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This is the oral history of World War II veteran Ralph Thomas Boose. Mr. Boose served in the US Navy Hospital Corps. He served in the Pacific Theater. I'm Tom Swope, and this interview was recorded at Mr. Boose's home in Sagamore Hills, Ohio on February 26th 2004. Tom was 77 at the time of this recording.
Where were you living in 1941?
19 -- Well, 1941, my family had kind of split up a little bit, and my brother knew a fellow named, Simon -- Earl Simon -- and he had moved out of his house, he was one of the first guys drafted -- 158 was his number with the cavalry when he still had horses but then that was soon taken care of -- so my brother Russ, my brother George, and I went to live in his house with his mother and father. So that would be in -- on route 91, in a house that has a very historical value. It was taken down stone by stone and reconstructed in Hale Village. So I was living in Twinsburg on 90 -- Route 91 at Twinsburg, and I think I was listening to -- listening to a radio, but seemed to me that a out of state football game had some -- this thing happened on Saturday but what -- Sunday.
Sunday, right.
But would be -- was it Saturday here?
No, it was Sunday here.
Was it Sunday here?; How the --
Mmhmm. It was Sunday afternoon, it might have been a professional football game you were listening to?
No, that don't -- the pros weren't -- no there was no -- that I know of -- so well, I'm confused. But any rate, I guess I listened to out of state the day before.
Mmhmm.
And then -- yes, but any rate I happened to be listening to the radio for some reason or other by myself in Earl Simon's father's and mother's living room, and when they broke in -- in with the broadcast -- now I didn't know what the hell that meant. I was only 16 at the time, and I had no I -- what -- who the Japanese -- for heaven's sakes, you know, and invaded where? Pearl Harbor? So -- but then I soon found out what that was all about. And my father had died in 1943 -- well I'm jumping ahead here. Okay, next question.
Well, yeah actually so you were just probably still in high school then when you ____.
-- Yes, yes, yes. Junior in high school.
Did you ever do anything for the war effort before you went into the service?
No. Our family had split -- was so rocky that no, other than helping as a family contributing old medals, and old pots and pans and old tires, the things of that nature, and of course my mother at that time had what she called her victory garden, you know, but other than the family effort the collectibles, no I didn't do anything.
You didn't do anything organized at school or anything?
They had -- they probably did, but I don't recall what that was. I'm sure they had drives, I'm sure they did. And I was a member of the 4H Club at the time, and stuff like -- I'm sure we did things, I just can't recall what they were, you know.
So then did you finish school before you went into the service?
No -- let's say -- my father died in April of '43 and all -- he was sort of my support, and I was living with another family at this time and he -- Dick Crossic [ph] was a very close friend of mine. And the Crossic [ph] family took me in without any qualms about it, and her -- his -- Dick's mother called us the boys like I was her other son -- anyway he was going to be 18 in October and would be drafted. And I would be 17 in August of that year -- in 1943 -- and I just felt that -- didn't go -- I just, I couldn't stay here in this house although Mrs. Crossic [ph] made it very plain to me that I was welcome to stay, blah, blah, blah, you know, I was -- so I enlisted in 1943, in the Navy, and of course they gave you the 30 day waiting period. And I went into -- and I actually went to Great Lakes on October 9th, I believe, of 1943.
What can you tell me about your training?
Well, we -- at that time they had either a nine-week boot camp, or 11-week boot camp -- you went in that late in the year they cut it back to nine weeks -- so Dick and I went together, and we were in the same barracks together, and one night they had these in house type patrols, like fire patrol and things of that nature, and a few went out on these patrols. What you would do, you walk around the whole compound in boot camp and go and check the boilers, and see that the guys were firing everything, you know, nothing going wrong. You could also get a chance to smoke ____ after the smoking lamp was out. Plus you got points and you might have to, if you got enough points, you may not have to go to what they called a muster, you know, where you were required to be for a lecture, or required to be for a drill, you could skip this or that. Well, unfortunately it was a bad night. Dick got what the Navy called cat fever. He picked up a cold, and we got separated. So I came home in December for nine -- after nine weeks, and he had to stay the full 11 weeks. He came home after that. So any -- yes I came home after nine weeks of boot camp in 1943. And during that time his brother and my brother were also very close, and the Crossics [ph] had in the family -- their grandfather had a bakery shop on a 131st and Corlett near the Miles Avenue area. So Dick's brother Louie is a _____ -- is senior in school, in high school, he dropped out to the go to work in the bakery. And Dick had another brother, Charles, who worked in the bakery. So my brother George and Louie were very, very close friends; although my brother George completed high school, my brother George qualified for the Navy Air Corps with everything except his teeth didn't fit properly, and his lower bite. And they said no, no the G's, stuff like that. So he -- so anyways, so he decided to go into cook and bakery school along with Louie, Dick's brother, so those two guys went into cook and bakery school that filtered down to us. Okay. We're brothers together; we're going to go to cook and bakery school, too. So Dick when you're going for your interview he qualified, but the guy had a -- I can't remember, but he was a good, good fellow -- he looked, he says why you want to go to cook and bakery school? He says you have no background for it, blah, blah, blah. And I said, "Well my buddy is going to go." And he looked at me, well that's fine hes worked in that bakery on weekends during -- in high school but you haven't. And he said that I noticed here on the form that you filled out, you lean towards medicine. You talk about you want to be a doctor and so forth. So why don't you go into hospital corps school. You qualify there, he said we have openings there. And I said, "Okay, fine." So he put me in the hospital corps school, and I went there, and Dick went to the cook and bakery school. And I can't remember this guys name, but he was a different type of petty officer. He also said that you put down here on your application your nationality is German and Irish. That's not your nationality. Your nationality is American because you were born in this country. Why don't you put down American. Okay. So I erase it and I put down American. Then I tell us come back to the barracks at night, I told the guys what, this guy's crazy -- well, he was right. He put me in the hospital corps, and he put down my nationality as American, which is true. Your nationality is American. That's the country you were born in, you know. There's German and Irish in the background, that's your ancestry, you know, would be German and Irish. Anyway, so that's how I got in the hospital corps. And then after boot leave -- boot camp leave -- which was nine days I think at home, then I went back to Great Lakes to highly intensive high training. The things I learned there in that -- I think it was a total of 14 weeks all together -- so I think it was six weeks of intensified classes taught by doctors and nurses, and then med school guys who had washed out. And then eight weeks on the war before and it was very intensified training, very intensified. Okay.
Did anything unusual happen during that training?
Here? During the training --
-- During the hospital corps training, anything that comes to mind?
Well, no. Other than the fact that I had scored very high on my abilities, and such a such and -- I always got the extra duties. I always got the special washes, but no, nothing unusual at all happened there. Just probably very routine, you know, other than the fact I would go beyond the limit when they had a certain -- like a 40 hour pass or 72 hour pass you were supposed to stay within a certain area. I'd come home every time. Sometimes, though, {laughing} I'd get a train -- milk train out of Chicago -- I'd come home, say hi to everybody, go to a movie, go right back again, you know. But I just -- I don't know why I did that. So no, nothing really unusual happened.
But as long as you got back on time there was no problem?
Right. Right.
They wanted you in case --
Sometime you had to run like hell. Once or twice if you were lucky and you got a good petty officer, who was like the officer of the day, in the evening the commission officer -- noncoms -- if you were late they'd give you this big lecture. They're going to kick your butt, do this and they were going to do that. But they'd let you in, you know. Nothing unusual happened. I got back late a few times, you know, but didn't care.
So then what happened next after you --
-- well then I was -- I had that training and they also of course had included -- that combat training, and they gave you these little kits. We used to call them suture kits, and they were different sizes -- what they were like square cake pans. And in one would be a certain number of instruments that'd be wrapped up, and another one would be a little more. Finally you had enough equipment that you could actually perform a minor operation right in the field. And, so that kind of training -- I think I was in February of 1944 -- let's see, from boot camp to the hospital corps training, to the war and then I went to Shoemaker, California. It was a receiving station for going off overseas, and I think we left Shoemaker in February of 1944. I don't remember the name of the ship. It was one of those big and godly liberty ships. Respect five guys to the deck -- yes this is a very unusual story. I think it bears repeating. My family has heard some of them, but -- these liberty ships, or with whatever they were, and had these big holes where you put the men, and I was this one roll right near the bulk, and along that one bulkhead was a rack of torpedoes. My, God, have you ever seen a torpedo close up? They're as big as a bus. They had three of them stacked up there, and three more stacked up there, three more stacked up -- and taking supplies and during the -- during the day we went into a zigzag. And of course we were new at what they called the tuxedo junction -- torpedo junction, rather, named after the song Tuxedo Junction -- which is headed down towards Noumea /New Caldonia, down that area down there. And although everybody kept it quiet, one of the ship's company guys kind of allowed -- they'd spotted a submarine. So we were zigzagging for a dual purpose, and we stood on that deck one night -- during the same time, this same period of time -- and we looked, and we were so dumb we didn't know -- we see this thing, this wake coming and something hit -- bounced off right below. Look at that, you know, we didn't know what the hell that was. Well, it was a torpedo. It hit, and it was a dud, didn't do anything. It bounced away. And that's when we realized -- then the ship's company guys came running, and everybody's running, running, running, running -- that's when we found out that, yeah, there was a sub in the area. Also, there was a British -- I guess you call them ____, I don't know what they would be -- British version of our B-25, a small two engine plane, and it kept circling the area. And then our guys cleared their guns and they shot balloons. They missed this one big huge balloon so I guess they radioed to this aircraft, this British airplane they came up and flew, and shot it down. But any rate we still didn't really know. Okay, so now later on this same night, below decks in our bunks {bump bump bump bump bump bump} right on that bulkhead. Well, those damn torpedoes were about from here to that wall away from me. So twice that night I would have been blown completely out of the water. I didn't realize what that was until after we got overseas we start comparing notes and I broke out in a cold sweat, you know, so twice we watched the torpedo hit and bounce away and then at night we felt another one hit and bounce away. So twice -- that because, you know torpedoes early part of the war were terrible such as American torpedoes. I had a book here that's real thick called Silent Victory which I gave away to a friend of mine who collects all this, but was the story about all the subs, you know, and this guy _____ Morton -- or whoever he was -- one of our more famous sub commanders -- what was the name of his sub. It was finally lost toward the end -- but our torpedoes were stinko, you know, so anyway.
So obviously these were bad Japanese torpedoes?
They were just as bad as ours.
Oh, man {laughing}.
Just as bad as ours. So I got to Noumea/New Caldonia -- gosh it took quite a while, maybe two weeks to get there, and of course Noumea/New Caldonia was nothing at all like McHale's Navy. We were not allowed to go in town because you would see these big, tall, half Aborigines. Noumea/New Caldonia was identified to us as France's secondary Devil's Island. They're real bad ones -- so went into town we had to go in groups or pairs and there were certain places we could go and couldn't go. And you'd walk down the street and you'd see these big, huge, muscular, bushy red haired guys with red like complexions which were Aborigines, you know, intermixed with the French people. And they say that these guys would knife you just to be doing it, and you got that general feeling when you saw them down the street because you gave them a pretty wide berth when you saw them in town. And well, one guy from my area in camp, they found him in a ditch pretty well slashed up one night, but he was the kind of guy who would go after anybody's woman. Went after the wrong woman, and that's where he ended up. So anyway -- so yes. February 1944 after all this intensified training --
-- garbage truck. {garbage truck}
Oh, okay. Garbage truck -- intensified training went overseas about two weeks, and ended up in Noumea/New Caldonia in a place called -- it had been MOB 5, which is a mobile unit, where they had everything you could pick up and leave when they had to go with the Marines -- take everybody with them, the personnel, the doctors the nurses and the corpsmen and all the necessary gear, but by this time things had pushed farther up north. Mob 5 became Fleet Hospital 105. So I spent a lot time there on ward duty and things of that nature and then, I was sent up to -- my wife loves this, Espiritu Santos [ph] in New Hebrides. But Espiritu Santos [ph], that cracks her up -- and that also had been at one time Mob 3, which is now Hospital 103. And this was in -- when would this be -- I know, I went to Guam. I was involved in Guam about the eighth wave, not you know pretty far back in July of '44. I can't remember these actual dates, but any rate.
Exact dates don't matter.
Yeah.
What kinds of things did you do on ward duty when you were -- before the Guam invasion?
Oh, in the ward duty? Yeah, everything. We did everything, and when I tell this story to some of the RNs today, when I go to the various hospitals, they're astounded that we were allowed to start IVs. We gave all the injections, the nurses did nothing and just followed the doctor and wrote in a book and had the keys to the narcotics drawer, that's all. We would give a guy morphine with this bent spoon thing over a little -- this alcohol thing -- and we'd put a little sterile water in there and take a morphine tablet and melt it down suck it up and give the guy a shot. And we did all the -- we changed all the dressings and applied the new dressings. A typical day would be the doctor would come in in the morning. A typical day had to go down all the beds and everybody who had any kind of a wound used to have to loosen the bandage so when the doctor came, you would just, you know, and hed say change this guy's dressing, do this, do that. Then after he left, we followed out his orders and we would put our new dressings or cleanse the wound or do this or do that, and that was interesting. I loved that part. I loved that because I was -- although it was here in the States, as well as originally overseas the ward duty was -- but you felt like you really were contributing to the general health and welfare of the Marines that were -- Navy guys that you were working with, you know. Keep their wounds clean and do everything the doctor said that's where my reputation built because I was very -- I was very conscientious. I'm going to blow my own horn here, but I was. I was very conscientious, and I enjoyed doing that sort of thing. So the main thing a typical day would be to the TPR's -- temperature, respiration and pulse in the morning, and then of course serving their food trays and things and giving those who couldn't, give them bed baths and prepare the dressings and then change the dressings and prepare the IVs or start the IVs, and give them whatever medications the doctors ordered. Some doctors made rounds twice, and they'd come back in the afternoon same thing, but generally speaking, just one trip through -- yep.
So did you land with the Marines on Guam then you say what, about the eighth wave?
Yeah, the eighth wave. Yeah -- what the hell you call those?
Higgins boats or amtraks. Would things that just hit the beach with the ramp?
The ramp goes down -- what the hell was that?
CVP or something.
What the hell -- what was the name for them?
Not LST or LCT or --
Well, I brought them up, you should talk to him. Hes going to insist LST landing ship troops.
That's the big one -- LSTs were the big ones.
Landing ship tank is what they stood for, but Joe insists landing ship troop. So, he may -- when he landed in Italy, he may have been on an LST --
-- Possibly.
But see the T to him was troop, but to me the T to me is tank, and they were that type. That's the type of thing that it was.
Sounds right.
Of course they were still shelling and still snipers and still fire, and I like that too because then when you got to corpsman -- when you got to a wounded Marine right in the field, that gave you an opportunity to do -- we were taught the first day, the first thing you do is remove the cause, whatevers causing the wound. So if you could find a piece of shrapnel, get rid of it. And that's when you treated -- basically you treated the guys wound and -- if they had a little rear beach hospital set up you would see to it that he got there through the stretcher bearers or sometimes if you were close enough to the hospital yourself, you could start an IV on the guy, you know, whatever, and even the plasma -- we had plasma then in those days, it was a powder. A brown -- white brown powder in one jug and you put that together with a jug of normal saline together, turn them over and then the plasma would become liquefied, and you give that to them, it was for them, but you had to be pretty close to the beach hospital to do that. So that part I liked too.
You remember the first time you treated a Marine in the field?
Yeah, that was terrifying because you didnt know if you can do the right thing or the wrong thing. You didnt know really what was the problem was. The first guy I treated was -- had a very bad shrapnel wound in the stomach and one in his arm. Matter of fact, that seemed to be the general thing and it was a bloody mess, you know, and horrible pain. At that point I wasn't cheating on the morphine, I was giving him the full morphine. Only thing you could do there would be to clean the wound best you could, shake your silver powder in and put a compress bandage on it and give him a shot of morphine, and put his rifle on the ground, and mark him for the litter bearers to take him back. But yes, I can't remember this guys name -- of course names didnt mean anything anyway. Seem like his name was Ottinger [ph]. But yes, I was terrified that first guy because although this was not {zing zing} going like you see on Band of Brothers, it was still -- there were snipers still, and the enemy was still there, and the guy was still badly wounded and you were -- but anyway, okay, to make a long story short, I was terrified of how I treated my first guy. Was I doing the right thing and was I helping him. So, you know, we used to go so far as to give the guy a cigarette, stuff like that. If he wanted water which was -- a stomach wound was a mortal sin, you know -- if the doctors or nurses knew you were giving them water with a stomach wound they would become very upset. Youd give them a little water out of the canteen and youre trying to make them comfortable, very comfortable. I can't remember -- there was a movie on TV narrated by Lee Marvin who really got shot in the butt on IWO. That was his claim to fame. But he narrated it, and I remember this one famous line and it was -- the Marine was killed -- the famous line -- you probably heard it too, was, Another Marine reporting, sir; Ive served my time in hell, you know, that went through my mind, too. Am I going to -- it was terrifying, lets put it that way.
So you dont have any way of knowing of whether he made it or not?
I imagine he did because he -- that's a good question. But I imagine he did because he seemed to be pretty good all aside from the pain and the seriousness of the wound. I think he probably did, but no, I have no way of knowing, absolutely no way of knowing. The only way I knew how a guy would make it would be if I was in one of the rear hospitals on ward duty, then you knew because you were with the guy for two or three days, you know. You knew either he was going to make it or he wasnt going to make it. I can remember the first guy that we lost -- this was at Fleet Hospital 103, and I'd gone back there for some reason or other, I dont know what it was. We got an influx of wounded in. And my doctor -- JRC Cullen ______. Dr. Cullen was a famous neurosurgeon from John Hopkins [ph] and he was my doctor. Well, officer that I worked for on the -- and he called me in, got me out of bed about 3:00 oclock in the morning and just got a shipment in and he worked on this one guy for about 8 hours and he told me, he said okay, go home and get some sleep because I want you to take the first watch. Well, the first watch never happened because, you know, he died. And I can remember it was daylight when I reported and the Dr. Cullens was coming out of the _____, he was -- and I knew by then why I wasnt called because the short patrol told me why. The guy had died and Dr. Cullens eyes were all watery, and he you could tell that it hit him very hard and I thought to myself, my God, you know, if that affects him that way, how's it going to affect me, you know, if someone should die right where I'm at? Well, it happened after that, but it was -- so that the humane side of all this is that although Dr. Cullen had operated on many, many Marines, and hed seen death many, many times, still had the affect -- he actually, he had tears in his eyes actually -- and see at that time, too, I wanted to be a doctor. And when I saw that, I thought no. Do I want to be a doctor? No way. So I kind of changed my idea of being a doctor at that time, but that part I knew very well -- to see Dr. Cullen crying because he lost his patient. He worked so hard on him, you know.
You mentioned cheating a little bit on the morphine? {laughing}
Yeah, well, that was after I had been around awhile. This was in the combat thing, but this happened in the field just once, I believe there, then the rest of the cheating on the narcotic part came back when they were on the wards and we didn't have that little toothpaste tube and we were cheating on the dosage we gave them in a little bent spoon -- whatd they call that? Well, pink stuff -- canned heat.
Oh, right.
A lot of guys would squeeze out the alcohol and drink it, you know.
Well, you know I can't --
{bird singing} Well, in that case the nurse give you the key to narcotics if they trusted you -- if they trusted you theyd give you the key to the narcotics drawer. Youd take out a full half-page tablet or quarter-grain tablet, and that's partway theirs where wed give the patient, wed cheat there. But yes, in the field, that was in Guam, in the field after a couple of patients, and after seeing all this stuff, you know, and bodies kind of stacked up here and there, and the callus way in which the burial details handled -- it just kind of got to you a little bit, you know what I mean. And that's where we cheated there a couple of times too, you know. But see giving -- rolling up this toothpaste tube and not giving him the full dose and marking on his forehead, you know, MS quarter-grain at whatever time it was you gave it to him on the forehead, you know. Thatd only happened once or twice in the field, you know, but roll up, give the guy -- say if the average wound, it was standard quarter-grain in those -- I don't know what that would be today, but a quarter-grain of morphine was the average treatment for the average wound. If it was really severe you would give them a half-grain because that's potent stuff. And a quarter-grain was really potent and a half-grain, my, God, you could amputate his leg on it seem like. That was a lot of morphine. So yes, you had these little toothpaste tubes and you rolled it up to eighth-grain, quarter-grain, half-grain. Wed draw up to a quarter-grain, as I told you before, mark on his forehead -- eighth-grain rather -- mark on his forehead quarter-grain, then take the other eighth-grain ourselves just to get through the day. A lot of -- I suppose there were some corpsmen that continued that practice and became dope addicts. I damn near did myself, you know. Nothing too, that I found in the hospital corps, being in the hospital corps and giving the short-arm inspections and so forth most of the other Marines thought that you were a homosexual. And some of the corpsmen were, but then also so were some of guys in the field. But homosexuality in the Service in those days was terrible. Youd be discharged or you would be beaten up or whatever if the Navy or Marine Corps found out that you were they got rid of you, you know. So we had to live with that too, was being homosexual. In a case like if we had abdominal surgery, whether it was in the field or the in hospital, the standard practice then -- not like it is today. Ive had a lot of abdominal surgery and they dont today, they just do the area -- in those days you had to shave the guy from the breast line all the way down to the top of the knee. Front, back, and scrotum and every place. And when youre down there around by the guys testicles and his penis, boy you know they were really looking at you, scared what youre going to do, but you had to do it because they just didn't want any hair anywhere for infection. They don't do it today, but in those days you did. So you had to contend with the wound the guy had, were you doing the right thing, plus the fact hes looking at you as being a homosexual, you know, and things of that nature. This a side bar I guess youd call it. ______ were two, Jules [ph] and Luther, and they became very good friends of mine. We actually worked together during different shifts -- very close friends of mine, and they were very good corpsmen. And I can remember wed laugh and talk and stuff like. I can remember one day Jules [ph] and Luther came to me right after chow and said that it might be a good idea if I stopped associating with them. And I said why? And he said itd be a good idea. Why? So some round-about way -- I didnt know that they were homosexual because I didn't know what the hell that was, even at the age of 18. A little farmer boy from Twinsburg, Ohio -- so how did they -- oh, they, something like, we're different than you, or something like that, and the guys are talking that you are one of us. So finally it dawned on me, and I thought well hell no, you're my friend. I'm not going to desert you. So I continued on, but I made sure that that point on that I took part in the anti-homosexual conversation and stuff like that, but we still remained friends -- Jules [ph] and Luther -- but I had to contend with that, too. I don't know, I guess Im talking more than I should.
No, no. This exactly what we want -- do you remember anything else from Guam?
No, just -- well, the first patient was that. Second patient was what we call a dum-dum although this is old eagle. When the bolt would hit you, small hole would come out and take half your leg away. My other -- my next patient though was hit in the back -- come on what's that knee part of the -- calf -- and there was a small hole when it went it in, but the other side, a big chunk of flesh was gone, and although they were outlawed, but still I find out later that the Marines were doing it themselves. You would take the shell -- the bullet and cut across it, bust wide open when they hit. You couldn't use a dum-dum, which is a soft shelled -- dum-dums were soft points. When they hit on impact they'd spread. Now you know what a dum-dum is, I guess.
Right, right. Hollow point?
Right, but these guys would cut it so when they hit on impact they made a cross in the lead impact. So that was my second guy and he had big hunk of his leg was gone. All you could do there was put what we called a fueled [ph] cast. You treat the wound with sulfur, give him two of the biggest sulfur tablets. God, those sulfur tablets were huge -- Im trying to remember, I think it was sulfur fizol was the tablet and sulfur dolamide was the powder. Spread the powder all over, give him these big tablets to take, and of course you had to watch their urine, too because if they took the sulfur too much the urine -- itd be crystals in their urine which would crystallize, and give them infections and make it hard to urinate. But any rate all you could do there was put a plaster of paris cast, but what they called a fueled [ph] cast. Just put this on and wrap it around, wrap it around, get it wet and have a temporary cast. And those, I hated those, because when I was back in the hospital part, the ward part, the guy came in from the field with a fueled [ph] cast, they were soaked with gangrene and blood and stuff. God, I remember this one guy, this was in Noumea -- Frake [ph] -- Frake [ph] was his name, Marine, he had been hit in the leg, similar to what I had, and they put the fueled [ph] cast on, but they -- but they left a lot for some reason or other for a long time. And I start to cut that open the guys were ______ clear out the whole ward. The guys that were ambulatory let them go outside. The guys that werent ambulatory we pushed their beds up against the far end -- the odor was horrific -- and when I cut his cast off he was really in bad shape, but they saved his leg, but I'm sure today hes walking around with no calf, if he's still walking around. Yeah, so okay. But first was the wound to the stomach, in the arm, the second was the gunshot and the leg. I had just one more -- what the heck was -- seem like it was a chest wound, shrapnel to the shoulder maybe. No, two more; shrapnel to the shoulder, which was a slight wound, which was easily treated and one more. I think it was a gunshot in the hip, I believe. But these guys I just treated them and send them on their way. So two, I guess, two serious wounds, and two that was just lightly treated and that was it for me with the Guam part. Then from Guam I went back to the New Hebrides and I was there quite awhile and then back to Guam. That's how I got back to Guam the second time the war was already over and -- not all the way over, but it was early in '45 and -- not the invasion of Iwo. Thank God for that. Do you know anything about the invasion of Okinawa at all?
Do you realize that was a bigger invasion than D-Day? 75,000 more men were involved; more casualties and it stretched out for months. People don't seem to realize that Okinawa -- the invasion of Okinawa was the most severe invasion of World War II. You got D-Day is the one that everybody remembers but on Okinawa they dont. Well, anyway so I was supposed to go there -- just as an assignment, it had not nothing to do with the invasion -- and of course they had the famous Okinawa typhoons, and my ship went down with all my records, all my gear. I had managed to keep my little fuel pack with all the instruments in it, I wanted to bring that home and also had managed to steal a couple of -- well about this size here, and about that thick -- what they call suture trays, and all the instruments there, and that went down. My clothing went down, and my records went down.
Did you abandon ship that time?
No. I was a different ship. See, we were supposed to go on this one ship, and all my gear went there. Then the change of orders, I went to another ship, the USS HAWKING, then after HAWKING ____ here in Ohio, and I came home. So my ship with my gear went there, and I came here.
So you weren't actually in the typhoon?
No, no, thank goodness for that. Well, its some bad weather, I hated those high seas because the screw would go overseas in this liberty ship, you didnt know what was happening. The weight would be so bad the screw would come out the water and shake the whole ship {groaning like ship} -- what the hell's that, because the props for these ships are huge, size of a house. When they come up out of the water they would rattle the ship something awful. So that was it, bad seas, high seas, and the bow going {groaning like ship} under water and coming back up, that was those storms, typhoons.
Are you telling the story before we started the tape rolling about the guy -- almost full body cast?
Oh, yeah. Well, I had several of those -- the first one counted was actually it -- the hospital in Great Lakes when we were overseas -- he had been in an accident, a Jeep accident. I'm not even sure, I think he was an Army guy, but we happened to get him. He was in a full -- just like a cast they call it, where from the chest down youre encased in plaster of paris, a cast all the way down to including the feet, and they had these little separating bars to keep your legs apart, and they had a lot of multiple fractures in the legs. We kept him in a private room in the back where we would keep the officers because youd walk across the floor, just walking across the floor, little vibration would drive him crazy. They had another one like this though who stepped on this mine I'm telling you about, who didn't kill him. It him so hard it blew him up -- this was overseas. This is in the Espiritu Santos [ph] where I was still stealing drugs ____ and stuff like that. And he was in like a cast. He had, as I recall, 11 fractures on one side of his body was only like 22 on the other side was all, some were hairline -- but I woke up, I was so out of it, the next thing I know guys are hollering and pulling me out. I got under this guys bed for some reason or other. I dont know why, maybe because I took his drugs, I don't know, and passed out. Next thing I knew I had -- it was like I was caged in, I'm trying to get out. I'm under beneath this poor guys bed with my feet kicking up, kicking up, the guys bouncing up, bouncing up, bouncing up, screaming and hollering. And some of the corpsmen came and pulled me out; poor guy. God, that must have been horrible for him. These bones rubbing together and here I am kicking up in the air and he's bouncing like a basketball.
Did you lose any corpsmen in your outfit overseas?
Yeah. Kid named Buck -- Buckinger [ph] -- something like that. See, the snipers, the Jap snipers, -- the early part of the war was no longer by the time I got in, but the corpsmen would wear red armbands so they know who you were. Well, all the Jap sniper had to do was sight that armband, move over 6 inches and shoot you right in the heart. So they stopped doing that and they put on the helmet. That didn't help either. So then -- the officers, too -- the officers used to wear the bars in the front of their helmet, but they sure as hell stopped that and just marked painted black in the back. So by the time I got in you didnt know ____ saying to you, you just wore it on the back of your helmet. But this one corpsmen, for some strange reason, I don't know why, he was an older corpsman; been in a while, probably a lifer -- had a dam armband, sniper picked him off just like that, and I think his name was Buckinger [ph] something like that, I dont know -- a lot these Southern boys bothered -- there was Ottinger [ph], Buckinger [ph] -- something like that. I don't know the name. Yeah, I didn't know him all that well, but he was picked off by a sniper. That's the only one that I know of. There were others, I'm sure because I could see their bodies lying outside the receiving tent that I knew vaguely. But hes the only one I knew fairly close, you know, because I was usually in a unit of six or seven corpsmen. We always split up when we got to where we were going. We would ride the trains together - the ships together. But once we got to where we were going we split up. He's the only one that I knew of that a sniper got him.
Did you have any really close buddies over there that you hung around with?
The saying then was that, you had a buddy if you lose them you dont make another one. So I had heard all about this before I got overseas. So I had a lot of close friends, a lot of guys I knew, but I never really had a close buddy. Never did because I had heard all the talk about if you lose one you don't make one again -- how horrible it is. And I -- so I knew a couple of Marines that were under treatment for that type of thing. I mean this had happened early in the war. They were so hostile-wise for the fact that they lost their buddies. So no, I had a lot of close friends, yes, but I never made a, what you would call, a buddy, never; for that reason, for that reason. But you heard that from other guys, too.
Yeah, actually I have heard that, you know, that some guys had a buddy, and they went through it with a buddy, but a lot of guys said they didn't want to make buddies.
Yep. Yep. Especially if you knew the riffle man, especially that, you know, yeah.
Did you get to do much for entertainment or anything over there?
Well, yes. On Noumea/New Caldonia -- which was at the time considered a rear hospital -- Bob Hope came there. So I saw Bob Hope and I think they had outdoor theaters, had a big huge stage set up for the USO, stage shows, and of course Bob Hope or whoever came there always made sure they had a couple of well stacked girls with them, drive the guys up the wall. Why they did that, I dont know. God, that was horrible, you know, and then they would show movies, and the same thing on Fleet Hospital 103 -- which had been MOB 3 in New Hebrides. They had USO shows. END OF CD ONE; BEGIN CD TWO. Who came there -- some celebrity came there, I cant remember who it was in movies, primarily movies -- and how they can -- I was watching last night a movie on -- what was the name of it. It was Don Ameche and a bunch of guys aboard ship. Had to do with Midway -- oh, the movie was called a Wing and a Prayer -- thats what it was -- made in 1944. They got this huge aircraft carrier and all these airplanes, and all these actors -- how the hell did they do that, you know. Ive seen movies, 1941, 1942, 1943 and theyre making these big huge movies during the war. How the hell they could do that? I mean very authentic, too. I mean, nowadays if you saw an aircraft carrier youd think {yawn}, but to have this huge aircraft carrier -- which Don Ameche was the flight officer apparently and -- I don't know who the captain of the ship was. Dana Andrews was one of the pilots. Mike was another pilot. Of course you always got one of the heroes would get lost, you know, and then theres the empty bunk and packing up the gear _____ -- look at 1944? How they'd do this, so yes we -- our entertainment would be occasionally only when you were in the rear hospital though -- like on Guam, when I was in Guam the second time around while I was waiting to come home, they had an outdoor theater, saw movies there. _____ other than that. So in Noumea I saw Bob Hope and movies. And then in New Hebrides because then it would make -- the reason I mentioned the girl -- there was this one girl, I can't remember her name, but she was young -- probably 20, 21 -- really stacked and really, really gorgeous. And whoever she was with. I cant remember the celebrity, it wasnt a big well-known name, but it was a celebrity. They would go from ward to ward for those who couldnt attend, you know, and I followed with them, and I got to know her pretty well for some reason or other. And the guys were betting me that I couldnt make it with her. Of course in those days I was still a virgin at 18 or 17, whatever it was. So I told her, I said, would you -- there was an empty ward in between, empty closet in between wherever I was. I was 32 North and then there was 31 North and then 30. So I said, Could you meet me at 31 North tonight right after chow? Well, sure, sure. Whats this all about? So we walk in there, and God was she gorgeous, was she stacked, and I told her what was going, and I said the guys have this bet that I cant make it with you. She went along with it. She's fixing her hair, fixing her dress and stuff like that, and I'm buttoning up my pants -- nothing happened, but I won my 10 dollars, you know. But I cant remember her name. Why would they do this? Why would they, you know, like Francis Lang -- why did the dig these well stacked -- they still do it. Bob Hope always had some good looking girls with him. I don't know why because itd just drive the guys nuts. Especially when, you know -- because see in those days when you were overseas _____ when you were there for a year and you came back -- when you were gone for the duration like I was overseas a total 23 months, straight tour, you know, almost two years. Some guys in the 37th Infantry or 37th Division which -- in peacetime the highest was the National Guard. In wartime it was the 37th Division. So most guys were over there almost 40 months, overseas, you know, so. Do you know the story about -- what's his name - Roger, damn, whats his -- well known kid. Mickey Rooney played his part in a movie, it was Ohio guy.
Roger Young?
Roger Young. You know about roger Young?
I've heard the song by Burl Ives.
Yeah. Roger Young was a true -- he was under 52. He tried every branch of service there was. He tried stretching, he tried this, he kept getting turned down, he kept turned down, kept turned down. Then funniest thing he either made it with the Army or the Marines -- which of the two it was -- and he was in the 37th, at that time it was the National Guard -- okay, thats what it was. He finally made it into the National Guard which then became the 37th. And he goes overseas, I think it was Georgia, someplace in the Borneo/Georgia area -- and he's the first guy to get the Medal of Honor. Hed charged the machine gun nest and wiped it out so his buddies could get through, and I thought boy that was a very inspiring _____ -- there was this young guy that couldn't get in, couldnt get in, couldnt get in. Finally got in and he saves the lives of 12 guys and charges machine gun nests. Is that what Burl Ives song was all about?
Yeah, exactly. Its an island in the Solomons, I believe.
Yeah.
Is that what he refers to?
I think it was -- the actual island was Georgia I believe.
Yeah. I think thats in the song.
Borneo or Georgia or something of that nature. It was in the Solomons, right.
Yeah, and all Burl sings is that he was in the infantry. He doesnt specifically say, but yeah. Im not sure when that song came out.
Yeah.
It might have come out during the war, but I have a recording of it. And he was, like, from the Toledo area; is that right?
Yeah, and Mickey Rooney played the part. They made a movie of it.
I dont think Ive ever seen the movie.
-- and the heavy backpack, the marshes and stuff like that, he really suffered, really endured, but that was - of course I didnt know anything about it until the war was over. If I had known about it during the war, God, I may have charged Japan Island itself, all by myself, you know, ____ but it was very inspiring, and for someone to do what he did -- and I do believe he was one of the first Medal of Honors winners. At least he was the first one from Ohio. But you know Roger Young
-- I think so, yeah.
-- and Im sure thats been recorded many, many times elsewhere.
Well, actually in all my reading of that Ive never read anything much about Roger Young.
Really?
Ive read short little stories about it, and I had this song. Ive had this song forever and so I knew there was something there. {laughing}
Well, somebody should record his story for this monument thing.
Exactly. Oh, yeah, you're right. I hope someone has submitted him to that registry for the monument. I want to see if hes got family.
I'm sure he must have family somewhere.
You know, I know a professor at Toledo -- University of Toledo -- we should see if hes tracked down any of the family members of him -- you know, are you thinking of sterno?
Sterno. Yeah, yeah.
It just came to me. Do you remember mail call?
Yeah.
When you were over there?
Yeah, Yeah.
Did you get much mail if from home?
My sister -- thats another good story. My youngest sister, Evelyn, was a very good letter writer and penmanship. She wrote faithfully to me, to my brother George, and to my brother Russ. My brother Russ was a big blustering guy. He was a football player in high school -- I'm from Twinsburg, Ohio, small school, and his senior year in high school -- well, children had banned football because the principal at the time -- too many guys were getting hurt. So we came back in 1932, just one year ____. So my brother Russ played, he was so good that he made the national -- the high school All American team, and opened road for boys, stuff like that. And after the war through ____ he got a shot at the Browns, the original Browns -- but he had double hernia, he had no way to repair it so he didnt make it -- but at any rate you would think that hed be the last person in the world, but when he died a few years ago his wife found that he saved every damn letter that my sister, Evelyn, had written. Unfortunately, all my brothers and sisters are dead. All my -- the only relative I have is Joe Net, who was a brother-in-law. All my sister-in-laws are dead. I'd love to get my hands on those letters that she wrote, but any rate. She wrote to me, she wrote to George, but he kept every damn letter, and theyre beautiful. I dont know whos got them. I try to find out -- my sister-in-law died a year or so ago and the family knows about those letters, but nobody seems to know where they are. But anyway, getting back to mail call, yes, mail call I would get from my sister; a letter from the Crossics [ph], who I was living with at the time, and from a girl named Betty Smith, who was my girlfriend at the time; and once in a while my sister Louise would write, my sister Margaret would write, but mail call to me wasn't really all that, that much mail, you know, a letter here or there, maybe once a week or twice a week here and there. So no, it wasnt all that extensive.
Were you able to write much back home?
Yeah. I wasn't a very -- I wrote to my girlfriend a lot, and I asked her _____ from time to time, but no I was very, very -- just like most guys, very lax in that, you know, very lax in writing letters home and -- I can remember when I was Noumea, I had picked up dinghy, which is sort of like a similar thing to Malaria. And they had me in the isolation ward, and being a corpsman I had access to my records, and the outfit was moving out. So I managed to work my way up to the desk and get my records and put down DU, diagnosis undetermined. So I lost all that as a disability if I ever want to claim it, but at least when the doctor -- Okay. So he discharged me, so I got out of there, but -- what was the purpose -- Oh, thats our cat.
{laughing} Digging my records out -- so you didnt have that in your --
-- wait, why am I telling this particular story here - okay, why Im in the isolation ward, yes. My girlfriend had written a letter, something about -- I guess her classmates they had graduated from Twinsburg High School and had the usual banquet, stuff like that, but during that summer -- since the girls were going to split up, some were going here, going there -- I guess they decided to have a get-together. Betty wrote me a letter about how she and her girlfriends slept over, and they got drunk, and they were vomiting out the window, and I thought that was very unlady-like. So I got ticked off and I broke it off. That's it, I thought no more, no more. So a couple months go by, a couple months go by, and a kid named Ray Black, who was another corpsman -- he was taking care of me -- and I kept getting these letters, and he would -- I wouldn't touch it. He finally cut them open and read them to me. So then he on his own wrote a letter home to Betty and explained what was happening. So hes responsible for my getting back in my correspondence with her. So for a long while -- for awhile I was just devastated, I didn't write to anybody. So the mail call going out and coming back was disrupted for awhile, but thanks to Old Ray, right, I got back on the right track and continued that way -- that's the purpose of that story, thats right.
You treat any Japanese prisoners over there?
Not there, but on Guam.
On Guam?
-- Oh, yes. Going overseas after theyd cleared their guns -- the guys are lousy gunners. They sent up some balloons, three balloons, and that was for the Twin Forties. They got two, missed one and then for the 3 inch or 5 inch guns they dropped a white barrel -- 55 gallon drum. They couldn't sink it. So the captain of the ship finally got close enough -- some young, hotshot with a _____ .45 -- most people couldn't hit the broad side of a barn -- but hes up there {pink pink}, hit the Y line and sunk it with this little .45. Any rate, just shortly after that, although we were not allowed in the area, they picked up a Jap on a little life raft ______. This guy was all skin and bone, and then they took him down to sickbay -- and of course us being corpsmen we took turns with the watch on him because the ship had their own corpsmen, but they only had two or three and this guy required, so yes -- this guy was all skin and bones and his eyes were just terrified look in his eyes, he didn't know, but we treated him nice. After the two-week trip he showed little signs of improving, put on the weight. And it seemed like his health was pretty good. That was the first one. Others wanted to kill him, you know, Marines wanted to kill him. But they took care of him -- then when I got on Guam we had a lot of Japanese prisoners there. This -- they were clearing off the baseball field, they put the Japs to work - they built the theater, the movie theater -- and theyre clearing off an area in the back for the baseball field, and this one Jap found an unexploded grenade, walked up to this Marine, handed it to him. The guy almost shit his pants. But he handed him a grenade. They, you know, they were human beings like the rest of us, most of them, not some of them. Maybe the early ones weren't, and maybe there were some amount of bad guys, but these guys were -- so there were quite a few guys there, yes, and every once in a while they would come into sickbay, and I had a special watch on one, he had some sort of operation. You had trouble communicating, but they were just terrified. But I never forget this one Japanese prisoner handing a grenade to this Marine on the baseball -- because they love baseball, the Japanese, oh, they love it. You could see them lined up watching them play baseball. And Guam, towards the end of the war -- I had tournaments in basketball and even football and baseball. And I was on the basketball team and the baseball team -- and the pitcher for us was the guy -- what the hell was his name -- he had pitched before the war for the Boston Red Sox, then after the war he went to the Braves and he pitched against the Indians back in the forties -- what the hell was his name, Clinger [ph], Bob Clinger -- and we could only use Bob Clinger for a couple of innings because {swoosh swoosh}, you know, strike out, strike out, strike out, but through Bob Clinger. And then we had this other guy -- I keep wanting to say Ralph, but it wasnt -- but we had a couple of guys on the Yankees farm team that were really great, and so because those guys we won the championship baseball. In basketball we had a guy named Tom Morston [ph] who was All Kansas, and Tom Hairston who was All American from Kansas, and Tom Morston [ph] was 66; Hairston was about 63 on our team, and those guys were really great basketball players. I had made the team too but thats only because they had to have bodies to fill up, but I learned a lot and we won the championship in basketball, too. But this was all after the war of course. And they had tennis courts there. Pat Larman [ph] was a corpsman from a very socialite family in the East and he got to know this one nurse, and of course you were not allowed to do that, but theyd play tennis and then theyd disappear because she being an officer, shed get the Jeep, and stuff like that. So it was a big scam about that, but --
You remember hearing in the news about F.D.R. dying?
Yes. Another thing too, when I was on Guam the one time -- that's where the Enola Gay took off, the B-29 with the bomb -- and matter of fact, a couple of weeks ago was my wife's birthday. My wifes birthday is February 14th, Valentines Day -- so the kids were all over -- we dont have any kids of our own, nieces and nephews. We were out to dinner -- a place called Austins here in Brecksville -- and were discussing things, because I had told them you were coming here and we talked about that. There was a movie on TV called Hiroshima. It was a movie sort of a documentary on HBO where they talked about the bomb, and then the after effects, and theyd bring you up to date to the 1990s, and go back and forth, back and forth, and so that reminded me. And I told the kids, I said when we heard about that bomb, what it did, I said, we werent happy, we were terrified. Because our thought was then, my, God, do they have one too, you know? We saw that bomb in Yank magazine -- one of those magazines where, you know, we heard what it did, we heard the reports on the radio on what it did, and saw what it did. You cant imagine how terrified we were, at least all the guys, me and _____. Yes, but FDR we heard about right away, FDR. That was gruesome, I mean, that was devastating. Right then and there we thought, Uh-oh, this is it, the war is over, weve lost. That was mortifying when he died.
So whatd you think when you heard that the dropped the second bomb -- atomic bomb?
Even -- well, by that time the Japs didnt respond with theirs we kind of felt better. When they dropped the second one we were even more mortified, but you know, they never did. Yeah, that was horrible, too.
Were there a lot of celebrations when VJ Day finally came?
Well, VJ Day -- where the hell was I VJ Day? I think I was Espiritu Santos -- oh, yes, you were allowed to get beer rations, two cans of green beer, we called it, every other night at starboard and port, starboard and port. But for that we were allowed our two cans, plus a bonus two cans. So yes, we all had our four cans of green beer and celebrated like crazy the best we could, you know, and sang and stuff. The guys told me I had the best voice of all, of course maybe when I get drunk I could sing, I dont know. But we were singing like {singing} Praise the Lord, pass the ammunition. Yes, there was that sort of thing. It was very memorable, yes.
So did you stay there or were you -- Espiritu Santos?
Well, that was kind of --
-- You stayed there until you came back home?
No. I went overseas. I went to Noumea/New California [ph] then I went up to Espiritu Santos as a base because from there I went to Guam then back. I went to the Philippines, _____ on Lusan and Sumar and went back, and then when the war was over I went back to Espiritus [ph], thats where we were celebrating VJ Day on August 1st, or whatever it was. Then from there I went back to Guam, then from Guam I went home.
So were you in the Philippines during the war then when the war was still going on?
Like mop-up. Yeah. No, there was no action there. I was the _____, but there was no action -- I mean combat action that I saw --
-- Right.
I had some duty in the hospital here, and some duty here, and mainly it was like a transition saying we were on our way to other places, and of course us corpsmen being corpsmen, we were limited. You werent supposed to give us other duties, other than related to hospital duty. So this one petty officer -- we had about, maybe 30 hospital corpsmen living in one barracks, and he kept rousting us up. Remember it was 3:00 in the morning, we had to get in this damn LSC, or whatever it was, and get out and unload some bags of potatoes from one ship. So I start complaining, hey man, I says, you cant do that with the corpsmen, we cant do this; cant do that. I said, were strictly sanitary. He got smart. So we spent the rest of our two weeks there digging latrines [laughing]. But yeah, he was doing that on purpose, giving us all these lousy, rotten jobs that I can remember. It was 4:00 oclock in the morning, hundred pound bags of potatoes, and theyre dusty, and then loading and unloading all that kind of crap. But now, in retrospect, the guys really got pissed off at me because that was a lot better duty than digging ditches, digging latrines {laughing} you know, because the only way they had to drain them was with ditches. So that was my duty on the Philippines. Was no combat action but -- well, there was still Japanese there hiding out here and there. Every once in a while one would come in -- matter of fact, one of those places -- the most famous sniper was a woman Jap, you know -- and I think too, we cant prove it, but it seems to me that they all -- the Japanese had their Geisha girls with them, too. Like, we found a group of 18 Japanese at least -- there was at least one woman with them for entertainment purposes, I guess, I dont know. We always figured the Japs take care of their men, you know, give them their Geisha girls or whatever. We didnt --
So when did you finally come home?
I came home -- I was home stateside for December 1945, but being single, and being young I didnt have enough points, so I had to stay in. I was finally discharged April of 1946. Which was _____ go home on my 30-day leave from overseas. In January I was sent back to the dump-off station - receiving station in California. What was the name of it? I gave it to you before -- Shoemaker, California. Shoemaker. And I can remember -- I think Ive told this story just to my wife, or maybe a couple others. I can remember a couple of us went down to the docks. We were looking out, and it was black. Everything we saw was black. The water was black, the sky was black. We was mortified. Theyre going to send us back because there were too many stories about guys who would come home and successfully have their leaves, and they went back for another tour of duty and were killed. And even though the war was over by this time, there were still a lot of accidents. A lot of things were happening. Boy, I could never forget that we just stood on the dock -- of course it wasnt broad daylight, but everything just looked black. I could remember how black -- the water looked black, the sky looked black, everything, because we were just mortified were going go back overseas. Even we had orders to do so, but that was all changed. And I came back and was discharged April of 46 from Great Lakes Naval Station, in 1946. But to fill you properly here -- see, I was born and raised in Twinsburg, Ohio and we were -- depression time we lived in four or five different places. My father was a -- my grandfather had a big sawmill in Twinsburg. He was a big dude in Twinsburg, and he had six or seven sons who did this, and who did that. My uncle Georgie ran the sawmill, my father drove a big truck. We picked up ten-gallon cans of milk from the farmers. But my grandfather paid poorly, and he always gave my father grief, blah, blah, blah. So we were always kind of poor and stuff like that. And then I can remember we moved up on Highland Drive, and our mother started seeing other men. And so our family started going downhill then. By the time we got to a place on 91 Hack, we almost in the Hudson -- on 91 Hudson -- it was graduation night for Twinsburg, and my mother had gone to graduation, but before she went -- no, no she didnt go -- anyway had an old kerosene stove and she was getting ready to go to graduation -- thats what it was -- by this time my father had been in a horrible automobile accident, and my mother was allowed -- she had all the morphine in the room. Dr. _____ trusted her so she had all the morphine there was in the world. I can remember real narrow tubes -- vials, pink, I believe, was eighth-grain; blue was quarter, or whatever it is, it had gone, and she had all the paraphernalia to give my father. Well, my father, also was drinking heavily at this time because he knew what was going on with my mother, and he was becoming a heavy alcoholic. Well, he happened to find out where she was keeping the morphine stuff so he started sneaking. He snuck enough out that she couldnt tell how much he took, but he started injecting himself. Well, anyway, he was out of it in the bedroom and my sister Evelyn and I would help my mother get dinner. Had this old kerosene stove and I was filling the bottle up, and I spilled a little bit of kerosene onto one glass, and it made my hand a little slippery. So when I went to set it in I kind of dropped it, and then the stove caught on fire. That part was okay. My mother put a blanket on the stove, on the fire. But what was on the floor flared up behind the wall, and my sister Evelyn -- everybody remarks to this day about, 12-years-old, -- but she closed the door from the kitchen to the rest of the house. Had like a little woodshed here, she closed the door to the woodshed, the door to the bedroom and pantry, she closed that door. She closed the door to the living room, and very calmly picked up the phone and said, This is the Boose residence. Our house is on fire. Could you please send help? {laughing} But anyway, we got burned out and that was the end. My mother really then took off with her people, and any father became horrible. And I -- so we left. My brothers and I went to live in this house that Earl Simons had lived in, my brothers friend. And then when Russ went into the Army, then my father and my brother George, or Wendell, we found a house in (Trensic) [ph] we were renting. Well, then George went in that left me and my father there and he wasnt paying the rent, and he was drunk and horsing around, and I was 16, very embarrassed. Finally I figured to hell with it, I ran away from home. And the only place you could think to go to was the Crossic [ph] who lived up on Sheppard [ph] Road. And they had this old, big old farm that they had there that hadnt been farmed. Years ago it wasnt farming and I would go up there at night, circuit this route through the woods. You climb up into the hayloft and in the morning Id show up. They couldnt figure out where Id show up. And theyd invite me in for breakfast. And Dick and I, this was in the summertime -- summer of '43 I believe, yeah, summer of 43 I believe, no 42 -- so finally the Crossics [ph] were getting very suspicious. So this one night when I crawled over -- they had this dust door to the barn. The bottom part was locked, I never unlocked it because it was hard to lock. So Id crawl over. My wallet fell out. So Dick, I guess, was wondering -- so he got up early and he found my wallet, and he climbed up the hayloft and he saw me sleeping there. So then they took me in, no problem. They took me in as part of their family. So I was with the Crossics [ph] from 1942 through about 1946. And they were my family, and Dick was my close buddy. There was my really close buddy, we were like brothers. We dressed the same, and talked the same, and looked the same. So thats how I got involved with the Crossic [ph] family was through him, and thats why I went into the service, through him -- through them so forth. I kept up a long correspondence with them. So thats my involvement with the Crossic [ph] family. So I came there through the barn, and then Dick got married and moved out. And the Crossics [ph] decided they were going to go to Florida. Well, I didnt want to go and I had no other place to really go to at the time. And I was working as a bartender at Fords Tavern renting a room there, and as I recall, I think he decided that he needed the room for somebody else. So I had no place to stay. So the Crossics [ph] sold the property. So for a couple of nights I was back in the barn, sleeping in the barn. And I had this little dog -- this little black and white dog. And one morning I woke up, the dogs barking, yipping, barking, yipping. They knew whose dog it was -- where am I -- so he did the same. He climbed up the ladder and saw me sleeping in the hayloft. So I came to the Crossics [ph] in the barn, and left them in the barn. But then he offered me to rent a room there, which I did for a short length of time, and then from there I went on -- this was after the war of course -- then from there I went to Bedford, got a room in Bedford, and worked here and worked there, blah, blah, blah. But that was -- I thought that was funny -- I came to them in the barn before the war and left after in a barn.
When you think about World War II does any other particularly vivid memory come to mind?
You mean as far as Im concerned or anybody?
Your experiences.
Let me think here --
Or do you think weve covered it? {laughing}
Put that thing pause for a minute.
In those days there was considerable discrimination -- the blacks, you know -- and there was this guy, Charles Andrews, who was a ____ for the Marines -- and this was in Espiritu Santos, Fleet Hospital 103 -- and he came in -- the first black guy Id ever treated. I didnt even know there were black guys in the service -- and he came in, he had stomach wound and an arm wound, something like that. He was the last patient I had on that hospital, and he, compared to the first patient I had in the field -- stomach wounds with shrapnel, and arm wounds with shrapnel -- same as the first guy. And he was there, but he was severely infected. You could tell he had not been taken care of that well, but my Dr. Collin [ph] -- he was, you know, he was a good guy, and Nurse Lambert -- so they gave him to me; told me to clean up the wound, which I did. It was horrible. I cleaned him up really good and he start recovering well, and other Marines were in there too. A couple of Marines wanted to kill him -- die hard brothers -- felt better and we asked Charles how did he get wounded. He said he was bringing ammunition from the rear up to the front line, and a mortar round. And I said, Well, did they offer you any Purple Heart? No, no, no Purple Heart. Well, how come? You were wounded in combat. The guys bringing ammunition up, hes wounded in combat, but nobody would put him in for a Purple Heart. This one Marine -- Cadish [ph] -- who had Purple Hearts coming out the ass, he says, I got one coming. By this time they were putting -- truthfully there was no ceremonies anymore for most of your medals. Purple Hearts were coming out on the chow tray. You give to the guy -- so he got a Purple Heart, Cadish [ph]. So we took the paperwork away and went to the yeoman in the personnel office, had him wrote up paperwork for Charles. So Charles Andrew had all this fancy paperwork. It wouldnt go into his record, he wouldnt get any compensation anything for it. But he was facing some minor surgery, so we knocked him out -- in the ward, knocked him out -- woke up he had a Purple Heart pinned to his pajama top. And the guys were all standing around applauding. God, he went through the roof. He couldnt believe that he got -- and the paperwork was there too. So we gave him the Purple Heart. The doctor -- everybody went along with it. So finally Dr. Collins [ph] said he was going to try to get it into his record, but whether he did or not, I dont know. But, yes, I thought that was above and beyond the call of duty. But he was very happy because we gave him the Purple Heart, paperwork and the whole bit, and Charlie was very, very happy about that. I thought that would be a side story you might be interested in.
Yeah, that was great. Thats very good.
What happened to him after that, I don't know. And I think too, the same guy, Cadish, he was -- I think he was someplace -- anyway, he was, early in the war some of these old fashioned tanks had a double hatch, and his problem when I got to him he was pretty well healed. But some other sniper hit the one hatch and it came underneath his helmet, went around inside his helmet and came out and hit the other hatch and bounced away, but his scalp was a nice incision all the way around. You actually could lift up his scalp, clean out the wound and put the scalp back on all the way around. I thought that was unusual too, for that helmet and back out. So he had this big flap that we had to treat. That I thought was different, that and giving Charles the Purple Heart too, extraordinary, or different I thought you might be interested in.
Very good.
Yeah.
You think that covers it?
I think that covers it. Yeah, yeah.
In the late 80s, early 90s, I was writing for the -- Record Publishing has nine weekly papers, and one daily. And I wrote for the Twinsburg paper, and this paper here. And I decided for Twinsburg to do a series of the people who were lost during World War II. We lost three -- Twinsburg lost three in World War II, one in the Korean War, and two in Vietnam, but the important one -- I was trying to think if I can get a hold of her Im going to have her give you a call. Fellow named Ernie Statler was a very good friend of my brother Russ. The Statlers lived just down the street from us in a big farm. And Fred Statler was 36 years old, but got the draft number 158, and he went in. And he was in about six months and they said, hey wait a minute, youre too old to be here because 18-35 -- so they sent Fred home. Then they changed it to 38 and Fred was redrafted back into the Army -- and the Philippines hes out on patrol ____ sniper got him. So I always thought that was a very interesting story. Here he was out safe and sound, and then got redrafted and got killed, and I talked to his sister about that and she told me what happened. But I thought maybe -- shes too far away to interview, but I thought maybe she could give you a written statement that you might want to read it into here.
Oh, right. If she wanted to send me a written thing about him, right.
Because thats interesting. Dont you think thats unusual for a guy to be discharged and then redrafted.
If she has any photos or copies of photos or letters, or anything like that.
This goes back to 1990. Her son had electronic and TV store in Twinsburg - Olson -- I got him through -- although she was my sisters best girlfriend who lived down the street, and her husband was police chief in Twinsburg for years. They had moved someplace, and I got in touch with her through him. And I just happened to think of it a day or two ago. So Ill see if I cant get something for you because I thought that's unusual for something like that to happen.
Well, yeah. Because they are soliciting if they can get stories about World War I veterans, and pictures and letters and whatever they can get.
Oh, yeah. I got a story about World War I. Herb Ritnzer [ph] was a World War I and Herb Ritzner [ph] -- he came to Twinsburg when I was in high school. On _____ day every year for several years hed come and tell the story, and we had our basketball coach -- our football coach was a good piano player, our basketball coach had a real tenor voice. {singing} My buddy, my baby. Theyd play and sing and then Herb would tell the story, but he -- World War I in Germany and his unit was over run. So he a two other guys hid out in this farmhouse, and then they got separated from everybody. And he was given up for dead, so much to the point there was even services in Europe, and services here in Twinsburg and an unmarked grave -- I mean a marked grave but nothing in it, they even had services here. And his whole family, and his sister, and his family all upset, and all of a sudden Herb comes marching home. He had just gotten lost for awhile {laughing}. I thought that was an interesting story. I wrote about that, that he was considered dead. They had memorial service for him and all of a sudden he shows up, shocked the hell out of everybody, I guess {laughing}.