.
And you went to cavalry school for 12 weeks as
a saddler? Uh-huh.
And when you first went in, what was your pay?
Do you recall? Uh-huh.
How much?
Twenty-one dollars.
And what was it the highest you got?
the highest? God, I don't know. Forty-five, I think.
I was getting one as a safety cap, twenty-one
dollars a month.
Was it? Uh-huh.
Now, I see you've got several discharges here.
What's this
Navy discharge? Were you in the Navy then?
Yeah, I got in the Navy.
When was that? Forty-six.
Let's see what it says here.
You went in the Navy November 26th of 1946, and
then you were discharged on December 16th of 1948.
What did you do in the Navy?
A. Oh, ship, paint, paint, worked in the engine room.
Yes, an engineman, fireman.
What kind of ship were you on?
A tanker. Tanker?
And where all did you go?
From Seattle to Kodiak, Alaska.
Oh, okay.
It says you were on the USS Namakagon, N-A-M-A-K-A-G-O-N-A-C-G-A-O-G-53.
That's an oiler, 53. Namakagon.
How do you pronounce it? Namakagon.
McCargan okay and you're also on the USS Dipper
yeah but it was a mothball oh
okay oh something about the Aborigines on one
of the islands what was that
probably New Guinea the local people yeah where
was that and what
You don't want nothing to do with them things.
What did they do?
They'd kill you if you got a chance.
Of course, down there where we was at, they was
by Highway 7 of ours.
That's about all.
Of course, the Australians, I had a lot to do
with them.
Oh, okay.
But you get up north, away from Burma, you don't
want to play with them.
Now, was this in Australia or where?
New Guinea?
It was in New Guinea.
New Guinea.
That island ain't even, I don't know, you talk
about something primitive, that island is
really primitive.
I mean, up from Boone.
Of course I don't imagine it's improved no
whole lot since the war.
It might have.
I don't think so, but they-well, when we was
over there, that major, Finley, he didn't
He said, don't sit on the ground, don't drink
this water out of the river, don't go swimming
in it, don't go to the beach if you go
swimming, everything is contaminated oil.
And there was a guy, I guess, must have sent
home and got some tomato seeds one time while
he was over there in New Guinea, and he planted
them tomato seeds, and they come up, and he
raised some tomatoes, and they wouldn't let him
eat them.
That's how bad it is.
Man, in the summertime, when the dry season is
on, when old trucks go down through there.
Do you think these roads are dusty?
Man, that stuff is just like it's coming out of
a pipe, just thick.
You couldn't see, you can't see, and then when
the rainy season is on, you walk down
through the woods, you don't have to walk, you
just sit at the edge of it, and you could
smell it, the trees and stuff decaying, it's in
there, I mean it's, it's somewhere else.
It gets hot, sticky, or it gets 103, 104, over
there, over in New Guinea.
It ain't no place for a white man, I'll tell you.
Did you have any combat on New Guinea? No.
We got there just after it was secured.
Had a lot of training there.
That's where, I don't know, I have no feel to
that place.
Did you get home with any souvenirs?
I didn't look for any.
Did you ever see any USO shows anywhere? No.
Nobody, Bob Hope, nobody came around, huh?
Oh yeah, he'd come around, but I didn't go to him.
I see.
Did you have any experience with the Red Cross?
Yeah, good or bad?
What was it? Well
They'd steal when they got a chance.
They stole our cigarettes and sell them to us
for ¢50 a carton.
They stole the Coca-Cola
and sold it to us
a shilling, a cup, and I had no use for them since.
How about the Salvation Army?
Well, I don't think they were even over there.
You didn't see them over there, okay.
That Red Cross, I remember some people, what's
it like, at 9-11, the Red Cross stole a bunch
of money from them people, people that donated
money, nobody could make a stand for it.
a gift of the Red Cross, where'd he go?
Somebody, somebody, I think Paddy DuBois
came up with it.
Could be.
I wouldn't trust that Red Cross out of my shop.
Even today, and even back then.
I've heard a lot of bad comments about the Red Cross.
I wouldn't give them nothing.
Did you get home with any mail?
I mean, when you were overseas, did you get
your mail with any regularity?
Pretty regularly, yeah.
Not that V-mail.
V-mail, right.
Did you ever hear Tokyo Rose on the radio? Yeah.
I never did hear it, but I heard all of it.
But she didn't bother me, I mean, I knew what
she was, but I didn't pay no attention to her.
People said she played good music.
Oh, yeah. A lot of guys said she played good music.
Of course, that was propaganda. I mean, that's
to make you homesick.
Oh, yeah, right.
Now, when you crossed the equator, did you have
any kind of a ceremony or anything then? No.
On a troop ship you probably didn't, right? No.
Now, May the 8th of 1945, Germany surrendered.
Did you all hear about that over there? No.
Yeah, I think I did.
Somebody heard about it.
Any kind of a celebration or anything? No.
Well, we had one little guy, he'd go around,
he'd start a rumor or something, he'd get
around to it, he'd believe it.
Somebody one time says, the war is over, and
then he paused a minute and said, all over
the world.
All over the world, yeah.
Yeah. April 12th, the 45th, President Roosevelt
died. Did you all hear about that?
Yeah. I heard about that. Any reaction to it?
Now, of course, you were home when Germany
surrendered. Yeah.
Yeah. Any celebration then?
No. No celebration, huh?
Yeah, you were discharged two days before they
surrendered, okay?
All right. Did you ever use your G.I. bill? Uh-uh.
Did you have any trouble adjusting to civilian
life when you got home?
Have you had any reunions?
Not going to any, okay.
I got those teeth, I don't know how they fix
them, but they got them down to a point,
so I thought.
Sharpened teeth, huh? Yeah.
But you got beat or not? Yeah.
Must be a dope.
It is a little bit, yeah.
Turned your teeth and the gum's all red, is
that right? Yeah.
You ever try chewing any betel nut? No.
There's cocaine over there in Peru. Uh-huh.
Of course, Peru's got it.
over there in Peru. Of course, Peru's got it. I guess
Columbia's got it. I'm not patenting it.
When you got back home after two years overseas,
did you see much change in this country?
Never even noticed.
Didn't notice any change, huh?
No. Well, I mean, only a few changes, but I mean,
but I mean I know I took it pretty close to
heart because ain't nothing going to stay the same.
I knew that from the beginning, I mean ain't
nothing going to stay the same.
But you're right, I went back, when I got back,
come back from Michigan, went down to El Paso,
I went out to Fort West. Well, I knew it was
going to change, you know.
So, nothing had. Not very much, but a little bit.
Two years I was gone. Nothing changed.
Well, is that it? Have you thought of anything
else about your time in the service?
Not right now.
Okay, well again, I want to thank you for your
time today, and I want to thank you for your
service to our country.
I was glad to serve.
He also got the combat infantryman's badge.