Oral History Interview with Warren Hale

WILLIAM BERGE: The following is an unrehearsed taped interview with Mr. Warren Hale of Corbin, Kentucky. The interview is conducted by William Berge for the Kentucky Oral History Commission at Cumberland Falls State Park. The interview is conducted here at Cumberland Falls State Park, on September 29, 2000 at One PM. Mr. Hale, let’s start by you telling me, your full name, and when you were born, and where?

WARREN HALE: My name is Warren Hale and I was born in Laurel County, Keavy, Kentucky, May 15,1921.

BERGE: 1921. Where did you go to school?

HALE: In Keavy, Kentucky

BERGE: In Keavy. What was your father’s name?

HALE: Bill—William A. Hale, Most people called him Bill.

BERGE: Huh-huh, and where was he born?

HALE: I’m not sure. I guess he was born in Knox County.

BERGE: Knox County.

HALE: I’ve heard him talking about ( ) land.

BERGE: Ok. What was your mother’s maiden name?

HALE: Her name was Karr. K-a-r-r .

BERGE: Was she from Laurel County?

HALE: Yes.

BERGE: One of those Laurel County Karrs. And when you went to school at Keavy, how long did you go to school there?

HALE: I went up to the—about a year and one-half of high school.

BERGE: Did they have a high school in Keavy?

HALE: Yes.

BERGE: Hum-hum. What year did you leave high school, do you remember?

HALE: Well, I went in the three C’s, more or less from school.

BERGE: What year was that? 1:00BERGE: 1935. Do you remember—well, why did you go in the three C’s then, can you recall?

HALE: Well, I just wanted somewhere to go, I guess.

BERGE: Yeah.

HALE: I was talking about that to some of the boys just now. All boys when they get fifteen or eighteen or nineteen, they want to leave home. Want to go somewhere.

BERGE: See something.

HALE: And ( ) in those days, I hadn’t thought about this aspect of it too much, but I been thinking about it lately, boys that day and time they had an alternative. Now you go to the army, you go to the navy, but we had the three C’s that we could go to, and that didn’t put you at risk as far as war was concerned; but you could go to the three C’s.

BERGE: (laughs) Did you go with many friends? 2:00BERGE: Who were some of the ones you went with? Do you remember?

HALE: Well, from my community, there was a Newman, he was the Postmaster’s son, Carl Newman; and a cousin of mine Ledford Karr, and Bert Mobley, a friend of theirs, and, probably twenty that went. Delbert Storms and Truman Profitt …

BERGE: Do you remember when you went where you enlisted. Where you signed up? Do you remember that?

HALE: I signed up at Emlyn.

BERGE: Where’s that?

HALE: Down below Williamsburg, about five miles out of Williamsburg.

BERGE: Why did you go there? Was that the closest place? 3:00BERGE: I see. And then when you went in, where did they take you, to Fort Knox?

HALE: Took us from Emlyn to Fort Knox. We stayed there three or four days, I guess …

BERGE: Get your uniforms?

HALE: Getting processed, and so on, and then they sent us out west.

BERGE: Where?

HALE: To Wyoming.

BERGE: Whereabouts in Wyoming did you go?

HALE: Morecross, Wyoming, Devils Tower was the name of the camp. Morecross was the railhead about fifty miles from Devils Tower. Most desolate place in the world.

BERGE: Not many people there, huh?

HALE: Nothing at Devils Tower except the town.

BERGE: Huh-huh. Is that Devils Sour? S-o-u-r? 4:00BERGE: Tower. Oh, Devils Tower. Ok. Ok. Now what did you do there?

HALE: Well, we worked on the roads, ( ) the banks off to make it look better, and to keep it from …

BERGE: Washing.

HALE: Washing down, I guess.

BERGE: Was the camp already there when you went there?

HALE: It was brand new. We was the first ones to occupy it.

BERGE: Did you have to build it, or was it pretty well built when you got there?

HALE: It was pretty well built. I went to one later in Oregon that I had to help build. But this one in Wyoming was pretty well built. It was amazing it had these big open barracks. With a great big stove, two stoves I guess in each barracks. 5:00HALE: Yeah, well it would get to be fifty-five below zero.

BERGE: Yeah?

HALE: I’m going to have a ( ) in those barracks. But I remember there ( ) …

BERGE: How long did you stay in Devils Tower?

HALE: Nine months.

BERGE: Nine months.

HALE: Your terms of service with the three C’s were normally six months; but if you had reason to go home, a special reason which I did, I came back to go to school. So I came back to the same school I left. And I’d get out in mid-term, so to speak.

BERGE: But you were in Devils Tower the whole nine months?

HALE: Yes.

BERGE: Ok. And most of the time you worked on roads. Anything else?

HALE: We worked in the woods some, clearing logs out of the, 6:00you know, trying to ( ) and trying to clean it up.

BERGE: Were most of you from Kentucky?

HALE: About all our work force was.

BERGE: It was. When you were out there …

HALE: Now later on we got men from other states maybe, but to begin with they were Kentuckians.

BERGE: When you were out there at Devils Tower, did you get into town much?

HALE: Not much. I probably was in town, in the whole nine months, maybe five times.

BERGE: What’s wrong with that?

HALE: Well, we went to Denett, Wyoming, most often I guess. Most often the theatre is all they had, so we went to ( ) sometimes to the show.

BERGE: Mostly Dennett. 7:00BERGE: When you were out there did you pretty well enjoy it?

HALE: I did. I didn’t know any better. (laughs) I thought it was pretty good.

BERGE: Yeah.

HALE: They fed you pretty good, and took care of you pretty good.

BERGE: What was the daily routine like?

HALE: Well, we’d eat breakfast of course, oh, about seven o’ clock in the morning, then after breakfast pretty soon they’d have a row of trucks, and then you would go out and get on the truck to the work site.

BERGE: Hum-hum. 8:00BERGE: At the work site.

HALE: Yes. You’d eat lunch, and about three-thirty you would come back into camp.

BERGE: Did you go to any of those educational things at night?

HALE: Ah, some. Now, at this one camp I didn’t do much but at another camp I was at later, I learned to type. 9:00HALE: And that got—the supervisor got to know that, and I had some high school education, so they made me the company clerk. And I made a little progress there, I’ll tell you about it.

BERGE: Did they pay you any more for doing that?

HALE: Yeah, the company clerk normally made forty-five dollars a month, whereas the men all made thirty. So he was considered on ( ) pay at forty-five dollars a month. Now I made thirty-six. They had me on a ( ).

BERGE: Huh-huh. Well, that was still six dollars better than some of the others I guess.

HALE: That’s right. Education wise—now they had an educational advisor in every camp, and I did this mostly on my own; but they had a bunch of us in the second camp I was in, in Oregon—they had a bunch of us enroll in high school courses, and frankly they didn’t do much, but we got credit for being in these courses, and I graduated from high school from Redmon Union High School, in Redmon, Oregon. 10:00HALE: Because I took those extra courses.

BERGE: Yeah. When did you go to Oregon?

HALE: That was nineteen and thirty-seven, I guess.

BERGE: Well, what did you do? Come back after nine months, came back here …

HALE: Came back and went to school some.

BERGE: And then reenlisted.

HALE: Reenlisted later on ( ), and a friend of mine was in that camp. A local friend of mine Matt Keene, and he told me, he says, “we are going to Oregon.” This whole camp ( ) was going to transfer to Oregon. And said, “they are going to take in some more men. So if you want to go you can probably go.” So I ( ) going to Oregon, so I signed up, and in two or three weeks time—I was in ( ) for about a week--and then we went to Oregon.

BERGE: Did a lot of guys do 11:00that? Drop out for six months or so and then go back in?

HALE: Yeah. Quite a few.

BERGE: You got to see a lot of the county that way didn’t you?

HALE: It was very good. Like I said, young boys get restless anyway, lot of them go in the service, army, navy, whatnot, and we had a chance to go in the three C’s, which thinking back on it was better cause we weren’t in the army; we didn’t have to go to war or anything.

BERGE: A lot of people learned trades too.

HALE: And learned something, right.

BERGE: Tell me something, when you went to Oregon, did you like it better there than Wyoming? 12:00BERGE: It was.

HALE: Wyoming was very desolate. It was dry, there was nothing out there except, Devils Tower. They called it a national monument, and it was quite a sight to see; but it is out there by itself. And you could see this thing for fifty mile around, or further.

BERGE: Huh-huh.

HALE: That’s clear country, but don’t have much contamination. And you could see this tower for a long ways, fifty mile or more.

BERGE: What was the place like in Oregon where you went?

HALE: It was at Redmon, Oregon and it was dry country too. But I remember on the way out to the camp that morning, my first exposure to something like this—we passed tents where the Indians lived and that was their home—they just weren’t there for show. 13:00HALE: I don’t know. I don’t know. But driving to that camp was only three or four miles, but on the way out we passed several Indian tents, where Indians lived.

BERGE: Huh-huh. Huh-huh. When you a—what was that camp like, you said it was a new 14:00 camp?

HALE: Well, it was different from other camps in most places in this respect. They had three companies, side by side.

BERGE: It was a big camp then.

HALE: Yes. Where as usually you would just have one company …

BERGE: About two hundred men and this one had six hundred.

HALE: This one had about three companies with about two hundred men in each. So that was kind of unusual as far as the three C’s are concerned to have three companies together.

BERGE: Was it built pretty well?

HALE: Pretty good. We had to finished it up.

BERGE: What did you do, what kind of things?

HALE: I worked on the carpenters crew for a while there building—adding porches on the barracks that were partially built already, and laying the floor down in the aisles that hadn’t been laid yet. So I helped build that camp.

BERGE: What was that camp there for, what kind of work did they have you all doing?

HALE: The main purpose was that it 15:00was the Shoots River Project, they called it. And they were building an irrigation ditch about fifty feet wide for water to eventually to come in the irrigation canal; and it was going to be a dam built by the camp ( ), and that was about eighty miles away from Redmon probably. But once the dam was built and we ( ) built it later, and back up water, and they had a big reservoir to furnish these canal with water, then the canal was eighty mile or so, a hundred maybe to dry areas where they irrigated crops with it.

BERGE: You must have been pretty near California then, is that right?

HALE: Well, I—we were kind of central Oregon. Might have been ( ) to California, but not much.

BERGE: Oh, central Oregon. Ok. Well, did you ever go back to that country later?

HALE: Yeah. Matter of fact I was in the army and wound up back in Oregon again.

BERGE: Oh.

HALE: So I was in Camp Adair and Camp Wyatt, Oregon and found years later that I was on maneuvers kind of in the same area of Oregon where I was first with the … 16:00HALE: It was. I didn’t have any experience with it, but it was.

BERGE: But did it change the country side any?

HALE: I never knew. I wasn’t there.

BERGE: Ok. Well, how long did you stay out there in Oregon in the three C’s?

HALE: About a year.

BERGE: About a year. And were most of those people from Kentucky too, that were out there? Well, no, only a third of them because the other camp—the other companies were from other places.

HALE: We had a Kentucky company, and Indiana company, and a Ohio company.

BERGE: Well, they were all from the same part of the country though. You were all from this same general area, though, Ohio and Indiana.

HALE: Right.

BERGE: Did you all have any trouble between 17:00the three groups?

HALE: Huh, no. No, not much, none to speak of.

BERGE: What about the recreation? What did you do for recreation?

HALE: Well, I was going to tell you, we played basketball, they had a team, each of those companies had a team and we had a team. Well, we had some competitive sports like that and we—it there were friendly relations …

BERGE: Did they have any boxing? A lot of the CCC’s had boxing.

HALE: Yeah. Usually every camp had boxers, they had—that was one of the things they provided was boxing gloves and the boys could pick out the gloves, and spar around, and some had some ( ). If there were too many on a side, it was kind of customary …

BERGE: To put the gloves on.

HALE: Kind of a customary thing. You guys after work you guys you will put the gloves on and fight it out.

BERGE: That was a good way to handle it actually, probably. When you were out there in Oregon, did you get into town very often?

HALE: This Redmon, we were on the edge of Redmon, 18:00we could walk across a couple of miles to town and go to the movies, that’s about all there was.

BERGE: Was it a little bigger town?

HALE: It was fairly small, probably five thousand or so.

BERGE: Huh-huh. Did you ever get to know any of the people there?

HALE: Some. We got acquainted with some of the young girls.

BERGE: Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.

HALE: Ah, and, ah, had some relationship with them.

BERGE: I guess the boys in that town didn’t like you as well as the girls did, did they?

HALE: I didn’t ever really get acquainted with any boys at all.

BERGE: Hum-hum.

HALE: Now they would have—it was unusual both in Wyoming and Oregon both—you would think there weren’t any people around. They would have a dance though …

BERGE: And they came from everywhere.

HALE: And they came from everywhere. They would show up. And Wyoming, where you didn’t see anybody, but they’d 19:00have a dance at one of these dance halls out there in the country somewhere and there’d be people everywhere.

BERGE: They came from everywhere.

HALE: They’d come from fifty mile away for the dance. And we did too. We might go fifty mile away for one.

BERGE: That was amazing in a way wasn’t it.

HALE: Sure was.

BERGE: Yeah. Tell me this, you, you spent another year out there I guess and then you came home.

HALE: Yes.

BERGE: What did you do after you got back home? 20:00BERGE: Oh.

HALE: Then rule wise, I forget, I think it was a year or two after you spent it out west, that you could transfer back. So I signed up on that and transferred back home and came back to Bell Farm, Kentucky.

BERGE: Oh, down in McCreary county.

HALE: Over in McCreary county.

BERGE: What did you do at Bell Farm?

HALE: Ah, I was doing clerical work, at the time and I worked in the first aid dispensary. We had a doctor there named Dr. Clinton, and I got a ( ) with him and I worked as his assistant … 21:00HALE: Williamsburg.

BERGE: Huh-huh.

HALE: I knew him after I got out of the three C’s he was a ( ). Williamsburg, not a real ( ) practice but he was a …

BERGE: So ah, how long did you stay at Bell Farm?

HALE: I was only there a few months. Then I transferred to Bald Rock.

BERGE: Oh, in Laurel County.

HALE: In Laurel County. And I was their 22:00company clerk in Bald Rock, since I had, had some experience, they were looking for one. And I transferred in to their company because their company clerk ( ).

BERGE: Hum-hum. Well, I guess you got home pretty often when you were in …

HALE: I could go home every week end at least. If I wanted to I could go other times. I was only about ten miles away from home.

BERGE: When you were at Bald Rock, how long did you stay there?

HALE: Oh, it was about a year or more, I don’t remember the exact time.

BERGE: What did the most—what did that group—that company at Bald Rock doing? What were they there for?

HALE: They were building a bridge for one thing, across the Rockcastle River; they had a side camp over in Dixie—I am not sure what they did, but they were over to the side camp, a group of men. And they stayed over there, and they would come back to the main camp at Bald Rock, they’d ( ).

BERGE: Like you did.

HALE: Yeah. Did the same kind of work. And rock quarry …

BERGE: Where was the rock quarry?

HALE: On the Rockcastle river—along beside the river.

BERGE: Huh-huh. Who was the commander at Bald Rock when you were 23:00 there?

HALE; We had a Captain Uhlhorn—U-h-l-h-o-r-n.

BERGE: Where was he from?

HALE: He was from ( ), and then later we had a Captain Reno, Uhlhorn was coming on—of course nobody knew what was coming, but they were activating some people, and he was a—I guess—a reserve naval officer. So he went back on active service, and then they would have a Captain Reno that came there.

BERGE: Hum-hum. What year was it when you were at Bald Rock do you remember?

HALE: About 1940.

BERGE: Then how long did you stay in the CCC?

HALE: Till 1941, ( ). I can remember that because, when I went there was loose horse in the community, just kind of a community horse. He just come loose around the camp …

BERGE: Wherever he went …

HALE: And that year, Whirlaway had won the Kentucky Derby. So they called this horse Whirlaway. (laughter).

BERGE: Ok.

HALE: So it was 1941, when I went over there, I remember the date because of the horse …

BERGE: When did you get out of the three C’s?

HALE: I got out, probably the latter part of forty-one, I guess.

BERGE: Before Pearl Harbor.

HALE: I got married 24:00in forty-two, in February so I got out somewhere between there.

BERGE: When did you go in the service?

HALE: September forty-two.

BERGE: What did you do in the meantime, from the time you got out of the three C’s until you got in the service?

HALE: Mainly I worked at the Marine Corps Air Station. They had a lot of defense work jobs, and those types of things, so I went to Marine Corps Air Station at Quantico, Virginia.

BERGE: Oh, Quantico. How did you find out about that job?

HALE: My brother was out there working and he had left there. He had some connections that he had followed up to go out there. Some family connections. His family worked at Quantico. So he went there and worked and then because he went we went.

BERGE: Where was your wife from? 25:00BERGE: So she was a local girl, then. Did she go to Quantico with you? In February?

HALE: Yes.

BERGE: And why did you go in the service were you drafted or …

HALE: Drafted.

BERGE: Huh-huh. That’s funny that you would have been—you wouldn’t have been drafted, you know. Working for the Marine Corps.

HALE: Well there was a possibility of getting an exemption because of that, but it didn’t work in my case.

BERGE: Ok. Where did you go when you went in the service then? What month did you go in?

HALE: September.

BERGE: September. And where did you go?

HALE: Camp Walters, Texas.

BERGE: Where was that?

HALE: It was kind of eastern—east Texas.

BERGE: Did you go to basic training there?

HALE: Near Dallas and Fort Worth. 26:00HALE: Yes.

BERGE: Ok. How long did you stay there?

HALE: I was there about three or four months and then I applied for Officers Candidate School; and went to Fort Benning, Georgia, and went through Officers Training there. I was a Second Lieutenant and when I got out I went back to Oregon.

BERGE: Did your wife go up to Oregon with you?

HALE: Yeah. She followed me around quite a bit, to Oregon and Texas and wherever I was, she managed to be there some.

BERGE: Huh-huh. How long were you in Oregon when you were in the army?

HALE: It was a year or two, I believe that we were probably in Oregon about a year.

BERGE: What kind of work did you do in the army in Oregon; what were your duties?

HALE: I was a ( ) major, in a rifle platoon.

BERGE: Rifle platoon? And how long—and you stayed there over a year you said, then where did you go?

HALE: To North Africa. 27:00HALE: In April of forty-four.

BERGE: Oh. Well the fighting was pretty well over there.

HALE: In North Africa it was. What we were doing we were preparing to go into Italy.

BERGE: Italy.

HALE: They were hung up there at Anzio Beach …

BERGE: Yeah, I remember.

HALE: And we were going to go in and try to relieve the situation at Anzio, but before we got in they broke out …

BERGE: Yeah.

HALE: Of Anzio, so we went in above Rome. 28:00HALE: Yeah. I got wounded pretty soon.

BERGE: Where?

HALE: Above Rome.

BERGE: Yeah. Were you on the beach? 29:00BERGE: How long were you there before you got wounded?

HALE: Oh, just a few days.

BERGE: Huh-huh. Were you wounded badly?

HALE: Well, I had a shrapnel wound in my shoulders and my knees.

BERGE: What did they do with you when you got hurt—when you got wounded?

HALE: They had a hospital set up, big tent, and so they operated and took the shrapnel out and sent me back to Rome.

BERGE: In the tent hospital?

HALE: Yeah.

BERGE: And did you go to the hospital in Rome? 30:00BERGE: How long were you in the hospital there?

HALE: About a month. At Rome about a month and then, on down back at Naples, another month or two, and then they shipped me back home.

BERGE: When you were in Rome and Naples did you get out of the hospital much? Did you get out on the street?

HALE: I wasn’t able much. I was—my leg was still—couldn’t 31:00get around much.

BERGE: Even in Naples?

HALE: Yeah.

BERGE: When you left Naples—when they took you from Rome to Naples, how did they take you?

HALE: By train. Kind of a funny situation. They had these springs ( ), you had a bunk to lay on and they put springs to try to make it a better ride. But actually it …

BERGE: It bounced you.

HALE: It done a lot of bouncing.

BERGE: I need to turn this over, just a minute.

END SIDE ONE TAPE ONE HALE.

BEGIN SIDE TWO TAPE ONE HALE BERGE: You were telling me about your trip from Rome down to Naples.

How long did it take you? Do you remember?

HALE: Oh, we—just a day—probably one day.

BERGE: Ok. And after you stayed that month in Naples and they brought you home; did you come home in a hospital 32:00 ship?

HALE: Yes. We came home on a hospital ship. Kind of interesting when I got back to Naples, I said, how often are they leaving here? I wanted to get an idea how long I was going to be getting away. Going home this time. I didn’t know at first that I was going home I thought they would send me back.

BERGE: Huh-hum HALE: They said, well, we had a man leave last week. ( ) wasn’t very fast. So I thought, well, we’ll be here forever, if they are on that kind of schedule. But, they finally took us all at the same time. By that time I was able to walk some, on my leg.

BERGE: You had crutches?

HALE: Ah, no, I didn’t have crutches. I don’t think I did.

BERGE: You don’t remember that.

HALE: I don’t remember. But I could walk around but slowly.

BERGE: How was the boat trip?

HALE: Pretty good. I would walk around the deck every day, two or three times, trying to get so that by the time I would get home maybe, I wouldn’t be limping.

BERGE: Hum-hum. Where did you land when you got back to the states? 33:00BERGE: Did your wife know you were coming into Charleston?

HALE: Well, I guess she didn’t know, where, but she knew I was on the way. Kind of interesting, when they said—when they started to ship us back on this hospital ship, they said, “well, are you going as an ambulatory patient? Can you walk or are you a stretcher patient?” I said, “well, it depends on how far and how fast I can walk. I can walk some.” They said, “well, we had better put you on as a stretcher patient.” So everywhere I went they were carrying me, even though I was able to walk.

BERGE: Hum-hum.

HALE: When I got on the ship, they said, “now.” They set me down and they were looking around—I could tell they were trying to figure out something, I said, “what is the trouble?” They said, “we are trying to figure out how to get you over to that bunk, over there on the side of the ship.” I said, “well, that’s no problem, I can get over there myself.” So I got up and I walked over and climbed up on the bunk, no problem. but even after I got on the ship then I was getting better all the time. But they had to carry me off the ship even though, by that time I could walk pretty good.

BERGE: What happened after you got to Charleston?

HALE: We just stayed there two or three days. I was transferred from there to Thayer General Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee.

BERGE: So that is when you got to see your family then.

HALE: Right. I called home, and my wife came down to see me.

BERGE: How long were you 34:00 there?

HALE: Oh, three or four months.

BERGE: Then did they discharge you or …?

HALE: I was retired on disability retirement.

BERGE: From Thayer.

HALE: Yeah. from Thayer.

BERGE: Then what did you do? After you got out of the service? Did you work, or did you just stay home and listen to the radio?

HALE: No, I didn’t—I was active, I did some work. Finally wound up going back to school.

BERGE: Where did you go?

HALE: UK. But first I went to Sue Bennett College. A Junior College, I guess it was called at London. I got finished my year, I had two years there and I finished very quickly. I took extra courses and got on to the University of Kentucky, within a year and one-half. 35:00HALE: I went up to take law, but I backed out. They actually encouraged me to stay in Law School, but I didn’t want to go to school that long, I didn’t think. So I went—I got in the College of Commerce and got a degree.

BERGE: Business School.

HALE: Yeah.

BERGE: Then what did you do for a living, Mr. Hale? 36:00BERGE: Hum-hum. Where? In London or …?

HALE: Wait, I’m getting mixed up a little bit. I went in the moving business before I went to school.

BERGE: Oh. Ok.

HALE: And then I went to school, and come out and was hospital administrator for a while.

BERGE: Oh. Ok. Where were you a hospital administrator?

HALE: At Corbin.

BERGE: Ok. Do you think that your experiences in the CCC helped to determine what you did with your life?

HALE: Yeah, it did. It … BERGE: You were interested in education as a result of that, weren’t you?

HALE: Yes. Right. I had—like I said graduated from high school in thirty-seven. Mostly, as a result of experience, not education, but that was part of it.

BERGE: But they gave you credit for it though.

HALE: Yeah.

BERGE: I guess you ( ) at UK.

HALE: Yes, it was a motivating factor.

BERGE: I am convinced that one of the best programs that the United States government ever had was the three C’s and the GI Bill.

HALE: Very good, and I was part of both of them.

BERGE: Yeah, I am convinced of that. Did you do any other kind of work besides being a hospital administrator?

HALE: After I was a hospital administrator I was in the automobile business, sales business for a while.

BERGE: Huh-huh.

HALE: Then I went into insurance.

BERGE: Huh-huh.

HALE: And I was in insurance for quite a bit.

BERGE: but you’ve always—after you got out of the service you and your wife always stayed around the Corbin area, London area?

HALE: Yes, right.

BERGE: Well, sure want to thank you for coming in here and letting us have this interview, it really helps. I am convinced that for a great number of people the experience in the three C’s was really important.

HALE: It was important to us, and we realize that it was important to the military. You had these men, about three million of us I think …

BERGE: Were half trained …

HALE: That were sort of—we were used to being regimented and out on our own, and so on, so it didn’t present as near a problem.

BERGE: No. For instance, when you were in basic training, do you think that it helped you there that you had been in the three C’s?

HALE: Yes. Very definitely.

BERGE: They--they could spot you right away couldn’t they?

HALE: I had a—I took clerks training—I don’t remember what they called it, in the army, and some of the terminology that we had used being a clerk in the three C’s carried through in the army.

BERGE: Oh, that was good.

HALE: So they had to know that I had some experience right away.

BERGE: Sure. Sure. I tell you it has been a big help for us and we are sure thankful that you did this. Do you want a copy of this tape?

HALE: Ah, yes.

END SIDE TWO TAPE ONE HALE END OF INTERVIEW.