Oral History Interview with Lucian Barnes Part 3

[START OF TAPE 2002OH 12.2c] Barnes: All right, while we, while we’re still in, in Greece reminiscing, the, I went to a, a Greek celebration of…vic…they call it victory celebration, even though it was a month or six weeks after VE Day. So, the most beautiful stadium I have ever seen. It was all marble, even, even the seats were marble. Of course that’s what they had over there [Chuckling] was marble, and it was hard to realize that a stadium for example, was made out of marble. I got a picture of that stadium, and then they had a big parade down through town, but I, I found out what happened over there 1:00that had Piraevs that was the, the main port of Athens there was a long hill going up to Athens from the port. These old trucks were slow carrying a, a heavy load and, as they come around a bend there, the Greeks would jump off on the trucks throw stuff off on the ground, specially the last truck in the convoy, and downtown in Athens, Palmolive soap, Colgate toothpaste, anything that you wanted to buy was on display downtown, but…these civilians for the most part couldn’t buy it, it was black market so to speak, ba…I believe these black market prices, even though it, it was sold in, in the street, and going down the streets, you could find in the gutters, in front of the library 2:00one million, five million drachma notes, three hundred thousand drachma notes the Germans had printed up. They were beautiful bills, I saved a lot of them, but of course they were worth nothing then or had they been previously because it just took too much to do it. The…we went, had a chance to go to the Acropolis and then all the places that you nat…naturally see there. But that was what was happening to the, the…food that was going over up, probably being stolen and I had to make a report, written report out, when I got back as to what I actually found. The construction of a lot of the places over there are made out of tufa blocks, a tufa is 3:00layers of sandstone that are cut with saws and laid out to harden, and the longer the, the things harden, the tougher and harder they get. So, I saw some buildings that are thirty-seven millimeters that shot into and they hit them block, they knock out a, a piece as big as your fist. That was all the damage they did, some of those villas they hit, hundred or two hundred year old and they were, they were really…blocks got tough, you never think that they cut those things out with a saw, they are so soft and they harden that, to that extent. At, I’m skipping around now here because my notes are skipping around. We were talking about the beer warehouse in Sardinia. Well, in Bari we had three beer warehouses made with Quonset, they made as Quonset huts because we had got to reverse land lease from the British, they had the Quonset huts and we didn’t have that kind 4:00of material and one of my officers said, “Barnes” he said, “I got a problem with my beer warehouses.” “No, not another Sardinia.” He said, “no,” he said, “it’s some thing that, that I was raised on a farm, I know a little bit about buildings.” I said, “I know you’re a farm boy.” I said, “I, I like for you to come out there and let’s find out something.” So I had the occasion to get out there one morning, that’s my wife over there, she is checking out water in her flower, ( ).

Downs: Somebody’s glass broke or something.

Barnes: Rather the door slammed, I think.

Downs: Oh okay.

Barnes: So, I went over there. He said, “they, there is something wrong with number three warehouse.” We drove up there and drove around it. Yeah, there is something wrong with it all right, but I, I don’t detect what it is. 5:00We kept talking; we went around that thing about three times. I said, “Paul, I can tell you what the trouble is.” I said, “it’s put up wrong, put up backwards.” He said, “how do you know?” I said, “because shingles on a roof overlap so they shed water, that is put up, if it rains, all the water is going in that warehouse. [Chuckle – Interviewer]. Well come to find out the Italian crew chief had over there they had all saint day every week, I think, because they, every week is always a bunch you have personnel missing because they are celebrating religious holiday, and he was off and the…Rinehart had told him to go ahead and keep on building that house, put the, 6:00the…roof on. So, instead of starting it at the bottom and going on up, they did right ass backward. So they had to take all that [Chuckling] sheet metal off and do it like it’s supposed to do. And it was back to these tufa blocks, we put up tufa block warehouse out on the coast road at, at Bari and I asked a, they had one wall up, the sergeant had report to me, he said, “we got one wall’s warehouse up.” I said, “did you brace it?” He said, “what do you mean brace it?” “To keep it from falling over.” “They are not going to fall over, how would it fall over?” I said, “you can get a wind off the ocean, it’s on the coast, you get the wind off the ocean.” I said, “the thing is going to blow her on you.” “No-o-o way!” This sergeant, he was smart all right but he hadn’t, he hadn’t figured on, on, on this. I went out the next morning and all that was laying flat. They hadn’t put a brace 7:00up and the same thing happened here in Lexington a few years ago with concrete blocks warehouse they hadn’t braced it, the wind come up overnight and normally it wouldn’t, wouldn’t happen, you know, with so much resistance there and the wind toppling it over. The…I had learned from a seal that I had one time about how to handle an army mess. The army mess is the morale of the unit. If you give the men good food, why you can usually get along with them, and if you can’t give them the best, 8:00give them the best that you got, at least they know what your problems are. You’ll have as ha…happier personnel. I took…rank that normally would go to a depot and put it in the kitchen. I made the kitchen so top heavy with rank that everybody wanted to be a cook, or first cook, so as a result, I had Italian personnel, I had Hungarian personnel, because most of my unit came from New York and New Jersey area. So we had ethnic population, high ethnic population, and they could speak a number of languages, but they’d take the same food and cook it different ways so you ended up that you had gourmet food all the time. They were on one day and off two, that wasn’t official, nor was it condoned but if you, if 9:00you’re dealing with certain men that you can trust and they know and the men under you know that it’s to their advantage to keep their mouth shut, you can get by with it and you got happy troops. So, I do say that, that we had a lot of transit visit the messes, eating with us, because our food, even though it was regular issue, the way they fixed it was superb, And cabbage to a GI, for example, is like eastern Kentucky cabbage, or western Kentucky cabbage, but to a Hungarian, you got gourmet food and they can take simple food and use different flavored com…common 10:00sense and, and they, they rea…really got something. I’m going to skip because we got…an area here, and see if, if we can start in on, on going back to Leghorn and get….

Downs: Get ready for Japan?

Barnes: …head, head for the Pacific, yeah, and if we got any, anything left over, why we’ll head on to it later on.

Downs: We….

Barnes: Can you turn it off a minute?

Downs: Yeah.

Barnes: Do you like honey? [Pause] Barnes: We are now in…Leghorn, getting ready to go aboard ship to go to the Pacific, and I was issued new vehicles. Everything was new and they went aboard ship, and I sent my motor officer along with them because I don’t trust the army and I don’t trust the navy, and I don’t trust nobody else when it comes to my individual supplies. We expected 11:00once we, we get to an area, to perform and the war was over, I never saw my vehicles a, again, I never [Chuckling] saw my vehicle officer, they went to Okinawa, but at least we know what happened to them. We went aboard ship…the General (Ariam?) Blanchford, B-l-a-n-c-h-f-o-r-d, on the 18th of June 1945. We passed Gibraltar on the 20th late in the afternoon. On the 31st, we went to Mona Passage, which is off of Puerto Rico, 12:00and on the first of August, we arrived in Panama, and of course, everybody was allowed ship leave. I think Balboa was the…port town. However, I didn’t leave the sh…the ship except to go into a PX area, because they had everything there that wasn’t available in the states. I spent about three hundred dollars and bought nylon hose, which is unobtainable here and had been for years, I bought Chanel no.5 and Taboo and all this junk, my wife still got some of yet [Chuckling] I got, got so much of it. Well, on the…some of the guys went downtown the bars and they’d came back tell about cockroach, scorpion fights. 13:00They put a cockroach in a jar and the scorpion in the same jar, then they would place bets. I understand it was fifty-fifty thing. The scorpion would try to sting the cockroach, and the cockroach would try to evade, and the scorpion would sting himself, there was a question of whether the scorpion would sting the cockroach and the killer sting himself; he said, said it was pretty well fifty-fifty. I can’t vouch for that; that was the tale that [Chuckling] that came back. I thought that was, was interesting.

Downs: People bet on anything, won’t they.

Barnes: Oh yeah. And we left Panama on the second of August. On the sixth day of August, just four days later, we got word by communiqué, written communiqué, that a H bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima. Now….

Downs: That didn’t mean, that didn’t… Barnes: Huh.

Downs: …mean anything to you, I guess, did 14:00it fall….

Barnes: N…no but…but the second communiqué came out and elaborated a little bit what a H bomb was like. Of course…nobody knew a whole lot what was going on, it, he, it’s, it’s, what an atom was, it doesn’t, I, we remembered a little bit about it…from physics and chemistry, but other than that why we just…didn’t know.

Downs: It was probably almost incomprehensible to….

Barnes: That’s right.

Downs: …to, to imagine one bomb doing all that.

Barnes: Well, three days later, we still hadn’t been…given to the extent of damage it would, was done, we knew it was a tremendous amount, but the third bomb was, was dropped on Nagasaki, and that, we knew that, that it was going to have a lot of affect on the war, but we still didn’t realize to what extent it was going to be. As long as it was killing Japanese, why that was all that we was concerned about. On the 13th, we 15:00came within sight real close to, I’d say within two or three miles of Christmas Island. From what I saw of Christmas Island, the only thing I saw was a, a (Nissan?) hut on the island of, of level sand, and a few British personnel, black soldiers. There you could distinguish what it was, and we were possibly a half a mile out in the ocean a…away from this…island, and after I heard the song about Christmas Island, I never want to see it being Christmas any other, other day on Christmas Island, because there is nothing there.

Downs: Did, did you know where you were going?

Barnes: No, I had no idea, and the 14th was VJ day 16:00but it didn’t mean a, a whole lot to us at the time. The 16th, we crossed the international dateline. So, Tuesday was another day, and on the seventeenth was a nonexistent day because we crossed the date line about shortly after midnight. So, actually we didn’t know the…17th was a nonexistent day as far as we was concerned. And on the 20th, we crossed the equator at seventeen ten dash ten and on the 23rd, we arrived at Hollandia, New Guinea 17:00for refueling. Well, the navy…is the only thing that I saw of Hollandia, New Guinea, we…were allowed off the ship and went to the navy…equivalent of the, of the PX and I thought, while I was there, that I’d go down on one of the roads and walking, and see what I’d get into, I hadn’t gone, I don’t think a mile until I was into an area that I called the jungle. I guess if I had been in the jungle, it’d been worse than what I saw, but I heard sounds that I never heard before and I knew I was in an area that I had no dam business being in. So, I got out of there. I, I’m satisfied that all I was listening to was some odd…birds, or something that, that wouldn’t harm me, but it, it, that didn’t, I 18:00didn’t care for the found—sounds I wasn’t used to them. But, something interesting happened that time. We had the executive officer, you get aboard ship, the executive officer is the big cheese, the captain, even though he has the final say, the executive officer has so much pull, it’s kind of like a executive judge, for example. Use to you didn’t have these judge executive, but now you got them and they handle so much of the administrative work and personnel…relea…relieving he judge of that duty. Well the same was true aboard ship. You had an executive officer, and he didn’t have to worry about little details, the executive officer took care of everything. Well, this executive officer was on everybody’s butt. You couldn’t…we 19:00were restricted on the ship for two days for somebody slipped, slipping over a cigarette butt or something like that. So, he had issued orders that the navy nor…nurses aboard ship that no enlisted personnel or officer personnel was to be beyond a certain roped off area where the nurses’ quarters was. And that night the nurses was invited to dancing the navy was putting on ashore. And the officers and nurses went over there had a, a ferry boat, I’m, sure they call it the navy something else but anyway that’s all it did, it ferried us from the, the main ship over to the installation. We got ready to go back, the executive officer had gotten on real well with one of these nurses, 20:00and aboard ship they had marines that guarded those nurses quarters and the marines didn’t like this executive officer any better than anybody else aboard ship. This executive officer, when he went under the ropes to tell this nurse, nurse good night, he come in contact with his own orders, they arrested him [Laugher – Interviewer] and they not only arrested him, but they, they put him in quarters and he remained in quarters the rest of that, that trip. And that it was joy aboard that ship….

Downs: I’ll bet you….

Barnes: …for the next few days….

Downs: …I’ll bet he….

Barnes: …I’m telling you….

Downs: …was madder than a wet hen, wasn’t he [Laughter – Interviewer]?.

Barnes: Oh, oh, oh, ah, ah, ah, I’m sure he must have been. 21:00Well, after we got out of New Guinea, we were, this was a fast ship, didn’t require any escort, and we didn’t have to do a zigzag course, but the radar was a cold cup shape job that oscillated and it normally went all the way around searching. It wasn’t until we got half a day out of Hollandia, New Guinea that…thing would remain alllllmost in one position. Well, it didn’t take any, anyone…could figure out what was happening, they had a Jap sub homed in and I thought at the time, here are two atomic bombs being dropped, the war is over, and we’re going to get, get sunk by a Jap submarine holdout. 22:00Well, that didn’t happen and we went through San Bernado straits where there was a, a lot of fighting…during the war. We went into Manila Harbor, was only, Manila Harbor a short time, and we were told that we was going to, to San Fernando, which is near (Lingay?) Gulf, that’s where the Japanese had done a lot of landing, it was also where the, the Americans…that made the death march were marched up and loaded aboard a ship to go to Japan. Well, we got up there and ready to unload, orders came in 23:00that we was to go back to Manila. So, we went back to Manila and the truth of it was, the war, for all practical purpose was over. They didn’t need any American personnel for anywhere and they didn’t know what to do with us. So…they said that the company was going to Batangas, so I knew that the ship was going to unload in Manila, and that I had better be on the dock area and protect my supplies. I told the first sergeant, I said, I am going to take eight men, get off the ship, and go 24:00to the dock area. Well at that particular time…an officer, he was young but his, all his hair was white. He was a bomb disposal officer. He had been staying in the same stateroom that I was in on the trip from Italy to Manila, and he found out I was going to get off he said, “Barnes,” he said, “I want to talk to you now,” he said, “I’ve got orders, I got to go some place to dispose of some ammunition and,” he said, “I’ve got a trunk full of pistols,” he said, “they are, they are aboard such and such ship,” he said, “I want you to be there when they unload my pistols, and I know about what’s going to happen,” he says, “I want, I want you to, you to be there.” Downs: He is going to take them home?

Barnes: I said, “okay, I will do what I can.” 25:00So we got there and found an old tarpaulin and strung it up over some ( ) to keep the rain off because it, it was raining quite often…showers, primarily. And the humidity was high, and the ponchos, all they was good for was to get you wet, especially from the knees down. So…when this ship started to unload, I saw the whole that they were coming out of and I told my men, I said, “let’s get up here.” And I started placing them around on…around the hole of the ship and this port battalion hooked this sling and I, I knew when they hooked, I knew when they put it on the sling, which one it was, because a trunk locker, one man or two men can handle it. It took four guys to handle that one, and I knew that was the one, 26:00even thought I was up and they were down in the hole. Well they put that on the edge and the rope in such a way that I knew it wasn’t going to make it up, but I, because I, I couldn’t tell them how to, how to unload the ship, and I didn’t have any authority there anyway, to ( ) over them. They got that thing about this high off the, the…bottom of the hole and the swing turned upside down and this trunk locker hit and there was pistols went everywhere and they started picking them up, I hollered “Hold it.” I ( ) my men I said “get out there and get those guns.” Eight of them went down and they got all the pistols that we could get and we got that trunk locker, 27:00and of course that restricted our air ( ) we had to keep somebody on that trunk while hurry it all time outside of that tarpaulin that the, in it raining. Well, we didn’t have a place to eat, there was no place to eat, we was on the dock area. So, I checked around and I found out that the ration depot about a quarter a mile from there. I went up and asked to see the officer and there was no officer there, but there was a sergeant there. I said, “sergeant I got eight men down at the port, we haven’t had anything to eat for three meals. They’re 28:00beginning to get hungry, I’d like to have a case of C rations.” Well, he said, “you got a requisition?” I said, “No, I, I wouldn’t be almost begging you if I had a C ration,” I said, “I’m not authorized a, a, a requisition.” I said, “My company is out of Batangas. We just got…off the ship yesterday, come over from Europe, (Aska?) Italy.” He said, “I can’t let you have any, any, anything, any C rations.” I said, “Man I’m not asking you for good food, I’m asking you for dog food.” I said, “I, I wasn’t expect any but C rations, I have had mountains of C rations and I would give C rations to anybody that was angry, that the, the army personnel.” He says, “I’m sorry, I can’t do it.” “Sergeant, I’ve got eight men that are angry. I’m going to pick up a case of C rations, put it on my soldier and I’m going out with it.” 29:00He said, “if you do, I’ll order the guard to shoot you.” And we were close enough to the guard, and the guard hear, raised his voice, he said, “if this officer starts out of here with that case on his shoulders,” he said, “you shoot him, if he won’t put it down.” I said, “I’m not, once I pick it up I’m not putting it down, but” I said, “I want to know what it’s going to sound like at a court martial, when you have to testify that you shot a captain in the back as he was going out of your installation because he wouldn’t obey the order from a guard to set a case of C ration down which is going to feed eight of his hungry men that hadn’t had anything to eat for three, three 30:00meals. That’s what I want, want to know how, what it’s going to be like at that court martial.” I walked out that gate scared when that guard said, “set it down, Captain!” I said, “I’m not about to set it down.” No shot was fired and we had something to eat when we got back, but it was a bluff that you, you had to run those bluffs.

Downs: And you got him to thinking about, yeah that will sound pretty bad if I shoot a captain in the back, he was kind of ( ).

Barnes: After, after a couple of days of those C rations, they…as, as much as food felt ( ) your stomach, why it still didn’t satisfy. So, I, I remember telling you that at Fort Lee, for about two weeks, I read nothing but army regulations. Well, army regulations, I remember reading that, somewhere back, and after you’re somewhere, an officer could go in the finance office 31:00and draw a partial pay on his signature. So, I went to the finance officer, office, of course I had no, no vehicles, all this is walking, and saw sergeant major and I said, “sergeant, I want a partial payment.” “Where is your company?” I said, “I’ve been aboard ship for fifty days. I haven’t been paid for two months. I got eight men, we’re eating C rations, I want to change the diet and buy some bananas for a change.” He laughed; he said, “you’re going to have to do better than that to get any, any money from this office.” And I started raising my voice and “Now listen sergeant, I know army regulations, some of them at least. I know that any officer can go in any finance office anywhere in the world and demand a partial payment.” And I say, “that’s what 32:00I’m here for.” So, he still refused and I got louder. A few minutes a major walked in, he said, “sergeant, we all have been hearing this conversation.” He said, “the captain is right. An army officer cannot be refused a partial payment, if he comes and demands it.” The sergeant said, “what’s to keep him to, tomorrow to go into another finance office.” He said, “there isn’t nothing to keep him, but that’s not your concern.” He said, “the FBI, that’s what, and the CID, that’s what we got them for.” And he said, “he will always stay in the army until he gets a government paid, and you don’t have to worry about the army getting its, his money. So you just give him the money he is supposed to have, because he knows his ARs.” 33:00So, we were on a banana date for a few days, and then I, after we got as many supplies as we could that belonged to us, our supplies that we had, those calculators, did I tell you about, I had marked TAT, put it in the reserves supplies. They were all intact. The boxes that cleaning preserve supply my calculators had all been broken into and the typewriter boxes had been broken into by, either the people aboard ship or the port authority, or something, but anyway, I had what calculators that…but I knew I didn’t have all of my supplies, I didn’t know at that time where they were. Later on I found out they unloaded them in Lingayan Gulf where we supposed to have loaded…un…unloaded 34:00and didn’t. So I had to make a report to survey later on and…go, turn that in to be relieved of these responsibility and accountability of the loss of supplies that were misdirected. Later on, one day about two or three weeks later, when we got settled, this fighter had heard ( ) of a bomb disposal unit showed up at our camp and he said I’ve come after my pistols. And I said, “I didn’t, didn’t find no damn pistols, I don’t’ know what happened to them?” He said, “Barnes,” said, “I, I think it’s, I know what happened, I’d, I have been told everything that happened, about how, how your men retrieved all of my pistols.” He said, “that was something nice,” 35:00he said…I told him at the time I didn’t know where I’d be, he said, “don’t worry,” he said, “I’ll find you.” So I s…I don’t know in what kind of shape it is, but (Ray?) and I got them in the…in the…foot locker in under my cot there was out in a tent. He said, “you see any of those pistols you wanted?” I said, “oh, I’d, I, I have seen some pretty ones in there all right, several different kinds, they were German pistols, Italian pistols on. He said, “you take your pick, you can have any one you wanted.” And I said, “well, may I look at them again?” He said, “yeah.” I said, “I want something small, something I can get home. If I get a big one well they’re going to check me with it.” So that’s how I ended up with an Italian Beretta, and…I, I got authorization…as a war trophy and I couldn’t take the big one home 36:00at the time, but I didn’t know that I was go [Chuckling] going to be able to, to get a certificate to bring it home. Well, we had a problem there, because when I went to the quartermaster ( ) he said, “we’ve been looking for you, you’ve been missing for five days, your company went to Batangas and you’ve been somewhere,” I said, “yeah, I, I’ve been…trying to hold on to my supplies. They said, “well,” said, “your company is leaving today for Batangas coming back to Manila, they’re going out near Clark Field at the depot we got out there.” And said, “you’re to set up a tent out there for them.” “I only got eight men!” “well,” he said, “you’re going to have to do the best you can.” He says, “can you leave your men and go out, I’ll show you where it is?” I said, “sure!” And 37:00we drove out, going out, he was a big rough guy, he said, “I used to be a ser…first sergeant of such and such unit and,” he said, “when, when the war was declared, I was made an officer, and now I am a colonel.” And he kept bragging about this, you know. We got out, he said, “this is your area out here.” “Colonel, that’s a rice paddy over there.” He said, “sure it’s a rice paddy, but there is no rice in it and there is no water in it.” I said, “these Philippinos for hundreds of years have been doing nothing but building terraces to run the water into these paddies and when it’s really start to raining, that’s going to be full of water and I know it. I will not 38:00[taping sounds] put my men in that area.” He said, “you’re forgetting that you’re just a captain and that I am a, a colonel.” I said, “Colonel, I’m not forgetting that at all, what I’m remembering is that you used to be a first sergeant and you were [taping sounds] combat branch. A big percentage of my men are limited assigned men, they’ve been on the fifth army front, they got the hell shot out of them, they’ve been in the hospital and they come back. You would not, as a first sergeant put your men in a hell hole that is going to be covered with water.” And I said, “neither am I going to put my men in a place like that.” He started to grin and he said, “what do you propose? We don’t have any hotels over here.” I said, 39:00“right over here across the road, that ground is ten feet higher than, than the…that on the, the right.” He said, “that belong to the Philippine army.” I said, “hell, I thought we were fighting the same war, I didn’t know that, that we were on different sides.” “well,” he said, “we got a particular situation here that we are not to impose on the Philippino army.” Well, I said, “that’s where my men are going to be. Have you got any tent to put up, I’ll put them up on that ridge over there.” Oh, he said, “well, go ahead, you may have to move, but go ahead.” So we set up our tents there, and of course they were personnel moving out…going to…Okinawa and going to this place and that place, and the combat engineers down by Clark Field had plenty of sheet metal. So I commandeered enough truck full, I had, didn’t have any trucks, and the trucks that, 40:00that I was issued, they said, we got ten acres of trucks up in this field, get your mechanics ready and go up and fix you some trucks up and take them with you. Some of those trucks it took week, and they didn’t have supplies, supplies, moved the depot supplies to Okinawa. So we had to cannibalize, we weren’t supposed to but we had to cannibalize to get the trucks going. We hauled in enough stuff to start on a mess hall. We had no nails though and I took four guys with me in a three quarter ton, I was, the three-quarter ton was the only one that, that was really running, doing a good job, and I said, “we are going to the engineer depot.” See we weren’t, we weren’t authorized to draw any supplies…to build with. We were authorized tents and that was it. So I told them, 41:00I said, “now listen, I’m not asking you men to do anything as far as stealing is concerned. All I want you, I wa…when I drop you off in this open storage engineer depot, I want you to be my eyes so that I don’t get caught.” When we come out of there if nothing happens I’m going to have enough nails and enough small stuff to build that mess hall. So we went in and dropped off these four guys and drove around and the first time around I saw where the nails were. At that time I was a wiry little devil and I could pick up a hundred pound without any trouble at all, even up until about five years ago. I pulled a keg of nails on the truck here, twenty pennies here and ten pennies over there and on and on and on 42:00with, I got what I wanted and what I thought we could use and ( ) nails was a, was a big thing, picked up everybody that I dropped off and they sat down on the nail cage to kind of cover them up and we drove out of the depot and, and that was it. We made the sheet metal, built us a mess hall. There water trailers up in that eight acres of vehicles but we weren’t authorized a water trailer, there was no running water there. So…I commandeered a water trailer we weren’t supposed to have. But one of the men told me about the depot, there was a, a big water tank ( ) tremendous tank. Well, we traded around and got that tank moved and set up on it some blocks 43:00back of the kitchen, and that tank was about the size of one of these milk…tanks that you see all run down the highway on, on, on a big truck. But we had no way to fill it up. There was a fireplug about sixty to a hundred- fifty feet away from us. I walked up to ( ) po…post engineers, I said, “can you use any three-quarter-inch pipe?” “You guys sure can.” I said, “what is it going to cost me?” I said, “I want you to come out two inches from that fireplug 44:00opening and put me a three-quarter inch nipple on that for me. He says, “what’s this all about?” I said, “I just received army regulations that we are not allowed to tap on to a water plug anywhere, but if you put a plug two inches out, I said, “I’m not tapping on to a water plug, I’m tam…tapping on to that particular nipple you got.” Dropped a load of pipe to his place and that was done, so he said, “now, here’s what I advise you captain,” he said, “our water pressure is everything that’s required for hospital 45:00and so-and-so, during the day, but,” he said, “at night, we don’t have much requires for water.” He said, “I suggest that you draw your water at night.” We filled our tank up at night from the fire hydrant and used that to cook with and all that kind of stuff during the day, and we had a, a typhoon alert while I was over there, had to tie down the vehicles, but it, it di…really didn’t move in all we had was ( ) rain, it didn’t, didn’t affect anything too much, but we hadn’t be…hadn’t been there too long until I was looking for a particular regulation that I knew was going to come in. I just knew it was, how I knew it, I don’t know, but…one night about ten o’clock, I was going to the 46:00company mail and I read it, I knew that’s what I was hunting for. Everyone was ninety points or more was allowed to return to the states. I had eighty-one. So that meant I was going to have to stay over there an ex number of months more, about another year before, before I got a chance to go home. They said that according to (Mathusa?) order number so-and-so, paragraph so-and-so, that units who had s…been separated from their parent company, were authorized battle participation awards that was allowed at company headquarters. Well I knew that in (Buri?) that they had been authorized, Naples ( ) campaign 47:00( ) are no campaign, and each one of these campaigns was worth five points, so that would put me over the, up to the ninety points that needed. That’s what I had been looking for, I knew it was coming in, I don’t know how I knew it, I just, I knew it and I had been hunting for it. I called the first sergeant, I said, “wake up the company clerk, get the supply sergeant down here, I want to talk to them.” He called the supply sergeant, and I said, “you get everything ready, all the supply to turn over to Lieutenant (Petri?) he just…been moved in about a week before, and I said, “oh company fund to be turned over to him, and I went through my files from Sardinia, picked up roster what men I had that were authorized battle participation awards as a result of this circular and I memo graphed copies of an order that I had made 48:00the next morning, everything was turned over to this lieutenant and I took him to drive me to Manila and I had the sergeant major down there, in headquarter, that I had cultivated, friendship. I showed him this order. I said, “I got my ninety points.” He said, “I’ll put you on the first order.” I said, “I’ll stay here and take it with me.” He said, “can’t operate that fast.” I said, “yes we can operate that fast.” So, I had operated that fast once in, in…Italy when they had a red cross fellow, his mother was dying and they told me that they couldn’t operate fast enough to get the boy home to see his dying mother. I said, “yes we can, because I am going to stay here until you do.” 49:00That was about ten o’clock in the morning. By three o’clock in the afternoon, I had his orders and told him good by and hit back to the states. I knew it could be done. So I stayed there I left and I made a picture of head, headquarters as I was leaving and I have it with me, and that afternoon I ate super in the repo depot, getting ready to go home, and I had a sergeant, master sergeant that I had, had told that I wanted him to say good by, or to say hello to my wife when he got back to the states, he left about a month before, and I got over there and ate, got everything put away and I asked him how soon I get out, he said, “well,” he said, “you probably won’t be able to 50:00get of here for a couple of months, that office of personnel slow because there is not that many staterooms.” “I am not interested in stateroom, I am interested in going home!” Because I had already been promised my majority, if I’d sign up and for another year and we allowed six months at home and I told my old lady, the only way that I would stay in this hell hole, is to be made brigadier general, I know you’re gone—not going to do that because they, they had already…I looked out one morning in that mess hall I’ll tell you about and there were surveyors. I asked them what they’re going to do, they say we’re going to build a roadway through here, so I had to end up steal, 51:00begging, and borrowing start the camp on the other side of the road where I was supposed to have been in the first place and, and didn’t. Well I knew that, that the, the red tape would be cut. So I went and I said “now listen, I want to go home, and I want to go now. I don’t care how I get there, I have been an enlisted man in the past and enlisted men is my kind of man, my orders were that they s…were to salute the first time in the morning and not to salute me any time during the day after that unless another officer was with me, that they didn’t know, because it was, it’s aggravating to me to return the salute as it was for them to have, have to salute. And I said, I…enlisted men are my people. I said, I’ll go in the hole with 52:00the enlisted men. He said, “we will put you on ship tomorrow.” I said, “that’s what I want.” [Chuckle – Interviewer]. So, I, I got out of there real fast and…we…we headed, headed back, and….

Downs: What, what day was this?

Barnes: Now it’s what I’m trying to find right, right now. The, the date that…that we left there…was on the SS Admiral (Simms?) the tenth day of November nineteenth and forty-five at eighteen hundred hours, and on the fourteenth day of November we passed Hiwo Jima, landed in San Francisco the twenty-fifth of November and went by ship, 53:00from our ship up the bay somewhere to camp Stoneman. The next morning I got up, a…what I, that night was really surprised me, they said you can have all the milk and steak you can eat. Well, I wasn’t sure the line was kind of long, I wasn’t sure that, that was going to be possible because…I would give twenty dollars for a quart of milk…because I had my money said that I couldn’t spend and the milk was one of my favorite. So I walked out behind the mess hall to be sure and there was milk stacked there s…looked like there was a hundred cases of milk in big plastic containers. I knew I was going to get all the milk that I wanted. I went in there and I ate as much steak as I could eat and all drank all the milk that I could drink. The next morning I got up and then the fog was so thick that you couldn’t see the barracks was right, front, or back of you. 54:00And then orders came that…we were going to ship out of the training in such and such day. Well, I knew it was wintertime, and then be advantageous, if I had my warm underwear. In the meantime well we got a chance to go downtown in San f…Francisco and had…few days for shopping before hand, go to good restaurants and jewelry stores and all that kind of stuff, and so, I bought my winter underwear and didn’t, didn’t get to use it until after we left Needles, California, go west San Francisco, went south and, and then get it up…towards Flagstaff, Arizona and it was 55:00one place when I looked out and saw all these airplanes to the right and to the left of me and the back of me, I couldn’t see the end of them, and I just couldn’t believe it was possible for any country to have that many planes, and knowing that there were still airplanes…in the Pacific and then in every theater of operation that we had ever been in and all these planes out there. Well, the food on the train was just about as lousy as anything I don’t think I had ever ( ) anything in the s…in…overseas, it was bad as that train trip was, and the cars were cold and a lot of people complaining, of course I had winter underwear on and that, that helped. I was trying to find a c…a train commander and wasn’t able to find him. Each day, it kept improving. 56:00We was on the train all together about five days. There was snow in…Flagstaff when we got there, and we were allowed to straighten your legs out. The only leg stretching that we got, except run up and down the, the…train moving about. It was more like barely moving still running and about Saint Louis, I guess it was, this guy came in one day and said, “you’re Captain Barnes?” I said, “yeah,” he said, “I hear you’ve been hunting for the train commander.” I said, “yeah, you’re dam right.” I started to tell him the things that I was complaining about. He said, “well, how are you fixed now?” I said, “well everything is pretty good, now,” and he said, “well sir, that’s the reason I come to see you. There wasn’t anything I could do about it previously, because we started out with a new crew and we have to teach them how to cook,” he said, “we only got a short time to do it in, we got to…to 57:00take care of these cars as best we can, and,” he said, “I’m Brooks (Hickle?) from Paris, Kentucky.” And of course, since he was almost a hometown boy we got to talking and everything went off real well. I later on ran into him in, in the army reserves, so we came in to, to Fort Knox and…the…got debriefed and discharged and all that kinds of stuff, the seventh of December and I had a hundred and three days of authorized leave time that I was paid for, although I got out the seventh of December, the twenty-first of March, 58:00I still was being paid up to that time at my regular salary, and I think I enrolled at the University of Kentucky on the 20th of March’ I had twelve hours to knock out at that particular time, but I made the decision at Fort Knox that I was going to stay in the army reserve, because what I had seen of those Russians, and no one, what I had read and heard of the Russians, that they couldn’t be trusted, I…signed up and I called my wife and asked her to meet me at (Seal Back?) Hotel on the 11th of December and told her that I had stayed in the reserve and she started giving me hell. “I knew you’d, you didn’t want to come home, you wanted to stay in the Army. You like the army. You stayed over there three years just because you liked it 59:00over there.” And on-and-on and all this crap, you know, and she couldn’t see that our potential enemy was the Russians, and I knew at my age, I’d have to go on as a private, I, I, I had enough ‘private’ life and…not only….

Downs: So that you stayed in the reserves as an officer then?

Barnes: I stayed in, in as, as an officer, and was assigned to the hundred and first airborne division, and they gave me command as, as a parachute maintenance officer and I had…personnel in that capacity and we trained…in the summer with the Screaming Eagle down at Fort….

Downs: Bragg?

Barnes: …no, Fort Campbell.

Downs: Campbell, yeah, I’m sorry.

Barnes: And…I got disillusioned with the 60:00policy of the 100th Division, the 100th Division was quartered, their main headquarters was Louisville. All the promotions was going to Louisville officers. Lexington officers wasn’t being promoted, and we were getting a lot of details and I was used to details, but we was getting details…that the officers up there wasn’t, wasn’t getting and I said, “I’m fed up with this organization,” and the main reason I got fed up because when we got ready to go to Campbell, we were told that…we’d go by train, but it was left up to the unit commander discretion of anyone go their own pri…private conveyance. So, I had gotten 61:00in the army surplus business, the truck part business and I bought surplus at these various depots all over the country, and my home was in Christian County, and that trip down there was more than going to summer camp. I was going home and I got to drive from the camp to home if I took my car I also got to use my car after camp to go to…military depots, there is one at…at Camp Breckinridge at Morgan Field, as well as, as Campbell, and of course the commanding general issued orders that all vehicles would be impounded in such and such date, for people that was unauthorized to travel by car. 62:00Well, I got a hold of the lieutenant colonel that…was chief of staff, and I said, “now here is the orders, these order says that commanding officer can authorize certain personnel to go by their own car.” I said, “all my men went by train except me, since I can issue an order my men I certainly can issue an order for myself and take it ( ) verbally author…I’ll authorize myself to travel by private conveyance.” I said, “I didn’t disobey the order from the commanding general. I will NOT allow my car to be confiscated and impounded.” 63:00He said, “that…I said “the impounding order goes in effect six o’clock tonight, I get off duty at five o’clock, I’ll take my car some place. I tell you what I am going to do, I am not doing it behind your back.” The Captain said, “I understand your problem, but,” he said, “I hope you appreciate my problem.” He said, “I’m supposed to enforce that.” So we talked for a little while, he said, “you let your car be impounded and I’ll give you my word that tomorrow morning at six o’clock that it will be taken out of impoundment and you’ll be a…allowed to park it n the parking lot.” I said, “all right that’s good by me.” So that’s what happened, but it was little things that caused me to think about it that had…reserve school here, in Lexington at that time, opened up to all the military personnel in the area, 64:00officer and enlisted men to go to Branch school. They had command of the general staff school, they had quartermaster school, ordnance school, and on-and-on-and-on the various services, and I told the headquarters, I said, “if you don’t straighten up fly right, I am going to get out of this unit.” He said, “you’ll go to Korea.” Then Korea was blossoming, I said, “I’ll take my chances.” I went down to school and asked if they could handle an officer. My experience is that we don’t have a…. [Interruption] Barnes: …assigned me…to the school and I was given a job of keeping the personnel records of, and recording the, the 65:00drills of all the individuals in the school, and the records were, were in an atrocious shape. I brought those up to date and stayed in, got my time in, so I actually…had to twenty-nine years, about eight months and so many days time in for pay with only twenty years of good time – that was all I needed was twenty years good time, and all this other, when I was at…commanding officer this parachute maintenance company, I had all kind of time because I worked weekends that I didn’t even keep count of because I thought I had plenty of time when time come up, you know. There were bad years; I didn’t have enough, enough points. 66:00So, I went up to Fort Hayes, in Columbus, Ohio when I knew my twenty years was up and got my certificate of retirement with the inactive reserve; that was nineteen and sixty-four. So my retirement actually didn’t begin until I was sixty-five, [Chuckling] that was about ten years later. But I stayed in, at, at that time, why, I was lieutenant colonel, I had been lieutenant colonel for over a year or more, but I had a heart attack back before I got my majority and…when orders came in that I had to have a physical, I went in, did the physical, 67:00and this nurse I knew pretty well, having been my own private doctor, she was beating the EKG unit, there is something wrong with it. I said, “no, there is nothing wrong with that, I’ve had a heart attack, and…” she said, “what doctor do you go to?” I didn’t, didn’t go to any, I just sat down for a while. And I said, “I want you to take this EKG ( ) send it in to the government, do not evaluate it.” I said, “if you evaluate it, I won’t get my majority but, if you don’t evaluate it, I’m str…expecting some little whack corporal 68:00get a hold of that, she won’t know what to do with it and my promotion will come on through.” That promotion came through just as nice as please, when, when I got ready for my lieutenant colonel’s promotion, I still had problems with the heart but I was still working full time, I, I was, I was still, I was still going in to, in to…on active duty had they ordered me…be…I had a, an army major reserve that I went to for that examination and he was a black doctor, nice guy, and I, Doc Jones, I wonder if you do me a favor?” “Sure, what do you want, Barnes?” I said, “when this, 69:00you make this EKG, send it in, don’t evaluate it.” He tell me, “kind of odd isn’t it?” I said, “not after you look [Chuckling] at the EKG, why you will know why.” I said, “I, I, I had a heart condition and I know that they’ll kick me out.” He said, “sure.” That went in, in come my promotion, nice, everything happened just exactly like I thought it was going to be. Well it was a, an interesting trip, and if you want me to go back and try to catch something else while we got that tape, I’ll cut it off there a minute and then we will see.

Downs: Okay. [Interruption] Barnes: In the early…part of the war, while, after we got to Sardinia, they…point 70:00had reached to lend these intra replacements and they turned to the service units to get intra replacements because a lot of personnel was going to the Pacific. So I was told that I would report fifty percent of all my personnel that would be suitable for after replacements. Well I had a, a night to think about that. So I came to the conclusion that I had no right to order any man to do anything that I wouldn’t do. I had always led them to believe that I had done everything that every enlisted men ever done except latrine orderly. So I made up my mind 71:00what I was going to do the following day. The, the next day, I had an order cut. I put my name at the head of the list, I took by rank. If they was two master sergeants, two buck sergeants, two whatever, I took one of them and put his name. I tried to leave the best individual for the job at the unit and put the other one up. All except key personnel, the major that had the engineer depot, I knew who his key personnel was. I put their name on that list. I did the same thing with the signal depot and on-and-on-and-on. When I got through, I held a meeting of everyone 72:00and I told them, read the order, that fifty percent of the unit would be sent to infantry replacement. I said, I put my name at the head of the list because I felt like that I no right to sent somebody else out and I’d go and lead you or whatever necessary, but I got an ace in the hole, I can’t tell you about the ace in the hole. I went to the engineer major and the signal corps major, and-on-and-on, and I showed them where their key personnel was on the list for infantry replacement. I said, “this will be sent in to Governor Webster’s headquarters today.” They said, “you can’t do, you’ll strip us of our key personnel” 73:00I said, “I’m sorry, I, I just have to do it that way.” Needless to say, I never heard anything from that list, that was the end of it, because I found out that they went to General Webster, and he took the necessary pre…precaution to save their own necks, I didn’t have to do it for them, they, they took care of that. And back quite some time ago, I was telling you about this boy in Sardinia that went, that drank so much vino he drank a, a liter of, of vino before breakfast and that he quit cold turkey? Well the same type of operation happened when I got over to Bari, Italy. The war wasn’t over and they needed replacements and I got the order in that I had to submit the name of half of my personnel or a certain percentage of it, I don’t remember whether 74:00it was half or not, a certain percentage, and one of the fellows that I had to pick was that particular individual had, he had quit cold turkey in Sardinia. He came up to me and looked me straight in the eye, he said, “sir, a year or a year and a half ago I quit drinking vino because you were, were my company, I had no family, this is my company, and here you send to the infantry, and I never would have quit drinking if I had known this, you betrayed me.” And on-and-on-and-on, cut it off. [Pause] Barnes: …convoy between…Oran and Bone, I had had hiccups for about five days. I tried the hospital at Oran before, tried to get cured, they couldn’t do it, and I had hiccup day and night, I couldn’t hardly sleep. 75:00We had stayed one night…out in the camping area, at the edge of the Sahara, and the next morning there was a rise several hundred feet up and it was kind of cool in the morning, and I went for a walk, and ever few seconds I would [mimic sound of the hiccup] hic, hic, hic, and there was an old Italian came out of the gate of a, an area, and he…hic, hic, like he was mocking me, and he reached up one of these cactus, there was a fruit on it, about like that, yellow, had a ( ) with thorns, had a end 76:00of a blossom on it. And he took his pocket knife out and opened it up and when he did, I took my pocket knife out and opened it up. I couldn’t speak French, he couldn’t speak English but he peeled that thing and offered it to me, and I motioned for him to eat it. So he took the first bite, and after he did, I took a bite or two and he motioned for me to finish it, I finished it, and the length of time I’m telling you about, my hiccups was gone. I don’t know what was in it, but medical science would do a lot if they tried to, to determine what it, what it was because they sure what medical science wasn’t able to do anything about it train them over there. [Pause] Downs: And you know I guess, if you don’t want to, you don’t have to answer. How, how did you come by 77:00that French, was it twenty-five….

Barnes: Field piece?

Downs: …millimeter field piece that you’ve loaned to us.

Barnes: Huh, my son was in the gun business. He bought and sold military fire arms and ammunition, well he didn’t have to…to buy it from ammunition because I bought ammunition from the government, DMC, Director of Markesman…ship, whatever it was, I bought old Blue Grass Army Depot, and…so, however, he bought about a, a truck load of, you could buy a, a gun for almost nothing. So, he had a bunch of…of Norwegian anti aircraft-not anti aircraft but antitank 78:00guns was sled mounting. They had metal…aluminum where you pulled them across snow and I had the opportunity to buy this thing, and I did, I had an opportunity to buy ammunition at the time, but who would want the ammunition, I wasn’t planning on firing it, I just bought….

Downs: So….

Barnes: …I, I, I bought field glasses, I bought carbines, I bought pistols, I bought all, all this stuff. In other words, I think my forty-five cost me seventeen dollars and a half, and ….

Downs: Do you know what they go for now?

Barnes: Oh yeah, I know ( ) [Laughter – Interviewer]. But….

Downs: What, about what year was that then?

Barnes: I don’t know, I’ll have to look at my bill of sales, I can tell you it was in the fifties.

Downs: Oh, it was the fifties. So you…it was probably inexpensive.

Barnes: The ammunition I bought carbine ammunition and thirty-o-six ammunitions from Blue Grass Army Depot. 79:00I think it a thousand rounds was the smallest amount they would sell you. It wasn’t until Kennedy was killed that all that was changed.

Downs: Mm-mm!

Barnes: I’d like for you to do something for…. [END OF INTERVIEW]