Leslie L. Slinker
[b. 6/16/21]
[0:00:06.3]
Morgan Essex: [Today is Saturday, September 29th. I am Morgan Essex and I am interviewing Mr.] Les Slinker at 922 South 600 West in New Palestine, Indiana. Mr. Slinker is eighty-six years old and was born on June 16, 1921. Mr. Slinker served in World War II and held the rank of sergeant.
ME: Were you drafted into the war or did you enlist?
Les Slinker: I enlisted.
[0:00:30.0]
ME: Where were you living at the time?
LS: I was living in Shelbyville, Kentucky. I was born in a little town in southern Kentucky called Merry Oaks, m-e-r-r-y-o-a-k-s. My family moved when I was about seven or eight years old to Shelbyville. My dad was a town farmer, and that means that somebody else owned the farm and he farmed it and shared in the profits of the crops. I went to school in Shelbyville, graduated from Shelbyville in 1939. I went back and worked on the farm for a year. And in 1940 they came through this town square with a tank, and after having been working on the farm we had the crops out, I parked them near a spreader and unharnessed the mules. I told my parents I was going to go join the army. So I joined the army in 1940, my mother cried when I left of course. Everything the first year and a half was pretty routine, just training and all of that. I did make the post baseball team, and things were going, you know, first year and a half. And then we went on maneuvers in October of 1941.
[0:02:06.4]
My family in the meantime had moved to Indianapolis while I was in the service. I was in Louisiana maneuvers, I got word that my mother was walking across Southeastern Avenue and was hit by a train and killed, so I came back home to her funeral. And I come from a family of eight, six of us kids and my mother and dad of course. Then December 7, ‘41 came around and they mainly sent us to Fort Dix. We stayed at Fort Dix for a month and they shipped us out to Ireland. I hugged my sisters and brother and dad when I left there when I came home for my mother’s funeral. Anyway, we went to Ireland for a month, trained with British 5th Army and they moved us over to England for a month, and we were still training with the British 5th Army.
[0:03:21.6]
And then we went and invaded North Africa at Oran, o-r-a-n. Our first objective was to take Rabat, which we did. Then we moved up all through North Africa, Algiers, Tunisia, and all.
Our first big battle that I was in was Kasserine Pass. People don’t probably even remember that name now it was from so far back. Then after we met the British 8th Army and drove the Germans out of North Africa, then we went through Sicily and then the next invasion I was in was Salerno, and we moved up to Cassino. And the Germans, we couldn’t get across the river so they pulled some of us out and sent us to Anzio. Then we invaded Anzio. Then, from there… we were in Anzio for four months. Well this time now I’ve been over there already two years. I went over there in ’42 and in June of course they pulled a big invasion at Normandy. That same day we broke out of Anzio and took Rome— went through Rome. Then we moved on up through northern Italy. Come March of 1945, we had come back for rest camp.
[0:05:13.1]
In the meantime I got captured in North Africa because of my stupidity; Germans had me for a couple of days. We had been moving so fast, they pulled us back, and we were sitting in the bivouac area and our captain said, “They left an antitank gun up there, somebody go up and get it.” So three of us jumped in the jeep, no guns or anything at all. Somebody forgot to tell us the Germans were still on the antitank gun. So they captured us and held us for a couple of days. There were three of us, Sterba, Medley, and myself. Sterba got away and I ran and jumped over a rocky fence like they have over there and then landed right in a bunch of them, I had nothing to do. In the meantime they took us up there and questioned us and ran us off through all their interrogation and all of that. And we kept telling them that they were surrounded, and they couldn’t get out. It took us a lot of talking; I was talking to a German captain who had graduated from the one of the Eastern universities; he was very fluent in English. (I told you I went to school in Kentucky so I’d mastered my Kentucky language). But anyway, we convinced them they were surrounded and they surrendered to us. And so we got out.
[0:06:41.4]
This was in North Africa; then we went on through Italy like I told you. I was there in the grove and I saw a chaplain come out to talk to me. If I get a little emotional here, pardon me. He said, “Get ready, you’re going home,” I said, “We’ve got them on the run, I don’t want to go home.” He said, “You’re needed at home, back on February 11th your home burned in Indianapolis and your four sisters perished in it.” So they started me back home, and I spent the first night in Florence, the next night in Naples, and the next night at Casablanca. They didn’t have all the main terminals, they was flying me right back in… at that time. Then move into Washington D.C., and I had to stay there for a day, because I didn’t know where to go. I didn’t know where to tell them that I was going. Back home I land in Kentucky, she runs out. My dad and brother, they were the only two left, my brother was a senior at Tech High School; he was playing on their basketball team. He’d jumped out an upstairs window and broke his arm, but he escaped the fire. So then when they did get me my papers, they sent me back to Indianapolis. I had a big homecoming; my dad and brother met me at Union Station. Then I went on, they let me have a furlough and after the furlough they sent me to Miami of all places. They said ’cause I’d had over five hundred days in the combat zone, I had to go through a bunch of series to be re-acclimated to become a citizen again. Turned out they’d (?rake the old?) just a ten-four session, they opened a restaurant up to us there. Then I came back to Fort Knox just to— in limbo really because my division was still in Europe. Then, of course, near the bay where the Germans surrendered.
[0:8:50.2]
Then they said if we wanted to get discharged then we could; they said you had to have eighty points to be discharged. So I went over and applied for a discharge. They said, “You have to have eighty points,” and I said, “Well I got no problem there I think I got 131.” And so he said, “Well I’ll call you later this afternoon.” I went back and he said, “You don’t have 131 you have 136 and…” You got so much for each combat zone, you got so many points for how many overseas, how many years in the army, for Purple Heart; a lot of things like that. So I got discharged and came back to Indianapolis. I got discharged in May of 1945. I may be talking too much for what you’re wanting to do, I don’t know, if I am tell me to shut up. [Background mumbling]
[0:09:41.0]
The next year I was pretty much in limbo, I didn’t know what I wanted to do, so for a year I worked two or three different places. I worked at Diamond Chain, I worked at US Rubber, I even was the brakeman for the Pennsylvania Railroad. All this happened in a year. Then I got a job at the Preston right out at Speedway. And my younger brother, he was a senior at Tech; he’d gone on that year and gone to college. Well, I loved to play baseball and that was a passion. And everybody out at Riverside at that time had all kinds of baseball diamonds; every factory and everything had a team, I was playing on two or three teams. He said, “Why don’t you come out and go to college and play baseball out here?” So I did. But in the meantime I kept my factory job, and went out there and entered in college, and I did make the team. That’s where I met her, at a baseball game. We were playing Anderson University I think and I popped up, putting me in on base or something; they had a water fountain over by the bleachers and I was complaining about something and she made some comment and that’s how we met. [MRS. SLINKER: Very romantic]. We went together for two years though; I kept my factory job, I worked third trick and went to college for two years while I was going to college. We dated on the weekends, and she’d have to call me to wake up and tell me it was Saturday, because I’d come in Friday night and go to sleep, you know. After two years we got married and then she graduated from college before I did; she’s six years younger than I am. Then she got a job teaching in Avon and I got a job out up at college at the filling station working between classes. I got two and three years; I got it going in summer and all, I got the major in English, Business, and Phys-Ed. I went over in Wayne County, started coaching. At that time, they didn’t have all the sports and things at school that they have now; they didn’t have football center over there I coached the baseball team, I coached the track team, and I coached the basketball team. And after seven years of coaching, the principal job opened up just as I got my masters from Ball State, so I got a principal job. Then— we after that, we went up at Randolph County where I became superintendent; we stayed up there for twelve years. I was talking to the superintendent of Southern Hancock Schools, we were talking at the superintendent’s meeting one day and I said, “I want to get me a good elementary principal job, and get out of the superintendency.” He said, “Well, we just built a new school— Brandywine.” He said, “Would you be interested in it?” I said, “I don’t know, I just signed a new three year contract for superintendence over there.” But I told him I’d look around. He said, “Well why don’t you come down and talk to us.” And I came down, met with the board over lunch… and he called me the next day and said, “Well you got a decision to make, you want to be principal of Brandywine, you can be.” And so we talked about it, and decided our kids were in college and been out of school and then we had four kids of our own. And so we came down and I became principal of Brandywine. Then four years later they built Doe Creek, and they came to me; I didn’t apply for a current job at all, and they said, “You’ve been over here four years, and you need something more challenging and would you want to be principal of Doe Creek?” I said, “Well, the carpet’s getting dirty.” I was joking with them, you know. So I came over as principal of Doe Creek for two years. Then, they came out and said, “We need an assistant superintendent.” So I went back in the central office and I was in there as assistant superintendent for six years. Then I retired and that’s about the story of my life. I do have stories of my tenure in— they put it in the paper of course. I’ve got the headlines and everything of when I came home about the girls; I didn’t know whether you was interested in anything like that. [Beth Essex: She definitely will.] And you may take this and do whatever you want to it. Now any other questions that you have? I’m just one of a million people that served in World War II. I’m not any special person, didn’t do anything special or anything like that anyone else didn’t do.
ME: Well, going back to when you arrived in North Africa, that was the first place you were stationed?
LS: Yeah, it was first combat we were in.
[0:14:36.5]
ME: Do you remember what you felt like when you arrived there?
LS: It was pretty easy. We took Oran without any much trouble at all. We really didn’t have any really serious casualties and things as we moved up until we hit Kasserine Pass. If you read your history you’ll know that we got clobbered there, and lost a lot of equipment and everything. But in the meantime the Second Armored had moved down, come in to Casablanca. And so we got their equipment, tanks, artillery and everything, and replacements for men there.
[0:15:20.2]
ME: This is a different question, but are there any certain experiences during the war during the time you served that stick out in your mind, most memorable experiences for you?
LS: …In World War II? I guess when we drove the Germans out of North Africa and met up with the British 8th Army. If you study your history you know they were coming one direction, we were going the other. And when the amount of prisoners that we took there in Tunisia, Tunis, and we ran them out of North Africa. That was because we spent several days transporting them back to Casablanca and they shipped all of them back to the United States from over there.
[0:16:21.0]
ME: How did you stay in touch with your family? Did you write them often while you were overseas?
LS: We didn’t have telephones and things like that; there was never any conversation from the time that I left the funeral of my mother in Indianapolis with my sisters. Actually, when I hugged them and told them goodbye, when I went back to serve, I was hugging them and telling them goodbye for life. We had what we call, now you have e-mail on the computers now, we had V-Mail. And we would write a letter, and they would take a picture of it and if we mentioned anyplace where we were, they would cut it out. So we had no, hardly any way of really telling anybody where we were.
MRS. SLINKER: Did you put any of those in there?
LS: No, I did not. Those were kind of personal. And the girls would write me, one of them would write. Maybe I would get it a month from the time that they had written the letter. It just all depends where we were and what we doing, you know. That’s the way the mail was. I am kind of glad that they didn’t have TV and all that for World War II, for the people to see back home, because I lost some friends over there, my close friends. And I was lucky I can say I got burned up on my leg, I spent two or three weeks in the hospital for the tank explosion. That was the only time I was in the hospital. I don’t know if you’ve ever watched M.A.S.H. or not, but they thought they’d come up with M.A.S.H. out of the end of World War II. But that was a similar situation of what I was in, because I went back, it was a tent the hospital was, and I slept on an army cot. I was in there for two or three weeks and then when they got the new one, of course, I went back to the service. And I just had surgery last week in the hospital, and as I went in the surgery one of the nurses, I was looking up around and back and she said, “Are you afraid of (?injured?)” I said, “No, I just remember the first time I was in a hospital what it looked like, and what all this machinery looks like today in here.” I guess that, you know, taking North Africa and meeting it up there, driving the Germans out. Of course it was a big day when we took Rome too. At Cassino there they had a monastery up on the top of hill 606. 606 don’t mean anything to me, and we were not allowed to fire around that or shoot at because it was supposed to be a monastery, but we never did think there were monks in there, we thought it was the Germans in there. Then like I said, I had thirty-four years in education after.
ME: You mentioned some of the relationships you had, people in your unit that maybe you befriended; did you keep in touch with any of them?
LS: No, I did not. (She remembers this). The 1st Armored Division had a reunion out here at the airport. She said, “Why don’t you go out?” and I said, “It’s a whole new bunch now they won’t remember me.” And we had a board meeting, so I left the board meeting early and drove out there and the whole division, the whole 1st Armored Division went to the reunion. I started to walk into the door and way back over in the corner, a bunch of them called my name out, and there were some of them out there that didn’t remember us then. We were sitting here one night, I’ve never told my sons about this, but some guy driving down the road, he came in here and said, “Do you remember me?” I says, “No,” and he said, “Well, you were my sergeant over in the war.” I said, “What’s your name?” and then he told me and I don’t remember the name. But no, to answer your question I have not kept in touch with them, because, several reasons. A lot of the original ones that I knew here in the States before we went over either were hurt, or you know, something happened to them, and we had a lot of replacements, different ones come in when somebody’d been hurt or killed, why we’d get a replacement for someone well that, went on. By the time I came home, the original bunch that was in my company who I went over with, many of them were not there anymore. I have not kept in touch with any of them.
ME: Do you remember any particularly funny or unusual events maybe, in your time?
LS: No, not really.
MRS. SLINKER: Did you tell about the time you and the other guy captured all those guys?
LS: Well, that was when they surrendered to us. Medley got at one end and I got the other. They came streaming down the hill and I was leading them out, he was following them back, the ones that had captured us that we took out. That was kind of a, yeah, I guess you could call that funny. Satisfying anyway, let’s put it that way.
MRS. SLINKER: He said they fed them well, they thought it was their last meal.
LS: First thing they did, they lined us up against the mountain air, back of the mountain. We didn’t have any guns because we were on a, I guess you would call it you usually call it “cruising” or something, we were goofing off. But they did take watch, billfold, all the pictures and things like that. Because I went through the Depression when I was a teenager we didn’t have a whole lot; I never owned a watch but because I didn’t charge communication and all they gave me a nice watch the Army did and oh they took that. So every prisoner after that, well that’s the first thing I would take from them, and I’d give it to one of the little Arab kids or somebody like that. They didn’t know how to keep time but they could listen to the ticking, you know a watch ticked like that in the old days. ¬
[0:23:05.5]
ME: Do you remember any of your officers or fellow soldiers? Do you remember anything special about them?
LS: Yeah. I remember the captains of course because I rode with him; I was in the lead vehicle. I remember Tottens and Smogley and different ones. And I was— when we first went into war, we didn’t have all the camouflage outfits, we wore our uniform, we wore our neckties. We hit them back to get a track put on the vehicle, and this half-track pulled up and a guy got out, had his two guns on his side, turned out to be Patton. And I didn’t have my necktie on, so I got reprimanded by General Patton because I wasn’t wearing a necktie. And he gave me a slip and I took it back to my commanding officer. I said, “What should I do with this?” I don’t know whether I should tell it this way what he told me or not but anyways he said, “We’re short on toilet paper, you can do what you want with it.” That’s what happened. [Beth Essex: That’s great.]
[0:24:31.5]
ME: Were you awarded any medals or citations?
LS: No, just, we get a star for each combat zone that we were in, and I got six of those; I was in six different combat zones. Like I said, we were over there for three years. We were actually probably the first division to ship out in 1942. There were only four divisions in North Africa, the 1st Armored, 36th, 45th, and the 3rd, and that’s all the divisions that were in there, so we were one of the first ones to go over. No, I wasn’t any hero or anything at all like that, we just did our job and all that. Anybody that says that they weren’t afraid, they’re fibbing. Here about four years ago, I got to reliving World War II, and I couldn’t sleep. I got to where I couldn’t even write. I went to the neurologist and they brought me up.
MRS. SLINKER: You want to show them this? [Shows pictures]
LS: Yeah all right.
MRS. SLINKER: Now these are not original; I wrote to a place [Interrupted]
LS: ‘Cause these burned in my home and [Interrupted]
MRS. SLINKER: And he didn’t have any of them, so
BE: You got replacement ones? How nice. Oh those are nice.
[Showing of newspapers, pictures, letters, etc]
BE: There’s the one, Old Ironsides. Isn’t that neat? [ME: Yeah.] Were you going to ask him the significance of that?
[0:26:33.3]
ME: Yeah, I was researching a little bit about some of your information and I saw, was there a particular reason why the first invasion was called Old Ironsides?
LS: Well, I guess because we had been one of the older divisions. The Armored Divisions- they used to be cavalry in the Army. This was long before you’re dated, but I think you’ve heard this. So the Armored Divisions became the cavalry. We wore boots like the cavalry in the 1st Armored Division. And we were allowed to wear our caps on the left hand side of our head because we were one of the oldest divisions, where all the others had to wear them on the right hand side. I guess just because we were better prepared to come, because we’d been on maneuvers in Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina; we’d been out for three months when - December. So we were just coming back from that when we shipped out from Dix, we went out of New York, and they took us down there in the middle night. Why I don’t know but I guess it was to keep anybody from going and we took us two weeks to get to Ireland, because we went by this big ship, took us down along the side of it, it turned out to be the Thomas H. (?Barrack?) which had been a banana boat between Cuba and the United States. We had to stay in bunks so many hours because we’d put ten thousand of us on there when its actual capacity was five thousand per boat. So we were there two weeks going over, so I guess that was kind of funny, but not in a way that… [Lost train of thought]
MRS. SLINKER: And you didn’t train with guns?
LS: No, we didn’t have any. When we were on maneuvers. our guns were wooden sticks, our machine guns and things were, see you’re talking about, you can’t imagine the times of the Depression, and I come from that generation and I’m thankful for it in a way because it made me, it makes me appreciate the things that we have today. I had not ever gone to church or anything at all like that because when we lived in farm town we didn’t have transportation. We got a Model T. Ford when I was a senior in high school. That was the first vehicle I ___. Now then, some of these rich people around here have these Model T. Fords as hobbies but they’ll never, that was more my price, in fact that was my Cadillac back in 1939. And my dad told me to take it out in the field and drive it around till you learn how to drive it, and so I did and then he sent me to town for something but, like I said, we didn’t go to church or anything at all like that. And I never, when I came home I was not a Christian or anything like that, and her family took me in and they were strong Christian believers, and so I became a Christian and been in church ever since we got married. We celebrated our 60th wedding anniversary in June. [ME: Oh wow.] [BE: Wow, how nice.] So, that helped me, becoming, and I don’t mean to be preaching or anything like that, but it helped me get through things that I came back to. So I came back. I didn’t have any home when I came back, my home was an apartment. And I never had a home until we got married and we lived in an apartment until we moved to Richmond; we moved and lived in Richmond for ten years. We went to First Baptist Church out there on and…[Lost thought] you say you lived in Richmond?
BE: Mmhm.
LS: You ever hear of Wayne Dairy?
BE: Yeah, oh yeah.
LS: When school was out, I got a job at Wayne Dairy. They had six wholesale routes in Richmond, the guys got two weeks vacation, so I could run, I learned their routes, and I ran the wholesale routes in Richmond for twelve years, in the summertime. And I took a lot of the static because Centerville and Richmond were great rivalries in sports, and I got a lot of static from the merchants and things, good-natured things like that. But, then went on and became superintendent, well then I was moved over here, but I did work for Wayne Dairy for twelve years.
[0:31:28.6]
ME: Do you recall the day your service ended?
LS: Yeah, I do. It was in May, ’45, right after May the 8th at, I’d have to look you know to see just what date it was, but they sent me from Fort Knox to Camp Atterbury. And I got discharged at Camp Atterbury. Like I said, I came back and just did everything, different things there for a year before I went into college. I had no idea of going to college because remember I said I graduated in ‘39; this is six years later that I started college. I didn’t know whether I could make it or not, ‘cause I wasn’t the best student in high school, wasn’t the best student in college but I got through. And then we got four kids grown now and eight grandkids and two great-grandkids. All four of ours have been to college; six of our grandkids have graduated from college, one’s a senior in college and one’s in, only five of them graduated, one’s a senior at college and one’s a freshman in college and the other’s a sophomore in high school. [ME: Wow.] So education’s kind of been a thing with the family I guess. When I graduated high school there really was no chance I could go to college; we had no money or anything at all like that, but the government had a GI Bill, and they paid my tuition, and I didn’t have to pay any tuition costs going to college. I did on my masters but I didn’t on my B.A. This is what I looked like when I… [Lost thought, shows picture]
BE: Wow, I can see why you married him, very handsome. That is such a nice picture. Now was this uniform, the ties and stuff?
LS: Yeah we were allowed to, because Africa because the sand and everything we were allowed to… [Lost thought]. [BE: Wow, I did not know that about having to wear ties, that’s cool.] And this tells all about the fire and the tragedy.
MRS. SLINKER: They’re more interested honey, in your Army things.
LS: It gives an explanation in there of you know ___+ and things like that. [BE: All right.] So those are just scraps that are from the newspaper ‘cause… [Lost thought] [BE: And this was here in Indianapolis?] Right, out here on the East side.
ME: Do you remember the time in your service that you felt the most fear maybe?
LS: The most fear? I guess when I was captured. [ME: Really? Scary.] Yeah.
ME: Did you, while you were over there, did you keep a diary or anything?
LS: No.
ME: Good memory.
LS: No, I didn’t keep a diary.
[0:35:06.1]
ME: Now, do you think your military experience influenced your thoughts about war maybe?
LS: Yeah, because I get agitated. We knew who our enemy was, we knew who we were supposed to, now, these personnel that are over there now, they don’t know who anybody walking down the street, they don’t know whether they’re enemies… and friends or what. And if you look at your Indianapolis Star today, you have to turn to page seven to find out anything about casualties or anything about the war. And I think the most that they write about the soldiers today, the troops that are over there today, is “four soldiers lost their lives in Iraq today” and that’s the extent of it, and underneath it, people see it, and they think about it, but I think people today have a hard time understanding what it does to the families, not only do the four men lose their lives over there but think of the people that’s affected by men over there. Yeah, I get upset about, in my own head I don’t say anything about it but, you hear that people give lip service to the war that’s going on in Iraq, but rather, really down deep does it affect their normal lives, like it does all of them over there? Now I know we say, “Well, we shouldn’t be in Iraq,” I don’t know whether we should be or not, I’m not going to get into that part because being in the military, you accept the fact that the people that put you in position know what they’re doing. I really wonder if deep down, in their heart and all, that people really are giving the right kind of attitude to the war in Iraq. I may not be making sense to you with what I’m saying. And, just how many people down there, are you a senior this year?
ME: No, a freshman.
LS: A freshman. How many times a day do you hear anybody mention about the war in Iraq?
ME: Several times.
LS: Do you? Really? Maybe they think about it more that I realize.
ME: Every day.
LS: But this is the first time I’ve ever sat down and talked to anybody about it.
BE: Is that right?
LS: Mr. McCoy asked me, he said that New Palestine Press was going to run some stories about the war, would I submit to an interview. So that’s how I got the name, and I said yes I would. So I didn’t know whether this had anything to do with this or not because I know you got my name from him, ‘cause we talked. I think he was in Korean War. [BE: Yes, he was.] He’s a lot younger than I am I tell him. [Background conversation] But I feel lucky, I’ve been fairly healthy all my life in fact, before I had this surgery a week or so ago, every day we’d go play and I’d walk nine holes of golf, played golf every day of the week, except Saturday and Sunday and then everybody was out there on Saturday and Sunday ___+ I think I played right around eighty times this summer. [ME/BE: Wow.] So I feel, I been blessed with good health. I’m having some problems right now, or have had some well, think I shouldn’t even tell them…
[Interview gets off topic]
LS: I don’t want to give you the impression that I was any different than millions of others. There were a lot of people that didn’t come home, and it was, I came home under, not only that was a war running but what I came home to, or grew up to. So I’m glad that we were able to do what we did, I was hoping, that we thought that would end the wars but you see ___+ And I really, having dealt with youth all my life, it’s going to be a challenge for you, life is just going to be a challenge. I’m not trying to preach to you or anything like that at all. But when I was growing up there was no such things as drugs and alcohol, it was unheard of. You didn’t have to lock the doors at night and all of that, but you’ve got drugs, or did have, I don’t know what’s down there now ‘cause I was a hearing officer for the corporation and there’s drugs right now and things like that, and for goodness sake, help keep people, talk people out of it if you know anybody. It’s like a war zone when you pick up the paper and read it anymore, and anymore three or four people get killed every night in Indianapolis. And we’ve got two great-grandkids and we were just talking the other day, haven’t seen the changes that we’ve seen as we go up through the world. We didn’t get electricity until 1936 in the house on the farm in Kentucky, so Abe Lincoln and I had something in common, we had lamplights but he was ___ and became president and I didn’t. I just see the opportunities and I sometimes wonder if we’re traveling too fast in the world today, I don’t know. I’m not trying to be bitter about it or anything at all like that, just as I read the paper I just wonder what the challenges you’re going to face; I didn’t face those challenges when I was going to school, and then wherever you could lay anything out you wanted to and no one would take it or anything like that and it took us a long time to get to the fact where we would lock the door. [MRS. SLINKER: Even here.] We do now, but for a long time we wouldn’t even lock the door.
[0:44:46.3]
END OF SIDE ONE, BEGIN SIDE TWO [Question and answer partially lost]
[0:00:07.9]
LS: When I went into the service being able to take a shower, ‘cause it was the washtub done Saturday night. We did have a creek running through the vast farm that we were on and we dug out some to make enough of a hole in it, not to swim in, but to go over and take a bath in and so, but then the regular bath was in the old, I don’t know whether you know what a washtub is or not but the old washtub was on Saturday night. And during the service, our helmets, we had a liner and a helmet, and that’s what we would, when we could find water and had water and things like that, we’d use inner (?alignment?) for the base for doing our shaving and things that we do in our bath with. We had a funny name for it, they called it taking a prostitute’s bath. I know she’s pointing the finger at me now. ‘Cause I don’t use profanity, that’s, one of the boys, I got a letter here oh, I don’t know a couple of years ago after. And incidentally we still meet twice a year, all of them around that I coached over there they take me out for lunch and feed me over there at Richmond, we make two trips to Richmond and every year the ones that I coach, we lose one or two, and I’d like to stay around longer but we have fourteen or fifteen because of that which I coached at Centerville showed up at New York a couple of times a year. [BE: Oh how nice.] They’ll call and say, “What day can you come?” and they’ll get together, we’ve had them fly in from Kansas and different places and things like that but that’s the real satisfaction too.
[0:01:59.8]
So, there were a lot of bad things, the Depression, but you can, some of the good things about it you can buy a Coke for a nickel, back in those days. Movies were a quarter, if you had the quarter to go to the movies. We never did, we had our own thing, do our own gardens and things so we knew we’d suffer during the Depression and hunger and things like that there were no good food on the farms. We didn’t have any money. In fact the first money that I ever got… the year after my senior year that I worked on the farm I made a dollar and a half a day and nine dollars a week and it wasn’t so much for a hour, you start in the morning, daylight, and go to dark. But when I went in the Army, we got paid twenty-one dollars a month, that’s what the Army paid in 1940. You made private first class you got kicked up to thirty dollars then if you got promotions well you got more money. So that was the first money I ever had on my own when I went in the service… I could say that I had spent what I wanted to. But I’m proud having served in the Army, and you hear people say it’s great to be American and all that and sometimes I, you know, it’s not said with a feeling that I really feel like a, some maybe. Most people really believe it; some people just say it to be saying it. But I’m as proud with my time in education just like I was in my service. I only applied for one job, that’s how I got my first job and then things just fell into place so I guess they just kept trying finding a place for me I guess, had a hard time doing that maybe.
[0:04:16.9]
[Interview gets off topic]
END OF INTERVIEW
Additional information not recorded on tape and sent via letter (included).
[We approached Kasserine anticipating going through, however before our attack the Germans attacked and literally overran and completely had their own way with a lot of casualties and destroyed equipment, we were in complete retreat and the lucky ones took several days to assemble and get back to our outfits. The 1st Armored, my division, called up reinforcements both men and equipment from 2nd Armored at Casablanca. My duties as communication, I was in the lead vehicle I took and sent messages in Morse code. Everything was coded and it was important to get correct message. I got my training in Morse code at Ft. Knox. The weather was much better in Africa than Italy. Our rations were K rations and C rations in combat, a lot of spam and powdered eggs etc when we pulled back. My burns were caused by a tank explosion. I was also in hospital in Naples with yellow jaundice because of improper diet and went back to unit after two weeks. Hope this answers your questions. The service cost me a great deal however I am a proud veteran.]
