Oral History Interview with Lucian Barnes Part 2

[END OF TAPE 2002OH 12.2a, SIDE 2] [START OF TAPE 2002OH 12.2b, SIDE 1] Barnes: …it provided a lot of…. [Pause] Downs: …we go.

Barnes: We, we requisitioned…fellows from the Italians, and…I requisitioned one to go out for my enlisted men for a club. Well, this club was, was near a, a small factory, and I sent a detail down to clean the place up because it was overgrown with weeds, and the detail showed up. I was down there and it was a Italian industrialist, plus either two or three 1:00lawyers with him. They wasn’t about to give up his villa without a fight. So, all this talking going on, everybody hands going, fighting the air and these Italians showed up with new tools and this industrialist reached up and grabbed one of those shovels away from the soldier and turned it up right and left. The shovels that the Italians were using was just a straight piece of metal 2:00and here was these pretty curved shovels with long shanks on them, you know, and (de hana?). he looked at that over, turned to my interpreter and said, “are these the kinds of tools that you issue your troops?” (Delaventura?) said, “yes, that those are just normal tools.” He turned to these, these lawyers, and after they left--they left almost immediately, (Delaventura?) told me what he said. He said, “with tools like that, there is no way in the world that we can, can win the war, that the Germans don’t have a chance, that I’ve seen their tools. They give these people anything they want, because they can pay for it.” And we opened that club up with first class GI eighty and ninety and a hundred proof American whisky, plus plenty of vino 3:00and everybody and his brother was in…invited, and we had a lot of cognac that was out of one of our, one of our, our, our standbys, was cognac and grapefruit juice. And the guy would take his GI shoes off, leather shoes, and hit the bottom of that bottle, and that cork would come out a little bit at a time until it’d get almost out and then, then take it out. But something else interesting happened when they, I’ll tell you about, before you, I’m about to get ahead of myself. We was up on the fourth floor and we had a PA system but it wasn’t doing too good, and, and I was told that it needed to be re-wired. I had one boy there that was a jack-of-all-trades, he could do anything, but he was always busy doing, doing other stuff. I had another one that thought he was. 4:00So, he was always, he had time on his hands, so I told him, I said, “(Whiteis?), how about you getting some wire and re-wire this PA system.” Well, I expected him to requisition the wire and get it. About two hours or three later, well that was in the morning and after lunch, a couple of MPs came in the compound, this compound…they had a big wall around and one of the first thing they’d do in all these foreign countries was build a wall and put a building up. He came in and he said, “Lieutenant,” he said, 5:00“have you seen anyone around out back here, a shady character of any kind?” “No, I haven’t seen nobody.” “Well,” he said, “the main communication line [Chuckle – Interviewer] from headquarters, there was about fifteen feet been cut out of it. It looked like they took a damn chopping axe” they said, “chopped it out.” [Laughter – Interviewer]. Well, they didn’t have to draw me a picture to know what, what (Whiteis?) had done. He hadn’t requisitioned anything, he just went out there and saw the wire out there and cut it in two. But when I heard the music being played on the PA system, why I, I, I knew that, I didn’t even ask him [Laughter – Interviewer] but I, I knew I was going to get in more trouble if I ask then if I didn’t. And 6:00when they got ready to invade France, the 42nd Wing was pulled out and moved to Dijon and I was put in charge of the quartermaster section. Well unknown to me at that time, I had two Yugoslavian labor companies and these Yugoslavs, I had two of them as orderlies, and they told me that they was invited to a party and they got drunk and they found themselves in the Italian army the next morning [Laughter – Interviewer]. So they, they shanghaied them and they formed, really I don’t have any companies they had formed but we had two companies on, on Sardinia, and his name was Bruno, I got his picture there in the, in the, in the folder, and 7:00so we had those labor companies, but we got an issue of beer, they started issuing beer in nineteen and forty…three, and the Italians had three or four warehouses that they’d carved out of the hillside, in solid sandstone, and the only exposed section was the front of it and the doors, and the front I think was made out of tufa blocks and the longer tufa blocks harden, the harder they get and then the doors were thick heavy material covered with metal and Rinehart, my lieutenant, kept saying, “Barnes, I go to that warehouse every week, issue beer to these companies,” and said “there is always a case or a case and a half of beer setting up on the top, empty,” and he said, “I’ve looked those, front of those buildings over, I can’t find where anybody has gone in,” he said, “the locks don’t appear, they hadn’t been 8:00tempered with, and,” he said, “I don’t know what the problem is.” I said, “well.” He said, “we changed battalions guarding those things every week, we got a different bunch of men on, and we will change locks on them.” We changed locks on them and I had the only keys in the quartermaster office for those warehouses. There is only one man and myself had access to the safe. The next week, the case and a half of beer was empty, it had been drank. So I got a hold of the provost 9:00marshal, he was a colonel, and told him what was going on. So he went up and checked it over, he said, “I can’t find a, an entry in that warehouse, in those three warehouses anywhere,” but there is one warehouse in particular where it was all the dirty work had been done. He said, “there is nothing there that I can tell.” He said, “I’ll change guards, a different company each night.” So that was done. Still, the beer being drank, being drank. I called him up one day, I said, “Colonel, I’m sorry to report.” He said, “I don’t want to hear anymore about that damn empty beer bottle that you find in the cases.” He said, “I have gone over that thing again, and again, I’m doing everything I can,” he said, “now, as far as I am concerned we’re dealing with ghosts” [Chuckling], he said, “we’re not losing that much, let them have it.” Somewhere, I am a thinking, we never found nobody. Somewhere I am a thinking 10:00that a laborer in helping construct those warehouses knew of a cave entrance or something that had been concealed to the point where he would, he had access to going in and out, and each week he’d go in there and, and drink a case of beer. He might, it might have been in every night, I don’t know, and laughing to himself. But that will always be a mystery as far as I’m concerned….

Downs: You did, never figured out any, never figured out a thing.

Barnes: …never, never did find out ho…who did it.

Downs: Hum.

Barnes: The…I had one guy from, 11:00from Louisiana that he was hard to do anything with, but he was smart. He got caught for speeding in Oran one time, in a GI truck, going right through the middle of town speeding, and the MPs got after him, but he didn’t, he didn’t get arrested. They got up pretty close to him and he stopped that truck, got out and threw his hat down on the pavement, started chomping on it. About time the MPs pulled up, “damn accelerator, I’ve been telling them to do something about it, it get stuck like that, that that’s not the first time it’s happened, that!” But the MP let him off, you know. He was, he was always good until the thing, he, whatever he got into, he’d work his way out, and he was having trouble, everybody was having trouble 12:00keeping (Mosley?) working. I said, “(Mosley?), tell me what you would really like to do?” He said, “I’d like to build a jeep.” I said, “you have my permission. Build a jeep.” So it wasn’t a couple of days until he had a, an old jeep frame and a bunch of pieces out there, working (really?), I mean he was putting in twelve, fourteen hours a day, only thing I’d ever seen him work on, in two years. And he would, he would, the harder, you could court martial him all you wanted to, it didn’t do no, no good, and so one long couple of three weeks, he was driving that jeep. It looked like hell, but at least he was, he was driving it, and I’ll get around after we get to Italy I’ll, 13:00I’ll tell you more about that jeep, but it was, one thing or two things going on the time. The first thing we did when we got there, this…colonel I was telling you about that was inept, General Webster put him on…assigned him on a, about a eighty-three position, which meant that, that he would never in any, anybody’s way. Later on, after the 42nd Wing moved out, he was put back in charge of the allied garrison in Sardinia. So…you, normally, in the army, the main thing that we are interested in was winning the war. 14:00Here we had a colonel, West Pointer, an old man, and he was brought up in the twenties and thirties when you did everything by the book, and the army reserve officers throwed out the book to win the war. But that’s getting a little ahead of myself, the, we got there we needed a shower. Well, I had made showers out of still drums in North Africa with low, low wash…water pressure and laid the pipe on the top of the sand, and you would have a hot shower. So we got there and it was pretty cold in Sardinia, snow, light snows. So driving through the, the streets of bombed out building, I saw a radiator, like a steam radiator, and I told one of the boys and said, “go down there and get me one of two of those steam radiators and bring them up there. And,” I said, “now you take those steam radiators, set one on the top of the other 15:00and build a, a little fire in under it, it’s going to come up through those openings and warm that water, as long as our water, water pressure in low, and of course, it was low because the Italians had open spigots in the street that run all of the time, and so we had another guy there that, that…wasn’t, wasn’t too smart, but I had to keep him doing something. I told the first sergeant, I said, “get John (Fagan?) out there to, for a shower, but warn him about, I just want a little, a little 16:00fire, that won’t take much. I will put a piece of tin around that to con…conserve the heat. Everything was going good there, we, were getting some hot showers for about two or three weeks, and one day I was setting doing some paper work, and I heard an explosion, and I knew from the way it came what the hell it was, I went out there and John (Fagan?) had gone to sleep and the fire had gotten too hot and that cast iron radiator had blowed up. They had pieces of shrapnel from it sticking in the wall beside where he was sleeping [Chuckle – Barnes and Interviewer]. So, we had to change our method and took some…three-quarter inch pipe and rolled it around a fifty-five gallon drum and made a coil out of it and that, that held up pretty good. And another, another thing that happened there with the, that was kind, kinda of funny, the, we had a, every time we could use an Italian why we used him whether there was a…army or civilian, and I had about four or five guys 17:00working in the kitchen.

Downs: Would you have to pay those people?

Barnes: Oh yeah, we had to pay them anyway, we had to feed them.

Downs: You might as well get them to work, huh.

Barnes: So…we had, heard an explosion out there one day and I went down to check and see what it was, well, one of the cooks had taken one of these Italians out and showed him how to light an immersion heater. Of course that was gasoline, using the immersion heater that you washed your mess kits in, in the water. And before he could get it lit on the next one, somebody else come out and got him--he couldn’t speak Italian either, the Italian couldn’t speak English so it was, it was, took him in the kitchen to use him for something, and when he came back he knew he was supposed to light, he had already turned the gasoline on and throwed that match [Laughing] down in there, and wham! Ever…everything went up 18:00[Chuckle – Interviewer]. So, at least he, he learned. Well, we got ready to load out to, go, go back to company, my company had left Bone and gone to supply the 15th Air Force which was staged in Foggia, Italy. But the, the headquarter was in Bari, because Bari was a seaport town, and we got orders to rejoin the company, and while we was in Sardinia, I traveled back to Oran, I traveled to Naples, I traveled to Rome on…a C-47 on a mission to pick-up various parts and that kind of stuff. So, I was at, at Rome about a week before Vesuvius erupted and I was in Rome again about a week after Vesuvius erupted. But we went to, went aboard ship, and 19:00we was shipping out everything that we had, or turned it over to the British in the Allied garrison in Sardinia, and the British wanted about eight or ten cases of fruit cocktail that we still had in the depot, saving, and I told (Rinehart?), I said, “trade the eight cases of fruit cocktail for as much rum as you can get.” The British had plenty of rum, and it was that good old thick Jamaican rum, it was, it, it, it knocked on your ears if you weren’t careful. So the last eight cases went to 20:00the British, and out on the fantail of this LST the mess sergeant set up a GI can, right before we had coffee in any way, in a clean GI can, and had it about a fourth full, a third or fourth full of rum. Everybody went by with a mess kit cup and took a big ladle and dipped down in there. That was sone of the best rum that you ever tasted in your life, and we landed in Naples the next day, because it’s just a day’s sailing time. I…they put Italian destroyers in ferry service, the ferry between Naples and Cagliari, I got to ride one of those one, one time. So, we got into Naples, and started, headed up toward Fori--Foggia and run out of gas…in the jeep and broke an axle on 21:00one of the trucks. So, I never knew how cold it, the gasoline could get. They had a ferry service that bought gasoline on the road when people got stranded, but I didn’t have a nozzle to put in the can, so I had to send somebody to a Italian house and the only thing they had was a tea cup; and we’d pour gasoline in the gas tank with a tea cup until that guy’s hand got so cold that he gave it to somebody else; but we stayed at a, a Catholic village 22:00that night, and went into Bari. The next day and joined the company and this jeep that we had…I took it away, from Mosley, after I got over there, because we were having so much trouble with it, and we had a, go…got there we had, we had another guy that had been…in, in a ship that got…bombarded out of Marseilles, at, at the company got over there, most of the men in the company at that time 23:00were limited assigned men, men that had been on the front, in the 5th Army front and had gotten wounded and sent back to our company, and he was one of the limited assigned man, and he was similar to some of the others we had, that you couldn’t do anything with him or you had to pick the job that he wanted to do. He came in one day and he said, “I want to be your driver.” I said, “I don’t need no driver.” He said, “I want to be your driver,” he said, “I’ll fix that jeep up where you won’t know it.” I figured well…you got to use him for something. [Chuckling] so, I had, he said, “we need axles, front axles for that jeep.” I said, “go over and see Sergeant (Spall?)”, he is the supply sergeant, “have him requisition some axles.” 24:00Sergeant (Spall?) was from Seymour, Indiana. So (Spall?) couldn’t get the axles. He tried two, two or three other legitimate sources, couldn’t get them. A k…the first sergeant one day, he said, “come out and take a look at your jeep.” Well he did, had the front axle taken out and had it pulled up by some olive trees and came in three or four hours all greasy, he said, “I want to take you for a drive,” said, “I got those new axles in.” We came back I told the sergeant, and he was a thorn in his side, “Sergeant, I want him promoted to a T-5.” He said, “that man is crazy. He was in that ship that blew up!” 25:00I said, “He is not crazy, he, he’s just taking the first sergeant and had some fun out of him.” I said, “you could not get the axles, supply sergeant couldn’t get the front axles, he went out and came in with two new front axles.” And I started naming all the stuff that they couldn’t get that he did get, and he, he is nobody’s fool. He got those stripes on, he was a different man, you, you couldn’t, you couldn’t believe the difference it made in, in the individual and of course, we took care of all the supply service for the 15th Air Force, with the exception of ammunition. We didn’t have anything to do with ammunition, we did, didn’t have anything to do with engineers, we didn’t have anything to do with signal, or we didn’t furnish the whiskey, but we furnished everything else, and we had the personnel and the capabilities to do it, and the, while I was over there, I, 26:00I had visited a company from Sardinia, trying to get, get that company to come over to Sardinia, but I wasn’t able to swing that and got over there. We had a, a major in our company that had originally brought the company to, to Ireland as a captain. But he’d been transferred out at different times that in the, finally transferred back in, and he was a battalion officer at the time. I was put in as battalion to the executive officer, and me this major, he was a, a third Cherokee, or Chickasaw, or something. 27:00Anyway, he had features of an Indian, a big guy and he and I couldn’t get along. By that time…I had had enough time under my belt that…a major didn’t, didn’t scare me at all, and I, I, I knew my way around a little bit, so we were always cordial, worked together, but at the same time, there was always friction there, and he would tell me things that he wanted done, that I knew was not required, or was not expected, but to keep me busy, to keep, keep me with something to do, and ever so often I’d, he’d 28:00say something to me about and I said, “I, I’ve got to, here what I have done, but I got more work to do on it major.” And the months went by and none of those jobs ever did get done, and they never were meant to be done, and…orders came in one time that you could promote certain lieutenants that had been in grade at least twelve months, you could promote them even though no, no vacancies existed. We had two second lieutenants there. One of them was an infantry second lieutenant that came off the line and I don’t remember what the other one was, but anyway they had been in grade and then no promotion. So I called them both up on the field telephone and told him, “as of now you’re first lieutenant, you can come in and pin your bars on soon you get your orders.” I told the first sergeant to write up the orders and that it be ready for the major’s signature when he come in. Well, I knew the major, he had been in grade as a lieutenant so long that he wasn’t about, he’d already said he wasn’t going to promote any, any of the officers that he had in his company, 29:00and when he came in at noon, I handed him the orders, “ready for your signature, sir.” He said, “I am not going to sign those.” And I said, “I think it’d be a good idea if you did sir, I have already called them up on the phone about two hours ago and told them that orders had came through from headquarters authorizing promotions and I had, had orders typed up for your signature that you’d sign them as soon as you got in here.” [Laughter – Interviewer]. You talk abut a mad Indian, he was a mad Indian, he was so mad there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it, because that came in at about that time waiting for his signature. So, he had a, he had a pet, a guy…out of Columbus, Ohio, that had a, an upset stomach. He was trying to get back to the states and was wanting to get back 30:00and there is no way I was about to let him get back because we, we had…many in there that had been there close to three years and hadn’t gotten a chance to go back in that rotation, even though rotation was available. I wasn’t about to, to send him back, until…the right time came along and, and I, I was trying to get the oldest ones back, and the major said, “Barnes,” one day he said, “let’s go for a drive.” We, he said, “I don’t want (Matus?) to go along.” So I got in the jeep and we started driving and he said, “I know that this fellow hasn’t been sent back to the States because you always throw a monkey wrench in the wheels.” He said, “I’m getting ready to send him back, and you get a hold 31:00of headquarters, you know somebody and, and he don’t get to go.” He said, “I’m leaving for the States, and I want you to promise me that you will help him get back.” I said, “there is no way major, that I will promise you anything to get the man back to the states, because I got men more deserving, family problems, combat problems, or else, but” I said, “I’ll promise you one thing, if it will help you, I promise you that I won’t interfere next time.” He said, “that’s all I want to hear.” He said, “if you don’t interfere, while you get back.” [Chuckling] Sure enough he was back in about thirty days [Laughter – Interviewer]. But, you had to play politics in the army. If you didn’t play politics, why you didn’t get nothing done. So…we 32:00had an (office below?) over there, and then we got orders that the war was over in Europe, and everybody was authorized a double ration of beer. Well, the 15th Air Force sent their trucks down and we loaded them up with trucks; we had three big warehouses that put up out of (Nissan?) huts, and Lieutenant (Rinehart?) had those beer warehouses, so he issued everybody a double ration of beer and on, a few months before that, we had celebrated Derby day, and I made mint juleps in canteen cups, 33:00Derby day, we in the tent, and it had, had these frosted cups and they, they basically [Laughing] they made a good substitute, but then we got orders to prepare for, we were shipping to the Pacific, and so we was supposed to, to mark all of our equipment and I’d been on move before and I knew what it was like. I, I took our computers and I told them I said, “I want every box that’s got a computer or a typewriter in it mark it preserving and cleaning material on the outside of the box. There is supposed to be a, another mark there, T-A-T with, inside a goose egg, 34:00egg circle, and that was supposed to let the port authorities know where they were going to, the destination. So the cleaning and preserving material was supposed to be marked ‘Typewriters and Computers.” And when we reach the Pacific, I’ll tell you…how that, how that worked out. They, we got ready and we were told to stop at Caserta. Caserta was an old castle outside of Naples, and the captain and myself stopped at Caserta, we were going to Rome, spend the night, the company was coming on, we were going to meet them at Leghorn. So, the, 35:00we got to Caserta, and I was called in and me and the captain, and pinned the bars on and the major, the captain was promoted to a major. Then I was told by this colonel, he said, “you all have done such a good job in North Africa, and Sardinia, and here in, in Italy, I’m going to sent you to the Pacific.” I said, “you mean that’s what we get, that’s the reward we get for being such a good…” “well,” he said, “after all you got a citation.” I said, “that, that don’t mean anything. The company has been over here four years. I have only been over here two and a half, with the outfit.” But he said, “yeah,” but said, “you all have got the experience now 36:00and the war is still going on.” So we took off and went on, spent the night in Rome, and went to Leghorn the next day and went to headquarters. They said “you’ve been assigned to Venice with a-- not Venice, but…to Pisa, Pisa.” They said, “you’ve been assigned to Pisa,” and we went up there and there was a, a really…a game preserve, it’s what it really was originally, and we set up camp in this game preserve, but our orders read, ‘you’re assigned to pin Base section 37:00for rations, quarters, and administration.’ Well if you analyze that, nothing was said about training. So, I didn’t do any training, I didn’t train no men, I didn’t train my men, nothing, they had already been trained as far as I was concerned. There was outfits out there that was marching and doing manual of arms, and doing everything in the world, and I gave my men vacation trips. We took the train and went back to, to Rome twice. On one of those trips…the first trip we went to Rome, I took a musette bag, a musette bag is a canvas bag that the officers had, and I put as many cartons of cigarettes in there that I could carry, and at that time 38:00cigarettes were selling on the black market a hundred lira, the equivalent of a dollar. And the Stars and Stripes official newspaper said calls could be made in Rome back to the states, but the list now was so long that there was a waiting list of weeks or months before calls could be made. Well, I knew what I was going to try to do, and we got off at Rome, and of course the army had the best hotels, I stayed in at the International Hotel for a couple of bucks, that ( ) money, two or three hundred dollars, and [Chuckling] we, I went up to telephone company 39:00and asked where the interpreter was. First you had to buy a call and then I found out that you couldn’t make a call unless there was an interpreter on duty, or a censor, and that’s what the interpreter and censor was all about, he was an Italian soldier, so--Italian officer, I mean; and I said, “what happens when a man don’t show up to make a call?” I knew that, that some of these men were, were…putting their name down on the list to make a call and they’d be shipped out. What happened if he don’t show up?” He said, “well, you have to talk to the censor.” I went upstairs and met him and I pulled out a pack of cigarettes and asked him, “have one.” He took 40:00a long drag and I could tell that he enjoyed it [Chuckle – Interviewer], and I put the cigarettes down there, I said, “take them with you.” I said, “I’ve got about fifty men with me, then I’ll have some more men later on, to make calls to the states.” And he said, “well,” he said, “if there is nobody here, I go home!” I opened up that musette bag and he saw all those cartons of cigarettes [Chuckle – Interviewer]. I said, “you think that we can make some kind of a deal?” He smiled and so that night, instead of him going home about seven o’clock, there was calls still being made to the states at twelve o’clock. Some of them had spent all their money on women, 41:00but those who hadn’t and wanted to make calls, we made calls. And I called my wife and, and I must have talked for half an hour. I said, “you be at home tomorrow night at this time, because I’m going to call you tomorrow night.” Downs: I…the guess probably in 1945, that was a very big deal, wasn’t it ( ).

Barnes: Oh you’re might right, you’re mighty right!

Downs: Calling on the telephone long dista…that long a distance.

Barnes: And, and the next night why we repeated it, and the censor was satisfied and I was satisfied, and my men was satisfied. I never sold a cigarette while I was overseas on the black market, but anytime that I could swap a cigarette or give something to benefit my men, I didn’t hesitate to do it.

Downs: You didn’t do it to put it in your pocket, you….

Barnes: That’s right.

Downs: …did it for the benefit of everybody.

Barnes: That’s right, and we, we visited the catacombs 42:00and I, I went to the Vatican, this is the second or third time I had been to the Vatican, and to the Coliseum, and Alpine Way and on-and-on-and-on e…everything that was to be seen, why, I took them or allowed them to go and we went back to…camp. So we decided that we, we go on, going to go to Venice, just the officers. So, Major Jones, myself, and Billy (Camp?) and…got I have to looking at his picture, to remember the guy’s name. We took off to Genoa. So we went up the coastal road by Cassino 43:00where they, they’d bombed out and got at (Richard?) a big hotel in Genoa, the 97th Division I believe, that was a black division, I think. They had charged of all that area up, up there in Genoa. I went to the dining room [Chuckling] that night and I looked at this guy’s head, even though he had a burr hair curt I knew him right away. “George, what are you doing here?” George Harris, he was a professor from the University of Kentucky. He was a first lieutenant and he had slipped off from, from Germany and was trying to get to the Riviera [Laughing] and Genoa was in 44:00between stop for him. The war was over and everybody was, was going everywhere they could un-authorized and hoping that you didn’t get caught. So, the next day, we took off for Lake Como, in, in the region around there, that’s a beautiful place, and headed on over, and stopped at Bologna, I believe next to see a, a…a guy there that used to be down at Bari and the first sergeant had been told to get in touch with us with him, in case he needed us, he could call us, we’d, we’d call him from Venice. So, we went on in to, to Venice and the air force had taken over all of Lido Island. I think they was five or six big hotels on Lido Island, and we caught a, 45:00a duck from Saint Marco’s Square, ferried us over to Lido Island, and then, I think, the mi…the, the…it was two dollars, and what they charged stayed at the hotel for a meager twenty-five cents, and it was GI air force over there, you, you wouldn’t believe, hundreds of them. And this next day, we went back and down the Grand Canal, and then did our thing around there and spent three or four days, three days, I think, and we all said, we’re this far, so we’re close to Trieste, we might as well go to Yugoslavia. And then somebody decided, well, we better call Verona and see if 46:00Sergeant (Loretti?) is got in touch with us, and wants us for anything. He said, “where have you guys been?” he said, “(Loretti?) called and here it is Friday, you’re supposed to ship out to the Pacific. You got officer’s call, Saturday at seven o’clock, and Barnes is supposed to be there.” Downs: [Chuckle – Interviewer] And you were on the other side of Italy, huh.

Barnes: So, we took off. Well the roads weren’t marked, because the Germans had pulled up the signs, you…followed your nose or the air force say the seat of your pants, and we almost got killed, they had a pontoon bridge across the Po River. We almost got killed…when I was driving, and they come to a, 47:00a right-angle turn in the road just before you go down in the Valley where Florence is located and I, I was going too fast to make it, then the jeep, jeep brakes, jeeps don’t have any good brakes on. Well anyway, we stopped at Florence for super and at the…main cathedral for a little while; we figured we’re going out to get, get in, in time for that meeting. We got in, in time and I sat down, the meeting had already started. I sat down and the commander in charge of all these units around, “Well,” he said “they not, no use to keep those here that are not going over, been pulled from the list, he said, “we will let them go first.” He said, “such and such unit,” then he said, “the two-forty-sixth quartermaster unit won’t go 48:00on this trip, they’ll make the next one.” He said, “the officers from those units may be excused.” We took off and the major took the rest of the officers and some that, that didn’t want to go to, the others filled the place that they had been before. They went back to Venice, and I took another trainload back to Rome. So we were just having one hell of a good time running around, seeing places that you don’t get to see. I….

Downs: Have you been back?

Barnes: No, I haven’t been back, they, I haven’t got enough money to go to all the places, but we had already made Carthage, we’d, we’d already made…Pompeii, where we was down in the Naples area, and we 49:00just had, had made so many places that we had, had seen, and we got, got ready to, ev…every day we had to go to Leghorn, which is about twelve miles away. So we passed the leaning tower of Pisa every day, twice a day or sometime [snapping fingers sound] more times than that. But our, our men didn’t even have to, to cook; they didn’t have to [snapping fingers sound] to wash dishes or nothing. They had German POWs there, and one day, I was getting ready to wash my musket, we did have to do that, and one of the man was talking to one of these German POWs that had been on the Russian front, and he was shot at and sent back, 50:00asked him why Germany had lost. He said, “I was a machine gunner and I killed so many Russians that my machinegun barrel melted and bent over.” And he said, “there was always one Russian come behind the others,” he said, “you just can’t stop them.” Then he said, “beside,” he said, “you look down the road here. Every field is full of ( ) equipment” He said, “we didn’t have that kind of equipment.” He said, “you all didn’t beat us by manpower, you beat us by machines.” But those German units, I talked to Sergeant (Spaw?) who was my supply sergeant. He stayed in Italy while we went overseas because he’d been, been overseas so long, and they put him in charge of a chuc--a 51:00truck repair depot. He told me, he said, “the German officers, when they would come in, they were Germa--they were English-speaking officers, they’d ask me what I wanted the men to do that day and I would tell them, and that’s all I had to do until I closed the doors that night, that they did the rest of it.” They were efficient and they wanted to do something. The Italian POWs, we worked in Bari. I had a bunch of them working and I had to court martial a man one time because…he gave his carbine to a Ger—to Italian POW who wanted a load of cigarette. But he knew and I knew that the Italian wanted out of the war and they, they, they wasn’t going to do anything, but the fact that he had done that, 52:00I had to set an example and court martial him. Later on I had problem in Sardinia because I’d found out by my own Gestapo that he had planned to kill me one night and this one particular fellow took the pistol away from him, and I knew about it, and I’d searched his, his locker for guns and weapons, like I did all my, my men. One night he came in and this was back in Sardinia, and he said “I’d like for you to go with me down this beer joint.” He said, “the Italian took my cap.” I said, “okay, I’ll go with you.” And I reached and got my forty-five, put a clip in, put a shell in the chamber on safety and stuck it in my field jacket pocket. After we walked outside 53:00of the compound, I passed the guard down there, I said, “now (Burley?) I know that you had planned to kill me because I had you court martialed for giving the carbine to an Italian POW, so you could light a cigarette. I know that. Tonight we’re going down there, to this Italian beer joint to get your cap. I know why I’m being laid out here. But I want you to know that I was marksman, I was rated in the country, I, I know how to fire and take care of weapons. I got my forty-five in my pocket, my hand is on the trigger, the shell is in the chamber, my thumb is on the safety. 54:00You better hope to hell that nobody does any shooting on the way down there, or you better kill me [Chuckle – Interviewer] with the first bullet, because you’re just a dead son-of-a-bitch.” We went--walked there and walked in the jerb, beer joint, walked pass these Italians, his cap was down there all right. He s…I don’t know whether anybody had taken his cap or not, but anyway, he got his cap, we walked back out and not a word was, was said…all the way back, and I had kept him on my list trying to catch him. It took about two months or three to catch him, we caught him stealing a truckload of gasoline and I never did see him no more. The CID, CID took care of him, they, they was on him, on too because they knew who was doing it, and we put out traps and just like me setting traps out the farm. When you set a trap out you don’t [Chuckling] always catch them the first time, 55:00you have to go back and back. But…we got ready to ship to the Pacific, and you wouldn’t guess who was there that morning. A jeep pulled up and this crazy (Meadows?) that was on that ship at Marseilles had a new jeep. He pulled up there and he said, “Captain,” he said, “I’ve come to get your bedroll and your musette bag.” One of the other officers said, “how about taking mine down?” He said, “like Hell, Lieutenant (Shetin?). His name was (Chilling?), “Lieutenant (Shetin?), he said, “I am only taking care of the Captain, the Captain took care of me and I’m taking care of him.” He not only shored me down to the ship, but carried my stuff and put in the stateroom. Now let’s see if I can turn that thing off there, let me see if I can a g…at…. 56:00[Pause] Downs: Okay.

Barnes: You howler when you’re ready.

Downs: We are all ready! Just…start wherever.

Barnes: Well I think of the first thing that I, we’ll start with here is how fast rumors spread aboard ship. And every, every day, or several times a day, you’d catch what this headquarter is going to do, where we were going. Of course, in reality, no one knew where we were going, no one knew…anything but those stories always spread.

Downs: This was from America to Africa?

Barnes: Yeah, and I was, I was concerned about how fast they might spread, so I started my own rumor [Chuckle – Interviewer] and about six hours 57:00later, at meal, someone was telling me a story that I knew that I had originated only they had (polished?) second hand or maybe four, five people, and they had added on to it to almost I didn’t recognize in, in six hour-time, or I didn’t almost recognize my own story. So, when he finished I told him, I told him, “I don’t believe a word of it, it’s not true.” He said, “how do you know? So-and-so told me, they, they were in know.” I said, “because I started that story myself this morning.” And, and that was always happening in the war, and especially aboard ship. And the…another interesting thing that, that happened, we, as we approached North Africa coast, up on 58:00the high bluff, there was a, a pink-looking building, and it looked like it could have been ten miles away, but this bluff…must have been a thousand feet or more. Of course, I later found out that it was a gradual slope rather than a perpendicular slope, and we went in past Oran to the French port of Mers-el-Kebir, and that was about all that was there, was a port, and the French navy at one time had this installation. And the Americans, of course had taken over and tried to salvage what the French had left. And they unloaded our baggage off on to a, a barge. 59:00So we were allowed…after we were unloaded, we were trucked back in of all places that pink building, about twelve miles out of Oran. It used to be a resort for…French people in the money. So I was assigned one of the rooms along with three other doctors in that particular installation, and about four days later, they told us that our baggage had been unloaded in Mers-el-Kebir and we could down and identify it. I went down…and looked the place over, I found a trunk locker that I had taken and I found the bedroll. I was still short something else, 60:00and there was a, a little guy, he couldn’t have been over five foot tall kind of on the, excuse me, on the heavy side, and he had what we call a peanut cap on, actually it was a wool cap that worn under the helmet, kind of used to see radar O’Reilly wear in, in the movies, and that wasn’t an official dress for the average GI, but since he was who he was, I can understand why. And I just figured he was another GI and I commandeered him. It wasn’t until he got hot…looking for my baggage he pulled off his jacket and he was a full captain and I was just a second lieutenant, of course, and I apologized to him but he 61:00was mad by that time because he’d been taking orders from the second lieutenant, and had he exercised his rank, it would have been a different story, but that in…instant plus the one I had in Fort Lee months before, told me something, to not take things for granted, always check out the guy before I got myself into trouble. I, before I left New York, I had a hundred-watt bulb and I knew that I was going to need that once I got overseas, if the wattage and the voltage was right once we got there. I was told that they had DC currant in some of these places, AC would work. I bought this hundred-watt bulb at the PX in Fort Lee, Virginia 62:00and naturally I took with me when we went to Camp Kilmer, so I took it and put inside of a sock and another sock on the top of that and on, and on, until I had about four layers of socks and wrapped them under shirts and stuff around it to get overseas. So I took it out of my trunk locker and scooted in the room at that particular installation and it was beautiful. The…doctors that were assigned to other rooms used to come in there and they study a little light. I had a chaplain come by one day, and he said, “that is exactly what I need, and I’ll take that with me.” I said, “no you won’t.” Downs: Talk about you….

Barnes: …”that’s my, my personal property.” Downs: …your bulb.

Barnes: “Oh,” he said, “we can take care of that,” he said, “the chaplain don’t have anything like that, but a forty or fifty watt bulb,” he said, “I’ll just see Colonel (Loaf?), he will take it.” And for some 63:00reason or other there was a piece of, of wood, like a stick in the room, and I, I grabbed it, and I said, “no you won’t, I’ll shattered it here and nobody gets the use of it.” So that, I was able to save my bulb. But there was always something going on. I remember one time that for some reason or other, I, I’d s…I know what I, how come we didn’t get it, I was going to trade in a Thompson submachine gun for an M-1 after we’d been on a, a…patrol supposed to hunt German paratroopers of which I found out later there were none, and nursed it, the biggest part of a case of tropical chocolate. Well this tropical chocolate…wasn’t very sweet, but it had a good taste and it was 64:00lighter in color than a chocolate bar, and this sergeant said, “( ) what are you going to do with it?” And all I was trying to fish with one, one bar of the chocolate.” He said, “I wish I had some place to, to throw it because I like to get rid of it, but you can’t give it away.” I said, “I’ll take it, how many bars can I have?” He said, “you can have the whole thing if you want it.” So, I took off with it, I had a rough time hiding it where I knew that I could eat it as I wanted it. But that was wonderful. Another interesting thing happened at this Canastel installation which turned out to be a replacement depot, as individual soldiers came in unassigned, they were assigned to that particular unit to be piecemealed out to various units and…cases of, of death, or built-back-to-strength because of enemy action or whatever, 65:00and I had a platoon out one day drilling, and other second lieutenants were drilling platoons elsewhere, and I heard this noise, and although I don’t know how I knew, I knew from…a picture show or I kn…knew from something, anyway, it was a whistling noise of a shell, incoming shell, and I, I hollered, “everybody hit the ground!” And they did, and plop, something hit over here, a short distance away. And about six shells hit. That was the only time I was ever under shell fire, and it turned out it was r…British Royal Navy shooting duds, 66:00target practice out in the, the…ocean there, it was actually, the…the Gulf of Oran, I guess. But they were, they were duds and they apparently had their sight too high and instead of, of hitting in the side of this cliff, or hitting into the water, they came up…apparently just above the ground and landed there. So I, I thought that was interesting, the fact that, that…I was a, a non-combatant officer and the installation was a replacement depot. We were being under shellfire and it turned out that it was, it was British practicing, and after I was assigned to my unit…I had the occasion to just goof off. I got in a three-quarter-ton 67:00one day and went out in an, an isolated area. I wouldn’t say that it was a…a, a desert area, although it was dry, and n…not too far of, half a dozen miles…from town, or maybe a little further than that. And I didn’t see anybody nowhere. And there in front of me, there was a covey of pheasants on the ground. They apparently the truck hadn’t caused them to fly or anything. So I had, although I had turned my Thompson in, I traded it off for an M-1, the…three-quarter ton weapons carrier had a Thompson on it, in the holster on the side of the truck, and so I took that 68:00Thompson out of the scabbard and put, and put it on automatic and raised it up, see how many pheasants I could kill, so help me, that covey came up after I had emptied a clip on the ground, because they didn’t know what was going on, I didn’t hit a one of them, there wasn’t a single of them with a, with a submachine gun, but I tell you what did come up and scared the hell out of me, these Arabs came up everywhere. They must have been in the ground, I don’t know where else they could have come from, because there wasn’t, wasn’t a house within sight, and it scared me to the point that I stuck that thing back in the holster and headed out of there back for town. Which reminds me that on convoys, moving troops from place to place, you would stop every hour 69:00for a break, ( ) for a man to take leak, and you had to have, after the first time, you had to have at least two guards, one on either side of the truck, that would wait their turn because those trucks would be covered up with Arabs. There wouldn’t be a house around anywhere and they would cover you up, and they wouldn’t take a…whatever they had to, to cut open a barracks bag and fortunately we never lost any, anything of…any valuable on those trips, because you’d leave the two guards would be sufficient…and….

Downs: Otherwise they’d steal you blind, huh.

Barnes: That’s right, and where they come from? What I, what I want to emphasize, I don’t know where they come from, and anyone that, that ever tells you that Algiers or Tunis has so many 70:00hundred thousand people, they’re lying because they don’t know how many hundred thousand they got [Laugher – Interviewer]. They’re, they’re everywhere. In Oran, as you came down from Mers-el-Kebir, at Oran, you, you looked on your right and up…on the side of a mountain was a church. And they told me that this church was built as a result of a cho…a cholera epidemic in the eighteen hundreds. Of course at the time, why I knew it was about eighteen hundreds and what, but I don’t remember now, but the…apparently as a result of the cholera epidemic, there was a religious gathering, and at this religious gathering they pledged that a church 71:00would be built to such-and-such saint as a result, if the town was spared, and the church is the result of that. I thought that was kind of interesting.

Downs: Mm-mm. Is it, it was near Oran?

Barnes: Yeah, and….

Downs: It was….

Barnes: …up above that, was an isolated area, and I used to like, when I had a little extra time, to drive up there, it was about four or five miles up where you could look at all the port of Mers-el-Kebir and see the incoming convoys. I was up there in a jeep one time, had a carbine in the scabbard on the side of jeep, and I stopped, there was some Hack-hack installations up there, because occasionally German reconnaissance planes would come over to photograph the harbor area and 72:00no bombs were ever dropped. The first ones that came in why we were the first few we were concerned and had sleep trenches that used in case but the only, the only thing a sleep trenches was good for was to protect you against shrapnel from the hack-hack that was, was falling [Laugher – Interviewer] because the Germans definitely weren’t sending any planes in with reconnaissance planes, there was no threat from that. Apparently…somebody in headquarters figured to be a feather in their cap if they shoot down reconnaissance planes because it, it was certainly no threat to us, but you had to use those sleep trenches it was, because shrapnel was falling from those hack-hack gun batteries. The, in, in Africa, we had mountains of C rations 73:00and the labor force, we had Spanish, French, and Arab Berber laborers, and you never knew when the peak was going to come in, so if you had five ships unloading, for example, and you needed three hundred people in your particular installation, if later on ships came in and they were unloading ordnance, unless you retained your three hundred people, you sent them back to a labor pool, ordnance would get those people and the next ship that came in would unload, unload class one, class two and four 74:00quartermaster material, you just didn’t have the personnel to do it. Then you couldn’t call on the labor pool to let you have it. So you ended up that you had to maintain a force even though you didn’t have work for them to do.

Downs: And pay them and all that?

Barnes: That’s right, but, to keep them from setting on their buts, why you would move C rations from one side of the yard, or to the other side of the yard, and sometimes that would take a week to two weeks’ time to move those on your back over across. And I had one Arab one day, after we had moved those C rations about three times, I had walked down to one corner of the yard and he walked up to me and said, “lieutenant,” and 75:00“yeah,” he pinpoint to the C ration that he had on his shoulder and pointed over there where we have taken them, he said, I said, “yeah, that’s exactly right.” He had al…all ready found out since we’re down to the last of these that, that he’s going to be bringing those things back again. So, all of them weren’t dumb, but we had, like in any group of people, we had a lot of them, and the French were…really a colonial landlord….

Downs: Mentality?

Barnes: …they, they, they, they treated those, those people…worse than we ever treated mules. I have seen them take a, butt of a gun and, and knock them down on the ground, they would, no…no love at all, or, it, it, it was, it was atrocious the things that, that happened among those people. 76:00Downs: They treated them like they were their….

Barnes: Conquered.

Downs: …yeah, conquered people.

Barnes: Yeah, and another interesting thing, I had the opportunity to go to Sidi bel Abbes, that was the home of French foreign legion, and we had gone to a place called Mestagnem, which is up on the, the coast, to a ball game to another unit up, up there, and I had seen the sign said ‘Sidi bel Abbes’ so many kilometers that pointed this way. The, (Masio?) said, “you know,” he said, “we haven’t got a whole lot going on today,” he said, “why don’t we go to Sidi bel Abbes to see the home of the French foreign legion,” he said, “I hear they got a good gun museum up there. Does anybody know the way?” I said, “yeah, I do.” So I said, we will go up here at Mestagnem and take a road to the right because I saw a sign when we went to the ball game. So we proceeded, and we drove and drove, and drove, 77:00and instead of, of heading any way we heading more or less back toward the way we had come. So, we took a, a good hour, an hour and a half to get over there, enjoyed the place, but we had driven about thirty-five kilometers.

Downs: The French by this time, had, had finally joined the allies?

Barnes: Oh, oh yeah they had, they had, they had joined, yeah they’d had…the free, had…had surrendered, and we got to Sidi bel Abbes all right and I’d say predominantly number of the troops were Germans. They had, when Rommel was overrun, a lot of them had disappeared and they had made their way to the French and had joined up 78:00with the French foreign legion, and in the, the mess halls, it was German slogans all the way around the wall, but we got ready to come home, it was only ten miles or twelve, or ten or twelve kilometers from where we had started from, and we drove thirty-five miles [Chuckle – Barnes and Interviewer] around to it. I had a rough time living that one down. I said, “well, none of you all knew the way and I, I did, it just so happens I knew the long way.

Downs: [Chuckle – Interviewer] But how, how long after the actual invasion of North Africa was it m…before you were actually there?

Barnes: Huh, about two months, I think they invaded in September, or November, I don’t’ remember which, any, anyway it was…we landed…the twenty-seventh of December.

Downs: So you spent Christmas on ship then.

Barnes: That’s right, and so that’s, 79:00that was all that I had on North Africa, we’ll catch Sardinia…we, we had…a, a different, different opportunity at Sardinia that I never experienced before, in that…that, that whole island was controlled by the air force. Well the air force, it wasn’t much discipline nearly…among, no discipline, hardly among the fliers because they were alive today and gone tomorrow, and the, that, even though we were ground forces, and they had ground troops on the island, it…kind of brushed off on us and the first thing you know…the discipline was lax 80:00and they…I felt like there was a lot of animosity among…my own men, after a short period of time. They weren’t, they weren’t happy even though they had good, as far as soldiering go. So I instituted what I call a bitch night. I called them into a mess hall which had been an old garage for trucks for a ( ) drill and I said, “I’m gone to start something, we’re going to start tonight. You can complain to the moderator about anything that you want to concerning this command, and 81:00if you complain about the chow we’re having, we got the mess officer and we have the cooks and the mess sergeant here to answer the questions, we will see if they, the questions can’t be answered. At not time, regardless of what you say about me or any of the officers or the non-coms, will any action be taken against you, but I must insist that once you walk out the door, don’t bring it up anymore because I don’t want to hear…of it and those regulations that I am issuing verbally won’t be applicable once you get out of this mess hall tonight, but next week at this time, we will have an answer 82:00by the appropriate individual of your complaint, try to alleviate any, any problems.” The next week, we started settling things, sometimes it was, it was me that was on the, the frying pan, sometimes it was somebody else, but we brought up these things, and after two or three weeks…as I was walking out the door, I heard one of the individuals talking to somebody else that such-and-such should have been done and he turned to him and he said, “I don’t want to hear anything about it,” he said, “you had the opportunity to speak up,” said, “you wait until next week,” said “that, those are the, the orders,” and said, “I think he is doing a good job.” So that was the only place, as long as we were on the island, that was the, that kept going on, but 83:00there was no, no time in the army that I was ever to do that again, because the conditions weren’t such and the personnel had changed. We had, when I got to Italy, the, I had sold a large percentage of combat veterans who had been on the 5th Army front, had been shot all to pieces, and instead of sending them back to the states, they, they had taken part of my men and sent them up front, after training I, I’m assume, I hope, and gave us those infantry…replacements that did come back from the hospital or wha…what, whatever, and you just weren’t able to handle it. I also had two di…(dimi johns?) of vino that anybody could come in and drink 84:00an…any time they wanted to. I felt like, and it happened, I had pure drunks as a result of that than I did if I t…when I tried to restrict drinking. So we had some control with that.

Downs: I imagine it’s probably hard to restrict drinking in a country where it’s just….

Barnes: Where you can buy for….

Downs: …every day a life.

Barnes: …you, you buy for ten ce…ten cents a, a, a liter! So, if you had it there for free, they c…come to get it anytime they want. A lot of times, a guy that normally would, was drinking wouldn’t come by at all, but once or twice a week. Another, another thing that, that happened while I was in Sardinia that I thought was, I had the opportunity I never had before, one of the, the major who was depot commander of the engineer depot, he had made contact 85:00with the warden of the island prison. So, had, had told him that he would like to him to come over some time and go wild boar hunting. Since my men…operated the engineer depot, furnished the personnel, the signal corps got pulled on and on the various depots because they were trained to do, do a…any, any kind of depot work necessary. One of the buck sergeants…had the opportunity to go, and he asked me if I wanted to go. “Yeah,” he said, “what’s it all about?” “I will talk with the major.” So we took our carbines and went down there. This prison was almo…was almost in the center of the island and the 86:00area that we were hunting in, there was no big trees, but there was shrubbery, thickets, as thick as anything that you can think of about the height of the man’s head or some places it be a couple of feet higher, and we were stationed along a path that these pigs, wild boars had made, that wasn’t over a foot and a half wide we were stationed at such a place that when you fired, we were given fields of fire where you fire…is certain degree and you weren’t allowed to go ten degrees to the right or to the left. That didn’t endanger of the men down the way, because we were stationed about…thirty, to fifty yards apart on this path. We heard the hogs, 87:00we smelled the hogs, but [Chuckling] we didn’t, we didn’t find any hogs, but it was, it was interesting because…at least I got to go wild boar hunting that I never had the opportunity to go before. I was able to pick up a…several pictures in a fascist headquarter because when we went into an area…usually, the, our plane had bombed out the town, and the only thing that was available was outside storage or an area that was partly covered, and so we took advantage of any sport stadium and, and there were several, a lot of them in all of those places, and there was one area we went into for a ration dump in Sardinia, and…there was a building there that hadn’t been bombed out and I went in the headquarters, 88:00and I found several fascist pictures that I brought back with me, I thought was really important. And, you remember I told once…previously about this fellow that came in for a, a purple heart that, where a German plane had, had…exploded? Well, he found a Sardinian girl he wanted to marry [Chuckle – Interviewer]. So I went over and, because the army regulations required the company commander to go over and look them over, see what you think about them, and I went over and looked them over and…it was interesting in the fact that I got it the wedding, I got the marriage approved and it went through, but 89:00later on, I run into an officer from Maysville who was…Captain (Stit?). By that time the last time I saw him, he was Lieutenant Colonel…he came back after the war was over on a ship that had a bunch of GI brides on it. This girl was on the ship and she married this boy from Greenup, Kentucky. I have some customers from Greenup and I asked about him, and about the girl. Well said, “as soon as she came back, she li…lived with him a little while, but she did marry him for one reason, and that’s to get to [Chuckling] the….

Downs: The United States.

Barnes: …United States, that’s all that she was interested in. I knew, she was a beautiful woman. Now 90:00I was, we want to go to Italy…I was in Italy during the typhus epidemic. There is a lot of people died in Italy during the typhus epidemic, that was short….

Downs: U. S. soldiers too?

Barnes: No.

Downs: U. S. soldiers or civilian population?

Barnes: Civilians, civilians. I was there during the epidemic for a couple of days. We had gone in there for supplies, the C quarter seven, we flew over past Mount Etna that’s erupted now, and swung around by Capri and around by Vesuvius and, and landed there at, at Naples, and it was winter time, and cold as the devil, sleeping on army cots on about the third or fourth floor of this villa, and it was…filthy and dirty as it could be, they, 91:00they hadn’t been there a long enough to clean the place up, was what it amounted to. But they, the…funerals went up a, a long hill, you could see it from out…where we were staying, and some of them were charcoal burning ambulances, or hearses, and they’d would go a few feet, a few yards, and an Italian would jump off and pour charcoal on the wheel going up, up this hill, and they’d take a back to the chips and throw some chips in this thing and, and…stroke it, a few minutes make the methane gas….

Downs: Of the, of this….

Barnes: …and, and take off, yeah.

Downs: …Stan…steam powered or….

Barnes: No, it was methane gas.

Downs: Oh!

Barnes: So I was told, I, I, as far as knowing I don’t know actually, but I was told it was methane gas from the, the 92:00chips that, the French used that in, in North Africa too, same, same type of thing that didn’t have the gas. Well, and I had the opportunity to go to Pompeii. I was at…that was before the eruption of Vesuvius, then after the eruption of Vesuvius, about two weeks, I was over there at Pompeii, going through the ruins and…it…it was interesting. The ruins told you about what a wicked city it was, and what I am going to tell you, you can, can edit it out, if you want to. One of the houses with prostitutions had a penis sticking out over the door that advertised…the…. 93:00Downs: Girls, uh-hum.

Barnes: …house and on another one I went into, they had, it was, had built a cabinet about this big square around the paintings. This house had originally covered up with lava and it was excavated, and there was a guy with his dong on the balancing scales and an Italian, according to the guides said, “it’s worth it’s weight in gold.” But there was a lot of interesting things that a person got to see. For example, had casts of the individuals that had, had been destroyed…in the ash and when they found something like that, they just filled the cavity up with a plaster of paris 94:00and wait until it harden and then dug it out and you had a complete…cast of the individual that had, had been there.

Downs: That, were they a lot of those?

Barnes: I didn’t say…four or five at most. But I, I saw several paintings on the wall, and they had, had some pretty good artists back, back in those days too. Well, at, there was a German reconnaissance plane that would come over Naples Harbor, I was told, every day at two o’clock, because this particular bay, that I’m thinking of, the guide said, “well Jerry got five more minutes and he’ll be here.” And I didn’t know what, what they were talking about until I asked. He said, “at two o’clock, a German recon plane comes over the area, goes up and circles around Mount Vesuvius and head back, 95:00it happens every day.” “why don’t you shoot him down?” He says, “he is too fast, no, nobody has been able to shoot him down, we tried there for a while, now we just let him fly because he is by himself, he is not going to hurt any, anything. That was a different approach than what we were doing down in Oran trying to knock a single plane down and all what we was doing was getting our own people hurt from shrapnel. Sure enough at two o’clock, here come this German plane, and it wasn’t until later that I found out what happened, because I was at a depot one, one day…in Sardinia, when some of the pilots, the pilot of B-36s had come in with a supply group to pick up supplies and one of them was talking to the other about today, I was flying and I was doing all I could do, and these German plane come right up alongside of it and hover there for a minute and wave to me 96:00[loud hand clapping sound] it just took off just like a bat out a house, I don’t know what happened. Well, the Germans had developed the jet at that time, and this reconnaissance plane, evidently was a jet plane because he would come in so fast and gone. Of course, they hadn’t revealed that and intelligence hadn’t picked up what was happening.

Downs: Hmm, that’s interesting.

Barnes: The…they found out later that Vesuvius at night of course lit up the sky. The recon planes and when they came in the night, at night, they used that as a beacon to make their circle and turn back. I did some hitch hiking on, on planes. I remember one time…catching 97:00the C47 out of Sardinia going to Bari because that’s where the other half of my unit was and I had been told by our commander to try to get the other half of the company over to Sardinia. So, we got over, this was early in the war and the lines was about forty miles, or fifty, up north of Naples area, if you drew a line straight across, and we had flown towards Foggia at, a second lieutenant pilot in this C47 and had a sec…second lieutenant of navigator, and we got over there about, I consider halfway over and this…pilot 98:00asked the navigator, “Colonel, where are we?” He looked at the map and he said, “Dam if I know sir, I thought we were so-and-so.” Well, I don’t know whether they were doing this for my benefit, or, or whether they were acting, but they, they were doing a good job of acting. But anyway, one of them said, “I don’t know where we are.” Well, since we were only forty miles from the German line, it concerned me, if, if they tried to scare us ( ) they did a pretty good job. But anyway, the reason I think it’s real, because…this navigator said, “I think we’re going due east, but” he said, “over here is a railroad,” he said, “it’s going that way, so let’s follow the railroad. And according to my map here, that railroad track running directly to Bari so we went down the rail line to Bari whether 99:00it was intentional or unintentional, I’ll never know, but I’ll [Laughing] always, always figured that maybe they didn’t know what they were doing anyway, because they, they turned out some of them that, that didn’t know, but I caught a B36 out of Bari back. But when you hitchhike it, why you never know who you’re going to get and in the air force, why people always hitchhiked. You had to have a legitimate order, but you went in and, and showed a, your order, and if there was a plane going in a certain direction, why you, you, you’d get it, because you, you was authorized to go. I got a B36. A B36 takes a long landing area, or an awful smart pilot, or both. Well, we missed the airport in…Rome coming back it flew to Rome 100:00and then, then back around, and so I was concerned about that after a second attempt, and he was going to land the next time, I figured he wasn’t going to make, but they settled it down and, and they made it all right. So that’s what you get into for hitchhiking sometimes. At, at Bari we had another case of a boy wanted to marry a Italian girl, and he was in a restricted area. The MPs had put up signs in, in…you wasn’t allowed to go in there because there was a lot of houses of prostitution you, and. So went down there and waited until we saw the MPs make the rounds and we went in by jeep and drove into the courtyard and closed the gate. 101:00We went in and introduced us to the boys’ papa and mama, and he came out with a, a bottle of white liquid and poured out a glass, I would say, it was about a, an ounce and a half, he said it was potato whiskey. I turned to my driver and I said, “stingy old devil, wasn’t he.” He said, “yeah,” he said, “I, I think so.” So we turned up it went down, and I got all the information I wanted in about twenty minutes, we got out and got in the jeep to leave and I said, “(Laris?) I don’t know about you but I am drunk.” [Chuckle – Interviewer]. He says, “sir,” he said, “I am too.” He said, “I don’t believe I can drive,” he said, “I never had anything to hit me like that.” And I said, “well, it’s a good thing that that guy was stingy, wasn’t it.” [Laughter – Interviewer] Barnes: [Laughing] He, he said, “yeah, he sure was.” 102:00Whoa, we sat….

Downs: Almost pure alcohol, probably wasn’t it?

Barnes: …we sat that out in that area that was inside of the wall until we sobered up. It took over an hour for us to sober up to get out of there, but if anybody ever ask you what kind of, of liquor is the strongest you can tell, tell them that potato whiskey is [Chuckling] is really got it because I can vouch for it [Chuckle – Interviewer]. The…I don’t know whether that boy ever married the girl or not, but he, he, at least I can say to the family, he knew how, how to make good potato whiskey. Well I, I told you the other day when I wanted to get this on record that one night about ten o’clock, the ( ) of the base at Bari had called me, and he said, “Barnes, I want you 103:00to put up so many tents in your area.” I said, “sure Lieutenant, we will get started on it first thing in the morning.” He said, “you will do it now!” and hung up on me. That officer had, had been a nice jo and always listened to reason, you didn’t, but this particular case without telling me anything, there was no reasoning there. Well, we had had a Russian captain that had been assigned to the area two or three days before, and he was eating at our mess, there were no indications from anyone in our area what was happening. So, the next morning, after 104:00talked to, having to put the tents up, why in come several truckloads of Russian men and women. They were all civilians that when the Germans had overrun an area in Russia, they had brought back slave labor to Germany and as a result of the Yalta Agreement between Churchill and Stalin, Roosevelt, Roosevelt and Stalin had agreed that those individuals that came after they over…Americans and British had overrun an area where they found these slave laborers, they were return—supposed to return them to Russia. So these were brought back to the Burma Pass—not Burma Pass but…Brenner Pass I think they call it, to Bari 105:00and the first thing on the agenda was I was asked about places for them to take a bath. Well, I wasn’t expecting this but the Germans women got off the truck at the same time the men and they went in our showers with, men with the women. Well, I had to post guards on those showers to keep my men out, but…I wa…had assigned about three men that could speak Russian in my unit to assist. I don’t know whether they were any more men from other units or not, because I, I never, never, never was told about them. Well my men told me…every few days what was happening, and I, I couldn’t believe what was going on. This Russian captain and there were some non-com up there too, and they would 106:00give these men orders, drill them, right face, they would do a left face, they would hit them over the head with a club and…he said that the, wo…men and women were fearful of going back home, because as slaves they were treated better in Germany than they were ever treated at home. Their luxury was greater in Germany under war conditions than it was at home under normal conditions, and they knew that they were going to be sent to Sardinia or some labor camp somewhere and they didn’t want to go back home.

Downs: Siberia.

Barnes: And yeah, Siberian instead of Sardinia, they…and I, with my own eyes saw the…Russians being guarded with machine guns, submachine gun toting by 107:00Russians, apparently off of the ship and I knew something was wrong because I had only been, been overseas about a year and a half or two years at the time and you didn’t have to take no submachine guns to get me home, so I knew something was wrong. Later on we found out that, that’s exactly what happened to them. The…another thing happened at Bari before I got there. In the winter, I, I left Sardinia and got to, to…Bari in…the month of November, I think and the month before, or so, the Geri came over and bombed the harbor and they sunk 108:00several ammunition ships in the harbor, but after I had been there about two months we rejoined the company, I was out talking to Sergeant Marvin (Polk?). He was a utility sergeant at the time, and I looked up and over the port area, which is…about five miles from the depot area, there was this big huge mu…mushroom cloud that began to, to come out. So I said, “hit the ground!” And everybody hit the ground and the Italians laborers saw us, they did the same thing and it wasn’t momentarily afterwards until the…sh…shingles which all, nearly all those buildings were tile roofs, the shingles began to rattle and some had fallen off because of the concussion went up and over. So that night, 109:00no one was hurt in our particular area that night, our CO came in and…he had a finger that was almost cut off, he had worked in, in the port area and from flying glass, the…there were several people injured downtown, civilians, and speaking of that, remind me, one time I saw an ammunition ship blow up in, in…in the convoy approaching Mers-el-Kebir. We was up on the edge of a, a ridge and was counting the number of ships in this convoy and all of the sudden [clapping sound] ship number seven, for example, wasn’t there, it’d just completely disintegrated and a big plume came up, so I knew when I saw the plume over (Buri?) what 110:00was happening because it was from the port area, I had seen this ship in Oran a few months before, and I, I knew that that had to be a ship blowing up. Well they told me that, that one man walked off of that particular ship, that the ship itself did not blow up. But it was a freak act even though it was an ammunition ship, and you would think the thing…blew up. It blew down more or less to the water line, and all above the water line went up, out, and the Italian dock worker walked off of the ship and I was told that the British ships in there too, one of the…British personnel gave him a shot of rum 111:00because they had plenty of rum…available on British ships, and the Italian was, he was talking about it, and he indicated that in his opinion, that somebody, one of the dock workers, or somebody had access to unloading had tried to sabotage the ship, and instead of whole ship going up, only part of it blew up. I thought that was, that was interesting in the way it happened….

Downs: I was going to ask you last week, but since brought Bari back up, or two weeks ago, about that particular incident, because I have read about that ship blowing in Bari Harbor.

Barnes: Is that right?

Downs: And, did you know that, and I don’t it’s been no, maybe ten years ago that I read this book about that ship blowing up from Bari Harbor, 112:00that it was full, it was an American ship, it was a…full of mustard and nerve gas. Had you heard that?

Barnes: No, I would, I would think that, that, that…we were told it was ammunition ship. Of course that could have been ammunition too, but…if that, if that had been nerve gas, a foreign gas, why it would of, it would…of kill a lot people there and it didn’t. There was nobody…as far as I know, that was killed or hurt as a result of gas contamination.

Downs: I, I, I will try to see if I can look that up again, and, and I’ll make a, a note when I, when I type this up, but I, I’m pretty sure that it say and it was an embarrassing, it seems to me like it was an embarrassing situation for the United States, because we had these poisonous weapons which there was, of course an international ban against, that close to the battle field, and of course we never used them, nor did 113:00the Germans, but, there in WWII, thank God, like in WWI. But I, some, some of those, some…I’m pretty sure that it was some of those weapons that…some of those ships wa…some of those, some of the ammunition in that ship was poison gas.

Barnes: Well, I don’t dispute…it, it wasn’t possible because I, I know that…I have read that the reason that Hitler didn’t use gas was because he knew that the British Isle had enough gas on it to destroy all of Germany, and…but at, at the time I don’t think that the United States had any nerve gas, the only people that had nerve gas was Germany. Germany had nerve gas…according to 114:00the documentaries that I have seen on TV, but Hitler chose not to use it. And if he had, we wouldn’t have had any means whatsoever to take care of our injured personnel because there was nothing at the time available in our arsenal to, to do that.

Downs: Did, did, did…did all, were all you all issued gas masks?

Barnes: Yeah, we had issued gas masks, but…we had to practice drills, but primarily it was used to carry candy bars in, and all that kind of thing. I used to like…I would take my men on forced hikes ever so often, usually unannounced, and we’d get out a couple of miles away from the installation and I would, 115:00would…order gas masks and they had so many minutes to put them on, navy candy bars, every other thing that you can say, toilet paper, everything else, they’d drag out of those bags because normally all they used them for was to pack stuff in. But…while we were at Bari we had a sub installation on the mainland of Greece, and the British controlled all of Greece. The British at one time…controlled Greece and they came back and took Greece from the Germans and 116:00they controlled it, but we had small installations, and I don’t know how many troops we had, we couldn’t have had too man…many because we didn’t have too many supplies over there. But our supplies were disappearing and the quartermaster wanted to know what was happening to the supplies because they weren’t getting from the port area to the depot installation. So, Lieutenant Bill (Chilling?) and myself was ordered to go over there and check that out and make a report back…to the colonel. Well, we caught a, a ferry plane over to Athens. We checked in at the Great (Batan?) Hotel. The Great (Batan?) Hotel was opposite, on the opposite side of the street from the king’s palace 117:00and of course the king had, had abdicated and gone to Britain, I think, and they had a provincial government…there that the allied were propping up. But this hotel, even though it was a nice hotel, all the beddings and everything like that was gone out of it…we were sleeping on GI cots and canvas cots, and the food was C rations warmed up so they [buzzing sound]…the first thing that, that I was asked, the first morning I got out, didn’t say good morning or anything like that. “What’s the price of the drachma today?” And I found out later that there was, 118:00the drachma was worth so much and that it fluctuated daily, always going up, and the British with GIs that were so inclined would buy drachma and take it in the finance office exchange it for either pounds sterling or for the dollar, and then they’d go back and repeat the process. So that is one way that the gorillas were able to finance the rebellion after the British and Americans left Greece. If it hadn’t been for Truman and the Marshall Plan, the communists would have taken Greece, and 119:00we helped finance it by our own personnel. It’s about time to change the….

Downs: yeah, it’s getting close, I think, since we got a break here, let me just go ahead and stop it and put a new one in. [END OF TAPE 2002OH 12.2b]