Veteran Transcript
James DeCamp
[b. 12 / 27 / 1924]
[0:16.4 counter start #]
[Note: adjust the following paragraph and put it in brackets if this was not included at beginning of your tape.]
“Today is Sunday October 14 2007. I am Eric McMechan and I am interviewing James DeCamp at 8121 Cherington Dr. Indianapolis, Indiana 46227. Mr. DeCamp is a friend of my grandfather. Mr. DeCamp is 82 years old and was born on December 27 1924. Mr. DeCamp served in World War II and held the following rank of 1st Class Corpsman and 1st Class Seaman.”
EM: Were you drafted or did you enlist?
JD: I was drafted.
EM: Where were you living at the time you got drafted?
JD: Lebanon Indiana.
EM: You joined only because you were drafted?
JD: That was one to go, yeah.
EM: Why did you pick the service branch you joined?
JD: So that I would have a place to sleep. Three meals a day.
EM: And you were unable to serve as a corpsman the entire service right?
JD: Yeah,
EM: So which did you switch to?
JD: I didn’t switch to a seaman till the last six months of my time in the navy.
EM: Do you recall your first days in the service?
JD: Yeah.
EM: What was it like?
JD: Well it was something very different. They were making up companies and all my friends that I went to the Great Lakes with made it to this one company. When it came my turn they had stopped taking them in that company and I was put in another company with a bunch of people from Michigan that I didn’t know anything about. So I lost all my friends, I was more or less on my own. And it was kind of touchy. You didn’t know what was going to happen.
EM: So what did it feel like during boot camp and training?
JD: Well, I can’t say it was scary, but you had to learn a lot real quick. And you had to get up, which I always had a problem with. Worried my mom and dad were still getting me up. Well, you soon and get the job done.
[2:48:8]
EM: Were you glad when boot camp and the first few weeks of training were over?
JD: Yeah, sure. But we had some nice things happen. We went to a few football games in the Great Lakes. They took us into Chicago to watch a Northwestern game one time. That was fun.
EM: What unit did you first join?
JD: Well, I didn’t really have a company. After boot camp they sent me to the Philadelphia Naval Hospital, and I started my actual work there. Well what I was suppose to have learned at school or at the great lakes.
EM: So you first went to Philadelphia and worked in a naval hospital?
JD: Right
EM: How long did you stay there?
JD: I started in January of ‘44 and I stayed there till March of ‘45.
EM: So you stayed there for about 2 months?
JD: For five months.
EM: What were your experiences while you were at the hospital? Do you remember any of them?
JD: Oh yeah, the first assignment I had, the second night I was there I had to go on duty at midnight and the fellow had a tracheal I-V and they had to run a tube up his throat to clear out the mucus and so … It scared me to death. I had never seen anything like it. Fortunately, a patient in the other bed was there long enough he knew what to do and he helped through it. That was my scariest moment.
EM: How old were you?
JD: I would have been 18, maybe I just turned 19. Then I got a regular assignment. It was in a ward where Marines and soldiers who had venereal disease came in there to get medicated and I was in that ward about three months I guess. It wasn’t very much fun.
EM: Yes.
JD: And then I got called on the draft? They sent me to Africa.
[6:06:7]
EM: Africa, so it was in Africa. What were some of your experiences in Africa?
JD: Well I was there I was in Oran and in a naval hospital and they had all kinds of patients and I wasn’t assigned to a particular ?quantiped? But at that time the first thing I did was to take meal to the ground and carry it to the quantiped? The hospital wards and there were some pretty nasty sights there.
But I think the worst was in the psychiatric ward where most of the people were dangerous and I saw terrible deaths in there too. But they would take the other corpsmen up in there and they didn’t take care much of the cure when they didn’t throw the food at you. The worst part of that was they use to take a towel and put around a person when they didn’t want to eat or they would spit it out they would put a towel around and twist it so the guy would have to keep it open up and swallow his food. It seemed like a torturing way to keep a guy alive and that’s what they would do. So as you can see that’s stuck in my mind too.
EM: Yeah.
JD: Then I was signed up, why I don��t know, to a beach battalion that was in Italy, and they flew us to Italy and we joined its Fourth Beach Battalion. In May of ‘44 and I was with this battalion till October of 44, and we made a landing in Southern France which everybody said was very easy. But it was still a landing and there were some people hurt and the first thing I hit the beach and crossed over the trenches and there were dead Germans lying in the trenches. You had to step over them and that kind of made you crazy a little bit, but we got through that. In the beach battalion we were in charge of the beach and we took care of the wounded that were sent back and our commander we had all kind of different people in this beach battalion and our commander would be in charge of the beach and he would tell what ships what to bring what like bring in tanks or bring in troops.
[7:15:5]
Until it was, until the beach was secure he was in charge nobody, no general, nobody could come over him. So I joined them in Italy and made this landing in Southern France and then we went back to where we were in Oran where their base was and stayed there for a few weeks and then we went and came back to the United States. I got home for about twelve, fifteen days, something like that. Then I went to California and was still in a beach battalion only they had done it a little different. They assigned a battalion to the main ship, and that ship was the USS Plan. APA 134
EM: APA 134?
JD: Right, USS PLAN. We were a beach party on that ship, and nice part was we did training in Hawaii.
EM: Did you guys enjoy Hawaii.
JD: Well, no, this was some part of Hawaii, don’t think of Hawaii, we were on Maui and there was nothing there. Stayed for a week training with them dropping wooden bombs on us and things like that on the way. Fortunately we missed; they didn’t come after us in time so this ship was not allowed to get in the convoy that was going to Iwo Jima which was the best thank goodness. But what we did do we went out and used our ship as a hospital ship. We took on veterans from Iwo Jima. We were sent to pick them up and see if we could get them back to our space. Some we did, some we didn’t. Some we had to drop off at Hawaii because they were too far gone to make it all the way back.
That was one of my proudest moments I think it was. I was in charge of a section on the ship. I had about thirty, thirty-five marines and they all had different types of injuries, and it was my job to get them comfortable and to get them able to get back on their feet or whatever. It was quite an experience and I was able to get a few people that were able to go on back to the United States and a few of them sent to Hawaii but I was proud of what I was able to do and how I handled the situation.
[7:40:3]
I was unable to do all the things that were needed to be done so I had to get the marines that were halfway able to help me take care of their buddies, and we found a few. For example, one guy was stuck, propped up all over the ceiling, and a guy told me that he, he says, “this guy’s not eating”, he hasn’t said anything so I crawl up there and I talk to him and he wouldn’t talk to me at first so I just kept working on him and he finally started talking to me. He had lost all his buddies going into Iwo Jima and he was shocked by the whole situation. We finally did get him where he was eating a little bit and talking to me. He was one of the guys they took off at Hawaii.
The other thing was there were a lot of hands burnt. These guys would want cigarettes well pretty hard with both hands tied up and I would get somebody to go over and say, “hey hold your buddy’s cigarette, help the kid out”, and I was pretty proud that I was able to tell somebody else what to do. Not a big thing, but to me it was. It was part of my duty and I thought I had done it pretty well, and we came back, took them back, and then we came back to Hawaii and I was on a softball team on the ship.
EM: You were on a softball team?
JD: Yeah, we were playing, I was playing third base, and a guy slid in and knocked my feet out in front of me and I fell down and broke my wrist. So they weren’t suppose to but they let me go back to the United States and I stayed in Santa Cruz, California for about three months recuperating which was pretty nice. They had taken over a hotel there and they kept all the cooks. We had steak, some of the best of eating. Then, well I got shipped to California for further assignment. We got on a troop ship and went all the way to Okinawa and there was a typhoon.
EM: Typhoon?
JD: Typhoon, it hit Okinawa so we couldn’t go near there and we had so many corpsmen they let us transfer to seaman which is unheard of. To get off this ship, we were on there like a month. So I got off with a seaman’s grading. They put me on a yard minesweeper. 150 foot long like a tug boat, and the duty was to sweep the mines that we had dropped in the bays around Japan. And after a couple months of that why I got my points up so I could go home and that’s what I did and I came on home and got to the Great Lakes and got my discharge paper and came home. That’s it. Is that good enough for you?
[8:32:6]
EM: Yeah that’s fine. You said you played on a softball team?
JD: Yeah.
EM: So were there usually activities like that going on, in the ships?
JD: Yeah whenever we got to land. They had a basketball team. Well we did on that little tugboat. They had a basketball team on it. But yeah they try to have different sports. On a ship the main thing was boxing.
EM: Boxing?
JD: Yeah, I didn’t get into that. There were too many good fighters there. That and the movies were good entertainment. You always had a movie at night.
EM: You always had a movie at night?
JD: Yeah, see that’s another thing about the navy. You’re not lying out in the mud or in a tent. They had some nice moments.
EM: So what were some of your favorite activities to do when you had some free time or you weren’t actually doing something?
JD: (Laughter) Girls love the uniform that’s as far as I want to go.
EM: So while you were serving the army,
JD: Navy.
EM: Navy, sorry, so were you able to keep in touch with like your family?
JD: Oh yeah, yeah well it was mostly by mail. When we were in the states we would make some calls.
EM: So was it harder to stay in touch with your family when you were actually on the ships?
JD: Oh yeah, you could mail once every two weeks.
EM: Two weeks.
JD: That’s where you were.
EM: Yeah.
JD: I got transferred a lot. My mail was always behind. A couple weeks old before you could get it, but that’s no problem. And they made you, they checked with to make sure you wrote home. I don’t remember what that was like I never had a problem with that. How they found out I don’t know. They did check and tried to tell you write home.
EM: So when you were on the ships, how would you guys find out what was going on in the rest of the world? In other parts of the war?
JD: Well we …, of course we had radio contact and they would have a little paper. They would have a paper I recall if you had a real big ship they would have… they would just release you know keep you up on things like that. Like if you were in Europe why they would have it on what is going on in the pacific and vice versa if you were in pacific they would let you know what the troops were doing in Europe, but I don’t remember too much like that except those papers that we use to get. Sometimes they would be ten days old, and I can’t think what they called that paper. I’m drawing a blank there.
EM: You were talking about the food and stuff before. So overall, what did you experience with like the food and stuff during your service on the different ships and stuff?
JD: It was pretty routine; you would have on Monday a certain thing, like Saturday was beans for breakfast.
EM: Beans for breakfast?
JD: Not many people liked that. I loved it. Because it filled you up I guess was the reason, and when you are on a troop ship you have trouble getting food. Like they feed you two meals a day that’s all they could handle because of all the troops.
EM: Yeah.
JD: And I could say a little trouble. If I had a tray I had to put another scoop on it. But the food was generally. You know, it depends where you were and what kind of ship you were on. The bigger the ship I’m sure the better the food. I was never on anything bigger than that APA, but I heard the other ships, the big ships, they were fed real decent. And there again it was kind of what part of the world you were in, whether they could get supplies to you and stuff like that.
EM: So the ships you served on, did they always have plenty of supplies? Did you ever have the experience, like, almost running out of supplies?
JD: No, no I didn’t. That’s another good thing about the Navy. Some of those guys in the army…well I’ve eaten, well when I made a landing or something we had to eat rations just like the army did or the marines. And that wasn’t too very good. Use to be a hard piece of something like a dog biscuit.
[22:21:0]
EM: So, did you ever have some special routine… some routine you had to do everyday?
JD: Oh yeah, you had your assignments to do everyday. Well, you had to get up and make role call. That was one of the first things you did, and being a corpsman we had a little different arrangement than a regular ship’s company. We report to the hospital on the ship, and on a smaller ship well, but on the bigger ship everything was routine. That wasn’t so on a smaller of a ship. You had to make sure you got up to get off if you’re going out.
You had your duties there, and you know the night before what time you’re going to go out. And the same coming in, if we were out on a ship like on this yard minesweeper. Every day we would go out about the same time and we had to get up. Fortunately, I was on the bridge which is where they operate or steer the ship or whatever, and maybe I had to run the flag up that day or maybe I would… well I never had to work the shore. Tying it up or tying it to the… sometimes I did steer the little ship. But on the big ships you had daily routines. Of course if you’re in a hospital or something there were special things you had to do each day. They keep you busy.
EM: So did you ever get leave during …?
JD: Oh yeah, yeah that was very nice. Sometimes you are able to go home, sometimes your weren’t. Well I got home several times during the war.
EM: Were there any parts of like traveling around the world that you were able to enjoy while serving the navy? Did you ever like the fact that you were able to see some like different places?
[26:35:8]
JD: Yeah, yeah, they weren’t much nice. Like in Italy, Naples was all blown up, and ruins all over the place. In France, we were in a small town so there wasn’t much there. But in France, that’s where we loaded … the injured and we put them on either a LCI, which is landing craft something, and load it with stretchers with people in and then they take them out to the big ships, the hospital ships. And they had to be out of there before dark because rules of war or some such thing.
But the interesting part there was we’d go out there and our doctor he would go out and he would get around the ship and tell them all, “You hear that fire, yeah yeah were under attack”. He would just tell them wild tales. Or we’d go, “anything you need, anything you need”, “yeah we need some bread” we’d call mattress covers full of bread and then we’d go in and trade them for wine or for something like that you know. It was quite interesting. I had fun. There were some bad moments, but I had fun. I think I’ve had fun my whole life. I didn’t let that bother me that much I mean, scared a few times but that wasn’t bad.
EM: Do you remember any of the like funny things or anything happening onboard any of the ships you were on?
JD: Yeah, funny. Well they weren’t funny. Probably the worst, well no not the worst, well I’ll have to think, straighten my thoughts down for anything funny. But I can’t think of any… well might not be funny, funny to us anyway. We got an ensign from Minneapolis that came on the ship. Ensign was all he was, you know, just fresh out of the deal and he started making rules. Twenty-five, thirty guys and he starts making rules. Like you had to be clean shaven every day, well there’s a rule in the navy that you can grow a beard so we all grew beards. He should have learned something there, you just don’t tell us to shave. We’ll grow a beard so that’s what we did.
When we’d be on this land, transporting troops, well most of them didn’t have a shot so we had to give them shots and there would be a line coming through. We would tell them just relax and they would see this needle and just pass out before they even got the shot. That was funny, not to them I guess but it was to us. They’d just look at the needle, and there were some white people that did the same, they just didn’t want a shot I guess they’d never had shots in their life. And that was, that was funny. But I can’t think of anything else.
EM: Did you ever end up keeping a diary or anything?
JD: No.
EM: No, nothing like that.
EM: Well, do you remember like the day your service ended? Like turned in?
JD: Yeah, I had to get home. I wanted to get out of the Great Lakes and get home. Didn’t know what I was going to do. That was part of getting out … nobody knew what they were going to do. Some guys, well I did go to college. Well, veteran administration paid to go to school. Well so I did that and it was six months before I went to school.
EM: So you ended up going to college?
JD: yeah.
EM: So did you make any close friendships during the service that you kept after you got out?
JD: Yeah I did. I did for a little while, and I ran into some funny things there. I traveled after I got out of college. And I traveled and I went to a couple of towns where buddies of mine. And they were rather cold which was surprising. And I had a few I just didn’t … some good buddies I would have liked to keep in contact with. That’s a shame in a way; it’s very easy to make friends in the navy. Pick up someone right away to run around or discuss your situation. So that was never a problem with me.
EM: So did you end up joining a veteran’s organization after you were out of the service?
JD: Not right after because I belong to the American Legion, but I’m not much of a joiner.
EM: So do you think your service helped you later in life? Like, outside of the service?
Helped the way you did things?
JD: Yeah, yeah it kind of straightened you out. You know, the world wasn’t a joke. Yeah, it helped a lot. It gave you a lot of good memories. The bad ones you kind of forget. You don’t harp on those. You don’t think about them anymore. Like I say, I keep good thoughts and I thought I had a good time in the service. I know there are a lot of guys that can’t say that and they were in difficult situations but I didn’t have to look out or anything. I was, maybe you would say I was lucky. But yeah it just straightened. Well, there is not knowing maybe what you’re going to do, but I think there is a lot of guys who came out of there with they were mechanics in there so they might get in a mechanical situation.
Me, how I can get in, I wasn’t going to be a doctor. But overall, yeah I’d say yeah, and you got around the world, got to see a lot of things you never saw before or after really. So, yeah I’d say it did me a lot of good. Because I didn’t know what I was going do. It gave me a chance to go to college too that I wouldn’t have been able to do. So, yeah very definitely.
EM: Where did you go to college?
JD: Chase College in Cincinnati it was a law school for a year, a night law school. But there so many, and they had a three semester deal, and so many guys that just wanted to make a three year deal, get in and get their diploma quickly and they incorporated that into a day school. Get your pre-law or your business school administration. That’s what I did. I took it three years. Luckily they had that because I would have run out of money, they had, I think I was just on the verge of running out of them giving me money to go to school. I did make it through.
[38:55:3]
EM: So what did you go on to do as a career after the war?
JD: I got into construction business for a little while. Carpenter’s helped, so that wasn’t going to work. So I, well that’s when I started going to college, and then I, after I graduated from college then I started looking for a different job and I got. My father worked for a man that was a big shot at the Palm Beach clothing company and he got me a job in there and I spent ten years with him. Then I, my brother-in-law had these pizza places. I decided I didn’t want to travel anymore, I had two, three kids at the time and I’d be gone three or four months a year, and get back maybe once a month and I said, “Well this is not going to work.” So I went ahead and we worked out something and brought the pizza business here. There I am.
EM: So did your military experiences influence your thinking about the war and the military in general?
JD: What’s going on now?
EM: Yeah and just your entire life, has it changed the way you’ve looked at the military?
JD: No, not really because I haven’t stayed, I haven’t stayed up on what they are doing and it’s so much different now than then. There’s so much more technology and there’s a lot of things that would work, that we did, that they couldn’t, they wouldn’t do now. Can I have that question again?
EM: So…
JD: Influenced my thinking?
EM: Yeah.
JD: Not really, well I did think we made a mistake in not having a demanding call that every citizen should have go to war, go to the service for a year. I definitely believe that from the way things are going now and the way the kids are acting today. I think it might do, it might do them a lot of good to get in the service. Some it’s not going to do any good, but we save one or two kids that’s the dream.
EM: So do you still try to keep up to date with what is going on in the world? Like current events?
JD: Oh yeah, absolutely.
EM: Do you ever attend any reunions or meetings with other veterans?
[39:45:2]
JD: Well we had a, we had a group, the fourth beach battalion that still to this day has reunions. I didn’t go to any of them. I kind of like to say, “Come on I’m not too much into this kind of stuff.” I wasn’t with them long enough. I don’t know, it was only like six months I think, and I didn’t get to really fit in. Most of those guys had already made three landings, and they together, they treated you all right but as far as going and visiting them again. I didn’t know them that well to begin with, and it was always out of town somewhere. I just didn’t, it’s not for me. They sent a newsletter every two or three months. It was very interesting reading it. I don’t get it anymore I think the man that put it up died. So there’s very few in that deal anymore.
EM: Is there anything you would like to add that I haven’t asked you? About your service or anything?
JD: Well let me think what I told you. Well I told you about trailing around the country. I’ve been across the country from anywhere around three times.
EM: Yeah.
JD: Yeah, you’d have to go back today and see it. This thing is amazing you know. How we have advanced. Nothing like they use to be. Trains are different. Planes are different. But no, I don’t think there is anything else.
EM: So, has it been surprising to see all the advancements and stuff in technology and everything that’s happened?
JD: Oh absolutely. Yeah, yeah well television, computer, all kinds of things.
EM: Thank you very much for interviewing and answering my questions.
(40:19.4) End of interview
