Encoded for the Experiencing War web site for the Veterans History Project.
The recording of the interview with Dean B. Stucker 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.
Today is March 26, 2014, and we are interviewing Dean B. Stucker at the Adams County Courthouse in Quincy, Illinois. Mr. Stucker, how old are you?
Well, I was born August 25th, 1923.
Okay. My name is Anita Rodriguez, and I'll be the interviewer. Mr. Stucker, could you state what branch of service you served in.
I was in the 87th Depot Repair Squadron attached to the 15th Air Force.
And what was the rank that you achieved?
Buck Sergeant.
And did you serve in a war?
Yes. I was over in, in Italy, World War II, and the name of the town was Foggia, F-0-G-G-I-A.
And how did you, were you enlisted or drafted?
I was drafted.
Okay. And did you receive your basic training someplace?
Yes.
Where was that?
St. Petersburg, Florida.
And about how long did that basic training take?
About six months.
And after you'd completed your basic training, did you immediately go over to Italy or
No. I went in, they assigned me to operations and intelligence school, and that was in Enid, Oklahoma, and my mother nearly fainted when she heard that I was in the intelligence part.
How, how long did the operations and intelligence school last?
I think, oh, golly. It was probably three months.
Three months.
It was very, very concentrated. We went to school eight and nine hours a day.
And was that training for a particular position within the Air Force or why did they happen to send you there?
Well, it trained you to read the secret code books and that type of thing.
Okay.
We had to learn how to type. We had no typewriters overseas, but we learned that.
Okay.
And different manuals that you used in the service, if you were lucky to have them.
Okay. So you didn't always have what you needed?
No, ma'am.
Okay. Now after your training, your basic training and the intelligence school, where was the first place you actually served?
Well, I didn't serve in the United States. My training was here, but I was assigned to the 15th or the 15th Air Force, and, and we were the 87th Depot Repair Squadron, but to make the term understandable, it was really a junkyard. The airplanes during the war, we had around 20-some air bases in Foggia, Italy, around us, fighter squadrons, bomber squadrons, and when they returned from a mission, any, any ship that was disabled or had mechanical trouble would land on our base because if they crashed on their home base, they couldn't fly the next day because they'd tie up the fields, and most of the fields were dirt or they had metal runways that the Air Force manufactured, but we had around, I think 18 or 19 air bases scattered around us. We were like a hub in a wheel.
Okay. So whenever any of the aircraft were damaged or needed repairs they flew into Foggia?
Yes. If they were disabled, where they couldn't be repaired on their home base.
Okay.
And then we had a crew of people who would try to put, make one aircraft out of two or three work because we didn't get replacement aircraft very often.
Okay. So was part of your basic training learning mechanical skills?
No, ma'am.
Or did you have other training for that?
Just a foot soldier, basically. We took, we had 90 days, and we, I went to the, the school was called Operations and Intelligence, and it was a college, a small college in Edmond, Oklahoma, that we went to school. We went to school eight hours a day to learn secret codes, and basically, typing and, and basic coding that we had to use whenever we got in service, and then we were assigned to a, then I was assigned to the 15th Air Force after that.
Okay. But in, in Foggia, when the, the aircraft came in that needed repaired, what was your part in that?
Well, basically, if they had injured on board or dead or some type of problem, I would take the injured to a hospital in the town of Foggia, which was pretty well demolished by us during the war, but they had a hospital there, and any immediate medication, there would be a doctor somewhere, and then any of the dead we had to take to a certain place in Foggia.
Okay. So I misunderstood. I thought you did the mechanical work and repairing the airplane.
No.
You took care of the injured.
We took care of the injured -
Okay.
-- and assigning the airplane and getting the airplane or getting the people together to, whatever they had to have done. If it was engine work, I would make sure that somebody took care of that part of it.
Very good. And how long were you in Foggia, approximately? Was it a lengthy period?
About two, two years, I think, approximately.
For the whole two years?
Approximately.
Okay. And were you ever assigned anyplace during World War II, other than in Foggia, Italy?
Well, just basic training camp, which was in Florida.
Right. But, but after --
I was not -- I was assigned to the 15th Air Force, and I was discharged from that.
You were discharged?
In the 87th Depot Repair Squadron, right.
Okay. As far as your squadron is concerned, were there casualties in your unit?
Yes. We had, the Germans came, bombed our air base at one time, and they, they hit one of our tent areas, and there were, I don't know how many deaths, but not a lot, but it killed several soldiers.
Okay. And, and did they bomb the air base in Foggia, you mean?
Oh, yes. Oh, yes. would drop big flares. They would send, at night, they It would light up the whole countryside, and then they would come in and bomb the base.
Did you ever sustain any injuries yourself?
No.
Okay.
Not from gunfire.
Good. Okay. And were you awarded any medals or citations?
Good conduct medal, which my mom almost passed out when I told her I got that. I had, I wasn't injured or -- I was in the hospital on a couple of occasions.
Okay.
But not due to any battle injuries.
Okay. And how, how did you get along with the, your fellow officers and fellow soldiers?
I guess all right. You would have to ask them. But, no, I, I got along well with them. I had quite a few people that I had to work with, and, especially, when you had to line up medical service or ambulances or get men to a hospital, but over there, most of your buildings, like a building like this, there would be no windows in it, but it would be a hospital, and, and we had to make use of the, in Italy, the buildings that they had, and most of the buildings in Italy were masonry. They weren't wood because they had very little lumber over there.
Okay. And this, this hospital that you are talking about, you, you said it didn't have, had bare, bare bone walls or --
Well, it would be kind of a building like this with no windows in it. It did have floors, and most, most of the Americans were pretty ingenious. We got the windows covered and made use of it, but it wasn't like a hospital here.
Right. Did you, and did you have necessary medical personnel? Did you have
Just bare bones.
Okay. And were the, the medical personnel at these hospitals, were they military personnel?
Yes.
Okay. Since, since you had to, to transport the wounded, had you received any special medical training yourself?
No, ma'am.
Okay. During the time, the two years you were in Italy, were you able to keep in touch with your family?
Yes.
Back home?
Yes. Just by, by letter.
By letter. What did they call that?
V-mail, I believe it was.
V-mail. And what is that?
They had a little folder. I don't know whether I've got that in here or not, but yes. I wrote to my folks at least once, once, tried to do it once a week, and all your letters were read by the commanding officer or one of the officers because they had to sensor your letters, and if you had written in something that would, they think would identify us, why --
Okay. So your location or -
Yes.
was not to be identified?
Right.
Okay. And about how long would it take to get like a letter from you to home or, or to receive a letter? Was it a long process?
Well, I can't answer that specifically, but I think it was from, over 30 days because they all had to, they were flown sometimes, and then sometimes they went back home on a Liberty ship. I mean, they would carry the mail and that, so forth, or sometimes they never got them because the mail got blown up somewhere.
All right. Much, much different than today.
Yes.
Right?
Much. Being able to stay in contact with, by computer.
Yes. No, that was, well, we didn't have electricity. Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. You brought numerous citations or patches and things with you today.
Well, these are some that I accumulated. Those were on my uniform, the 15th Air Force and that Air Force insignia, and those are my good conduct medals. I don't know what the conduct was about. That was my stripes on my uniform. I was a sergeant. I was, my highest rank was staff, Buck Sergeant.
Okay.
Just plain sergeant.
Okay. And you have at least a bullet shell there.
That's, that's an Italian bullet.
Okay.
I found out in the field.
Okay.
And that's, I, that's, I don't know what, I can't remember where I got that money from. It was either in Africa. I was shipped to Africa after the war was over with to, to wait out, to get home, to get back to the United States.
And why did they ship you to Africa? What, what was there?
It was just a staging point to get us out of the European Theater, yeah.
Okay. And how long did you have to stay in Africa before you came home?
Oh, gosh. Oh, I believe it was around 60 to 90 days.
Okay.
I went over on a, I went oversees on a Liberty ship. Have you ever heard of those?
No, I haven't.
Okay. Those were ships that were built by Henry Kaiser, that made the Kaiser automobile, and he was the first man in this country that could make ships on an assembly line, and they were hastily built. There were a lot of them built during the war, and they hauled, well, they carried, in our case, they carried soldiers, but we had, we had 6-by-6 trucks, which were a common military truck, and we had, I think, three tanks strapped to the top of our ship, and we had, and then they hauled us soldiers in the bottom of the ship, five layers high, and it was about eight feet. I mean, I couldn't roll over in my bunk. I was the last one on the bottom, and you had a great big heavyset guy on top of me, and I couldn't roll over. I just had to lay flat.
My goodness. How, how long did it take on the ship?
Ninety days to go across the ocean.
Ninety days.
Yeah, yeah, and we ran out of water. Drinking, well, we ran out of drinking water, and we landed in Foggia, Italy, is where I ended up in the war.
Okay. And what, what did they do when you ran out of drinking water?
You didn't drink anything.
You just didn't drink anything.
No. There was no place in the ocean to get -
There's no
A lot of the ships had distilleries on the, on the ships that they could make.
They could process.
Take the, take the ocean water and make it into drinking water, yeah.
I see. All right. And when, when you were in Italy did, was there any downtime? Did you get any time off to, to interact with the community?
Well, there was -- no, no. You were on duty 24 hours.
Okay.
Because you had to be aware that you might have some infiltration by the enemy at night because that's when they usually would try to infiltrate or they'd try to poison the food or do something to the water, but we never, we, we had good surveillance. We did.
Okay. So, so it, it was a 24-hour job for seven days a week
Yeah.
-- for almost two years.
Just about, right, yeah.
All right.
The, the, kind of interesting, if, a lot of airplanes, when they came back, a lot of them didn't get back, but if they had injured on board they would shoot a flare up in the air, and then we knew right away that they had either dead or injured on there, and if there were any dead on an airplane, like that, they would kick them out off of, on the runway because most times if the airplane was crippled it would crash and burn, and they wanted, so we'd have to, that was the tough part of the job, is picking dead soldiers up off of the runway if they were --
Absolutely. After, after you went to Africa, and then you were able to come home, what did you feel like your homecoming was like? Did the people welcome the soldiers and the, the personnel as, as heroes?
No. I don't really think so. I don't remember of anything.
Okay. And what did you do after you, after your military service ended?
I went to college on a -- I had started. I had had one-quarter of school. I had one-quarter of college before I left_for service, and then I, then the G.I. Bill took me through school.
Okay. So the G.I. Bill did help you complete your college?
Oh, yes. Yes. Oh, yes.
Where did you complete your college at?
Pardon?
Where did you go to college?
Oh, I went to Iowa State University or College, I guess they call it. There's two Iowa States, but, and in the field of agriculture I wound up in.
And after your graduation from Iowa State College, did you work in agriculture then?
Uh-huh, yes, yes.
Are you presently retired?
Yes. Okay. How many years did you work? Let's see. When did I retire? 19 -- MRS.
You retired in '88.
'88? MRS.
'88.
Yeah, '88.
Okay. And presently still live in Iowa or -
No. We live here in Quincy.
You live in Quincy.
Yes.
Okay. When did you move to Quincy, after your retirement, I assume?
No. I worked, I went to college after I got out of, to Iowa State University, and then I, well, I can't - MRS.
You worked for the --
Huh? MRS.
You worked as a consultant for DeKalb Ag.
Well, I ended up, I wanted to get, my dad had me, he, he wanted me to be an engineer, and math and engineering just didn't work for me, and, and I wanted to be in agriculture, so I graduated animal husbandry from Iowa State University.
Okay. Very nice.
And then I went to work for an Amish community, believe it or not.
In Iowa?
In Iowa. That's the only place I could get a job after I got out of college, but
Okay. Very good.
Yes.
And did you think that your military service, did that help you in any way?
It helped me grow up pretty quick.
Helped you grow up?
Yes. I had had a good life as a kid. I was sheltered and so forth, but you grow up fast when you're thrown in with all kinds of people.
So you would have been early 20s or -
Pardon?
You would have been early 20s when you entered the military?
Yes.
Yeah. Okay.
I was in just about two years. I went over on a Liberty ship. It took me 31 days to go across the ocean and 31 hours to come home on an airplane.
Okay.
And one of the things I had when I was in Italy, I was in the hospital for about two months, and the Red Cross had a tour, and they took us up to the, to the, Rome, and I got waylaid somehow looking around, and I ended up having almost a private audience with the Pope because I stepped inside a building that had doors like that, and the door closed, and I couldn't get out, and the Red Cross tour left me, and all of these people went up so I went up with them.
And how, and how did that end?
Well, I finally found somebody that could speak English, and they, they directed me in the right place, so I got caught up with the group I was in. That was, that was kind of an exciting experience for an 18 year-old kid.
Exciting. Yeah. Yeah. I bet it was. Any other funny experiences like that that you can think of?
No. I can't think of right off the top of my head. We always had kind of fun with the, the kids from the east because they were really momma's boys, and then when they got mixed up with the service, their life changed pretty fast. We used to have a lot of fun with them.
A lot of fun teasing them?
We'd short sheet their bed, and they couldn't get into bed, but we had a little fun along with it, but --
Very good. I recently read a book called Once Upon a Town. It was about a canteen that was set up in North, North Platte, Nebraska, for soldiers who were going across the country. Did you ever have anything, did you ever encounter anything like that?
No.
No?
No.
And how did you travel from Iowa to Florida for your basic training?
Well, let's see. I think we came -- I lived in Cedar Rapids. I know we came down through Quincy, and we were on a Pullman car that had no windows in it. They were all broken out, and during that time they, the railroads, they were abandoning the other cars, but the nice railroad cars, we didn't have. They just had cars with no windows in them, and then I had a, I think it was two-weeks' leave from St. Louis, and I drove, I went, took the train from St. Louis to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and I was right in the coach behind the engine, and it had no windows in it, and I got home and got off at the depot in Cedar Rapids, and my mom didn't recognize me. I was just black as the ace of the spades.
Oh, I bet.
The smoke on the train.
Oh, my.
But we had a, we had a three-day, I think it was a three-day leave before they shipped us overseas.
Okay.
We didn't have any, I think the 18 months, we didn't have any fresh food. All of our food was either K-rations or packaged of some kind.
Okay. So not real tasty?
They really had no tasty cakes back then.
Yeah. Okay. But, as far as, although they were K-rations you had plenty of it?
Oh, we, we didn't starve, no.
Okay.
No. We didn't starve. We didn't have any fresh food for almost 18 months; SPAM, K-rations, but you had to be careful overseas of the water because the enemy would poison the water, and you couldn't drink out of a stream or -- that was the one thing that was hard to come by.
Oh, yes, absolutely. Did you make any close friends while you were in the service that you've maintained friendships with?
Huh-uh.
No.
Most of them were from New York or Oklahoma.
I wonder why that is?
I don't know. It just, I think they just scattered us around wherever they wanted, and like they wanted so many to be engineers, and they wanted so many in the different parts.
Okay. After you got out did you join a veterans organization of any kind?
No.
Okay.
No. I went to college. I took advantage of that.
All right. Okay. Is there anything else that you would like to add that we haven't asked you about, any special --
Well, did I comment it took me 31 days to go across and 31 hours to come home?
Yes.
Yeah. That was the -- yeah.
That's a long time.
Yeah. We were in a convoy. I'd never seen an ocean-going vessel before I got in the service, and I can remember when I, there were three of us. It was: Stamps, Stewart and Stucker, and Stewart had been in the, he had been in the service for a short period of time, but he kind of knew his way around, so I kind of followed him around, because he knew how to avoid getting out of KP and so forth. When we had to go on KP he would say: Cover up your head. Tell them you're a cook. Sure enough. I said: Oh, gosh. I couldn't do that, but anyway, we'd do it, raise up: We're cooks. Lay our heads down, and the rest of the guys were on KP, and here, and then we would slip out and go in to another company's tent and eat breakfast and come back, slip back.
It sounds like you were pretty ornery.
Yeah, I was.
Okay. All right. Well, on behalf of all the people of the State of Illinois and the people of this country, we thank you very much.
Oh, you're welcome. You're welcome. Yeah, I'm still alive.