Interview with Mr. Robert D. Huff
[Born July 7, 1924]
Interviewed by Drew Grein and Andrew Pauszek
Recorded on 1/12/2006 at Park Tudor School by Kathryn Lerch
Transcribed by Caroline Huang
Drew Grein: Today is January 12th, 2006. I am Drew Grein along with Andrew Pauszek and we are interviewing Mr. Robert D. Huff, at 7200 N. College Ave. Mr. Huff is 81 years old and was born on July 7th, 1924. Mr. Huff served in War World II and was in the 96th Division in 383rd Company A, and held the rank of Private First Class. Mr. Huff is accompanied by Mr. Bill Hill, also a veteran of the 96th Infantry Division.
Andrew Pauszek: So Mr. Huff, were you drafted or did you enlist?
Robert Huff: I was a draftee.
DG: Where were you living at the time?
RH: I was actually drafted from Beaver County in Pennsylvania, but I left Marion, Illinois to go into the service.
AP: Why did you join? Did you have any ambitions in the service?
RH: No. I registered for the draft in December of '42 and I got my first call in February of '43.
Bill Hill: They didn't wait very long, did they?
RH: No.
DG: Do you recall your first days in the service?
RH: Yes. Very uncomfortable. Our first Army meal was late at night and it was cold mutton stew.
BH: Mutton stew? Gosh. I thought mine was bad. I had cold cuts.
AP: Was the food very good in basic training?
RH: Overall in basic training the food was pretty good except the days that we had mutton.
BH: Where on earth were they getting the mutton? Where was your basic?
RH: Camp Granite, Illinois.
AP: How were these experiences? Could you maybe describe a daily routine you went through?
RH: Well, basic training is a routine. You are up early and the lights went out at nine and in between those times you are busy.
BH: How many weeks did you have in basic?
RH: I think we had eleven. I was in basic training as a medic and medic training was virtually the same as infantry, except we had no weapons. We were not supposed to be armed.
DG: How did you get through your training?
RH: Well, one step between basic training and the 96th - for some unknown reason to me, even to this day I don't know - I was then sent down to the University of Illinois to the Army Specialized Training Program. We were reassigned out of Illinois and then sent to North Central College in Naperville for two terms and then the University of Chicago for the third term. But then in March of 1943, the government - or March of 1944, the government cancelled that program and we were all sent back to the troops. There were some 2000 of us that landed the 96th in Oregon at that time. Most famous guy I know of was an ASTP was Henry Kissinger. He did not wind up in the infantry though.
BH: The explosion in Chicago with that ship that blew up, were you anywhere near there?
RH: Port Chicago. We were Camp Stoneman, which about 8 miles across country from Stoneman and it rocked the barracks. Stuff was knocked off the shelves. I was at a blackjack game with the supply sergeant and my squad leader and we dashed out of the barracks and thought we were the first ones out, but we were probably the last ones out. The lights were turned out, the camp and they came around and told us to go get our weapons and draw ammunition. They didn't know what had happened. It turned out it was some ammo ships blew up and then a lot of us went to the hospital and gave blood to, for transfusions to the wounded who were shipped in.
BH: That was in early '43?
RH: Been in probably late June. No that would have been in early July of '44, because about a week later we went down the river to San Francisco on a barge.
AP: Could you describe some of your medical techniques you used in the field? Just maybe like situation techniques, what you would do to help out?
RH: Well, when I got to the 96th Division, I was put back in a medical battalion and I didn't like the idea and I asked to go to the infantry. The next morning I was over in a barracks with a rifle company and it made no difference because later on, our medics were armed. Not like in Europe when they had a red cross on their helmet or a red cross on their sleeve. They were targets over in our part of the world.
DG: So when you were originally trained as a medic you didn't have any experience with a rifle?
RH: No weapon whatsoever.
DG: So your first experience was when you switched to the infantry?
RH: If we had gone to Europe, we would never had carried weapons. But I got away from being a medic because to me that was worse than being in the infantry.
BH: When you joined the 96th, did you get rifle training there?
RH: Actually no. Most ASTP boys who hadn't had any infantry training and those who had been in the Air Force before ASTP, had a thirty day training period. But by being in the medics, I didn't get that training and when I went over there, I knew nothing about an M1. In fact, the day after I got a rifle issued, we went out in the country. They had a village course - I guess it was - where targets popped up to shoot at. And went down to the line of departure and the non-com there gave me a clip of ammo and I said, "How do you load this thing?" and I thought he was going to have a heart attack, because I have a rifle and a clip of ammunition and I don't know how to load the rifle. He yelled for the officer that was in charge and he came down there and he told him, "Got a man here that can't load his rifle!" Immediately, they thought I was goofing off and I was telling them the truth. So Lieutenant Casey, was the young lieutenant, nice guy, he said, "I'll load it. I'll load his rifle and go through it with him." And I said, "Well, I'm not going to shoot anybody. I've dealt with shotguns and 22 caliber rifles, but I don't know anything about an M1." So we went through the course and I didn't shoot anybody. We got through it and he said, "Well, there is an insulator up on top of that pole. Do you think you can hit it?" Which was an old telegraph pole. I said, "Let me warm up and I probably can hit it with a rock. 'Cause I said, " I've hit many of them with rocks going down the railroad track at home." So he said, "Lets see you hit it with this." Well, it was not more than 25 yards away, so it was very easy to hit with a rifle. I eventually wound up carrying a BAR and the only two weapons I knew anything about was an M1 and a BAR. I knew nothing about a machine gun or mortar and if I had been asked to help out or do something, I would have had no training whatsoever.
BH: And a Browning Automatic Rifle is a big, heavy, squad piece that they use and it's got a big, heavy magazine.
RH: Twenty-one pounds with the bipod. Seventeen pounds without the bipods, which we dropped in the ocean.
DG: How did you learn to use the BAR? Was it similar to the M1 or different?
RH: It was an automatic weapon where the M1 is a semi-automatic. The BAR had a different ammo feed on it. Actually all you needed with that was somebody to show you how to do it one time and you can do it. Tearing it down to clean, that's a different story. You had to learn how to clean it.
AP: Did you know how to clean your gun?
RH: I was shown how to clean that.
AP: What was your role in your squad using the BAR?
RH: Being in an assault squad, we were moving up to go as fast as you can and fire it as many times and you can to protect yourself and wipe out everything out in front of you. As I used to say seek and destroy. That was the goal.
DG: Could you describe your experience at Leyte?
RH: Leyte was pretty easy for us. We went ashore with part of the first wave that went in through the swamps and the first night we got up on a hill and on a ridge and the next day we got on up on a hill and we had to the highest ground on that side of the island, between the highest ground which was Catmon Hill and the ocean. So they had us just to sit there and we dug our hole a little bit deeper everyday that we were in. So by the time that we got pulled out after eleven days, we were almost guilty for desertion for diggin' so deep. [Laughter]
BH: Daker's men, they were the ones doing all the fighting.
RH: The 382nd and the 381st went around Catmon Hill and ran into much more opposition than we did. All we did was go out on a few patrols and sit up there and dig to get deeper in case of a bonsai, which we did get a bonsai one night - not a big one. Only about 400 of them were killed.
BH: Four hundred Japs were killed?
RH: About four hundred Japs were killed.
BH: Coming into your company area?
RH: Right. Well actually not the company area. The battalion area.
AP: How did you feel at the time of the attack? Was it pretty scary?
RH: No, because you are too busy thinking about what is going on rather than to be scared. You are just hoping that nothing happens to you.
BH: Pretty noisy?
RH: A lot of artillery, a lot of rifle far, a lot of hand grenades and a lot of screaming and yelling, particularly by the Japanese. I think they always got psyched up before they started a bonsai so they didn't feel as much pain.
BH: How close did they get to our troops? Do you have any idea?
RH: The closest they got to our hole was maybe twenty feet, which is quite a distance.
DG: Did you come into any contact with the locals on Leyte?
RH: You mean with the Philippinos? Not for several days. You would see them and have an occasional contact… Everybody was a guerilla. Every male was a guerilla. Most of them had weapons. Whether they were friendly of not, I don't know, they didn't give us any trouble. But as far as contact with the civilians, normally we didn't have any contact until we after got pulled out of the lines. We were always in a rural area, never in a town.
AP: Were there any differences in types of fighting at Leyte and Okinawa?
RH: In my experience, yes. We were much closer to the Japanese or they were much closer to us. On Leyte, I don't think I had a bullet come within ten feet of me. On Okinawa, I had them come closer than that the first minute I was ashore, which again we were part of the first wave going into Okinawa. We thought we were going to have to scale a seawall and had ladders on our amtrack, but the ladder man got the ladders loose and we discovered we weren't going to hit the seawall and we just nosed into the land and went over the front of the amtrak and stepped on the shore and it sounded like a bunch of hornets buzzing around. The way the bullets were. And everybody says the landing was easy and it was compared to what we thought it was going to be, but we, we had several casualties early in our company. In fact, the boy, he wasn't a boy, he was older than I was, that helped me put on my equipment in the amtrak before we landed, was not more than five minutes ashore when he was killed and he was killed because of inexperience. He was a replacement that came in and he got a slight wound and he did what they were told to do in basic training. You get wounded call a medic. So he raised his head and called for a medic. And it was all over then.
DG: Because the Okinawa operation involved a large naval armada will you describe the sight of all the ships as you were headed for Okinawa?
RH: The invasion of Okinawa, on that day, the first day which was Easter Sunday and also April Fool's Day that year, it was the greatest show I had ever seen with all the ships and the airplanes flying overhead and the big guns going. There is no way to describe it. There was a thrill and yet you didn't want to be going through it. But it was still a thrill.
DG: Did you ever witness a kamikaze attack while on the ship?
RH: Never saw a kamikaze because we were always ashore and when I left Okinawa, I flew out of there rather than going by ship. That was my first airplane ride by the way, when I left Okinawa, down to Guam.
AP: Do you remember your unit's plan of attack for the initial invasion?
RH: I don't think they ever gave us a plan. They just said for us to saddle up. You're going to go. And here you went. The same way, of course, when you land on those amphibious, amtraks they called them, I don't know what that stands for. The ramp goes down and you go out the back or the sides and its everybody for himself right then. You try to stay with the people you know, but there is no plan to it because the idea is for somebody behind you, who is supposed to do the mopping up. You're supposed to go in as quick as you can, as far as you can and shoot anything that moves.
DG: So was it a very confusing environment for you?
RH: There is confusion and in some cases, there is probably some so-called friendly fire. Although I don't consider it friendly when it is coming out at you. No matter which way it's coming from it isn't friendly.
AP: Because the Japanese concealed their position so well, how difficult was it to find them and try to defeat them?
RH: It's kind of like rabbit hunting. When you get close enough to kick a rabbit, he'll run. You get close enough a lot of times the Japs would run also. And I have always thought of it kind of like rabbit hunting and when you look down a rifle barrel it was just the same as looking at a rabbit as far as I was concerned. I had no sympathy for them whatsoever.
BH: Now from that first day, you moved on. What did you do the second day from that initial?
RH: Wish you hadn't asked that. The first day we didn't reach our day's objective. In some way our leadership fouled up or something. Well, the Navy landed us on the wrong beach to start out with on the first day, which kept us from scaling that seawall. We never did get on the right track that day and the first night, we just scattered on a hillside there and everybody dug in the best they could. The next morning, we had some people trapped and we had to call in a mortar squad to get them away from a machine gun that was about to get them. The second day we moved on out, withdrew one or two villages, I don't recall which and actually we had it pretty easy the second day, easier than the first day. Then the third day, we wound up digging into a cabbage patch that had some of the best raw cabbage I ever ate in my whole life and the digging was easy. We had a hole dug for the night within ten minutes after we got into that cabbage patch.
BH: The unfortunate part of that is that they used human excrement to…
RH: Oh yeah. You weren't supposed to eat the vegetables that were grown up there.
DG: How was your unit's morale until you reached the cabbage patch.
RH: I never heard morale even mentioned. We had a lot of new recruits and replacements just before we went to Okinawa, some of them older than some of us, but we treated them all just like kids, because they had no experience and as far as I know, I never heard anybody griping or complaining. We just felt like we were lucky that we hadn't been hurt.
BH: Were there any mental cases you know of, that they just had to take them away?
RH: I only heard of one case - I didn't see this. On the first day, we had one platoon sergeant get hurt. He came back to us on the 7th day and he completely lost it. We caught an artillery barrage and I think the fact that he came so close to getting badly hurt the first day and then that artillery coming in, just broke him mentally. I don't know whatever happened to him.
BH: When this artillery came was everybody dug in at the time or what happened when the artillery came in?
RH: We were digging in when the artillery came in on us.
BH: You prepared for the artillery?
RH: Partially prepared.
BH: And it was in broad daylight when it came in?
RH: Oh yeah. Broad daylight. And later in the night we caught some more that was pretty close, actually, because one boy in a hole with me, I heard him mumbling and grumbling to himself. Artillery you are helpless. Rifle fire you could shoot back, but artillery is beyond the range of your rifle and the boy named Stanley Carly, I heard him grumbling and mumbling about his rifle and thought nothing about it until the next morning at daylight. He was sitting there holding the stock to his rifle and I said, "Carly, what happened to your rifle?" He said, "Didn't you here me last night? I had it laying up against the edge of the hole and a piece of one of those artillery shells just wiped the barrel all off and left the wooden stock."
BH: Now that's combat!
RH: We had on guy a couple holes up from us that had a BAR belt folded up with his head laying on it and a shell fragment hit one of those magazines and ruined it and he had his head laying on the belt and he wasn't touched.
BH: Now would it be interesting to continue on from this point? Would they like to hear some of your experiences from this point on?
RH: I think about the end of the third day they put the First Battalion in reserve for the regiment and we moved down and set up and couldn't dig in. They put us on a path around the hill and we were actually in front of the battalion that was on line, although we were supposed to be in reserve. We stayed there for two days, then we went back on the attack and that's when things really got hot.
BH: Now you were in a rifle company, what rifle company was it?
RH: A Company, 383rd.
BH: What was the name of the hill?
RH: Just a hill. We moved out at noon on the 7th when we moved out, back on line and we started having casualties much faster and on the 8th, we had a lot of casualties and on the 9th we were virtually annihilated.
BH: You had a lot of casualties on the 8th. You had twenty guys, fifty guys, forty guys?
RH: We were down to 70 after the night of the 8th, so I don't know how many we had that morning.
BH: The start out 180, 150?
RH: They start at about 170 - 175. We were down to 70 after eight days and we left on the morning of the 9th. We started out before daylight to go up on Kakazu Ridge, which was the main line, the main line of defense and we got up on Kakazu before daylight. And we had a lot of fun. Then at daylight the Japanese had the fun. And that's when I got hurt, that morning. They told me later that that night that they only had nine men left in the company, so that's when I said that we were virtually annihilated. Two guys I spent every night with on Okinawa were killed in one of those nights. One was killed and laid on top of me because I got down before he did and the other boy was a rich boy from Washington, D.C. and why he was in the infantry I don't know. He had dated General Omar Bradley's daughter in high school and he knew General Hershey, the head of the draft personally, played tennis with him at the Army and Navy Country Club in D.C. and he had joined the army. We picked him up in Hawaii as a replacement. And I used to ask him, "Carly, what are you doing here? How come you're not working in the Pentagon, even if you are emptying wastebaskets or something?" He said, "I wanted in transportation." I said, "You're in transportation. One foot in front of the other through the mud." This guy was my assistant for as long as we were on Leyte and if I saw a mud hole, I wouldn't let him carry my BAR because I knew that he was going to fall in it and he would. If he were in front of me, I would say, "Carly get behind me. I don't want to see you fall in a creek or in a mud hole." And I'd go around it or through it and I'd hear a splash and that would be Carly laying there in the mud or the water. He was out of place. He should never have been in the infantry.
BH: Did he make it through?
RH: Oh no. He was killed in one of the nights. He and Gurgens, a boy named John Gurgens, from Cincinnati, came in as replacement just before we went to Okinawa. He was a sausage maker for some meat company there in Cincinnati. When I asked him what he did, he said, "I'll tell you if you promise not to tell anybody." I said, "I won't tell anybody, but if you had an honest job, what's the difference?" He said, "I was a sausage maker." I said, "There is nothing wrong with that." But he was killed lying on top of me. Three bullets right through the head.
BH: Can you describe the incidents of how that man was killed? Was it Japs coming in? Was it a hand-to-hand thing? What was going on?
RH: We got up on the ridge and I think one thing saved me. I practiced one thing - try not to be the first and try not to be the last of anything, so we had a non-com in charge of the platoon, because the platoon leader had been wounded a couple of days before and there was a squad leader, platoon sergeant and then me. So we get up on the ridge and we start setting up a defense. So they told me to stop off right there. So my assistant stopped off with me and these other guys went on forward and as a result, I was on the backside of the defense rather then up on the front. And when it got daylight, the Japanese started having fun. They threw lots of mortars in at us and they had me pinned down behind a rock and I was afraid it was going to drill a hole through the rock, because bullets were just hitting and splattering off of it and I knew they were there and I couldn't move. I had mortar shells on each side of me and one behind me and normally, you know, one in front, one behind you move, or one on each side, you move. Well, I had three sides that I couldn't move and all of a sudden I got hit. One little shell fragment hit me and I thought somebody had crawled in and hit me with a club and I rolled over on my back and I think I would have shot anybody standing there. And then I realized I had been hurt and the next thing was to get the blood stopped if possible. And I got one hit right behind the ear, came through and broke my jaw in two places, but it didn't knock me out and that's where hillbilly blood comes necessary. If you've got a hard head like a hillbilly, you can take it. That's what saved me, because they did not carry anybody off that hill to my knowledge. But it broke my jaw in two places, but didn't knock me out.
BH: It was hard to get the medics up there to get the guys down.
RH: Well, our medics, the day before, our platoon medic had been wounded helping, trying to help a friend of mine. And then that day, the other two medics were wounded. I saw one of them back in Guam. He was in the ward next to me. Poor ol' boy had been shot about four times. I saw him there, the last I'd seen him, he was on his feet on Kakazu, but he had his shirt off and he had been hit through the chest twice and I saw him in Guam, he's got his leg in traction, he's got a big splint on his elbow, on his arm. So I asked him what happened, you were walking when I saw you. And he said, "They were carrying me out and the Japs shot at him and they dropped me and then the guy used me for target practice. The litter bearers ran and I was just laying there in the field". They shot him in the leg and shot him in the arm.
BH: Were you getting machine gun fire from counter hills, back and forth?
RH: I wasn't. The one I had was all coming from one direction. I heard later there was some hand-to-hand combat up there. I did not see any hand-to-hand combat.
BH: Did you see any Japs yourself …?
RH: Yes. I saw a Jap come out of a pillbox behind me. All he had was a bayonet in his hand and a helmet on. No weapon. I thought I was going to chalk one up, but my BAR didn't fire. He went within four feet of the muzzle.
BH: And it didn't shoot?
RH: Oh, he was screaming and hollering trying to get away and he got away as far as I am concerned. I don't know what happened to him.
BH: That's the only weapon you had was a BAR?
RH: Yeah, oh yeah.
BH: And your weapon locked up? Then what happened?
RH: I never had a chance to fire. I was hit shortly after that. I had fired it earlier that morning, so there was something...
BH: When you fired, you fired in a range?
RH: When you go at an assault, you hold it kind of at the waist and you just move it in there shooting.
DG: After you were injured you were sent to a ward, correct?
RH: Well, we had to withdraw off that hill. In fact, I was laying there by a machine gun and the company commander came by and said, "Who's laying here?" And I rolled over and he said, "They've got us all, I guess," and he threw down his radio and he said, "I've got about six men left and I am getting off this hill." And when I heard that, I got up and I followed two other guys out of there. Back down to… You've heard of the gorge, didn't you? Yeah, we were up beyond the gorge. And then they decided down there, B Company was down there and that the walking wounded would try to go up to the Third Battalion with some assistance. Captain Royster, the company commander, had been hit in the face and lost an eye really, though he didn't know it at that time, so I was one of the walking wounded and had a boy with me that helped me. We never did find the Third Battalion aid station, but we couldn't get back to our aid station and about two and a half to three hours later we ran into an officer that had a jeep G3 or G2 and the driver gave me a ride and dropped the boy with me off at regimental headquarters and took me on down to a field hospital. I was still in no pain because not knowing at the time, the shell fragment that hit me had also nicked the nerve in my face so that the right side of my face was completely numb. No pain whatsoever. So when they finally got me to me and they do take head wounds pretty quick, the doctor worked on me and I had - my right arm was all bandaged up from where I had skinned it from running from a sniper three or four days before. So he wanted to know what happened and I told him and he said that he'll put a clean bandage on there and I said that he's got other guys waiting. He said, "Get you ten miles before you're back." And I said, "Wrap it up, Doc and for ten more miles, wrap the other arm, too." Here's when I discovered when I was getting ready to put my jacket back on that I had been wearing for a week on the ship and nine days up there or eight days, shaking the dirt off I noticed to holes in the back of it. I thought they looked like bullet holes to me and I held it up to see and try to match where it out to be. And I had been burned right across the shoulder blades. Didn't even bleed, but it was about a 3 inch burn right across the shoulder blade, but by having a fold in my jacket, one bullet made two holes. So I came real close to getting at one time or another, I don't know when, very close to rip my shoulder blade out. But I have no idea how that happened.
AP: So were these injuries how you obtained your Bronze Star? Or was that a different experience?
RH: No, that was for helping a friend of mine the day before. The medic was hurt, the platoon runner that had stopped to help, he was hurt. And like I told him later, he started yelling for me to come out and help him. He was laying out in the open. There was no protection whatsoever. In fact, he is a retired attorney out in Charleston, West Virginia. I see him fairly often. And he credits me for saving his life and I told him yeah, you called me out there wanted me to get shot instead of you. And that's a good way to get a Bronze Star. Go out and get anybody that's exposed.
BH: Did you go out and get him?
RH: I went out there. He thought he'd lost his leg because of the way he stopped. He did a classic fall just like in the movies. He was hit and his rifle flew up in the air and he tumbled down. He was a BAR man also, the other one in the squad, but when he stopped rolling down the hill his leg was folded back under him and it just looked like his leg was off when I got out there. I straightened out his leg and cut his pant leg open and of course, he had a big puddle of blood in that pant leg and gave him a shot of morphine that I wasn't supposed to have, but I did have and drug him in to where there was a little shelter. And I got a couple of other guys and we moved him back.
BH: How did you carry him back? Did you have a litter?
RH: We moved him without a splint. We didn't do his leg any good at all. It ground the ends of that bone in there and he was actually in the hospital with that leg in traction a lot longer than I was in the hospital. They first told him they were going to amputate his leg and he had such a fit, in fact he told me that he told the doctor, if you amputate my leg I will kill you when I get well. [Laughter] So that influenced them and they changed their minds. The funny part of it was, he was in the same hospital that I was in Hawaii it turned out and he couldn't walk and I couldn't eat because my teeth were wired together. So I was the runner to the PX and whatnot. But when I was out there hunkered down over him, he reminded me there back in Hawaii, he said, "You know the sniper that PF., who was our squad leader, shot off the bluff?" And I said, "Yeah, when I was out there." He said, "I think the guy was shooting at you. It was a bad shot." And I said, "Why?" And he said, "Two bullets hit beside my head while you were laying there next to me." I said, "Why didn't you tell me I was being shot at?" He said, "I was afraid you would leave me" and I said I would have. I wasn't born to be a hero.
AP: So these Japanese snipers were a large threat to you?
RH: Yeah, no. I don't know how many there were. On Leyte, the sniper hit at least three guys in our company that was killed. One guy was in a hole with his rifle torn down. He was cleaning his rifle when he was shot. But you never knew where they were going to be.
BH: Yeah. The Japanese would tie themselves up in trees and they had smokeless powder so you couldn't tell where the shot was coming from and they were trained to do just that. So that's how's come they got this guy in the foxhole, because they were up. When men go into battle, especially on Leyte, they were constantly watching for these snipers. Trying to get their position ahead of time to try and take out anything they might see.
BH: This battle that he was in there, Kazazu, his A Company, was one of the biggest battles, biggest, important battles on Okinawa. There is something else that civilians ought to know about that battle up there. This should go down in history. What should they know about that battle?
RH: Well, I don't know about that exact battle, but if we'd had more men going up there we might have been able to hold on to it, which might have shortened that phase by several days, because it was actually two weeks before they got that ridge under control.
BH: Was there more companies coming up behind you?
RH: One company was supposed to come up and help us and they couldn't get there. We could see them getting up and they were getting knocked down as fast as they got up.
BH: Artillery coming in on them, too.
RH: Small arms, too.
BH: So you're seeing a one on one account of what it's actually like to be there and when he was there, he didn't see all the whole thing going on. He just saw his own little area.
RH: Just my own small group.
BH: Just like I asked him about machine gun fire crossfire. Why, he wouldn't know about that. His area was right in front of him. He didn't know what was coming over there or over here. At people's back they knew were the battle was coming from. They tried to get other men up there to help them, but they were pinned down by artillery and couldn't get up there.
RH: You know strange thing is I never felt that I would get hurt until the morning that I got hurt. We were walking out abreast, just in a line going across this field before we got to this gorge that I mentioned and this squad leader I had was an old reprobate. He was about 33, 34 years old and anything he told you was the truth and he probably didn't tell it all to you. He'd always said they aren't smart enough to get me. There won't be one of us that don't see the sun go down this evening. And I said, "PF, you are probably right because this is about the silliest thing I ever heard of." I made it, he didn't. But that's the first time I heard him say that he thought he might get hurt or hit.
AP: So did you have any superstitions also, on anything else?
RH: No I just, like I said, I never-till that morning I never thought I would get hurt. I thought I was-I was the one that if anybody, if only one survived, I would be it.
AP: How did you obtain your combat infantry badge?
RH: Just by being in combat.
AP: Just being in combat?
RH: Yep. They give them to everything that-if you're in combat. Ernie Pyle started that and they had a program they called Expert Infantrymen which the guys here in the States went through. A series of things [it] had compass reading and various various things and it was just a bar, a blue bar, with rifle on it. Now the combat badge was a blue bar with a rifle-shape on it with rings on it. And I think they handed out those combat badges to everybody that actually went into combat. And for that you get ten dollars a month extra.
Bill Hill: Ten dollars.
Drew Grein: Could you describe your experiences in the hospital, after you were injured?
RH: Well, they flew me to Guam and I got down into a ward and they had the prettiest little nurse there I had ever seen, I believe, because I had been used to seeing these people with slant eyes and whatnot and there she was an American and she was cute. But anyway, that's beside the point.
BH: Laughs
RH: The first thing I asked was where the shower room was because I hadn't had a freshwater shower… That was on the eleventh of April, we left Leyte about the twentieth of March and you could have all the salt water showers you wanted but you had one three-minute shower. That was a minute to get wet, a minute to soap up, and a minute to get washed off and they turned the water off. If you didn't have all the soap off, tough. The guy had a stopwatch I think and anyway, I went down to the shower room and I threw all my clothes out the window. There was a trash barrel right outside the window and threw everything in there except my boots and my belt and my knives. And I got in there and soaked up some water and they came down to get me--said the doctor wanted to see me so I said, well I need some clothes. And they said, well, what happened to the ones you wore in here. And I said, well, somebody must have stolen them, because I turned around and they were gone. So they brought me some Marine clothes down there. And went down to see the doctor and an old geezer he told a corpsman to uh, I had Vaseline gauze in the hole in my jaw back here. Told him to yank that out and the corpsman told him this EMT tag, Emergency Medical Tag, says that hole might be four to five inches deep. Well, he said, just bandage it up and they bandaged it back up. So the next day, they took me down and took some x-rays, they showed the shell fragment, but it didn't show any breaks and then I'd get to sleep and this ol', he was a Navy doctor, I was in a Navy hospital, they'd wake me up and he'd have somebody take the dressing off my head and he'd want to show some other doctor what had happened to me. And that, that went on for at least the first two days I was there. And then the fourth day I was there, I got on a ship for Hawaii. And I got back to Hawaii, about oh, the twenty-fifth, twenty-sixth of April. Yhey put me in a ward and I kept seeing an ear doctor. In the meantime I can't eat. I'd eat soggy corn flakes, mashed potatoes and things like that. So one day, this doctor, he was a major, he wanted to know if I'd been to the dentist. I said no. He said, "Well, you hear about as well as I do. I'm gonna send you to the dentist." So he did and I don't remember if he took me up there or -I think he took me up there. And this dentist, this Lieutenant Colonel up there was a big old Southern guy from down in Mississippi. They-he gouged around down there and it hurt when he did that. And finally he said. "Fine, well, we'll x-ray your teeth." So they did and the next day I went back and in the meantime they put me in a convalescent ward. They needed my bed for people they knew what was wrong with them. So Colonel Hale says, "Why didn't you tell me you were a combat casualty?" I said, "Nobody asked." He said, "Well, I thought you'd been in a fire or something." He said, "We've got to get some skull x-rays." I got the skull x-rays and I had two breaks in this jaw. And then he said, "We'll wire your teeth together." We don't know much good it'll do other than it'll grow back, but whether it'll grow back right or not [we don't know]. So they wired me up and I became a star patient. He used to use me as a demonstration of his work. He was an oral surgeon. And every day, even after they unwired my teeth, I went to the dental clinic and I sat out in the hallway, Colonel Hale would come out and say "Come in, I want you to talk to so and so." It might be an officer, it might be an enlisted man. It didn't make any difference. And he'd say, "Well, Joe, this is Bob, a patient of mine. He could show you what kind of work I do." And he'd just speak. And so the guy looked in my mouth and that time I had no fillings and no teeth out and he'd marvel at how good of a job Colonel Hale had done. And he hadn't done anything except for wire my teeth together. So the old Colonel would come back on in awhile and say "Well, Joe, what do you think of my work here, boy?" and he'd say, "Well, you did a good job. He'd walk me out and he'd say, "Go back and get back in the car, Gabe," or "Hang around I've got another one." And uh, that went on for I don't know, ten days or so and all of a sudden I'd get shipped back to the States. I thought I'd be going the other way because the war was still going on and July first, the year I hit the States, wound up down in a hospital down here in Louisville and uh, soon I got processed and went home for thirty days. And I was home, having supper, when it came over the radio that the war was over. Well, then, I was already late, I should have been back to the hospital already. And, uh, I figured, what were they going to do to me, send me overseas for penalty? So I got back to the hospital about three days late and went in and the bed I had been in was empty, I got some hospital clothes, I put them on, went to bed and the nurse came in and said, "Oh, you decided to come back I see." And I said, "Well, I'm tired. There's been all this partying going on and there was, believe me, there was lots of partying when the war ended."
BH: Hmm. Now, one of the reasons why he flew back was because all the hospital ships were full, they had completely filled three hospital ships.
RH: Yeah, a lot of those went to Saipan.
BH: Yeah, Saipan, but they had to get them back some way.
RH: And then I took a ship to Hawaii. Plus head wounds I think had a little different treatment.
BH: Um, hum, yeah.
RH: I got on the airplane to leave Okinawa and the first thing they did was offer us a roast beef sandwich and I couldn't eat it.
BH: Gosh!
RH: Couldn't chew it.
BH: How on earth did you survive all that time, you just flew it.
RH: Well, I lost weight. Believe me, that's one way you will lose weight, because after they wired my teeth together, I gained about six pounds while my teeth were wired up, I didn't think about getting them wired again so I could lose some weight.
BH: Laughs. That's the hard way.
RH: Yet, if you ever have your teeth wired and you start to sneeze. Lord, grab and hold on because if you don't, if feels like you're having every tooth in your head pulled. I tried to sneeze one time and after that, from there on end, boy, I hung on just as hard as I could because that, there's no give there. When you sneeze, your mouth wants to fly open.
BH: Overall, what would you think of your army experience, your war experiences, your whole army with it, the 96th and…
RH: I'm glad I went through it. I've often said to go do it again, I'd want a million dollars in advance so I can spend it.
BH: To do it.
RH: Yeah, overall, when people ask, I always tell people-"What were you in the war?" and I said, "Well, I was in the infantry." You don't have to tell them anything else. They say, "Well, I was the 9-16th Refrigeration Company, or something." What was that?
AP: Do you have any ill feelings towards the United States Military after being in it?
RH: Not really. I thought I was smarter than a lot of the non-coms that I had. Brainwise, I probably was, brainwise, but maybe experience, I wasn't. Because ASTP without bragging, the minimum score on the classification test had to be five points higher than for OCS. That's Officer's Candidate School. And why-well I didn't score 150, I did know one boy that did-two boys that did and our own platoon sergeant, one of the best soldiers I ever met, could not get a field commission because he couldn't score 110. He took it numerous times and he never got over 108. And I told him, "Won't they cheat for you a little bit?" And he said "No, you got to make, 110, before you can become a Lieutenant." And here, 2000, of us went out there, and everybody had over 100, had 15-115 or more.
BH: Did you lose any officers in the battles? Commanding officers that you know of?
RH: Well, General Buckner, the Tenth Army Commander was killed. General Easley, the executive officer for the 96th was killed. Karl May, the regimental commander was killed. That's the highest. By the way, the 96th, the three regiments 381st, 382nd, and 383rd, three full colonels, none of them went to West Point, which is unusual, I guess, from what I've read. Colonel May, our regimental commander had been an enlisted man in World War I and he stayed in the National Guard and became a full colonel. Mean. Mean, tough old rascal. He'd say "A solder never gets tired, he just gets lazy." That was his philosophy.
BH: That's what, you got that when you were just training with the 96th?
RH: Colonel May was a-his helmet came down and you couldn't see his eyes and no telling where he would show up. We ran into him one day, we were on our two day patrol and we ran into Colonel May and his runner and we were going to stay all night in a little village and he found out where we were going to go and he said, "I called for an artillery barrage to hit that village about five-thirty tonight." So we didn't go there. We stayed someplace else. But he roamed around, but I wouldn't have been his runner, no way would I want to be with him. He was crazy, but good. He was ranked very high as a regimental commander.
BH: How about your company commanders? Did you lose any company commanders?
RH: Well, our first company commander was an old Army man. He'd been about eighteen years in the Army before the war and then got a commission. Got wounded on Leyte, came back and then transferred down to the Third Battalion 383rd as the executive officer. Captain Royster succeeded him and he lost an eye the same morning I got hurt. I came out with him. In fact, the last time I saw him, I was pretty tired. I'd lost a lot of blood. They took a little break and they were going on to try to find the Third Battalion medics or the Third Battalion aid station and I told the guy that was helping me, staying with me, waiting with me, just to rest a couple more minutes. And I asked Royster, "Do you know what you're doing?" He said, "Well, yeah." And well, I said, "Well, I've seen you mess things up before and I don't want you messing up anything this morning." Because I'm already hurt, so I don't care what I said. That's the last time I ever saw him. He made it out. I talked to him on the phone once. He was from Nashville, Tennessee. But I think everybody should - I think one of the best things that could happen today is if-and you guys probably wouldn't agree with me-after high school, I think every guy should spend a year in service. I gained weight in basic training. Most guys lost weight in basic training. You see some guys come in with-they'd be wearing a 44 and when they finished, they'd be wearing a 36 shirt. And I gained about eight or ten pounds in basic training because I was getting three square meals a day and went to bed at nine or nine-thirty at night, living out in the tents, getting a lot of fresh air and exercise. I'd been working out in a factory in Pennsylvania and working swing shift so every third week, you'd go on days, and every third week you'd work 12 to 8 also. The next thing, I was actually drafted from Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania in Beaver County and I went back home and transferred my to draft board down in southern Illinois, 'cause I didn't want to go with a bunch of strangers. I at least wanted to leave home with some people that I knew. I think it was - I think a year in the service would do most guys real good. There's others, they'd make bums out of them. I saw guys that were bums before they went that come out good and saw a few from my hometown that came out bums and they started out pretty good. But I got two and a half terms of college out of it which amounted to thirty-two, thirty-three hours credit when I came out and started to college and that got me out of some required courses that I wouldn't have wanted to take in civilian life; some of the math courses and the physics. I had six weeks and finished pre-engineering.
BH: Six weeks what?
RH: Six weeks finishing pre-engineering.
BH: In the army?
RH: We went, we took like twenty-three credit hours. They talk about sixteen's being the normal load. We went to, we started at eight o'clock in the morning, went till five and of course we had some P.E. I think we only had Phys. Ed. about three days a week. And then on Saturday we went from eight till one and we were supposed to have an inspection in at three but we never did have inspection. Had compulsory study hall six nights a week from seven till nine. Bed check at ten-thirty, except on Friday. That was eleven-thirty. The girls got out until eleven-thirty there at college. And then on Sunday-ah, Saturday night we had no bed check. Then on Sunday you better be back by seven and go to study hall and then they had ten-thirty bed check again. I got to college and I couldn't believe it was so easy. We had my fifty, my fiftieth class reunion and I told them, I wasn't a good student in college and my wife said later "Did you hear what he said? He said he wasn't a good student." I said, "It was too easy taking fifteen, sixteen hours after twenty-three and compulsory study hall, bed check." I said, "The Rathskeller downtown had a place reserved for me."
DG: Is there anything else you'd like to mention that we haven't covered so far?
RH: I would say this. If you're ever volunteering to go into the service, don't volunteer for the infantry. It's not-it's not the place. I was silly. To show you how silly I was, following the University of Chicago, another boy and I decided we didn't like going to school. So our company clerk had been in the airborne infantry. So we went down to see him about getting into the airborne infantry. He said "Why? Why do you want to get into airborne?" I said, "Well, they get more money." He said, "No they don't. If you want more money, get into the paratroopers." So where do we see about the paratroopers? He said, "I don't know and I don't care and I don't want to know." So, "Well, how about the personnel officer? This was at Chicago-they had several military people there. He said, "Yeah. Head over to headquarters. They've got a personnel officer. So we went over there and asked the first guy we saw. We were over here seeing about getting into paratroopers. He thought we were crazy. It turned out, the officer, the personnel officer, was a WAC captain really. Her husband was a captain in the paratroopers. She thought that was the greatest thing in the world that two young boys wanted to get into paratroopers. Well, she got all in a dither, she couldn't find anything and she said, "Well, I'll have to check it out. You'll have a note in your mailbox." That night we had little notes that said you can't join the paratroopers from here. Maybe from your next station you can join. I got into the infantry. I was glad I wasn't in the paratroopers. I never asked again.
BH: What do you think of the future of the 96th Infantry Division Reunion and the transfer to the new unit. Do you think it's going to be a success? What's your opinion on it?
RH: I hope it is, but I don't think it will be. I was a guest this year, this being our last one this year. I wanted to go until at least fifty instead of cutting off of forty-eight. About five years ago some people decided that that was it, it was going to be it and they convinced people-I didn't argue with them because I knew I was going to go to these reunions, till the end and I laid forty-five out of the forty-eight. And the people that were guests there were short-timers. If you check the ten-year-some of them were only ten-year people. But they were doing all the work and they get tired, I didn't blame them, but they volunteered to do the work, too. I didn't want to do it, but I'll never go to Salt Lake City or Denver, that's too far.
BH: That's too far?
RH: Yeah, I went before. I went to Denver, twice or three times-what was it? Salt Lake, I went twice. It's not going to be the same.
BH: But see the 96th unit, reserve unit, reserve command-we're going to try to make it work.
RH: Well, it will work as long as the commanding general that is there now, stays. But if he retires or gets transferred, the next one may not care.
BH: That's true.
RH: That Colonel Reed, who teaches at Utah, till he retires, or whatever. He'll be very interested. He's done a very good job.
BH: Yep. Yes, he's on our - that last- that last-tape that they made, that EBD.
RH: But these guys are not as old as some of us.
BH: Yeah, that's true, that's true.
RH: But they're going to get older, they're getting older all the time.
BH: That's right, that's right, that's right.
RH: I think we were getting one executive meeting they said if anybody was under eighty raise your hand and I don't think anybody raised their hand. These guys didn't even blink when they saw my age. When I was down at the hospital, when was that? A year ago, October, down there in the room, getting prepped and whatnot, the gal wanted to know when I was born. I said, "1924", and she said, "How old are you?" And I said, "Eighty." "What?" I said, "Well, you subtract that out. Born in twenty-four, I got to be eighty, this is '04."
BH: [Good] mathematics there.
RH: I don't think I'm eighty-one until I look in the mirror.
BH: [Pointing to Andrew Pauzek] His grandfather was a Deadeye.
RH: Is that right?
BH: Uh, huh. Yeah. In fact, we interviewed him too, his grandfather. Polzin, Polzin.
DG: Could you describe the weather conditions that you experienced during the war? During your battles, I guess.
RH: Fortunately, by going to the Pacific, I didn't suffer from the weather. If I had been in Europe, I would never have made it. I hate cold weather, unless I've got the clothes and all the-to survive, like at the Battle of Bulge, those guys had summer clothes out there and I don't know how they survived at all. The only thing I had to worry about in the Philippines-I think like the month of November there, 44', they had like 25 inches of rain that month. And you dig a hole, it filled up with water on you if you got very deep. And the down, in the rural areas, if you were up on a hill it was a little different. It didn't seem too hot. However, I went back over there in '73 in October, it was on October twentieth, which was the first time any combat troops had ever been back on October twentieth. October twentieth to them was a big deal like the Fourth of July here. They had celebrations, parades and whatnot. And the weather, man it was hot, unbearable and we talked about that. But before, we went we had been California, we'd been in Hawaii, we'd been aboard ship for thirty-days between Hawaii and Leyte, so we adapted to some of that hot weather and all. And then October here, it's getting cool, go out there and man, you just, suffocate. I went around with a wet towel wrapped around my neck most of the time. Okinawa wasn't bad. It started raining in Okinawa, I got hurt on the ninth, we went down to the airstrip on the tenth to fly out of there and our plane was laying there burning up and we were supposed to leave on it because it got chased down by a Jap fighter and cracked up when it went running off the runway. So we had to stay, and it started raining on the tenth, or maybe the night of the ninth, I don't remember. On the eleventh it was raining and the night of the tenth, I was in a Marine hospital and they gave me two wet blankets to cover with and no, nothing mentioned about food, not that I could have eaten a whole lot, but I could have, you know, drank coffee anyway. And there were a navy crewman in the bed next to me, an old timer, and he kind of took me under his wing wanted to know if I wanted some pain pills or some medical out here and got me some fruit cocktail and some coffee. And then on the morning of the eleventh, we did fly out and got down to Guam that evening. The weather's not a factor like it was in Europe.
DG: What kind of post-war occupations did you have?
RH: Well, for about the first six months, I loafed and didn't really do anything, except I started in school in the fall of '46. Oh, I did work out there in the war plant down home. They were cleaning out the storage facilities where they made the-they were filled with TNT that they were shipping somewhere up in northern Illinois and I worked out there, cleaning out those igloos, we called them, the TNT which was pretty easy work. Some people were scared of TNT, not knowing that it's not dangerous. They put us down in black powder one day, which is dangerous. That'll blow you up, but TNT, nothing to it. I did go to demolition-so called demolition school in Hawaii for a week and I never used it. We had our own satchel charges and flamethrowers and whatnot, in fact I was that's one reason I got a BAR, I was afraid I was going to get a flamethrower and I didn't want a flamethrower. I often wondered if we'd had to scale that seawall in Okinawa and how a guy with a flamethrower would have gotten over. He'd have to throw it over or something because, about eighty, between eighty, eighty-five pounds, depends on how much fuel they had on it, how heavy it would be. And I didn't like that flamethrower at all. That flamethrower, when you hit the ground, you'd hit the ground, and then the flamethrower would hit you, because you didn't wear it tight, and you got down before it did. Having an eighty-plus pounds thing hitting you in the back didn't feel good.
AP: Are there any other final things you want to say?
RH: Well, I could say about our army experience after I came back. I got back July first. I went to the hospital, just so that I could get processed and all. I had thirty days at home, went back to the hospital and they had an rehabilitation program going and I got a three-day pass into Louisville and went back and they shipped me to Fort Sheridan and got a up there one night at about ten o'clock. The next day we, ran through and I wind up down, talking to a guy at the desk and he said, "Well," he said, "I can send you to Hot Springs, Arkansas, or Miami Beach. Which place do you want to go?" I said, "I think you got the wrong guy." I was in the infantry, not the Air Force," and he said, "No, no," he said. "There's some pictures of Hot Springs right around the corner there on the bulletin board. Said, "Miami Beach will be just like that." So I went around and looked and sure enough, big hotel, maid service, and all, and so I went back and told him, I said, "Well, you know, Hot Springs is closer to home, so just send me to Miami Beach. He said, "How about a thirty day delay en route?" and I said, "Okay." He said, "You think you'd be ready to leave by three o'clock this afternoon?" And I said, "Give me ten minutes to get my bag and I'll be ready to go now." Thirty more days at home. So I had two months there at home and of course the war was over then. I went to Miami and they put us up in a hotel and most of the guys down there were ex-prisoners of war. Up there on the beach and man, we had a private beach and we had a dance about two nights a week. You didn't have to wear a hat, cap, or tie during the day and you'd turn your sleeves up until the sun went down. The rule was, when the sun went down, the sleeves came down. You went to eat, you went in, you looked at the menu, you told them what you wanted, you picked it up down at the end of the aisle, at the end of the counter, and then on the way out, you left the dishes on the table, the dirty dishes. You go out the back door, and they had bins of oranges and apples and stuff back there just help yourself all you wanted.
BH: Boy, that R and R wasn't it?
RH: I don't know what they called it, but it was good. Not only that, if you had a date, eleven, I think it was eleven o'clock, they opened up the mess halls, either ten or eleven at night, you'd take her in and feed her there too. Boy, deep-sea fishing, surf fishing, and I even went to Arthur Murray a couple of times for dance lessons free. I'm not a dancer. My wife, said, "It didn't take, did it?" Said, "No it didn't."
BH: So I'll be darned. I hardly realized something like that even took place.
RH: Oh, I didn't know there was such a thing as that. I told a guy down there, I said, "If I could get this for the rest of twenty years, I would sign up right now." This was a staff sergeant carrying my bag, going over there and I'm a PFC with no stripes. I've got a room up there with a guy, I don't know if he was from Mississippi or Georgia, somewhere, he'd been over in Europe. Had the worst scar I have ever seen on an individual. He'd been hurt-he wouldn't even go on the beach without a t-shirt on. The scar started right over here, about that wide and it just came down a point right over here. And then his stomach had just little pockmarks where they dug shrapnel out of him. Anyway, we'd go down to the beach, which was just out the back door of the hotel and he would not go out there without a t-shirt on because that scar, it looked so bad. I wound up in the MPs and they gave me a new classification test and to show you how things can change, you're smarter when you get out of high school than you are later on in a lot of ways. I got more right on that classification test when I took it when I went in, than questions that I answered when I took it in the summer of '45. I don't know how, I don't know what my score was in '45. I know what it was in '43 but that I couldn't comprehend as fast or something. I don't know, I just couldn't answer as many questions. After some town duty and whatnot, I ended up riding trains between Miami and Jacksonville. Soft, easy, job. We didn't even check papers. We were afraid we'd find a deserter, or somebody AWOL. We didn't want to stay in for a court marshal. Of course, there wasn't anybody out there deserting I don't think, not with the war over. Like I wrote one time to somebody saying, "That MP duty at Miami was soft and easy. All I ever wore was my combat badge and I never had any problems with anybody." My face was still a little bit dirty, I think. It took a little while to get the dirt scrubbed out of your face. That right, Bill?
BH: The hot showers we had.
RH: Showers? You ever show them any pictures where they somebody's holding up a number ten can that they've taken a nail and punch a hole through it, one guy hold it, somebody's pouring water into it, and the guy down here's taking a shower.
BH: Well, that was a great, great interview.
