Oral History Interview with Sam Burns

[START OF TAPE 2002OH12.1a, SIDE 1] Kelly: It’s August the tenth nineteen hundred and...ninety-one. I’m in Frankfort, Kentucky. I am Colonel Arthur L. Kelly. With me, in my home in Frankfort is Sammy Burns, now known as Sam Burns who was a member of the National Guard, Kentucky National Guard, Battery C 106…Coast Artillery Air Defense. He was called to active duty in January of nineteen…forty and…forty-one, and…went to Camp Hulan, Texas, with a men from Springfield, Kentucky, Battery C, and…trained there, went overseas…in battery C, participated in, 1:00on D-Day, in five invasions starting with North Africa, Sicily, Salerno, Anzio, and Southern France. Sam...Burns participated in four of those...D-Day invasions, up to and including Anzio and then he went home on points. One of the...unusual things that have happened in Sammy’s tour was...the time that he was attacked by...German bombers and shot down two of them and one left on fire and he was awarded the distinguished service cross, second highest award for valor [Clears throat]. He was with the unit in...what they call Stuka Valley, they call it Stuka Valley because of the number of bombings that they were 2:00subjected to, some thirty-two in eight days, and...left a lasting memory in all of them and on all of the men’s minds of, of Battery C, one-o-six artillery, anti-aircraft artillery [Clears throat]. Another...unusual event in Africa, a bomb dropped in his dugout when he and (Lawston?) were commanding a, a...fifty-caliber machine gun but it apparently had a delay fuse and went very deep before it went off, but it did blow both of them out of their pit and covered him with...a red clay and his friend (Lawston?) thought he was, thought that Sam, Sammy was dead, stunned him, and when he came to, of course, he thought he was severely wounded. So we will get into all of these 3:00things that occurred. Sammy, tell me a little bit about the background, before we get into your military.

Burns: Well, I was born in Washington County, Kentucky, out in a, on a little road called Logan. That’s...between the road from Springfield to Perryville and Gravel Switch, and I went to a little school called Pottsville and then when I got of high school age, I went down to, to East Texas High School, I went just one year there and the principal was Earl (Foley?). I think he got killed in France in World War II. And then I had joined the Kentucky National Guard, the troop out of 123rd Cavalry when I was sixteen, I got my mother to sign a permission slip, and I took training there at the armory by...( ) Smith’s 4:00Brother. I forget--Tom Smith--and we were called out to Harlan County, the coal strike, we went up there and stood guard when they had...an open shop things there for the…coal miners.

Kelly: Do you know what year that was?

Burns: That was...nineteen--I believe it was about 1939 and….

Kelly: Summer, or….

Burns: That, that was I, I don’t remember what time of the year it was but I think it was getting toward the fall of the year. After that, the next year we went to...Wisconsin with the, for the cavalry. I think there was some seventy-five thousand horses someone said they had up there with all the National Guards from around the world, and we were on training there for twenty-one days and out of the twenty-one days I think it rained nineteen of it, and then...in 1941, we 5:00were federalized then and taken to Camp Hulan, Texas. We were there for eleven months; we just lacked a month of having our year in, when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December Seven.

Kelly: Why was that year in important?

Burns: Well they wanted to get a, a year of training for us, you know, and then goes on to, just go back to our civilian life. But we were frozen, our enlistment was frozen, we were sent then to...Ireland. We loaded up, was, we embarked from Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania, loaded on boats in New York and we went to Northern Ireland where we were--set up anti-aircraft positions several places in Northern Ireland. We were trained quite a bit by the evacuees of Dunkirk, in Northern Ireland; and then we were there for some time then they transferred us then over to Leeds Staffordshire in England, where we made preparations for the invasion. We were sort of confused as to where we might be going. They put antifreeze in the trucks and they issued us mosquito netting which was somewhat different than most mosquito netting and one of our man by the name of Harry 6:00(Atkinson?) from...from Brooklyn, Massachusetts, he sort of figured out that we was going to go to Africa on the account, and he was called in on the carpet because he...had told everybody we was going to Africa and they was trying to make the Germans think we were going to Norway because they put antifreeze in the trucks. So we did find our way then in the Atlantic headed South and through the Straights of Gibraltar toward...North Africa. We...I never forget Great Britain, all the queues you’d line up to get everything, you know, potato chips and everything was, you had to line up for fish and chips and so forth, you know, we met a lot of nice people in Great Britain. But we...landed in North Africa on November the eighth, 1942.

Kelly: Can you just kind of recall for me some of the things that occurred during the invasion for you in Battery C? 7:00Burns: Yes in, in North Africa, we...were loaded on to some more landing craft, we had to climb over the side of the ship and go down big rope netting to get into the ship and we...we had the antiaircraft gun, the forty millimeter Bofors which I think is a Swedish made gun. We had with that generators, that gave power to the...an instrument called a predictor that we attached to the gun. We had to drag those things ashore and...set up 8:00on the beach head there at…Oran, or close to Oran, and we were pretty well strafed and bombed there by German planes. All the planes that flew in a certain direction we were ordered to fire at, because the American or Allied planes were told which route to take when they came over the beach heads, you know, so these, these German p...pilots were flying some repaired, captured, spitfires, and I remember we shot down two spitfire planes on the beaches of North Africa when we first landed there. The French...foreign legion, or some of the French troops were there and in order to make it look good...to the Germans, so they wouldn’t punish the people back in France they...led on, or tried to make it look like they were fighting us and they would fire and I, not really in our direction, they would give the wrong elevation, 9:00the wrong range, you know; I remember one time they were shooting our, sort of in our direction, they shot down some...high tension wires and the wires fell down and some not necessarily our boys but some other boys were, were electrocuted by the lines.

Kelly: Did you see that?

Burns: I...I didn’t see it but I saw the lines that had fallen and the sparks and the things that had fallen, see. We...set up...and guarded some of the airports in Northern I...northern Africa, after November the 8th.

Kelly: Let me, let me roll it back just a little bit. When you [Clears throat] were going toward the shore--when did you learn you were going to North Africa? After you got on the ships?

Burns: Well, just a few days out.

Kelly: All right. And when you learned that what, what went through your mind?

Burns: Well, of course, we didn’t know what to expect, Africa, you know, you always think of the dark and hot country, you know, we were sort of...wondering, you know, what it would be like, of course, and at first we will, we’re getting news of...Rommel in, in eastern Africa, northeastern Africa, Libya and so forth, you know, and we were, knowing of all his success we, we knew we was going to hit a pretty 10:00steep adversary, you know.

Kelly: Knowing that...can you describe how that made you feel?

Burns: Well I was, I was still quite young, I was less, around nineteen, or right at nineteen when we landed there, and of course...never, never been in combat before and, of course we had had some raids in Northern Ireland, the British long range plane did come over in Northern Ireland and we had witnessed some of that. It, it was, it, that’s kind of a feeling that’s very hard to describe, to be, you know, in a war zone….

Kelly: Help me just a little bit with that. When you got on the ship, can you, were you, bu...sensing then that you were going to be at risk?

Burns: Yes.

Kelly: And in sensing that how, how...how much did that prey on your mind? Was it there day and night, or….

Burns: Well, 11:00you, you know you...I, I think there is no such thing as a, as a battleline atheist, you know, I think everybody, when they realize that you were going to go into combat you did...have a prayer life, you know, asking the, you know, the lord to, to guide you through those. You, you, you anticipated getting hurt and perhaps even meeting death on those places you know, but as you went along though, you realized that your, your, your duty came above everything else and you...I think everybody was scared. I was afraid, but I learned to cope 12:00with my uneasiness and still perform.

Kelly: All right, before we get advanced and I get you into combat, I’m trying to get your feelings now as you move toward combat and you know you’re going to.

Burns: Yes, uh-huh.

Kelly: Huh, and, and...are, are you praying a little more intensely now than you had been before….

Burns: Yes.

Kelly: While you were in England?

Burns: Yes we were, I, I would say I did and….

Kelly: Can you tell me how, how you were directing your prayers, or what you were saying you….

Burns: Well, I was…sort of the, the baby of my family, my mother had raised me by herself as a single parent and I was always concerned about what she would think if I got hurt, you know, and one of the reasons I wanted to protect myself more or less was because of her, you know, and…the…it, it, as you, as you got closer and closer to the, to combat areas, you know, you, I think that you sort of began 13:00to get a little bit acclimated, yet, you know, you used every bit of precaution you could but you still never slacked on whatever you were supposed to do.

Kelly: Well, let’s start, you know, y…you get on the ship, you know you’re going and then you’ve been on it for about half way, say, and then you’re approaching the beach. Can you kind of give me a, a little insight and feel for your feelings at those three different points?

Burns: I think your pulse rate increased. I, I know that…I, I believe my heart beat faster….

Kelly: When, as you were loading on the ship?

Burns: As we, as, and then, and it began to, more so, accelerate as you got closer and closer to the, to the front, you know.

Kelly: All right. When you, when you were praying, can you recall some of those prayers for me? Do y…you remember what you were asking for?

Burns: Yes, asking for protection from harm and asking to, to spare for my life, that’s one 14:00of the favorite words, you know, to…to return home, and then of course you ask for protection of your friends and that you would be able to perform well.

Kelly: That being able to perform well important to you?

Burns: Yeah.

Kelly: Can you tell me why?

Burns: Well, I’ve always had a, a feeling of…sort of a, when the flag goes by I always got goose bumps, you know, and…I always, I’m, I’m a real…patriotic person, you know, I am an American, I’m grateful for the freedom that I enjoy here and live here, and…I, I wouldn’t want to disappoint my country, you know, and I wouldn’t want to let my friends down, see. So I figure that every person…regardless of his rank, or whatever you’re call to do had a…responsibility 15:00 and….

Kelly: Did you, in, in that fear, Sam, did you…were you concerned that you might…might--I don’t want to say coward, m…were you concerned that you might not be able to have courage in the face of death and, and look bad in front of your friends? Was that a concern of yours?

Burns: No, really, I never did, I never did, I never did anticipate of being….

Kelly: What were you concerned about in the performance of duty and praying for so that you would be praying that you would be doing all right?

Burns: Well, you know, a, here’s, when you’re training, you…you do things so many times that you can do it by rote more or less, more familiar you know, and, and so…as long as you are, are able, as long as you are alive, why you can do this, 16:00you can do most anything that you’ve been trained to just….

Kelly: Remotely.

Burns: That’s right.

Kelly: Yeah, just by reflex.

Burns: By reflex, yes.

Kelly: Okay. As you go on toward the…sh…toward the shore and you know you’re going in and, and, perhaps at the last minute there, when you’re getting ready to load on to that boat, can you tell me how you’re, what you’re feeling and what you’re saying and what’s, what’s going on with your friends? Can you describe that scene for me?

Burns: Well….

Kelly: About the time you’re getting ready to go over the side to load d . . . walk down that rope.

Burns: Well when we…well, we loaded, first of all we loaded our artillery over the side to the ships with the big tackle 17:00and load them into landing crafts and then we climbed down the side of the, the ship and with nets and so forth, you got in. And then we started ashore, we didn’t, we really didn’t know what to expect….

Kelly: All right.

Burns: …because we were taught to, you know, keep down and keep moving.

Kelly: All right. When you were walking down that rope, can you remember what you thought there?

Burns: Yeah I w…I was afraid of, I think I was afraid of getting strafe, or strafed to the British call it strafed, you know, know, getting shot, you know, in the….

Kelly: Back.

Burns: …back as you go down those nets, you know, the….

Kelly: Were the planes over your head strafing and bombing?

Burns: There were some, there were some planes that were overhead yes.

Kelly: Huh, so your, your, your fear level, was it kind of elevated at that time?

Burns: Yes.

Kelly: And your heart beating fast?

Burns: Yeah.

Kelly: And, and what do you saying to yourself? You’re saying this is it, or you’re saying….

Burns: No, no, I wouldn’t, I never did, I n…I never did anticipate, I never did…think that I was coming to the end except at one time when the bomb fell pretty close to us 18:00and went down and blew us out of this hole, and you know, we’ve had several close calls, but….

Kelly: Are you talking to your friends now as you g . . . load, loading on to that little, what kind of a boat were you loading on to?

Burns: I, I don’t know what it was, I guess it was a…an LCI or…some of us went over with….

Kelly: Was it a small one?

Burns: They were small, we landed, also we were in a little barges like that, that, that the Bofors guns were loaded in, that let down the front, you know, like a…LST vantage storage tank, and we had to pull those guns with our hands outside of the…and, and hook them on to the truck you know, that was on shore, yeah.

Kelly: This LCI, how big was it? Big enough to get two or three guns in there, one gun and two ( )?

Burns: Well no they, the LCI was just for the infantry more or less for personnel.

Kelly: What you had, what you got ( ).

Burns: Theirs was like a barge with a front in like a….

Kelly: Yeah.

Burns: ...landing and it was a….

Kelly: Well, what you landed on, was that the kind that opened the doors opened in front?

Burns: They let down in….

Kelly: Let down.

Burns: ...the front, uh-huh.

Kelly: But it was big enough to put a truck in?

Burns: Truck and a, and a, and a Bofors gun, yes.

Kelly: And a Bofors gun and a crew.

Burns: Yes.

Kelly: How many of you were in that crew?

Burns: There’re, I think that in our crew there is about twelve.

Kelly: Twelve.

Burns: Twelve, uh-huh.

Kelly: All right. And who were some of them in your crew?

Burns: Well, let’s see, Richard Kelly, Dick Kelly, 19:00and his brother Lewis, and…I don’t remember what Plug’s first name was, but we always called him Plug, Plug (Lawston?), and we had…(Art Carney?), and…we had…let’s see, who else did we have?

Kelly: Who, who was your chief section?

Burns: Charles (Carney?) was the sergeant in charge; I believe he was the sergeant in charge.

Kelly: Was he a pretty good sergeant?

Burns: Yeah, he was great.

Kelly: Okay, all right, now, as, as, as, as you’re, as you’re going ashore then, a dozen of you around your gun and your truck, were you all talking?

Burns: I don’t remember [Chuckling] I don’t remember what wha…I guess each person was…responsible for certain things and I guess other people knew what was supposed to be done, would probably, you know, kid us or say bring it on up or do whatever you had to do, you know.

Kelly: Are you seeing any kind of…action going on around you, or are you just…. 20:00Burns: Well when we first, we pulled our guns ashore….

Kelly: I mean as you’re going ashore. Are you seeing any enemy planes above you? Are you seeing any rounds going over you and then the rounds going over or any explosions, or is it just kind of quiet.

Burns: Well, it was sporadic.

Kelly: Sporadic? And, and….

Burns: Yeah, uh-huh, we w…we would have, we, it wasn’t too, it wasn’t too real active when we went ashore….

Kelly: All right.

Burns: …but we had, we got ashore….

Kelly: It was reasonably quiet going ashore.

Burns: Yes, uh-huh.

Kelly: And you weren’t getting anything hitting close to you.

Burns: No.

Kelly: And you weren’t seeing anything getting hit out, away from you?

Burns: No.

Kelly: All right. And you go to shore then and you let the, open the doors 21:00or let the, let the front end down.

Burns: Yes.

Kelly: And then what happens?

Burns: Well, we pulled the guns out and we set it up.

Kelly: Right on the shore.

Burns: Right out of, on the shore.

Kelly: All right.

Burns: And…then we were told that anything came in a certain direction, we wouldn’t fire at it.

Kelly: Did you shoot at anything while you were sitting there?

Burns: Yes we did, we…we shot down, I think, two or three planes….

Kelly: Back there on that beach?

Burns: On that beach, uh-huh.

Kelly: You’re pretty sure about that?

Burns: We shot down--there were two of them was…Bit--British spitfires.

Kelly: Is that right?

Burns: Yeah.

Kelly: All right, when you say we, you’re talking about the whole company or just your bat….

Burns: The whole….

Kelly: …your….

Burns: …comp, just the whole outfit there.

Kelly: So how many, how many guys you got there altogether then with the company?

Burns: See, I’m not, I’m not sure what we had. I think we had…we had four guns that, or eight gun, I’m not sure whether we had eight guns or four guns, I can’t remember whether, in, in Battery C, I believe we had four guns, four, four….

Kelly: Four bu…what do you call them, Bofors?

Burns: Platoon.

Kelly: Four Bofors? 22:00And, but, did you have any other kind of guns other than Bofors?

Burns: We had fifty-caliber machine guns.

Kelly: That were mounted on vehicles or anything?

Burns: We had those…usually they were mounted on the, the back of the…the truck that pulled the trailer. You had a, there is only at, so you could fire a hundred and eighty degrees, you see, and that was the kind of gun that I used when I, when I had up in Tunisia at Sidi Bou Zid.

Kelly: Okay, all right. How many times were you all under fire there, while you were on the beach there at Oran? Several? Or two or three, or….

Burns: Oh yes, we, we, it, it….

Kelly: ( ) Burns: …slacken, it slackened off, we weren’t there too long because there was a….

Kelly: ( ) the first day, the first day there, is that when you shot down the two there?

Burns: The two spitfires, yeah.

Kelly: Are you pretty sure about that? That two went down?

Burns: Yeah, that’s, that, I’m, I’m, I saw one myself fall, I’m, and then they said there two shot down.

Kelly: All right, do you know who shot it down by any chance?

Burns: Not--no, there’s too many people firing at.

Kelly: Everybody shooting at it.

Burns: Too many….

Kelly: And when you, when there is…four Bofors going off like that, how much noise we got, lots of noises?

Burns: Quite a bit.

Kelly: And…can you just kind give me a feel for that sounds?

Burns: Shebong, shebong, shebong.

Kelly: How, how, how, how, how wo….

Burns: It shoots, it, I think the, it has a thing that holds about five shells.

Kelly: Mm-mm, and they go through that pretty fast?

Burns: They go through it pretty fast, yes.

Kelly: Show me, give me five rounds out there, how they go.

Burns: Shebong, shebong, shebong, shebong, shebong.

Kelly: About like that?

Burns: Yeah, uh-huh.

Kelly: And then…is there a pretty loud noise?

Burns: Fairly, fairly lou…fairly loud, yes.

Kelly: Did you have to kind of hold your ears, or….

Burns: No we, we got so we opened our mouth, you know, it’s…that sort of keeps you from…getting too much ( )….

Kelly: Lot of…lot of smell of….

Burns: Gun smoke.

Kelly: Gun smoke?

Burns: Uh-huh.

Kelly: And, and….

Burns: Sometimes, you know, you fired the Bofors so much you had to change the barrel; we had a spare barrel with us.

Kelly: Mm-mm, all right. That forty em…forty 23:00millimeter, how big around is that?

Burns: Well, I guess it’s about almost two inches.

Kelly: Almost two inches.

Burns: About two inches.

Kelly: All right, all right. And…when those planes were attacking [Clears throat] were they attacking you, your gun position itself, or were they attacking something else on the beach?

Burns: Different, then, I guess in, just in general, probably, even the boats and everything.

Kelly: They weren’t shooting at you at that time.

Burns: I don’t think so, no.

Kelly: Do you recall whether or not you were…mostly concentrating on directing the guns and that sort of thing or, or were you--I’m trying to get your fear level now.

Burns: Yeah. No, I never, I never, I never sought cover in those, we always mounted down our guns, my, my job, of course, was to drive. I drove the truck, and….

Kelly: what were you doing on right now, while the, all this was going on?

Burns: I, I came…for the lack of an alternate, I assisted in everything.

Kelly: All right.

Burns: When you have to park a truck you know, you had the….

Kelly: So what were you doing on that, on, when that first attack there, do you know? 24:00Were you handling the ammunitions?

Burns: I was, I don’t remember exactly, but I, I’m quite sure that…I was opening boxes, or crates, or….

Kelly: Yeah, you were busy.

Burns: Yes.

Kelly: Now, now, are you--this is your first….

Burns: Experience in combat.

Kelly: …experience in combat, can you tell me…what your fear level was here now, are you doing all right, are you shaking a little?

Burns: No, I don’t, I don’t remember. I, of course you’re concerned….

Kelly: Yeah.

Burns: And…I, I, you sort of build it up as you go along. You get a little bit more acclimated to it; I think you are not….

Kelly: Are you all kidding any, or are you all serious?

Burns: We’re serious, very serious, yeah.

Kelly: Huh, a lot of shouting going on?

Burns: Not particularly, no. We, we, everybody knew their job pretty well.

Kelly: Mm-mm. Was somebody identified the can…planes and shouting out the plane from….

Burns: Yeah, they were, they were hollering that they were spitfire planes, you know, and of course we fired at them because they came out of a certain position and…they were firing at us too, you know, so…. 25:00Kelly: Okay, anything else on the invasion, we aught to get on this record here…that you recall?

Burns: Of course I was, it was kind of interesting you know, as we looked at signs, we couldn’t read them, they were in….

Kelly: French.

Burns: …foreign lang… in French, you know.

Kelly: Yeah.

Burns: And we had a fellow with us they could read those and we came to a sign, there was going around the curve, and he said, well we’re coming to a narrow bridge, and we got around there, it was a narrow bridge because he had been able to read the sign. That was Harry (Atkinson?) from…from Massachusetts.

Kelly: Is that right?

Burns: Uh-huh. He was an older fellow.

Kelly: One of the draftees that came into the unit?

Burns: He was attached to us in England.

Kelly: Mm-mm, mm-mm. Okay…from there you went on to an airfield and provided air defense for an airfield right there in that immediate area for a while. Let me ask you, I want to get you up to this…when you shot down those planes, when you all moved toward Tunisia, can you describe that move? 26:00Burns: Yes, we had quite a bit of rain, they moved us on to an air strip out, close to…let’s see, there’s a, there was this little town known as, called as Farriana have you had, heard that word 27:00 Farriana?

Kelly: Say it again, please.

Burns: Farriana I believe they called, and…I remember we had so much rain and…that the…planes were bogged down where they were in a little valley-like, you know, and I remember making a suggestion to the captain there, one of the officers in charge of the airport, I said, “you notice on the top of these hills, you know, that it’s dried off, the water run, now there was sort of a soap stone like plant. I said, “have you ever thought about pulling your planes up on these ridges and, and take off from up here?” So they did.

Kelly: Right.

Burns: They, they hooked the planes…trucks to the plane and pulled the planes out of the mud up on the ridges where it was dry and they taxied off and P38s and P40s and things, and took and they, and they used the ridge tops to get an early start on the Germans 28:00like that, see.

Kelly: How far was this from Oran? Just days out, or….

Burns: I, I don’t remember the distance, but….

Kelly: Close, was it close by, some distance though.

Burns: Some distance maybe, thirty-forty miles, uh-huh.

Kelly: What I’m trying to get at, did you--you know…when you landed and before you got to where Rommel was, you know, Rommel was still west of….

Burns: East of us, yeah, mm-mm.

Kelly: Yeah, he was east, uh-huh, at, and a long ways east.

Burns: Yes, uh-huh, a long way east, yes.

Kelly: How many miles? Probably several hundred, wasn’t it.

Burns: Yeah. I imagine it was at least five, six hundred miles.

Kelly: And what I want to get at, did you all have one time when you moved day and night for several days befo…before you came to Tunisia where the battle’s line was still being drawn.

Burns: Well we, we…crossed, we went over the Atlas Mountains…a little town known Constantine and we, we set up there and then….

Kelly: How, how bu…how many days was that from…Oran? Two days?

Burns: Probably no more than two days.

Kelly: All right and you sat up there for how long? 29:00Burns: I really don’t remember.

Kelly: We’re talking about days, of just….

Burns: Less than a week, probably.

Kelly: Less than a week, all right. And then from there you moved.

Burns: We, we, we went ov…we went over the Atlas Mountains, went over them pretty much, then we came back, back from them and set up.

Kelly: Again.

Burns: Again. And then….

Kelly: What were you guarding? What were you defending?

Burns: Well, I guess mostly troops.

Kelly: Reserves, or….

Burns: Or infantry troops, I mean….

Kelly: …or, or people, or units moving along the road?

Burns: Just anything. I think lots of time we…they just set us up mostly…to protect airstrips, and…even tanks and everything, they had us dispersed, dispersed several different places.

Kelly: All right, when you came back over the mountain, again, what were you guarding, do you remember, or you’d protecting? Airfield?

Burns: We came down to a little town called Farriana, Farriana, a little town, little airport called Talep. 30:00Kelly: Air, airport.

Burns: Airport, uh-huh.

Kelly: So you’re, most, most around airports then.

Burns: Most around airports.

Kelly: Okay. And when the companies around those airports, are you, are you all in walking distance of those four guns that you have there, or you….

Burns: Well, some of them will be on one side of the airport while the others will be…you know, in other words you may be on…three sides of an airport, you know.

Kelly: What I’m trying to get at, are, are you all scattered so you don’t see each other much?

Burns: Yes, you don’t see each other much, no.

Kelly: And you’re generally just dealing with your own section?

Burns: We had telephones set up, you know….

Kelly: Yeah. Are, are, are you operating in pairs so that there is two s… platoons kind of together as a rule, or are you just alone, one platoon?

Burns: We are mostly alone, we have, we had the 50-caliber and the 40-millimeter.

Kelly: And those two worked together.

Burns: They both work together.

Kelly: And is this a platoon or a section?

Burns: This is….

Kelly: You call it a platoon?

Burns: This will be a section, yeah.

Kelly: Section. And you had four sections in the battery?

Burns: I’m, I’m not remembering whether we had eight or four. It seems like to me, 31:00four stands out more in my mind.

Kelly: All right, we won’t worry about that too much.

Burns: Yeah.

Kelly: We will quit and get that later.

Burns: Uh-huh.

Kelly: The Atlas Mountain, was that a pretty hazardous….

Burns: Yes that was pretty…it was a….

Kelly: Winding.

Burns: …winding mountain roads, yeah. There was a, a…there was a place up there close t…getting into Tunisia…they had a hill that was marked six-o-nine, I believe that’s the title they had, and they had open wheat fields leading to this high like plateau and the Germans were on the top of that (stump?).

Kelly: Six-o-nine?

Burns: Six-o-nine. And…they really gave a withering gunfire into the wheat fields. I remember that there was quite a few bodies in there that had to be….

Kelly: Did you see that?

Burns: I saw some boys ah burying some bodies along the road there.

Kelly: About what time was this, in that, in that?

Burns: This was in….

Kelly: …in the African campaign, toward the end of it? 32:00Burns: Toward the end of November, no this was before there was… Kelly: Mm-mm, it was early on.

Burns: That, that, it was in the other part of it, yeah.

Kelly: Well what were you, what was you, what were you all doing there at that time, what was your mission, you know?

Burns: Well we’re just still lugging that forty millimeters along and setting them up.

Kelly: I mean do you know who you were assigned to, who you were supporting?

Burns: Not, not, I don’t remember that.

Kelly: Okay. At that particular time when you, when you’re at the wheat field, had you all been…was this before Stuka Valley or after Stuka Valley?

Burns: I, I’m not sure…evidently we, it, if it, you know, the w… I don’t know whether this is winter wheat that was sowed, you know; if it were it was probably around about that time.

Kelly: Was it riping – ripening?

Burns: No, it was….

Kelly: Green?

Burns: …it was sort of greenish like.

Kelly: And how high, two a feet or….

Burns: Oh it was high enough that a body could crawl and if you got wounded or shot at, you wouldn’t be seen, you know.

Kelly: Okay, I’ll come back to that in just a minute. 33:00Let’s go to Stuka Valley. Can you tell me where it is?

Burns: No I, I remember very vividly that we were, it was a, it was be…in the valley…it was not too steep of mountains on, on, on both sides.

Kelly: How narrow was the valley, a mile wide or….

Burns: About a, probably less than a mile wide.

Kelly: Okay.

Burns: And I remember of, that we…that we shot down a British (blinum?) one time coming up Stuka Valley….

Kelly: We being just your gun crew or being the whole battery?

Burns: The four-five gun crews, yeah.

Kelly: Okay.

Burns: All of us, uh-huh.

Kelly: All Right.

Burns: Now he, what was happening…there was a, a German plane that had started up the valley and had taken a detour or some and went up another canyon or something and, and…it was mislabeled and they thought this was a German plane that was coming, and the pilot wasn’t lost, he got his leg broken, 34:00I remember that. But the plane I think was lost.

Kelly: It was a friendly….

Burns: A friendly plane, yeah. We had a lot of that encounter.

Kelly: Did you?

Burns: Yeah, we fired at each other, lots, lots of time.

Kelly: Were they firing at you, the British firing at you?

Burns: No. No the British, the (blinum?) wasn’t, no.

Kelly: All right. A little more about the terrain. These mountains…barren, no grass or fore…no trees?

Burns: No I think it was, I think there was, you know, shrubs.

Kelly: Shrubs?

Burns: …pretty much on them.

Kelly: And in the valley, the terrain down there, you got grass down there?

Burns: You got grass, uh-huh.

Kelly: What kind of grass?

Burns: I don’t remember, I don’t remember….

Kelly: Was it kind of a desert type setting, or….

Burns: At some places you have…quite, quite a bit of sand, and when we got down….

Kelly: Well, Stuka Valley, did you have to be trying to get the feel for the….

Burns: Stuka Valley, I can’t remember…there were small, I remember small bushes. I remember shrubs and things like that.

Kelly: All right. Your own gun, your own position, you, you got a, a forty…millimeter. 35:00Burns: Yes.

Kelly: And you got the machine gun.

Burns: Uh-huh.

Kelly: Where were you in Stuka Valley, your, your two guns?

Burns: Well, we were….

Kelly: Were you together?

Burns: …we were fairly close. Usually we used the machine gun pretty much in the rear, you know, of our gun site. We used it more or less to protect….

Kelly: Some s….

Burns: …it was, it was more ready. You could get to it quicker and you could fire quicker than you could the…the other gun and you used it while you were setting your Bofors.

Kelly: Mm-mm. How long did it take to set your Bofors up, you got alert?

Burns: Oh we could stop it from the dead, while we were traveling and you set it up in three minutes, you got three minutes.

Kelly: Okay. In, in, in Stuka Valley, you’re, you’re set up thought, right?

Burns: Yes.

Kelly: And you’re set up like that where are the crewmembers? Are they in foxholes?

Burns: We usually dug a little…grave-like length for things, you know, to lie down in and sometimes we, the, some of them would make it more…elaborate, 36:00they’d dig down and we had sandbags sometimes we would sandbag around.

Kelly: That’s Stuka Valley; all of you have a hole?

Burns: I can’t remember--everybody yes had some place to get, yeah.

Kelly: All right. And…generally…during the daytime you would not be in those holes.

Burns: No and we would, you know, come to think of it, I don’t, I don’t think there were too much individual holes, it mostly the gun pits, because….

Kelly: Was your gun pit dug in Stuka Valley?

Burns: Yes.

Kelly: How, how deep would it be dug in?

Burns: Oh, you’d dig down two-and-a-half feet and you throw the dirt up which gave you, you know, about three feet height….

Kelly: Okay.

Burns: …to (leave it?) on. But see we didn’t….

Kelly: And how much….

Burns: …we didn’t….

Kelly: …space did you have around that gun to….

Burns: Of course the, the forty millimeter gun would traverse all the way around 360 degrees you know, and…but you see the….

Kelly: When, when you, when you got hit the guys that weren’t doing anything, where would they be?

Burns: Well it, usually, everybody…. 37:00Kelly: They would be in individual holes?

Burns: …everybody had something to do and usually when you had an air raid, you never got to go to a hole anyway, because you were the, you were the one….

Kelly: You’re fighting.

Burns: …you were fighting, you see.

Kelly: Mm-mm. Well you know, when you are on the gun, did you have any…shields that were taped in the gunner and the….

Burns: It has, I think it has a little small piece of steel, but I don’t--the best I can remember there was not too much. The only thing that protected you was…was, you know, getting down behind the earth.

Kelly: All right. Now, Sam, if you can, early on you described the intensity, you, you were saying that you got hit thirty-two times in eight days, and that you were hit….

Burns: We were bombed that many times.

Kelly: Yeah, early in the morning and late in the evening, and they came out of the sun, and…hit all around you.

Burns: Yeah.

Kelly: I want you to take one 38:00of those bombings and describe when you saw the plane, how much time you had before it got to you, when, when you engaged it if you engaged it, and just the details of, of one of those encounters. Can you do that for me?

Burns: Well, we would… Kelly: Huh, once he….

Burns: …hear, hear a, a drone, we had, most of us were taught to identify planes.

Kelly: Okay.

Burns: …we, we took that training in England and, and Ireland, and usually there’s always somebody sitting on the gun turret with a pair of binoculars, you see. And…you would hear the planes and by the time you heard them, they were almost ready to attack, and they would come in as quietly as they could and they’d get almost straight overhead, eighty-seven degrees or at least up toward left degree, then….

Kelly: I, if you will Sam, rather than talking about general, talk about a specific. 39:00Burns: Okay, one time in particular, I remember…some Stukas eighty, JU-87Bs, as we labeled. One came, one time one came over and it was just, almost got up, straight up overhead, and….

Kelly: ( ) dive, a nice straight down.

Burns: He was coming down, almost straight down. He had sirens on.

Kelly: Okay.

Burns: And it was real terrifying and the, I think the reason for the siren perhaps was to terrify, you know. And…they look like a, some type of a bird or something, they had wings; they call them inverted gull wings. It came right straight down and I could see the bomb as it came down, and I, it oh, it looked to me he was going to hit right in the gun pit with me and it went down with a thud and it went down quite deep and then exploded, deep underneath of us. It was a small one, it probably didn’t, probably come weigh over a hundred pound maybe, but it, when it blew out, it lifted the 40:00s… the ground above it and…I was lifted out, Plug (Lawston?) was with me, he was lifted out and that, the gun…fifty milli…caliber gun was turned over, it had a cradle that you put your back in when you’re sort of swivel from left to right. It turned it over and…left, left a great big hole, and I was covered with real red clay with the gun, burnt gunpowder and so forth, and I looked red looking, and Plug thought I was dead. I was stunned, I didn’t move. And finally I, I overcame being stunned and I, and I got up wiping mud off on me and I was looking for blood, I was looking for a wounded place and I didn’t [Chuckling] find anything. I was surprised that I wasn’t terrifically hurt and we’ve had to turn the gun back up on its tripod and, and get it…the mud wiped off and other, and get back to firing at the other planes. 41:00Kelly: Okay. I want to back you up, and, and, and take this thing a step at a time, if you don’t mind. Is this at Stuka Valley?

Burns: This is Stuka Valley, uh-huh.

Kelly: Is this one of the first, middle, last attacks?

Burns: I don’t remember but I, it was probably up toward the middle of it.

Kelly: All right. And…about, about…when did you see the plane, when it was in its dive, or… Burns: In its dive, uh-huh.

Kelly: And, and at that time…was this before it released his bombs?

Burns: I saw it before it released his bomb, I even saw the bombs come out….

Kelly: All right….

Burns: …and then when the bombs came out, then the plane…would…level off.

Kelly: Okay.

Burns: It pulled away.

Kelly: All right. Are you firing at it?

Burns: I’m, I’m got my gun barrel right on it, yeah. We stayed right on it.

Kelly: You’re shooting at it.

Burns: Shooting at it.

Kelly: All right. And…how far away was it when you saw it?

Burns: It looked awful close. 42:00Kelly: Was it a thousand feet, over a thousand feet?

Burns: Probably less than that, six, six or eight hundred feet. It came down to; it came down within at least a couple hundred feet of the ground before he pulled out.

Kelly: Huh, so….

Burns: He loo…loosed his bomb about probably five hundred feet.

Kelly: Is that right?

Burns: Mm-mm.

Kelly: And, and he, he was almost as straight down.

Burns: Straight down.

Kelly: And they, and the, and the…how long did you see him when he was diving at you before…before he released his bomb? A minute or so, or….

Burns: Oh not that much.

Kelly: In other words, the first time you saw him, he was, he was….

Burns: He was in his dive, yeah.

Kelly: He was in his dive.

Burns: Or you could see him just as he started to make his dive, yeah, and then….

Kelly: Did it come, was he coming out of the sun so that you didn’t see him until he went in the dive?

Burns: Well, it was difficult to see him, because most of the time he came in from the sun, but when he dived, he was straight overhead there was, there was no sun straight overhead.

Kelly: And you saw him at that time.

Burns: You could see him now.

Kelly: And that’s when you picked him up.

Burns: That’s when you picked him up.

Kelly: And he was low at that time, under a thousand feet probably. And so you don’t have much time there, do you. 43:00Burns: No you don’t!

Kelly: All right. But let’s back it up now and, and the moment you saw him, what were you doing?

Burns: Firing.

Kelly: Were you, were you on the trigger? Were you on the gun or….

Burns: Yeah, it was on that way, see, our, we were almost, our gun barrel was almost straight up and down, see….

Kelly: How, how did you manage to do it?

Burns: …and you had your back, you had your back in a cradle, which wrapped around you, it’s a big padded arm that goes around behind your back.

Kelly: So you were horizontally on your back, right?

Burns: And your, and your weight is against that arm that goes around behind the gun, at, and you use that, see, you straddle your legs put your feet out and you swivel the gun with your back, see, and also with your hand.

Kelly: So you’re firing ninety degrees from the horizon, from horizontal.

Burns: Just about.

Kelly: And are you under the gun?

Burns: Under the gun, that, right di…directly under it.

Kelly: Now, as, are you able to sight pretty well?

Burns: Well, you don’t usually, you don’t get to use your sights as well as you like to because you mostly 44:00watch your ammunition, you have….

Kelly: Oh you’re watching tracers.

Burns: Tracers.

Kelly: Okay, now we, now we’re talking. I want to, I want to, we’re going to have to turn this thing over. Let me…no we got just one more second here [Clears throat].

Burns: The…there were two armor piercing and two incendiary and one tracer and it fired so fast that the tracers just, you know, you could watch them, seem like everything curved you know, and…so you sort of directed your gunfire by your tracer.

Kelly: Okay. All right, we’re going to…well we have another second or two here. Are you getting close to him with these tracers?

Burns: Yes, he looks, yeah, you, you keep adjusting you know, if you’re shooting behind him you keep moving your gun forward, you know. I can’t remember…how many we did…I don’t remember particular at shooting anyone down you know myself, but I know that we…we shot down, I think, 45:00maybe thirty or some planes all together in Stuka Valley.

Kelly: In Stuka Valley.

Burns: Uh-huh.

Kelly: And, and, we, are you talking about the c…the company, are you talking about….

Burns: The whole, well….

Kelly: …the battalion.

Burns: …our, our, the battalions and… Kelly: The whole battalion was kind of in Stuka Valley, is that correct?

Burns: Yes, uh-huh.

Kelly: All of them in there?

Burns: Most of them.

Kelly: Was that kind of, was that in an assembly area for some kind of division or something?

Burns: Well I, I can’t remember but I….

Kelly: Were you seeing other troops?

Burns: Please?

Kelly: Were you seeing another troops, other guns, or tanks, or….

Burns: Well we were off, we were off the beaten path but I’d, I just imagine the best I can remember that, that, that was a, sort of a thoroughfare, through, you know, for troops going to the front or coming back, and….

Kelly: Mm-mm. A lot of traffic on the road?

Burns: Them, they’re, ev… we were off the road, of course we couldn’t see anything.

Kelly: Well I mean, was there traffic on the road there near your position.

Burns: No, I don’t remember, I don’t remember in particular….

Kelly: Well, I, I’ll come back to that.

Burns: Yeah.

Kelly: Let me, let me stop and turn the tape over.

Burns: Okay. [END OF TAPE 2002OH12.1a, SIDE 2] [START OF TAPE 2002OH12.1b, SIDE 1] Kelly: I’m Colonel Arthur L. Kelly. We are in Frankfort, 46:00Kentucky. I’m talking with Sammy Burns, a World War II veteran with the Kentucky National Guard, Battery C from Springfield, Kentucky. Sammy is also a graduate of Center College. Later after he went overseas, let’s pick up this…this one attack where you were on your back with your machine gun pointing ninety degrees from the horizon at a plane diving right at you.

Burns: Straight down my gun barrel.

Kelly: And, and Sam, I, I want to…I want, I want to…be there with you as best we can here. I want you to…to describe for me when you first saw that plane, what, what your feelings were, and then what your actions were.

Burns: Well, I don’t…I think you, you try to get him before he gets you, that’s the idea of the whole thing, you know. And you try to get off as many rounds as you can in, in, in the closest proximity ( ) shoot, shoot right 47:00at him you know. And…it….

Kelly: Do you know he is coming after you?

Burns: Well, he’s, see, I’m right next to the, to the, to the Bofors gun, evidently diving at the Bofors gun, which is thirty yards maybe from the, from the machine gun.

Kelly: Okay.

Burns: And…that’s what he is going after, is that embankment there at, at that particular gun.

Kelly: Okay.

Burns: And…he seemed to be real bent on it, because we….

Kelly: All right.

Burns: …we can’t ( ) those flex? At all, see?

Kelly: So you know he is coming right close to you.

Burns: Yes.

Kelly: And, and, and…your fear level here now.

Burns: [Chuckling] I don’t remember how, how, I don’t remember my fear level, I, we were scared. I, I know I was scared many times and…it, it sort of hard to recall, but, I, there was, I was scared so many times and I was scared a lot of times over there. But, 48:00this one particular time in, in Stuka Valley I think that we had, we had, had so many raids with so many planes, the intensity of it was--for eight days they were bombing us all the time nearly.

Kelly: All right, when you, when he releases that bomb, does that kind of cause some more problems for you?

Burns: Yeah.

Kelly: All right, tell me about that.

Burns: You can see the bomb, and it, you can hear it whistle, and it (imitates the sound of the bomb) eeeee, you know, it sort of have those, I guess, it…sort of whistles like. And then you hear, sometime--you’re glad when you hear them, because when you hear them you know it’s not, [Chuckling] it’s not going to get you, you know, I’m not talking about the fall and the explosion, you know, and lots of time they, you know, make one after the other, maybe ten or fifteen feet apart, you know, several of them, they dump roughly quite a few. I remember looking up at this one and I was lying flat on my back 49:00and seeing that little bomb come down. It’s, it’s hard to re…really recall your feelings, but I know we were scared; I was scared.

Kelly: Would you…help me if you, as much as you can here, I want, I want…I know that you, are you feeling like this might be it?

Burns: Yes.

Kelly: You’re saying….

Burns: Oh you thought about… Kelly: No, I mean….

Burns: …you really….

Kelly: …at that point, on that particular occasion, right now you’re saying, my goodness, is this going to get me, or….

Burns: I never, I don’t know, I never did have the feeling of, of getting killed. I, I just sort of had a feeling that I was going to get home. I was…I was scared and all that, and I knew there was a possibility of getting killed, of course, with ( )….

Kelly: Mm-mm. I want you on this particular p…point now.

Burns: …on that particular one. I don’t remember, I, I thought I was--after the bomb fell and I had that all over me, I thought I was already wounded, you know.

Kelly: All right.

Burns: Yeah.

Kelly: We will come to that in just a minute. 50:00Did, how, you know, it’s only seconds when that thing hits the ground. Did it seem like…did it seem like the bomb was just a…instant, or did it seem like it was taking it forever to come to the ground? Do you remember that?

Burns: No, I, it, it, it just almost….

Kelly: Yeah.

Burns: …it’s so fast, you don’t even have any…there is no way of describing the quickness, it pretty quick, you know, ( ).

Kelly: All right. Were you firing the whole time, while it was falling?

Burns: Yes.

Kelly: You never stopped firing.

Burns: Never stopped.

Kelly: Okay.

Burns: Not until, not until the, wan…until the bomb hit me and turned the gun over.

Kelly: Mm-mm. What stopped you from firing was the, was the hit.

Burns: The hit.

Kelly: All right. It hit. How close to you was it?

Burns: Oh, it hi…it hit made the whole, maybe ten, ten-twelve feet.

Kelly: From you.

Burns: Uh-huh.

Kelly: All right and then, then, then it was a delayed fuse, right?

Burns: Yes.

Kelly: It went down in the ground sometime. Was it, was it just moment before it went off? 51:00Burns: Well of course, it, in almost instantly you know, it went, it went it’s depth and….

Kelly: All right, I’m just trying to, to, to d…to determine whether or not you were aware that there was a bomb that was going to go off in your hole.

Burns: Yeah, I, it, it was so quick as a, as if, as if it went off on the surface you know, it….

Kelly: Okay.

Burns: Yeah.

Kelly: So you didn’t have, there wasn’t a little delayed there for you to think about.

Burns: No [Chuckling] Kelly: And, and when it…when it hit, did it knock you off the gun? Were you aware that you were being knocked off the gun?

Burns: Oh, well I, I don’t, I…it, it was a sort of a pfoof, like that, and that’s all I remember for, for a few minutes. I know that Plug wa…(Lawston?) got me by the hand and after he saw that I was coming to and pulled me up, and he and I together our, reset the gun.

Kelly: All right, before you do that, and, and I, I’m, correct me if I’m wrong. I’m thinking it hit and you knew it was close, and, but you didn’t have time 52:00to think about it because it was just almost instantaneous, just boom-boom, and went off. Then you’re, you’re groggy, you say, got knocked out?

Burns: Yes, uh-huh.

Kelly: And the gun is out of action.

Burns: The gun is out of action and turned over.

Kelly: You know the gun was turned over before you came to, or….

Burns: No.

Kelly: Okay.

Burns: No.

Kelly: So that, that bomb kind of hit, and kind, that was kind the end of your memory, right there at that point. Right. And then…then you kind, do you know how long it was before you came to, or would you talk about….

Burns: Oh maybe thirty seconds.

Kelly: Just.

Burns: Or less.

Kelly: And, and as you came to, do you remember what you were thinking?

Burns: Yeah, I thought I was wounded. I, I thought I was really hurt, because….

Kelly: Can you describe it?

Burns: …I, my, well my, my ears was sort of ringing from the sound. I had mud all over 53:00my face and I was wiping it out, even so I could see.

Kelly: All right, huh, tell me about that just on…about the covering of your eyes. How were you getting it off your eyes?

Burns: I, with my hand. It…of course I closed my eyes, I guess, evidently, when, when the, when the explosion took place and the mud came up. And I, I wiped it off and I was looking at it, and it was so red! And I was thinking--it, it was so red that it looked actually like blood. I don’t know what it was, some kind of red clay mixed with the, the powder and the burning of it and so forth.

Kelly: Was it kind of wet.

Burns: And it was wet, muddy-like, uh-huh.

Kelly: Mm-mm. So it was sticking to you.

Burns: It was sticking to me.

Kelly: Mm-mm. And…when you thought you were wounded, that raised you….

Burns: Oh I couldn’t, I c…I couldn’t feel the wound, but I could see that, and I finally realized that was not my blood, it was something else, you know.

Kelly: Well, before you realized that though, I’m just trying to…to get…did you feel like you were severely 54:00 wounded?

Burns: Yes.

Kelly: And, and, tell me about how that made you feel.

Burns: Well I, I didn’t, I, I thought I was, I thought I was, you know, that was it. I thought I was really, because it w… the intensity of the, the stuff I had on me and…and the redness of it, I thought it was, it was me.

Kelly: You thought you were severely injured.

Burns: I thought I was severely injured, yeah.

Kelly: Did you think you might die?

Burns: Well that was the part, I guess, the part of my thinking.

Kelly: All right. And, and with that knowledge, what did it, how did, how did you, how did you…face that and what did you think and what was going on in your mind, your head here?

Burns: Well that, I thought that was it.

Kelly: Did….

Burns: I mean I, I thought I was wounded severely, you know, I didn’t know….

Kelly: Did, did you feel, the fear level going up in your heart pumping and all that stuff now….

Burns: Yes.

Kelly: …because you--of that thinking?

Burns: Yes.

Kelly: In other words it was, it was causing your body to respond that, that fear that you were severely wounded, and…[Clears throat] 55:00did--were you ever saying a prayer in any of this or is it too busy, or….

Burns: Well I wa…I sort of lived with a prayer on my lips, you know. I mean I….

Kelly: Did you think you said a prayer there then?

Burns: I can’t [Chuckling] remember, no.

Kelly: Okay, I, I’m asking too much of you. And I don’t want you to put anything in there that you can’t remember either. But I want, you know, these little details….

Burns: Yes.

Kelly: …here. How long did this go on before you found out you weren’t injured?

Burns: Oh it was….

Kelly: Thirty seconds.

Burns: …it was thirty, thirty seconds.

Kelly: All right. And, and, when you did find out that you were going to make it, did you have some kind of unusual feeling there?

Burns: I can’t remember. What, what my first thought was to get the gun back in its position.

Kelly: All right. Let me…you know, I have interviewed some people, and I’ve not gone through it myself, I, where there is an exhilaration, where you, you know, you wan…it’s like somebody’s sunk a basket at the…closing second and won the NCAA. You know there’s a, there is a…did you have any of that when you 56:00( )….

Burns: Well build up, sort of like…build up high but then there is a let down, I mean there is a, there is a, you know, a sort of like a calmness, you know, a, a reassurance or a peace-like after that, you see, you, you….

Kelly: I mean something that you could feel?

Burns: You could feel that, you know, a sort of coming….

Kelly: Relief?

Burns: …together thing.

Kelly: Are you talking about a relief? From knowing that you are not going to die, or….

Burns: Yeah, mm-mm.

Kelly: Is that a better way to describe it?

Burns: But you’re….

Kelly: I, I don’t want to….

Burns: …it’s sort of a soothing, soothing feeling, you know. You, you…have such a sense of gratitude that you’re not, that you’re not hurt, you know.

Kelly: Okay, and I, I, that’s what I was after now.

Burns: Yeah.

Kelly: You did have any gratitude, like thank God….

Burns: Yeah.

Kelly: …and this is great.

Burns: Yeah, this was great, yeah.

Kelly: Yeah.

Burns: Yeah.

Kelly: You, you did think that.

Burns: Yes.

Kelly: Felt that.

Burns: Mm-mm.

Kelly: Okay. And…what do you and, and Plug talking about now?

Burns: To get the gun back on it’s feet, yeah. And he said, “I thought you were gone, 57:00Sam.” And…he, why, both, he, he didn’t, it didn’t knock Plug out, I don’t think. But anyway Plug got all muddy and he said, “they’ve got Sam, so I got to get this gun back up.” So he came over and, evidently he started setting the gun up before like I made a movement or something, when I was groaned or something well then he reached and, and, and helped me up, and…so we both then, we got to re-assemble the gun.

Kelly: Did that cause you to want maybe to bleed in, nose bleed or a ear drum bleed? Did you ever have that while you were over there?

Burns: No, I never.

Kelly: Okay.

Burns: I had, we had quite….

Kelly: Did you see that on some of the guys?

Burns: Well specially the…boys that were killed.

Kelly: Okay. All right. Anything else on Stuka Valley that, that we can get here that was unusual or...di…difficult to deal with or….

Burns: Well that, I, I can remember Stuka Valley, I can remember 58:00yeah…that it was, it was a horrible, horrible….

Kelly: Experience.

Burns: …horrible place to live, horrible place to be.

Kelly: Was that your worse experience of the whole thing?

Burns: No, I don’t think--probably that… Kelly: One of those.

Burns: …one of them, one of them. I guess if, if you were ranking them, it would proba…it would rank pretty close to the top.

Kelly: All right, give me two or three of whatever you had that the worse times.

Burns: Well the worse, one of the bad times was at Anzio Beach, where that…they dropped flares and, and lit up the whole place, and then they….

Kelly: Bombed you.

Burns: …then they would bomb it, bomb it, bomb it. I remember the week that we pulled some trucks into a, a train tunnel had them, had a tunnel there, we got some of the t…and….

Kelly: I, I don’t want into details with this right now, we will come to Anzio in a few minutes. I, I want to get those…worse times for you, Stuka Valley, Anzio, was Anzio a bad time, the whole thing? 59:00Burns: Anzio was the bad putting on for the first two or three days, it was really bad.

Kelly: Really bad, really, really bad.

Burns: Yeah.

Kelly: And that’s what, that’s one of those times you’re talking about.

Burns: Yeah.

Kelly: All right, give another one or two.

Burns: Well….

Kelly: The killing inci…the, the….

Burns: The time that they, the time we had to retreat from…from Gafsa. The Germans were, were behind us and then we had to get out of their way, more or less, you know, and they were going to use our…anti aircraft guns as…anti tank guns, they were going, we were going to use those, so we set those up one night….

Kelly: Where was that?

Burns: That was…when we came….

Kelly: Gafsa?

Burns: …when we came from Gafsa, G-a-f-s-a, Gafsa, we came back up to a little place called Farriana.

Kelly: That, is it where this occurred?

Burns: Please?

Kelly: This where it happened, Farriana?

Burns: Farriana that’s where we…where we were going to…set our anti aircraft guns up a, as anti tank guns, 60:00and…I know there was a whole lot of straggling soldiers and…they…used every kind of truck to run back and pick them up in front of the Germans, you see. And…this was a….

Kelly: That was a tough time?

Burns: We had to give, we had to give, we had to give Rommel room to, to spin around, to go up into the Cap Bon Peninsula, you know.

Kelly: Mm-mm. Okay, I’ll come back to that in a minute. I want to wind up Stuka Valley, if I can. Is that, is that about everything there?

Burns: Yeah, I, I’m, I, about the most outstanding thing was when the bomb fell pretty close to the hole I….

Kelly: There were other guys that got, had bombs hit right close to the Stuka Valley wasn’t there.

Burns: Oh sure, I’m quite sure they did.

Kelly: They’re out, out of Battery C. Let me ask you another question on Stuka Valley and then we will go on, get off of that one. How did…the troops as a whole perform? Did you have anybody that was labeled a coward during any of that incurred? 61:00Burns: I don’t recall anyone ever running, or anyone ever shirking their responsibility.

Kelly: All of them doing their duty….

Burns: Everybody doing their duty, yeah.

Kelly: …in the face of disaster.

Burns: In the face of all that bombing, yeah.

Kelly: Yeah, okay. You’re kind of proud of that group of people and….

Burns: I always said that I wouldn’t take a million dollars for my experience and wouldn’t go through it again for a million dollars.

Kelly: The troopers, what kind of troops were they?

Burns: Our, our troops?

Kelly: Mm-mm.

Burns: They were great! They were, they we…they were really co…country-conscious. I mean they wanted to do their jobs. They, they wanted to get it over with, a lot of them, and so that they could go home. We spent, you know, twenty-two months in, in North Africa or Sicily.

Kelly: ( ) but in, in, in, in Stuka Valley they all performed gallantly.

Burns: Everybody.

Kelly: Would that be a description?

Burns: That would be a good description.

Kelly: And there wasn’t any exceptions.

Burns: I don’t know about any exceptions.

Kelly: Okay. Is there, is there one or two that stands out 62:00as being extraordinarily courageous?

Burns: Well, I always thought Plug was.

Kelly: Plug?

Burns: Yeah, and I always thought that…I can’t remember (Carney’s?) first name, Charles, was it Charles (Carney?) Kelly: I don’t know. Sergeant (Carney?) Burns: Charles (Carney?) I believe he was. I remember (Settles?), Charlie (Settles?). He was a great fellow, and…and the Kelly, the Kelly boys, they were, they were great. I remember, I got something to tell you about Richard Kelly I don’t know whether you want it on tape or not, but, about one time he got…he went on a little leave and, and the lieutenant hit him with a pistol at ( ).

Kelly: No.

Burns: Did you ever hear of that one?

Kelly: But you can tell me about it.

Burns: Huh?

Kelly: Yeah, go ahead and tell me.

Burns: Well we were, they were giving some R&R, you know, a little bit, and…and Richard (Killet?) that was one of the reasons that I was sent on that raid, that I got the medal. 63:00The night before that, they was going to use Richard’s truck, Richard got a pass and went into a little town there and they had artesian baths, or whatever they call warm bath, and he went in there and he, on the way home, Richard had a, he had a hair trigger response. He was always quick, and, and he, he was pretty good temper, see, and he wouldn’t take anything off anybody. He was game, Richard was, and, and one person and he got in an argument on the back of the truck and the lieutenant was riding in the, in the front, looked back and…somebody had a gun drawn on somebody. So, it was dark and making the moonlight I guess it was or a very faint light. The lieutenant got out of the…while the car, while the truck was moving, 64:00the best I remember, and took his pistol and reached over and, and aimed to hit, he thought he was hitting the one that had the pistol and he hit Dick, and he cut a great big hole in Dick’s head.

Kelly: Is that right?

Burns: Yeah. So when they came back and…they bandaged him up, and the next day they called for him to bring his truck, he was going to haul some infantry troops. He wasn’t able to go. So I took his truck.

Kelly: Okay. It’s a good time to go into the, to the…attack where you shot down your planes and before we do [Clears throat] for a background…where are you? Do you know where you are?

Burns: Well, w…I…I can’t remember the towns, there was a little town know Farriana and there is another named Talep and of course we had already… we hadn’t, we hadn’t gone 65:00down the Gafsa yet because this was a… Kelly: Gafsa is kind of forward, isn’t it.

Burns: Yeah Gafsa was down toward the desert line yeah.

Kelly: In Tunisia, down in, down in south, south….

Burns: Down pretty close to the edge of the desert.

Kelly: Yeah.

Burns: That little town. So I took…they, they asked me to…to bring this truck, and we loaded it with infantry and it was going to be a raid….

Kelly: Te….

Burns: …on Faid Pass, I believe it was Faid Pass….

Kelly: Yeah, okay.

Burns: …F-a-i-d.

Kelly: All right.

Burns: Faid.

Kelly: And that’s, that pass is close to…the famous pass…what’s the name of the famous pass there? Kasserine?

Burns: I’m not sure, pre…perhaps it is, it’s a…a little town….

Kelly: Well, let me ask you this question….

Burns: Sidi Bou Zid.

Kelly: When, wha…what time, when is this? Are, are we still in ’42 or we’re gone over to forty…three?

Burns: It, it’s, it’s November, it’s, it’s in December, December seems like to me, it’s about a month after the invasion. 66:00Kelly: Okay.

Burns: And…we weren’t even allowed to use our blackout lights to drive. The only way we could tell that we were, we were going across the edge of the desert, the only way we could tell that we were behind the car, our truck in front of us, is that sand hitting us in the face. And we drove just about all night into a little area called Sidi Bou Zid, in Tunisia. Do you have a map there?

Kelly: Yeah, it’s not a very good one [Clears throat]. Before we get into--we are looking at the details of the, of the map, e, e, is…is this about the time of Kasserine Pass, do you think?

Burns: Yes.

Kelly: Kasserine Pass, let’s see when does that occur? Huh, this is, this is when you are…as, as I recall, some do the fellows from Springfield told me that there was an airfield down near Kasserine Pass 67:00where you all were, and I think it was Tébessa or something like that.

Burns: Tébessa, uh-huh.

Kelly: Yeah. Is this the time period we’re talking about now, when you’re going to get hit, when you’re going to knock those planes out of the air, or, or….

Burns: This was….

Kelly: …before?

Burns: I don’t know, but it was about this, it was about a month after we landed in North Africa, it was in No…it was in December.

Kelly: All right. Okay. Go ahead.

Burns: It was the 3rd of December. It was the third of Decem…December the 3rd ( ).

Kelly: Okay, all right. Now, tell me a little bit about what’s going on, in the general situation that caused you to be moving troops and that sort of thing.

Burns: Well, I think they, the Germans were…in, in the part where we were. I think they were sort i…in the mood of retreat. I know that when we pulled in to this little area, we went beyond the German line and the Germans didn’t know that we’d sort of infiltrated their line and during the night, they got up and got back out of, out of our area, you know, and…I remember we went, someone said we went right down to the side of a gun pit, German gun pit, you know. But they didn’t recognize us as…as Germans--I mean as Americans and we didn’t recognize them, and then during the night they got up and they, they managed to get back through our line and get back to their safety area, you know. I’m at, I’m at, the reason I’m saying that is in order to say this, is because 68:00the air, the aircraft were required to strafe a certain hill and during the night, the Germans had vacated that hill and the Americans had occupied it and then we were strafed the next day, you see, by our own planes. See, they didn’t, they, the air force wasn’t informed in time enough to…to withdraw the attack and…and we were strafed on one of those hilltops.

Kelly: Okay, here, here is a map right here. See if you can figure out where you were. [Pause] Kelly: Okay, we, we are…you ( ) this is going to occur at, at Sidi, S-i-d-i, Bou, B-o-u-z-i-d, pronounce it.

Burns: Yeah, Sidi Bou Zid.

Kelly: Okay.

Burns: Tunisia.

Kelly: All right. This is where you’re going to shoot down the planes.

Burns: Yes.

Kelly: All right. Go on with what’s going on here on ( ).

Burns: All right, well….

Kelly: It happens about December the third.

Burns: Yeah, we were, I was 69:00transporting infantry troops…for a, a potential raid in that area of Sidi Bou Zid, that’s a little pass there, and…I was driving a truck that had a fifty-caliber machine gun mounted on the back on a pedestal of that…more or less was welded to the front part of the, of the truck itself and on, in order to fire the gun, you can only fire it over the cab and you can fire it in, say like a hundred-and-eighty-degree arch over the cap, because you stood in, in the, in the truck bed, in the front part of the truck bed and…the fifty-caliber machine gun was mounted so that it was about three feet higher than the bed on a pedestal, and you could fire it, but you couldn’t fire it toward the back of the truck because there is no way of getting up on top of the cab and depressing it.

Kelly: You’re standing?

Burns: Standing behind it, yes.

Kelly: All right.

Burns: So…when, 70:00when we took some troops up and let them off and I was…there was a lot of cactus bushes there, large cactus and…we were ha…had the truck…in order to make it less conspicuous we took an army blanket and we put it over the windshield to keep from the fo…the reflection down see. So I remember that we were attacked, I don’t know what time of the day it was, but anyway there were seven junkers eighty-eight, J-88, these were the long reconnaissance bombers at that time. And they were beautiful plane at that time. And we were attacked by seven of them, and I remember that I had not had too much experience firing a, a fifty-caliber machine gun, and we had quite a few boxes of ammunition on us, so I remember with another gentleman, I don’t remember the fellow’s name, I never got his name, 71:00ever, we tore open four boxes that had, you had to take the wooden top off the box with sort of a thumbscrew of nuts, you know, and bolts, butterfly. You take those off and then you had to, had a handle there, you had to pull the handle, to rip it open in order to get to the ammunition and this was…I think was about two-hundred and…twenty-five or two-fifty rounds per what you call the bandolier, or whatever the long chains….

Kelly: Belt.

Burns: Belt, uh-huh. And the machine gun would not fire… [Interruption] Kelly: Keep talking, I’ll fix you up.

Burns: The machine gun wouldn’t fire…too well unless someone held the ammunition up to feed it in through the breech of the gun, you know, ( ), and…it had a ammunition box there, and as 72:00long as the box was pretty full, it would feed, but when it got down a little bit lower it would sort of bind it and then the gun wouldn’t fire. So we tore open four boxes, that gentleman and I, tore open four boxes of ammunition and we loaded the first one in at, and as…this…we’d already had that pretty much prepared, we had the gun loaded and these seven Junkers planes headed toward us and I open--I had my windshield covered and had a army pack on top of the, the…blanket to keep it from slipping off, you know, and I met the planes head on and fired directly into, into them--I could see the tracers leap, going right into the plane. The planes then went straight on over, they didn’t do too much on the first…first initial flight; I guess they were just sort of looking over the thing, see. When they got beyond me, they divided into 73:00two groups. One went to the right about four of them and three of them went around to the left. And in order then for me to fire the gun at them again, I had to get down, start the car--the truck, and I cut it hard as I could one direction and just backed it until they came around a hundred and eighty degrees facing in the opposite direction, see. And here comes the, would come four planes you see, and I would fire at the first one then, of course they weren’t all coming at me, there was coming at this area of trucks and planes and that, and they didn’t do too much bombing, it was mostly strafing. And it was infantry troops there; and I recall…of, of hitting one of the planes pretty much in the windshield, I could see the bullets going into the windshield and then I saw some smoke coming from it as it sailed off over the horizon and then I kept seeing it go down and…I turned my truck around 74:00again when the…the three planes or, or the four, I don’t know which one it was, they…went over to other areas, but the ones that had come over my area had been going over and circling around was headed back again. I jumped down and turned the plane--I mean turn the truck around again, waiting for them to come back again. I turned the truck around three or four times, in order to meet the planes coming. And each time that I made my hit I was hitting the planes as they flew eastward, so the second plane that I hit set on fire went in that same general direction as the first one did. And I saw this plane get lower and lower and then I saw an explosion over on the horizon like, you know. And then on the, I was, and then on one of the others, they made four flights, about four flights over me, and I fired at them, another of them was on fire too. I saw two fall 75:00but I didn’t see the other one fall, and….

Kelly: Okay. Now let me go back and, and pickup some details, and kind of help you with your memory as best we can. This is a, a convoy of troops going….

Burns: We’d already d…we’d already left our troops off. They were up on the, up on a little firing line.

Kelly: Okay. You, you had taken these troops to the front line….

Burns: Yes.

Kelly: …from the assembly area?

Burns: Yes.

Kelly: How far did you move them? Ten miles?

Burns: No, we moved them…I guess we moved them all the way from Farriana to….

Kelly: Sidi?

Burns: Sidi Bou Zid.

Kelly: And about fifty miles, or….

Burns: Probably, I don’t know, it seem like when we drove the bigger part of the night because we, we drove without lights.

Kelly: Okay, and this was during the--this was a night move? 76:00Burns: It was a night movement, yes.

Kelly: All right. What time of the day did this attack occur?

Burns: This happened before noon.

Kelly: Before noon.

Burns: On December third.

Kelly: Okay. And, and at Sidi Bou Zid ma…is it Zid, am I saying it right?

Burns: Sidi Bou Zid, uh-huh.

Kelly: Uh-huh. When they attacked you, how many--well, let me back up just. The convoy that went forward, how many trucks you’re talking about, a hundred or ten?

Burns: No-no-no, they were, I was supposing they weren’t over, oh more than twe…best I remember, I would say twenty, twenty….

Kelly: So we’re talking about a small unit, maybe a….

Burns: I’m talking about maybe….

Kelly: You move a battalion, that….

Burns: …maybe….

Kelly: A company, maybe.

Burns: …maybe three-hundred-fifty, four hundred….

Kelly: Yeah.

Burns: …troops, yeah.

Kelly: Yeah. Two companies, maybe.

Burns: Yeah.

Kelly: Yeah. So…and, and you, and you moved most of the night.

Burns: Moved them most of the night, with….

Kelly: All right and the time that this attack occurs is what time?

Burns: It was after daylight.

Kelly: Just day, the crack of dawn?

Burns: Well, no-no, it was, it was way up in the, in morning ( ).

Kelly: Okay. So…how 77:00come you all didn’t go back?

Burns: Well we were waiting to, to see what they were going to need the trucks for.

Kelly: Okay.

Burns: See, we had some….

Kelly: All right so what, were you, were the trucks dispersed in this place?

Burns: Yes, they was, they were, they were quite large cactus trees, bushes-like, you know, and small growth and so forth, and we were dispersed around and most of us had blankets over our windshields too.

Kelly: Were you camouflaged with that net or….

Burns: We were camouflaged.

Kelly: Did you have a net over it or anything, or….

Burns: No, I didn’t have a net….

Kelly: …are there trees around?

Burns: …over mine.

Kelly: And, and how far, far close were the other truck to you, the nearest truck, a hundred yards or more, or less?

Burns: No they were close, they were probably within fifty feet, fifty feet to…to fift…maybe fifty feet to fifty yard, they would be.

Kelly: Every other….

Burns: You know, ever so often there would be a truck.

Kelly: There would be a truck, and on both sides of the road?

Burns: Well there were no roads, this was back off of the, in the, sort of….

Kelly: In just kind of a field, an open field?

Burns: Open field, mm-mm. 78:00Kelly: Is it kind of flat, rolling?

Burns: Flat, and it was right close to the, some pretty high mountains-like.

Kelly: Okay.

Burns: There were some pretty good hills in there.

Kelly: And…do you know the name of the mountain by any chance?

Burns: No, I don’t remember.

Kelly: All right. And…is this…desert, or are we talking about….

Burns: It’s arid, quite, quite at dry-like.

Kelly: Okay.

Burns: And….

Kelly: And…when you are sitting there waiting this whole time for these…how many of y…are just you and another assistant driver?

Burns: No, I didn’t have assistant driver, this, I don’t know where this fellow came from.

Kelly: Just you.

Burns: I was the only one driving the truck….

Kelly: Just one truck.

Burns: …in my outfit, uh-huh.

Kelly: And so, so there were so…how many? A dozen trucks scattered throughout the area there?

Burns: Probably twenty.

Kelly: Twenty trucks scattered. And…were all of them from the 106?

Burns: No, I don’t know how many was in the 106, I, I don’t think it was about, about four maybe from--I don’t even remember, I don’t even remember any other from 106. I….

Kelly: Was there any other, any other, none e…no one else with you from your battery.

Burns: I didn’t know anybody 79:00else there, no.

Kelly: Okay, all right. And…when the attack came, where were you at the moment it hit.

Burns: Well I….

Kelly: Down, under the truck?

Burns: I was….

Kelly: Getting in the truck?

Burns: I saw the trucks, I mean no, I, we usually…you know, just around the truck, under the truck or in the truck. We had…our rations, you know, I had some British campo rations that we were eating at that time, and--excuse me, and…I remember the seven, the seven planes when they first came. They went over us the first flight but then they broke up. We, we were o….

Kelly: Did, did they fly over one time, got you doing anything, is that what woke you up?

Burns: Yes, uh-huh. Well….

Kelly: Were you sitting there eating or something, or….

Burns: No, I don’t remember.

Kelly: …laying on the ground?

Burns: I, I don’t remember that. What, what it was, we were just waiting…I was waiting for them to dismiss me to go back to my outfit.

Kelly: Okay.

Burns: And….

Kelly: Were you sitting in the cab, or were you sitting on the ground, in the shade? 80:00Burns: I don’t remember.

Kelly: Okay.

Burns: But I, I remember that….

Kelly: All right. The point that you do remember…the first thing that you remember about the attack was what?

Burns: That they were seven, that they were, that they were enemy planes….

Kelly: Okay.

Burns: …and they were, they were….

Kelly: Coming at you.

Burns: …coming at us, coming at the whole group-like.

Kelly: All right, coming at the trucks, really.

Burns: Yes.

Kelly: All right, trucks were the targets, okay?

Burns: Truck and troops, uh-huh.

Kelly: And, and were they coming from what direction, east, west, north, sou….

Burns: They came up from the east.

Kelly: From the east.

Burns: Uh-huh.

Kelly: And…how high in the air were they? Less than ten thousand?

Burns: Oh yeah, they were just ov…just over the horizon as they came in. They--I don’t know how to estimate the height, but I would say less than two thousand feet.

Kelly: And…and, and they were just kind of diving a little bit and strafing?

Burns: They were just, just, well they weren’t really down--yeah, I guess they were down in the little, a little of a, you know, a little slant, and, and they was, 81:00yeah they were strafing everywhere, yeah.

Kelly: They strafed the first time through?

Burns: I can’t remember whether it was the first time through, but I, I’m quite sure they did.

Kelly: All right. W…how, how long did it take you to get up there and engage them is what I am trying to get out now?

Burns: Well I…I instantly, you know, loaded, loaded the gun when I recognized them. I don’t think I got off any rounds on the, when they was coming though.

Kelly: Okay.

Burns: And I had to get this one fellow to hold the ammunition up level so it would feed well.

Kelly: Mm-mm. How, where did you get him? You say you don’t know.

Burns: I don’t m…I mean, he just happened to be there, he might have been a driver from some other outfit, some other truck.

Kelly: He probably was, yeah.

Burns: And…so…when they, and when they circled around to come back I had to turn my truck around to face them again, you know, so that I could….

Kelly: Did they, they fly full three hundred and sixty and come back to the east again?

Burns: Yeah.

Kelly: From the east again? But you, and you had to move your truck in ( 82:00 ).

Burns: I had to turn my truck around, I turned my truck around, I’m thinking…n…I don’t know if it was four times or three times ( )….

Kelly: Now, is your truck facing east?

Burns: The truck was facing east to begin with, and then when they came back, they were going east I had to face west and I fired at them then. I got one, I got one plane that one plane up on the, on the second trip over.

Kelly: Okay.

Burns: And then they came back and they came back again across this way and they turned around, and they came back, and I was facing them again, and I, and I hit another plane coming from the same direction I did before. They both flew back toward the enemy line and then the, the…the last, on the last run, I saw one that was burning. They were, I think it was four times they flew over me.

Kelly: Mm-mm. The other, were you the only one that had a machine gun on your truck?

Burns: I was the only one firing, best I remember.

Kelly: Did, or you were the only one that had a machine gun.

Burns: I was the only one that, that, I guess, I don’t know whether there was other guns or not, but I was about 83:00the only one that was firing.

Kelly: Is that right? And…when you hit that first plane, is that’s the first time that you’d hit a plane?

Burns: That was the first time, yes.

Kelly: And can you tell me what that feeling was?

Burns: Well, at….

Kelly: Or are you too busy to think about it.

Burns: I really don’t…I can’t res…describe my feelings at that time, no. I…of course your heart’s in your mouth, you know.

Kelly: Is your heart in your mouth?

Burns: The heart in your mouth and….

Kelly: Are you shaking a little bit?

Burns: I was, I would assume that…it, you know, you sort of built up to it….

Kelly: Are, are you throbbing, your, your, can you feel that heart pumping, pum, pum, pum-pum.

Burns: Oh yeah!

Kelly: You can feel that.

Burns: You can feel, you can feel it, you feel in your body….

Kelly: Up your chest, you feel your heart pumping, your heart’s pumping.

Burns: And…when, when they passed over, you know, you began to…you know, you sort of….

Kelly: Relax, you’re relieved.

Burns: Relax, and then when you see them turn around again….

Kelly: You know.

Burns: Of course you’re waiting for them.

Kelly: Uh-huh. All right…di…how long did it take them to go out 84:00and turn and come back? It must have taken a little while….

Burns: Oh….

Kelly: …because you had time to turn that truck around, huh.

Burns: Just enough time to get me to turn around the truck, yes.

Kelly: All right. Tell me how you were doing that?

Burns: All I did wa…I let, I never touched the wheels but just one time when I backed up the first time, I cut it all the way to one side and just backed, see. And then, and they….

Kelly: You, you have full accelerator? Do you have accelerator to the floor?

Burns: I don’t know that, I don’t remember, but I know that, you know, it didn’t take long to turn around and of course I had, I know my blanket, I had to check, see, I had to move my blanket in order to see, you know.

Kelly: All right, just one second, let me back you up just another minute here. Excuse me for….

Burns: Yeah.

Kelly: …interrupting. I, I’m trying to get the rhythm of, to this thing. See, you, you must have a pretty good rhythm going. He goes by you, do you kind of…just drop your gun and jump off the truck, or do you, you, are you able to jump from the back end into the, under the wheel.

Burns: No, I had, I had…it had a cab over it…. 85:00Kelly: Okay.

Burns: …so I had to get down and open the door and get in.

Kelly: All right. Tell me how you did that?

Burns: Well I, what I did, I just sort of jumped over the railing of the, of the…gun--I mean over the truck, and open the door, but I had to move my blanket. I moved it so I could see through the windshield see. But what I, the best I can remember as, that I realized if I just back it, like I had the wheels cut, I could back around and have the same position, you see. And I did that…I’m, I’m quite sure it was, I think it was four times.

Kelly: Are you just backing it in, in circles as time goes on?

Burns: No-no-no. I, I would back it one way this way, and then I’d pull back the other way, see.

Kelly: Mm-mm. You follow the same tracks ( ).

Burns: Follow the same track, yeah.

Kelly: All right. So you just go, you’re doing a hundred and eighty, weren’t you.

Burns: A hundred and eighty.

Kelly: Zip around and then zip around.

Burns: Yeah [Chuckling].

Kelly: All right. When you…d…did you have to kind of lock the gun in place or did you just drop the gun and jump?

Burns: I just dropped the gun and jumped.

Kelly: All right. And, and, and the gun then just kind of set down, settled down?

Burns: Settled down, uh-huh. The heavy part is the handle part and it, 86:00it goes down the other part shoots up, straight up, yes.

Kelly: So the, the….

Burns: Yeah.

Kelly: It just plumps up there and is, is sticking up in the air.

Burns: You got, it’s a sort of a bolt through and the, and it swivels up and down, you do it like it had any, the whole thing turns.

Kelly: Mm-mm, all right. You don’t, you don’t lock it or anything; you just turn loose.

Burns: Just turn it loose, yeah.

Kelly: All right. You’re going to have to hustle. Can you, can you describe that hustling that was going on? Are, are, are you, are you in one bound hit in the ground or, are you kind of climbing over, or you kind of…of…springing over, or….

Burns: Springing over ( )….

Kelly: …hand, hand springing?

Burns: Just springing over the…the railing, you know, ( )….

Kelly: You got both hands and kind of doing a….

Burns: A, a… Kelly: A summers….

Burns: …a summersault, yeah, yeah, leapfrog-like. I was just, I was young, I was nineteen….

Kelly: I mean you, you, you were just grabbing that fra…how, how ta…you’re talking about the framing about it….

Burns: Frame is about….

Kelly: …waist high?

Burns: …five feet.

Kelly: Yeah.

Burns: And you just….

Kelly: And you s… Burns: …jerk, jerk yourself up on the metal railing of the outside of the truck 87:00and you just….

Kelly: Flip over.

Burns: …handspring it, yeah.

Kelly: Just jump over.

Burns: Yeah.

Kelly: And then hit the ground on one leg.

Burns: In, and in the cab.

Kelly: And then you, you got to open the door.

Burns: Open the door.

Kelly: And, and how are you getting in that cab, you’re stepping on a, a bumper, a fender?

Burns: There is running board.

Kelly: A running board?

Burns: Running board, yeah.

Kelly: Is this, that a, is that a bump-bump, or, I, I, I, I’m just trying to get how you’re managing to get in there fast enough to turn this truck around. How, how are you doing that?

Burns: I don’t know.

Kelly: You are not wasting any time, are you.

Burns: I wasn’t wasting any time, no [Chuckling].

Kelly: In other words you, it’s almost a, a, zip, zip, zip, isn’t it. In other words, you are just, you, you, you’re almost…well kind of help me with it. Are, are you… Burns: It just, it’s….

Kelly: …kind of like Superman here, or are you….

Burns: Continuous movement. Yeah, when you jump over, you jump over the…the railing and open the truck, and you go, and…and just start the car, start ( )….

Kelly: You had to start it, you turn it off each time.

Burns: Turn it off each time, 88:00and then just, I had it all of the way one time and I cut right around, you know, and then I jumped back up and checked my blanket….

Kelly: You cut it all around.

Burns: …and, and loaded it, we loaded that thing, we loaded it, we shot four, four….

Kelly: Boxes.

Burns: …four boxes of ammunition during that…four raids, four times over.

Kelly: What it, what did happen to other guy while you were turning the vehicle around? Was he back on the back of the truck?

Burns: No that, that’s, that’s the (prot?) he probably was holding the gun, because he stayed up there….

Kelly: Did he?

Burns: …when I turned it around, yeah, uh-huh, yeah. That’s happening so fast.

Kelly: Mm-mm. How close are these rounds hitting to you as the, the strafing?

Burns: Oh you see, you see, fe…you know, see the dust from there, from the…sand as it kicked through there. We didn’t, our truck never got hit, but some trucks got hit.

Kelly: How, how, how, how is it coming to your truck?

Burns: O-o-oh, five, six feet. 89:00Kelly: Is that right?

Burns: On each, on each side, I remember, I remember two, two rows going down, one on….

Kelly: On, on….

Burns: …the side of my truck.

Kelly: …on, straddled your truck.

Burns: Yeah.

Kelly: You had, you had a…describe that for me, please, so somebody else can understand it.

Burns: Well, it seemed like to me, the, the, the, the plane itself was right square over my truck, but the…guns that were, they was firing, were off to the side of his fuselage, I guess, you know, and they sort of straddle my truck down, on one time, I remember that it just, a whole row of dust on this side and a whole row of dust on that side.

Kelly: Both sides from that one plane.

Burns: Yeah.

Kelly: How high above you was that plane…when this occurred?

Burns: Less than fif…about fifty feet.

Kelly: Is that so, can you describe what you could see?

Burns: O-o-o-h yeah! It was, it was just, you know, almost cover you, you know, like a blanket it was, you know, so close and….

Kelly: Overwhelmed you?

Burns: Overwhelmed me, like, you know, just like a…a…a 90:00whole big…flock of bird, you know, that would blocked out the sun, you know?

Kelly: And are, are you seeing…are you thinking of this thing as being some kind of a monster? I mean you see that plane….

Burns: Yeah.

Kelly: …what, what are you thinking here?

Burns: It’s big, it’s bi-i-g and it, and then, it is devastating, yeah, and…it, I, I’m sure that…of course, he evidently, I don’t understand why they never got me, well that’s the reason I am, I guess I’m here now, but…he, he, he got several….

Kelly: Did you….

Burns: …I know he got several vehicles.

Kelly: When, when that thing came at you though, those rounds on both sides of things and he is coming right over just feet above you, he, what are you thinking?

Burns: I don’t remember.

Kelly: You’re shooting at him the whole time?

Burns: I’m shooting at him, until he gets right to me, and then….

Kelly: You can’t.

Burns: …what, and then when he gets up to me, there were, there were four of them, 91:00and one comes right over me, well then just as soon as he jumps over, I jump off the…truck and…and turn it around, and…I am not sure, remember whether I am firing at him, I didn’t get to turn around in time up not to fire at him while he was going away from me, but that’s the first thing I did as soon as he passed over me, was to, get the truck turned around.

Kelly: Did you get one on the, on the, the second fly-by, did you get one?

Burns: On the second fly-by, I got one.

Kelly: And the third fly-by you get one?

Burns: The third one, uh-huh….

Kelly: So are you….

Burns: …and on the, on the fourth one I sat another one on fire.

Kelly: So how are you feeling about that, you’re feeling like, well I, I’m doing all right.

Burns: Yeah.

Kelly: One, one against one?

Burns: I was at, I w…some fellow came up and talked to me, I remember very vividly w…what he said to me, he said, “where are you from son?” He was an officer of some rank, I think a Colonel. And I said, “Kentucky.” And he said, “hell, I might have known.” Kelly: Really! Is that right.

Burns: Yeah, that’s the very words he said. He said, “hell, I might have known.” Kelly: Mm-mm. Can you tell me how you felt with 92:00that success when the attack was over?

Burns: Well, it, yeah, I, I can’t remember. I think I had mostly mixed feeling, you know, you think about the people that were in the plane, you know, as least, they were at least three in each plane that were lost, you know.

Kelly: We’re going to have to stop now and I’m going to come back. [END OF TAPE 2002OH12.1A, SIDE 2] [START OF TAPE 2002OH12.1B, SIDE 1] Kelly: We’re in Frankfort, Kentucky, it’s August the 10th, 1991 and I’m Colonel Arthur L. Kelly, I’m with Sam Burns from Springfield, Kentucky, a member of the 106…National Guard that went on active duty during World War II. We were talking about your [Clears throat] shooting down two planes and another one going off in smoke, for which you received the distinguished service cross and…we just talked about the Colonel saying you must be a…might have known you were from Kentucky…once the attack 93:00was over and…you have shot down two planes and you, you know that now, don’t you. What’s going on? What’s happening? The, the colonel came up and said something to you. What else is going on?

Burns: Well, of course I, I was…real interested in getting back to my outfit because I’d, you know, I didn’t want to stay there too much long…I was hoping they, you know, get release, so I could leave, but…there were a lot of people going out, the best I remember there was some people going to go out and check on the salvage of the planes the ones that, that fell, and, of course I never did see anybody that had come back. But…I remember as, as I was telling you just at the close of the last tape, that when these planes went over, they, they didn’t seem much higher than fifty, of course, it could be a hundred feet, but it seemed like about fifty feet, and they were such a large 94:00thing, it was, you know, black, painted black with swastika on the wings and, and…vrrrrrrrrom, you could almost feel the heat from these planes as they went over and…it sort of block out the, the light, the sun, they were so close and you could hear the machine guns from, from, actually you could hear…the b…the motors and the gun fire and…the dust flying from, from the round that hit the ground close to and I don’t know whether there was anybody that was wounded or not because… Kelly: Go ahead, keep talking.

Burns: Yeah. But I, I do remember with very, vivid…memory that…this 95:00officer of, major, I think about a major rank, coming up and ask me….

Kelly: Talk just a little louder.

Burns: …ask me where I was from and, I told him I was from…he said, “where were you born?” I told Kentucky and he said, “hell, I might have known that you’re a Kentuckian,” you know.

Kelly: All right. Let, let me get…make a point here, or try to get a point out of you, if I can [Clears throat]. When it’s over, was there a gathering of troops around you, or do you remember?

Burns: Well, there were few. The people…most of the boys were underneath the trucks that they had dispersed, and they were underneath the cactus bushes, trying to get away from, you know, any, be invisible at all, by the planes.

Kelly: Mm-mm. Did any of them get hurt?

Burns: I don’t remember any…I, I know there was quite a few people that was wounded, I’m quite sure, because we always had…medics, 96:00you know…being called, you know, medics do this, do that.

Kelly: Do you recall that they were, you, you, you remember hearing….

Burns: I don’t, I don’t remember…any particular wounded of that. I, I do remember when, when we first got there that the troops all, and we, we were fairly close to some rising terrain, you know, it was back in behind the mountains that they left and went up into the mountains. That’s where I think the Germans were holding up and that, that’s when they, they was trying to route them out of that particular place, you know. It…there is a sense of you know, of, of gratitude that it’s over, and that you’re, that you’re still breathing, that you’re still living and…you’re…have different feelings about you know, that there were people on the plane and always, 97:00always had the feeling that it’s someone’s son, you know, even when I read the newspaper today and see where there is an accident, you know, I figure well that’s somebody’s brother, somebody’s son, and….

Kelly: So you kind of have mixed emotions. You, you, you are, you are feeling empathy for the….

Burns: For whomever might have gotten hurt.

Kelly: Is this the first time you killed someone or, that you know of?

Burns: Yes, yes.

Kelly: And…does that kind of make it an impression on you?

Burns: Well….

Kelly: Is that a heavy burden, or….

Burns: …it doesn’t, it doesn’t affect me, I, I’m not, you know, any, anyway, a conscientious objector, I, I figure that, you know, that you’re not, you’re not held responsible for anything that, that you do under, you know, under…conscription of your, of your country.

Kelly: Are, are you, are, are you f…feeling some exuberance from having scored those hits, are you feeling that? 98:00Burns: I, I felt…I felt good that, that you know, that I had, was able to contribute, that I was able to protect. In fact, I kept those planes pretty well…I kept those planes pretty well back, you know, I mean, they came over but they respected my fire, you know, at least two of them didn’t get to come back, the third one, and…I, I remember that one, that particular one that flew so close to me, it flew over the top of me, but I, I can’t remember, I remember firing….

Kelly: Did all the seven of them attack the, the twenty or so vehicles, or did four of them peel off and go over and take some other target?

Burns: I’m not, can’t, I can’t remember whether I fired at the three or whether there was four but they split up when they went beyond me and they were, you know, coming around, it, the other side.

Kelly: And hitting you, all of them were hitting the same target.

Burns: They were all hitting the general area in that, in the round that.

Kelly: Your trucks, the truck….

Burns: Truck, trucks and troops….

Kelly: come that truck…assembly, 99:00and the troops?

Burns: And the troops, uh-huh.

Kelly: Troops are close enough to you to be….

Burns: The troops were up in the, up in the hills, and the ( )….

Kelly: And they were hitting those up there?

Burns: …( ) Kelly: They were hitting those up there too, huh.

Burns: Yes.

Kelly: When they made that turn, how far out did that plane go before it turned, a mile or two?

Burns: Yeah it, I, I have a poor conception of miles per plane but I would say they went out three or four miles before they….

Kelly: A pretty good distance.

Burns: …yeah, before they circled.

Kelly: And, and did he go up high and then kind of come in?

Burns: No, they just sort of went out straight out, and just turn right straight around and, and came back, but as they came over our area, it seemed like they had just a little bit of a decline, and then as they went away they pulled up some, and then they turned around, and they came back, they had a slight decline. I guess it made it better for the weaponry, you know, if you’re going to do the same stuff….

Kelly: Could you see the pilot?

Burns: I could see him one, that one plane, I could see men, in the cockpit, yeah that was….

Kelly: As they came toward you.

Burns: As they came toward me.

Kelly: See their eyes.

Burns: And I, I, and I, and like I could see my bullets going 100:00right in, right into the motor and, and area of it, see.

Kelly: The one that got so close, is that, is that the one you hit?

Burns: I’m not, I’m not sure that, I think that’s the one perhaps I hit, yeah.

Kelly: Mm-mm. But you, you could see the bullets going into the cockpit?

Burns: I could see the bullets going, the, the…the tracers going right into the cockpit area, uh-huh.

Kelly: Right where they were.

Burns: Right where they were.

Kelly: What were they doing? Were they, were they….

Burns: They, they seemed like they had some thing like ear, like they had on, had a black-looking…cap with something down over their ears, you know, and…and…they were two, two of them, they were in the cockpit area, and…of course it was just, (snaps his fingers) you know, instant that they went through, and….

Kelly: Could you see, you could see expression on their face?

Burns: No, I couldn’t tell, I can’t tell, they, 101:00of course they….

Kelly: Keep talking.

Burns: …it was… Kelly: Go ahead.

Burns: …everybody was so serious, seems like. I, of course I can’t recall any expression but I can still see the figures of the people that was in the, in the plane.

Kelly: Mm-mm. What was the most frightening part of it, for you?

Burns: Please?

Kelly: What was the most frightening part of that attack?

Burns: W…when the first one came so close over me, you know, they, you could just, it seemed like it’s engulfing you know, and vrrrrrrrrrrm, you know.

Kelly: It just overwhelmed you.

Burns: Overwhelmed-like, yeah.

Kelly: Talk a little bit more about that.

Burns: Yeah, you could….

Kelly: Kind of….

Burns: it’s just like a shadow, you know, like, like, you know, you could….

Kelly: The shadow of death?

Burns: Just like a, you know, as they went over you they, it seems like he just blocked out the sun, it was, you know, fairly close and the motors, I think there were two, there were just two motors on the ( ) and…big, black, it seemed like to me that you could feel even the heat 102:00from them. I guess it might have been from….

Kelly: Could you feel the, the, the draft from the…propellers, could you feel that?

Burns: I can’t remember that. Probably….

Kelly: Was that…was that noise of that plane, was that kind of deafening, or….

Burns: Yes, pretty loud.

Kelly: Was there kind of describe it, see with your shooting and that’s noise and them shooting, that’s noise, and then that roaring of the engine, kind of describe that, that extreme noise level when it got right at you.

Burns: Yeah, well it seemed to, it seemed to build up as he came to you it got, it seemed like it built up, it reinforced itself as it got closer to you, like [Imitates the sound] eeeeevroom, that way, and as it drifted off it got fainter and fainter, and so in proportion it coming into you, it sort of multiplied, but as it left it sort of….

Kelly: Trained off.

Burns: …trained off, yeah.

Kelly: But the…the, the…strafing…how far apart was each one of those little bursts on the ground? 103:00Ten feet? Five feet….

Burns: Fifteen, twenty feet apart.

Kelly: …between them?

Burns: Yeah.

Kelly: And…s…what, can you kind, kind of d…could you hear the gun firing, you know, where the….

Burns: Well of course mine was going off too until they got up almost to me. But, when, when they got, you know, real close to me, of course…I couldn’t do anything, because I couldn’t…I could depress my gun down so far but….

Kelly: Yeah.

Burns: …and then as they went on over I….

Kelly: That was the end of it.

Burns: …that was the end of it, yeah.

Kelly: In other words you couldn’t depress the gun down.

Burns: I couldn’t, I could go down and I could get them, I could shoot over my cab up so far, but that’s all, and then I, I had to drop the gun and run in the truck….

Kelly: In other words…at, at one point it got so low that, that you couldn’t, you couldn’t lower your gun enough to get to him, in other words you’re shooting over him.

Burns: Yeah. As he comes to you the gun barrel goes higher and higher if he comes 104:00in, you see, he goes higher and higher, you keep ( ) it, you can only go, you know….

Kelly: So higher.

Burns: So high, yeah.

Kelly: Yeah. In other words you’re following him over.

Burns: Yes.

Kelly: And that’s when they go high.

Burns: Yeah.

Kelly: You’re all right as long as he is out….

Burns: Yeah, ac….

Kelly: …just a little distance above you.

Burns: Yeah, because you’re looking straight down over the cab.

Kelly: Yeah, and then you’re really right heavy, that, that’s when he is in trouble, isn’t it.

Burns: Yeah.

Kelly: So you, you’re, you’re getting closer to him; he is getting to you, really weren’t you. But those things, those, could you hear that…splash on the ground, those bullets hitting the ground….

Burns: I, I, of course I, I think….

Kelly: …or too much noise from your machine gun?

Burns: I assume that I could at that time.

Kelly: Well it’s probably….

Burns: Yeah.

Kelly: …it’s probably integrated with your firing, wasn’t it.

Burns: Yeah.

Kelly: In other words, there was noise from the motor, there was noise from….

Burns: Of course there was, there was other planes flying along beside of him, you know, they were strafing….

Kelly: And you….

Burns: …other vehicles….

Kelly: and….

Burns: …that they all went….

Kelly: …and you’re hearing….

Burns: …sort of….

Kelly: …and you’re hearing that.

Burns: I, it’s, it’s the whole thing was in together, yeah.

Kelly: Are you hearing any of those trucks get hit?

Burns: Huh, there were several trucks that got chi…machine gun bullets in them, uh-huh….

Kelly: Any 105:00of them….

Burns: …that I recall….

Kelly: …catch on fire?

Burns: …they were no fires or anything.

Kelly: No fires.

Burns: Uh-uh.

Kelly: So you weren’t seeing anything like that out of the corner of your eyes. Did you see anybody, any men getting hit? Did you see any men running?

Burns: Oh there was all, of course they dispersed and…went under cactus bushes, and underneath the ( )….

Kelly: You, you weren’t seeing any other men, were you.

Burns: No, uh-uh.

Kelly: Just you and this other fellow.

Burns: Just the, yeah.

Kelly: And you don’t know who he was.

Burns: I don’t even know who he was, now.

Kelly: Uh-huh. Did he get any award, or do you know?

Burns: I don’t know that, of course, we looked for him one time later, we tried to find out…who he might be, you know, but when, when it was all over he just jumped off and, he probably was driving another truck.

Kelly: Mm-mm. He, he…that was quite courageous of what he was doing, he was a hero.

Burns: Why he was, he had the same responsibility that I did; he held the ammunition….

Kelly: Yeah.

Burns: …so it would feed through the gun.

Kelly: Yeah, yeah. He, he was a hero of the same order.

Burns: My gun, my gun got so hot that it quit firing though. I fired a thousand and, and some odd rounds through it 106:00in that, in that time.

Kelly: Did they attack you again before they…when, when, when you couldn’t fire at them?

Burns: I….

Kelly: Or just….

Burns: …I fired up a whole row as they came in, and then by the time they went out and turned around, I had, that boy had loaded it again, and I had turned the truck around, see.

Kelly: Was he reloading while you were turning the truck around? He must have been.

Burns: I, I don’t remember, I, I assume that we both loaded it after I got back up into the cab.

Kelly: Uh-huh. And…back to that, after it’s all over now, one more time, you know, you kind of won a basketball game, or you won a football game, or you, you know, you’re the champ and….

Burns: Yes sir.

Kelly: …it’s you against the world. Can you feel that? And you have succeeded? Can you feel like, you know, it’s, wasn’t bad….

Burns: It wasn’t, wasn’t bad marksmanship there, yeah.

Kelly: It wasn’t bad marksmanship 107:00and it wasn’t bad…day’s work, pretty good day’s work, were you feeling that?

Burns: Yes.

Kelly: You felt good.

Burns: Uh-huh. Oh you, that’s what I said, why you still had mixed emotions, you was, you was, you know, sort of feeling that you had hurt someone but you figure I guess, I guess my feeling was that…your protection of, of what you’re supposed to be done, doing, you know.

Kelly: Did anybody come and shake your hands?

Burns: Yeah, this c…this officer did, and, and some of the enlisted men did too.

Kelly: Did they?

Burns: Yeah, “hey, great g…great, great, great,” you know.

Kelly: Great shooting, huh.

Burns: Great shooting, yeah, and then this one fellow said now, where, where you come from and I told him Kentucky, and then he said, “hell I might have known.” Yeah.

Kelly: Mm-mm. Can you remember what any of the others said?

Burns: No, “good going,” things, you know, something that, to that nature, you know.

Kelly: Quite a few handshakes?

Burns: Several.

Kelly: Mm-mm. And…then how long was it before you went back to your unit?

Burns: Huh, I went back to the unit that, that evening.

Kelly: That evening.

Burns: Yeah, and then…. 108:00Kelly: When you got back to the unit, did they know about it?

Burns: Someone had, had gotten back over it and…they came over and, and…and, and Fred (Ganter?), I believe it was Fred (Ganter?) and someone they went…they went up and got…some verification on the planes that had been destroyed, you know, they went up and, I don’t know who it was that did it, but they…got up and got some signatures and….

Kelly: About what happened.

Burns: What happened, yes.

Kelly: Somebody said that they were going to court martial you for burning that barrel up.

Burns: Oh….

Kelly: Was that true?

Burns: [Laughing] George (Morris?) said that they were going to make me pay for the barrel on those machine guns.

Kelly: He was just joking.

Burns: He was just joking.

Kelly: Yeah, there wasn’t, wasn’t any truth in that.

Burns: He said, “you’re going to have to give us a new barrel for that gun, Burns, you burned it up.” Kelly: Yeah.

Burns: Yeah.

Kelly: When you burned that barrel up, did…did that…did it…did they attack you after the barrel was burned out or did it kind of….

Burns: It sort of choked up. 109:00It jammed, more or less you know, toward the last part of the firing.

Kelly: At the last of it.

Burns: Mm-mm. I even jumped off my truck and fired five rounds from my M-1.

Kelly: After, after you, after it chocked up?

Burns: Uh-huh. As, as they went away I fired five rounds with my rife.

Kelly: Just for the hell of it.

Burns: Just for the hell of it [Laughing], yeah, yeah.

Kelly: [Chuckle – Kelly] That’s pretty good, that’s a pretty good story.

Burns: Yeah.

Kelly: All right, anything else about that we ought to--oh, oh yes, we ought to know about what, what was the reaction with the company, Battery C when you got back?

Burns: Well, there was a little bit of…I think there was a little envya, yeah, envy.

Kelly: Do you?

Burns: Yeah, because, you know, I, I wasn’t, I wasn’t, I wasn’t one of the best mixers, you know. If, if it came…down to, to two people to, to go on a detail, there was no doubt that I wouldn’t get it a lots of time, you know. When I was down in….

Kelly: You weren’t one of the favorite sons. 110:00Burns: I was--well I was, I was the one that wouldn’t belly ache, I’d do it, go on and do it, and he knew that he wouldn’t have any repercussions if he said, “Burns, you go do that,” Burns would do it. They put--I was in charge of the latrine down in Camp Hulan, and I took kerosene and cleaned those sinks and I had them so immaculate that I got compliments on it, you know, I cleaned with kerosene, boy, I cleaned them, you know.

Kelly: You always wanted to do a good job whatever you’re doing.

Burns: And I did a good job, I remember I peeled a million potatoes.

Kelly: Well, how would you describe your personality, at that time?

Burns: I was, I was quite countrified, I mean I wa…see I only had two years in high school and, and I was--see I grew up…I was, I was a product of…of an unwed mother, I mean, my, my, my brother’s father…Jake Burns, had died with appendicitis, two years before I was born, I was the product of, of…Jake Burns’s 111:00brother, George Burns, and George Burns had lost his wife with the flu about the time that my mother lost her husband. And they lived fairly close, on Logan Road, and I was the product of their acquaintance, you see, and…I have been called a little son of the bitch, and bastard all of my life, see. And….

Kelly: Did that bother you when you were growing up?

Burns: Oh gosh, I went to school, and when I was first grade, it was a eighth, it was the eighth grade school, and…the kids brought sling shots to school, and they filled them with green plums, or chalk, and the back of my head was a solid soar from my ear to this ear. Boy, they would fire slingshots at the back of my head and I’d scream and howler, and….

Kelly: What was your mother say when you came home?

Burns: Well, my mother stayed out on maternity cases. She was sort of like a midwife, 112:00and I had a little sister named Annabelle, and Annabelle would try to fight my battles for me. She was five years older than I. Annabelle died.

Kelly: And, and then they, they were, they were picking on you because of your circumstances because you….

Burns: Yeah.

Kelly: …born out of wedlock.

Burns: Yeah, mm-mm, that was a….

Kelly: And….

Burns: …that was a real no-no.

Kelly: …and insulting you too?

Burns: Yeah. I had a fellow one time would come up to me and I was on my way to Sunday school and he said, “do you like your tie?” and I said, “yeah.” And he said “here,” and he took a knife and he cut it off right below where it was tied and handed it to me, see? And…at school, I was picked on.

Kelly: Did you fight back?

Burns: I fought back. My little sister, I can see her now fighting and crying. I used to…carry my lunch, I never could carry it in a little pretty…lunch pail because…it, it was fragile, and we hit somebody with it they would fall apart. So my mother carried, fixed my lunch in a half gallon lard bucket 113:00and I had a wire (bailet?) with a corncob to handle, and I’d put rock in that thing, and use it as a weapon to defend myself, and….

Kelly: Did that, was that constant and, and continuous all through your life there in….

Burns: Pretty much so, and when I got to be sixteen I was, I was taking on a pretty good size, and I learned to fight, you know, so I joined the National Guards at sixteen and….

Kelly: Were you, when you joined the National Guard, did they receive you and treat you pretty well, as a group?

Burns: Oh they, they was perfect, yeah. I think….

Kelly: Was the National Guard kind of a haven for you?

Burns: It was, it, it…I got to go down, I used to help them shoe horses, I used to help…George Moore on the, in the armory.

Kelly: Did you get some respect from the, from the guard people?

Burns: Yeah, uh-huh.

Kelly: And that’s something you hadn’t had before.

Burns: I hadn’t had that before.

Kelly: And you enjoyed that.

Burns: Did you know the superintendent of Washington County Schools bought my books and paid for them personally out of his pocket? 114:00Kelly: You mean (McQuarter?) Burns: (McQuarter?) Kelly: Why did he do that, because your mother didn’t have the money?

Burns: I didn’t have money for schools. I remember a boy one time by the name of Hubert, Hubert (Webb?)….

Kelly: See, I, I remember this about you Sammy, I, I remember you as being tough and could fight, and I remember even seeing you maybe a time or two in the streets, you know, and, and you were a little bitty guy, but you could take on a pretty good size fellow.

Burns: Yeah, but I never, I never, I never started it….

Kelly: And you were barefooted too, if I, as I recall.

Burns: Yeah, uh-huh. Yeah, I went barefooted until it got so cold. I remember I used to, we had two old cows, one of them died eating too much dairy feed, got in there and ate a whole sack and die. We just had one cow, and I used to go out and get her barefooted and it would be so cold, that I would chase her up and stand where she lay and warm my feet, see? And….

Kelly: Was your mother, was your mother…able to kind of help you with some of these problems and give you some…. 115:00Burns: My mother was the custodian of a church at, at Pleasant Hill, and she used to, we had a old horse called Old Nell, and we would ride it during the daytime in a buggy. At night he would be, you’d have those creeks crossing bridges so we would walk and carry our lantern and I used to sit on the front seat of the church pew wrapped up while she cleaned the, the lantern reflectors behind the chimneys, you know, and start a fire and draw water for them and put it on the ( ).

Kelly: Was she protective, and caring of you, and, and sympathetic with your, with your plight?

Burns: Not particularly, no, I think she resented me too.

Kelly: Really?

Burns: Sometimes, yeah, because I was a stigma for her, you know.

Kelly: Did you, and you felt that.

Burns: I felt that, yeah. My sister Annabelle who, who died when she was only eighteen….

Kelly: She, she was your….

Burns: …she had ( ) of tuberculosis.

Kelly: …she was your protector.

Burns: She was my protector, yeah.

Kelly: When she died, that was a pretty good--left a jolt to you, huh?

Burns: And then a month 116:00 later….

Kelly: How old were you when she died?

Burns: …I was…fourteen, I guess, fourteen, fifteen, but then just a few months later my brother committed suicide, you know, Luther.

Kelly: I didn’t know that.

Burns: And he, he killed, he killed a man, you know, he killed Dick (Coyle?), Harrison (Coyle?)’s brother, Leslie (Coyle?)’s brother.

Kelly: Uh-huh. No I didn’t know that.

Burns: My mother married him, you know, and they were married a while and he worked on the railroad and he had a wife on that end of the train, and my mother on this end, you know, and he spent all his money over there and he’d come home and he’d be drunk and, and he jerked my mother out, out of the, one time and…pulled her out of the house by the hair on her head and broke all her ribs up, you know, and my brother took a shotgun and killed him.

Kelly: Is that right?

Burns: And then, and the next day he went down the Washington County Fair and Arvin Arnold said, “Luther,” said, “I heard what happened,” he said, “you better go give yourself up,” said, “the sheriff is looking for you.” So he went and gave himself 117:00up and Arvin Arnold told me, he said, “I’ll, I’ll go his bond, he won’t.” They said, “no we will let him out on his own recognizance, and he never went to jail a day.” They had a trial in less than two weeks and they cleared him ( ), but that, that, I saw my brother kill himself, I saw it all.

Kelly: You saw that?

Burns: I saw that when I was home, I was five years old.

Kelly: Five years old!

Burns: Mm-mm, five or six and a half. And then she married Dick (Coyle?) I mean she married…Bob (Harden?) and he was another drunkard. Do you remember Bob (Harden?)?

Kelly: He lived out on the, he’d go out, he’d get drunk every week (in the world?) he’d go to town and take eggs and milk and then he’d get drunk, see and he’d come home and I’d have to run from him, you know. He wanted me to go hunting with him one time he said, “I’m going to take you out on the back of the farm and I am going to shoot you,” you know, and…so by joining the National Guard I got to go to Harlan County, I did the coal field strike and then I got to go to Wisconsin, and then I got to go to--I 118:00went to Fort Knox…one time and…and then Camp Hulan. I was a, I got to be a, I was a chauffeur, they asked for a volunteer driver and I was the only one in the whole bunch that couldn’t drive, and everybody stepped forward except I, and George Moore said, “Come on, Burns, I got a job for you.” Kelly: Was George Moore good to you?

Burns: He was good to me.

Kelly: Who else was good to you? Who else understood your circumstances and, and, and looked out for you? Mr. (McWerter?) gave you money for your books.

Burns: Yeah, he bought my books and sent them to me. Jack Arnold’s wife, Elizabeth (Noe?)….

Kelly: Was good to you.

Burns: And… Kelly: Who else in the unit?

Burns: I, I--oh, in the unit? (Boswell?) Smith, I guess was the, probably 119:00the, the most… Kelly: Considerate of you and….

Burns: He was just about as considerate as anybody and, and, and so was…a fellow by the name of…he was a big first, a big s…tech sergeant, he was from…Glasgow or something, I forget what his name was, he was a great guy. (Settles?) was nice to me and he was, he was stern and he was fair. (Arch?) and, and…Charles (Carney?) he was a good buck sergeant, and….

Kelly: So you, we will go back then and we talk about these guys being…a little jealous of you when you came back to the unit. Were some of them coming out and shaking your hands and petting you on the back?

Burns: Ever…just about everybody was, yeah, yeah.

Kelly: They did that, yeah.

Burns: Everybody was. You know it’s kind of interesting that…th…that, you know, I was, I was sus…I was…expendable, 120:00you know, that they could send me to, up to the front, you know, and, and let me go on that. It was a raid, that’s what we was, there was a raid, the troops were actually raiding a strong hole up there in those mountains, and…and so…circumstances, as it were, and then it, it turned out that it was to my good in the long run, so.

Kelly: Mm-mm. Did, did getting a distinguished service cross, did that kind of help you to… Burns: Rise, rise.

Kelly: …rise above your, your background? Was, was that a big thing for you?

Burns: Yeah, it really was.

Kelly: I ha…describe it for me, I mean….

Burns: Well….

Kelly: …what it meant to you.

Burns: I got a, I got a…radio announcement from Kate Smith. She sent my mother a dozen roses, and…I was on…I was in the Armed Forces magazine, and, and it had some publicity 121:00to that. And when I came home, why several people met me at the…at the…bus, you know.

Kelly: Mm-mm. This is different, isn’t it.

Burns: It was different, but I always hated that I lost a pair of new shoes. I forgot to get them off the bus. I [Chuckling] had them up in the rack and that was a good pair army shoes, you know, and I didn’t get home with them. Yeah. I, I didn’t, I, I was a person who p… I was a, I really appreciated everything. I mean, when I put a piece of bread in my mouth, I would just feel how good it was, you know, that I was grateful.

Kelly: Mm-mm. And…getting your life back in, in some kind of an order after this hard…situation for you as, as you were growing up…when you got the distinguished service cross that, that helped you, and then…how were you able to get your education. The guard (costed?)…. 122:00Burns: When I was in the service, there was a fellow by the name of Harry (Atkinson?) from Brookline, Massachusetts, and he was a educator. He was the person that could read the French signs, and the Italian signs, he taught himself Italian while we were going to Italy, Sicily, he taught himself German, and he told me, he said, “Sam,” he said, “when you get out of the service, I want you to go back to school.” So with his encouragement, and with all the, the things that I had seen, I realized my inabilities, and…at, as a sophomore, I got back, I was going on twenty-three years old.

Kelly: You went back to high school.

Burns: I went back to high school, but I was a little self-conscious about going to Springfield, because I knew too many people, so my mother and I left Springfield and went to Campbellsville, and we rented a little efficiency over there near Campbellsville College, Campbellsville High School. I went to Campbellsville High School for a year, and then I heard about the GED 123:00test. So I went over to Lindsey Wilson and took the GE test, I think I aced that thing.

Kelly: Really?

Burns: I really made good grade there. I came back and they accepted me in Campbellsville Junior College, and I went two years there, and I met my wife there, and then I transferred…then I went, I taught school at Riley, Kentucky, and my wife taught at Gravel Switch and I…I, I ran, opened a little grocery store there and had a fourth class post office.

Kelly: Where is this?

Burns: In Riley, Kentucky. And I hung the mail, I was the mail messenger, and I hung the mail for the train to catch as it went back and forth. And…I, I stayed there a couple of years and, and I taught one year and then, and I ran the business next year and my wife continued to teach at Gravel Switch. She and I were the, we both taught at, at Riley the first year. She had the upper four grades, where we went she had the upper four grades, she had, we didn’t have eighth grade because 124:00when they got to the eighth grade they dropped out, see. We had one through seven. And then we moved to Danville, Kentucky, and I transferred my credits to Center and Center wouldn’t accept my GED certification. They took some of my high sch…of my college credits and applied them back to my deficiency in high school. So I had to take an extra year at Center, so I went to Center three years after….

Kelly: How, how did you finance it?

Burns: GI Bill.

Kelly: GI Bill.

Burns: GI Bill, all….

Kelly: Took care of all of it.

Burns: All the way.

Kelly: So you are a Center Alumni.

Burns: I’m a Center Alumni, yeah.

Kelly: Yeah.

Burns: Yeah. I graduated with…fairly good grades, I didn’t have any….

Kelly: Well, when, when you get back from the Army now, you, you meet this other lady that’s, that’s been so good to you, say, are, are you, your world now, just a, the contrast between your, your life’s situation.

Burns: Well I’ve always been 125:00kicked uphill. When people kick me, it’s always been to my good, because…I don’t know whether the Lord really had a real liking for me or not, but…I would lose maybe a job and then get a job three times better.

Kelly: Mm, is that right?

Burns: Yeah.

Kelly: Do you have any bitterness toward some of these people that did, cut your tie….

Burns: Yeah, yeah, I don’t have a person, I don’t; there is not another person in the world I dislike.

Kelly: Is that right?

Burns: I’ve been disappointed by a few people, but I figure that…you know, I always…refer to that bible verse where it says vengeance is mine, I will pay, I’ve been beat out of a lot of money, I’ve been very good to people, I picked up a…a, a thousand hitchhikers and bought their meal for them. I’ve even bought clothes for them and….

Kelly: Have you ever had drinking problems or anything like that with all this….

Burns: I never drunk, because my stepfather drank and I promised God, 126:00if he let me live to get away from that place, that I would never touch it. So I never drank.

Kelly: Was he mean to you?

Burns: Please?

Kelly: Was your stepfather mean to you?

Burns: Oh very mean to me, he hit me with a roll of cups one time and I had, and I had my mother bought a roll of cups and had them wrapped in piece of brown paper and (popping sound) he hit me in the face and broke the cups. I never will forget that. And….

Kelly: Well, let me get you back to the war. Is there anything else about that…about the Distinguished Service Cross that we need to get on record?

Burns: Well, I was given to by W. B. Smith, he is a, I think he was chief of staff then for Eisenhower and….

Kelly: Where was that? Where were you awarded it? In Washington D. C.?

Burns: No, I was awarded in North Africa.

Kelly: North Africa.

Burns: Yeah. I, I don’t remember when it was, it was a few months after that. I heard, I heard one statement and, and when I was in…I 127:00can’t remember where it was, Sici…I guess it was in, I believe it was in Anzio we had Hap Arnold. His son, to the best I remember, had something to do with our outfit, was, he was the head of it, of, of that 45th Division. Was Hap Arnold over there?

Kelly: I don’t know, I don’t think so.

Burns: Well, anyway, Hap Arnold’s son, I remember hearing Hap Arnold tell one of the officers when I was in Anzio “how come you didn’t recommend him for the Congressional Medal of Honor?” Kelly: Is that right?

Burns: I heard him say that. He said, “you will never have anybody to do any more for a medal (that honor?), you know, he said, “well I thought, you know, this was….

Kelly: Wh…when you, when they pin that medal on you, can you describe that feeling for me?

Burns: Yeah, that was, that was quite something, yeah, I remember, I still have it at home, I should have brought it and showed it to you. I liked the word where it says for valor, 128:00it’s engraved on the back, it got my name on the back, and it’s got ‘for valor’ on the front, see.

Kelly: Have, have you ever watched people get decorated?

Burns: On, only mostly on TV, you know, or….

Kelly: You know, when a guy gets a high award he, it’s an unusual expression comes over his face, have you ever noticed that?

Burns: Yeah.

Kelly: Huh?

Burns: Yeah.

Kelly: Did you….

Burns: I, I experienced, I had a, I had a, you know, sort of a big grin, yeah, yeah; I remember that.

Kelly: it’s not just a grin, you know, I mean it’s a, it’s a….

Burns: It, it….

Kelly: …there is something going on in the, the heart is doing something that makes the guy look different. I mean his, his exp…his color changes, for one thing. And his expression changes and I’m just trying to get you to tell me how you felt. I know there is a unusual feeling there.

Burns: Yeah.

Kelly: I felt it myself.

Burns: Yeah, well.

Kelly: Can you, can you tell me about that? Can you recall that for me?

Burns: Well I remember that, I remember when they were getting, they were, they called me, 129:00and I was kind of shabby, and they told me to clean up real good and…and they said, “shave and clean up,” said, “a General wants to see you.” I believe they said it, you know, and that scared me, you know. Well, what have I done wrong now? I w…I w…I’ve always had a sort of a…a sense of…I had a, when I was teaching school my principal would leave a note in the box for me. I, I had a sort of a defensive nature, you know, what have I done wrong now, you know.

Kelly: They cut your tie off again.

Burns: Yeah. So they said for me to get cleaned up, and shaved and cleaned up that the General wanted to see me. And you know I wasn’t, I didn’t know I was going to get the medal until I got to the assembly area where it was, see. I mean I’d, I, I, I had a feeling it was coming and I understood that it had been recommended, you know. But then, I guess, basically, I probably thought maybe that might 130:00be what it was but I didn’t know what it was.

Kelly: The whole battery in formation?

Burns: No, no, it did…it wasn’t too much of a gathering, it was several officers and I think Fred (Gainer?) was, was there and, and…I think…I’m not sure where the, who it was, but some of the lieutenants were there and…and this officer came up in a jeep and got out and had a driver and maybe there was two jeeps or something like that. And he said, “where is this young man?” And they motioned me to come over and, and there was, you know, it wasn’t too long about it at all, you know, and he pined it on my lapel and he gave me the box.

Kelly: What did you do after you got it on?

Burns: Oh, I looked at it a little bit. I think somebody took some pictures but I never did get any of them, and….

Kelly: And then…and then what did you do? Went, went back to your….

Burns: I took if off and put it in my barracks bag 131:00and carried it all the way through for the rest of the war, nearly.

Kelly: Did you write home, tell your mom?

Burns: I wrote home, told mom. I may have som…( ) but you know, I think the best I remember that…I am not sure whether it got s…the colors got soiled or something, but anyway it seemed like to me, it seemed like to me, there was some tripe’s action on this side of the water about replacing the ribbons or something or, you know.

Kelly: Who else got the Distinguished Service Cross in Kentucky? Do you know any other, anybody else that got it?

Burns: Not a soul. Do you?

Kelly: No, I don’t right off the top of my head, no.

Burns: What medal did you get?

Kelly: I never had any… Burns: Oh, you said something about proud of….

Kelly: Yeah. I, I’ve had, I’ve had…a minor award for valor but nothing like that., and some good medals for dis…distinguished service, but….

Burns: It would have something to have gotten the congressional, wouldn’t it!

Kelly: Yeah, yeah.

Burns: And…. 132:00Kelly: Huh, huh…so it was just kind of a short-lived thing then, and you put it in your bag and went on back to….

Burns: Went back to work, yeah.

Kelly: Yeah, okay. Then, let’s go to the next big event then, and…I, I believe we want to move since we’re, we’re kind of…burning up a lot of time here, I want to move to the incident where the ((Carraco?)?) and (Goatley?) got killed, and…at Salerno.

Burns: Yeah, that was sad.

Kelly: And would you start out and tell me exactly what was going on just before it occurred and then describe what happened.

Burns: Well, when, when we were there…some of our troops had gotten cut off and was pretty much surrounded by the Germans, but the best I remember, they got back. This was pretty close to…Salerno. I remember one time I was…I had dug a hole 133:00and some way or another I got a hold of a, rather than have an M-1 or 03, I had a Tommy gun. They had issued the tr…half track drivers, I believe Tommy guns, and I had a, an old army, somebody in, in, in England had given me a scarf which you could turn inside, half way inside and pull it down make a toboggan over it, see. Well I had that, I had four or five clips, forty-five caliber ammunition for my Tommy gun. I kept it in that old cap [Chuckling] and carried it with me, and I remember one time we was pretty close to the German line, I, I mean you could almost feel them, they were so close and I had dug a hole and I was lying in it and…I believe it was Plug, because Plug and I were pretty close, we fought together quite a bit. Plug rolled in the hole on the top of me. There was a machinegun 134:00fire and he was looking for a place to go and he, and he rolled in there, and he, and it’s a good thing I froze, because I would have hurt him, you know, I, I, I did, I thought it was a German, and he rolled in on the top of me and then of course I realized it was Plug, and he was a great big boy too.

Kelly: What did he weigh?

Burns: He weighed over two hundred. That’s the reason they called him Plug, I guess. Well, anyway, we had white stars on our trucks and the Germans then got to putting white stars on their vehicles, and then we would put a, about a four-inch circle around our stars touching each tip of the stars as they went around, you know, and then the Germans would put a circle around their stars, see. And then we would put a grrreeaat big foot-wide circle around our stars, and the Germans would do that too, see. So I remember that, I know that the pilots were quite a bit confused 135:00and so forth, you know. So I remember when they pulled us up close to, to the line…we had…we put nets over it for the, sort of a draw-string where you could pull it, and…then the, the posts were leaning outward and when you pulled that s…little string, well the thing fell apart for our gun, you know. And I remember we was up there and I don’t think we had, had got that up yet, and…this plane came up over the horizon and, and, and he dived down at, at the…one gun emplacement, and that’s where Hershel Fryman was and Hershel was waving at it, waving at it, this, this was believed to have been an American pilot up that shot these people, didn’t, didn’t they?

Kelly: Yes it was.

Burns: Yeah, a P-40 or something, see.

Kelly: Yeah.

Burns: And Hershel was waving at this fellow 136:00and…and when he was waving the gun burst went off and he almost lost all of his arm, see. Well then we came on over to the, to the…we had a self-propelled gun at that time. We turned it, we got rid of our Bofors and we got half-tracks with guns mounted on a--we had one half-track that had twin machinegun turret and it rol…ran by electric, by battery, you see. And…just when this plane ducked down over the hill there, he strafed this first outfit and then he came up on ours which was a thirty, this was a thirty-seven millimeter gun mounted on half track and it had…seems like the best I remember it even had, I’m not sure it had, whether there were two barrels, 137:00or what. But anyway….

Kelly: I think it was.

Burns: Was it two barrel?

Kelly: I think so.

Burns: Yeah, two barrels, I believe there were two barrels. And ((Carraco?)?) was sitting guard on it and…he had his binoculars and he was looking toward the German line and then the German line was only a few hundred yards over our little embankment and we were sitting there, playing tonk cards at a…we’d taken a gasoline can that was empty and laid it on the ground, and we were sort of squatted around this can, and, and we had…I remember where, where (Curlie Brock?) was in that group, or not, but anyway we had…we had…the boy from out toward Maxwell, what was his name? That had got….

Kelly: (Perret?) Burns: Johnny (Perret?) and then Henry (Spence?) from up in the mountains of Kentucky, he was there. They started running. See, we, we, we had identified this plane as a friendly plane, and then he cut loose, 138:00and when he did…the whole lower part of (Perret?)’s abdomen was shot away, and Johnny, and, and Henry (Spence?) the whole back, all of his back part, was shot away.

Kelly: All right, let me, let me get a…tur…. [END OF TAPE 2002OH12.1b, SIDE 1] [START OF TAPE 2002OH12.1b, 139:00 SIDE 140:002] [Long Pause] Burns: Did someone tell you about them so that was it?

Kelly: I’m, I’m Colonel Arthur Kelly and I’m in Frankfort, Kentucky, I’m with…Sam Burns from Springfield, Kentucky, member of the 106 National Guard Unit Battery C, we’re talking about…the Salerno incident when…two of the Washington County boys were killed by a friendly plane. Okay, you’re talking about (Perret?) getting hit now--I mean…the other boy.

Burns: Johnny (Perret?) and (Carraco?).

Kelly: (Carraco?), yeah.

Burns: Yeah, Je…Joh…John R. (Carraco?)--he was from…around…what is that? St. Matthews, St…what’s the name of the Catholic School down below Springfield there, 141:00Saint… Kelly: Saint Rose.

Burns: Saint Jos…Saint, the college.

Kelly: You’re talking about in Bardstown?

Burns: No, Springfield.

Kelly: Springfield.

Burns: This is where Carrac…J. R. (Carraco?) was from, yeah.

Kelly: Mm-mm. Well, anyway, go ahead.

Burns: Anyway, he was sitting on the top of the gun and…he had in….

Kelly: When you say on the top of the gun, what do you mean?

Burns: He was sitting up in one of the gun seats.

Kelly: In the gun seat?

Burns: One of the gun seats.

Kelly: On the left side or the right side?

Burns: I don’t remember which one it was, ( )….

Kelly: Okay.

Burns: …and, but he would had a pair of binoculars around and he was watching for planes, and this plane was coming at us and no one didn’t, needed to take defense because….

Kelly: Friendly.

Burns: …we identified it as an American plane, see, and…so he cut loose, he c…just as he cut loose on the first gun sight, they both…he hit at the first gun sight before he got the second gun sight.

Kelly: You mean the gun position.

Burns: Gun position, yeah. And… Kelly: Out of C Battery, right?

Burns: Of C Battery, yeah, and he, and that’s where (Fryman, Fryman?) was up about….

Kelly: Yeah.

Burns: …a hundred yards in front of us… Kelly: Just….

Burns: …before…. 142:00Kelly: Where is (Fryman?) from? Was he a draftee or… Burns: (Fryman?) is from….

Kelly: …was he a guardsman?

Burns: He was, he, he wasn’t a guardsman….

Kelly: Okay.

Burns: …but he got attached to us later--Hershel, Hershel (Fryman?) Kelly: Okay.

Burns: And…so…(Carraco?) was sitting up in one of the gun seats and…and he had identified the plane as friendly, and we were sitting there and no one offered to get up because it was an American plane. And we were playing tonk and…I remember I pulled the gun, I pulled the…hands, the hands, cards, five cards that, that Johnny (Perret?) had in his hand. I brought them home, and I’m not sure I gave it to the parents or not, but I remember, and, and…Henry (Spence?) I pulled the cards out of his hand, both people were dead and still gripping their hands to the card.

Kelly: Really?

Burns: Yeah. And Carra…(Carraco?) then, when he, he was shot, he was just turning to get off the gun, when he realized 143:00that was hostility, and the bullet hit him in the back of the head. I remember and it came out and pushed his eyeball out, I remember that, see.

Kelly: Which eyeball did he get?

Burns: I don’t remember, it seemed like to me, it was the left eyeball that went, hit him.

Kelly: Mm-mm. And then entered the right, the back of his head.

Burns: Entered the back part of his head and came out this eye.

Kelly: What kind of a bullet are we talking about?

Burns: Fifty-caliber.

Kelly: Fifty-caliber, that’s a great big hole then wasn’t it.

Burns: Oh boy!

Kelly: So he, he was killed instantly.

Burns: Yeah, all three men were killed instantly, yeah.

Kelly: Uh-huh. Did…you, you were saying something about he fell on you or something?

Burns: He fell over me. I was, I was up against the bottom of the, of the half track, I, I, I had pulled all the metal I could between me and the plane approaching, see? After I realized, see, I was sitting playing cards with them! But you know I, I, I was, I had developed something that I don’t know whether other people had developed it or not. I always developed the idea, if I am attacked from this part, I, when I get in my car, 144:00before I go somewhere, I sort of map out my route in my head, where I’m going to go, and that keeps you from starting out and going in the wrong direction to start out with, see. Well, I was sitting there playing cards with these fellows and I had sort of summed up what I was going to do, if a plane came. So my….

Kelly: Thinking ahead.

Burns: …I worked on it by impulse. And when that plane opened up the gun fire, I (Clapping hands together sound) dived to the rear of that half track, and let all that steel between the plane and me, and (Carraco?) fell off over me, whether it was any weight or contact, I can’t remember but, I know he slumped to the ground within inches of me, see. (Carraco?), huh, I mean…Henry (Spence?) and Johnny (Perret?), when they saw the plane coming, they jumped up and started running away from the half track, at right angles too. And…they 145:00were cut down, I’m not, whether it was the same machine gun that got them both or whether the one was behind the other, I know, but one of them got his entire abdomen shot away, that was (Perret?) I believe it was, and (Spence?) got the entire back of his lower back shot away.

Kelly: Mm-mm. How many, how many were killed in this incident.

Burns: Three.

Kelly: Three.

Burns: And then Hershel (Fryman?) almost lost his arm, I figured they was just going to cut his arm off it was just hanging by the bicep muscle, but I, I open up a, a, a, a container of sulfur, you know that, whatever it is sulfur ( ) whatever it is, you know that, and I sprinkled, I remember doing that to Hershel (Fryman?)’s arm. And you I saw him twenty-five years later? He was playing pool with that arm and it was about that much shorter than the other arm. They had grafted a piece of bone in there. He couldn’t, he couldn’t 146:00move his arm in that direction because all that muscle was gone. He would pull it up this way and let gravity take it down. And he was, he could shoot pool, you see, and let the weight of the pool stick take his hand back in. I remember that.

Kelly: When you saw this incident, of someone you knew real close get butchered like that, can you recall what that did to you, what your feelings were?

Burns: Well there was a, there was a awful a sort of anguish feeling, you know, that these precious boys that had been slaughtered for no reason at all, you know, because of--but see the, it goes back to this drawing these circles around these stars, you see. They, they, they were so close to the front when this plane dived down and, and he was strafing enemy positions within a thousand feet of us, and when he, when he nosed up and came over that little draf…rise there, there was some more vehicles right against them , see. So he just opened up his guns and went on through. 147:00And when he landed, I understand when they landed, why, he was puzzled as whether or not he had shot some American ( ) our boys.

Kelly: Yeah, I think Tom (Duncan?) went back to see him.

Burns: Did he really?

Kelly: Somebody did, as I understand, I mean. I believe Tom ( ) said something about this. Let me cut this off just a second.

(Pause) Kelly: The…continue with the…(Carraco?) and (Perret?) Burns: Yeah, I remember I, I told you before, I, I pry the cards that they were holding in their hands; I brought them home with me and kept them for a long time. I’m not sure that I gave Mrs. (Perret?) those cards or not, but they got lost as time went on. And when I came back from overseas, why, I was attached to a cavalry outfit in Fort George G. Mead, Maryland.

Kelly: Can you describe that…that pall of gloom that came into the battery over 148:00that incident?

Burns: Oh that was awful, that was awful, yeah. Of course, they, we weren’t there too much long…longer there at Salerno. Then we came back and started preparing for the invasion of Anzio.

Kelly: Before you do this now, this, this incident, a…after they’re killed and, and you know the glooms comes into that organization, can you describe that?

Burns: Yeah.

Kelly: The, the expressions on the faces, the…tones of the process.

Burns: These, these boys, now you take (Carraco?), J. R. (Carraco?)…a bi…I can see him as clearly right now in my mind’s eye as I can my hand in front of my face. He was a sort of a red faced, you know, always black, black hair as could be, and…he…did his job to the best, 149:00in fact, he was so conscientious about his work that he was sitting up on that gun watching at that ( ) to see any, any plane, and he reassured us when this plane approached that it was, it was an American plane. He said, “okay, P-40,” I believe it was a P-40, yeah. And…so we all just continued sitting around this gas can playing tonk you know, and I can see him now as clearly and he, he, he was a, a real country-like boy and just as pure and honest and sincere, and when you took him out, you missed him, because…and, and (Perret?) was such a neat person. He was clean, exceptionally clean. 150:00I mean he’d shave every day, I mean, I don’t care if he had to shave in his helmet or what it was, he was clean, and he was real proficient too, and, and he was missed, and, and, and Henry (Spence?) was a person who laughed all the time, and he’d keep you in stitches, and… Kelly: The…the…after…the incident, when they were dead there, can you, tell me, how, what happened.

Burns: We were numb, just like numb, I mean there was not much talking best I can remember that was, wasn’t much talking, there was just, you know, wasn’t that awful? You know. I, I can remember that it seems like there was a hush.

Kelly: Anybody crying?

Burns: Crying, well there was nobody that felt good about it, you know, I mean there is nobody that, there was not much laughter, as far as I can remember, I can remember that there was, there was a gloom, there was a gloom 151:00over ( ) sad.

Kelly: And, and…the…( ) up the, the mess, can you describe that, what happened?

Burns: Well it was sad, you know, that, that when you saw something that belonged to them, you know, you wanted to more or less hold on to it, that’s the reason I held on to the cards. I kept them all west, way through the, the war and brought them home, I was going…of course they were, I didn’t know whether it would be too happy to have them because they were cards, a lot of people associate cards with….

Kelly: Evil.

Burns: …with evil, you know.

Kelly: Did…did you all load them in to a truck and take them back to the medics, or… Burns: I don’t know.

Kelly: …did somebody come into the unit and get them. I….

Burns: I don’t, I don’t recall. There was quite a commotion. There was quite, and a lot of, a lot of people came around after that, you know, to the best I can remember. It seemed like to me there was an ambulance that came, and maybe two of them 152:00and, and loaded them on stretchers.

Kelly: Almost immediately?

Burns: Almost immediately, and, and, and (Fireman?) the boy that got his arm almost severed, the entire bone was shot away and the entire triceps muscle was shot away, all that was left was just some of the biceps. And I remember after my opening a, a pa…package of powered sulfur and I sprinkled it around over that, yeah they were, there was about six inches, four to six inches of his entire back of his arm was shot away. I figured they might just take a knife and cut that on off, but they didn’t do it, they restored his arm, see. And…yeah that was, it was, it was, it was a real shock. We didn’t lose too many troops….

Kelly: No.

Burns: …from the time we left to the time we got back.

Kelly: No, no. At Salerno, any other unusual things happened to you 153:00while you were there?

Burns: No, I…we weren’t, we weren’t at Salerno much over, let’s see, we, I guess we…two months, two months, two and a half months probably the maximum length, wasn’t it, at Salerno, until we got ready to go to Anzio? We went to An…Anzio on January 22nd, 1945. We used a lot of time in preparing. We had to waterproof our vehicles. We put little breathing pipes on the batteries so that the air could get to the battery. We put extensions on exhausts, ran them up, and--no I, no, we closed up the batteries just before we went and then we had to open them up, I remember now, but we put…little tube leading down to the carburetor so they would get air, then we’ve brought them up above the, ( ) above the 154:00pump of the vehicles so we, we drove ashore. We had to, we took our feet and steer them, water got clear up over the cabs, yeah.

Kelly: When you went ashore at Anzio [Clears throat] was there any other unit, other than your section with you?

Burns: I don’t remember. I remember one, one incident when we went ashore to Anzio, dry sand is better than ( ) as good attraction as wet sand. I remember…some people hosing down some of the dry sands making it more, m…more… Kelly: Tractable.

Burns: Yeah, tractable, yeah, I remember that, see.

Kelly: When you went ashore, you didn’t get any, there wasn’t any trouble going on the shore, was there.

Burns: Not for us because we, we didn’t come up on, we didn’t come up at ( ) whatever area then, ( ) HR, we came in on D-Day but it was several hours after the…main 155:00assault. I did see one, one or two German soldiers still lying ahead not been picked up. One, one German…soldier, I remember was shot, and he had a, there was a bullet through the magazine of his gun, and his gun was inoperative, he wouldn’t, the bullet just happen to hit the gun where he couldn’t, couldn’t fire it, and, then he turned around and, and he was (nosed?) down. And they was having a dance at Anzio…and then, and it was such a surprise…that when they invaded this pavilion wherever it was that was up on a hilltop, that they jumped and run, and I remember one of the person telling me that the food was still warm on some of the plates in the, in the, in the…entertainment 156:00center, where they were. They had caught them by surprise ( ). But I never will forget Anzio, the bombing and the shelling of Anzio. They used those, well, I’ll tell you another, the most, on, we lost another t…member of the troop, at…a place…pretty close to…Ca…Monte Cassino. We went up, up in that area….

Kelly: Before you went to Anzio.

Burns: Before we went to Anzio, yeah after we left Salerno.

Kelly: Did you see the Abbey?

Burns: I saw the abbey at a distance, it was something….

Kelly: From your position?

Burns: …but looked like bombed out…but the Germans were still in the belly of that thing firing out, you know, and…it rained every day of the world, I remember a boy getting killed. I forget what his name was, his was a, 157:00in Battery C…a piece of shrapnel hit him right in the, right in the throat and cut his…jugular vein and ( ), yeah.

Kelly: How many, how many men were killed in Battery C?

Burns: I don’t know. But this boy was killed there, down off of, in the valley below Monte Cassino. The Germans had…they were over on, over on a real, it was a great big piece, a very big mountain. The Germans were on one side of it, we was on the other side and out in the distance was a…monastery, sitting out in the open, I remember, I stayed all night in the monastery, a few nights, because they afforded dryness. We would dig a (sleep?) trench, not a (sleep?) trench but a…place to lie ourselves, fox hole, and we would break olive branches off of the trees and put them down on the bottom of them and put our shelter half over it and, and we’d 158:00get down there and lie down and it wouldn’t be long you could feel water on your elbows and water on your hips where it had seeped in and kept run, and…and it, it, you just couldn’t sleep in the holes because it was too much water, and this boy that got killed, he was sleeping on the top of the ground, and got that piece of shrapnel.

Kelly: Was it cold?

Burns: Cold rain, cold rain. We were there, when we got up on the mountains…beyond Monte Cassino, we had snow. I remember there was a cistern that was partially expo…exposed on the south side….

Kelly: Wow, you mean, what do you mean up on the mountain beyond Co…Monte Cassin…or the ( )?

Burns: Well, we were, we were up in the mountains…I forget the name of the town, we was up, up in the, way up and there 159:00was snow on the mountains, you know. And I remember…I remember there was a cistern to, to hold water, and it was built on the side of the hill, and half of it, part of it was exposed and an artillery shell had hit this cistern and had knocked a hole in the side of it, and…it was dry for some reason, I remember that some of the troops went into this cistern and took, because they had a roof over it, and it was opposite of the German fire, I remember we used to…we could…we were.

Kelly: Good shelter?

Burns: Make a good shelter, yeah. It….

Kelly: Was that, was that just for a section that was up there or was it more than….

Burns: I don’t remember, I don’t remem…I remember… Kelly: Was this, was this north of the abbey, or south of it?

Burns: I can’t remember….

Kelly: It, it must have been south, unless it was after….

Burns: Venefro!

Kelly: Huh?

Burns: Have you ever heard of Venefro?

Kelly: Is that the name of?

Burns: Venefro?

Kelly: Is that the name of the town?

Burns: Yeah. Have you got that name? 160:00Kelly: I don’t know, I’ll look and see.

Burns: That….

Kelly: That, that was in the…that was in….

Burns: V-e-n-e-f-r-o.

Kelly: That was in Italy and it was before….

Burns: Before Anzio.

Kelly: Before Anzio, mm-mm. Okay. Let’s go on back up to Anzio then and, and…try to give me an understanding for the, the pounding you took while you were there.

Burns: Well….

Kelly: And start out, you know, at the first day and, and, and, and…be….

Burns: Did, did, let me read you this…you want, you want to see this little clipping that they wrote in the Loui…the Courier Journal?

Kelly: Read it.

Burns: What did I do with it? Here it is. Let me see. It said, “with the 5th Army in Italy, January the 28th, there are just two kinds of people in our invasion forces around Anzio, those who can run for cover when the Luftwaffe comes over, as it does every hour or so, and those who just have to stay out there and take it. Prominent 161:00among the later are the men who run Anzio Harbor and men who men the gun. There isn’t time for the engineers to take cover, and if they did every time there was a plane raid, they wouldn’t get anything done. Anti aircraft gunmen naturally have to stay at their post no matter how many bombs drop or how many (hack-hack?) fragments are showering down. They just have to keep their chin up and do their jobs, going coolly about the business around the Harbor…this morning when we had four or five rousing raids in the area, it was one of the finest collection of brave men in the United States Army. There are some sitting calmly around waiting for the next wave of Germans to come in which they did within a few minutes were a crew of two pompom guns, including five Kentuckians, James E. Jones, 1020 North Lime 162:00Street, Lexington, Kentucky, and Corporal Sammy Burns, RFD3, Springfield, Kentucky, and Corporal Larry (Abbergast?) Fort Thomas, Kentucky, and Private Wallace (Buger?) of Harrodsburg, and Corporal John Chambers of Independence.” See?

Kelly: All right. First day and take it, kind a day at a time and, and give me a feeling for the skill or the intensity, or the degree, or whatever you want to call it, of, of, of…both bombing and killing.

Burns: There was not too much silence at the time we were them, it, it, it, and when there was…I think sometimes that the…the shelling was more or less…sort of guide the planes then where they wanted them to hit a lots of time, they, they, 163:00it was, I, I don’t remember how many days I was there, I was, we landed on January 22nd, and it was up in February. I believe it was in February that I got to come on home on the point system, so I was there at least two weeks and…or maybe a little better, and…I remember one time…the bombs were so, so intense, that I went down into a basement of an old building, this was at night, we, we couldn’t do much firing at night, because we couldn’t see anything, that I stood in the doorway back in the building, because I figured that, that was the strongest point of the building. When that bomb that it felt everywhere, everywhere, the Germans seemed like they threw everything they had at us, and then the artillery came in, the screaming and, they had another instrument they used, we called them (crying mammies?) have you ever heard of those things?

Kelly: Mm-mm, mm-mm.

Burns: And they, they, they 164:00like six or eight of those, would go off at a time, they’d fire those in, you know, and they hit all at the same time, just about, see. But…I c…we, we were most fortunate, we didn’t lose too many troops, but we really did see the action at Anzio.

Kelly: Did you get, did you get, did you get something in your immediate area every day?

Burns: Well see, we were just a small foot hole on the Anzio, it, it was a resort city, as I remember, and…the Germans didn’t have too big a target, but they had plenty of guns and they all fired at that one place, and I remember one person saying, you know, if we could fire back with the same intensity that they are firing at us, we’d have to have, you know, twenty times more guns and things, because they were all sending in on that one little place. I don’t know, they might have been a time, I guess they thought about maybe giving that thing up there 165:00it was really, it was really bad. Because I don’t, we were down on, right at the edge of the water there, at one time, protecting unloading of ships and they unloaded ships and they were strafing them at the same time, they were still unloading. They didn’t quit for anything.

Kelly: [Clears throat] When the, when the shells came in, you all took your, you, you went in your holes, didn’t you.

Burns: Well….

Kelly: Except maybe for one or two guys that would be on duty?

Burns: Yeah. We…there was a lot of, there was a lot of rock work. Anzio was more or less on a cliff-like town, see and I remember one time, we took refuge in a tunnel at night. It was big, the trains didn’t, of course they didn’t run, the war was, I guess they had been blown up so much, but there was a pretty nice long tunnel running right around the cliff there at Anzio and I….

Kelly: So it was a lot pretty safe there wasn’t it.

Burns: Oh, it was nice, yeah. 166:00But the Germans, they strafed both ends of it, see. I remember the first time we were there, the first night we were there, it seem like to me, we pulled in our halftracks, we had the halftracks at that time, it seems like to me we pulled them in at night and then brought them out during the day, see. You think forty-nine years, it’s hard on your memory, do you know that? Yeah.

Kelly: Mm-mm. What was the worse, closest that, or the worse crisis you had while you were on Anzio? Do you recall that bombing, or artillery, or….?

Burns: It was…it was really…scary, specially with…when you look up into the darkness, you can’t see a thing, and you hear a bomb fall, [Imitates bomb falling sound] hiiiiiiiiiiio, it gets louder as it comes and it burst 167:00pretty close to you, and then you could hear the shrapnel as it cuts through bushes and things, you know, and…and then you, then you hear another plane go over it and you look up and you hear a little pop, and you look up and you see a big bright fire and then here comes the…flares, they drop flares now, and then….

Kelly: A flare, a flare, a, a….

Burns: It, it had a eerie feel about it because you, you’re getting brighter and brighter as it comes towards the ground, you know, and if you’re pretty close to it, you get lit up buddy, see, and then here comes the plane over and he is dropping bombs and then the artillery comes in. It, Anzio, I guess was….

Kelly: Was the flare an extra… scary experience?

Burns: Yeah, because you, you, you have no defense against the thing, it, it’s lightening you up and you don’t want to be lit up, you know, and they’re, they’re seeing where they, where you are, see. We would try to--I would, I would try to get behind, you know, a shadow, maybe like a wall, 168:00there was a lot of rock work and trees and things there in Anzio. I remember one time going down into a, a basement, and that thing had a greeeat big wine vat in that thing. Boy, it was would hold thousands and thousands of gallons of wine and of course I never drank and it didn’t bother me, but…some of the boys enjoyed the delicacies of that Italian wine, you know.

Kelly: There was plenty of wine going around there, wasn’t it, on Anzio?

Burns: There’s plenty of it, yeah.

Kelly: A lot of them was drinking.

Burns: We never had any abuse. I, I’ve never seen men, I’ve never seen anybody that…was abusive to any--you know, drugs was something you never heard of, we never, never even thought about it. I guess we were quite naïve or stupid or something, or dumb, we didn’t know anything about the ways of the, we didn’t have anybody that drank, about the only thing that boys did that probably would be they, they smoked, you know, if, a lot of chain smokers, they got that way, 169:00their nerves got on edge, you know. They…they furnished the cigarettes. I know I learned to smoke overseas, but I quit when I came back.

Kelly: Mm-mm. So you left right in the middle of Anzio, then.

Burns: I left about two weeks…and after Anzio was invaded, so….

Kelly: Were you first, were you the first to leave from C Battery?

Burns: I can’t, I think George (Moore?) left before I did.

Kelly: Yes he did.

Burns: Yeah.

Kelly: And then you?

Burns: Yeah. You know George, someone said he faked a, a…purple heart you know, somebody said that, you know.

Kelly: Is that right?

Burns: Yeah, did you hear him I said that, I said to George, said, “George where are the planes?” And George said, “there they are, way over there,” and said the bomb went off and hit him on his finger.

Kelly: Ha! [Chuckle – Kelly].

Burns: And he got the Purple Heart.

Kelly: Is that right [Laughter – Kelly].

Burns: Yeah, had you heard that?

Kelly: No.

Burns: You hadn’t heard that.

Kelly: The…was Colonel, Captain (Gayner?) a pretty good b…commander?

Burns: He was very, 170:00very proficient. He, he didn’t take any plays, he very seldom see him smile, but he was….

Kelly: Business.

Burns: …most appreciative. He is the fellow that appreciated seeing things done well.

Kelly: Is that right?

Burns: Yeah. I remember…I got to remember him now, we used to, the Germans used to put piano strings wire across the road and decapitate people in jeeps and motorcycles and things like that, and we came along and welded a big angle iron up and then put a hook on the front it and they would cut those wires as they went down, did you, did you know that?

Kelly: Mm-mm, mm-mm.

Burns: And I remember (Gayner?) was, he, he would never, he, he’d make, almost make a good Patton. He was not afraid of anything.

Kelly: Is that right?

Burns: He would go out at night and he would, he, the first thing he did when he heard about me, he came over to see me and you saw that picture, didn’t you, Kelly: Mm-mm, 171:00 mm-mm.

Burns: Yeah, yeah. I was, I should have gone to his…fiftieth wedding anniversary with his wife, they had a party that night. There is a picture that’s kind of been abused, you know. That’s when I was decorated--when I unveiled the Roll of Honor up at Fort George G. Mead, Maryland. Can you make out that one medal on my left there? Can you see it?

Kelly: Uh-uh.

Burns: There was one by itself; I think that’s mine.

Kelly: Mm-mm. Oh yeah, it is. Yeah, yeah there is one there. Well…going back to…some of the background information. At Camp Hulan, Texas, how long were you all there and, and how did that go?

Burns: Let’s see, we left…we were, we was at Camp Hulan, 172:00I guess ten to eleven months and we only had about a month to go until we had our year in, and we left then around…we, let’s see, we went down, did we go down there in January?

Kelly: Yeah.

Burns: Is this when it was, in January?

Kelly: Yeah, yeah.

Burns: All right, then we stayed down there until…February, wasn’t it? We, we crossed the Atlantic, when was it we crossed the Atlantic? I forget now. But anyway, we, when we sailed out of (In Town?) Gap, Pennsylvania, and we boarded our ship in New York, we went up into Nova Scotia, where the ships congregated and get a, get a, Atlantic fleet together, got everything ready in Nova Scotia. Then we sailed almost to Iceland. We took a northerly route, you see.

Kelly: It was cold, wasn’t it?

Burns: It was cold. We got a, seem like to me, when we landed in, we landed in Glas…outside of Glasgow, Scotland 173:00– we didn’t land, we just pulled up there, and we got on a, a ferry and they ferried us back over to Belfast. This….

Kelly: Wa…was Northern Ireland a pretty good place to be?

Burns: Please?

Kelly: Was Northern Ireland a pretty good place to be?

Burns: Well, we had to be on our toes on account of the IR, what is it, IR….

Kelly: IRA?

Burns: …IRA, yeah because they stole some of our vehicles….

Kelly: Did they?

Burns: …not particularly ours, but they stole some American vehicles, and they shot at a few of our gun sites.

Kelly: Had they really?

Burns: Yeah, we set up a gun site in Northern Ireland quite near Belfast, not Belfast but a little town called…Portavogie County Down, Northern Ireland.

Kelly: Yeah, the County Down is where my folks came from.

Burns: Is that right?

Kelly: Mm-mm.

Burns: I met the sweetest family in the world there, in Portavogie.

Kelly: Were they pretty good to you?

Burns: All sweet, yeah, they was ( ). We…the 174:00Irish, some of the Irish we talked to they’re kinda, you know, were picking at us so that they called us the colony, use of the colony, you know, some ( ).

Kelly: Making fun of you.

Burns: Making fun of us.

Kelly: Yeah. [Clears throat]. In Africa, at Kasserine Pass, Colonel, then Captain (Gayner?) told me that at one time you all were deployed and…set up to engage tanks at, at Kasserine, did you know about that?

Burns: We, we we…would we, yeah when…we, we did, we got a, I remember setting up our…forty millimeter Bofors I remember putting it over behind a rock wall, and had the barrel right down on the edge of the rock wall waiting for tanks.

Kelly: This was at Kasserine?

Burns: Seems like to me it was at a little town known as…when we come up, we came up from Gafsa to…Farriana 175:00and Talep. It seems like it was a little bit west of Talep the best I remember. We met a British brigade down there and they asked us….

Kelly: Do you know when it was, what, what time of the year it was? February, or January.

Burns: I don’t remember, I don’t remember.

Kelly: But anyway…how long were you in that position with the, prepare the?

Burns: Oh, not too long at all. We kept…seems like to me, the…best I can remember is that Rommel needed elbow room to turn around to get up in there and, and, and that’s what really happened, you know. I remember a British, meeting a British brigade when we was coming up from, from… Gafsa and they said, “where you people going? What are you running from?” [Chuckling] Ha they were--we said, “we’re not running particular, we’re just trying to get back over there and set up some positions, you know. The Germans are coming.” And he said, “well, but that’s who we’re looking for.” They, they wanted to hit them head on, you know, we was, we was trying to--we 176:00had a lot of in…there was a lot of infantry, I remember when we was coming up there they had a lot of an…boys that was carrying boys like those pictures you used to see in the civil war, you know, there was lame and limp, and I remember a, a black boy abandoned his truck because he was afraid the Germans was going to get him, and they wanted him to…pick-up some infantry troops, and…I remember, I got in the truck that he got out of and I went down, and I turned that thing around on a mound like the road was built up, kind of built up a little bit, and I turned that thing, I pulled the wheels over as far as I could, and I back up, and I pull up, and I back up, and pull up, and I got it turned around, and I picked up…a whole load of infantry boys that was trying to get in behind this barrica…these rocks, you know, and…but that seemed like to me was west of…(Heran, Heran?), or, 177:00or Talep, see? Let’s see….

Kelly: That might have been after they, that might have been after the, after Kasserine; that was the case. But anyway, you don’t remember for sure.

Burns: I don’t remember ( ).

Kelly: But you know, you know, you were, you were lined up to, in a, in a anti-tank role.

Burns: Yeah, uh-huh, I remember that, yeah.

Kelly: Were you all concerned about that?

Burns: Please?

Kelly: Were you concerned about that, frightened about it?

Burns: Well we, we felt, you know, we might be a little bit light for those kind, for that kind of work, you know.

Kelly: Mm-mm, yeah. You know, I think we….

Burns: Who wrote this book? I haven’t seen that book, you know, I’d like to get a copy of that and read that, won’t I?

Kelly: Yeah it’s, it’s a good book.

Burns: I’ve got to….

Kelly: That’s a good book, that’s a good book.

Burns: Is it?

Kelly: Huh, I think we’re about covered the waterfront here. Is there anything else you want to get on the tape, on records here, Sammy?

Burns: No, I, I’m glad that I had the o….

Kelly: I should call you Sam, I guess.

Burns: Yeah, Sam.

Kelly: That’s what everybody is calling you.

Burns: I, I’m glad that I had the opportunity to work with such 178:00a good group of people. I’ve always cherished just about everybody in Springfield. I remember when we left to go…to…Camp Hulan that I took a gallon of apple juice and went from business to business area with a li…some little paper cups, and I was toasting for my return. It was kind, kind of interesting, you know. And I got to stay at the old hotel on the corner there who was…who owned that….

Kelly: Campbell.

Burns: Campbell and that was the greatest treat for me that I, that I got to stay in a hotel, have my meals in Springfield before we left, you know, they sort of congregated us there you know, and….

Kelly: Well how would you summarize your military experience, your war experience?

Burns: Well I, as I always said, I’ve spent six years, two months, and six days in the service, you know, and that…I never had any regrets, ever, ever, ever, and I, I was never disappointed 179:00with anybody, and I always hoped that they weren’t disappointed with me, and that I carried my part of it.

Kelly: All right, all r…how would you categorize your feelings towards your service? Are you proud that you’re ( )….

Burns: I’ve always, I’ve always been proud that I….

Kelly & Burns: Served.

Burns: …that I was a serviceman, yeah. You know I was, I was, I was over in…Cincinnati one day, when the governor came over. I forget the name of the governor at that particular time and they had a, a…great big…group of people that came along with him, Kentucky…police, highway patrol, and I was sitting down there talking and I was saying I said, “aren’t you the best-looking men you ever saw,” I said, ”it makes me feel good because I am a Kentuckian, and every time I see a Kentuckian it makes me proud, you know.” And the fellow took my name down.

Kelly: Is that right?

Burns: He wanted to know who I was, you know?

Kelly: Yeah.

Burns: And do you know what happened? He did a research on me. 180:00Kelly: Is that right?

Burns: …he found, yeah, and he found out that I was the recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross, and he wrote the governor and made me a Kentucky Colonel.

Kelly: Is that right?

Burns: Yeah.

Kelly: Yeah.

Burns: Yeah.

Kelly: Tell me about your…present family, your wife.

Burns: Yeah well, I was, my wife and I have been married now for forty, it will be forty-six years ( ).

Kelly: And her, her full name, maiden name?

Burns: Her name was (Womack?) Kelly: First name?

Burns: Eleanor.

Kelly: Eleanor.

Burns: Eleanor Eloise (Womack?) Kelly: (Womack?) Burns: And….

Kelly: And how many children do you have?

Burns: We have six children.

Kelly: Their, their names?

Burns: and…John, our oldest son, he is deceased now, he died with leukemia, he was World War…war Korean veteran. He got agent orange and he came back and he died with leukemia, and he left a wife and two kids. And then after John….

Kelly: When did he die?

Burns: He died…on his mother’s birthday, September the 12th, be six years September 12th. And he was thirty-four, he 181:00would be forty now. And our next daughter, next child down, was Virginia Ellen and she is married to a, a safety engineer who works for the government. She has her Masters degree and teaches at Old Dominion University. And then the next girl down, her name is Lois, and Lois married right out of high school and put her husband through six years of college. And when he got through why she was not educated enough for him, so he took off and left her and she had all the bills and receipts and memories and a little girl. So she was sort of down on the world, but she, and the, she is going back to college now and we’re paying her way, keeping her, paying her house payments and things. And then under Lois, comes Michael, and Michael is a graduate of Wheaton College. He was noted as being the most devout Christian boy on the campus and…graduated with 182:00hi…high honors in piano, and teaches piano now down in Fort Lauderdale, in a private school, real swanky private school. And then we have another daughter named Mary, and Mary is a ten-year veteran of the air force, came out and married to an electronic engineer, and she graduated from Cincinnati, Magna Cum Laude, and she does freelancing, art freelancing, I want to show you some of that before I left ( ). And she is married to a little Polish boy and they got two boys, and they just moved to Kentucky back from Ohio, they just moved last month, up at Union, Kentucky, and so she is real proud to be back in Kentucky because she was born in, in this area and…and then after…Marie, we have a son named Brian.

Kelly: Where is he?

Burns: And he is twenty-three and believe it or not, he is teaching chess in academy.

Kelly: At WestPoint?

Burns: No, over in…. 183:00Kelly: …Air force?

Burns: …over there, with his brother in Fort Lauderdale.

Kelly: Oh, Fort Lauderdale.

Burns: And….

Kelly: Huh, go ahead.

Burns: …and they, he’s, they’re going to live close together, and mother and I are moving now, we have our house listed for sale in Port Charlotte, and we’re going to move over on the east coast where our two boys are.

Kelly: Where about?

Burns: In Fort Lauderdale.

Kelly: At Fort Lauderdale, okay.

Burns: Mm-mm. Tamarack Kelly: Tamarack and [Clears throat] you were a principal of….

Burns: Yes I, when I came back from school, I went to Campbellsville High School and then took a GED test and then went to Campbellsville Junior College and graduated and transferred to Center College and they took a year of my ( ) college work in Campbellsville and applied it to my defunct high school, and then I took an extra year, so I graduated from Center and I taught school…at Buckeye over, do you know where Buckeye, Kentucky is?

Kelly: Mm-mm.

Burns: And over by Lancaster, and then I went to Germantown, 184:00Kentucky, I was principal of a one through nine grades at Germantown, and I was a real resourceful person, I went down to the army surplus and equipped everything. I went over to Aberdeen took over a, a, a school that was in debt [Chuckling] and the lunchroom program and I, and I used a lot of frugal ability, and I also equipped their school with army surplus, put them in a big serving counter and all that stuff, you know, refrigeration and everything and I left them with a lot of money and served about forty-three hundred free meals to the boys and girls that needed it, yeah. And I was principal there for, I didn’t last but one year because I crossed, crossed the Turk of this board and he was agnostic, he hated anything to do with anything that had Christianity to it, and he would come in bringing an encyclopedia or something and say, “here is what I bought for the school, here is what I bought for the school,” and I said, “I thought 185:00that was my responsibility, you know, to take care of the school, you know.” So anyway, I went from there down to Key West and I initiated the driver training program in Key West, Florida, and my wife’s daddy got real bad, so then we came back to Midwest. I taught, taught school at, at…Elmwood Place for two years, and I taught out at Harrison school for two years, I taught in Saint Bernard for two years, and I, what’s interesting at Saint Bernard I was hired as a science major to teach English and a friend of mine who was, had a, had an English major, he was taught, and he taught science, and they never did get it straightened out for two years, here I was an English, I was a science major, taught English, I learned more grammar that year that I ever learned in my life, you know, and then after that, why then… Kelly: Are you and your wife both retired teachers?

Burns: We’re both retired, uh-huh, but…mine is disability, more or less, disability retirement.

Kelly: Is that right?

Burns: Uh-huh, because I, 186:00I got my shoulder, you know, when…I, when that bomb fell in the, in the hole with me, it dislocated my left shoulder and I had to have surgery on my left shoulder, after that, I didn’t tell you that.

Kelly: Did…did the veterans do it for you? Veterans hospital?

Burns: Uh-huh, look at that, see that popping?

Kelly: Mm-mm. Does that still bother you?

Burns: Yeah, it still bothers me. I get a twenty-percent disability on my shoulder.

Kelly: It hurt.

Burns: It hurts and it, it got a little, I think I’m getting bursitis or arthritis ( ).

Kelly: Yeah, yeah. So you….

Burns: And I get fifty percent disability on… [END OF TAPE 2002OH12.1b Side B] [END OF INTERVIEW]