Interview with Ric Ranucci
[10/21/1924]
[007]
The date is December 7, 2002. We are in Carmel, Indiana, interviewing Ric Ranucci, who was born in October of 1924 and he lives at 225 East Main Street in Peru, Indiana. Attending this interview are Jessica Ranucci and Ric Ranucci. Ric Ranucci was in World War II and Korea in the Marine Corps and was in the Air Force.
[011]
Jessica Ranucci: How did you first get involved in the military?
Ric Ranucci: Well, actually World War II started when I was sixteen years old, and I had to sign up for SS [Selective Service] when I turned eighteen years old. But instead of waiting for them to call me, I enlisted. I was in my senior year of high school, and I quit school and I enlisted in December of 1942. I enlisted in the Marine Corps, that is in 1942. I went in. They actually took me, on January 9th, 1943. I went to Paris Island, North Carolina for my basic training. In those days instead of thirteen weeks training, it was nine weeks training, due to accelerate it because they needed people. From there I went to North Carolina, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. I went there to train as a wireman, or as it was called, telephone school. From there, I was sent to a regiment, which was forming in the East Coast and we eventually joined to other regiments on the West Coast to form the Fourth Marine Division. I went to California by cattle train, cross-country, to Camp Pendleton… in the latter part of 1943. From there, as I stated, we formed the 4th Marine Division and we went into training.
[027]
We trained and trained and trained until the second of January, the day after New Year’s 1944, we shipped out of San Diego, California. From San Diego, as I said, on the second of January, we made a beachhead in the Kwajalein Atoll; namely, Roi-Namor in the Marshall Islands. We were one of the first divisions that ever went directly from our native country right into combat. That operation on Roi-Namur lasted a period of approximately four or five days, and that was our first taste of combat for all of us, most of us. We had some veterans in our organization from Midway and Guadalcanal. They formed a nucleus of our veterans, and they trained us and took care of us until we got our feet wet in combat.
[036]
Now, as far as the Kwajalein Atoll operation went, it was a short time period for combat, but it was combat and it was hectic. There, after the island was secured, we had the unpleasant duty of trying to clean up the island until the permanent troops who were going to take over the island, that were going to be stationed there. This consisted of burying the dead Japanese and whatnot. It was rather savage when you think of it today, but in those days we didn’t think too much of it because they were our enemy. The way we buried these people was we had bulldozers that dug out great big holes in the sand. We would throw two, three, four hundred dead bodies of Japanese in them and we would cover them up. Then we would put up a sign for two or three, four hundred Japanese bodies buried here. It was an unpleasant duty, but we were evacuated from that island and the day we evacuated, that night we were hit by a Japanese air raid by their air force. It was a horrible experience. Believe me, there’s nothing like being bombed from the air when you can’t do nothing about it.
[049]
At any rate, from there our advanced base was destined to be Maui in the Hawaiian islands. We went back to Maui and there what we did there was set up camps and whatnot. Setting up camp was a matter of putting up tents, stringing lines, and whatnot. That’s where we worked a lot with telephone wires, the heavier telephone wires to towns and between our different regiment divisions and whatnot. And from there we trained and trained and trained, we got replacements and we trained with those people. What we did was we went to different little outlying islands and we made beachheads from the ship to the shore. This was called a beachhead. What we would do is climb down these big nets from these APAs or transports onto these little Higgins boats. And it was a dangerous thing because the swells of the ocean would go up and if you didn’t get it right, you stood a chance of being crushed between the ship and the little Higgins boats. Well at any rate we did this consistently until about June of that year.
[061]
June of that year we took off, no not June I’m sorry. I look back on it; we took off before June. We landed in June. We were on the ocean about… two months before we hit the next island which was in the Mariana groups. The Fourth Marine Division, which I was in at the time, hit the island of Saipan. It was a pretty large island but not the biggest island in the Marianas group, which was up to the Third Marine Division. That operation took a period of about thirty to thirty-five days. It was day and night, night and day, and it was a horrible experience for the whole time that we were there. You had to be there to understand what it was all about. When you made the beach head (the beach head again is coming from the ship down to Higgins boats) you’d circle around in the water in these little boats. A lot of people would get seasick… but then you hit what they call the departure line, and from that departure line was about six Higgins boats in a line would head for the beach you were headed for or had to hit, and you would make your landing there. When you hit it, you could bet your life that there’s all kinds of incoming rounds coming in, whether it’s mortar shells or artillery, but you are getting a lot of havoc created by the Japanese. And it was when you hit that beach, it’s all confusion.
[077]
Well… my job and the people I was with, and our job was to string telephone lines between whatever it was: from division down to regiment, from regiment to battalion, battalions to company, and companies out to what they called OPs [observation posts]. You weren’t set in one different spot. And at nighttime it was brutal for us people when we got a line that went out, or there was a short, (what they call an open or a short). It was our job to lay another line, (which we didn’t do because we couldn’t see where we were going), so we had to trace the other line, which was precarious because you’re moving and you could be shot at either by the Japanese who are waiting for you or by your own people. It was very dangerous.
[085]
For example, one night a buddy of mine by the name of Mascal and I, we fixed a line from company… we put the lateral lines and whatnot. We went back to company, they said there was a line out at battalion. All our other people were gone, so Mascal and I took off on that line. When we got back to battalion there was a line out. We didn’t even know who strung the line or where it went. But we followed it by hand which was dangerous. It could have been put out by the Japanese but that’s the only way we had to trace it. We were following that line, when we got back to regiment they said they had a line out to division. Now mind you, we have come a long way from where we started and we didn’t know where we were at, Mascal and I. But orders- they tell you to do it, you do it. You don’t question it, you just do it. Well, we took off and kept going and going and finally we didn’t know where we were. We lost a line, we didn’t know where we were at, we were just in a great big open field but we knew that. All of a sudden the sky just seemed to light up and we hit the deck real quick, Mascal and I. It was a reflex. We hit the ground real quick. What it was artillery that went off. We were silhouetted before we hit the ground, and before we knew it, there was machine guns firing at us-- all over the place. Well, we were hollering like mad “We’re marines. Quit Shooting. We’re marines. Quit Shooting.” We knew they were our own people. We were that far back. They finally quit shooting and all of this “come up with your hands high” and all this. And we walked in there, and it was an army artillery outfit that had come in, which we didn’t know about of course. So… we got back there with those guys, and we took showers and drank coffee with them and we stayed there that night and the next day. When we started off the next day, we didn’t know where our organization was. But we kept walking and whatnot and finally asked here, asked there, and we eventually got back to our original outfit and they had us listed as MIA, which is called missing in action. And I said “We’re not missing in action, we’re still here!”
[110]
When we got back to our original organization, we did our everyday duties which was laying telephone lines and keeping up communications so to speak, wherever they needed it whether it was to the front, or to the rear or lateral. We were on Siapan approximately thirty-two to thirty-five days, I can’t exactly remember. And finally, we secured the island.
[115]
Again, we again went back to the transports, we climbed our nets and got back on the ships. And once we got back on those ships, we went back to our advanced base again, which was Maui, in the Hawaiian Islands. We got back to Maui, and again it’s the same thing. Oh, everyday routine stuff which was a lot of fun. We would have a lot of recreation but we worked stringing telephone lines and whatnot. And we had our parades and inspections. Finally, replacements would come in and we had to train these replacements to do what we knew how to do and what to expect in combat. We did this until approximately January of 1945.
[124]
Then we took off again for another operation. We were told when we were aboard ship—we were never told where we were going until we were at sea and usually on all of these operations we were on the ship for one to two months, maybe even longer. We got to feeling more like we were soldiers or sailors than we were marines, for god’s sake. But at any rate, once we were on the ship this time and out to sea, we were told that we were going to hit a little island called Iwo Jima. Now Iwo Jima, we were informed, was a little island about two miles at its widest point and five miles long. They said it was shaped like a pork chop and they showed it to us. They said it would be a walkover, that it wouldn’t be too difficult, because it was a small island and it was supposed to have been bombarded, seventy-two days before we assaulted that island, with artillery. And naval bombardment was hitting it day in and day out. They were obliterating this island. We thought, “boy, this is going to be an easy one.”
[135]
Well when we got there in February (somewhere around the first or second week of February, I forget the exact date now), I was in the third wave when we hit the beachhead. The first wave went in, it was quiet. The second wave was quiet. When we hit, all hell broke loose. They let us have everything in the world, everything that they had. It was mass confusion. It was brutal. Guys were getting hit right and left. And it was just a volcanic ash; there wasn’t anything that you could dig into, for foxholes or anything. All we could do was hunker down and take it, and try to move inland. Well, we moved inland, I believe, the first day only about a thousand yards, if that.
[145]
That night, instead of digging fox holes, my buddy and I, who I was with on this trip was a man by the name of Des Roberts, we used to call him ‘Canuk’, we put in at this great big shell hole. It was either made by a bomb or naval artillery, and it was a big, big, bid old hole. But we were at one end and there were guys scattered all the way down, throughout this hole. We hunkered down that night. We always had two men—buddy-buddy is what they called it. One man would sleep and one man would watch. Well at any rate, the night passed. Before dawn, we started getting ready for that day’s action and a shell came over… Des and I heard it, and we hit the deck immediately and it landed at the further end of that shell hole. We looked, and the guys at that end were all dead and we knew it and the incoming [fire] was tremendous again. Des took off… I gave him a little count and I took off. When I took off, I saw another hole and I jumped for it and I got hit in the back of the right shoulder. It didn’t break the skin but at any rate, it numbed me to death.
[160]
But at any rate, I came to find out that Des was in the same hole. We weathered that, that barrage let up. Des and I got out and we went about our business again. We started moving forward with the troops. We couldn’t do much while we were moving, just moving with the frontline troops and that’s it. That day, we did string line and when we did, one line was open. In other words, it wasn’t working right so Des and I located the problem… somebody had ripped it open. We were bent over and the shell landed behind us and Des got hit real bad and so did I, I got hit on the inner left thigh. I had to take Des down… to battalion aid where I had to leave him—he had a chunk of shrapnel through his left arm, projected through both ends, and it had sealed itself it was so hot…. I left Des there, and I had to go on my own. I did this for a period of two or three days after the fact.
[175]
By that time, I was getting worn pretty thin from all the action and I was alone. It was a pretty tough job for one man alone, to take care of what I had to do and what needed to be done. Finally, I was relieved by the corporal that I knew real well by the name of Plafchack. I went to a rear outfit and they replaced me with two other guys. Well I stayed in the rear for approximately a week or two and then the call come down that we needed wiremen again. We lost too many and we need a couple more guys. So I went back up with Plafchack.
[182]
This went on… all the way through the rest of the battle. The day that they raised the flag on Iwo Jima (that became a famous portrait in America), I was… north of the island and I looked back, and I could see the flag like everybody else could. Well we kept moving inland and I saw the first bomber land. The airstrip wasn’t even finished, but it was a crippled bomber that had made an air raid on the mainland of Japan, and it made an emergency landing. We were on the cliffs, which were [on] the northern part of the island, we looked down and we saw that aircraft land. Well, they told us the main purpose of taking this island was for a landing strip so that they could have our fighters, which were supposed to escort our bombers over the island of Japan when we raided them. In other words, fighter protection. [The plane landing] really gave us something to say… what we’re doing this for when we saw that fighter land -- at least something worthwhile before we even got off that damn place.
[197]
Well at any rate, the northern part of that island was way different than the southern part of the island, which was where [Mt.] Suribachi was. The northern part was all caves and cliffs. At night time when you dug in, sulfuric acid [made you see] all these shadows and clouds come up. It was eerie. It scared us to death. It looked like every Japanese in the world was coming at us. We didn’t get much rest for the rest of the time we were on that part of the island. What they claimed to be a three or four day operation, it took us approximately thirty-two to thirty-five days again to secure the island of Iwo Jima. We lost something like 6,000 people, KIA on that island, which was killed in action. God only knows how many were wounded. There was a ton of us, that’s for sure. But at any rate, we finally secured the island, we left there and again we get back on the transports. We had to climb those nets again, those ropes, cargo nets, and that was a chore because we had lost a lot of weight I did at any rate, and a whole bunch of us. We were skeletons compared to what we were when we first hit that island.
[214]
We finally made it on that ship, and we got back again to Maui, our advanced base. Well, again we go through all the training…the usual thing. A lot of recreation when we could—baseball, football, whatever. In August of that year, the war with Japan was over. The Japanese surrendered. The war was over in August [of 1945], and I made four beach heads, and I left out the beach head when we hit from Saipan to Tinian. The reason why I did is that I made the beach head the first day, and the second morning… I had dengee, which is a form of malaria and also I had a lot of diarrhea… they evacuated me to a hospital ship. From the hospital ship… they evacuated me to an army hospital which was back on Saipan. Well, I recovered there, and after that operation we ended up in Maui. But, getting back to when the war was over, about a week or two later after the war was over, I started passing a lot of blood. I became very ill, and I went to a division hospital, from division hospital I ended up in Iwa Heights naval hospital in Pearl Harbor. I was there for approximately a month. They couldn’t find out what was causing the bleeding and I kept losing weight, and I didn’t feel too well, believe me. I was getting very anemic. And one day, I look down and there’s a carrier says Fourth Marine Division, going home-- my organization and I wanted to go home with them, but, of course, I couldn’t. That was another day that saddened me tremendously. I just wanted to go home with my organization but I couldn’t. At any rate, I was there about a month, they shipped me back to United States of America, to the mainland on a hospital ship called the Matzonia. From there I went to a hospital in San Diego—Balboa Park, a naval hospital there. I was there for approximately a month or two… and they still couldn’t find out what was wrong with me. So they shipped me by hospital train from there to Bainbridge, Maryland. In Bainbridge, Maryland, again another doctor and all the tests and whatnot. They still couldn’t find out what was causing the bleeding, and by this time I was down to about 120 pounds. Mind you that when I went into the Marine Corps in January of 1943, I had played football and that season of 1942 I weighed a strapping 205 pounds. When I was in Bainbridge, Maryland, I weighed 120 and I was feeling very ill. Finally I got fed up with it, I said that I wanted a discharge, I wanted to go home. I had to sign all kinds of releases, which I did. And I went back to my home. There, I went to a family doctor and he found out what was wrong with me in a matter of two or three visits. He found out what was wrong with me, he stopped the bleeding, and I started gaining weight again and I felt a lot better. Well then I joined civilian life. When I first got home, it was very difficult for me to get acclimated to civilian life. I was surprised… that I couldn’t cater up to my mom and to my family. There was a different life than I lead for the past two years. It was difficult for me. But finally I started getting acclimated to it and whatnot, I started working again. For the next five years, I enjoyed civilian life.
[266]
JR: Where were you living at that point in time?
RR: At that point in time, I was living in Binghamton, New York. That’s where I was born and raised… and as I said, I was enjoying life and I got used to it again…. I had played four years of semi-pro football which I enjoyed tremendously. I started playing baseball, and from baseball I went to softball. In 1948, a team that I played with, the Seven War Legion, we went to a tournament in Syracuse, New York and we won the state softball championship. We were supposed to go to the nationals but we couldn’t get finances so we had to bypass that. But boy, we had one tremendous team. At any rate, I just kept working and whatnot and life was just lollygagging around.
[279]
In 1950, the Korean War broke out. I didn’t think too much of it, but in 1951 I said, well I’m just wasting my time here, I don’t know what I’m doing with my life if anything, so I joined the Marine Corps again. They shipped me to Quantico, Virginia. I stayed there for approximately a year and I requested Korean service, which they gladly accommodated me with. They shipped me again to Camp Lejeune, in North Carolina. At this time I was not a lineman, I was an infantryman 0311 because I knew machine guns and I knew mortars and whatnot. They put me in special weapons. I went over there… they pulled me from my draft, and they made me a machine gun instructor. I instructed two or three platoons that came through and finally I said that I was tired of this and I wanted to go to Korea, which they again gladly accommodated me.
[295]
Well I got to Korea, and they shipped me to Able Company, first battalion, First Marines. I heard the first shell go over my head and I thought “are you crazy, what are you doing over here? Didn’t you get enough in WWII?” At any rate, I stayed up in the lines there for nine months. When I got there, they were dug in on the 38th parallel. I was not in the fire of movement. What we had there when I got there was trench warfare. We reverted back to World War I. It was all incoming—we’d blast them, they’d blast us and back and forth. We did go out on what we’d call ambushes and what not…. It was horrible. You were there in a dumb hole in a hill and they’d shoot at you and you couldn’t do [anything] about it, just take it. It was hard to take.
[308]
Anyway, after I’m up on the line for nine months I get relieved. There was some kind of an order about old rethreads and so much time on the lines, old rethreads being WWII guys. They called us old—I was twenty-six years old, and they called me old. Well they were right. I was old, too old for combat. I’d had enough. They shipped me back south in Korea to a place called Maison. They made me a motor pool sergeant. I had… three or four months of good duty. I enjoyed it back there. There was nothing to worry about, nothing to do really. I mean, I didn’t know anything about the motor pool, but the people under me, they did all the work. All I did was rank and tell them “I’m boss, you do it,” and that was about it. I was a buck sergeant then. I finally rotated back to the United States, they shipped me to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Of course I got my thirty days leave, but I did go back to North Carolina. I spent a couple months there, and I was discharged in January of 1953.
[329]
When I was on furlough coming back from Korea, I met a lady by the name of Joan Monahan. We kept company whenever I was home on leave, which was once or twice before I was discharged, and we sort of took to each other. When I was discharged we kept company and kept going out for two years. And we decided that we kind of like each other and we were going to get married. We got married in February of 1955. We start talking, Joan (now Joan Ranucci) and I. I was her idea. She said, “you know, you’ve had so much time in the military, why don’t you think about making it a career?” I said fine, I’ll think about it, which I did. I decided it wasn’t a bad idea. But I told her if I was going to make it a career, it wasn’t going to be the Marine Corps because that’s not a married man’s life. You’re always in the field in the Marine Corps. I don’t care what you are, you’re going someplace doing maneuvers and other things. You’re away from home too much. I said that I would join the Air Force, which I did.
[348]
When I joined the Air Force, I went to a little air station in Waterloo, New York. I wasn’t there but a month or two and they decided to ship me to England. Well I went to England, but when I went in the air force I lost a stripe, I had two stripes instead of three which I had in the marine corps, and by doing that I could not bring my wife with me. So I had to go over there by myself and my wife worked for six moths and I saved money and whatnot and finally my wife came over on the U.S.S. United States, which she enjoyed very much. She’s telling me about her good times and whatnot, and I’m hating this duty I’m doing in England, but she’s having a good time. We spend a week or two in London and she’s thinking that this is a pretty nice country, but I said don’t get too used to it because we’re not stationed here in London. So we kept going from one place to another. We’d get to one city and she’d say “is this it?” and I’d say no. And we’d get to another place and I’d say no. The towns kept getting smaller and I’d say no. Finally we got to a little town called Bainbridge, in England. She said “Is this it?” and I said no, and she said “well this is a small town” and I said “yes it is”. We finally got to Wethersfield Airbase, an old English air base…. We got there and I said “this is it. We call it the farm.”
[371]
This was a WWII RAF station. We were completely rebuilding it. There was nothing left. It was all mud, tents, and stuff like this. There was no base housing, no nothing for military people that had come over there. So, at any rate, we made the best of it. The first place we lived in was a little sixteen-foot trailer. Our table for dining in daytime was our bed in nighttime. You’d pull it apart, and it was a bed. And it was a joke, guys that I knew over there when Joan, my wife, first got there, they’d wait for our lights to go out and they knew we were going to bed and since my wife just got there, they knew we were going to get together and whatnot. They’d come knocking on our door. We’d ask ���who is it?” and they wouldn’t answer. We’d have to take that bed all apart to get up to answer the door, and they’d give us the razz. They were kidding with us and what not. They were welcoming Joan in their own peculiar sort of way. We stayed in England, and that’s where our son was born, Richard Mark Ranucci. He was born at Windpool Park in January 1957. He was a joy, believe me, a joy to behold. And at any rate, from England, when we left there, I got transferred to a place called Love Field in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Well, Love Field was a reserves, and whatnot and I wasn’t too happy with it. My enlistment was up, and I thought I’d get out for awhile.
[399]
I got out, I got discharged, and we went back to our hometown of Binghamton, New York. I started working and whatnot and I stayed there a couple months and I decided that I didn’t like this anymore. I wanted to join the air force. I went back in and they shipped me to New Jersey. I went to New Jersey, and by then I was a three stripe, and the cost of living was so high that I couldn’t bring my wife and child with me. It wasn’t far, so I just traveled home every weekend. I was there for a period of time, and I got transferred to an isolated remote tour in French Morocco. It used to be French Morocco, it’s Morocco now.
[411]
When I got to Morocco, this is a funny thing, as a small airbase I didn’t know what we were doing there. We were in the middle of the Sahara Desert, near the Atlas Mountains, and it had to spend a year there remote, isolated. I did not appreciate that. I did not like it at all. By that time, I had more or less quit being athletic, but when I got there, there was nothing to do except swelter in the hot sun. There you could literally fry eggs on a rock. But at any rate I had to have something to do so I got interested in softball again. I was a pretty good catcher. And I did play softball. We won the Sixteenth Air Force championship and went to Europe to play. That’s what I like about it. We got to go to mainland Europe to play. We won the championship, and then I tried out for volleyball. I was a set-man, and I was good at that. I went to Spain for that. I got to get out of Morocco for a couple months at any rate.
[430]
Well, I spent my year there and I finally got rotated back to the United States and they told me that I was going to Bunker Hill. I thought it was Boston. You know in history books, Boston and Bunker Hill. That’s where the revolutionary war was. But they said no, you’re going to Bunker Hill, Indiana. “Bunker Hill, Indiana,” I said, “I don’t even know where Indiana is, much less Bunker Hill.” When I told my wife, she looked it up. Population of Bunker Hill- 800. My God, I thought, what are we getting into? Well we reported for duty at Bunker Hill, and it was just that, about a course. There were other cities there. They said Bunker Hill, which was outside the gate, but there was the small town of Peru, there was Logansport, and there was Kokomo. Indianapolis was only seventy miles away. We got there and got settled, and they gave me several changes of MOSs[mission f service], my duty. When I got there, I was what they call a materials estimator, and civil engineers, but they didn’t have a call for me there. I was what they call a Munitions Maintenance, upload and download aircraft. When we got there, we had fighter bombers and fighters, but it dwindled down until we had the B-58 bombers, and that’s what I was uploading and downloading. We were over-manned in that field and again they asked me to cross-train into an other field which I did, called aircraft missiles and maintenance analysis. I was in that field for several months, and they said they were overloaded in that field.
[463]
At the time another position became available at the time—it had to do with physical training. I applied for that and was tested and whatnot and they felt that I was a good man for it and at that time I was a staff sergeant. And I became the NCOIC, a physical conditioning unit. My job at the time was to make sure all our people on base were physically fit. We taught Judo, we taught Karate, and we taught if a pilot was down, how to survive. I loved this duty. I stayed there for seven years and I loved every bit of it. It was the best duty I had ever had in all my years.
[479]
In the seventh year, they decided to ship me out and I had one year to do for retirement. They came up with a transfer to Alaska, and I said Alaska? What am I going to do in Alaska? I was there to run a fish camp for the Air Force. And I thought fish camp? I don’t know anything about fishing. They said good. They didn’t want a man that knows fishing, they want a man that knows management and how to control people and whatnot. I said okay, I had no choice but to go. If I went up there alone, I had to do a year and a half, minimum duty. If I wanted to bring my family, I had to extend it a year and half, and that meant three years. At this stage of my life, I was not going to leave my family again, so I decided to extend. That means I had three years to do. We went to Alaska and we drove up there, Joan and my son and I. We took the Alcan [Alaska-Canada] highway which was an experience, believe me, it was an experience. We saw the old gold mines. The Alcan highway was not a real highway. It was a gravel road and it was not too wide. It was through mountains, and if you ever fell off… you’d have drops of four, five six hundred feet. We finally made it across, but it was an experience. My wife enjoyed this, but I didn’t. I had to do all of the driving…. It was an awful experience in that every time you was a place that had a gas pump, you had to gas up. You didn’t know where the next gas station was. There were tents up for what we would call a gas station here. Tents, just plain tents. One place my wife had to go to the bathroom. She came out and said “you know what I had to use for a toilet? A tin can.” I laughed. It was comical. What you did find in those places was good food. Everything was home-cooked. We finally made it to Anchorage, and we settled in there and my job was to go down to this fish camp where we had boats, we had motel units, and the second year we had trailers put in and we had a rustic place where you could pitch tents and whatnot. Well the first year I spend up there, I spend it alone because there were no accommodations. The second year, they brought these fifty feet long trailers and that’s when I brought my wife and my son down. My wife and my son enjoyed that summer tremendously. As a matter of fact, I had a PX[post exchange] in there and I had a dining room and could accommodate 350-400 people on a weekend. We would get a lot of VIPs down there. As a matter of fact, when I was there vice president Humphrey and his entourage put in time there. We had to accommodate him with fishing craft and everything and believe me, it took a lot of doing just to feed these people, much less take care of them.
[550]
At any rate, for every day that I spent in Seward, down where the fish camp was, I got two days credit for one. I did my tour, I curtailed, instead of three years I put in two. I got transferred to North Carolina, put in a year in North Carolina, put in my papers and I retired. I had a great life, and I enjoyed it.
[561- End of Interview}
