Mary Nadine “Punch” DePrez Harris
[b. 3/26/15]
[001]
Michael Harris: Hello. This is October 5, 2003. My name is Michael Harris. We are sitting here in the living room of the Harris residence, and I am interviewing Mrs. Punch Harris about her experience as a civilian during World War II. Ok, grandma. What were your maiden name and your name at the time of the war?
[005]
Punch Harris: My maiden name was Mary Nadine Deprez, and my name at the time of the war was Mary Deprez Harris.
MH: OK. And your age?
PH: Let’s see. I was born in 1915, so what am I, 88 (late 20’s at the time of the war)?
MH: Sounds about right. What’s your family background?
[011]
PH: Well, there were many Deprez people in Shelbyville—they had come from Germany—and some of them stayed in Greensburg, and some stayed in Cincinnati, but some of them came to Shelbyville. And there were eleven boys and only one girl, and I was the first of the girls in forty years. So my dad thought I was pretty wonderful. But they were a wonderful family and we had a happy family life except for they had four sons and the youngest was killed. He was having to get the cows back to a pasture, or something, and he was knocked off of a bridge right outside of Shelbyville and fell to his death, and my grandmother whom we called Aha—my brother thought of that name when he was a baby—because she always went “Ahahaha!” and, oh, she never recovered, but she was very wonderful to my brother and me, and we loved her very much.
[021]
MH: Can you tell me a little bit about your educational background?
PH: I went to Shelbyville the first, let's see…freshman year of high school. Then I went to Tudor Hall in Indianapolis, and I loved it, and everyone thought I was the happiest person they had ever seen. We boarded then, and it was a small school, but we had a very good time, and…I had happy times. Oh and then I went—after that I went to Smith College for two years, and my dad died, and my mother wanted me to be closer to home, so I went to DePauw University for one year, and I was Kappa Gamma there.
[034]
MH: Oh, just like my mom.
PH: Yes. That’s right. And my friend [whose book I’m going to let you have now went to DePauw with me]—we were great pals.
MH: Okay. And your current address?
PH: 8140 Township Line Road, Indianapolis, IN 46260
MH: At the time of the war, you were married, correct?
PH: Yes.
MH: And what was your spouse’s name and occupation?
[040]
PH: During the war?
MH: Yes.
PH: Well, he was in the Air Force, and his name was Edward Wesley Harris, Jr. He was working in Muncie; he was in charge of the branch house of a wholesale tobacco company, which was Hamilton-Harris . And then he went into the war, and did a lot of things. Do you want to know what?
MH: Yes.
PH: Well, let’s see, he was in the Air Force, and he was older than a lot of the inductees, and the man—one of the people who…He was in Sioux Falls, South Dakota for his training, and it was so cold there that they all had to wear their overcoats and galoshes. And it was an old facility, and it wasn’t very super, but they survived it, and then he was sent to Florida and then to Mississippi, and then all of a sudden they wanted to send him to Las Vegas, Nevada. And that’s—Eddie and I—your dad and I—had been to see him whenever we had chance to, but during his induction and all, we didn’t get to see him very often. But then—after he was sent to Las Vegas, we went out, and it was very hard because we couldn’t get any transportation in those days. But my father in law found a way to get Eddie and me on a troop train, so we were the only civilians on this troop train. And your dad was about—oh about a year and talking, and all the men were crazy about him because some of them had had to leave their kids at home, so we were kind of the [favorites]. And I think it took us four days to get there—I’m not sure. But it was not just a quick trip the way it is now. So much of the thing that we went through on the train was blacked out and we couldn’t see anything about the lay of the land or anything like that. And, let’s see, when we arrived at Las Vegas, Nevada, I thought I’d never seen so many lights in my life because it was just bright, and it was a very small town there. But it had its gambling, which Nevada’s always had, and like we know. So, when we arrived, your granddaddy met me and we lived on the base of—the Air Force base out at Las Vegas . And we were—stop it a minute—[tape stopped and resumed a few seconds later]—[When we] got there, your dad had to find the furniture in this furnished apartment for us to get the apartment on the lease, and the furniture left much to be desired. When I made the bed up in the mornings, it looked like as if a couple people were still in it. You didn’t have yourself such a mattress and things like that. And—let’s see—stop—[tape stopped and resumed]—in the army corps division. And he learned and then taught others the tailgate gunnery information. And he was not allowed to pilot because he had hay fever. But he was able to teach, and teach many pilots a lot of important things. Let’s see. Well, in the first year your dad was—no in the first year, my husband, Bud (Edward Wesley Harris Jr.), was in, and Eddie and I—your dad and I—became camp followers, and whenever we could we didn’t go where he wanted to, but a regular thing—we lived on my mother’s farm in Shelbyville, and never have I worked so hard.
[103]
And one thing was the large victory garden that I had, and I would put your dad out in the garden in his playpen, and work…work work work work, and we were all planting and helping in every way we could. Occasionally, when the farmer man next door could stay with your dad, I’d go into the Red Cross, and there were always many chores to do for the army. And when we were able to join your granddad, we did. We—oh yeah, I told you about our apartment. We—some people in Las Vegas had been so good to your granddaddy, and he wanted us to have them over for dinner as soon as we could— which we did. And we heard them talking about us whenever we’d take food out to the kitchen and bring food in, and we didn’t know what they were talking about. But as they were ready to leave, they said “Now we don’t want to hurt your feelings, but we’d love it if maybe you would like to have two lounge chairs that come from our train.”—the Union Pacific train—which he was an executive in. And it was from their club car. And we were thrilled to death because our furniture was so stiff and not a bit attractive and not a bit comfortable. So they got us these two big lounge chairs and we were the envy of the whole base. And when they left, we asked them what they wanted to do with the lounge chairs because we had people who wanted to buy our chairs because they really were something, but we asked them, and they wanted to have them back, so I don’t know what happened to them. They probably gave them to somebody else. They were such nice people. And the people we met in Las Vegas were just wonderful. They were so kind to people who lived there. And it was—it was—oh my gosh it was just a small town then. And they had two hotels, and now they have—I don’t know—several hundred. And they all have very fancy entertainment. And our two had Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, and a lot of people like that. We had such a good time. And there was gambling, of course. Nevada was one of the few states that had gambling, and they didn’t have any income taxes because people spent so much on gambling that they could pay for it. And it was—it was a very kind of a sleepy town, when we came. It was very small. And oh, now it’s just buzzing all the time. Let’s see. One of the things we enjoyed doing so much was we went to Mead Dam , which was one of the finest dams in the whole country at that time. And several times, groups of us would take picnics there, and it goes without saying that wherever the adults went, so went the children. We didn’t have babysitters or anything like that.
[148]
And, let’s see, there were no—on the base there—we had a washroom—a laundry room—and we had a decent washing machine, but the launderer, I mean the dryer, was something I had never seen before. It was two old rollers going around, and Eddie was such an inquisitive kid that I was scared he was going put his fingers in them, but we escaped that. On the base, mothers took turns. Half of us would go to the Red Cross to help out while the other half would take care of all the youngsters. And your granddaddy was teaching and flying in the tail wing gunner position. And he received several thank you letters from students who had benefited from his stolid instructions and then later went on to active duty. And we were in Las Vegas about a year when a message arrived—“Report to Wright Airport in one week.” That’s in Dayton, Ohio, and that’s a long way from where we were in Las Vegas. We had to rent the apartment, pack up, and drive 1000 miles in one short week, and tires were extremely hard to get—they were rationed—and the important rubber was going to army needs. But we had a fairly good spare, and it was very hard to buy a tire or to have one fixed, but when we were in about Utah, a tire blew out, and we didn’t have time to get it fixed. We knew if we could get it to Ottumwa, Iowa, someone there would help us. My brother John had married my roommate from Smith College and had lots of friends there. And luck was with us just as we drove to Ottumwa, the tire blew out, and we had driven long and hard to get there, but it worked out fine and we could buy one tire and have the other one fixed while we—before we went on to Dayton. And your granddad dropped your dad and me and relatives in Indianapolis while he went on to Dayton. There he found he had been given orders to appear in Los Angeles in a very few days. Now in that—those days— we had just been in Las Vegas, which is west, and then we came back, and then went back. But that was the army. You just went where you were told. But, again, Eddie and I stayed with our relatives until—well, I was having a baby a couple months later, and we had unhappily had a still birth, not because of the trip, but because I had a blood factor, which was at fault. And your dad and I stayed in Indianapolis until I was well enough to go on. We left in mid-February, when it was bitter cold, and we arrived in Los Angeles where your granddaddy was stationed. Where the sun was shining, and flowers and trees were blooming. And your granddad escorted us to the home, which looked like heaven to us. It had been a playhouse of a movie star, and it was—let’s see—it was moved from Hollywood site to Culver City, a suburb of Los Angeles. The only reason we got the place, because places were very hard to get there, was that your granddaddy called his dad and he arranged to pay for us for six months in advance. The woman would not let any serviceman have it except us because she had had some trouble with others skipping town and that sort of thing. And we lived a fairly normal life in Los Angeles. Bud was in charge of a group of soldiers who were working for Douglas Aircraft , which was a tremendously busy concern—supplying planes and parts of planes. And then we were completely on rations because we weren’t living at a base the way we had been before. And it was very hard to get any of the products that we might have liked, but there were so many of our friends and people that we got to know from all over, who were sent around us, actually. And we had guests practically all the time. And one of our best friends was in the Navy in San Diego, and another doctor was nearby in Del Rey, and others. And we had a flow of guests and enjoyed them as well as the roast beefs, legs of lamb, and ham etc. that they brought us. And next door to us was a darling but sad eleven-year-old boy. He had won a contest when he was in New Orleans so that he could try out to be a movie star. And they packed up, sold their business, moved to California, and they were terribly, terribly careful of him, and we felt very sorry him. He could not ride a bicycle or skate because he might skin his knees, and his mother slept with him because he might become uncovered. He was really very sad, and he loved Bud and Eddie, and he really was darling with your dad, who was one-and-a-half or two then. And we had him join us for many of the things that he enjoyed.
[223]
After the war, several years, we had a frantic call from his parents that he had run away from home, and they thought he might have come to our home, but we never heard the outcome, which bothered us.
Back to the house, which we lived in in Los Angeles—it was darling, but there were mirrors everywhere—even on the bathroom ceiling. It was a little disconcerting to look up while taking a bath and find yourself concentrating—concerting—I don’t know—with angelic cherubs above. We had a very dear friend, Mary Alice Jones, from Fort Wayne, whom I had known at DePauw. And she went to the Twentieth Century Studio and had all kinds of safaris and theatres and fun things for us to go to. And she was crazy about your dad, and just wanted to do all kinds of things for him. Stop—[tape stopped and resumed]. Your dad and I stayed in Indianapolis until I was ready to go, and we went in mid-February and were very thrilled with our house that had flowers blooming and everything. Well, I think I’ve said just about everything. Am I going? Oh gosh, I’m sorry. Back to the house. We had a very dear friend, Mary Alice Jones, from Fort Wayne, whom I knew at DePauw. And she went to the Twentieth Century, and meant a lot to Eddie and all of us. And she’s visited us many times. Do you remember when you all had a party for her? When I—well, it was quite a while ago when she was visiting me. And your mother was still working—she was still teaching. And I think that’s about all I have.
[254]
MH: Ok. Well, now to the questions that I have. Can you tell me a little bit about the rationing system? I know you talked about tires being rationed.
PH: Yes, well practically everything was rationed—food and practically everything—gasoline. And we were given a certain number of coupons. And then sometimes, like when we had all these guests coming, they were living at the headquarters, and they were officers, so they got extra rations, and they would bring them to us—well, they would buy the food and then bring it to us, which was very, very nice for us because we were quite the envy of our friends to have this nice bunch of gentlemen coming and giving us all this nice stuff. But everything was rationed—toilet paper—everything.
MH: Now, I noticed that you said you had lived in Los Angeles and Las Vegas and Shelbyville and Indianapolis. What was it like moving from place to place? Was it hard to deal with that?
PH: Oh, yeah. It was very hard to get [train] reservations. That’s why I said my father in law was the one who really went to all kinds of trouble to get us a reservation when we went either to Los Angeles, or—he was with us all the time, anyway. But it was very hard to get reservations.
MH: And what was it like having so many friends in the war? I know you said you had a favorite cousin in the war. What was it like knowing that he was out there?
[285]
PH: Well, it was very sad. And that favorite cousin died—was killed—in a B-29 . He was one of the first pilots to fly that airplane, and they don’t know what happened. But he had an explosion in the air and was killed. And that was really very hard on us. We had not only good friends, but we had relatives. My brother was an officer in the air corps—Air Force—and he was all over the East. And my brother in law, Bill Holtz, was an officer in—let’s see—in artillery, I think. But he had had some training in the army, had gone to Culver, and all kinds of things like that. But he was overseas, and Patton was his commanding officer, and let’s see—he was there a long time—’till after the war. Of course, we were always thrilled to death when they had peace, and we were not able to go home for several months because Bud was responsible for certain things at Douglas Air Plant. And he had to stay in Los Angeles, but we didn’t care. We were so happy the war was over. And it was wonderful. And it was very, very sad when—because there were so many people who were lost. Everybody knew people—and everybody knew people who were having horrible experiences as prisoners of war. And it was not fun, but we were very, very lucky, and we knew we were, so we were very glad to get home and start over.
MH: Did the war influence how you brought your son up? If so, how?
[316]
PH: I don’t think so…I don’t know. He never would want to go to war—I know that. But he was so little, you see. He was only one, two, three, four.
MH: Can you tell me a little bit about your victory garden and your Red Cross work? What all did that entail?
PH: Well, it was a big garden plot because before the war happened, the people who owned the farm had a gardener. And then he got taken into the army. And so, he had planted the garden for us before he got taken, and then I was left to take care of it. And it was an awfully big garden, and I did the best I could. And we had a farmer next door who was very nice to us. And they were crazy about your dad. They just wanted to stay with him and take care of him and stuff. They made everything much more pleasant for us. This old house was a woman killer. Well, it was two stories—two-and-a-half stories—and big and stairways and no kitchen. And it was not easy. But we—we did it.
[340]
MH: And the Red Cross?
PH: Yeah, well, we did a lot of rolling of bandages, and just whatever they needed doing. I took a very fine Red Cross course on how to help people who had broken a leg or had a bee sting or something, you know. First aid, that was it. And, oh, we had this woman—I hadn’t even thought about this—who taught us. And, oh, we felt so sorry for her because she told us this sad story. And what had happened to her husband. And, oh, he was mistreated. And they were, oh, were just crying, crying over her. And it turns out that she was just making it all
up. She was having fun with us. I did other things, but I can’t think of what they were. I didn’t do as much as I might have because I was busy.
MH: Can you tell me something about the defenses on the home front and how that affected your life?
PH: I don’t know.
MH: Like did they ever have blackouts?
PH: Oh yeah, oh sure. We did. And Bud’s dad—that would be your great grandfather—was always the warden or whatever he was called to make the neighbors do what was right. And they lived over at 3510 Washington Blvd., a beautiful old neighborhood right near Tabernacle Church. And he never was in the army or anything, but he did an awful lot for it. He was a great person.
MH: And where did you spend most of your time during the war? I know you moved from place to place.
PH: Well, about equal time in Las Vegas and in Los Angeles. Maybe over a year in each place. Just a little bit over a year, but before that, of course, we had been moving all around with training and other places.
MH: And also like, specific places. Where did you spend most of your time? Like at, oh, the Red Cross, or at home.
PH: I don’t know. Let’s see, I spent most of my time, I think, at home because Eddie was just a little kid, and I wasn’t too well.
MH: Well, did anyone—did you get married during the war or were you married—you were married before the war.
[392]
PH: Yeah. We were living in Muncie where Bud was head chairman of the—well, a smaller part of Hamilton-Harris. And what you would call a—chain? But anyway, we were there, and I was in a Civic Theatre play. And we got the news. It was a Sunday afternoon, and we got the news about Pearl Harbor. And we were just crushed. It came as a total surprise to us. And we were just absolutely crushed. And we couldn’t go ahead and do the play. We had to wait and get ourselves together again. And everybody felt we had been defamed by Japan, and that they had just struck without any—you know without any indication or anything else—and that they thought they could wipe us out. And they came fairly close to it, but then the country just put everything together, and people who didn’t go into the army worked at places that would have something to do with the war. And women worked in factories, and just did all kinds of things that you wouldn’t expect them to do. But I didn’t do that because I had a little baby.
MH: Can you tell me some of the first major changes that started when we went to war?
PH: Well, I suppose the rationing was one major change—and just the scariness of knowing that our husbands and brothers and everything were going to be in a dangerous situation. It was—it was scary.
MH: Did you—were you afraid that the home front would be attacked?
PH: We—I think a little bit, but not too much. We felt we were pretty secure, but we worried about it a little bit—especially the coastal—and the West Coast in particular.
MH: What kind of social activities did you take part in?
PH: We had social life, both when we lived on the base, then when we lived in Los Angeles. We had friends. We went together and did things, but not anything like we might have done otherwise because we were—everybody was concerned about it. I was going to say, of course, we were dumbfounded over the atom bomb. And some of our friends who were in the Pacific in those days—we were both scared and proud, and a little bit of everything. We—you didn’t know a whole lot, you know. We had to believe in the President, believe in our congress, believe in our country. And we did. It’s quite different from the war you know now.
MH: Were you ever worried that America might not win the war?
[447]
PH: I don’t think so.
MH: Okay.
PH: But that might have been just fools.
MH: Can you tell me how you felt about the war and what your emotions were like? How did you—did you agree with us going to war?
PH: We thought we had to because we were going to be wiped out if we didn’t.
MH: And how did your feelings—did your feelings change as the war went on? Did they get stronger?
PH: They got stronger. We knew what had had happened in Europe. We knew about Germany, and we knew about all those things that were so terrible. And we were trying to stay out of it, but we—we couldn’t.
MH: Can you tell me something about how your friends and you collectively felt? Like, about the Holocaust .
PH: Hey, we just thought that was the most terrible thing. Of course, we did not know as much about it as you know now. We had no idea that all those awful things were happening to the Jewish people. And all those deaths, and horrible things that Hitler did. We really didn’t know it at that time.
MH: How did the community as a whole respond to the necessities of getting food?
PH: I think—I think you heard very little griping. People were wanting to do what they could to help. It was really a great spirit of cooperation and goodwill toward ourselves—not toward the enemies.
MH: Did your friends have victory gardens as well?
[485]
PH: Some of them. But not as big as mine. Mine was meant for a man, not for me. But we made it.
MH: How did you feel when you got news from, like, newsreels and paper? What was—?
PH: It was terribly sad most of the time because of the people who were getting killed and maimed and things. And we felt that we were in the right, which, of course, I guess most countries feel. But we felt terribly sad for all the atrocities that were going on. We just couldn’t understand it.
MH: Do you have any childcare things? Did you ever get any groups of mothers together that—?
[500]
PH: Well, sure, we did. Like in Las Vegas. When we went out to Lake Mead. No—not that one when we did it—yeah we did. We’d have half of the mothers who’d go to the Red Cross one week, and then half would go the next week. And the other half would stay and take care of all the kids. We did have that kind of a cooperation.
MH: Can you tell me how you felt about the war and what your emotions were like? How did you—did you agree with us going to war?
PH: We thought we had to because we were going to be wiped out if we didn’t.
MH: So did that really help you out?
PH: Yeah. We felt we were doing something. We wanted to do more, but you know, when you don’t have any help or anything, there’s not too much you can do when you have a bunch of kids. And we had to take care of them. But the people were nice to us every place we went. And they were nice to all the servicemen. The people from Las Vegas were just particularly nice. They went out of their way to do nice things for all the servicemen.
MH: Did you get any letters from your friends or relatives that you can tell me about?
PH: Oh, from overseas?
MH: Yes.
PH: Oh, no. The only one that I really knew about was my brother-in-law, who wrote his wife all the time. He had five children at home, and his name was Bill Holtz, and he was married to your granddad’s sister, Louise. And he came back. Oh, by the way, we were out in
California, still, when he came back. And he brought Eddie a helmet and all kinds of things that he thought any kid would like, you know. And he had a lot of stories—a lot of stories about Patton.
MH: What effect did the war have on your physical and mental health?
[540]
PH: Well, we didn’t think about that. I’m thinking…I don’t know how. I’m trying to think. We were not under the extreme worry that many people were—except for a few people.
MH: Do you think that the medical care changed?
PH: Medical?
[547]
MH: Yeah. During the war.
PH: Well, it was very hard to get doctors—especially when we were moving around. We—it was hard to get doctors. They just couldn’t do it all because so many doctors had gone to the war, you know. I don’t know of any—oh, well, when—let’s see—when we were in Los Angeles, and we were thinking of running down and getting ready to go home, but we weren’t ready to—but we had to do certain things to do it. And your dad had measles. And I couldn’t get any sitter to come and sit with him when he had measles. So I begged the doctor to come and he said no, he just couldn’t do it. So we had to take him with us, and we had to go for some reason. And we took him in the car with us. And when we got home we found the doctor had come. And we were very much embarrassed, but he had told us he couldn’t come. So, anyway, I called him and told him what had happened. The doctors were nice to us, but they just got so overcome. They couldn’t take care of everybody.
MH: How did you cope with all the shortages, like the shortage of doctors, of course, and the shortage of food?
PH: Well, you just coped. You did what you could. And everybody was very nice to everybody else, and you shared when you could. And it was a—in some ways—it was a very nice period because people were so helpful to each other and really cared about what went on. So that part was nice, but the other part wasn’t very nice, though. Horrible things happened to a lot of people.
MH: Well, of course, as with any time, there’s all sorts of bad activity going on. Were there any—did you ever notice any black market activity going on?
PH: Yeah. We didn’t know anybody who was involved in it, but they did have that, of course. We were furious at people who would do the wrong thing—especially if it had anything to do with the soldiers and would hurt them in any way. We had our hackles up quite a bit because it meant so much to us and made things nice.
MH: What do you think would be one of your most memorable experiences during the war?
PH: Oh, gosh. Can you shut this off? [tape stopped and resumed] —memorable I think was when we reached Ottumwa, and we knew that we could get help there, and we knew we could make our deadline in Dayton. And I think that was probably one of our most harrowing times of all. But, of course, the affluence of my sister-in-law’s relatives and friends just took care of us and got us tires and did all kinds of things that we wouldn’t have been able to do without them.
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MH: Ok, so how did you feel when the war ended?
PH: Oh, so relieved. Just so relieved.
MH: Where were you?
PH: We were in Los Angeles. And—I want to say something about the United Nations . Oh, we—we were just sick, though, that the United Nations country (meant countries) couldn’t work out their differences and do the right thing so that we could have all helped each other instead of having the terrible rifes. And we still are having them.
MH: But what did you do when you heard the news?
PH: Oh, gosh. I don’t know. We screamed, and I think—I don’t know how we had some fireworks. Maybe from your dad’s birthday. But we did have them, and, oh, the whole neighborhood went crazy. We were terribly upset about the atom bomb , of course because that seemed to us such a terrible thing. But it shortened the war, and we knew that.
MH: And did you continue your wartime activities after the war was over? The victory garden and the Red Cross?
PH: No. No, not those. It was too many things, then. And then we had Mary. And then we had another baby and lost it for the same reason—the blood thing. So I don’t think—I don’t know. Many—I mean a lot of people had reunions and all, but we didn’t have any reunions. Oh, this book of Allen’s talks about the invasion of Normandy . And I think you’d like it. You might not want to read the first part because he’s explaining why he wrote it, and he said he had a grandson. And he said he didn’t talk about the war at all for many years, and then he said he wanted his grandson to understand a little bit about the war, so he wrote this book. And he had a lot of great experiences. So, you have a good interviewer (speaking to Laura Harris, Michael’s mother). Oh, did I tell you he became best friends with Ian Fleming ? Do you know who Ian Fleming is? The author? He was the British counterpart to Al Allen, who was, oh, he was in the intelligence. [END OF SIDE ONE] I think he was called in once before and was turned down. That’s what I know about it—they used to turn them down for flat feet and hate and things like that. And then he was called by the intelligence department. They wanted him to take this specialized training, and his counterpart in England was Ian Fleming, who was a great—who was an author. And he—they had some really interesting experiences. Ian was—well—you’ll see if you read the book. But he and Allen went in—no Allen—I don’t think he went on the D-day thing, but Allen did, and it was a very moving, scary thing. And on the way back, after they had done whatever they needed to do, and they were going back to their stations, they all just sat there and cried silently. I mean, they all just—were just spent—emotionally. And, let’s see, what else.
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The reason he did write this, finally, was because he felt his grandson should know about it. And all of my friends liked it so much. And I took it to somebody who publishes books, and she wanted to publish it. And so I called him about it. I—we had a very nice renewal friendship over all this. But his daughter didn’t want him to, and I don’t know exactly why, but I don’t know the daughter, and I can’t even remember her name. All this happened just before I had my accident, and was in the hospital. And I sort of lost—he kept trying to call to see if I was all right, and then all of a sudden I didn’t hear from him. And I didn’t know what had happened, and so—I felt something had happened—and so I called and couldn’t get any answer from his phone. And it had been disconnected. And I don’t know—I think he must have died because I think I would have heard from him otherwise—unless he’s incapacitated.
MH: Well, is there any one thought or experience that—or words of wisdom—that you would like to share with future generations about your wartime experiences?
PH: War is terrible. But it sometimes has to be. We were so lucky, of course, not to have some of the horrible things that so many people went through. I don’t have any words of wisdom.
MH: Okay, so is there anything else I should be asking you?
PH: No, I think you’ve done fine. I’m worn out—I can’t think of anything else.
[731]
MH: Anything else you’d like to add? Any footnotes? Endnotes?
PH: No, not really.
MH: Well, thank you for coming. Thank you for doing this for me.
PH: You’re welcome. Do you want this by any reason or not? [hands Michael a set of papers that she had written]
[END OF TAPE]
