[0:00:02] “Today is September twenty-ninth 2011. I am Melissa Sturgill with Robert Gerdisch and I am interviewing Mr. Joseph Alexander at Park Tudor School. Mr. Alexander is 88 [years old] and was born on January twelfth, 1923. Mr. Alexander served in World War Two. Mr. Alexander was in the US Navy [Reserve] and held the following rank: Lieutenant Junior Grade. [Also assisting in interview, teacher, Kathryn Lerch]
[0:01:02] Melissa P. Sturgill: How were you commissioned? Joseph Alexander: I went to Notre Dame and got my commission in the midshipman school. MPS: Why did you join? JA: We were called to service. Patriotism for one thing. I was going to Butler University at the time and they had a program there that allowed me to finish my education and then go into officer’s school, but they called me before I finished, but I was still conferred with my degree. I received my degree in absentia and that’s when I went to midshipman school off at Notre Dame. They called us ninety-day wonders because they got us through there in ninety days. MPS: Why did you take the service branch you joined? JA: I felt like I wanted to sleep on the sheets instead of on the ground. MPS: Do you recall your first days of service? JA: I recall going up to Notre Dame and going through the program up there and I remember the training that I went through later on Chesapeake Bay on an LCT. MPS: What was the boot camp experience like? JA: I didn’t like getting up in the morning. It was during winter and it was cold. I had to get out and do calisthenics. I didn’t care for that. Other than that it wasn’t bad. MPS: How did you get through it? JA: I had to study hard because the agreement at Butler with the president of Butler University was if I got my commission, they would confer me with a degree. So when I went up to the midshipman school then I had two things to work for, not only my commission, but also my degree. So I studied hard. Robert Gerdisch: So you served in World War II? JA: Correct. RJG: Where exactly did you go? JA: From the United States, I went to England. RJG: Do you remember arriving? JA: In England? Yes. RJG: What was it like? JA: It took nineteen days to cross the North Atlantic. I was sick every day of those nineteen days. RJG: What was your job assignment? JA: I was a skipper of an LCT. That is a landing craft for tanks. RJG: How did you feel about Pearl Harbor? JA: Oh, I was devastated. It was unbelievable. RJG: Were there many casualties in your unit? JA: In my unit? I had fifty percent causalities on my LCT—dead and wounded. RJG: What happened on June 6, 1944? JA: Well, we invaded France, Northern France, that’s Normandy, and we were penetrating Hitler’s outer defenses there. RJG: Can you describe some of the combat that you had? JA: Well, I remember approaching the beach and from there on we started to get hit with 88 shells and from then on it was a matter of trying to survive. RJG: Did you suffer any casualties? JA: No, I didn’t. RJG: And I understand you were awarded a medal for European Theatre? JA: Well, I think that was common for anybody that served over there. That was not a special commendation.
[0:05:21]
RJG: What kind of weapons were you given to fight with? JA: Okay, on my LCT there were two 20 mm guns. MPS: Did you stay in touch with your family? JA: Oh yes, yes. I received letters and wrote letters all the time. MPS: Were there long periods of time where you didn’t hear from them? JA: It took a while sometime for the mail to catch up with me, but eventually I got all my letters. MPS: What was the food like there? JA: The food wasn’t bad. On the LCT we had to beg food from the larger ships and as a rule they were pretty nice to us. MPS: Did you have plenty supplies where you went? JA: I didn’t hurt for anything. Anything I wanted I would request it and as a rule I got it. MPS: Did you feel pressure or stress? JA: Never. MPS: Is there something you kept with you for good luck? JA: No, I didn’t have a good luck charm. MPS: How did you entertain yourselves at the camp or on the ship? JA: Well there was always plenty to do on the ship. Keep the equipment up and keep it clean. And the officers would get together and we had some parties. But the time just went by. We were never bored. MPS: What were the parties like? JA: Just get-togethers. Nothing special. We were able to get … the officers were allowed to requisition good American bourbon. We had to pay for it. We paid $15 a case for it and when we were fortunate enough to get that we just had a little bourbon, but no one got drunk. MPS: What was the life like in England? JA: England? I felt sorry for those people. Their husbands had been off to war, because you want to remember now that I am talking about ‘43 and ‘44 and they were at war since ‘39. Many of them had been gone for years and years. They lacked sugar for example, and butter, that sort of thing. I went into London after the blitz and the city, London was almost like a ghost town. Maybe out of five buildings only one would be standing. MPS: How long were you there? JA: I was in Europe for about a year. KWL: How long were you in England? Like where were you posted in England? JA: Well, I was there a month before the invasion and then I went back for forty-nine days. They put us in what they called a survivor’s camp and after the 49 days I was assigned to another LCT and I went back to Normandy and I worked over there until the spring of ‘45. KWL: I added another question. They don’t know about Slapton Sands. JA: Oh my, that was horrible. KWL: Could you talk a little bit about that and expand on that because that is very interesting. JA: Slapton Sands was an area where the LCTs went to practice and there were three LCTs going there to practice and a German E boat, that’s similar to our PT boats, got in there and sank one of them and there was a loss of 700 and some lives. Four hundred and fifty of them were American lives. I crossed the boat alley just after that. I saw some of the debris in the water, but I didn’t know what it was. It was a secret. The news never picked it up because it would be too demoralizing for the American public. And incidentally, I mentioned when I crossed this E boat alley they call it, it was Lyme Bay and well that’s another story. I don’t know.
[0:10:28]
KWL: Can you go on with that one and then bring up the other one? JA: Well, when I was in Plymouth, England I got verbal orders to meet at the break water. They didn’t tell us where we were going. We lined up. A boat came by with a loud speaker and says follow the ship ahead. Keep your radios off. So, we fell in line. We were going. We were underway about an hour and a dense fog came over us. It was so dense that I couldn’t see the ship ahead me, but I stationed one of my men on the bow and he was able to keep his eye on it. Well, after we were underway for just about an hour he radioed me back with our speakers and said that the ship ahead had lost the ship ahead of it. Well, that was a predicament. So I thought … well, I didn’t worry about it because I thought well sure the escort vessels are going to miss us and they are going to come looking for us, but they never did. So I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t even know where I was going. So I called my quartermaster and I said lets take a map here and we assumed a fix. We assumed where we were because we knew how long we had been gone and how fast we had traveled. I saw on the map where there was a naval base on Portland—in Portland. So, I thought lets just make that our destination. So that’s what we did. We headed for Portland. The sea was smooth as it could be other than some of the debris that we saw. And I noticed on the maps there that there were a lot of mines that the English had planted to deter any invasion so I had to give those mines a wide berth. Finally I got into Portland. I got in there about 1:00 o’clock the next morning. I had to find a place to tie up, that is to park so to speak. Nobody would let me park near them. Finally, I found a place. Later I found out the reason they wouldn’t let me tie up next to them because they had the super secret tank, the floating tank, that was going to be used in the invasion and they didn’t want anybody to see it. So that’s the reason. Now to go a little farther there, I went ashore and I went to the headquarters and I went to the yeoman at a desk there and I said, “I just came from Plymouth. I don’t know where I am supposed to be.” The commander of the flotilla overheard what I said and he stepped out and he said, “where is the rest of the flotilla” and I said, “I don’t know.” Well, the group that I was with was supposed to stop overnight because they didn’t want us to be out on the water at daybreak or at dusk it was too dangerous. He said, “You mean to tell me you crossed E boat alley unescorted?” I said, “yes.” I didn’t know it but that was Lyme Bay. So because of that he insisted that I be the lead ship when we made the landing on D Day. So that’s the reason I got the job … because I got lost.
[0:14:13]
KWL: You got the job because you survived. You used your smarts to figure things out. When you were in England you were based in Plymouth is that right? JA: For a while, yes. Yes. Yes. KWL: Now, were you billeted in barracks there or did you stay in homes? JA: No, aboard my ship. KWL: Oh, aboard your ship. JA: We are calling my LCT a ship. KWL: Okay. JA: It’s easier to say. It’s a craft. Because in Navy parlance a ship has to be 200 feet long. My LCT was only 113 feet long so it was a boat. KWL: Okay. JA: It was a boat. KWL: Okay. JA: It was a boat. KWL: When you talked about the floating, or the tanks that were going to be floating in, you didn’t get to see them then, but you probably saw some of the remnants of them later. JA: I didn’t see them, but I will tell you what happened there. I think there were 36 of them and an inept officer ordered them to leave the LCTs and go into the beach and it was rough water and they all sunk. He was later reprimanded for that. But then there was another man, a group commander named [Holk?]. I forget his name. Another group commander and he didn’t let his tanks go off. He circled along the beach until he found a safe place to get into it. KWL: So between the Slapton Sands, I will let you kids get back in here, I am just curious ... between that drill that obviously didn’t work out very well. JA: Yes. KWL: And they had all those causalities, which of course were not reported. JA: Yes. KWL: For very good reason. JA: Yes. KWL: Because if they had then the Germans would have known that plans were afoot. JA: Well, not only that but the American public wouldn’t have ... KWL: Oh … they wouldn’t have liked it. JA:… they wouldn’t have liked it. KWL: No, no, absolutely. So, tell us about the couple of days before D Day. What did you do? How about connections with home? What about the mail? Was it stopped? JA: Everything seemed like it was normal. I don’t remember anything specific going on. I remember about two or three days, maybe three days before the invasion we were called in and they had plastic replicas of the beach and we studied those and we were told to not recognize where we were going to hit the beach because every man-made object on there would be devastated. So I had to learn where I was going to enter the beach only by the contour of the land. RJG: Can you tell us a little bit about the fighting on D-Day itself? JA: I entered the beach on the far left end, the left side. And if you have ever seen pictures of the beach, it is about 8 miles wide and there are cliffs on each side. Well, the cliffs on the left side there was a pill box in there. I later saw it and it was solid concrete. It must have been 6 or 8 feet thick and there was an 88 in there and that’s the one that got me. My orders were to go into the beach at H + 220. That is two hours and twenty minutes after H hour. H hour was at 6 o’clock, so I went in at 9:30 or 10 o’clock. I was on time. But when I started in there were supposed to be 10 ships following me and when I got on my megaphone and I said … they didn’t look like they were lining up to follow me … I said what’s going on. One of the skippers said they are all scared to go in. That made me so mad I just told my helmsman and my coxswain full speed ahead and we went into the beach. I was alone when I went in. RJG: Can you describe some of the fighting on the German side coming toward you? JA: No. I didn’t see that. I didn’t see any of that. All I know is that we were being hit with these shells and interesting I had on my ship a high ranking officer. He had to be above a major and he was the head of the unit, the anti-gas unit. As we were going in he came up in the conning tower where I was and he says “you can’t go in there, look at our boys” and I ordered him off my conning tower. I said, “get off my conning tower” because I was so insist to get in there. I put my binoculars on the beach and I literally saw the soldiers laying face down. I could see the soles of their shoes and as Ernie Pyle said, “our boys are hanging on with their fingernails.” They couldn’t get on the beach because the guns were keeping them down. But I started then thinking well I have got a tank aboard ship. I will just let the tank off and then I will back off. Well one of my, one of the sailors on my left here, who was a loader on a gun, had his May West on. He was looking like this and I picked up my megaphone because I was in the conning tower. I said, "Lay low!" Right next to him was the electrician who was manning the anchor and he thought I said let go. When he did the anchor went down. Well I didn’t know what to do. I was going full speed ahead. So I thought well if anything happens I will just drag the anchor, but it wasn’t soon after that when the shells started to hit us. So from then on we didn’t get any farther.
[0:21:30]
KWL: How far into beach did you go? JA: I was close enough that I think I could have let this … I was close enough now. The cable on this was about 100 yards and I think I was getting towards the end of that. I would have been pretty close to letting the tank off. I was thinking that the tank could help but I didn’t realize that 48 … the 88 guns would knock out a tank. I didn’t know that. I just didn’t know. KWL: How many tanks were on you? JA: Just that one tank. KWL: Just that one? And the rest were troops then? JA: Yes. And I also started to say that when they told us at the meeting, don’t recognize any man-made objects because they will be devastated. They will be destroyed. They said that the allies were going to make 3000 sorties. I didn’t know what a sortie was. That means that there were going to be 3000 hits. When I got into the beach, there wasn’t a single bomb that hit because of the low cloud cover and the beach that I was going into was just as smooth as it could be. It was necessary for these bombs to land on the beach so there could be holes so these soldiers could hide in these holes, but they didn’t have that. MPS: What did you think of fellow officers and soldiers? JA: Well some of the officers were all college men. I thought they were high caliber people. I did see just one that I felt was kind of inept. In other words, he just didn’t know how to handle his ship and his crew was laughing at him. That would have never happened to me. RJG: Do you recall the day your service ended? JA: Yes. I was released up in Chicago at the training station up there. They gave us a physical. They found a spot on my lung and they weren’t going to release me thinking maybe I had tuberculosis or something like that. Well, I was so anxious to get out I said “let me out of here, I will let my doctors at home take care of me,” but I think after the examined it they realized that it wasn’t tuberculosis and they released me. I was glad to get home. RJG: Where were you at the time your service ended? In Chicago? JA: Great Lakes, Chicago. Great Lakes, Michigan. RJG: Okay. KWL: North of Lake Forest, north of Waukegan. RJG: Right. What did you do in the days and weeks afterward? JA: Well I came home. My father was in the hardware business. I worked in the hardware store. From there I went into the hardware business. RJG: Did you have or make any close friendships while you were in service? JA: I did. I kept in touch with four or five officers. I still keep in touch with one officer that was in my group. I keep in touch with 3 or 4 other officers which I didn’t know at the time, but they were on LCTs and I correspond with them every week.
[0:25:23]
RJG: Did you join a veteran’s organization? JA: No. RJG: What did you think of the movie “Saving Private Ryan”? JA: I thought it was extremely accurate. There was one scene there. Do you remember the scene where the soldiers were dead— Lying face down in the water. It showed maybe a dozen of them. There were hundreds of them— hundreds. And when I walked down the beach I ran down the beach thinking I could get help because my crew was wounded. I couldn’t take three steps without stepping around or over a body. They were just that many on the beach. KWL: So you were there at the beach and your anchor was in the ground, your tank? JA: No. KWL: This was a separate, a different LCT? JA: Well no. When I realized that I wasn’t going forward I thought the anchor was holding me so I ran up there and grabbed a sledge hammer and started to chop the cable. While I was chopping the cable, one of my crewmen came to me and said, “skipper, the engine rooms are flooded.” So then I gave the sledge hammer to somebody else. I ran down to where the hatch was that went down there and that’s where I stepped over a body. I didn’t recognize it. It was decapitated. We all had clothes on to repel gas. So I didn’t recognize that he was the other officer aboard ship. I thought he was a solider. So I ran over to the hatch and went down there and one of the motor macs was standing on the ladder to go down. I said, “go down and see what’s going on down there” because it was taking on water and he looked at me and he said, “people drown down there” and I said, “yes, blankity blank blank they drown” and I grabbed him by the hair of his head and I pulled him up off of the ladder. I went down there and found the water was about waist deep and I could see there was a fracture in the bulk head and water was coming in so then I knew that the water was over the engines. The engine room is next to the generator room so I knew that’s what the problem was. The engines were flooded out.
[00:28:07]
KWL: So obviously you couldn't go any further?
JA: Couldn't go any further there.
KWL: So that's when you got off the ship to go and help?
JA: So no then because, because I chopped the cable and had no power I was just dead there on the water and I jumped up on the bow of the ship and I had a monkey fist, that's a close line rope like with a knot on the end and you throw it and I was hoping that someone would take it, pull it, pull me away from the beach cause that's where they were firing at us, but it was just helter-skelter. There was nobody was willing to help me. So then I just started to float, float, float, float with the drift with the current and that’s when I settled underneath the cliffs settled down so I really didn’t have to swim. Now I had a fear there that they could drop hand grenades over the cliff on us—that was a frightening thing to me. And later I found out that one of our destroyers was having a gun battle with a tank that was right up above me and when they would fire their shells the dirt was coming down, coming down on us. And that was very rare that a battleship was dueling with a tank. So that's the boat settled down and I left the boat, went looking for help thinking I, because we ran out of bandages and that sort of thing and I didn't have enough for them.
KWL: How many crew did you have on the boat?
JA: I had sixteen, sixteen, so eight of them were wounded and one was killed so that was fifty percent. And the other interesting thing, when I went back aboard ship the aft end was underwater, the forward end was out of water, and the tide was coming in and all along the cliff there were all these soldiers wounded there and I noticed there a major was tending to them. And I went to him and I said, “listen the tide's coming in, here's the water mark,” he didn't know what I was talking about. I said, “these men are going to be underwater,” I said, “you better bring them aboard ship”. So that's what we did. I brought maybe fifty came and stayed on the forward of my ship and I was so sad. All night long the waves were hitting, water was splashing over. These soldiers were laying shoulder to shoulder, head to foot, just like sardines on my deck. They were wet, just like that. I heard one of them call for his mother. One wanted water; I had a hard time stepping over people to bring him water. But then the next morning we were able to get them off.
KWL: So you did a good thing?
JA: Well, what else were we going to do? Couldn't stay there. Then I found a LCVP, that's a small landing craft that carries about thirty-six people I think and they're called Higgins boats, there was one of them, came and let off, just three or four people that must've been observers or officers or something and I ran out to them and I had a hard time running because I had to run into water that was up over my knees and you know how difficult that is and I begged him, I said, come to the aft side of my ship and take my wounded off. And he consented to do that, he took my wounded. So then I was relieved of that. Then I stayed on the beach for about six or seven days. I slept in fox holes and I just ate C-rations or K-rations I don't know they were cans and I’d pick one up and open it, if I didn’t like it I threw it away, I’d grab another one. So that was quite an experience. I had a little other experience, after about the third or fourth day I still didn’t learn my lesson that guns kill and I decided that I would go up to the front and get myself a German Luger. Well I had on khakis and I didn’t even have a helmet on, I had one of those knit hats. I went up on the cliff and I saw a fella' getting on his motorcycle “I said, “Hey! Where you going?” and he said, “Where you want to go?” And I said, “I want to go to the front.” He said, “Jump on mate!” He happened to be a British courier, and his job was to take the messages to the front lines. I jumped on; I never had such a fast ride in my life. If he couldn't get around it he went over it. All of the sudden, I knew we weren't gone very far and if you read your history the Americans hadn't penetrated very far, and this was, I don't remember the day, third day something like that we were just a few miles from where we'd penetrated in. All the sudden he runs of the road, he slaps the motorcycle down with both legs down. He's next to me over here is a soldier in a prone position firing, in a prone position firing. Over there at the road was another one firing. I was in the front lines. And then I slowly backed out, I backed out, and I thumbed a ride to go back to the beach. And along came an ambulance. And it was one of those ambulances that would hold twelve people. Three, three, three and three. And all these fellows were wounded and the happened to be Poles—Polish. One fellow could speak English and he was telling me that their outfit was wiped out by the German Tigers. I never heard of the German Tigers. Well it was a tank that we all feared. So then I realized, my gosh the Germans are that good, I didn't realize it. So that was my experience learning that we weren't invulnerable, we weren't impervious.
KWL: I have another question cause they aren't familiar with mulberries. Did you go back later, on a later craft and come in when they put the mulberries up on the different beaches?
JA: No, but I was there when they took the American ships and lined them out and they blew out the bottoms and they sunk and that made an artificial harbor.
[0:35:59]
RG: Where did you go after D-Day?
JA: After D-Day, after I stayed on the beach for six or seven days then I went back to what they called a survivors camp which was, I was just living in a nice beautiful home back in England. And after I was there for a while doing nothing, I went back to France and I was assigned as a skipper on another LCT.
KWL: Forty-nine days that you were at the particular camp so not quite a month and a half.
JA: Month.
KWL: And where did you go back in France? Any particular port?
JA: I went back to Omaha, and we worked, we worked in this artificial beach.
KWL: What was the LCT you were on this time? Was this the 11- I don't know.
JA: 1166 was the new one that I took, that I was assigned to and I worked that until I came back to the States which was in the spring of '45.
KWL: You listed a gun-boat, the converted gun-boat do you want to-
JA: That's the LCIG, that's what I went, I went to Pearl Harbor and I picked that up because it had come in from the specific. And something interesting there, there were six officers about sixteen men, I was the youngest officer but I was the skipper. That's because when you go into the navy you're assigned a number, well the lowest number is the highest ranking. So I out ranked the other five, and I was the youngest.
KWL: How did you get that lowest number to be the highest?
JA: Well it’s just that when I went through my training up at Notre Dame I was assigned number 3605, no it was I don’t remember, it was a four digit number, I don’t remember what it was now.
KWL: So they recognized right then that you had leadership?
JA: Well you do well and you're better than another officer then you say what's your number and you tell him and you automatically out ranked him.
RJG: What did you go on to do as a career after the war?
JA: After the war I helped my dad in his hardware store and then he helped me start in the hardware business so I went into the hardware business.
RJG: Did your military experience influence your thinking about war or the military in general.
JA: Well yes, I saw all this devastation over there from what a mad man could do and I just knew that we would have to protect ourselves against anything like that again.
RJG: What did you think of propaganda that came out of the war?
JA: I didn't see much propaganda, I don't know.
RJG: Do you attend any reunions?
JA: I did go to the inaugural of the D-Day Memorial in New Orleans. And when I was down there that's when they encouraged us to write our stories, so I wrote the story, but we had the fiftieth reunion it was in Omaha, Nebraska. I called them, I had my flight reservations, I paid one day hotel and then I forgot to go. I didn’t show up.
RJG: Where were you and how did you feel when the war ended?
JA: I was so happy. I was elated, I didn’t feel like jumping up and down I was just so thankful.
RG: How did your service and experience just affect you whole life?
JA: I don’t think that motivated me any particular way. The thing that I think that motivated me was the fact that I was a boy scout, I was an Eagle Scout and when I went into the service I thought nothing’s going to happen to me. I followed the Boy Scout oath and I thought I’m a good boy, nothing’s going to happen. And that's the reason I went into the beach very confident.
RJG: Is there anything you'd like to add that we haven’t covered in this interview?
JA: No, I’m just thankful that I did my part and I keep thinking what would've happened if I didn’t go into the beach? The people that were killed on my ship, and wounded, they'd be probably would be alive but on the other hand would I be able to live knowing that I didn’t carry out the orders? And I keep thinking well, while they were firing at me and using their energy to shoot me I was sure that others were able to advance. And not that, that happened but soon after that the tide did turn and the Allies did start to take over the beach.
[0:41:50]
KWL: Where were you on V-E Day?
JA: V-E Day I was in Norfolk, Virginia.
KWL: Tell me what the town was like. What happened in Norfolk on that day?
JA: Well, I was staying with some friends; I was visiting some friends on Chesapeake Bay. The first time I flew down to Chesapeake Bay we sank for shrimp, brought it back, we ate shrimp, heard that the war was over and the whole town just exploded. So we jumped in the car went downtown and the cars were bumper to bumper. The people on the streets were shoulder to shoulder. People riding on the fenders of their cars, on top of their cars. It was just a celebration.
MPS: Can you explain what VE-day is exactly?
JA: Well, V-E Day was the day that it ended in Europe. Now we had V-J Day which when it ended, when we went to the Pacific, that ended the war—when Japanese were defeated.
KWL: Was there a difference in the celebration for those two?
JA: I don’t remember V-J Day that much. I don’t remember exactly where I was either. I’m not sure where I was.
KWL: But certainly V-E Day, that must've been, that day so memorable.
JA: Very, yeah.
KWL: That was a very positive day, which is nice.
JA: Oh definitely, when I was involved in that over there. When I went to the Pacific I didn’t see any action. I went over there on an aircraft carrier incidentally I was sea sick on that too because my billet was at the bow of the ship and those big swells in the Pacific, the ship would go down, and up and down and up and I was sea sick.
Kathryn Lerch: Can you remember the carrier you were on?
JA: I don’t remember the name of the carrier.
KWL: It’s not really important I was just curious.
JA: No, I don’t remember the name of it.
KWL: so you would've been in Hawaii? Did you go out from Hawaii to the Pacific or did you stay more in?
JA: no I only spent five days, only spent five days in Hawaii. So that was my contribution to the war there.
KWL: Well they often say that perhaps this is the most difficult thing for veterans to do is to tell their story. And many didn’t want to tell their story, came home, you got married, you got a job, and you put that all behind you.
JA: Yes.
KWL: but obviously, you know even sixty years later it’s a very difficult story for many to tell.
JA: Well, I’ll tell you this; time does not diminish the memory of those days.
KWL: No.
JA: And I think, but I don’t go around talking about it.
[Life outside the military]
RJG: I understand you went to school with Kurt Vonnegut.
JA: Yes.
RJG: What was it like to go to school with him?
JA: Well, I didn’t associate with him but it’s just that he and I graduated together, that's it.
RJG: What did you think of Slaughter House-Five?
JA: I enjoyed reading it. As a matter of fact, I read it twice. I got the book twice and read it.
[0:45:38]
KWL: I can probably think of something else. Life on board ship, I know they talked to you, [Announcement over PA, pause] Okay, so back to this, so when you were on board, I guess I’ll say your boat, versus ship what type of cabin did you have? How was the configuration set up for you as an officer?
JA: Yes, I had my own quarters, and the focus, the building, I forget the terminology I was using now, was large but then I had a partition so that I had my private quarters.
KWL: How many, you said you had sixteen on the boat?
JA: Yes.
KWL: And then you say you would’ve had somebody who was there a cook to cook the meals?
JA: Yes, we had a cook. And we had the Motor Macks, we had the deck hands, yeah.
KWL: What were some of the jobs, for example what did the Motor Macks do? Because I know they're not familiar.
JA: Well care for, we have three engines and two generators and they kept those going, kept them clean, that sort of thing.
RG: What was daily life like on the boat?
JA: Actually I think my job was just to make sure that there was, that everything was in order and I had a good crew, never had any problems. I knew what, I’ll tell you about the time that I told you that we got lost and we got into port. Well, that night a plane came over and dropped a bomb and my boatswain opened the hatch of my, and he says, 'Air raid blank-blank!' I don’t want to tell you what he said. ‘Raid blank, blank and I’m not kidding!' Well I thought, 'he's drunk, I’m going to get him.' So I got out of bed and about that time a bomb fell. Knocked me off my feet. [Laughing] Well I went to grab my helmet and I didn’t know where it was, because it was pitch dark in my room and I went all over the wall, looking for where I’d hung it. So I realized he wasn't kidding.
KWL: When did you have opportunities in England to be ashore? In some free time? Did you get to meet some of the locals, down at the local pub or not? Did you mingle at all with some of the English population?
JA: I didn’t go to the pubs. I don’t recall visiting with the British. I stayed with the officers. That sort of thing.
KWL: Have you ever been back to England?
JA: Yes, uh-huh, yes a couple times.
KWL: Has it changed, do you think much, obviously it has, that's a silly question but yeah, clearly.
JA: Oh yes, from back then.
KWL: Have you ever gone back to France?
JA: Well, I went back for the fiftieth reunion.
KWL: Did you go back with anyone that you knew?
JA: I took my family.
KWL: Oh good.
JA: I took three of my children and my niece with me when we went back.
KWL: What year did you do this? The fiftieth year I’m assuming you can calculate it.
JA: The fiftieth, so that would be what '94 then wouldn’t it?
KWL: Yes, it would be.
JA: as a matter of fact, the niece that I took back was [Angelo Xarvices] wife and because of Angelo is the reason I’m here. I don’t know if you know him.
KWL: No, I don’t.
JA: Well I wonder,
KWL: I got linked.
JA: Well somehow Angelo said would you do this at school and I said sure and that’s the reason I’m here.
KWL: Well that’s wonderful.
JA: It was his wife that I took back.
KWL: Well can you think of anything else ladies and gentleman?
MPS: Were there any meals that you and your fellow soldiers on board looked forward to?
JA: Meals? No, I thought we ate well, I had a Greek cook and he wasn’t a cook, he was really a newspaper man. So when they signed him up, said, “Cornegenous you must be Greek so you're the cook.” So somebody made him the cook. Well, can we turn this off? The Greek got sick so he was prohibited from cooking for thirty days so then one of my crew members took over. And the food was lousy. For thirty days.
KWL: Ok, anything else?
[0:51:16]
RJG: What was it like when you returned from the war? What did people think of veterans of the war from that time?
JA: I didn’t get any feedback from anybody. Like she said when we came back we were interested in earning a living and consequently we didn’t keep in touch with each other. It was until years later we tried to find each other. And I was able to find all my crew members. Many had passed away and all that and I was able to locate about ten of the people that were under the command of this fellow and this chemical outfit. By coincidence the newspaper on the Ohio River and Missouri, I can’t remember of the newspaper, called me up and wanted a story. I said yes. So when he called and interviewed me and I told him that I had this chemical one of the fellows there read it and when he said I was with this chemical company he called me and he said my dad who passed away was in that outfit and he belonged to the organization, their reunion. So he sent me the names of the people that were in there and I got in touch with all of them that were aboard ship, but they all passed away except one and he had a stroke and I found him in a nursing home down in Jacksonville, Mississippi. When I called him, he was pleased, I couldn’t hear a word he said but I could tell that he was very, very, happy that I got in touch with him. And unfortunately I didn’t realize until later but the Daughters if the American Revolution has chapters all over the country and I realized that I could’ve had one of them go there and interview him. You see they would’ve done that, the nurses didn’t want to give me the time of day. They were busy, so I missed out interviewing him.
KWL: That’s an interesting thing to know that there are groups that will do that.
JA: yes, daughters of the revolution or something.
KWL: Yeah, Daughters of the American Revolution, DAR. Well I think we've done very well. It was a very nice interview and if they have any other questions later may they call you even to the Florida if necessary.
JA: Well the phone number I gave is here. But this phone number is the one that’s always here but the one in Florida, I’m in and out. But I can give you the Florida number. But thank you very much.
RJG: Thank you.
MPS: Thank you.
JA: [For] giving me a chance to spill off here.
[00:54:24.7]
