Folsom, Daniel oral history

              Mr. Daniel Folsom


[b. 3/11/1925]


Recorded on 10/6/05


[Interview starts at 002 on counter]

Lauren George: Today is Thursday, October 6, 2005. I am Lauren George and I am interviewing Daniel Folsom at 10535 Indian Lake Boulevard. Mr. Folsom is a friend. Mr. Folsom was born on March 11, 1925. Mr. Folsom served in World War II, and was in the 111th [NCB] Battalion and held the following rank: coxswain.

LG: Were you drafted or did you enlist?

Daniel Folsom: I was drafted.

LG: Where were you living at the time?

DF: I was living at New Carlisle, Indiana.

LG: And, why did you pick the service branch that you joined?

DF: I didn't pick it, they gave it to me. They were drafting for the Seabee Units, and I got drafted.

[020]

LG: Do you recall the first days in service?

DF: Yes.

LG: What were they like?

DF: Well, I was nude, and they were painting numbers on my chest, and I was at Camp Perry up in Toledo, Ohio being inducted into the service.

LG: Tell me more about your boot camp training experience.

DF: Terrible. I went through boot camp at Camp Perry in Williamsburg, Virginia, and it was hot every day, very humid. I lost a lot of weight being there. And, it wasn't hard to get into [the] regimen [of] what they wanted you to do because I grew up on a farm, and understood getting up early and so forth.

LG: How did you get through it?

DF: By the skin of my teeth, I guess. No, I got through fine, when you go in the navy they make you an apprentice seaman, when you come out of boot camp, they make you seaman second class. So, that’s how you know that you're advancing.

LG: I know you served in World War II, but where exactly did you go?

DF: I went to Europe [on the 5th], and I was in Normandy on June the 6th, and came back from Europe and I went to, out into the Pacific. I went to the Philippines. I went to the South Pacific, and I went to Borneo, Balikpapan, and Brunei Bay, which are down in the South Pacific. [And] I went up to China for a landing, and then from there back to the Philippines. I was- went off to Guam, and got mustered out from there.

LG: Do you remember arriving, and what was that like?

[061]

DF: We went over seas- on the Mauritania to Europe, and it was terrible. It’s a British ship, and of course, it was wartime. The food was lousy, we got fed twice a day, and on the way over they gave us some shots. [We] were down in D-Deck, which is where they transport the automobiles in those days. [We] were bunked in hammocks, five high, and on the way over they gave us all of these shots, and so forth.  The guy on the top hammock would get sick, and the four guys down suffered from it. So, it was horrendous. When we got over there, I 
forget how many days it took us, but we had to stay in the Irish Sea for a couple of days waiting for a high tide.

LG: What was your job assignment?

DF: I was a coxswain on a rhino barge, which was a barge landing craft that offloaded LST's and Liberty ships and so forth, and we took the cargo into the beach.

LG: Did you see any combat?

DF: Yes, I got a star for the invasion of Normandy, and I got two in the Pacific. My Battalion received one for the Philippines, but I never wear that [star]. [I don’t] credit myself to that star, because I didn’t go up there [on the invasion].

LG: Were there many casualties in your unit?

DF: No, we had a lot of wounded people from shrapnel, and not that many casualties, deaths.

LG: Tell me a couple of your most memorable experiences.

DF: [Laughing] There's a lot of them, but some of them I can't put on that recorder. Let's see, going into Normandy was a very moving experience. Seeing so many kids my age and stuff, you know, that was their last day. It was very hard to do that. - In the South Pacific, being with the Australians was an adventure in itself, so whatever fun you could see when there wasn’t war, they knew how to do it.

LG: Were you awarded any medals or citations?

DF: No, none for bravery or anything like that.

LG: Did you have any injuries while in service?

DF: Only [once] when we were building a pontoon, and it was pushed over, and I was in the water when it happened, and it hit me and it hurt my leg. I had about thirty, forty stitches.

LG: How did you stay in touch with your family while you were over seas?

DF: I didn’t have an immediate family, I just had my foster parents, and I stayed in touch with them throughout the war.

LG: Through letters…

DF: Through letters, yeah. When I came home on leave, I would go stay with them.

LG: What was the food like?

DF: It's just Navy food, it's nothing spectacular. Although we did have barbeques, and stuff, and it was pretty good, up in Sun Valley [Rhode Island] and some of the places we were stationed.

LG: Did you have plenty of supplies?

DF: Yes.

LG: Did you feel pressure or stress?

DF: No, I don’t believe so. I was too young.

LG: Was there something special you did for good luck or anything like that?

DF: Not really. I wasn’t very superstitious.

[143]

LG: How did people entertain themselves?

DF: Well, they had - we had basketball, boxing…teams, and we had inter-battalion matches against [each other], and Navy matches. Other than that, they would show us movies and things of that nature, but that was it.

LG: Were there any entertainers that came?

DF: Yeah, I hate that- I've always hated this. When we went over on the Mauritania, Jimmy Cagney went over with us. And they had been giving us these Black Plague shots, and everybody was sick, and so forth. And he came down to entertain us, [laughing] and our battalion booed him out of the- out of the place. I've always been a little ashamed of that, but he was very gracious about it. You know, he understood our condition down there.

LG: What did you do when you were on leave?

DF: [Pause] Just came home and ran around with my farmer [buddies], and that’s about it.

LG: Where did you travel while you were in the service?

DF: I went from Virginia to Rhode Island to Europe. Then I went over, caught the Samuel Chase ship in Boston, and sailed around to- through the canal, out to the Pacific. It took us some fifty or sixty days to do that. And, [then sailed to Samar in the Philippines], and then to China. [It] was an interesting place. I enjoyed that.

LG: Do you recall any particularly humorous- humorous or unusual events.

DF: (?) Yes. A lot of them, but some of them ended in tragedy, and I would rather not say anything about them.

LG: Are there any pranks that you or others would pull on each other.

DF: Yes, and I- since you’re doing the interview, I can't tell you what some of them were. But it was very interesting. After the interview, if you want, I'll tell you're dad, and he can tell you.

LG: What did you think of the other officers and soldiers?

DF: Well, I-I liked most of them. We had a few that had a couple of (?), were just, you know, ninety day wonders, and they seemed to think they were more than (?they could be?), but when you go into combat that all changes.

LG: Did you keep a personal diary.

DF: No, but I've got a lot of letters that, like I say, I wrote home. I don’t know if my son took them, but I know they must be somewhere around here.

LG: Do you recall the day that your service ended?

DF: I came back to the- San Francisco, and went over to the Treasure Island, and I can't remember the day it was or anything, but then I went back to Great Lakes, and I got mustered out at Great Lakes.

[203]

LG: Did you work, or go back to school?

DF: I tried to go to school for a year, and my brother, who was a test pilot, was killed. And- so I had no support other than myself, so I couldn’t afford to go even on a GI Bill.

LG: Did you make any close friendships while in the service?

DF: Yes, I did and I [pause] I've lost most of them, they're all gone. Like I said, I had one really good friend die here, about a year ago. He and I went into boot camp together, and went all through the service. I miss him, he was a good friend.

LG: Did you join any Veteran's organizations?

DF: Yes, I belong to the VFW.

LG: What did you go on to do as a career after the war?

DF: Well, in Chicago, I started selling equipment for the poultry industry, which was a growing thing then. My brother in law owned the company, so I started doing that. I got divorced, and I had custody of my daughter, and so I moved to Indianapolis because my sister lived here, and she helped take care of us, and I started in the chicken business, then.

LG: Did your military experience influence your thinking about war or the military in general?

DF: Well, I've always put the country ahead of my personal thinking, but with my family all being in the military and stuff, I'm very much for the military.

LG: If in a veteran’s organization, what kinds of activities does your post or association have?

DF: We drink a lot. [laughing] Oh, they do things for the community and things like that.

LG: So, do you attend reunions?

DF: My battalion, we had our last one…two years ago. And, we've dropped to so few in number that it's gotten to be a heck of a thing trying to get guys there.

[243]

LG: How did your service and experience affect your life?

DF: I think [it made] me more of a, a humorous person. Because, I've learned to want to see the humorous side of things, and I don’t like this idea of painting everything with a brush that’s black. I like everything to be- for people to have fun.

LG: Is there anything you would like to add that we have not covered in our interview?

DF: Well, there are days when I get very disappointed with the attitude of young people and stuff, and I think the reason is because I don’t think they are told enough what we went through to make their life possible. And, I am glad that you are doing it, and I've done this for Lawrence North too. So, I have no hard feelings about it. Like I said, I wouldn’t take a million dollars for the experience, but I wouldn’t give you a dime to do it again. I made a lot of friends, including your family, and so forth, that I would have never met had I not gone in the service.

LG: Is that all?

DF: Oh, I don’t know, I'll give you these books, and you can tell me if there’s something else you want to know about.

LG: Okay…

DF: And I'll be glad to give you a call, or just tell you, or whatever.

LG: Thanks.

[Pause for Break- further discussion of war experiences]

[268]

DF: When we - is it running?- When we went into Normandy, the part of it that was so spooky to me, was when I saw all of those green uniforms. From out in the channel, it looked like algae, but when you got up there close it was soldiers that had drown and had been shot right at the edge of the beach. So, when we offloaded the bulldozer that we had on our rhino barge, and he dug a long slip trench, and they laid- laid the deceased kids in the slot. Then, after they got clear the beach, they established the cemetery that people see now. It was between the road- hill going up and our Seabee bivouac area. [They built] this cemetery, and they brought the deceased over there to bury them. But, the thing that I believe that never gets enough attention from anybody was the part that the three destroyers played on Omaha beach, making it possible for the people to land. [Before], they went up, really at almost point blank, and unloaded [the shells], and they could have run on ground. [The Germans fired, and] caught them up there and killed them all. But, when they finally got [the] three destroyers in there, the beach opened up, and [the troops] were able to get up there. Until then, it was just guys piled up on the beach, waiting to get up. It looked like drowned people who just lost their weapons and everything. But, once they got going, then, they did a great job. In about two days, you could get around on the Beach. You had to be careful where you walked because of the mines. And, we never had any problems getting the LST's and the Liberty ships unloaded and taken in after the second day. It was [a pretty beach].

[When] I was in the South Pacific, the thing that scared me more than anything wasn’t the Japanese shooting at you, it was the darn sea snakes. Man, if I had to go in the water, I think I'd just cut my throat and go on in. Because they were huge [and poisonous, and] they would be swimming around there and you're trying to get [on] the shore. [And] they're trying to find a place to sit, you know. I remember that  in Normandy the Man-of-Wars floated around. [There] was so many of them. I was trying to think in England what there was- that would be of any interest to people, other than, we were over there, and it just seemed like every place you turned there was an American, and not an English person.

The English were very good to us. I can tell you one story. Just prior to- prior to the invasion, we had to be billeted- the invasion date was due June 5th, and the weather was so bad that they postponed it, and we were billeted in homes down in the south of England. I went into this house. [We had been told by the] officers to eat our k- rations, and don’t eat anything that the English had because that was their food. Which, you know, they had a tough time. So anyways, when I went in [a house] and this woman had a cat. Then the next morning when I got up for breakfast, she invited us down to eat and everything, and I saw this dark meat on the table. And, until I heard that cat meow, I wouldn’t eat that meat. [Laughing] Anyway, they were very, very  nice to us down in the southern part of England. Those people at Dartmouth, Penzance, Landsend, Plymouth, and Torquay. Another thing in England, I was at Slapton Sands, [and] we used to do maneuvers there. They put the lid on us the night after we [came] back [because] some German E-boats had gotten into the fortilla up there, and we lost about a thousand soldiers and sailors that night. So, they put a clamp on us, so nobody could tell anybody about it. There's a book out on it now. It's upstairs; if you get interested in it, I'll let you have it. But, it's an interesting book with what we used to do. They found a place in England, and they moved everybody out, all the families. They had just so many things, they took everything-cattle, cats, everything they had. And then, they would shell that place, and we would run into the beach and we make mock landings there, and that was an interesting thing. But, the English people sacrificed a hell of a lot.

I also remember- another thing that struck me was when I went to mass the first time in Normandy. There were as many German prisoners in the mass as there were Americans, so that made me think twice about being told what the Germans were like, because they- the ones we met, the prisoners, they all seemed rather nice to us. They came down, and they were billeted there on the beach, and they [had been] taken aboard a ship and sent to England. But, it was- it was an experience, that’s for sure.

Let's see, the fun we had in the Philippines on the boxing team. If you went out for boxing you got two [extra] cans of beer a day. They treated you a little nicer if you were on the boxing team. So, I got on the boxing team. A kid about your size, waylaid the hell out of me. [Laughing] I'll never forget it. His name was Antonette. Man he could fight. It finally got to be humorous, getting beat up like that. He beat the crap out of me, it was something, yeah! But all of them are gone now. The sad part of it is everybody's been about ten years too late starting to find out what happened in World War II, and I'm grateful for the people like Tom Hanks. I don’t believe in his politics, but I'm grateful for what he's done, and other people as far as making other people aware of what happened during World War II, and I think the thing you're doing is very, very good.

[372]

 [END OF SIDE ONE, BEGIN SIDE TWO: fast-forward tape to end of side on and turn over]

[607]

LG: Mr. Folsom, you're very interesting to talk to, and I feel very privileged that you have given me your time. But, your stories are very interesting, and I was wondering if you could elaborate on some of your memories or stories from the time that you served.

[612]

DF: Yes, I'll be glad to. I think you'd rather know what happened in Normandy and those places before I get to the Pacific. We- we went in on the first day, on June the sixth, and at that time we had to sleep aboard our barges, landing barges, for the first few days before we could get ashore. And, during that time, we lived off of K-rations and so forth. Normandy was a farming area in
France, so there were cattle there and so forth. A lot of them had stepped on mines and been killed, so they were bloated out there in the field. About the fourth or fifth day, we built a pup tent area, a bivouac area, above the beach, so that we could go there at night and sleep while we weren’t unloading. One night while I was there, this little French girl come running down to the beach, and wanted to know if there was anyone that could help her. What had happened was that her grandfather's cow was going to have a calf, and it had gotten caught. It didn’t have [nose first on the way out, but its feet] on the way out. So having lived on the farm, I was able [to turn the calf around], and to help get the cow relieved of her calf, From that point on, our little group of guys got free milk all the time, which was kind of a treat at Normandy at that time. We unloaded for about two weeks. [At the] end of July a storm came up in the channel. It tore up the whole beach. By this time the army had gone up to the Cherbourg peninsula, and pretty well secured a port for it, so that we became expendable there. After that, we just built causeways for Liberty ships and so forth to pull up to them. And, we offloaded those that drew too much water to get into that little port-like thing. We stayed there till, I think, in December- November or December, in which time we came back to the States. After that, we had a thirty day leave, and from there we came back to Boston and caught the Samuel Chase. An interesting thing happened to me the other day, I was in a Kroger's store, I had my Seabee hat on, and this gentleman come up to me, and wanted to know what outfit I was in, and I told him 111th Naval Construction. And, he said, "Well, we hauled a lot of Seabee's out to the Pacific.", and I said, "Were you on the Samuel Chase?", and he said, “yes” And sixty years ago, that’s how I went out to Pacific- on his ship. Of course, he regaled me with all the way. They had about six hundred cases of beer aboard, he said. This Samuel Chase was a supply ship, it was a Coast Guard ship, and he had six hundred to seven hundred cases of beer on there, so that as we went across we could- the battalion would draw on it. We never drawed once. When we got to Hawaii, there was no beer left. He wanted to know if our Seabee Battalion had gotten it, and I told him we wouldn’t do such a thing as steal the ship's beer. But, we had a beer blast at Eniwetok, and then went on up into the Philippines.[702] Stayed in the Philippines what seems to me like some time in March when we went down towards New Guinea and loaded a group of Australians.

One thing I remember was when I got aboard the LST, the flag was at half staff, and I asked the other seaman there why it was flying there. He said Roosevelt had died. Not being a strong democrat, but being proud of serving in the States, I felt bad about it. Other than that, there were no feelings. It seems like everybody just sort of gets hardened [to] people dying, and you get away from putting a lot of attachment to the person that passed on. There was no sadness aboard the ship, the flags were at half staff, nobody had even discussed it. So that’s [how] I knew then- that's how I can recall part of the time. I can't remember all of the dates exactly, they're in my battalion books I suppose. 
But, I had a great time with the Australians. I went on two invasions with them. They were really excellent, excellent soldiers, and great people, all- I had a lot of fun with them. I can't remember, but it seems to me that they were from the seventh division or something. I’d have to read through my battalion books to see which one it was.

[731]

Out in the Philippines, we'd come back to [Samar]. We lived pretty [good] there in life. There was quite a group of people there at Samar in the Philippines that were there all the time. [clears throat] If there's anything that you can think to ask me, feel free to stop and ask. In the mean time, I'll tell you some of the adventures while I was out in the Pacific. [Samar was our battalion headquarters] We lived on Samar, and there was, like all Seabees and units will do when they're there- they try to figure out what you can drink stronger than beer. So, in this little place, there was a lot of palm trees, and the natives there used to crawl up in the palm trees, cut off end of the palm that comes out there, and would put a coconut underneath it, and they would fill that up, and then they would bring it back down. We would confiscate it from them because it was on Navy ground. Then we would put raisins with it, and make raisin and mix in pineapple juice- not pineapple, but grapefruit juice with it that we would steal off the ships as they would come in. So, that was our alcohol that we drank out there. If you know the taste of any of it, I 
don’t suggest anybody try it. Out in the islands, they had island whiskey, and that was hard on you too. Just didn’t want to do that. But the older guys, the guys in their upper twenties or thirties, it didn’t bother them. It was just part of the mixture with them. They gave us two beers a day, and if you went off on an invasion, those beers would accumulate. On one maneuver we were gone sixty days, so when you came there you had a beer card good for a hundred and twenty cans of beer. So, all of us would get together and pool it, and we'd have quite a party. The hardest thing to get was ice to cool it, but I got hurt, and when I got hurt I went on the MA force in the Philippines, and one of my privileges was I had the key to the ice machine. So, if you wanted ice, you came to see me- see me about getting a key to go in and get some. So, I traded ice for beer, so I always had plenty of that around for everybody. [789] I lasted there until we got up to China…just after I made those two invasions I went up to China, and when I got there the rate of exchange was 5,400 dollars to a [U.S.] dollar. You pull up into a place that looked just like a little conductor’s stand at a railroad station, the guy had the money all piled up in value, and you'd give him a ten dollar bill, and he would give you 54,000 dollars, Chinese dollars. So we stayed in Tiensen, China, then all of the sudden, one day they said "Well, we're going to ship out in the next day or two." And, this was some time in late July, and we went up there just to practice landing maneuvers and stuff, and they said, "We're just going to get aboard ship and go back down to our base in the Philippines. [799] And, when we did, why, we weren’t there very long and they dropped the first atomic bomb. Of course, [they were] explaining it to all of us- how powerful it was and everything. It was kind of awesome to hear it, but I'm sure that we were waiting there in the Yellow- the South China Sea probably getting ready to invade Japan, which I'm glad we didn’t do because, Truman, of course, used good sense, dropped the bomb, which just stopped everything. We heard all kinds of reports after that about how many people would have been killed and so forth, and I figure I'd be one of them gone. [812] But, thanks to Harry, he did the right thing. Today, I don’t think that- from the way I see people, I don’t think anybody in this country- Democrat or Republican, have got the gonads to do anything like that. Although, I myself, would have liked a long time ago to see them do [something] more severe over there in the Middle East. Now, I don’t say bomb the kids and things, but there could have been something. You can believe what you hear about the technical abilities that the Air Force and things have, of selecting targets, that was never anything like that during the war- the World War I was in. They just dropped everything whole heartily down on you, and if you were there, you got it, and if you weren't there…

I was- happened to be in Normandy when General McNare got killed. He was killed by friendly fire, but you didn’t know anything about that. It wasn’t referred to then. I don’t know where they get some of these terms. Today, my brother, who has served thirty- five years, he can’t understand the way they fight these wars and things today, it's just ridiculous. And, you know, they make a big issue about so many people being dead, being killed over there. It's ridiculous. Here, we probably lost five times that many guys in Germany since we got there in automobile wrecks, and maybe murders, and everything else, and nobody seems to talk about us sixty years later still being in Germany and still being in Japan. And this aggravates a lot of the veterans when I'm with them and we talk about this. They can't understand why today they are making such a big thing about getting out of Iraq so quick, and the thing I resent about it, is that if they do withdraw the troops and everything, believe me, they're going to hit the United States, and do it again, and again. Somebody's going to have to stop people from committing war, and it isn't going to be anybody like John Kerry, or any of these people because they just don’t have the gonads to do what it takes to do this. Because, Bush tries, but he's got all these senators and all these news people going against him all the time. Whereas in World War II, the newspaper people all stayed together, they didn’t go up the front lines. All this horse manure you see about Walter Cronkite, and all these people doing things- that never happened. That never happened. They hung around at the beach, and hung around at the hotels, and so forth. Hemingway made one night on the beach, and you'd think he ran the thing up there. Frank Capra, he got on there and took pictures and stuff, but a lot of that there was just afterward, guys unloading off boats and so forth. Under fire, most of the photography was done by marines and army and navy photographers. The aerial photography that they show you today had nothing whatsoever, nothing like what they tell you happened at Normandy. There wasn't any bomb craters there, there wasn't anything for them kids to hide in. When they went on shore, they were surprised like hell. They were supposed to get up these hills and get out of there, but they were all mined. Today, they have deals that they can drop, and a hundred little shots go out, and they trip all these mines. So, they become- they've come useless. But, back then it was an important thing, a lot of kids got killed stepping on mines.

The Japanese [were] just were bitter people. They fought a different kind of war than anybody else. But the Australians handled them, and the Americans. When they'd get a Japanese prisoner or something, come back, he'd say that the Australians were the best jungle fighters. But, the Americans just did away with the jungle, just burned it, and set it on fire, or bombed it to hell. But, a lot of things happened during the war that when you get away from it, and look back on it, you see the good and the evil of the thing. I'd ever suggest that if we ever get in a world war again- I hope we never do, I don’t think they will in my lifetime, but what concerns me, is the way, the indifference of some people about what happened in New York. I mean, there's no reason. Here we lose two thousand people, at Pearl Harbor, and to this day it’s the worst thing in the world, but if you so much as show a picture of an airplane [flying] into the towers, you're wrong. Politically, you're wrong to do a thing like this, so the country has to be taken over by people who want the country to win a war, or they want the country to be protective of the people there. So, we're all going to have to live with what we get, but we don't have to get what we don't want. But, it seems like we're going- I don't know, as an old veteran, I guess I've had my day across the line. Most of my friends that served with me, they're all gone, and I just feel sorry for the kids that have to live in this mess that's been created by a bunch of political people. And, it ain't over oil, for cripes sakes. Not at all. Anybody who thinks that- it’s because the newspaper told me to think it. During World War II, they kept to a group of themselves, the newspaper people did, and the generals let them come in and interview them, and they told them what they had to know, and so forth. And that's how a war should be run, it shouldn't be run by the press. And, that's what's happening now. It's very, very unlikely that we will ever go into a war like we had. It's going to be skirmishes like we got in Iraq forever, unless somebody finally gets strong enough to say, "Look, we ain't gonna take it anymore." Or, "Man, we're not gonna take it anymore" And, there's got to be a group of young people come along that will take that. I want to give you a thing on D-Day for you to take, and I wish I could find my invasion money. I used- I kept some of it, and had it for years, but my son Alex is quite a World War II buff, and he probably has it somewhere in Louisiana. But, this money was given to you, and the funny part of it was as we were going across the Channel, nobody knew how to gamble with it, so everybody just played it anyway they wanted. It was just, you never knew if you were going to get to spend any of it or what, so the crap games and the card games got pretty big and wild while we were going across the Channel. The one day delay didn’t help either, because the money fell in just so many people's hands. If you were good with dice, you got it, and if you weren't good, you didn't get it. But, I don't know of anybody, there were a lot of people I'm sure that were killed that had a lot of that money on them. But, I had some and I just can't find it, but if I do locate it, I'll give it to you for your report or whatever you want.
 
LG: You mentioned earlier about some of your injuries. I was wondering if you could expand on how those came, and what the medical care was like.

DF: When I was in the Pacific, we were putting our pontoons together out there, and what you did, you had to launch them into a shallow part of the bay. I was in the water at the time, and one of the pontoons came down and struck me across my shin. I thought I was going to lose part of my leg, it went in so deep, but the surgeon there, and we always laughed about it, because during the war, the doctor was a hemorrhoid specialist, and he did the operation on my leg. And whoever you had, that’s who took care of you. And, so I got laid up for a month or two in the hospital billet. That was the only time that I got injured. One of the things, anyone can almost get a Purple Heart over there for something, because of the way that shrapnel flies around, you get a cut real quick. So, I was blessed with never being wounded. Although, my brother, Ted, was wounded three different times. He was wounded three times, and bayoneted once. They wanted him to leave, when you're wounded three times you can leave, but he wouldn’t go. He stayed. They put him in an engineering outfit, and he refused to go to that. He went over the hill and went back to his infantry outfit. So, he ended up in the infantry. And, I think I told you that my other brother was a prisoner of war, so he got out after the Germans surrendered. He was- they shipped him back here, and didn’t ship him out to the Pacific.

LG: Ok, thank you.

DF: Is there anything else you'd like to know?

LG: Not unless there's anything else you'd like to add.

DF: I think I've pretty much got what you'd be interested in. I'm sorry I had to expound on my political beliefs.

LG: Oh, no. That’s fine.

DF: But, I figure that’s the veteran's choice.

LG: Well, thank you so much for your time.

[966: END OF TAPE]