Oral History Interview with Lucian Barnes Part 1

START OF TAPE 2002OH12.2a, SIDE 1] Barnes: No one knew that they weren’t allowed to take the machetes out of that sheath unless they meant to draw blood. Well we had a lot of college men in this company. We had a f…a few as dumb old men that you could find anywhere. We had this boy from Greenup, Kentucky, and I won’t name his name because…his relatives may still be living, but anyway, he went up to one of them an pulled this machete out to look at it, and this big guy, he, he, he, he, he, you could see it all over his face. That wasn’t supposed to come out without blood being drawn, so he was lucky 1:00in that he took it away from him took along his thumb, but his own blood started (pouring in?), put back and so, first--my first assignment was to an area where they had unloaded ships with everything that you could think of. They didn’t have time to do anything to get them unloaded, they didn’t have the depot set up and there was two sergeants and two enlisted men, and myself. I was put there first 2:00to separate this material. And we had about a hundred-fifty Arabs working for us of course, they could speak French, but since none of us could speak French or Arabic, why it, it didn’t help any, but I had on the idea of try to separate cases by size first, then to separate cases by markings; each case had a, a, a mark, green, yellow, red, or what have you, or, or something to identify it and I was there for maybe three weeks, and we were, we were doing, doing real well with what we had, and this captain come by one day and he said, “I’ve got a job for you, Barnes,” he said, “get in the jeep.” And we drove out to, east of town toward 3:00(Lessigne?) and… an American cemetery out there, (Mula, Mula?) the, the first graves I saw was Virgil (Beasly?). Virgil lived here in Lexington and he had trained at Camp the same…the year that I did down to Fort Knox but he was already a lieutenant from a previous year, a year, a year previous and he was ordered to tankers unit and he went in on the invasion and was killed and so he was buried at the cemetery I got a picture there in the, the…we’ll bring some pictures. So we went out there and there was about a ten-acre field, wasn’t a thing in the world on it. We got out of the jeep, he said, “you’re to establish a ration depot here.” He said, “the convoy will pull in here tomorrow morning and start unloading and you’ll start receiving merchandise. So I, I looked down, 4:00there was cracks in the ground everywhere. And I got down, laid down and I run my arm down in one of those cracked up all the way with my shoulder and didn’t hit bottom. I said, “captain….

Downs: Dry ground from….

Barnes: Yeah, I said, “Captain, I want all the dunnage that I can get in the ships; when they load the ship, they put down so many layers of whatever they’re putting down, then they lay oak boards, four six-inch and eight-inch oak boards over it and they call that dunnage. I said, “I am going to need dunnage to keep this up out of the water,” he said, “what do you mean out of the water, it don’t rain in North Africa.” I said, “the hell it don’t rain in North Africa. I remember getting washed out w…back in, in March, the last of February, I guess it was, in Canastel when they washed 5:00the pup tents away and washed the men out of their tents,” and I say, “it, it does rain.” He said, “well I was back in the winter time, it don’t rain here anymore,” I said, “it has rained here, I can, anytime you see cracks like this, it rains.” Well the stuff started coming in and trucks were lined up as far as you could see. We had about three hundred Arabs unloading trucks, and for the most part this was coming in, in fairly straight loads. You could start a, a stack of macaroni, for example, and, and you might get a couple of, of loads there before…you got into beans or something else. So the engineers had been out there and along the side of the road there was some weed trees, and they had cut down some of those trees and cut them up, 6:00up in, in sections about like this. I felt the need of an office. So I took four of those blocks, being a country boy, I could do this by myself there after I got the men going, and at that time I was still using the same men that I used at this previous installation, only we had Arabs that’d in…increased in number, from about one hundred and fifty to three hundred, and keeping those busy when they didn’t want to work…is, is rough.

Downs: Did you find anybody that spoke French?

Barnes: Yeah, I, I got, I got a few people that…the Arabs, one in particular, that was an Arab chief that spoke French, and he was good, dependable too. And I had about four 7:00that was, that was pretty good, and I built an office up on these logs and I put in a field telephone. Of course I had no door, no window on it, just openings, and I had a roof on it. I did all that by myself, it didn’t take too much time, and so one morning about nine thirty, I looked up to the North towards Algiers and there was a cloud that looked like it was bigger than my fist. I, don’t ask me how I know because I don’t 8:00know, but I knew at the time I saw those clouds, that cloud, that it was going to rain. I had men in my installation who was handling the class two and four warehouses and doing a lot of other work around Oran, and I called (Armenian?), he was a buck sergeant. I said, “(Shelby?), I know I’m not authorized to have what I’m going to ask for, but I want every tarpaulin that you can spare.” He said, “Lieutenant, how am I going to cover the paper work?” I said, “I don’t know, (Shelby?), that’s for you to figure out. I don’t have any trucks to spare, because I don’t, I’m not authorize trucks, but you commandeer a truck from somewhere and load it down with tarpaulin and send it to me, I’ll get them back to you when this is all over.” He said, what’s going on?” I said, “it’s going to rain, and I’m going to need all the tarps I can get.” “Yeah, Lieutenant, it’s not going to rain, but” he said, “I’ll send you the tarps.” 9:00They came in there, that truck about three o’clock in the afternoon and started unloading and covering up, I think s…the spaghetti pile was about eight foot high and maybe twelve or fifteen feet wide and ten foot the other way, and so we started covering that up first, it was in, in boxes that was out of lay plywood. They wouldn’t stand water. We started covering up. I went back in to camp and we had slit trenches around in our area because German reconnaissance planes came around the port of, of Oran and it was a good idea to get in a slip trench, anti aircraft fire, ( ) you 10:00got shrapnel round. About two o’clock in the morning I heard it thunder. An hour later, there about, it started raining. The next morning when I got up those sleep trenches were full, they were, were up about waist deep, they were full, and it was really pouring. Well I didn’t think that there was any reason for it, but I got in the three-quarter ton, had the driver to drive me out to my installation. I got out there, the water looked to be at least four feet deep. It was low and, and the road was about four feet higher, at least four feet deep, and there was macaroni case they were like, they were bottled up down in the middle of that office and we had rain there for about three or four days. It just poured 11:00and it messed up every installation that the army had, and so I went back out there and we got everything going in pretty good shape. There was a colonel, by the name Colonel (Breyer?) He would visit various installations, and he come in, and this buck sergeant I had, (Derbyshire?) he said, “Lieutenant Colonel (Breyer?)” I said, “I don’t want to see him, you report to him.” And of course that was a no-no. An officer is supposed to repert--report…to the next in command even though he wasn’t the next in command, and as I far as I was concerned…I was supposed to report to him and I didn’t, I had things in such a bad shape as the result 12:00of that water. Two or three weeks went by and we moved all this stuff out there and….

Downs: Did you lose a lot of it?

Barnes: Yeah, maybe ten or fifteen percent, but I was getting ready to close up completely, that command car pulled in. There was no place for me to hide. So I reported to him. He kind of laughed, he said, “well, Barnes,” he said, “I got you. And I knew you didn’t want to see me,” Well he said, “each I came out, things had improved to the point where I knew you would working on it, and I knew that I could, could trust you because of what I was seeing done out here.” But he said, “I’ve got a impossible task in town” he said, “I want you to do it.” He said, “I’ve got an officer in charge that’s a lawyer,” and said, “he don’t know what he is doing,” and said, “what you’ve been through out here, I think will workout real well.” So, 13:00I think what got him pissed off was that besides all the stuff is wet, this Lieutenant (Keybart?) had got the men to take wet rolls of toilet paper and string them on a, a rope and hang them out to dry. Somehow or [Chuckling] another that got that colonel so aggravated that, that he just, the thought of his men was just too much for him. Well, I didn’t know at the time that (Keybart?) was the little boy blue 14:00of Major so-and-so, which was my next superior that I hadn’t even met. I had been dealing with, with Colonel (Breyer?). So each time the colonel was coming every day or so, I’d get in his command car and we go around, I would point out things that I was doing and things I had to improve in on, and he’d say, “oh no, that’s, that’s just right.” Well this major that I hadn’t met sent a captain in, at the time to take over the installation. Well I wasn’t aware of what was going on, it was only a hind sight that I realized what was happening, so next time Colonel (Breyer?) came in, I told him about it, this captain coming over there, and he was, he had told me of things he was going to do. One thing he was going to do away with was 15:00my utility section. I had a, a bunch of people from Spain that had escaped Spain during the Spanish Civil War and we had hired them, and they were artisans, and I used them in the utility section and items that was coming in destroyed, why I was turning them over to them and they would put them back in shape to issue again. So out of two artisans we had, I was saving, saving the government a tremendous amount of money by repairing and getting them ready. And I said, “Colonel, he is going to take that away from me.” He said, “No, I think I can handle that.” Well I didn’t realize that the, the, that how many toes I was stomping on [Laughter – Interviewer]. So, I didn’t seek Colonel (Cook?) no more 16:00he didn’t show up there no more, but imagine what was happening to…the major, (Linquist?) that was his name, Major (Linquist?), and though every once in a while I’d see, the men would tell me about Swastikas painted here and there. The Arabs was very much in sympathy with the Germans, and there was little fires that we’d find and put out, and of course instead of me reporting to the major, he never show, showed up or come around, the only one I could report was the colonel, and let him know what was going on. We got in five thousand cots, we had no place to put them, 17:00so I put up a, a big assembly tent and two of, had fire aisles, like you would in state side would have been prohibitive, well it wouldn’t had enough room in that one tent, and I didn’t have the, the…place wasn’t large enough, it was a dog track, and it wasn’t large enough to put up another tent. So I just stacked them in there, just shoved that thing full. We had a, a fire in that tent, and so I called….

Downs: Arab, Arabs do it, you think?

Barnes: I, I called, I called the…the colonel. Well the colonel must have gotten a hold of the major because I’d, I got to meet the, the major [Chuckle – Interviewer]. I had seen him once before, he came out there and, and you talk about getting dressed down, about going over his head, and on-and-on-and-on, he didn’t know anything about it, Colonel (Breyer?) called him and give him hell, 18:00and-on-and-on-and on, and he said, “I won’t have any problem with you no more,” he said, “going to court martial you and send you back to the states.” And how he was a mad man. Well, a couple of days went by and I knew what the talk was. I was going back in disgrace. So, one day this colonel came down from base headquarters, a captain, I mean. And I knew he was from (Breyer?)’s office. He said, “what you’re looking so gloomy about, Barnes?” I said, “well, I’m not here for long! I guess they’re convening a court martial and they’re going to send me back to the states.” And I had a big pile of tent pins. I am not exaggerating, that pile of tent pins was bigger than that house other there [Chuckle – Interviewer], and… Downs: Wooden ones?

Barnes: Huh?

Downs: Wooden?

Barnes: Yeah, wooden. And over on the other side of the wall, was an Arab market 19:00and this Arab market, they sold everything that GIs had; and one day I heard an explosion over there and I found out that…somebody had bought a hand grenade and one of these Arabs thought it was some kind of a nut and he got ready to crack it with a, with a hammer. That’s what at least the story went and man, I know the noise was there because and I, I wouldn’t be surprised that didn’t happen. Well, we went on up on this tent pile because I had made stair steps because the Arabs picked these things up and put them on their shoulder and packed them up. And we got up there out of everybody’s hearing, he said, “you don’t have anything to worry about,” he said, “you are not going to be court-martialed,” he said “you’re going to get a commendation.” He said, “further more, you’re going to get promoted.” I said, “there is no way, captain that I get promoted, because my commanding officer 20:00stayed in the grade for about five years before he was promoted to, to first lieutenant, and, and he has already made the threat to none of his officers is going to get promoted before the time that he served.” I said, “it’ll be five years before I get promoted.” He said, “I already know that the word was out and that he, himself submitted the application because Colonel (Breyer?) made him do it.” He said, “your promotion is coming through, don’t worry about anything else.” Well, naturally, I, that was good news as far as I was concerned. But…we had a lot of trouble with thieving. The Arabs had a habit of stealing anything, it didn’t make any difference whether they needed, used it, or what it was. Most of them had, a, a roll of money that, as big as that can 21:00there with a sponge in it, but they couldn’t spend it for anything. A mattress cover, GI mattress cover, sold for thirty dollars, the equivalent of thirty dollars and they caught one over there at one time it had fifteen Arab, or fifteen mattress covers wrapped around him like a belt. And I remember walking in one day in (Al Hoodlun?) 22:00walking on (Hoodlun?) and I saw this Arab standing there, I had two Moroccan Arabs that the CIA had given me or CID I think they call them, it was the CIA at the time, from Morocco. Well even though they were Arabs, they were, were Berbers, like we had hired; and this old Arab was standing up like this with…a rope tied around his, his…what you call them, robe, I guess. I took my knife and just slit that rope. Eight cases of GI soap fell [Chuckling] out on the ground, he had ( ) down in there. Well, we had find stuff in their sleeves. That was a common place, to put in their sleeves. And I would try the punishment in when I was working them out there, at the depot, we had bacon coming in and I’d give them extra duty punishment, when 23:00they would work, I’d make them carry seventy-five or eighty-pound box of bacon, and this bacon, usually luncheon meat or something like that, you know, done up, but I would tell them what they was packing and that would reaaaally, some of them would drive in on the ground, pack it, had two guys there and they’d pick it up and send it back on his shoulder again. Often time, the guy would just leave, go out and take off, you wouldn’t see him no more. Of course he’d be hired, somebody would hire him for some other job [Laughter – Interviewer], but you got rid of a lot of them that way, and sold his dunnage with damage we, we would damage it…and I made the mistake of, I didn’t want to see the Arabs out on the road. A man would be riding his little donkey and the woman would have seventy-five or eighty pounds of bushes on her shoulder, on her head, and I was giving these old planks and things for firewood 24:00to them. Well I was called in on the carpet, because some of these Arabs that didn’t get any went to headquarters to find out why they weren’t getting firewood when the others were [Laughter – Interviewer]. So then….

Downs: You had to cut that out, huh.

Barnes: Then I had to burn it in front of them, and…y…you, you had to, to work someway to see how you get along with them, and the…from, from there, why we went to…to Bône. Bône was a…up on a ( ) I’d say on the coast about half way to Algiers, and we operated a class-one depot, 25:00class-two and four, but it was much smaller than…the ones in Oran, because in Oran we had huge depots. We, we had electric calculators and…relieve personnel to carry out depot work, and…it was important because after the African Corps was…surrendered, and they were, a lot of them walked back to Oran to ship out. They were f…defiant, a bunch of bastards. As far as, as they was concerned, why they were still superior to anything that the Americans had, and the fact that we had, had 26:00got to help weed out of Kasserine Pass, we had seventy-five millimeters and they had eighty-eights, they naturally feel superior. Of course at the time, I didn’t know about ultra, and of course that was written that, that…the German got defeated by the Eighth Army. He would requisition fuel from Genoa, and the British knew about it, as soon as it left the Harbor. But a…anyway…we, we went up to, to Bône and we stayed there for about three months, and in October of ‘43, orders 27:00came in that one half of 246th Depot Company…was to report to Bizerte and further orders would be issued from there. Well….

Downs: So that was almost all the way across North Africa, wasn’t it?

Barnes: That’s right, that was up in Tunisia.

Downs: Yeah.

Barnes: So, Lieutenant (Rinehart?) and I took half the company and the British had 28:00trucks that were running up and down the roads with fuel, in case people run out of fuel, and the British had just established some places where you would spend the night and so we spent one night on the road I think it was, and then we went in to a staging area at Bizerte. We stayed at Bizerte about a week and in pup tents and that, that mud was clay-type mud, and you’d walk on four from here to the wall and your feet would pick up these balls of clay and if you did scrape it off why you twisted ankle. Well, we were assigned to Tyrannian Bay 29:00section in Sardinia and on the 27th of October, we arrived at Cagliari in Sardinia. Well the air force had knocked out Cagliari, the Germans had occupied Sassari and Iglesias and Cagliari and they had knocked everything down, destroyed the railroads and everything in general, and we went over in…LSTs, I guess they call them, the ones that open up in, in front? And at that time, the 42nd wing of the 12th Air Force, 30:00was stationed there flying B-36s. We were supposed to supply that wing of the air force, and there was a, right outside of town, a granary that four stories high that hadn’t been hit, because apparently they had no military value, and I put my men on the fourth floor of that granary, and it was a, a colonel from the allied garrison in Sardinia supposed to have been the commanding officer, my commanding officer. He was West Pointer. We went around and looked at various installations and there was a lot of installations 31:00that we could, could have taken over that the fascists had, and the Germans had that we still could, with very little work improved on and use them for warehouses but the colonel wouldn’t act. For some reason or other, he either didn’t have the experience, or was afraid to accept the authority, so he didn’t, didn’t act and finally the three-ten service group, the air force had to take over, the three-ten service group…Captain Rogers was the executive officer, and Colonel (Hicks?), and we were called in, my unit then was called in 32:00to quartermaster headquarters and this captain, he gave us the layout of what was going to be done, as far as his section was concerned, what we were supposed to do. I was supposed to furnish men to the signal corps depot. Well, it so happen that the signal corps officer was a Captain (Stit?). (Stit?) was a character who was in the three Cs, had a lieutenant down at Dawson Springs, and had western Kentucky, and he was the sector commander. But now he was a, a commander of the signal corps depot. Well, I furnished men to take care 33:00of his installation. It only took about fifteen men plus the Italian labor units, they had, yu…yu… yu…Yugoslavian labor units plus Italian army…personnel too. I also furnished about that many men to the engineer section, and they had a medical supply depot there but they had their own man. They mostly took care of the whisky for the flyers. When the flyers came in off of a, a mission, they were authorized an ounce of whisky, a stabilizer of some kind, I guess. But, I managed to get, get some of that, I’ll tell you about it later on [Chuckle – Interviewer], and so, 34:00Lieutenant (Rinehart?) he run the class one section in a, a stadium area where Mussolini used to train…athletes, so we were doing pretty good there with what was going on. However, one thing puzzled me at this meeting he said, “I’ve got all the officers I need except for GRS,” and we were walking out after we were dismissed, I asked (Rinehart?) I said, “(Rinehart?) you were commissioned through OCS, what does GRS means?” He said, “Barnes, hell I have never heard of it.” Well, the next morning about ten o’clock I found out what GRS meant. 35:00I got a call from headquarters, they said, “Barnes you are a GRS officer.” I said, “so what!” “Well” said, “these two British flyers, washed up on the Island of Saint (Alaco?)” and said, “you go down and get them.” What does the GRS means? Said, that’s Grave Registration Officer [Chuckle – Interviewer]. I said, “well, have you got any army regulations or anything that I could follow, because I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. He said, “I don’t know and nobody here at headquarters know what you’re supposed to do, but” said, “in the cemetery, out here at the edge of town,” said, “you got to bury them.” So I knew I had to do something 36:00and I remembered zoology, old Doc. Funkhouser, formaldehyde I put all those together and I had one of my man to go upstairs and get a couple of gallons of formaldehyde, and then I had the carpenters make a couple of coffins. I got my map out and found, found out where the island was located. It was down by a little old town of Carbonia where they did a lot of…digging of coal high sulfur content, the highest sulfur content, I guess you find anywhere. So, I sent some of the boys out with two five-gallon water cans to get five gallons of vino blanco and five gallons 37:00of the white wine, dago red, and so we got about half drunk before we started out, because I was going to something I didn’t know anything about. My men didn’t know anything about, even though they had been overseas, they were the first contingent that went to Ireland, they’d been overseas at that time almost two years, but they were being called on something to do that they hadn’t done before, so I took about five men with me, the driver was from…a fellow by the name of (Koger?) from Alpine, Tennessee. He was as wild as a buck and I took what I really needed something badly, I knew I couldn’t depend on my college educated men. 38:00I had to go to the mountain of Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia, and you’d be surprised how many times I’d call on them for jobs and that was one of the one job that I needed them right then for. We went down there, and here was these two fliers. They had been washed up on the beach in excess of forty-eight hours and bloated in the sun and I didn’t ask anyone to do anything, I walked over and took the formaldehyde and poured it over them to neutralize the stench and then I checked their pocket, there were no identification on their arm was a (prick?) where the watch had been because the sun burnt everywhere except on where the watch had been. So somebody had stolen all identification, 39:00all except one flight jacket one of them was wearing with the name Lieutenant (Gozlin?). Well, I knew who he was. So I got a hold his head moved it back to go through another pocket and when I did, well the hair and the skin slipped off in my hand. One of the other man by the name of, of (Reeves?), (Pusher Reeves?), he said, “Lieutenant, can I help you?” “Yeah, (Pusher?), I could use some help.” He came over. Then one by one on their own came over, as I expected them to do, to help. And we packed the two out 40:00 and….

Downs: Did you ever figure out who the other fellow was?

Barnes: We’re going to get to that. We got there and dug the graves and buried them in the cemetery and I made my report. The other fellow, we didn’t find out who he was, but the jacket I took off were buried, didn’t bury him with the jacket on, took it off and it was full of maggots, so I had the men wash it in gasoline and hung it out on a wire in front of the orderly room where he could be watched, so no one would steal it. It was stolen, even though that we thought we were watching it. About three or four months later, I get in this loooong 41:00letter with various endorsements from the British government wanting to know a little bit more about (Gozlin?)’s jacket, they wanted me to send it to them because (Gozlin?) was still alive but somebody had borrowed his jacket before the flight was initiated. They had, had bombarded the isle Elba off of Corsica and there was about eight planes shot down and the current had brought them down, and we got two of them. I called my men together and gave them a detail, there was about five of the men that I called together and I told them, I said, “now listen, they’re going to hang me unless we follow the plan that I have 42:00thought out, because I spent too many days on this. This jacket was in such poor condition, with blood and maggots and it wasn’t that much, that we poured gasoline on it, which we did, and destroyed it by fire. Any objection to you swearing to that?” No objection. So the endorsement went back to the British through channels, and that was the way that was handled, but shortly after, we had a local man on Sardinia that died. He was a Jewish boy, and at that time the Italians were digging the graves. So they found out he was Jewish, it was a Catholic cemetery, they weren’t going to burry 43:00a Jew in this Catholic cemetery. There was about eight to twelve German graves there with Nazi Swastikas, I told my interpreter, Sergeant (Della Latour?) from North ( ) in New Jersey I, you tell them that that Jew will be buried in the American section of this cemetery, otherwise I’ll dig all the German graves up and pour their bones on the outside and they won’t be an I…an Italian…a fascist buried in this cemetery as long as we are in command. Of course all were idle threats but he didn’t know that. So we, we buried the man, and 44:00I still didn’t know what I was doing. At that time I had no personal affect except the last one that died, and the, I had used some of my men that were giving me problems, they were drunks, or they’d been out whoring or whatever they’d been doing…I put them on extra duty and some of them were digging graves because now that part of my section, you, you weren’t allowed to, to, to give anybody any extra duty of doing anything that the rest of your men wasn’t doing, that’d be degrading. Well, since we had already been digging some graves, that wouldn’t be degrading, so I said to one, Willie (Hold?) in particular, he was always drunk, I said, “Willie, I’m going to put you out there at night digging graves in that cemetery.” He said, “Lieutenant, you may put me out there,” he said, 45:00“I’ll go, I won’t disobey your order but,” he said, “those spooks scare me at night,” he said, “I’ll d…run over everyone of those tombstones, don’t put me out there at night, I’ll dig grave in the daytime.” I said, “okay, Willie.” So I thought that would slow him down, but he was, he was drinking so heavy and was already seeing snakes and other crawly insects, and I sent “Lieutenant Ramsey,”--not Lieutenant Ramsey--“Lieutenant (Rinehart?) to the hospital, base hospital with him and we told him, I s…”we’re going to have to ship you back home, you’re just a constant threat to yourself drinking.” He said, “if you don’t send me,” he said, “I’ll quit drinking.” I said, “what are you having a, a liter of, of vino before breakfast, you’re 46:00drinking all during the day, that’s to your admission because that’s what you told the doctors.” He said, “I’ll quit,” he said, “I don’t have a family in the states,” he said, “if you send me home,” he said, “I’ll be lost, this is my family now.” That guy quit cord turkey and didn’t, didn’t take a drop after that for the next year and a half and it was wonderful to see somebody straightening up like that. Well, the next episode I had, and that’s several fliers shot down go up on the side of the mountain, and you have ex number of people in the plane, and you can only find three of five, so you still would have to end up with five graves. They were there, you had to do it, you’d find pieces you couldn’t tell…what 47:00went to where. We’d reached the point where we didn’t use no formaldehyde anymore, we went in cold turkey in the end with picking things up, we reached the point where we were still burying them in coffins. We didn’t know we weren’t supposed to do that at the time. We got so…we went in, going into a mine field…to pick up a corpse, sat down and eat dinner, the coffin was the table, yeah and it got so you g…become callous to it. Well, another very interesting thing, interesting thing happened. We had a bunch of Italian digging graves, they were army, labor units, and a high ranking officer had been shot down.

Downs: U.S.?

Barnes: Yeah, 48:00and General Webster, along with a lot of military personnel came out for the funeral. So they gave him a military funeral and stood at attention while I was having the coffin lowered in the grave. The coffin got down there about a third of the way and stuck. These Italian laborers had narrowed it as they went down and I was my coals--toes was to the fire. So I, I walked up to the officer in charge of the detail where the general was standing, 49:00I said, “sir we got problems, if you’ll give order arms and parade rest and back at attention and move them out of here, I’d appreciate it. We will take care of our little problems not letting him know what happened.” And he did that; we took the, the casket box casket out and corrected the grave. I had a, a tech sergeant with a stick [Chuckling] every grave they’d dug after that, a stick went down all the way on each side. Well, we had that detail maybe three months and a graves registration officer had been assigned with the detail 50:00for that particular unit that knew how to handle and what to do came in to relieve me of that job. I was called out New Year’s Day in ’44. The general, one of his buddies was shot down outside of Cagliari area and it landed nose down in a salt flat. These salt flats were used by the King of Sardinia to evaporate salt, back a hundred odd years ago and of course, some of them would go…had, had…reverted back to their original condition. Anyway, we went out there, it was a cold New Year day, I know, but all you’d see was the tail of his plane sitting there. So, I went back again, made my report 51:00and luckily the graves registration officer took care of those things, he knew how. We had another pilot that had been shot down…at Iglesias I believe it was, south of the island, and they had, the, the local population had put him in a lead-line casket and they wasn’t about to let us move that body unless we had authority from higher headquarters and since he was in a lead-line casket and I didn’t know how to handle it, why I didn’t push the situation at all…but they, when the graves registration officer and them came in here, they went up there and took the man out and said “the hell with you people, we’ll do what we, what we will please!” But…order came through after…they had this job that 52:00I was supposed to find every body that had been shot down and buried on the island. I had one Cajun from Louisiana who was a, a professor at LSU. We go into an area and he would learn the language within a week after we’d been there. He was smart. He was so much smarter than everybody else, either officers or our men, that any, any group that you assigned him to, any detail, nobody wanted him, because he right away would tell everybody how to run things, even though they might have had more experience than he did. So, we never had anything for the guy to do, and when that order came through, 53:00I called him in. I said, “Sergeant (Como?), I got a job for you that only you can do. There is not an officer on this island, or a man on this island that can do it.” He began to straighten up and he, and, and his chest pop out, and he said, “what’s this lieutenant?” I said, “I want a list, name, rank, and serial number of every allied airmen been shot down on this island and buried.” I said, “I don’t care how you do it, you got thirty days to do it in. I don’t want to see you until the thirty days is up.” I was taking privileges I had no, no right to take. I said, “you’ll live off the land.” I knew (Como?), the land is going to be easy for him [Chuckle – Interviewer]. He come back 54:00thirty days, a little bit worse for wear, just bubbling over. He had stayed with Bishop so-and-so and, and, and…rector so-and-so, and father so-and-so, and this monastery and that monastery and he had a sheaf of papers that you wouldn’t believe, because the people reported to the church all these people that they had buried, where they were, location, the graves and everything, and really and truly he was the only man that could have done it. He not only spoke French, he spoke Italian, and God only know what else. That was the only job that he ever did do for the company and he never was able to do anything else, 55:00but he got the job done, and he lived part of the time with, with a former countess, ate food there, and on-and-on-and-on he… Downs: That was a big whole adventure, huh.

Barnes: …he wanted, he really, he really, he really had a good time. We depended on the Italians for our, our fresh fruits and vegetables. The cons…Consortio of ( ) was part of the El Duce’s agriculture program and they had contracts with the farmers on the island, and they did the same thing on the mainland, and they brought in what overage food that there was, and we, we paid them for it; but the whole thing was organized and we were…were 56:00looked down on by using the apparatus that was set up by the fascist, but we were able to save a lot of time and to get things going that we’d had problems with. Of course, before the, when the Germans left, they sabotaged a lot of stuff, they sabotaged one of the main fuel tanks at the airport, but the engineers figured out a way what to use that fuel tank. They put water in it, and after a few days, they got down to the number of gallons loss of water out of that tank in a twenty-four period. So they put in another pipe on the side of that tank, and kept a continuous 57:00flow of water in going in that tank that was coming out of it. The tank wasn’t repaired. Diesel oil was put in the tank, they used it down to about a foot of the water and used that tank. I thought that was an ingenious method because there was no time lost in building more tanks or anything like that, they were able to use those, and while I was there, the air force had put a rest camp in, on Corsica, took over a hotel, at a place called Vizzavona. Vizzavona is up in the mountain between Bastia in the north and Ajaccio in 58:00the south, that was the home of Napoleon. So I took a week’s leave up there and we had used an Italian seaplane, put into service, with an Italian flier and this plane was made out of plywood and on that first trip, I thought it was going to fly far, you never heard such a racket in your life [Chuckle – Interviewer] with these sections of plywood making the noise, and we had demobilized what Italian planes that was there, took enough stuff off of them so that they wouldn’t use them, in case that someone had tried to use them, and the parts that were taken off was given to Captain s…(Stit?) because he was in charge of the signal depot, 59:00and he had set up a, an installation to take care of the Italian plane parts. Well (Stit?) knew that they would never used old Italian planes again, he just, he just…intuition and common sense told him that, so, he gave me and two or three of the other officers some of the clocks out of these Italian planes. One of those clocks is up there now a, above my lamp. That, that clock was the, the base there is, it turned upside down, but it was made by Italian who, who made caskets. And that’s a, that, that’s a fancy little, little job there, but one day, General Webster decided that the Italians could be trusted, headquarters over 60:00at (Matuson?) out of Naples, said the Italian policy weed them out now that they can be trusted and he wanted to put all those Italian [Chuckling] planes into shape to fly. So, I had already sent this clock home. The other officers, four of five of them had sent their clocks home and others, so-and-so. (Stit?) told me one day, he, he knew he had to report to General Webster because he didn’t have all the parts that originally had been entrusted to him. He said, “Barnes,” he said, “you have never been dressed down”--he was a major at that time, he said, “Barnes you have never been dressed down until General Webster gets a hold of you, that he can call [Laughing] you more things than, than you’d ever dreamed off 61:00[Laughter – Interviewer].

Downs: That’s a, I don’t, I another tape out of my car… [END of TAPE 2002OH 12a, SIDE 1] [START OF TAPE 2002OH 12a SIDE 2] Downs: …talking about his World War II service, and also his military career in general, before and after World War II. You were going to say we might as well jump on your ( ) so.

Barnes: All right, now am I close enough to….

Downs: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Barnes: …to the speaker so you can get this all right. Let’s start out here, John, by saying that was born in Haleys Mill, Kentucky, in Christian County, in nineteen and fifteen, and we were of a farm family and we were poor farmers, however, my mother insisted on the children having an education. So I graduated from high school in Crofton, Kentucky, in nineteen and thirty-five. However, 62:00conditions were so bad economically, during the depression, that several of the high school students joined the National Guard. We were, we would get sixty-five cents a drill and that was the old horse cavalry, and….

Downs: The one-twenty-third?

Barnes: The one twenty-third machine gun troop stationed in Hopkinsville. So, it was active, and I joined at the 30th of May nineteen and thirty-three and we went to summer camp at Fort Knox, and actually it was a lot fun, you did, you, you had…a good time. You got into a lot of trouble as you would anywhere else 63:00youngsters we were sixteen, seventeen year old. I remember one time, we was out on maneuvers and…I found a horse’s hoof hit a dud. So I figured it’d be fun to have that dud down at home with a big bluff and we’d attached it to a tree or something and triggered off, and really see how much damage we could do with it. So I stuck it in my saddlebags and I knew I wasn’t supposed to have it, I took it back into camp. I had a friend by the name of Armstrong, he later joined the three Cs and, and…then he went with the, the…corps of engineers as a dental officer in the Battle of the Bulge. But at that time, he was working 64:00in the kitchen for the National Guard, and I asked him to keep this dud so it wouldn’t be found, knowing that I wasn’t supposed to have it. Of course the first kitchen inspection they had, they found that dud. So he had to tell somebody whose dud it, it belonged to and I got punished by riding a post in front of regimental headquarters on the meanest horse they had, and that horse, it was a short post, you had to turn around, go back and forward, salute the flag each time, it was pouring down rain. That was my punishment. So, it was, it was a lot of, a lot of fun, you got yourself in to a few problems, but…at 65:00least we had some idea of what military service was all about, and we realized that being a private in war time conditions wasn’t all going to be fun, and that being an officer, as bad as it might be, was certainly better. So this depression kept getting worse and worse, and worse, and we graduated from high school, and then you ha…you had to be on relief, in order to, for the farm family, one youngster to join the three Cs. Well Armstrong’s family was on relief and mine wasn’t. I went with him to Hopkinsville to join the three Cs. I got up there, 66:00for some reason, evidently, he kind of aggravated the lady who was in charge, and she turned to me and said, “did you come up here to join?” I said, “no,” I said, “I can’t join, my parents are not on relieve, we’re a farm family,” she said, “well how much money did your daddy make last year on the farm?” I said, “huh, I don’t know but I know it’s, it wasn’t very much, less than three hundred dollars.” She said, well said, “you’re eligible that…if you, if the parents don’t make five hundred dollars a year,” said, “they fall on the guidelines for the three Cs.” She said, “how would you like to put your family on relief?” She said, “that way you get in the three Cs.” “Oh sure!” So I imagine 67:00in ten-fifteen minutes, I had signed all the necessary paper and I went home and told my dad, and even though I was seventeen years old, I thought I was going to get my behind thrashed because as far as he was concerned, he was making a living on the farm, regardless if he didn’t have any money, why we ate well and we was doing all right.

Downs: It’s amazing now to think back that you weren’t on relief and your father didn’t feel that you needed it or deserved it on, only three hundred dollars a year. People now, some, you can’t live on three hundred dollars a week [Chuckle – Interviewer] Barnes: Well, you want to remember, back, back then, a pair of shoes, work-shoes such as these, three dollars and a half. I paid about seventy dollars for these, these work-shoes, and that’s how far we have gone…the inflation is just eat the money up. When I was in Athens, Greece for example, 68:00I had some of my filing cabinets money that I had gone along the street and picked up in the gutter, if I found a, a bill that was nice and pretty, I’d pick it up. I picked up a hundred thousand drachmas, a million drachma notes, three million drachma notes, five million drachma notes. It had reached the point so I was told, that the German would come in to buy old man’s Packard for example. He didn’t want to sell it. It’d be impossible to buy another car, so he put a price on it that was completely out of line. Half an hour or an hour later, the Germans come kick off a, a bale of money, take his Packard. It got so you had to take a wheel barrel to the grocery store, 69:00if they had anything. That’s inflation. And…we’re experiencing it here; it’s not as extreme as it was there, in Germany after WWI. Well in, I was urged to summer camp in nineteen and thirty-five after graduation from high school, but I had also ordered to report to Cadiz, Kentucky to enroll in the three Cs, and I went to Cadiz, Kentucky and I was assigned to a camp at Benton down in Marshall County. So after I found out who my company commander was, Captain Ralph (Boggle?), I asked him if I could go for two weeks summer camp at Fort Knox, that was my third camp. 70:00He said, “sure,” he said, “I got a first sergeant that’s going up there for supplies,” he said, “you can just ride in the company truck with him.” He said, “you be sure that they send the necessary administrative report to me so I can take care of that for you,” and I went to summer camp that year and after two weeks I reported by train to Benton, Kentucky and I was assigned to a work detail. It was a soil conservation camp and we went out, some of those gullies in…around Calvert City. You could put an automobile in and lose them and never see them. We put in dams, we did…work in cultivating along the gullies, sowing seed, had a nursery 71:00and planted native shrubs and I was told a few years ago that you could drive a vehicle across those gullies now, that they had, had filled up and…really amazing what the various seed, seed companies were, were doing, but what was most important, the officers were learning how to manage personnel. They were learning how to feed personnel, and the men was learning the rudiments of being among other men and taking orders. So all that helped out when the war was finally declared. But, I had, 72:00I was out there about two weeks and really enjoying myself because I enjoyed working, I had been working hard on the farm, and they called me in the camp. The first sergeant had been pulled out and gone with the cadres to form another unit. So, they offered me a position to first sergeant. I’d been first sergeant for two or three months, and the colored company came in, the white company moved out, and the colored company came in, and Marshall County at the time only had one colored family in the whole county, and segregation was, was so bad that even if the whites saw a colored man as a hobo on a freight train, why they’d throw rocks at him. Well you can imagine 73:00what happened when the colored company came in. The local people was going to run them out of town. So, I wasn’t equipped to handle men of, in a colored company because, actually, there was a lot of cultural difference between the two races, however…about one hour after the sun went down, it began to get dark, there was a graveyard over close, and I heard a bunch of noise, people coming around. So I went in one of the barracks and blew my whistle and started talking to them and I told them I’d…”I’m 74:00here to protect you as much as I can. I’m white, and I can’t help that you’re black and you can’t help it. But as long as you’re on this reservation, why, we will get the job done, if we stick together. It happens at that time none of them had undressed or got ready for bed, scared as I was, but I was determined that since I was in the position of trust and authority, that we’re going to do what we could, we’d all die together if, if that’s what was necessary. So I gained their respect to a certain point, as a result of that. But, you had men from small towns, Covington, Newport, Cincinnati, 75:00and all over and some of them pretty rough people. Each, each Saturday morning while they was out, Lieutenant Ramsey, Hugh Ramsey from…Hazard, Kentucky, we would go up in the upstairs of these barracks, we would find screwdrivers, (sharbon?) and knives and everything that you can think of and we had to confiscate those, of course and I remember one, one of those ins…one, one night, the…I heard a noise in one of the barracks and I went down and one of these fellows had another one backed up in the corner. He was standing there with a (messing?) knife and 76:00daring him to, to get in closer to him or he’d kill him and about that time someone had told Lieutenant Ramsey, he came down there with a forty-five. He said, “hand me that (messing?) knife without trying to, to soothe the conditions and of course, the little fellow, he said, “no,” he said, “Lieutenant I am not going to give you the knife.” “well,” he said, “you are not afraid of this forty-five I got?” He said, “Lieutenant, you may shoot with that forty-five but,” he said, “I am going to get you with this (messing?) knife. And I, boy I, I saw it was about time something is going to be done, I said, “Lieutenant, how about let me handle it, and I’ll take care of it now.” He said, “yeah, I think that’s a good idea,” and he, he walked off, but 77:00his, the, the, the, the conditions were always like a powder keg, ready to erupt. I took them to Paducah, or Mayfield, or some place at least once or twice a week on recreational tours and you had to always be a person of authority. If you said, “we leave here at ten o’clock tonight, that don’t mean ten fifteen or ten o five or whatever, you leave at ten o’clock” and it wasn’t until I run off and left some of them and they were flagging the truck trying to get there that we got the message through that when ten o’clock come, or whatever time was set, 78:00they were there, because walking from Paducah all the way to Benton was an all night walk and there was nobody going to pickup a black hitchhiker in western Kentucky at the time. But I’m just telling you how things were back in those days. We were on the task service, there was five of us…transferred to Murray, and we stayed there two months with these people, and then we (ask?) transferred to a new camp at Dawson Springs. Lieutenant…William T. (Alan?) was commander of the camp at Dawson Springs, and…he later was regimental commander in the Battle of the Bulge, a full colonel. 79:00Well, you see that’s what I was trying to bring in the importance played in these officers’ learning about mass management, how to take care of men, because they weren’t getting it otherwise.

Downs: Let me ask you a question. At that time though, I guess, there was war—the war, the big war was over with what, almost fifteen years, something going on twenty years?

Barnes: Yeah, well….

Downs: There was no thought I guess, at that time, of another war happening in less than five or six years, was there?

Barnes: Huh, n…no there wasn’t a thought of a war but, I’m glad you brought that up, they had three C camps for veterans of World War I at the same time, because there was economic conditions were such that the veterans from World War I were having problems, and there was a camp at Dawson Springs, and one at…Dixon, 80:00Kentucky that I, I know of because…I had the…I drove the ambulance at one time for…Lieutenant (Arbergasten?) from Indianapolis and he was the, had several camps around there, he was doctor, MD and so normally there was no thought of war at the time, however the…I, I, I left…Dawson Springs, last four months out of Dawson Springs, they had me in the…as a PX…operator and I had saved enough money that I could register at the University of Kentucky. That was important to me, because the only way I could 81:00go to college was to come up with some money and out of the twenty-five dollars sent back home, Mom had saved enough for me to register. I came to Lexington on a train and I had…about pretty close to two hundred dollars, and the first of the clothes I ever owned in my life, but I had developed skills in the year and a half that I had spent in thirty Cs that was useful to me. I knew certain things that I could do by hand was important, and I found a, a place on north Limestone, now the part of the grounds of the Good Samaritan Hospital, and I found a room for eight dollars a month. So 82:00I…tried to find a job, I got here two weeks before…registration. I couldn’t find a job anywhere in Lexington, and I had, had gone in to a restaurant, operated by a Greek from the island of Crete and I asked for a job, he said, “who needed one?” And, I was hungry. I ordered an egg sandwich. That was about all I thought I could afford, an egg sandwich was a dime with a glass of water. Well, I turned around and walked back up to Main Street on ( ) climbed up to Main Street, I remember that I hadn’t paid this man a dime. I went back, and I said, “I’m sorry, I had something else on my mind, 83:00and I forgot to pay you for the egg sandwich.” He said, “well I knew you hadn’t paid me for it.” I gave the dime, told him again I was sorry and thanked him. He said, “come back Saturday morning, I’ll try you out.” Well that is awfully important in, in my life because it shows how much that being honest is important to individuals to put them in, in (try?) in being trusted, a person that they think is going to be honest working for them. Well, to make a long story short there, I worked for him off and on four years, while I was going to school, because I didn’t have enough money to, to 84:00go…each year I had to work a year in order to get enough money to register for, and in one of those cases back then, fifty dollars was tuition, five dollars down, and five dollars when they threatened to kick you out if you didn’t pay another five dollars down t…toward it. At that time we was, the only concrete walks on the campus run from Limestone up to Administration building and back down to Limestone. That was where the route, the streetcar run going out Limestone, you road the streetcar for a nickel if you had but most time I walked… Downs: Is that….

Barnes: …because….

Downs: …is that, that, there is, the road is still there, isn’t there? Well, I guess they are not or have they dug it up?

Barnes: No that, now they, the, the…the streetcar run in front a, along…. 85:00Downs: Along Limestone?

Barnes: …Limestone there, right in the middle of the street, almost. Well, I, I worked the first summer in Knoxville, Tennessee to get a little money, but I had to borrow money from my Greek landlord to get down there. He, he lent me money and told me, he said, “if you don’t like down there, you no stay, you call Mike, and Mikey’ll send you money to come home on.” By that time I felt like that he was almost like father and son, and so I came back in ’37, ’38. I went to work for the University 86:00driving a milk truck and I went to school again in ‘38, ‘39. In 1939 and ’40, I did extension work for the university and I covered about…seven or eight counties, but, in my traveling, I always had a radio on in the car. Hitler was running all over Europe and I knew by the time that he got in to Poland, that it was just a mater of time until we would be in it, and I was dating a girl. She belonged to one of the, the peace movements at the university. I went with her to Memorial Hall. I had a military uniform on, ROTC, at the time, and I had also worked over for the university doing extension work 87:00at Berea and I had some of my old national guard riding clothes that I used them for work clothes. After all, I was still a poor little ole country boy and I didn’t have many clothes, but they, they gave me hell when I’d get over to Berea. They knew that, at least part of it, my work clothes were uniform clothes and that I was connected with military or had been one way or the other, but the peace movement, you wouldn’t believe unless you went through it. We were authorized about a hundred thousand troops and the ( ) didn’t have over thirty thousand none of them used a full strength, and even the national guard we were using…World War I ammunition, machine guns and a belt. 88:00About one out of every five rounds of ammunition would fire, the others were duds; they were too old. So I had heard that World War I they sent men to the front that hadn’t been trained. I was determined that wasn’t going to happen to me, and I didn’t feel like that what the national guard training I had was adequate enough to protect my hide in case of a war. So I was determined to go to school…the next year. So I sold my car and got seventy-five dollars for it, and that, fifty dollars to register, twenty-five dollars for books, that meant that I had to work the rest of it out. I held down three jobs, 89:00carrying a full load, and that was nothing unusual, because I was doing that all along and I came to the University and I enrolled in advanced ROTC, and I told this old colonel, he was a major at the time, (Sanders?), up at. “Major (Sanders?), I do not want to go into the army unless I’m qualified, trained to do it, and I want to take ROTC.” He said, “we are full up, the program is full.” I said, “can I take it for credit only?” He said, “well, if you do, you’ll have to buy a uniform,” he said, “we can’t even furnish you a uniform.” I said, “well, I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I, I will, I, I’ll, I’ll buy a uniform.” 90:00He said, “you won’t be paid!” I said, “all right, we’ll go that route.” Well, about six weeks after I enrolled, someone was injured on the football field, the old (Stohl?) field down there on…High Street, and had to drop out of school, left an opening for me, and that is how I got in the advanced ROTC, and the (Pame?) instiment…incident that happened, the ship that got sunk, on the, I believe it was the Yangtze River; that was another indication to me that it just was a mater of time, 91:00and we went to the end of, during the year, we went to Fort Knox to train and we was out on maneuvers, the tanks was a ton-and-a-half truck with a canopy over it, with the word t-a-n-k on it. We used two each hollow pipe for mortar and dropped a tent peg in it, simulating fire. And all these things, we didn’t, we didn’t really have anything. I remember, we went out, out on the range to fire, and after we used the…o-three rifles, Springfields, and they had, they brought around a, a team 92:00from Fort Meade, I think it was Fort Meade. Anyway, they had two Garand rifles, M-1s, thirty-o-six. We got to fire those, and I remember I made a bull’s eye with the five rounds, each, each time. To me that was the sweetest shooting gun I ever had, and we got to fire the thirty-seven millimeter…rifle and on steel drums at two-hundred-and-fifty yards, any, any experience individual could hit one, but later on with the Germans heavy tanks being developed, thirty-seven millimeter gun didn’t mean a thing. So we really weren’t, weren’t prepared to, 93:00to do a whole lot at that particular time, and…you ought to remember than in Congress, the, the agitation by peace movements was something that you wouldn’t believe, and, but it all, all wasn’t…even though we worked hard, we had a little fun along the way, I remember one time we was, we were going on maneuvers I’ll tell you about, and the company commander had designated a point guard and flank guards and he turned to me and said, “you’re the get away man.” Well the get a may--away man was the individual that, if the column was surprised from the rear, was to run 94:00and notify them ahead. Well, we were going this desolate old gully and I looked o…up over head an oak tree about thirty yards ahead of me was a hornets nest, and that hornets nest was as big as my head, and…the devil told me to do it [Chuckling] [Chuckle – Interviewer], I guess. There was a stick laying down there in front of me, just about this long and I, and the temptation was just too great, there was nobody behind me to tell on me, I picked this stick up and threw it and so help me, it hit that hornets nest right in the middle [Chuckle – Interviewer] and our outfit was declared a hundred percent casualties [Laughter – Barnes and Interviewer] and the colonel never did find out, and of course I wasn’t able to laugh about it at the time, because I couldn’t tell nobody, but the colonel never did find out who threw this stick or where the hornets came from. 95:00Downs: Did you get away?

Barnes: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah sure, I swear. Well, I came back to the university and they had, I had a apartment on Graham Avenue, 120 Graham, it was right…to the south of Memorial Hall. I guess that the interstate college got all that section in there now, and so I had quit my job at the restaurant because I’d run in to two fellows roommates down on Limestone and we figured eight dollars a month was just too much for those rooms that we were living in, when we could get three rooms with a cooking stove and refrigerator for less money. So, they told me, said, “well you work in this restaurant,” said, “if you cook for us, 96:00we will buy the food and then all you’ll have is, is…rent money.” Well, I took them up on that, I thought it was a pretty good thing. And, we were living there…at the time I think it, that, the war was declared, so… Downs: Which is ‘39?

Barnes: No, that was….

Downs: This is ‘41.

Barnes: …’41.

Downs: Okay.

Barnes: But…the, at Pearl Harbor, I had gone down on Linden Walk to study for a final examination, well I guess it midterm, it could have been December, midterm examination and on the radio they were listening to the news…about Pearl Harbor, 97:00and…so that changed the attitude of a lot of people when the Japanese…had bombed Pearl Harbor, but the people in this country…had no idea where Pearl Harbor was, they had no idea the Japanese strength, or our weakness, and I had, the things that had, got so bad that prior to Pearl Harbor, that I had gone down to the post office, or recruiting to join the navy because they were paying thirty dollars a month, and I, I was…in, in bad shape financially, and was hungry at times, 98:00and most of the time, we’d go to (Glass?) Store, (Glass?) had about twenty stores here in town and four of us would go in a nickel a piece, chip in and we’d buy a nickel with cheese, a nickel with bologna, they’d throw the crackers in free and you bought a quarter of milk for a dime and split it between the four of you, and I went down there, the recruiting office was closed, that kept me out of the navy, I’m sure. But the opportunity came up to join the air corps and the mystique about flying a two-wing plane was more than I could bear; but there was nothing in the world I wanted to do…but to fly one of those planes. So, 99:00I needed three letters of recommendation and I only got one, and it was one that…was, basically what the man said was; the boy is honest but I find gin bottles laying around various places, and I know that he is the one that’s doing the drinking around here, and few little things like that. And I, I took this one letter of recommendation and he, he gave it to me in a unsealed envelope, I guess he wanted me to read it, and I gave it to the sergeant. He looked at it, read it, called the major, and the major called the colonel, and the soldier said, “is this true?” I said, “well, I guess 100:00it is, it’s what the man thinks about it.” He said, “well,” he said, “that’s the kind of man we want.” And the sergeant said, “we only have one recommendation!” He said, “we can waver that.” He said, “he can come up with two recommendations somewhere,” he said, “if they’re as good as this one,” said, “that, that’s all, that’s all we want.” Well it was eight hour examination and I, half of that was eye examination and I passed it with flying colors and then had…I got three orders, one to Chickasaw, Oklahoma, one to California, and one in New Mexico, but at the time, I had, was enrolled in the ROTC program and ole Colonel Randolph 101:00from Wright Patterson Field at that time, I think they called Right Field, he came down here to enlist additional cadets, and he tried to persuade me to leave the ROTC program and go with the air force, and the girl I was dating who later became my wife, didn’t want me to go into the air corps and so I guess it, I was fortunate in that I didn’t because nearly all of those people that were on order, the same orders I did, well they were sent to the Pacific. If their plane was shot down, or shot up and they were able to survive, they put them in another plane and sent them back up just as long as they, they had some ( ) wanting to fly, so it was impossible for them to come through with it, and 102:00so I, after I had gotten my commission in May of ’42…I went over to Darnell General Hospital in Danville, they’d built a big hospital the army had over there and took my physical and then…I was ordered to active duty at Fort Lee, Virginia. Oh yeah, the reason I was ordered to Fort Lee, Lee, Virginia, I had taken infantry branch ROTC but just prior to being commissioned, the army had need of administrative personnel in the air force, administrative personnel in medical supplies, and-on-and-on-and-on, and also 103:00there was a quartermaster section, they needed quartermaster officers, and being a farm boy, and having been in the cavalry, I requested quartermaster, because we had a (remount?) station down the road here from…Richmond Road, out close to…the reservoir and I said that, that be an ideal thing for me to get into. And so I was commissioned in, in quartermaster and so I went to Fort Lee, Virginia and was assigned into replacement tool, and about a week later that replacement tool was important in that the week that I was available, I did nothing but read army regulations 104:00and reading army regulations, it opened my eyes to a lot of things that in the army you could do anything you wanted to do, if you had a regulation to cover it. And if you looked long enough, they was there. It made no difference, there was always an in or out that you could use if you found the right regulation. And later on, that worked to my advantage a great deal. But I was assigned to OCS to get it, where enlisted men with top caliber were turned into officers after so many weeks, and I had…gave them after training until I was reassigned to another unit 105:00after the class graduated and this instructor got up and he said, “welcome, we got you people here, in warehousing that these are not a thing in the world that I can teach you about warehousing overseas, because,” he said, “you’re all going overseas,” he said, “the only thing I know is warehousing here in the states.” So when he turned his back, I laid down on my desk and went to sleep. So when the class was over, he sent me to the regiment commander, he said, “I was sleeping in class.” And this officer said, “were you?” “Yes sir!” “Well, don’t you know you’re supposed to stay awake?” I said, “sir,” and I repeated what the instructor said. 106:00“Sir, there is no way that I can stay awake in a class learning something that is going to be of no use to me going overseas.” He said, “he actually said that, did he?” I said, “yes sir, he did.” I said, “I need all the information and all the education I can get for the purpose of saving my own life and my men’s life, and I don’t need anything I am not going to use once I get over there.” And he started calling the s…guy a lot of names that, that I wouldn’t care to repeat. He said, “I would like to assign you to Colonel so-and-so, down at the motor pool.” He said, “do you think 107:00if you got down there, that you could stay awake?” I said, “as long as I’m learning something that I can use, I’ll not only stay awake, I’ll do a good job at it.” We got down there and then, and the colonel, he said, “you’re going overseas in ten days, then how could I make a [Chuckling] motor officer out of you in ten days, and I like you going with the shop, and if you see anything that you don’t know anything about, you ask questions, and I’ll give the instruction that everybody is supposed to try to answer any questions that you have.” Well, one of the things I was interested in, was joining a tire-changing class in the morning, and I was having trouble with this big seventy-fifty-twenty tire that was stuck to this rim, 108:00so there was a guy in coveralls there and I took advantage of him being there and put him to work. It wasn’t until we got the, the tire off and he got hot, he had to come out of the coverall, oh he was, he was a colonel [Laughing] [Laughter – Interviewer]. I tried to apologize, he was, he, he, he thought it was more fun that, that had it not happened, but we went to, allowed three days to come home on leave. And I came home and…I had married in the meantime, and I came, came home, my wife was sick with pneumonia and I stayed the three days and went to Camp Kilmer 109:00and we were out about ten or twelve miles, I remember out of Newark, because I went in to Newark to…take care of some insurance papers, and for the most part, why we were just waiting until a ship was ready so we could go aboard in…New York Harbor. So, while I was there, I was exposed in the barrack to a bunch of doctors, and two or three weeks we were there, we got to be good friends, and we were assigned to shipping order OGA 241, and that was to follow us overseas 110:00and, and beyond, that, that one particular number. Well, they gave us everything that we didn’t need, such as Tommy, Tommy guns and different stuff, they used this for a vehicle to transportation to pack, pack the stuff over there and then to take it away from us, that’s, that’s all it was for. And so the guy’s name was Captain (Dillon?) who was in charge of OGA 241, and he was a first class scoundrel, and I don’t know whether he did it on purpose or, or he just didn’t have the information, but he didn’t know nothing, and it…the, the 11th of December 111:00we went to New York port of embarkation and…the f…one of the first people I met was Lieutenant Billy (Black?) a football player from UK. He had gotten out a year earlier, he got his commission, and he was assigning decks and rooms to the officers and on the H, HF Alexander, was the name of the ship, and we…s…sailed out and I really don’t know how we went but I have the feeling that we 112:00went north to pick up escort from the British, because we hadn’t been out of the, the port of New York very long until we ran into rough seas. But while I was in New York I got to go to…to…baseball games and places because I think I stayed in the Roosevelt Hotel for two dollars a night. Of course the army had taken all that over, and…if I remember correctly, the…Roosevelt Hostel was right near the railroad station, but the reason I say that the seas were rough, I went to the breakfast one morning, and they had 113:00sideboards around the tables. We sat down there and the, there was two nurses sitting at the same table with a bunch of officers and the ship went down, and then went over to the right, came back and went over to the left, it, it was slow motion it was doing all those things at one time. And the food was set down on the table and something happened that that ship wasn’t doing the dipsy-doodle in cadence and the food jumped right out [Chuckling], turned upside down on the lap of, of one of these nurses and I was saying we, we were about four days…assigned to quarter below decks before we came out, we came out, we’d picked up British corvettes and 114:00(deck?) escort we were doing zigzag pattern and at that time, German Wolfpacks were real trouble and the convoy had about fourteen ships plus the escorts and you would see a corvette disappear for example, we were up high, we was, the convoy split off at just outside of Gibraltar and part of it went to Casablanca, and the British escort went with it because we were going in the Mediterranean and didn’t need escort. And on, we had left, of course, 115:00on the 12th of December, and here it was Christmas eve, the 24th of December we were pulling to Gibraltar in the Mediterranean, and I remember the midnight mass was going to be aboard ship and about eleven o’clock, the ship ahead of us in the convoy either hit a mine or was blew up by a submarine and they was more Protestants at [Chuckling] the midnight mass that night than were Catholics I think. So, the next morning, why on our, our left was a high ridge, looked to be at least 116:00a thousand feet high. I know, up on the, this hill was a, a red-looking building. I couldn’t tell what it was because it was a good two-miles or more west. Then we could see a, a city, a part of it on the hill, but most of it wasn’t of course, and we pulled up to a town called Mers-el-Kebir, the French had a navy there at one time and dry docks, so we unloaded. They put us aboard trucks and moved us through Oran, 117:00and Oran, and Mustaland, and Arziw had been captured by the Americans about two months before, and it worked. It wasn’t too much damage to Oran, some of the smaller towns were damaged, that building that we saw on that tall cliff was going to be home for the next couple of months. That’s where the, the replacement depot was located and we went up there and those, five of those doctors that Camp, Camp Kilmer I’d got, was assigned on a room and we were all together. Well, we got, started to get men in and started training replacements 118:00and each weekend I got command of the guard, it was at night while we hunted German paratroopers because this…Colonel (Loafers?) commander of the, the…unit, and I don’t know whether it was real or imaginary, but about midnight to two o’clock in the morning, he would, would see or hear German paratroopers, so we take our top of submachine guns out and go out on patrol hunting German paratroopers. And one night I fell and I heard this bolt go down and back, and I knew what it was, because at that time and all during the war, 119:00everybody and his brother was making arms and ammunition, and the one I had I think was made by Singer sewing machine, and came back off patrol, and I raised my gun at about this high and I dropped it down, that bolt [Cracking sound] went all the way down if I had had ammunition in there, why they would taken into the chamber and it would have fired. So I traded it for an M-1, at supply, that’s the only thing that they had, but I was glad to get it, and the b…I always thought when I got to North Africa it was going to be nice and warm. New Year’s night, I was commander of the guard that I’d been nearly every weekend. Here come the dadgonedest snow storm off the Mediterranean that you ever saw in your life and I don’t think the snow got over a knee deep, 120:00but the wind blowed and it was cold and I had a bunch of guards on and they, I found out later, were medical replacement but they were put on guard duty there. I don’t know who had, who had called it, but anyway, later on, they were sent out for replacement, infantry replacement, never having familiarized themselves with a weapon. They were on guard, and the only way that they could get the last…shell out of the gun was to fire it off. They could take all out but the last one but they didn’t know how to get that one out. Well, needless to say, 121:00at Kasserine Pass we had seventy-five or eighty percent casualties, and a lot of the casualties happen up then, I got them back later as replacement from the hospital to the same replacement depot and they told me how ill prepared they were at the time. I had some of them out working one time and after all, me being a second lieutenant, how was I going to try to repatriate and condition these men for further combat when they had been through hell already, and they just came back from the hospital, they was trying to, to get them in shape. So, I pulled my shirt off, and was out there working with them, tell them, I say, “put out what exercise you can, 122:00don’t, don’t overdo it,” and this major came up and wanted to know where the officer was in charge of that detail. One of the men pointed me out and he really gave me hell about conduct unbecoming to an officer…I never s…never saw the guy before, I never, never did see him after that. But, it just goes to show you the stupidity of some individuals, but the fact that I had had national guard training and three Cs training, I realized the only way to handle those men was to show them, rather than order them. Well, later on…we went up to an officer, 123:00he was a classification officer, he was a captain. One fellow ahead of me, he said, “Captain,” he said, “I have taken every mortar course that the army had to give, I would be ideal, I think, in a mortar battalion, transportation unit. This captain said, “Son,” he said, “I will tell you what you are good for, reassigned to warehouse.” Stupidity again, and that later on trickled down to me overseas in other post, having people sent to you classified for certain position that they couldn’t fill, 124:00they, the, the officer, classification officer knew better than the individual did what he was capable of doing. So…I was then assigned to the 46th quartermaster depot company.

Downs: This is still in North Africa?

Barnes: I was still in North Africa, in, in Oran, we were living right near….

Downs: 1943, I guess?

Barnes: Yeah, that was ’43.

Downs: Yeah.

Barnes: And, it was March, March the 9th in 1943, and the, at a bullring right next door to camp. The French trained our Singhalese troops just wire, single strand of wire, was surround our camp and they trained them right on the other side of the wire. 125:00On one occasion, they were out there and these Singhalese were big, black, husky, thin individuals, muster, French officer trained them…. [END OF TAPE 2002OH 12.2a, SIDE 2]