Interview with Dr. Boynton H. Booth
Born 08/05/1916
Interviewed by Cameron Wallin
Recorded on 10/21/2006 by Cameron Wallin
Transcribed on 11/19/2006-11/27/2006 by Cameron Wallin
Cameron Wallin: Today is Saturday October 21, 2006. I am Cameron Wallin and I am interviewing Dr. Boynton H. Booth at Nora Library. Dr. Booth is an acquaintance with Mrs. Lerch. Dr. Booth is 90 years old and was born on August 5, 1916. Dr. Booth served in WWII. Dr. Booth was in the medical corps, in the 4th Armored Division, 25th Cavalry Squadron, and he held the following rank of Captain.
CW: First off, were you drafted or did you enlist?
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Dr. Boynton H. Booth: I enlisted the week after Pearl Harbor. I was a second year medical student. The government decided that the medical students should stay in school, so they would not be drafted. So we enlisted and were called back to duty to when we finished our training.
CW: What age were you when you joined?
DB: Twenty-four, I think.
CW: Where were you living at the time?
DB: In Chicago. I was a student at the University of Illinois Medical School.
CW: Why did you pick the service branch you joined?
DB: Because the Air Force was not taking applications and the Navy turned me down. They said I was too short and my teeth didn’t fit together; so the Army was not so choosey.
CW: Do you recall your first days of service?
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DB: Certainly, I finished my internship at Cook County Hospital December 31, 1943. So, I got on a troop train and went down to west Texas. They inducted all of the medical students that graduated that year at the same time and sent us down to place called Camp Barkley, Texas, west Texas, close to Abilene.
CW: Did you meet any new friends right away?
DB: Well yeah, I always had already made friends. So, we were all shifted around. So, some friendships didn’t last very long.
CW: Did you join with a bunch of your buddies?
DB: No. We all went, but we were reassigned to various types of units. I think it was like picking names out of a hat.
CW: What did the first days of service feel like?
DB: Well, we really didn’t feel at ease because we were all doctors and then all of a sudden we were in the Army. So, we were treated as not being a doctor; you were treated as a ‘private’ more or less.
CW: Can you tell me about your boot camp training experiences?
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DB: Well, we were, as I say, we were in west Texas and I had an interesting experience on the train on the way down. The train stopped in Fort Worth and Dallas, and was there for several hours. So, I got out and took a walk and encountered a regular army colonel. He was tall and had gray hair, and he looked at me and said, “Sonny, you are dressed up like an officer, but you don’t have any insignia.” So, I explained out to him that I and four or five other medical schools and dental schools all graduated at the same time in Chicago and they had uniforms but they ran out of insignia. So, that was the reason I did know that I was on my way to boot camp and he said, “Get your fanny back on that train and don’t get off until you get to where you’re going.” So, we were in this barracks in Camp Barkley, and I had looked on the map and thought, “Well that’s several hundred miles south of here that side should be pretty warm.” There was a very bad snow storm, they called it a Blue Northern, blew in that weekend and our barracks didn’t have any heat. So, we were very uncomfortable. So, we were there for approximately six weeks learning the basics of being in the military and I think the last thing I remember was that they marched us up into the mountains eighteen miles with full pack and a lot of us were not physically up to that sort of thing. So, they had a lot of breakdowns and there was a lot of criticism.
CW: How did you get through training?
DB: It was fine. All the medical students, as I say young doctors that were there in Camp Barkley. It was six week, sort of, indoctrination. Since we were doctors there was not a lot of things about firing our guns or anything like that.
CW: Were there any people or objects that made you keep going?
DB: Not really.
CW: During WWII, where exactly did you go?
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DB: Well, after the indoctrination, I spent six weeks in Borden General Hospital, in Chickasaw, Oklahoma and from there I was assigned to a Coast Guard unit, a searchlight battalion that I joined in North Carolina. After several weeks in North Carolina they shipped us down to central Florida where they had lots of airports so we could practice tracking planes at night with our radar. We stayed there until; I think it was in the fall October, November. Then they decided they didn’t need searchlight units anymore. So, then I was reassigned to a field artillery unit up in Arkansas that was already to go over seas. They finished their combat training and their doctor came up with a bad knee. So, I replaced him. We went to New Jersey and went over to Europe in the convoy. Went around the northern coast of Ireland and landed on the west side of England for a few weeks, maybe a month or so, before they shipped us across the channel to Le Havre. Unloading our equipment at Le Havre, they damaged five of our nine cannons. So, instead of sending us into combat, they sent us to a little town of Dieppe, where there was a famous raid, a little coastal town in France. So, when they replaced our cannons we were sent down to the submarine pens in western France, Lorette (SP?) and St. Nazaire and we stayed there until the war ended in end of May.
CW: Do you remember arriving in England?
DB: Oh yes, we were, I think it was Liverpool was the name of the town, it was a port, and so we drove down to a camp west of London and southern England and we were there for a three or four weeks before we were shipped across the channel to France.
CW: What was it like arriving in England?
DB: Nothing exceptional, but actually the V-2’s were still coming over but we were not in London. So, we didn’t experience any of that.
CW: What was your job assignment?
DB: I was called a Battalion Surgeon. Each medical unit or each fighting unit battalion had a doctor and corps men.
CW: Did you see any combat?
DB: We were not awarded a combat ribbon, although, when we were down in western France. I was out on one of our gunner placements one day, and some 88 German shells came in and exploded. So, we did have one man that became disoriented and was wondering around, but all I had was civilian casualties.
CW: So were there many casualties in your unit?
DB: No, I never had any combat casualties. They were all civilian type casualties; you know a car accident.
CW: Can you tell me a couple of most memorable experiences.
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DB: My most memorable experience was when we were the security force for a large portion of the area between the Danube River and the Czech border. There was a large federal prison and this was at the same time the [Nuremberg] War Crime’s trials were going on. So, there were two German celebrities, prisoner one was Mrs. Goering whose husband, Herman was second in command. So, she could be like the wife of the vice president here. So, Mrs. Goering and her six-year old daughter Ethel Goering were just being held as material witnesses. Then one day an American general came through to inspect our prison and he couldn’t find anything to complain about except the Goering girl. So, he said, “Get that child out of here, you can’t have a child in prison.” So, he was made to read a letter pertaining to the child. It was a one-liner. It said, “To whom it may concern Mrs. Goering has my permission to keep her child with her as long as she is being detained. It was signed a one three letter word, ‘Ike’. So, the child stayed.
CW: Why were you on security detail for the federal prison?
DB: We were security forces for a large area of Germany and all of the land between Danube River and the Czech border from Passau, which is where the river flowed into Austria, all the way up to a town called Regensburg. It was a large amount of territory and we were the security forces for this area.
CW: Were you awarded any medals or citations?
DB: Nothing of any consequence, I did go up and pick up a wounded who crashed his plane in a national forest and so, they gave me a citation for getting him down to the hospital alive.
CW: How did you stay in touch with your family?
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DB: I only had a widowed mother and so, it was no problem writing to her.
CW: What was the food like?
DB: We always had fresh rations and that we ate very well, too well in fact, because I went into the Army weighing 121 pounds and came out weighing 150. So, over three years I picked up 30 pounds.
CW: Did you have plenty of supplies?
DB: Yes, no problem.
CW: At any point in time did you feel pressure or stress?
DB: No.
CW: You never felt like you wanted just to go home?
DB: No, I was happy and content to doing what I was doing and I knew that I was expected to do my duty and I did it.
CW: Was there anything that you did for good luck?
DB: No, not really.
CW: On your time off, how did people entertain themselves?
DB: Well, I don’t know how the rest of the soldiers did it but I was a poker player. So, there was a 50 cent poker game every night.
CW: When you had your time off, did you go into the city or town?
DB: Yes, I was in Europe long enough, we were entitled to a two weeks leave per year. My first leave I took a train tour through Switzerland for two weeks. The second one, I went to the French Riviera and put in two weeks in the city.
CW: How was your stay in Switzerland and the French Riviera?
DB: Well, both were very pleasant so it was very entertaining going through Switzerland and seeing all of the mountains and very scenic. The stay in the town in France and the thing I remember the most was that Maurice Chevalier did come entertain one night at the Civic Center.
CW: Where did you travel while you were in the service?
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DB: Well, we landed in France, and as I said the first thing happened to us we were sent up to Dieppe to wait for new guns. So, after we got equipment we were shipped to the west coast of France and this is where the submarine pens were and Patton had bypassed 75,000 Germans who were sitting down there. They didn’t want to breakout because they had no place to go and we didn’t spend the manpower to break in. So, we were in a rural area. The day the war ended we got orders to move up and take over the city of Cologne, and we surround it, we were security forces. So, all we had to do was make sure there was no crime. When we drove into Cologne, there was a gigantic Cathedral there that was 800 years in the building and our Air Force and the British Air Force had been ordered not to harm it. So, it was all bombed out all around it, but the British who bombed at night could see it through the clouds and so the Americans could bomb by day. So, it was not harmed. When we drove into Cologne there was a very large Tiger tank sitting in front of it. The Germans were not stupid; they knew the Americans didn’t want to harm the Cathedral, so, they defended right in front of it.
CW: Do you recall any particular humorous event?
DB: Not that I do.
CW: Do you recall any unusual or funny events that occurred?
DB: Well, I already told you the story about the American general wanting to evict the girl. So, he had to back off when he found out that Eisenhower told her she could stay.
CW: What were some of the pranks you or others would pull?
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DB: Well, when I was assigned to the 25th Cavalry Squadron there was a type of organization for two doctors. One who was doing all of the work went home and the other one refused to work. So, they assigned me to do real work, and they wanted to prove to this older doctor that they didn’t think he should be in the service, but he should be back home in Massachusetts making money, but he wasn’t ready to leave until they told him he could leave. So, they more or less they buried him for several months in a small town in a little valley with one troop, seventy-five men. These men were like mice, they knew he didn’t want to be there and they resented him. So, they did all sorts of things to annoy him. One Saturday night when he goes to bed early and some of his fellers are downstairs, drinking and socializing about what they can do to him tonight. So, they dreamed up this brilliant idea of leading a horse up the stairs to the second floor of this large German house they had appropriated. So, it worked great, they led the horse upstairs, they tethered the foot of his bed, he didn’t know about it until the next morning. Then is when the fun began because they couldn’t get the horse to come down. So, how do you handle something like this? No problem. Just put in a call with the engineers and they came with a crane and they knocked a hole in the side of somebody else’s house and lifted the horse up, and that was the end.
CW: Do you have any photographs with you?
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DB: Yes. This is a photograph of a painting a German artist did of me. This is a little town of Straubing and this was like downtown circle. That was sort of a bell tower right in the middle of the street. It was a dirt street. It was not paved. The artist was in prison and he had been accused of being a Nazi collaborator. The counter intelligence agents said it was not true and he was only trying to survive. So, he did what they told him to do. So, they cleared him. So, he was permitted to set up his workshop and do paintings of people for favors. So, this was the one that I got. When he was painting my portrait he pointed out to me that I have a great resemblance to his very best friend up in Beyreuth, who was the composer Wagner’s grandson. Once, an American told me the same thing many years later. But anyway, he was very concerned, worried that his wife and family were down in rural Czechoslovakia, because he had sent them down there to escape the bombings. So, the counter intelligence agents came to me one day and said that Gustov (SP?) was very concerned about his family and if I would loan him the truck, he would go down and get them. So, we did get his family out just before they closed the border and put in the iron guard curtain. I’m sure he is a name artist because I met an American, right here in town, who had one of his painting and he said he was an immigrant and he lived out in Texas.
This is a French girl that I met in Dieppe and she told me a very unusual story that there was a raid made on Dieppe and its been in movies and around television many times and she told me that was that the Germans knew they were coming. She told me that they came around the night before and said there was going to be trouble tomorrow, so stay home with the basement or whatever. She took me out and showed me the cemetery. There were 2,500 graves out there. They were all Canadians.
This is a picture of Hitler’s Eagle Nest.
CW: During the years in Europe, what was the most exciting place you have been to?
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DB: Well, I enjoyed the mall. I guess I did get to go to Paris one time.
CW: On what occasion were you in Paris?
DB: Leave/Vacation.
CW: During the years that you were in Europe, what was the scariest or most frightening places you been to?
DB: Well, [sigh] I guess it is about as much as everything really, Hitler’s Eagle Nest which was in the good town of Berchtesgaden. Well, I can’t remember that I was really ever scared or frightened by anything.
CW: Were you ever disgusted or disturbed by a town or the rural population?
DB: Not really, I didn’t have anything to complain about. I didn’t have any problems doing my duty or having any problems with superior officers or anything. So, nothing to complain about.
CW: What did you think the officers or fellow soldiers?
DB: Most of them were pretty good but we had one unpleasant encounter when I was assigned at the hospital down in Oklahoma. We had one officer, he was rich, and he just bought a house in town and just stayed there and never came to work. He was always scolding me that he was afraid that I was going to leave and leave him something to do.
CW: Did you have a best friend?
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DB: No, I was shipped around. So, instead of being with the same unit for three years, I was with this unit or that unit. When I came home, I came home with a 2nd Lieutenant who was in my outfit, and he was a very nice man, and he wanted me come and visit him. His name was Ed Hendy and I think he was of Armenian descent and he kept asking me everyday if I would come and visit him and his family down in south Texas. They had this little ranch. So, one day I asked Ed, “How big was that little ranch?” He looked sort of sheepish and he said, “90,000 acres” [chuckle]. Then I never saw him again. So, I came home and started training to be a dermatologist.
CW: Did you keep a personal diary or anything of that sort?
DB: Nothing more than a few pictures.
CW: Do you remember the day your service ended?
DB: Yes, I was in the town of Straubing and I got the message one night that I was to leave the next morning. So, I should pack up all my things and the next morning they drove me out to the airport where I got on a plane and was flown up to Northern Germany in Bremerhaven. So, from there I was put on a ship and shipped home. I was discharged from the Great Lakes Naval Station, up north in Chicago.
CW: So, where were you when they told you that you could go?
DB: I was on the Danube River Valley in the town of Straubing, which was one of the areas where they had places for soldiers.
CW: What did you do in the days and weeks after you were discharged?
DB: Well, I immediately looked up a dermatologist office I worked for while I was a student. I came from a impoverish family. So, I had to work my way through school. They immediately put in a good word for me and I started in a GI Bill of Rights post graduated course in dermatology. This lasted for a year. This was in Chicago.
CW: Was your education supported by the GI Bill?
DB: Yes, I did take advantage of the GI Bill. I got $100 a month and I also got $100 from the hospital [chuckle]. So, my income was $200 a month. It took four years to become a dermatologist.
CW: Did you join a veterans organization?
DB: Yes, they had a doctor and dentists post here in Indianapolis. Initially, they were a lot of young people and there was a lot of fun. We had parties and sat together. But eventually the doctors and dentists post turned into a political thing for people who ran it. So, I dropped out.
CW: What did you go on to do as a career after the war?
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DB: Well, most of us who were in the service for three years felt we were a little rusty with our education and skills. Since I had worked for a dermatologist office in Chicago when I was a student, I decided I wanted to go into dermatology and they were very loyal and put in a good word for me. So, I got in this GI Bill of Rights thing and it was all over the hospitals and medical schools in Chicago. There three very large medical schools plus Cook County Hospital. This lasted for a year. At the end of that time you had to find someplace else. So that’s when I applied here in Indianapolis for dermatology training. We have been here ever since.
CW: So, I hear that you were the first dermatologist in the Midwest?
DB: Oh no, there were lost of dermatologists in the Midwest. I came here in 1947 because there was a shortage of places to train. There were so many people getting out of the service who wanted post-graduate education and it was very tight.
CW: Did your military experience influence your thinking about war or about the military in general?
DB: Yes, I think we shouldn’t have wars in general. The military offered me a promotion if I would stayed in the military, but I didn’t like that life. So, I turned them down.
CW: You were talking about your veterans’ organization earlier, what kinds of activities does your post or association have?
DB: Nothing really. As I said there was a special doctors and dentists post. We would get together periodically and they had nice parties and entertainment and all of that sort of thing. So, we sort of kept with each other very gradually as we changed into a bunch of old-timers who wanted to make it into a political activity.
CW: Do you attend reunions?
DB: No, not really. As I said I wasn’t with anyone in the army long enough to be that close. So, no I have never been to any reunions.
CW: Do you keep in contact with anybody?
DB: No.
CW: How did your service and experience affect your life?
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DB: Well, when I graduated from medical school I had been in college nine years straight and having to work for most of it. So, I was pretty burned out by the time. So, I would probably run out and become a General Practitioner. After three years in the service I was ready to go get more education. So, I would not have been a dermatologist if I hadn’t been in the Army for three years.
CW: Thank You.
