Encoded for the Experiencing War web site for the Veterans History Project.
The recording of the interview with Oliver Miller was digitized.
This transcription was encoded with minimal changes to the original text in an effort to preserve original content and idiosyncrasies of the person interviewed. Period language and terminology are also retained. Encoding is literal with regard to the transcriptionist's capitalization, punctuation, and spelling. Spelling errors are indicated with [sic]; however, recurring errors in spelling within a single document have been marked the first time and not subsequently.
This is an interview with Oliver, known as Ollie, W. Miller of Plymouth, Minnesota. I'm the interviewer, Patsy Kuentz, and I'm here at the home of Oliver and Carol Miller in Plymouth. Oliver was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on November the 23rd of 1922. He served in the U.S. Army with the -- I'll try this, and you correct me if I'm wrong -- 20th Armored Division, the Headquarters Division, Office of Chief of Staff, G-2 Section. Is that correct?
20th Armored Division, Division Headquarters --
Division Headquarters. Okay.
-- Office of the Chief of Staff --
Okay.
-- G-2 Section.
Okay. That sounds good. The highest rank that you attained is T4, and that was a sergeant; right? You say three stripers?
Right.
Okay. The dates of enlistment, the dates of service time, March of 1943 to -- through February of 1946. Obviously, then, he served during World War II, and he served in the European theater of operations. I guess that's the introduction. Let's start with some questions. Okay. So, Ollie, were you drafted or did you enlist or how did you get into the service?
Well, I was drafted.
Okay.
And I was working in a defense-contracted company called Diamond Iron Works.
Diamond Iron Works.
And they were on 2nd Street and 18th Avenue North in Minneapolis.
Okay.
And I worked the night shift from three -- three to eleven o'clock.
Okay.
And --
How old were you then?
I was 19.
Okay.
I was 19 years old. And I was looking forward to being drafted, of course, because everybody was being drafted --
Yeah.
-- or they were enlisting --
Yes.
-- before they got drafted --
Yeah.
-- or they had enlisted. And I was curious about my own status. And going to work and walking down West Broadway, I often would run into several of the guys that I went to school with.
Uh-huh.
Went to North High School.
Uh-huh. You were in the old neighborhood.
In the old neighborhood there, yeah. And one day, one of those times I ran into a fellow by the name of Paul Prazniak (ph), and he was in uniform, and he had graduated from -- had been graduated with me from North High School, in the same graduation class, and he's in uniform. And I'm thinking, "Why am I not in uniform?" Well, it so happened that the draft board was in the police station around the corner of 3rd Street North and West Broadway at that time.
Uh-huh.
So I thought, "Well, I'll go over there and I'll find out what my status is." So I went over to the draft board and I talked to the woman behind the counter, and she went and got a three-by-five file card, and she said to me, "Have you been home?" And I said, "No, I'm going to work now." And I said, "I left -- I left home about two o'clock and I'm walking." And she said, "Well, if you went home," she said, "you would have the notice in your mailbox."
Is that right? My gosh.
So I spun on my heel and I ran home. Called the company that I was with, said, "I'm going to be late." And sure enough, there was the draft notice. So I went -- subsequently I went down to -- went out to Fort Snelling.
Okay.
And I stood in line for four days going through all of the induction process.
Yeah.
And that was in March of 1943.
Yeah.
1943, yeah. And everybody was eager -- everybody was eager to join --
Yeah.
-- and get involved. And everybody was, in some way, connected with the effort.
Right.
With the war effort.
Right.
And as civilians, you know, obviously. So that's -- that's my memory --
Yeah.
-- of that circumstance.
What did your folks think?
Well, my dad -- well, there wasn't -- I don't recall a lot of conversation about it. It was a matter of just going. You had to go.
Yeah.
Okay?
Yeah.
And my dad knew I had to go. My mother knew I had to go. Everybody else was doing it, and it was the thing.
Right.
It was happening.
Right.
You know.
Did you have any other relatives that were in the service at that time?
No. I had cousins. I had cousins.
Oh, okay. No siblings.
No siblings, no. I had cousins and other members of the family that worked in the defense plant, for example. Many of them worked at -- some of them worked at Northern Pump Company --
Okay.
-- which was a defense contractor in New Brighton someplace, and huge, huge company.
Okay.
Expanded during that time frame. And the Diamond Iron Works Company that I worked for had defense contracts --
Uh-huh.
-- of some kind.
Uh-huh.
And I was in charge of priorities for materials. And I did an administrative job securing those priorities from the U.S. Government and from other agencies, and don't ask me about it; I haven't the foggiest idea what I was doing. But I put in -- I put in eight hours a day there for about four or five months, and then into the Army I went.
Okay. Okay.
And --
Now, you were still living at home then?
I was living at home.
Yeah. And where was home? What city?
Home was at 604 25th Avenue North, which is in what is called the Hawthorn District --
Uh-huh.
-- of north Minneapolis.
Okay.
And typical circumstance during the war, I think, as far as I was concerned --
Uh-huh.
-- you know, just being drafted.
Yeah.
I went down, tried to get into the Merchant Marine, couldn't get into the Merchant Marine.
Now, what led you to think that you wanted to do the Merchant Marine thing?
The money.
Oh, it was better money?
Oh, yeah.
Really?
Yeah. It was a quasi military-type operation.
Right.
It wasn't Navy. It wasn't Army.
Right.
It wasn't Air Force.
Right.
It was Merchant Marine.
Right.
And you got paid.
Uh-huh.
And you got paid as a civilian.
Oh, okay.
You got paid as a civilian.
Okay.
But you were recognized as being in the service --
Yeah.
-- of the United States.
Qualified for service.
Yeah. Yeah. And, for example, I had a friend, one of my good buddies from North High School, still is, who was in the Merchant Marine.
Ah.
And he got bonuses --
Oh.
-- left and right. This was later, of course, during the war.
Yeah.
When he was on a Liberty Ship and they had to take war material to Northern Russia, and they'd take that Murmansk thing, and he would run that northern route in a Liberty Ship with war material on it. And if they got attacked by submarines, as they did --
Yeah.
-- on a couple of occasions --
Yeah.
-- he got 3-, $4000 bonus for each one of those, see, type of thing. So --
So if you lived to tell about it, you got a bonus.
If you lived to tell about it, you got a bonus.
Yeah.
And he lived to tell about a couple of it, so he got some pretty good bonus. And he was very happy about that. And they got paid quite well, too, you know --
Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
-- for those times, you know.
Yes, right.
So a lot of we kids wanted to get in the Merchant Marine simply for the money involved.
Yeah. But they didn't take you.
They didn't take me. And they didn't take me in the Air Force because I couldn't see good enough.
Oh, shoot.
And so I was up for grabs, and I didn't know where I was going. I got to the induction center and they put me on a -- well, for three days, I -- for three days, I did KP at Fort Snelling.
Okay. So they took you right away --
They took me right away.
-- and then didn't know quite what to do with you.
Didn't know what to do.
Okay.
But I was on KP for three or four days. And I scrubbed a little -- I scrubbed a stool, a little wooden stool --
Okay.
-- with GI soap and a brush. Because the mess sergeant, who was a regular Army guy, looked around for something for me, and he had so many recruits there he didn't know what to do with them all. He didn't know how to put them all to work. So he --
He didn't have enough potatoes to be peeled.
No, absolutely. So he said, "You see that stool over there? I want you to scrub that stool." So he gave me the brush and he gave me the soap and pail of water and I scrubbed that stool. When my turn was up, when my shift was up doing KP -- and I scrubbed that stool for four or five hours; another guy came in, and that mess sergeant said, "Hey, Pal, see that stool over there?"
Oh, no.
"I want you to scrub that stool." I came back the next day to do KP again, and I scrubbed that stool. And that thing had bleached out.
Oh, I guess.
It was perfectly white. Just bright white. It actually sparkled it was --
That's the cleanest stool anybody ever saw.
Yeah.
So where did they send you off to basic then?
Well, then they sent me on a troop train down to Fort Knox, Kentucky.
Ah, okay.
To the Armored Force Replacement Training Center.
Okay.
And we got there at three o'clock in the morning, we got off the train and we went into the mess hall, marched in from the tracks into the mess hall at three o'clock for doughnuts and coffee. And the next morning, I got up and went outside for reveille, and there was a wooden plaque on the barrack door, kind of a -- what would you call that.
Oh, like a medallion-shaped plaque.
Like a medallion, precisely. It was about three-by-five in size.
Uh-huh.
And on that thing, I took a look at that, and it said 656th Motorcycle Reconnaissance Squadron. And I thought, "They're going to put me on a motorcycle? I'm dead right now." Well, it so happened that that's what they had. They had motorcycles.
Huh.
But they hadn't -- they had phased them out of the training program.
Oh, okay.
Now, there were a few running around, but they were usually the regular Army guys that were using them in their off hours, you know, just to run around.
Oh, okay. It was more or less transportation.
Yeah, more or less transportation. We had nothing to do -- because, in the meantime, the four-by-four little truck had come on the scene.
Ah.
Which everybody in the whole world knows as a Jeep.
Okay.
But not in the Armored Force.
Okay.
It was not called a Jeep in the Armored Force. It was called a peep.
A peep?
A peep.
P-E-E-P then --
P-E-E-P.
-- instead of J-E-E-P.
Right.
Okay.
Now, the Jeep, to the guys in the Armored Force, everybody, the Jeep was a six-passenger command car, and that was a Jeep. And a peep was a little car that everybody, even today, called a Jeep.
I'll be darned.
So we had -- we had, in the G-2 section, the th Armored Division, we had about three or four peeps --
Huh.
-- that were driven by drivers that were assigned to do that only.
Okay.
So, anyway, got on the train and woke up a day later, at three o'clock in the morning, and we're in Fort Knox, Kentucky.
Yeah. Do you remember what it was like on the train? Were guys excited? Were they sad? Were they playing cards? Do you remember anything about that trip?
Yeah. That's about all that happened, exactly what you said.
Okay.
Snoozing, you know.
Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
We didn't have any -- we didn't have any berths, you know.
Right.
We just sat -- sat in the coach and went along.
Yeah.
And I had a barracks bag with our stuff in it, and wound up down at Fort Knox and --
Yeah, how did basic training go then?
Well, it was typical infantry-type basic training with instruction with a rifle, instruction with a handgun.
Uh-huh.
Instruction with a bazooka.
Uh-huh.
Instruction on two or three other things. Driver training. Training to learn how to drive everything that the -- everything that the Armored Force has.
Sure.
Tank retrievers, M4 tanks, M5s, peeps --
Uh-huh.
-- Jeeps, trucks. Anything that they had, we did. Not comprehensive training on each one. You split off later on to take a specialty, you know.
Uh-huh.
And then I went to -- I went to administrative school there and --
Now, how do you think they selected you for the administrative school?
Probably as a result of what I had taken in school when I was at North High School. I was the fastest boy typist.
Is that right? Your claim to fame.
Yeah.
So they liked that you could type.
They liked that I could type.
Okay.
And they liked that I had taken a lot of artwork, a lot of mechanical drawing, and a lot of -- I took a course at North High School on aviation drawing, you know.
Oh.
Which are high school courses.
Yeah.
I mean, they're not very sophisticated, you know, but --
But it's more than what most people had.
Yeah, it was --
Yeah.
It was a specialty kind of, that art training.
Yeah.
I belonged to the art club at North High School and so on and so on, and so I guess that put me in good stead. And I -- I never pulled, outside of basic training -- or outside of the induction center, I never pulled one single day of any kind of duty, such as guard duty or KP or garbage detail or anything.
Wow.
Never. Because, when my name came up -- I had volunteered to fire the barracks in our company. We had four barracks of guys, and I volunteered to get out of bed three times and fire those -- keep those furnaces going during the wintertime.
Oh, oh, that's what you're calling -- okay.
So I did that. And I volunteered. Now, they told you, "Don't ever volunteer to do anything."
Yeah.
I volunteered --
Yeah.
-- to do that, and I did that. Then when my name was supposed to come up for KP, my name was not on the list. So, conscientious as I was, I went to the orderly room and I talked to the clerk there, and he said, "Well, you volunteered to do the firing of the furnaces, so we took you off the KP list."
Wow.
So I didn't -- I didn't then do any KP. Then when my name came up -- the next time it didn't come up, I made lance corporal. Now, lance corporal was not an official noncommissioned officer. That was a band that you wore around your sleeve --
Oh, okay.
-- with two stripes on it.
Okay.
So I carried the -- what do they call that? The guidon?
Okay.
I carried the banner, the identification of the unit, and marched my section as a lance corporal.
Okay.
Well, they were getting kind of short on KP people and people to do duty, so they made all of the lance sergeants -- or all the lance corporals, said, "Now you're going to have to start -- we don't have enough guys around here to do duty, so you guys are going to have to start doing it, in spite of the fact that you're lance corporals."
Okay.
But not me, because I had just made lance sergeant, and they got excluded from that.
Lance sergeant, okay.
Yeah. So I had -- then I got out of basic training and they sent me to the 20th Armored Division.
Okay. Now, do you remember much about the instructors that you had in basic training?
Yeah.
What were they like?
Well --
Do you think they taught you what you needed to know?
Oh, everybody had somebody. You know. Every GI has got some guy, and we had First Sergeant -- I was going to say Jim McGowan, regular Army.
Okay.
Had been in the Army four or five years. A guy probably 25 years old, maybe 28.
Old guy.
Old guy.
Yeah.
And he did everything we did. We'd run back from the range, from the rifle range, for example, and we'd run up hill for a mile. He did it, too.
Yeah. Right. Okay.
And he was good. He was -- he was good. And you didn't -- you didn't fool around. You didn't fool around in his outfit.
Uh-huh.
And then we had a really tiny man who was a first lieutenant, and he was about five foot four or five foot five, and he was our physical instructor. We did calisthenics with him --
Oh, okay, uh-huh.
-- and all that kind of thing.
Uh-huh.
And he was also an instructor in the administrative school that we went to. So those were the two guys -- and I remember -- I remember, I had gone to the PX and I had bought myself a bamboo riding crop.
Okay.
See? And a few of us were allowed to carry a riding crop. And I went in the -- went in to report to Colonel -- I don't remember his name, but he had his riding crop sitting on his desk. And he says, "I see you've got a riding crop." And I said, "Yeah." And he said, "Well, I've got one, too," and he showed it to me. And I said, "Yeah." He said, "You know what it is?" And I said, "Well, I suppose you tap the horse with it," you know, so -- well, he said, "Yeah, but it's more than that." He says, "It becomes your personal friend." And I thought, "Okay," you know, "I'm happy with that." So the riding crop was my personal friend from that point forward.
Yeah. And the riding crop was basically a remnant from the old cavalry days of the Army.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And he was a -- he was a lieutenant colonel, and he was in charge of that battalion in some way. And I served as an -- not an aide -- to General Scott, and I was ordered up to his headquarters, and I was supposed to do anything for General Scott that he asked me to do. That was the only instruction I got.
And you were called an aide but -- or you weren't called an aide.
No, I wasn't called an aide. I was called something else.
Okay. A personal assistant?
No.
No?
I was going to say a dog robber, but I wasn't really a dog robber either. I was just -- because I went in there, and I stood there till my knees shook. I was standing there in front of this general, you know.
Sure.
And here I am a lance corporal, you know, been in the Army about, I don't know, four or five weeks at the time, and I'm kind of shaking, and I saluted, and I reported. And he said, "Okay, okay, Corporal, you go over and sit in that chair right outside the office door there," to his office, which I did. And I sat there all day long. I sat there until -- until recall. I think they had -- you know, blow the bugle?
Oh.
And I think they call that recall.
Okay.
And then I was let go. But that's what I did for General Scott that day. I sat there all day long --
Just like he told you to.
-- like this. Just like -- you know, stiff as a board. So that was good. That was good.
That was good. Good experience.
Yeah, it was good experience.
So then what did they have you -- what was the next day like?
Well, we went on 25-mile march.
Ah.
60 pounds. No, not 60. Maybe 40.
Now, this is still at Fort Knox?
This is Fort Knox. This is basic training.
Yeah.
And took hikes and went out on the range and fired the rifles. And I was an expert rifleman, which is pretty good.
Yeah.
And the poop that was going around was that you don't want to be too good at this because they'll put you in the infantry, and nobody wants to be in the infantry.
Front lines.
Front lines. But I made expert and --
Now, did you know how to -- did you hunt before or --
No.
No? You had never really worked with firearms before?
No.
Really?
Not --
So you learned all of that in basic.
Learned it in basic.
And you got that good.
I got pretty good with the rifle. With a handgun, with a 45, standing -- I think the target was about six to 10 feet away, I couldn't hit -- I couldn't hit the target.
Huh.
And the target was a silhouette.
Yes, okay.
A human silhouette --
Okay.
-- or something like that.
Uh-huh.
Maybe from the top of the head to the waist. I couldn't hit that thing to save my soul.
With a handgun.
With a handgun. Couldn't do it. And that's what we did. Then we went on bivouac a couple of times.
Okay.
Then we had the marches. We had a five-mile march, we had 10-mile march, we had 25-mile march. And what else did we have?
They never sent you over to work with General Scott again; huh?
Never sent me over there to work with him again, no.
Okay.
And saw Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Is that right?
Yeah. He was coming down there to see armored maneuvers, and he arrived. And he arrived at the main post. Now, the main post included permanent buildings, permanent construction of fort buildings. Fort Campbell -- or not Campbell, Fort Knox buildings.
Uh-huh.
Including the gold depository down there.
Uh-huh, uh-huh.
So that was probably two miles, maybe three miles from the Armored Force Replacement Training Center, the main post, as it was known as.
Okay.
The main post. And he was coming in there, and he was to arrive at such and such a time. I and a couple of other guys, some other guys and myself, we ran all the way up to the post to see Franklin Roosevelt.
Huh.
And there he was --
Huh.
-- in an open, big open car, you know, sitting in the back seat.
Uh-huh.
And my memory is that he looked precisely as most people remember him.
Uh-huh.
You know. With a kind of a haughty look about him, you know --
Uh-huh.
-- but big smile.
Uh-huh.
You know. And he drove by and reviewed the troops, reviewed -- they had a big, big ceremony in his behalf. And then they had -- they had the, you know, a mock-type exercise, you know --
Uh-huh.
-- field exercise. So...
Did he review it from the car?
He reviewed it from the car, yeah, yeah, yeah. We stood there -- we stood about, oh, I don't know, we were probably a half a mile away up on a little knoll and we could see, you know, we could see what was happening.
Yeah.
And it was a typical Army-type review, you know.
Uh-huh.
And then had some kind of a ceremony. We'd stand reveille every morning and we'd stand recall, or we'd stand -- what was that at night? What was the bugle business at night? Anyway --
I don't remember. I've heard it, but I don't remember it either.
What was that? I don't -- I don't -- I should know that. So then many of us got shipped down to Camp Campbell, Kentucky.
Ah, okay.
It's called Fort Campbell today.
Now it is, yeah.
But it was Camp Campbell in those days.
Yeah.
And I was assigned -- and I never even knew this, but I've got the -- I've got the orders in here. I was assigned to the 65th Armored Infantry Battalion, and it's here.
That's a copy of your orders?
That's a copy of the orders. And it says here Private Miller, Oliver W., so forth, Headquarters DET -- I don't know what that means, if that's detachment or what it is -- to be corporal temporary). And then this other kid here, Furedy, whom I talk to once in a great while now --
You're still in contact with him, okay.
Yeah.
Ah. Furedy -- what was his name?
Furedy. F-U-R-E-D-Y. Charles Furedy.
Okay.
He got transferred with me. That is the orders for that on the 20th of October, 1943. And the transfer papers and special orders to be transferred to higher grade and to Division Headquarters, G-2 Section.
Oh, so that's when you joined your group basically.
Yeah.
Okay.
That's when I -- The following EM -- enlisted men -- Headquartered Detachment 65th Armored Infantry are transferred in grade to Headquarters Forward Echelon, G-2 Section, 20th Armored Division. T4. That's the first time I realized that I had made T4, and that's -- that's dated the nd of October.
Okay.
And Furedy's on there, and he made corporal, and I made T4. Now, I had an MOS 045, I think, which meant that I'm a draftsman, topographical.
Ah.
And Furedy is something else.
Yeah.
But here I was transferred into the 65th Armored Infantry Battalion and transferred out on the same orders, so I never was in that other outfit. And that is -- that is this thing.
Huh. Huh. So when you got to Camp Campbell -- it's hard for me to say, too, because I used to live close to the Fort Campbell --
Oh, yeah.
-- in Clarksville, Tennessee, yeah.
Yeah.
So when you got to Camp Campbell --
Yeah.
-- what did they do with you?
They sent me over to this barracks, which wasn't a barracks for sleeping; it was a barracks for administrative duty. And I walked in there, and I met Master Sergeant Chaveneau (ph), Frank Chaveneau, and I showed him my orders, and he said, Go sit at the table." Okay. So I sat at the table. And people are buzzing around, you know, and I had no idea what this is.
Yeah.
Had no idea where I am or what I'm doing there or what the circumstances are. And then Major Williams came in. Of course, I never knew -- I didn't know him.
Yeah.
And I was introduced to Major Williams. And I don't remember the details of the whole day, but Chaveneau asked me if I knew how to draw maps, and I said, "I don't know how to draw maps." And I said, "I've never drawn maps." He said, "Well, what did you learn how to draw?" And I said, Well, we took these courses in high school," you know, so forth, so forth. And he said, "Well, I want you to take this pen and ink, and I want you to do some hand lettering for me," which I did.
Uh-huh.
And I did that and then I went -- then I left and went back to the barracks, and was about ready for reveille, to stand reveille. So that's all I did that first day there. And I had no idea what this was all about. I got settled into the barracks and I was in there with some other guys, obviously, on the second floor of this building, and there must have been a hundred guys in there.
Uh-huh.
And I bunked in, and I was talking to some guy, and he said, "Well, you're in the G-2 Section." I said, "Yeah." He says -- and I know the guy's name. His name was Paul Stevens. And he said, Well, I'm in G-3 Section, and you're in G-2." And he said, "G-2 is military intelligence." And I said, "I don't know anything about that."
Uh-huh.
And he says, "Well, we're all new." The division had just been activated.
Oh, so everybody, basically, was new.
Yeah. Everybody was new.
Okay.
They had a cadre of people that were older that had been in the Army that had been in administrative headquarters, so they had knowledge of the function of a headquarters organization, the Division Headquarters, but we were all recruits and we were all new --
Sure.
-- so we were there to take orders and learn --
Yeah.
-- the ropes --
Yeah.
-- so to speak.
Was this kind of, not knowing what you were going to do, did you feel some anxiety? Was it stressful at all or --
Well, I knew -- I knew that you had to be on the ball, as it was known as.
Yeah.
You know?
Yeah.
More so on the ball than if you were in a battalion or a company or whatever, because you were with all of the brass --
Right.
-- in the organization.
Right.
You had three or four brigadier generals, you had one major general, you had any number of full colonels, and you had any number of lieutenant colonels. And --
Sounds like a lot of saluting.
A lot of -- well, yeah. You didn't salute indoors, but you did --
Outside, yeah.
You saluted outside.
Yeah.
And you had to be clean. You had to be shaven every morning. You had to have your hair cut. You had to have your clothes pressed. You had to be clean. You had to be -- you couldn't be dirty. Boots had to be polished.
Yeah.
And you had to be number one. And you had to be careful about your conduct. Very careful about your conduct. The threat -- the threat continually was you behave yourself a hundred percent or you'll be sent down to a unit. Now, if you were sent down to a unit, chances are you would be carrying a rifle. You know.
Right. Right.
And I don't know that anybody ever attained that thing, but -- that I knew of, but that was the threat.
Yeah.
And that was kind of an informal threat. Nobody ever said that --
Yeah.
-- but it was kind of passed around.
You got the drift.
You got the drift, exactly, right.
Yeah.
So that's what we did. We trained and we trained and we trained and we trained. And we had exercises that we were out on bivouac. And we were then -- subsequently, we were made as a replacement cadre.
Okay.
So we would train other people and then they would be sent out to be replacements. And then we got the status of being a combat organization and we went overseas, but... So I was down there two years at Camp Campbell.
Okay.
Or Fort Campbell, as it's called.
Right. Right.
I was down there two years doing that kind of work, doing that kind of training. And learned the intelligence thing, went to -- I went to Fort Belvoir. They sent me to school. Fort Belvoir was the engineers school in Washington, D.C.
Okay.
Right outside of Washington, D.C.
Belevoir?
B-E-L-V-O-I-R. Belvoir.
Oh, okay. Okay.
V-O-I-R.
Yeah.
Yeah, Fort Belvoir.
Okay.
It's in Virginia. So I spent one or two months there going to this school for map, geological study --
Ah.
-- and that kind of thing.
So you didn't know how to do maps, but they were going to teach you.
Yeah. And, you know, I got some stuff here. I don't know what this is. I make no pretense about it at all, but I got some -- I got some goofy things here, if I can lay my hands on it. Maybe not. Oh, yeah, here. Well, I can't find -- I should show you this stuff, but I can't lay my hands on it right now.
Is it information from your training or about map making?
Yeah. Well, it shows you some little thing that -- I don't know why I've even got it, but...
That's okay. Well, I'll turn it off for a second. Well, Ollie didn't find what he was looking for right at the moment. But, at any rate, you were taught about map making, basically.
Yeah.
Uh-huh.
Yeah. And what we did, we were totally involved. We have about four or five officers in our section from time to time, and we had probably eight, six to eight enlisted men that participated in the military intelligence stuff that went on.
Uh-huh.
And attached to the G-2 Section was a CIC, counterintelligence and a counterespionage team, two teams, and a PIT, prisoner interrogation team --
Okay.
-- of guys that were -- came to be part of our organization, but they were on detached service from their own outfits.
Uh-huh.
And we also had a G-5 attachment -- or detachment, whatever you call them; I don't remember -- a G-5, which was a military government. And those people were specialized in -- what was the word I'm looking for -- dealing with the political circumstance in the various towns and areas in a foreign land.
I see.
You know, like France and Germany --
Right.
-- and Holland and so on. END OF SIDE ONE, TAPE ONE; BEGIN SIDE TWO, TAPE ONE.
We're on side B, and we're talking about the group, the G-2 group that Ollie was in. Okay.
And we had -- we had training in this kind of circumstance. And one of the main functions of the G-2 Section was to have a situation map, which was a portable map, take apart and put up, probably of feet high and probably 30 feet long.
Okay.
And it represented the mapped area that you were in; your front, your sides, showed enemy installations.
Hmm, okay.
Now, where did you get the information? Well, we got the information from our reconnaissance organizations, aircraft as well as ground.
Okay.
Political information, religious information.
Okay, uh-huh.
Interrogation information. And what could be plotted on that situation map was plotted. We're using symbols --
Yes.
-- and stickpins and things to identify what was happening --
Uh-huh.
-- on your particular section that you were assigned, which might run -- I don't know. I was going to say 15 to 40 miles wide, but don't quote me on that.
Yeah. Something like that. Okay.
Yeah. And part of my job was to make these -- plot this map. And the messages would come in from the message center --
Okay.
-- which was a bunch of guys with their equipment. And we had two semitrailers full of radio communication equipment, to Corps, to Army, from the 33rd Cavalry Reconnaissance to other reconnaissance organizations and -- 101st Airborne, for example, and 82nd Airborne and -- who were on our flank at times.
Uh-huh.
And we'd get information from them and they would get information from us, and this information was going on. Now, one of the things that -- it was rather chaotic, to say the least, because nothing lasted more than 20 minutes, you know, or -- nothing lasted more than an hour to two hours. Now, Bastogne was a completely different circumstance.
Right.
I mean, that was -- that was dug in --
Right.
-- circumstance. But --
That was the -- that was the forest? That was where they were in a forest? Am I confusing Bastogne with something else?
Well, was that in the Ardennes? Is that what you're talking --
Maybe that's what --
Bastogne? I think -- I think maybe it was, but I'm not sure about that.
Okay. That's fine.
I've got a map but --
Yeah.
Shows it, but --
Yeah.
101st Airborne were holed up there for I guess a month or something, you know --
Yeah, yeah.
-- during Christmastime in 1944.
Yeah.
And they were on our flank. They were there before we were, obviously, and we got to be on their left flank there for a temporary, maybe 15, 20 days. And that circumstance was very, very chaotic. I don't think that we -- I don't think that we did anything that counted for hardly anything at all because things were happening so -- so fast.
Yeah.
And during that time frame, there was a corridor that had been -- corridor of land that had separated German forces on the left side and German countryside on the right side. And these forces were trying to -- the German forces that still existed were trying to cross this open country --
Okay.
-- open corridor, maybe four, five, seven miles wide --
Okay.
-- and get into the -- get into what they perceived to be a safer place for them to be. And our -- one of our missions at that particular time was to prevent this from happening.
I see. Okay.
But -- now, in reflecting on all of this, at that particular time, that particular circumstance, reflecting on that, Sergeant Ronald Boutin, B-O-U-T-I-N, from Lewiston, Maine --
Uh-huh.
-- was our French interpreter. And we had a reunion in 1977 in Kansas City, and Boutin was there. And we were talking about these kinds of circumstances, about the chaos --
Yeah.
-- and the excitement, you know --
Yeah, yeah.
-- of what was happening and so on. And I said, How did we ever" -- I asked him, I said, "You know, Bout, how did we ever survive all that stuff?" You know. And he said, "Well, we survived because we were never where we were supposed to be." And I said, "Well, you know, that's exactly right. We were never where we were supposed to be. We were always someplace else." But the circumstance of crossing the Rhine, okay -- now, at this time, it was generally accepted that there were pockets of Schutzstaffel that were still loyal to the Hitler circumstance.
Oh, okay, okay.
You know. Pockets here and there of "Never say die" type operation.
Right. Right.
But, generally speaking, the civilian population, it was known to us that they had seen the handwriting on the wall, so to speak, and we were going to move in, and we were moving in on all fronts, and fast.
Uh-huh.
And the circumstance was absolutely immense. Oh, God. It was -- it was unbelievable, the material and the thing we had going.
Uh-huh.
Not only -- I'm not just saying about the th Armored Division, but the whole --
Everybody that was there.
The whole -- you know, we would -- if we had any time off, we'd park the vehicles in the woods and we'd try to get some sleep. And God, in the morning, daylight, maybe four o'clock in the morning, or five o'clock in the morning, our Air Force, the B17s and the 24s and the B25s and the pursuit ships and the whole -- and the -- oh, God -- would start to come over --
Yeah.
-- headed for Germany. And -- for the interior. And, my God.
It was incredible, huh?
Oh, unbelievable.
We were coming in en masse.
En masse.
Yeah.
They'd start at four o'clock in the morning and they wouldn't quit until noon. They're coming and coming and coming.
Yeah.
And peeling off -- well, you really couldn't peel -- you couldn't get a definite idea of what was happening, but you could see them -- oh, God.
Unbelievable?
Unbelievable.
Yeah.
Just absolutely unbelievable.
Now, this would have been about -- what was the time again?
This was in June -- no, this -- no, it wasn't June. It was February of '45.
Okay. Early, early '45.
March, April, May -- oh, I got to tell you. I'll fast forward.
Yeah.
Now, we're in the G-2 Section; right?
Right.
And we know everything. We've got the radio communication with everything.
You're supposed to know everything.
Everything. We're supposed to know everything. We're military intelligence. We're supposed to know everything. And we have the communication system there, parked there in this bivouac area. And we weren't dilettante in private property at that particular time. And we're just loafing around, and we're sitting in our half track. And Sergeant Netzger (ph) was our German interpreter --
Uh-huh.
-- from St. Louis. And he could speak fairly good German, and he could read and write it fairly good. And we are in a place, I think we call -- near Salzburg. I think it was called Tettenhausen. And it was a resort area in the Bavarian Alps, you know.
Uh-huh.
Lots and lots of big resort areas.
Uh-huh.
And we're just there, and there isn't anything going on. And they had a riding stable there, and a lot of guys were going up and they were taking these horses and riding their horses. It was just a lull in the circumstance.
Uh-huh.
And we're lying on our stomachs, and we're just, you know, looking out there. And there was a winding dirt road that went down, you know, just a two-track road, like that, down this hill.
Uh-huh.
Down by the side of the hill. And Sergeant -- somebody said, "Look at there. Look. Look. There's some German soldiers coming up the -- coming up the -- coming up the road."
Oh, no.
"No." "Yeah." "No." "Yeah, they're German. Look at the uniforms. You dummy. Look at the uniforms." "By God, you're right." Then they kept coming closer and they're walking and they're not -- they're not afraid. They've got to know that there are GIs --
Up there, yeah.
-- up there.
Sure. Sure.
And they kept coming closer. And Netzger, our German boy, he said, "Where's your rifle?" Well, we carried carbines, you know.
Yeah, uh-huh.
30-caliber carbine. "Get your rifle." So we run and we get our rifles, you know. And we're looking around for ammunition. You know. Nobody had any ammunition. So here they come, and we grabbed the rifle, and they're -- now they're on top of us and we're right there and we stand up. "Halt." You know.
Yeah.
And they halt. They put their hands up. And Netzger goes over there and, you know, "Bose loss." (ph)
Yeah. Yeah.
You know. And he -- and one of them reached in his pocket and he took out some papers, folded up papers, and he handed them to Netzger. And Netzger opened them up and he read them, spent 30 seconds reading them, and he turned to us and he said, These guys have got Army discharge papers. These are their Army discharge papers." Well, what the hell? And so he talked to the guy and he said, "He says the war is over."
Oh, my gosh.
And we said, "What?" Now, I want you to remember that we're in the G-2 Section; right? We're in Division Headquarters.
You're the first people that should know.
Yeah, we should have known three weeks ago, probably. And Netzger says, "My God," he said, the war's over." And --
And you had to learn it from some former German soldiers.
German soldiers. So what do we do now? He folded up the papers and he gave them back to the guys and they left.
For heaven's sake.
And that's how we learned the war was over.
Why do you think they came up that hill? Do you think they lived up there?
Well, they -- I'll tell you what our mission was at that particular time. A lot of the politicians and a lot of the higher up people in the Hitler regime, in the Army and in the political organization in Germany, were hiding out in an area that they called the National Redoubt area, which was the Bavarian foothills in the Bavarian Alps, and it's the resort country.
Yeah. Yeah.
So that's where they had been going, all of these people. Seeing the handwriting on the wall, they were running to escape --
Oh.
-- into that part of the country. And that's -- that's why -- part of our mission was to secure that thing. I mean, of course, the military government at that point was in heavy duty, you know. That was -- I think that was May 8th, 1945. And that's how we learned about it.
And the officers, too? I mean, you had officers there, and they didn't know this either?
Nobody said anything. Nobody -- I don't think anybody really knew.
For heaven's sake.
I think we knew -- we knew that things had quieted down somewhat, you know.
Right.
First of all, it was not a military-type circumstance in that part of the -- that part of Germany. It was like, for example, if you were in northern Minnesota, everything is happening in Minneapolis, everything is happening in St. Paul, or maybe Rochester, or maybe, you know, Mankato and so on, but nothing is happening up here.
Yeah.
And I think that's maybe the ambiance of that circumstance.
Isn't that funny.
National Redoubt area. So we thought, "Well, we'll see what happens." Well, then activity started to happen, you know. And we thought, "Well, what are we going to do?" And, "Well, we'll just wait for somebody to say something." You know. "Well, let's go to town." Now, there was a little town there, and I think it was called Tettenhausen. Very picturesque part of the country down there.
Uh-huh.
And "Let's go down and ask somebody, find out what it's all about." So we go down and we come to this nice house, and I walked up there, Netzger and I walk up and we knock on the door, and we look in there and we see all these little kids. There must have been 15 or 20 of them standing in the hall. There was a main hallway there. And they were running into the other rooms, you know. Pretty soon they all disappeared.
Uh-huh.
Netzger said, "Wonder what that's all about?" You know. Big family.
Yeah.
So finally this fellow came to the door and talked to Netzger. He said, "This guy has been the director of the Berlin Symphony Orchestra" --
Oh, my gosh.
-- "and this is his home." And then we found out that -- then his wife came and, oh, she was hysterical and she was crying. And we're standing there wondering what to do next. And Netzger is asking him a few questions. And they had taken these kids in, orphans --
Oh.
-- and was taking care of them, so...
Isn't that something?
So we got -- we got what little information -- and they had not known that the war was over --
Huh.
-- so we told them that. That's when the woman just went berserk. She got so hysterical.
Yeah. Yeah.
But I like that story because it's so typical of the things that happened over there. My God, there was absolute -- and they had -- they had a supply organization called the Red Ball Express. Have you ever heard that?
I've heard the name, but I don't know anything about it.
And that was, I don't know how many thousands of trucks they had, six-by-six, what we called a six-by-six truck, which was a 10-ton, a five -- seven-ton truck, and that was running constantly into the seaports from France into Germany with supplies --
Uh-huh.
-- just around the clock.
Uh-huh.
Oh, my God. Oh.
So now, basically, you became an occupation force.
We were occupation, yeah. And -- but not long.
Yeah.
Because we got redeployment, and being in the G-2 Section, we got the -- we got, subsequently, not over there, but when we got to the States, we got the -- we got our copy of the invasion manual for Japan.
Oh.
Oh, gee.
Next step.
Next step, yeah. So we came home.
So they brought you back.
Yeah.
How long after the war had actually ended?
The war ended in May. July.
Okay.
July. And we got back in August.
Okay. Did you come back on a troop train to the U.S. or --
We came --
Not troop train. A ship.
We came back on a boat.
Yeah, ship. Sorry.
August 6th. 20th Armored Units arrived in New York and Boston; four transports brought more than ,000 troops from Europe into the Port of New York.
Okay.
And --
So you came into New York?
Yeah.
And then what did they do with you?
Then they gave us a 45-day delay en route.
Ah. Which meant?
I came home.
Yeah.
I went back there after 45 days and I walked into headquarters, G-2 Section, and Master Sergeant Chaveneau was there, and he said, "What are you doing here?" And I said, "Well, you know, my thing was over, I came back." "Well," he said, "didn't you get our message?" I said, "No. What message?" He said, "We've extended it for another 10 days." Well, I never got that.
Oh, gee.
So jumped on a bus, came back.
Came back again.
Came back home for another 10 days. Then went back, got the information, read the thing, you know, parts of it. We're going to land in some island in north Japan.
Huh.
And then they started -- now, you got points. You got points recorded on your service record of the number of days that you spent in the Army, how many days you spent overseas.
Right.
How many this and that and so forth and so on.
Combat zone.
Combat zone.
Were you wounded. Yeah.
Yeah. And I had too many points to be sent back overseas, but I didn't have enough to get out.
Oh, shoot.
You know.
Yeah.
So -- and they were starting to have -- they were starting to have -- the GIs that were in the United States were starting to strike for release because now the war is over, and -- oh, yes. While I was home that second time, they had bombed Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
Oh, okay. Okay.
And the Japanese had surrendered in that short period of time.
Yeah.
Now, that happened in the end of August.
Right. Right.
And so now all those guys that had -- you know, were striking against being kept in.
Right.
And so we were discharged in -- huh? A discussion was held off the record with somebody else in room.]
That happened this morning, so...
Yeah. Oh, dear.
What time is it?
It's 10 till 12.
Oh.
You probably need to eat.
Where do we have to go? Home. And I went to visit my good friend's mother. He was in the Navy. And he was in the South Pacific on a PT boat.
Okay.
So I went to see her. And we're sitting in her backyard in a couple of lawn chairs when we heard that the war was over in Japan. So we went back -- that was in August, and -- late in August, wasn't it? 15th? 18th? 20th?
Latter part, I think, yeah.
Latter part, whatever. And so I went back to Camp Cook in California with the 20th Armored Division, and arrived there and was told, "Get yourself in shape to go home. You're going to be discharged." Well, one of the guys in the organization there, Furedy, knew somebody that had a car.
Ah.
And rather than taking a troop train and going to Camp McCoy down here --
Uh-huh.
-- and then going through the whole thing, and because we were in Division Headquarters, he had connections in the judge advocate general's office, or the AG or whatever you call it, the service _____, and Sergeant -- Master Sergeant John Galvin was the -- in the G-1 Section, and G-1 is personnel.
Oh, okay.
So he made arrangements -- somebody, however it was done -- so we could be discharged in California --
Okay.
-- near Sacramento at a separation center out there, the guy that had the car. So four of us, three in the back seat, two in the front, in a 1938 Ford --
The five of you.
Five of us.
Okay.
Drove across the country. Got in Kansas City; I got an airline ticket and came home on Mid-Continent Airlines.
Wow. That happened so fast.
Yeah, it really did.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Huh.
I don't know -- that was -- but that circumstance over there in Germany was just absolutely immense. They -- you know, my first impression one time, we were -- we were in -- we were in eastern France. Well, we had gone from Normandy, we went down near Rouen, and then we went on a northeast trek to Amiens, and then we went to Amsterdam and we went up into Holland --
Uh-huh.
-- and then we turned around and we went down through -- we crossed at Bonn --
Okay.
-- and at a bridge there and we got into Germany. And then we went to Nuremberg and -- where did we go? We went to Nuremberg. We went through Aachen.
Yeah.
Big battle in Aachen. We crossed at Bonn. Went to Frankfort, went to Wurzburg, went to Nuremberg, went to Munich, and went to Salzburg. That's where we wound up, in Salzburg. And we had -- we were scheduled to go down and meet with Marshall Tito. Wasn't he the premier of Yugoslavia or --
Something like that, yeah.
Something like that.
Yeah.
Or Bulgaria or whatever.
One of those.
Yeah. And -- but we never got that far.
Okay.
We turned around and came back.
Yeah.
Of course, we never got to Salzburg. Our units got to Sal- -- many of our units got to Salzburg.
The headquarter people.
But we never got --
How did you set up your headquarters at each of these places? Did it just depend? Did you set up in a chateau or --
Yeah.
-- a house or a tent?
Yeah.
Was it ever a tent?
Yeah. The general saw to it that we had about the best billets that you could find.
Okay.
Now, when we got in -- when we got in (?Lamarue?), which I guess, in French, means the old road, and there was a chateau; and I had a picture of that chateau --
Hmm.
-- someplace. But, anyway, and we were -- it was a three-story building, and it had a full attic, finished attic in it, with dormers. And Boutin and I -- Boutin and I -- Furedy and I were put in a room up there.
Up in the highest part.
Up in the high part. And General Ward was right below us --
Oh.
-- in a room. He had a two-room or three-room suite --
Uh-huh.
-- in that one. And we had a fireplace in there. And this was in February or March -- February, maybe. Latter part of February. It was cold --
Yeah, sure.
-- and it was snowing --
Yeah.
-- and it was raining and everything. And we're up there and Furedy says, "Let's build a fire in that fireplace." "Good idea."
Yeah.
So we went out and we gathered some wood when we went out there, and he had to chop it. We had a little hand ax, and he was chopping on it like this.
Uh-huh.
Pretty soon there was a knock on our door, or maybe just somebody came in, and it's one of General Ward's dog robbers, you know, a first lieutenant.
Okay.
"What are you guys doing?" "Oh, we're chopping." He says, "You know what you did?" "No." "Well, all that pounding loosened some tiles that were in the roof of the General's quarters."
The ceiling.
Well, we got transferred from that place over to the barn. The loft in the barn.
That was your penalty box.
And I thought -- and this lieutenant, I remember like it was yesterday, and he said, "You guys, General Ward would like to talk to you guys." Never happened, but that's what this guy said.
Oh, shew.
And I thought, "We're dead. We're dead. We're going to meet the firing squad in the morning." You know. But --
Nobody was hurt from these falling --
Huh?
Nobody was hurt from these falling tiles.
No.
Yeah. Well, that's good.
No. No.
General didn't much like them falling on him in his sleep.
No, he didn't like the idea of tiles falling out of the ceiling. I don't even know what kind of tiles they were, whether they were ceramic or whether they were some kind of acoustical material or what they were.
That's funny.
Anyway. But that's the kind of billets we had. And in a town called Turlemont, I think, we billeted in people's houses, at least Division Headquarters did, and we might have a house to ourself.
Uh-huh.
And then we might have the school building where we would have the situation maps and we would have the communications set up and all of that kind of thing. And we might have a stockade located near there with a couple of those multiple gun carriers to watch the prisoners that we took in and out.
Oh, okay.
And all that kind of thing. So it was an immense operation. Even at division level, it was a pretty good -- you got 15,000 guys, you know, and so you got all these units and it's -- it's an immense thing. And then you've got Army.
Yeah.
And I saw General Patton one time, came and visited us. He -- General Patton -- it was raining, and it was cold, and we were outside, and we had -- they had a tent put up, kind of a large tent, and they were making coffee in there and they were making drinks and whatnot, the officers.
Yeah.
And the word got out that General Patton was coming. We were in Third Army at the time. And best behavior, obviously. So he comes in, and everybody is, you know, kind of nervous about the whole thing. Now, our officers, some of them, had flight outfits on, Air Force flight jackets.
Okay.
Leather.
Uh-huh. Like an aviator jacket kind of thing.
Yeah. Aviator stuff and jumpers, you know --
Okay.
-- lined with, you know -- what do you call that curly stuff? Warm, very warm?
Yeah. Okay.
And General Patton came in and he looked around and he said -- you know, everybody's just kind of silent, you know, he's just looking around, and he's drinking a cup of coffee or something, and waiting for something to happen. He said, "Where did you men get those clothing?" And he was referring to these flight jackets and stuff.
Uh-huh.
And he said, "That's not Armored Force issue. That's Air Force issue."
Whoops.
"Get rid of that stuff and put on your regular uniforms." You know. Which were, you know, warm enough.
Yeah.
Combat jackets and, you know, we had -- we had warm clothing. And so he made them take it -- they didn't take it off right then and there in front of all of us or anything, but they got rid of those things and they wore the Armored Force.
Regulation uniform.
And his point, his point, I think, was these guys here haven't got that kind of clothing, and you're not in the Air Force, so you take that stuff off and you get in your regular uniform.
Uh-huh.
Which they did.
Huh.
And he jumped on his machine and away he went. And that was that. That was the end of him.
Huh. Was that the only time you ever saw him?
Yeah.
Yeah?
Yeah, for 15 minutes maybe.
Yeah.
20 minutes at the most.
Yeah.
And --
Did he really have the pearl-handled pistol?
Well, I --
Or did you notice?
No. You see, General Patton would tell you, "Those are not pearl handled. They're ivory."
Oh.
Yeah. So everybody knew that, you know.
Oh.
But I didn't see that.
Okay.
I didn't see anything like that.
Yeah. Yeah. Huh.
But --
Let's fast forward to when you got out.
Okay.
You came home, and then what did you do? I mean, how did it feel? Were you kind of at a loss or were you just so delighted to be home? Did you --
Well, I got home, and I got home in January or February, and there were a lot of GIs getting out at that very same time.
Sure.
So I went to school. I went to university. And the University of Minnesota, because -- now, don't quote me on this, but because there were so many GIs getting out at that particular time frame, they set up a circumstance where you could register and start school the next week.
Wow.
They did that purposely because of the --
Get them going.
Get them going on the GI Bill.
Yeah.
So I went there and I started going to school. And Carol and I were married, and she worked and I went to school.
Now, you married, once you got -- did you know her while you were in the service?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah. I knew her in high school.
Oh, all right.
Yeah. She was a sophomore and I was a senior.
Yeah. So were you engaged while you were over there or --
No. No, we were not engaged. We were -- she would have to answer that. I don't know.
You don't know whether you were engaged?
Well, yeah, we were engaged.
Okay.
But that came -- let's see, March -- let's see. September -- well, we were engaged, but we weren't engaged very long.
I see. Okay.
Could have been only four or five months, something like that.
Okay.
Three months, maybe.
Yeah. After. That was after you came home.
Yeah.
Okay. So you went to school and what -- at university.
Went to the university.
And what program were you in?
Well, I was in the arts college.
Okay.
They call it today -- they had a different name for it then, but now they call it liberal arts, SLA or something.
Okay.
And you have to take all the prerequisites as a freshman.
Sure.
So I took credits in science, credits in English and history.
Uh-huh.
And credits in physical science and so forth, building that thing. And of course you had electives, and I took electives in the department of art and commercial art --
Okay.
-- at the university. And then when I got to be a junior, then you can get into senior college, and then you can start to specialize in your particular thing. You've got all your prerequisites out of the way.
Yeah.
Your English and your literature and your this and your that, so... And that's what I did. I graduated in June of nineteen-something. When was that? Nineteen forty -- 1949.
Okay.
I did four-year curriculum in three and a half years. Went to summer school.
Okay.
And I worked part time.
Uh-huh.
I worked in the art department at the health department over there. The State Health Department --
Okay.
-- has a building on the campus.
Uh-huh.
And I worked in there. And then I worked for -- I worked in the anatomy building as a medical illustrator.
Oh, okay.
I didn't do any sophisticated medical stuff, but I did bar diagrams and histograms --
Uh-huh.
-- and periodical things, you know.
Uh-huh. Illustrations for magazines and whatever.
Charts. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, so we only have -- if we're going to quit here, what did you do your career then, as a career?
Well, this guy, Wiggins, was one of the main instructors in the department of art over at the university, and we were being graduated, and he got us all together -- there weren't many of us; there was only 20 or 30 guys in that -- in that -- sans girls --
Uh-huh. People, yeah.
-- that were being graduated out of the courses, and he was -- he was the mentor in this outfit. And he said, "Now, you people are qualified commercial artists. You've got a lot to learn yet, but you're good at what you do, and you're going to go out and you're going to get a job and I don't want you to take less than five dollars an hour. You're worth it." You're this and you're that. And you report back to me. And I want you to be sure that you get a good wage. It's important that you get a good wage so you can progress in your trade" --
Yeah.
-- "and five dollars an hour is the minimum." So we went out and carried our portfolios with us --
Right.
-- and went to advertising agencies and printers and --
Right.
-- large companies and everything looking for a job in their art department or their, you know, whatever. And I couldn't get a job to save my soul. Boy, I -- and I had to go out and look for a job at eight o'clock in the morning and come home at four-thirty or five o'clock, because Carol was working full time.
Yeah. Yeah.
So I did that. I was very, very conscientious. And I finally ran into a guy that said, "I know a guy that's starting a small company in the basement of his house, and he's looking for a guy like you that can do this and do that, and so why don't you go down and see him?" So I went out to 5641 Morgan Avenue South and rapped at the door and went down in the basement, and here's this guy. And, "Yeah," he said, "I'd like to give you some work. When can you start?" And I said, "Well" -- and he said, How about now?" And he says, "Hang your coat on that hook over there. Why don't you start now?" Yeah, okay. What are you paying?" "Ninety cents an hour." I said, "Okay."
Yeah.
And --
Anything for a job.
Yeah, anything. Because I had been out of work three months, yeah --
Yeah. Yeah.
-- and not doing a damn thing. So I never saw Wiggins later, but I don't know of anybody that was making -- I don't think he was making five dollars an hour.
He was giving you something pretty high to shoot for.
Yeah. Yeah.
Then how did you spend the rest of your career?
Well, I worked for him, and we built a company together.
What was the name of that company?
Photomatic.
Okay.
And I had been with him 16 years.
Wow. Okay.
And then I started my own company, and was in that for 20 years.
What was the name of that company?
Spectrum, Incorporated.
That rings a bell.
Does it?
Yeah.
Well, there was another Spectrum, and we had precedence over them, but we allowed them to use the name anyway.
Ah, okay.
But they were a national organization. And I don't know what they did. I'm going to have to refresh my memory on that.
Yeah. What did your company do?
We were -- well, we were a graphic arts --
Okay.
-- company. And we were in the color business.
Okay.
Anything that -- there were 13 of our shops in town.
Okay.
And we did color separations for color printing.
Okay.
Full color, four-color printing. And we had a good company. When I sold out -- 20 years ago, my God. When I sold out, we had 53 employees --
Wow.
-- and we were -- we were considered state of the art. We had a nice company. Had a nice company.
Yeah. Okay.
Been here ever since.
Yeah? That's fine. Well, I know we're going to get short on time. Can you tell me -- let me ask a couple of global questions, and then we'll quit. How do you think that the service and your experience in the service affected your life? I mean, this is a big question. I know this is a big question, but is there a short answer to it?
No, there's not. I don't know. There probably is a short answer to it, but {coughs}-- excuse me. But it's -- I think that it's always kind of there. And I keep in touch with the master sergeant in our section, and I've got -- I've got these kind of -- these kind of things going on 15 or 20 years. Oh, here, these were the things I wanted to show you. I got these field dispatches of the organization that I belonged to.
You've got all kinds of stuff.
20th Armored Division field dispatch.
So that's -- do you have a reunion --
Yeah.
-- of that company?