Oral History Interview with Arthur Y. Lloyd

TS (Thomas Syversten): Dr. Lloyd, I think the last time we talked we ended pretty much talking about your activities in the southwest Pacific, and bringing back a secret report. We didn't have much time to talk about your involvement through the U.S. adjutant general's office in Europe. I was wondering if we could pick up there today.

AL (Arthur Lloyd): Why, sure, I think so. Actually, I went over to Europe about seven months after I came 1:00back off duty in the southwest Pacific. Flew over in a converted B-24, the usual transportation in those days. It had none of the facilities like you'd have in the present day airliner, not even the ones the Navy used during the war, as a matter of fact. I came back from the southwest Pacific in a naval airplane. I preferred that because I almost landed in the water going out.

TS: Umhmm. I recall you mentioning that. [Chuckle] AL: I had a choice coming back. That, as I recall, took eighteen hours to come from Hawaii in to San Francisco, but it did have a bunk in there where you could sleep. I was again stationed in the Pentagon for the adjutant general's . . . the adjutant general's office for the army itself for a period of time. Did I mention how they 2:00. . . I'd been asked to return to the southwest Pacific, [and] how I got to Europe?

TS: No, I don't believe so.

AL: Well, I was doing my general work there in the Pentagon. The adjutant general in the southwest Pacific asked that I be returned there for duty whenever I'd been in the States an appropriate period of time, and I expected to go back. However, one day I ran into--the corridors there--a General Ralph Lovett. He's dead now, but he'd been my . . . chief of my division, I guess you'd call it, in the adjutant general's office in the Pentagon prior to my going out to the southwest Pacific. Meantime, he'd gone to Europe, 3:00was assigned over there, and he was the adjutant general for General Eisenhower's headquarters. So we met one time in one of the corridors, and he said, "Well, Lloyd, I thought you was in the southwest Pacific." And I said, "I thought you were in Europe." He'd been a colonel before and I'd been . . . when I was a lieutenant colonel, [and] he'd been a colonel when I was a major. And we chatted a few minutes and he said, "I'd like to have you over in Europe with me. Are you going back somewhere overseas?" I said, "Yes, I'm going. I already have orders. I'm going back to the southwest Pacific." He said, "Well," said, "you'd really like to go over there?" I said, "Well, I don't . . . that's not the question. I'm a good soldier and I go wherever they want me to go." He said, "Would you mind if I ask for you to go over to Europe?" I said, "I don't think it would do any good, General, because my orders 4:00have been issued and I'll be going in another couple of months." He said, "Well, I'll go upstairs and talk to George about it." That's George Marshall who was the chief of staff.

TS: Uh-huh, George C. Marshall.

AL: To my great surprise, why, shortly thereafter my orders were changed so I'd go to Europe, and I was assigned to Europe. Dwight [Hamickly?], who was a major at that time and I was a lieutenant colonel--he was from Lexington and I'd known him before for quite a while--and he went over on the same B-24 that I did. Our first introduction to the war in Europe was very close to the Spanish border. We left about 5:003:30 or four o'clock in the morning from Washington and, of course, daylight reached us out on the ocean pretty soon. But just before we got into the [common?], we saw our first ships [that] had been bombed by the German submarines and were going up in smoke. So our pilots flew down low and circled around to see if there were any lifeboats left or anybody we could rescue, though I don't know how we would have gotten to them if we had. But at least we could have informed the nearby ships.

TS: You certainly were not a PBY type, were you?

AL: No. And we didn't see any, but the ship was burning and just about to go down. So we had no idea and couldn't find out at that time whether they'd gotten the survivors off or what happened. But we went on in and landed at the outskirts of Paris.

TS: Can you give us a date on this, do you recall?

AL: I think that was about April 6:00of '45.

TS: Uh-huh.

AL: Late March or early April, I've really forgotten the exact time.

TS: Umhmm.

AL: I know spring was still around the corner. It was still cold. But on the other hand, Paris had just been taken shortly before, and we were . . . they had the headquarters of European Affairs at that time in Paris, and we got quarters there. I remember the first night they put us in pretty much of a flea box, you might call it. 7:00It was a hotel that the Germans had taken over during the war and used for their noncommissioned officers because it wasn't good enough for their commissioned officers. But, anyway, we got into it. So I found that there was a great amount of sort of dickering around about getting quarters up there because, while some of the best hotels had been taken over, all the higher ranking officers were in the hotels George V on the Champs-Elysees, and shortly thereafter they moved us out of this dump and put us into a little better hotel right on the Champs-Elysees, the Hotel Jubilee, and that also had been a German non-com hotel. But shortly thereafter I ran into one of my former students down on the Champs-Elysees 8:00and his name was Virgil Phillips. He was up from Olive Hill, Kentucky. And I . . . we was glad to see each other, and I said, "Well, Phillip," I said, "what in the world are you doing over here?" He said, "Why, I'm assigned to the same base area. I'm supposed to be a supply officer." "Well," I said, "that's good. There's several things you can do as a supply officer." The same base area covered all the [inaudible] and so on of Paris. I said, "That means you probably have under your general direction assigning quarters, and you're also in charge of the liquor rations and such things as that." He said, "That's right." “Well,” I said, "I want to see if I can't get a little better 9:00quarters for my outfit." Well, he got . . . he arranged for me to have lunch with the person that was a girl . . . woman, rather, who was in charge of the reservations and so on, and she picked me out some places that might be available. The results of my meeting with Virgil there and telling him my problems, and remembering my old political science teacher, was that she took me down to the old hotel Prince de Galles, which was right next door to George V but had the reputation among the younger officers of being a much better foxhole than the George V. 10:00The George V presumably was where the higher ranking officers stayed and was supposed to be a higher ranked hotel, but the George V was a little stuffy, most of them thought. But Prince de Galles had a better dining room and a better bar and all that sort of thing. So I wound up staying at the Prince de Galles mainly because I taught political science back in Morehead years before. Very shortly thereafter, though . . . oh, well, they sent me into Germany before the war was over on some special duties. But I managed to get back from Germany when we knew enough about the war, to drop in [and] I managed to get back to Paris where I still had some quarters.

TS: Can you give us an outline of what you did in Germany?

AL: Well, 11:00it was somewhat similar to what I did in the southwest Pacific.

TS: So you were carrying secret . . .

AL: Well, no. I was making studies of the replacement system. Whether or not they were getting the kind of men they needed, the training they needed, that sort of thing, which was an administrative type thing for the adjutant general's office.

TS: Now, was this classified as well?

AL: Most of it, yeah. We worked with the G-1 from General Eisenhower's headquarters. I was assigned to go with a representative of the G-1's office.

TS: I see.

AL: And we studied these various things and we went to the Third Army and the Sixth Army, Seventh Army, and we generally found out through their staff what the problem was on replacements.

TS: Basically, what did the report say?

AL: Well, it was working pretty well. Not perfectly, but working pretty well. You might be interested in 12:00knowing that when we were down visiting General Patton's office, we . . . I heard him make a speech for his men just very much like George Scott made in the . . .

TS: In the movie.

AL: . . . in the movie "Patton". I think George Scott probably portrayed him better than he was from a standpoint of speaking voice and that sort of thing. He probably used less cuss words. But that was the type of thing we were doing.

TS: Well, you told me that Patton , I believe . . . I believe you told me at one point that Patton had a rather high, light voice, whereas George C. Scott in the movie version came across much more masculine sounding.

AL: Yeah. Very much so.

TS: A commanding . . . a command-type 13:00 voice.

AL: Yeah. In order to . . . Scott had a much better command voice than Patton.

TS: Umhmm.

AL: But the . . . Patton was well liked by his men, though. He was what you called a soldier's soldier.

TS: Umhmm. Did you talk with people directly about Patton?

AL: Pardon?

TS: When you went on this mission to Germany or elsewhere, did you talk directly with officers and men about Patton?

AL: Well, no, not usually. We just . . . we worked with the assistants, usually the heads of the . . . we talked . . . we went . . . visited some of the units in the army and so on and . . . to determine whether or not they were really getting the type 14:00of qualified men that they needed. Plus another job I was assigned over there following the actual peace with Germany. We had . . . of course, the Japanese war was still going on. And there was . . . there had to be a shift of troops from where the war had ended into where the war was still going on. And that was an important part of planning at that time, and we had a point system as to if a person stayed in Europe long enough they'd have a certain number of points. [Telephone rings] TS: Yeah. Excuse me. [Pause in taping] Okay.

AL: I'm not exactly . . . I don't remember exactly where I was when I went to answer the telephone.

TS: Let's see. Well, we had just been talking generally about the . . .

AL: Well, about the 15:00movement in troops from Europe into the southwest Pacific. One of the things that we were trying to do, and it worked out in planning, was to try to hire civilians in these various places to take the place of some of our American troops who'd be going to the Pacific. We worked out a system, and I did quite a bit of traveling on that assignment to Luxembourg, Belgium, Finland . . . oh, not Finland but Denmark, in which we would set up an American office under jurisdiction of the U.S. Army and adjutant general's department to hire civilians from that country. And we'd pay them in their own currency. But we'd pay the government in dollars, and invariably we'd just give 16:00the government some dollars to be deposited in their bank accounts at home, and that pleased all these European governments at that time. They were tickled to death to get it. And these people were tickled to . . . just so glad to get a job with the American army, because they were paying. And they'd be paid in . . . the ones that worked in Germany for us would be paid in German marks for part of it for their living expenses, but dollars would be deposited in the bank for them. Same was true in all the other countries. And I went into Luxembourg and Belgium and Denmark, and we had, of course, offices in Germany. And I didn't go but I . . . there was . . . our office set up some offices in other places like Holland and so on. We found that they were 17:00very helpful and we could get very capable people for the job that we wanted them to do. I went also . . . we set some up in England, too. That took place pretty much during the . . . following the peace with Germany and during the fall of 1945. And we had a new adjutant general and vice adjutant general. General Lovett decided he was supposed to go back to the States in November, 18:00about around Thanksgiving. He asked me if I wouldn't stay over there until he went back. I could have gone back earlier than that, though, on points. But you know in the army when a general asks you to stay, he doesn't mean that you have a choice. [Laughter] When he said he'd like to have me stay till he went back, and said we'd both go back for Thanksgiving and be home for Christmas, well, I said, "Yes, Sir." As it turned out we had a new adjutant general [who] came over about the . . . I guess around October . . . latter part of October, who I'd known in the southwest Pacific. He was an adjutant general . . . had been adjutant general under General MacArthur and I knew him. And he arrived over there and I explained to him that we had this house there in Germany, a very good house, that General Lovett had been assigned. 19:00It was the only house I ever found in all of Germany that had seven bathrooms. The German's are clean people but they're not much on having lots of bathrooms. And we knew that this had to be owned by Nazis because nobody except a Nazi would have been allowed to have a house like that.

TS: Umhmm.

AL: So we took it over, and General Lovett and myself and two other lieutenant colonels lived in it. Did I say anything the other day about the household Germans we had there?

TS: No, I don't believe so. We had talked some about . . . no, I don't believe so.

AL: Well, anyway, 20:00our headquarters when we went into Germany were in the City of Frankfurt am Main.

TS: No. No, we didn't talk about this part.

AL: And that was supposed to be our permanent headquarters as long as we occupied Germany. And the air force had been very helpful to the army because they had planned ahead of time--the army had--to occupy the farming buildings. That's the huge building they had there in Frankfurt am Main. And when bombing the town or city, they bombed all around and left the I.D.'d apartment buildings intact. So that gave the American army a bunch of good buildings, still heatable and maintained, and you didn't have to build anything.

TS: But were the farming buildings intentionally left intact?

AL: Yeah. Yeah.

TS: You would think as a military target that they 21:00would want to take those out.

AL: Well, they did a great job of bombing all the way around them. But the war, you know, was almost over then anyway. It was in its last stages. And we had barbed wire entanglements around all the buildings and most of the part of town we occupied. But after the war was over, and then particularly after the Japanese war was over, well, then we were free to go pick out other places. John Lovett indicated he would like to get way out of the city, not live right by the offices there all the time because we were working seven days a week anyway. So he told us he wanted to look for a place that would be a little way out and comfortable, but easily accessible to the headquarters. We found that in a little city called Kronberg. It was right down 22:00at the foot of the tallest mountain where the [inaudible] Castle was right upon the mountain. That's where the Kaiser Wilhelm's mother lived. And so we found this house that had seven bathrooms, and so we immediately sort of did a little shifting of rooms and that sort of thing, and so each officer really had a small suite; a bedroom and a sort of living room and a bath. I called up the burgermeister down in the City of Kronberg. I told him that General Lovett was going to move in and that we were 23:00going to take over. We were expecting the people to move within twenty-four hours and we needed two cooks, two maids, a furnace boy, and a gardener, and we were going to pay them the going wage, at the rate of dollars in exchange for marks--that was in Germany at that time. And we paid that ourselves because that's . . . officers are supposed to do that for themselves at peacetime. But the wage was very low; it was $2.50 a week. I'm sure that all of them would have worked for nothing if just to get the food because we fed them, and we had a fresh supply of food. So that worked out very well, and we used to drive back and forth to work everyday and so on. I liked the German people. 24:00They were industrious, clean, worked hard. One of them that worked was a prisoner of war, a boy by the name of Norbet. He was about seventeen but he had gone into the German Army when he was fourteen. The only stipulation we put on the thing was that one of the servants had to speak good English . . . excellent English to be able to translate to the Germans because we didn't . . . of course, the whole headquarters was supposed to have no fraternization with the Germans. And I believe I said the last time . . . I was telling you about General Patton was pretty much opposed 25:00to that. But everybody pretty much did it that way. And I couldn't ever let them know I knew anything about Germans. I told the general I did not speak German and would not learn German. And this girl, the only one that could speak good English, was a true Nazi. She'd been a member of the Nazi movement and she'd grown up under Hitler. She was only about twenty-one or twenty-two years old. So her whole life had been Nazi. And I explained to her that we weren't going to learn any German. The Germans had to serve us. They had to obey, and if they failed to obey an order, 26:00if they didn't understand it, failed to obey an order, it would be just the same as if they did it deliberately. And it was her job to be sure that she heard every order given by a general or any of the officers living there. She conveyed exactly the way it was given to her compatriots who didn't understand English much. Because if they failed to obey an order we'd just shoot them. And she translated it exactly the way I said it. And you know they all nodded yeah. They respected it. But when I told that story to my wife, she said I was terrible. I shouldn't have ever talked like that to the German people. But the thing about it is the German people would respect authority better than any . . . they had one of the finest armies in the world because of their discipline. And 27:00they obeyed orders and they expected you to do that. They expected you to be very definite about what you'd do if they didn't obey orders. My wife also thought I was terrible to . . . that we gave them only twenty-four hours notice . . .

TS: To move.

AL: . . . to move. But if you gave them any more than that . . . when you gave them only twenty-four hours, they'd get only their most precious possessions and get out. When you gave them more time than that they'd booby trap the whole place and get a bunch of people killed. A lot of times when people moved in . . . when Americans moved into a German home, they'd have a Leica camera in them [as] one of the possessions left. 28:00And all Americans were trying to get hold of Leica cameras, the American G.I.'s, and so they'd go and grab that first thing and it'd blow up in their face. Or they'd see a painting on the wall sitting sideways, and you know it was a perfectly natural thing to go and straighten up a painting or picture on the wall, and that'd blow up. Or they'd flush the toilet and it'd blow up. Well, I don't kill that way.

TS: I see your point.

AL: Well, not only that, but before any house I ever went into, I didn't want to take that kind of chance. Anybody but me. So we usually got some German prisoners and had them to move. They'd go in ahead of time and move everything while we watched them. There was never a prisoner that was blown up, 29:00but it was a good precaution.

TS: This is interesting. This was a common procedure there then to hire staff to do this?

AL: Well, yes, if you were smart you did. The Germans were very tricky. They had a good army. I think they certainly had an army that was not only probably one of the best in the world, but they were so well disciplined that that was their point of weakness. Where Americans, I think, have the advantage over the Germans is that we were more adaptable. The Germans had been trained to the point, and disciplined to the point, that everything had to go by the book. The German's were extremely good soldiers, but unless things went according to the way they'd been instructed, 30:00or according to plan, you might say, they were very difficult to feel change, what's normal in a plan and been instructed to go on to something different. One time later, this was much later than that time, I was over in . . . I started to say Denmark, but this was in Norway and I was over there on some business. And a young man . . . a young Norwegian that worked in the American embassy there and found out I'd been in World War Two and so on, and he took me around to see things and that sort of thing. And his brother, he lived there. And his brother had been part of the underground during the war, and he would slip back through one of the passages over the mountains 31:00to see his family occasionally and slip out again at night. The Germans had a rule that if they caught any Norwegian with a gun the verdict was death. And so he couldn't have any protection because he couldn't bring his gun with him or take one away. So he showed me a pass up there on the mountain where his brother slipped in the back one night away from visiting his family, and suddenly ran into a German sentry who hollered, "Halt!" and held a gun on him. But he was close enough to the sentry he passed the gun aside, but in the meantime he knocked his helmet off. Guess what the German did? His 32:00helmet was going down, falling down the mountain, and he ran down to get his helmet because he'd been taught all along you don't go into combat or anything without your helmet on. So while he was chasing his helmet, the Norwegian got away.

TS: That's interesting.

AL: Apparently though, you can have too much discipline. Now the American army was very good at being able to change things and that sort of thing. [End of Tape #1, Side #l] [Begin Tape #1, Side #2] AL: Well, the Germans would . . . the Germans would string fine piano wire that you couldn't see in daylight from one tree to another on some of these narrow highways, and the American GIs would be going down the highway at a fairly great rate of speed with the top down or the glass down 33:00on the hood. Piano wire would cut their necks [and] likely cut their heads off. Things like that. They were very clever on those things and you had to watch always for some type thing the Germans would do that you might not expect them to do. But that's all part of training, and the fortunate thing for me is . . . was that I had trained in the reserves for many years before I had to go into war. Just being observant is a great thing.

TS: You were very cognizant of those kinds of things.

AL: If you'd been trained properly, you'd sense something was wrong without hardly noticing it. You'd just know something was wrong in that particular spot.

TS: Did you have any particularly harrowing experiences of that sort?

AL: Well, some of them. 34:00The worst one I'd say happened in New Guinea. Some of the soldiers there were killed because they didn't follow orders. They were told to dig a foxhole wherever they were. And they'd dig the foxhole because some sergeant or somebody would see that they did it. But Americans like to be comfortable at night. And frequently the men--and they were told not to do this--but frequently the men would take a shelter half--all of them had these shelter halves, and two of them would make a pup tent--and they'd cover their foxhole with a shelter half. And, of course, it rained every night, practically. [It] rained all the time in New Guinea, it seemed to me like. So the Japs would infiltrate at night and creep along on their hands and knees crawling. And you wouldn't hear . . . you'd hear noises 35:00but there's always noises in the jungle. And they'd creep along until they felt some canvas and they'd know there was a man or two men under that. So they jumped in with a bayonet or a knife. Now, if they felt a hole, they were less inclined to do that because they didn't know what was in the hole. And they knew that if a man was in the hole he'd see enough shadow . . . there's always enough light from the moon even in a heavy jungle that you could see a shadow or something cutting off part of the light, and the Jap might be shot right there when he leaned over. But there were many times when you have to notice things just like the Indians used to do in this country. They might have an enemy 36:00break off a twig or something getting into the hiding place where it shouldn't be broken or slight path-looking little place. You always watched those things. None of these things are particularly points of strategy. To make a long story short, I served in Germany under . . . I was talking a while ago about, this new general came over there and he . . . I told him I was supposed to go back with General Lovett and he said, "Hell, Lloyd, you're the only guy I know in this outfit and you're going to stay." So I stayed until February of '46 then instead of going back at Thanksgiving and getting home for Christmas. 37:00But that taught me something, too, because when I did get back home I was still a lieutenant colonel. And they wanted me to stay on duty. Well, they asked me if I wouldn't accept a permanent commission in the regular army. But I had just gotten married at the time that the war started and I had a child at home and a wife, and the farm hadn't been looked after properly during the wartime, so I didn't see where I wanted to stay in the regular army. Then they said, "Well, if you'll stay sixty days you'll be qualified to be a full colonel." I said, "I've seen the army change its regulations too many times. I'll go back to be discharged with the enlisted men in the Army Reserves because in sixty days they might change their mind 38:00and make it longer." But I did that purposely because of the fact that I knew it'd be easier to find an assignment in the Army Reserves as a lieutenant colonel than it would be a full colonel. And it turned out that way.

TS: So you came back to Kentucky at that point.

AL: Yeah. And I still took some . . . we had a . . . we had these training courses you could take at a center here in Lexington where they gave command and general status school courses, and I took those and so on. And that enabled me, when it came time to be promoted to a full colonel, I became a full colonel. And then later on I was acting in the reserves. 39:00Later on when I was in Washington, with the Burley and Dark Leaf Tobacco Export Association, Governor [Bert T.] Combs was elected to the governor's place, and I had been for him four years ago before when he lost. He wanted me to come back and take a state job and offered me a couple of jobs that I did not care for, but finally offered me the job as adjutant general. And I knew that job was putting me into a category where I could serve in an office calling for the rank of a major general. It enabled me to . . . in the National Guard you have to have the same obligation to be promoted to any office of rank 40:00as you do in the regular army. And I stayed in the reserves, but I accepted the adjutant general's appointment. I had been retired by the . . . under the army's rules as a full colonel in July 1960. By becoming adjutant general in command of the Kentucky National Guard, Army National Guard and Air National Guard, I could serve in a grade calling for a two-star general. So after I'd been in there I became a state-ranked two-star general appointed by the governor. But that doesn't mean too much unless you get confirmed by the Senate and recognized by the federal government. So after a few months as general officer aboard up there in Washington, 41:00I was recommended for it. I had enough time and grade and so on, and I became recognized as a regular two-star general.

TS: In the regular army.

AL: Well, not in the regular army but in the Army National Guard with federal recognition that I had the grade. And when I retired I would draw whatever the retirement pay was for my grade and number of years, which was the reason I left Washington again and came back to Kentucky.

TS: Okay. Well, we've covered a lot of territory for a . . . between the last time we spoke and today, from when you were a private on up till you were a two-star general.

AL: Well, I was fortunate in that I served . . . I was the first man since back in 1820 to serve as adjutant general under two governors and for a period of as long as eight years.

TS: Hmm. That's interesting. I didn't realize you had served under a second governor as well.

AL: Well, I was re-appointed by Governor [Edward T.] Breathitt 42:00when he came in office. And General Bill Wellman, who is in there now, will beat my record. As a matter of fact, I expect he's already beaten it because he's . . . I think he's exceeded the eight years. Is there any questions you have on it?

TS: Yeah. What about your state service when you came back in the late 1940s? Is there anything that you should be adding here--say, your service . . . did you serve somewhat under Roscoe Murray?

AL: Yes, I came back . . . as I said, I reverted back to the reserves as a lieutenant colonel. While I was still in the reserves, and still what you might call a weekend soldier, I became a full colonel. 43:00Roscoe Murray . . . I knew Roscoe when he was a lieutenant . . . second lieutenant and I was a sergeant down at Fort Knox in 1926. And I was very pleased to be in the reserves at the time he was adjutant general of the National Guard. And he was kind enough to offer me . . . he asked me if I'd reside . . . he recommended I be ordered to camp with the National Guard to do my two weeks annual duty. Besides, I attended, of course, some other meetings with the reserves, sometimes once a month and that sort of thing. But each time I . . . from that period of time . . . let's see. Roscoe Murray was adjutant general under Governor [Earle C.] Clements.

TS: Right. '48.

AL: And during that period of time I was also employed in Frankfort 44:00a good part of the time, and I used to go to camp with the National Guard most of the time.

TS: So when you were heading the LRC you were also going to camp?

AL: Yes. Pulled two weeks of active duty. And when I was up in Washington I went over in Maryland.

TS: As I understand it--I'm not a Kentuckian--but as I understand it, in the late 1940s early 1950s there was some fear among the Kentucky union ranks that both the new state police and the National Guard might be used as an anti-labor, strike-breaking force. Do you have any comments on this, and 45:00did you have any experiences relating to this problem?

AL: Well, I know something about it. It wasn't a question of maybe. But actually the National Guard's always been used in most states when they have any type of civil disobedience including strikes and that sort of thing and the citizens are endangered. The governor has the power to order out the National Guard to take whatever action is necessary to control it.

TS: True, but . . . yeah, the Guard can be used in a rather nonpartisan way as a . . . as a buffer, or it can be used in a very partisan, direct way.

AL: Oh, yeah. Yeah, that is correct.

TS: Obviously, labor has some reason to possibly have a fear based upon . . .

AL: Well . . . well, what you're talking about is things like they have a flood, tornado, or something like that, the governor always sends out the National Guard to help 46:00out the people. But they were used in Kentucky in strikes and strike issues even before the time you speak of. I was never sent on a . . . I was not in the National Guard during that period of time. I was never sent on a strike thing, but I know they were used in Harlan and various other places in Kentucky. Matter of fact, my predecessor used them. Was ordered by the governor and used them in connection with integrating the school systems.

TS: Umhmm. But were you involved . . .

AL: I was never involved because I was in . . . during that period of time I was in the reserves.

TS: Okay. Okay. I didn't know if you were called out for special services or . . .

AL: No, the reserves were . . . are only called out by the President of the United States. The National Guard 47:00is called out by the governor.

TS: I see. Okay.

AL: And if the president wants to use the National Guard, he has to get the governor's permission and order them out as federalized troops instead of National Guardsmen.

TS: Umhmm. Okay. Well, perhaps you could turn a few minutes to your assignment as an adjutant general, the milestones of your service as the Kentucky Adjutant General. We still have a few minutes to get into that.

AL: Well, I enjoyed that job as much as any I ever had. I had to work really hard at it. I told the troops on the day of inauguration [that] the governor wanted me there for a sort of welcoming thing for the new adjutant general. The adjutant general, as is the custom, is the first appointment by the governor. 48:00It goes way back to the time they appointed the adjutant general in order to protect the governor. You might say Daniel Boone was the first Kentucky Adjutant General or National Guardsman because he was a colonel in the troops of Kentucky. But I told these fellows---I knew most of them because I'd gone to camp with the National Guard so many times, I knew a lot of the officers--I told them I didn't expect to be the best adjutant general the guard ever had in Kentucky, but I did think I would be the hardest working one, and I certainly tried to be. And I had good relations with all the officers and men during that period of time. 49:00I made another policy which hadn't been done very much up to that time. In every troop, whether it was a company or regiment or battalion or what not, that went into annual field training for two weeks in some federal army post, I visited them, both air and army. And I think that helped me to keep in touch better with what was going on in it better than any of the previous adjutant generals had been able to do. But it was a very satisfactory type of position that I enjoyed. And all of my previous military experience was a big help to it, too.

TS: What were the major issues or problems that . . . that you faced as adjutant general 50:00as you look back? If you were to kind of think back in hindsight over what your contribution was in that period, what would you like to think about most?

AL: Well, one of the early ones, we were called . . . they had a big explosion down in one of the factories down in Louisville. The city administration in Louisville was . . . belonged to one party and the state administration to another party. The city administration wasn't very cooperative because they were always trying to find something they could blame on the state administration. I just happened to be talking on the telephone that day to somebody in Louisville when 51:00suddenly this loud noise took place and I said, "What in the world was that?" The fellow said, "I don't know. It was a whale of an explosion but I don't know what it is yet. Hold on and I'll find out." And one of the factories out there along the river had blown up. So I knew from the damage that this fellow mentioned that they'd have to call out the National Guard because anytime you have a thing like that your electrical wires are torn up, your pipes for water and heating and everything is blown up and you have to evacuate. And the guard, it does a great job of helping people evacuate and so on. And then you have the possibility of looters coming in and looting all the houses. So I knew that it was just a matter of time that 52:00the guard would have to be called out. So I called the governor and I told him I'd heard about this explosion, thought it was going to be serious and that they'd probably have to close off a section--and they did finally close off a section about a mile radius-- and I thought we'd be asked to call out the National Guard. And he said, "Well, I think so, too. I don't think they'll want me to call them out till the last minute. They'll want to make us look like we're unprepared. Go ahead and make your preparations and the time you think they'll need to be called out after they ask me. You tell me you're ready and you can be called out immediately." Well, that made sense. He said, "Go down to Louisville right now." So I got in my car, picked up one or two officers, and went. 53:00We found it to be even worse than we thought from the early telephone call. A great deal of damage had been caused and the explosions were still taking place. I took this action; we had a large number of troops near Louisville, we had a system already prepared for an emergency whereby each man would call two men. Those two men would call two more men each till you had a whole . . . whatever that size unit, you'd get a notice to most of them within a short time. And they were to report to the armory wherever they were based at a certain time. So we alerted the people that were on duty at each armory to start the system moving. 54:00I went down and looked at the situation. The Mayor of Louisville was out of town, didn't get back till that night. Nobody wanted to do anything till he got back. Meantime, my men had been alerted and were moving into the armories. They didn't ask me to get hold of the governor to have the guard called out till about 8:30 or nine o’clock that night. Well, the explosion took place at eleven o’clock that morning but they didn't know it. I said, "What do you want us to do?" He said, "Well, get your men in here quick as you can do it. We're going to have looting tonight and the police can't handle it." So I said, "What I'll do is to instruct the National Guard to cover the entire place you're blocking off and at each 55:00entrance . . . post of entrance you'll have some Guardsmen placed . . . stationed. Now, your policemen will be the ones that will go in and see whether or not . . . what the looters are doing and arrest them. I'm not empowering my men to arrest or shoot somebody that your policemen will [inaudible]." And they agreed to that. So the Guardsmen merely kept people out. And the people that wanted to go in their homes, well, the policemen went with them in the police cars and escorted them in there to get something and back out again. They checked in and out. But if we hadn't been ready it would have been a big mess that night, but state government would have been criticized severely.

TS: True. True. It would then become a political problem.

AL: Another time was when 56:00. . .

TS: Can I ask you another question here? Who did you deal with in the city administration during this . . .

AL: Who'd I deal with? The mayor.

TS: The mayor himself?

AL: And the county judge. The county judge and the mayor.

TS: Okay, so you were dealing directly on that level?

AL: Yeah. They were cooperative as far as I was concerned. I was just doing a job. They weren't for or against me politically or anything. I was just doing a job. Another instance was when Martin Luther King said he was going to stop the Derby. That was during Breathitt's administration. And the governor . . . and really the Churchill Downs authorities were very much upset about it. The governor asked me to go down and talk to them about it to see what we could work out. And I got my staff people together, officers that I had great confidence in, 57:00and I said, "I want you to take”---they had kind of what they called a `jam session” on. Sounds crazy but I said, "I want you to . . . if you were a fellow and you wanted to stop the Derby in order to get national publicity, how would you go about it? And I don't care how crazy it sounds, I want you to speak up and say how you'd go about it." Well, they came up with some crazy things. One fellow said he'd get one or two old cars that wasn't worth anything much and take them out, drive out on the Watterson Expressway, and when something got wrong with them in the middle of the road, he'd get out and set them on fire. And that would have made the biggest traffic jam you ever saw. 58:00Another one said, well, what he'd do if he wanted to stop the Derby is take a bunch of . . . couple of crates of live chickens out in the infield, and just before the Derby, turn them loose on the track. Now, you know . . .

TS: Only a Kentuckian would think of chickens. [Chuckle] AL: . . . a thoroughbred horse is a very temperamental animal. Something like that would just scare them. Somebody could have gotten killed. They could have jumped the fences or anything. So we considered all those things.

TS: Seriously considered those, I imagine.

AL: And so we investigated and we found that the City of Louisville at that time had contracted one garage downtown to send wreckers. The place had two wreckers that they could call on for a certain amount and get the highway or expressway 59:00or what got blocked or something. Well, I didn't think that was enough. I also found that they'd customarily only had one, at the most two, paddy wagons when the city police arrested people, to take them down to jail and book them. And that wasn't enough. Fortunately, we found a building over there in back of the stables at Churchill Downs, kind of a warehouse building, that was vacant. We rented it and we put heavy, strong wire and built a bunch of cages in there so we could hold something like two or three thousand people who were arrested. We had a number of tank wreckers because we had some tank units in Kentucky at the time; these big wreckers that could lift a tank.

TS: Umhmm. Umhmm.

AL: We brought 60:00some of those into Louisville, placed them along the side of the Watterson Expressway.

TS: Hmm.

AL: They could've picked . . . if somebody had a car, stopped it and put a match to it, them big wreckers could have picked it up [and] tossed it right out of the lane entirely. Wouldn't have to move it, just toss it. Because if the highway was blocked you couldn't get anywhere anyway. We had . . . I asked an attorney's opinion on this. I asked what could we do if a bunch of these people just went down . . . some . . . one of my men said he thought the best thing for them to do would be to go out and just lie down in front of the starting gate and dare the horses to run over them. And I found that you--got it from an attorney--that we had no power to move a man off the track if he was lying there. Just take off down the middle of the track, we had no author . . . we could tell him to move, but 61:00if he refused to move we couldn't do much to him. However, if he became mobile and jumped up or something, we could. I had . . . we had enough . . . we measured the width of the track to find out how many soldiers, shoulder-to-shoulder, we could have on there so we could have a special outfit in the personnel carriers there who were armed, not with . . . they were armed with rifles but not with loaded rifles--no live ammunition--but with a bayonet. According to this attorney general's opinion, if you got a man to move, you could sort of prod him a little bit with this bayonet and he'd move further. But until he moved, you couldn't stick him with a bayonet. Of course, we didn't want to hurt anybody anyway.

TS: True. You just wanted to move them.

AL: We had another group of people, soldiers, that had these 62:00little pencil type things that discharged teargas - not much, just a little. This squad with the rifle and bayonet would move on the people lying across the track and ask them to get up. If they didn't do that, they'd say you have to get up, now get up and go. No...no...if they still didn't do anything the fellow behind, we had one man between each two men behind with a tear-gas pencil, he's supposed to squirt a little in his eye. He'd jump. If that happened to him he jumped. And if he jumped they could prod him with the bayonet and make him go.

TS: Umhmmm.

AL: That was all on the plan. And we had people there . . . these extra troops were not all in sight. We always have troops at the Derby, usually four or five hundred. That day we had twelve hundred. The reporters kept asking me how many troops 63:00we were going to have and I said, "We're just going to have enough." But I had . . . over in the army we had a number of troops taking their regular weekend drill under federal pay that I could order over there if we needed them. And we had the personnel carriers that could carry them through there.

TS: But they weren't actually on . . .

AL: No.

TS: . . . all of them weren't actually on the grounds?

AL: They weren't actually on the Derby grounds.

TS: Were they in uniform?

AL: Oh, yeah, they were in uniform. We changed uniforms. Now, Governor Breathitt says, "Now, the ones you have down there we . . . let's make it kind of ceremonial. Don't get anybody panicked." I said, "What do you mean ceremonial?" He said, "Well, have them in dress uniforms and maybe white gloves." 64:00Well, I didn't know whether I could talk him out of that or not. I didn't try at that time. But we procured some white gloves and I got enough of these billies, not the ordinary night sticks, but these long billies that they used for riots. We didn't have enough in Kentucky but we borrowed some from the State of Ohio. All of my . . . [End of Tape #1, Side #2] 6/25/86 [Begin Tape #2, Side #1] 6/25/86 AL: Well, I will say that all of the officials at Churchill Downs were very cooperative. They were really worried. And naturally they didn't want--a lot of people were going to the Derby-- they didn't want a lot of people staying away on account of danger, and they didn't want a lot of people going out there and getting hurt either.

TS: Umhmm. Sure.

AL: We asked them, on the part of the National Guard, 65:00that if they wanted to have the Derby to do two things. One was . . . no, three things. Number one, I asked them if they wouldn't build another tunnel passageway under the track. They only had one. We always had trouble with that one because people going and coming both ways would get in there and jammed up and some of them had claustrophobia and we had trouble that way. I said if you'll build another passageway under the Downs on the ground itself . . . track, so one aisle will be the entrance into and the other would be exit so we wouldn't have people crowded up in the middle again. Number two, I asked them to build a chain link fence six feet high completely 66:00around the track, ten feet away from the rail around the whole infield. And, of course, both of these things were expensive but they did it. As long as it was important enough they did it. And the third thing we asked them to do that they were somewhat reluctant on, was that they would not permit selling of any type of alcoholic beverages in the infield. We weren't worried about the main part of the track because . . . well, where the seating places are, the club house, the grandstand, all that [because] you have . . . we had enough guards and policemen to control that. But if there was going to be any trouble we thought it was going to be coming from the infield.

TS: Where trouble usually comes from at Derby time.

AL: That's right. And Churchill Downs said, "Oh, we can't do that! We've always sold liquor out there." But I said, "Well, 67:00that's where it's going to come if you're going to have something." And I said, "I don't think it'll be from the liquor you sell out there because you don't put enough in your drinks to get the people stirred up. But if you let somebody take in a whole lot of whiskey and stuff out there, and they'll get to passing it around and stir up the crowd, and that's where the trouble will be." And so they agreed to do that. They said they couldn't do it. I said, "If the Guard's on duty, they'll stop the people and take it away from them." We did that. Later on the commanding officer . . . commanding general at Fort Knox told me, "Your men took a bottle of bourbon and a bottle of scotch away from me when I was at the track." I said, "Why didn't you tell them"--he was in civilian clothes--I said, "Why didn't you tell them who you were?" He said, "I was ashamed to." 68:00TS: [Laughs] That's cute.

AL: But they confiscated, literally, barrels--they weren't in barrels--but they were in cases, scotch and whiskey. So somebody was going to get a lot of people drunk over there. Not only that, but believe it or not, one group of people had two crates of live chickens that they wanted . . . they said they were taking them into the infield in order to barbecue them.

TS: Two crates?

AL: Two crates of live chickens. We confiscated those. So that crazy thing that fellow said wasn't so crazy after all. But you can imagine what would happen.

TS: That's amazing, just amazing. Did you interrogate the person with the chickens?

AL: Not to any great length. They would've sworn that they were going to barbecue them. You know they cook [and] do everything else out there on the infield on Derby day. 69:00So I guess they might have. I don't know what they intended to do with them. But, anyway, they didn't get in with them. We didn't have any wrecks out on the Watterson Expressway and I . . . we didn't have any great number of people arrested, no more than usual. By orders to the Guard, we had . . . we had one man with a long rod billie for each yard around that whole infield track. I mean where they built the fence, behind the fence, behind . . . from the standpoint of they're on the outside of the fence and the infield people was on the inside, you know what I mean?

TS: Yeah.

AL: Their orders were to, at the time the Derby started, right 70:00when the "They're off!" signal came, they were all to about face in a military manner and face the infield and not look at the track at all. Because if anybody was going to break down the fence, they were supposed to bop them in the head if they tried to get over. And I . . . that's one of the few Derbys I didn't get to see because I was up there on the pavilion as . . . you know, where they bring the horse after the Derby and so on. I was up on the roof of that and I watched through my field glasses where . . . I turned them and watched the men guarding the fence and all around the complete track. And they did just what they were told to. They were looking to the infield. Didn't have to bop anybody. A few kind of ran up to the track kind of like they 71:00would go over it. All they had to do was raise that thing up and they knew not to do that. At the end of the race I happened to glance at one guardsman. He didn't really move out of place but he kind of glanced around to see who had won the Derby. He was the only one who moved his head. I was very proud of them. And I was very proud of the fact that I talked with Governor Breathitt about having white gloves in their hands because nobody looks dangerous in white gloves. All the guardsmen that day were in battle clothes, helmets, and with these long billies. With the exception of the ones we had hidden over in that building and also with the army--and they'd have been there in five minutes if we'd have needed them. So nothing happened.

TS: Did you ever have an opportunity to talk with any 72:00of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference people afterwards about this, or the local NAACP?

AL: No, no, I . . .

TS: Did the governor or anybody else ever get information afterwards, in retrospect, to discuss what had happened, or what had not happened?

AL: Well, no. No, I know . . . I felt like the Guard had done its job and there wasn't any point in keeping something like that stirred up.

TS: I didn't mean to suggest, in a historical sense whether . . .

AL: Well, I'll tell you this. Now, the head of state police at that time was my nephew by marriage, Ted Bessell. He and I worked very closely together.

TS: I met him.

AL: We worked very closely together and, for an example, a lot of people said 73:00you surely have got to go down to the Derby the night before. They frequently have parties in Lexington the night before the Derby, and Ted and I both were invited to one of the big parties and we went. Of course, people didn't expect us to be there. They said, "Aren't you worried about it?" I said, "No, I'm not worried about it. There's not going to be any trouble." So . . . but we did have some plainclothes policemen, policemen in plain clothes [in an] unmarked car following the fellow who said he was going to stop the Derby. From the time he arrived in Louisville until he left we knew where he was, what he did, so on. That morning . . . early in the morning--incidentally I . . . there was one other thing I didn't say awhile ago that we planned on. Ford's Armory, which is the armory for the National Guard, is right there near the Derby grounds 74:00and right along the Watterson Expressway. Ordinarily we had a good many vehicles, a few tanks and personnel carriers, parked out there on the ground. I got all these extra tanks brought in, tanks and tank wreckers, and things like that and parked them over there. We had all the people taking training that day in battle dress, rifles, bayonets, helmets, that sort of thing marching out there. This man who said he was going to stop the Derby drove by very slowly on the Watterson Expressway and looked over at that armory several . . . well, a whole car full of them looked over there and saw them outside drilling about seven o'clock, and he saw us out there drilling. We had brought tanks in here that weren't supposed to be in here from other units. There were six. We 75:00had . . . it looked like a whole division. It didn't look like just what we normally have. And a whole division has fifteen thousand men; thirteen or fifteen [thousand], it depends. And we didn't have that many in the whole National Guard, but it looked like it. Now, he came back again about 8:30, looked again, and they were still over there marching and going around and moving tanks and so on. Half an hour later he called off the demonstration. [He] said he didn't want to have the people of Kentucky upset over anything they'd done and so on.

TS: Okay. I see the correlation now. That's interesting. That . . . that's a fascinating story.

AL: We also sent word that there had not been 76:00a man killed at the Derby by the National Guard since back in 1940 [or] some odd [year]. We didn't expect to have to do that. There was one killed by the National Guard. We had one, I guess, doped and liquored up in the late 40s and he just ran amuck. They hit him and kept beating him and he died of his injuries. But we said we hadn't had any like that and we hoped or didn't expect to have any. But if there was anything done or started to stop the Derby, why, we were ready. That was sent in a manner that they clearly understood.

TS: That's fascinating. I think most of us do not normally think of the National Guard at Derby time. You know, you think of the National Guard as being involved 77:00in things of the various police forces. That's a fascinating story.

AL: Well, they're really there to assist the police because Louisville doesn't have enough police. They had more out there that Saturday. And normally the state provides something like four or five hundred. But that day we had twelve hundred on the ground. It may have looked . . . to people who knew, it may have looked like a few more maybe, not much. And I was very proud of them, though. There had been all this talk. Despite that fact we had a big crowd there that day. But when those fellows all marched out with those long billies over their shoulders and around that track and took their places, the whole crowd stood up and cheered.

TS: Who was the leader of the black group there, at this point, locally? I mean, 78:00I know it was Martin Luther King who had . . .

AL: Well, Martin Luther King was the one we had followed.

TS: So it was Martin Luther King who had actually made the appearances. I see. Okay. It was not really a local leadership carrying out King's orders.

AL: He was . . . he was the key to it.

TS: King himself was actually the . . .

AL: He was the key to it. If he'd said go on with what they planned—[and] I don't know what they planned--but if he'd said go on with it, they'd have gone on with it. If he'd called it off, they'd have called it off.

TS: So then the fellow you saw in the car twice that day was King and apparently some of his . . .

AL: Some of his cohorts.

TS: Interesting. Fascinating story. I prefaced this by asking you earlier about your achievements and, you know, we talked extensively about this one particular achievement [or] accomplishment. Can you . . . are there some others that you like to look back upon fondly?

AL: No. Other things that took place 79:00during that eight years were oil burns, floods, things like that. The Guards do duty on that every time.

TS: Anything particularly historically significant--you're a political scientist--as you think back over that period that deserves some attention? Perhaps not today, I know you have an appointment, but when we talk again.

AL: I don't think of anything right now.

TS: What time is your appointment?

AL: Well, I’ve got to . . . I need to change clothes right quickly.

TS: Okay. Well, maybe we'd better stop here then. May we continue this on another occasion?

AL: If you wish.

TS: We'd like to very much and I want to thank you once again for your participation. [End of Interview on 6/25/86]