Oral History Interview with John Tincher

Philpot: All right, I’m just going to do a, a short, little intro for the recording so that they’ll, you know, when they go to play it back—you can move that a little bit? That they’ll…you know, be set.

Tincher: Yeah.

Philpot: This is John Philpot. Today is February the 23rd.

Tincher: John Tincher.

Philpot: It’s… Tincher: Oh I’m sorry, you… Philpot: That’s okay. It’s nine forty-three a.m. and we are, I’m speaking with John Tincher who I believe it says, you were a marine in the South Pacific?

Tincher: Yeah.

Philpot: And we’re going to talk about World War II. So…I just want to go ahead and show you this. This is our, our release form. It, it basically just says that we can take the interview and put it in the oral history commission’s archives. So, we will have you sign that after the interview.

Tincher: Okay.

Philpot: And…if you don’t mind, just…tell us your, your name and date of birth and occupation and…then 1:00just introduce yourself a little bit.

Tincher: Okay. I’m John Tincher. My birthday is May 16th, I went…when—before I went into service I was in farming.

Philpot: Okay. And so…what year did you tell me…we were just talking about it outside, what year did you go into the service?

Tincher: 1943.

Philpot: Okay. Was that…did you, did you enlist, or was it…were you drafted?

Tincher: I enlisted.

Philpot: Okay.

Tincher: Well, the way it was, I was drafted in the Army, and a friend of mine went to the marines, so I got, they enlisted, they discharged me the same day that I enlisted in the marine corps, to go with him.

Philpot: Okay. What…what did you know about the war in, in Europe, you know, before Pearl Harbor? Any, was that, 2:00you know, big news, or did you know anything about it?

Tincher: Well only what I heard on the news and it wasn’t at all that much.

Philpot: Okay. Let’s see, I guess…just, if you could, tell me a little bit about…you know, what your, what your life was like, bef…you know, before you joined, and then after.

Tincher: Well I was, I was farming had, I hadn’t been out of high school too long, and…I had been married about, oh about a year and a half. We had a son about four or five months old. I was only hum…nineteen, I suppose.

Philpot: Okay. Did you have any—were, were you and your wife in agreement about you, you know, you, you, I guess you didn’t have any choice, if you were drafted… Tincher: No.

Philpot: …since the… Tincher: Didn’t ha…didn’t have any choice. 3:00Philpot: All right, let’s see. Wh…[Chuckling] can you tell me about boot camp: where you went, what’s it like, and everything?

Tincher: I went through boot camp at San Diego, California, and it was pretty rough, it, they cut the…the boot camp time about two weeks on account of needing the men overseas. And I left…boot camp and went to San…to…Camp Pendleton, California.

Philpot: Okay…what…did—how did you get there, to the boot camp? Was that by… Tincher: We, we caught a train in Cincinnati, and there were several of us went together, and that’s how we got there.

Philpot: Okay. When did you…I, I guess, as a marine, when, 4:00when did you find out where you were going?

Tincher: Well we, we really didn’t until the last minute, and they didn’t tell you too much, and they loaded us up, took us half—loaded us up on the ships.

Philpot: Okay. So, I, how long were, were you on the ship then?

Tincher: Oh, let’s see, we were on the ship about five weeks, I suppose.

Philpot: Did…what did they have you do?

Tincher: Aboard the ship, we still trained, took exercise, and things like that.

Philpot: Was it…was—I just happened to see a thing the other day on television, was it loud, you know, on the, on the ship, as far as… Tincher: Was it loud?

Philpot: Yeah, like, you know, in, inside, or… Tincher: No, not too bad.

Philpot: Okay. So, did you have a…I really don’t 5:00know much about the marines other than you have the kind of what you see on TV first ones there… Tincher: Yeah.

Philpot: …the last one to leave. Did you have like a, a, an occupation specialty or anything, aside from… Tincher: Well, when I, the first…few months I was in, I was, I went in automatic weapons company, I was a machine gunner.

Philpot: Is that…like a…like, like a b…like a belt fed machine gun, or… Tincher: Yes, thirty calibers, most ( ) I was with.

Philpot: Okay, and…so it…I g…as a machine gunner, did you carry that then, or set it up on a… Tincher: Yeah, you carried, I carried the barrel part of it and an assistant gunner carried the tripod.

Philpot: Okay…well, I was going to say, y…we don’t have to go through all these, these questions, you know, that’s not set in stone or anything, they’re just sort of suggestions, but… Tincher: Yeah.

Philpot: …one of them said, 6:00did you miss any events while you were gone?

Tincher: Oh yeah, we missed the county fairs and everything like that.

Philpot: How did you feel about having to leave your child?

Tincher: [Chuckling] I didn’t like it.

Philpot: I can imagine, I have a, an eleven month old, so I imagine it was hard. That, that was nice, you said he just, he just…took right back up with you?

Tincher: Yeah, he took up with me just like he had been with me all the time!

Philpot: Okay. Let’s see [Chuckling], well, I guess…it, it was quite a, a culture shock to get…to the South Pacific… Tincher: We didn’t really know where we were going, and we, after we got aboard ship we went to the Hawaiian Islands and took on some more stuff and…we went from there on. 7:00Philpot: Well, it says that you were in five invasions? Can you tell me about those?

Tincher: Excuse me.

Philpot: Sure.

Tincher: Yeah, I was on, in the Marshall Islands we invaded two islands, Roi and Namur and…then we invaded Saipan, and then Tinian and Iwo Jima.

Philpot: Is that, is that basically true that the marines are the first one…first ones there?

Tincher: [Chuckling] Yeah, that’s right.

Philpot: How does that work? I mean how do you…I, I re…I mean [Chuckling] I guess it seems like a silly question, but how do, how do you invade something? I mean are you, in a boat, and… Tincher: Well, we went to—we went aboard the troop transport ships and then they had these landing boats on it, stacked up two and three high and then they would drop those overboard, and we would load up in them and we would go in, 8:00in them for the invasion.

Philpot: Okay. Did, did you usually, did you have like resistance right on the beach, or… Tincher: Oh yes [Laughing] yeah. Yeah, there was resistance all the way through until we got them all.

Philpot: So did, did you actually have to, you know, fight and, and, that was there ever a point, I guess like that they gave up or…how… Tincher: No, they didn’t do much s…they didn’t know what surrender was [Chuckling] to tell you the truth. You had to eliminate them.

Philpot: Did you…the reason I ask is ano…another fellow I talked to mentioned it. Did, did you have any feelings about…that there we…you know, the rest of Europe maybe felt like the Americans couldn’t fight, that kind of thing? You know, you think, did you feel like you had something to prove, or… Tincher: Yeah, they, they figured we were a bunch of softies, but we weren’t.

Philpot: Why did, why did they think that, do you think?

Tincher: Well, they thought we all lived, 9:00had a, had, you know, lived an easy life, and, didn’t do anything like this, but when you come down to it, we did it.

Philpot: Okay. Well let’s see…could you talk about maybe a couple of your most memorable experiences? It could be good or bad, ei…either.

Tincher: Well, they wasn’t none of them too good [Chuckling].

Philpot: I imagine not.

Tincher: No. Yeah we…well…it, it’s been so long ago, and it was, it—like I said, it was all, it was all bad; it wasn’t good at all. We had to kill a lot of people, and of course they killed a lot of us, and I was just, I was just plain lucky that I didn’t get it bad.

Philpot: Did you get injured at all?

Tincher: Yeah, I got my hips hurt. I had to have two surgeries on my right hip.

Philpot: Okay, let’s see…ev…everybody else I’ve talked to 10:00thinks this is a silly question, but I’ll, I’ll go [Chuckling] on and…if, did you get any…any medals or anything like that?

Tincher: No, no, I didn’t get any medals. We just did what we had to do and that was it.

Philpot: Okay, let’s see. Were you able to stay in touch with your family at all?

Tincher: I would write them letters and then they’d write me letters back and we would, we would get a letter every few weeks, and of course, they got our mail out pretty good back to back home.

Philpot: Was that, did, you know, were you able to kind of keep up with what was going on at home?

Tincher: Yeah, pretty well. My wife kept in touch with, with letters and everything. She, she wrote me pretty regularly.

Philpot: Okay, let’s see. What, what would you put in, 11:00in your letters that you sent home?

Tincher: You had to watch what you put in there, because every [Chuckling] they would cut most of it out, if you told them anything that was going on, and you just said there mostly that you were all right and you would be glad to get home.

Philpot: So if you put something in the letter that, that they didn’t want to you say, the, when she got it, did it have lines through it, or… Tincher: Cut out, a lot of it was cut out.

Philpot: ( ) with holes?

Tincher: A lot of it was eliminated with marking out, but most of it was cut out.

Philpot: Hum. Okay, that’s interesting, I didn’t, I didn’t know they did that.

Tincher: Oh yeah! I had some of them [Chuckling] cut out, that you couldn’t, you couldn’t tell them write the time that you were going to invade a, a place. If you told them where you were going, it was gone. I mean, they didn’t get [Chuckling] that.

Philpot: Was that, they were just afraid the letters would be intercepted, or, or they didn’t… Tincher: Yeah well, they’d be waiting for us, see, they figured the Jap navy would be out there waiting for us.

Philpot: Okay, let’s see. Did you have a particular letter that you received that really stuck out in your mind? 12:00Tincher: No, not really, they were all about good, they just told us about what they had been doing and what they planed to do and things like that.

Philpot: Okay. Do you…do you associate any, any smells or taste with your time overseas?

Tincher: Well, the s…the smell of a dead person was, still sticks with you, they would st…they’d get so many dead they would stink in that hot weather we had to, they…took bulldozers and built big long revetments and shoved the Japs in there, dead Japs in there and covered them. That’s all you could do.

Philpot: Mm-mm. 13:00That…must have been rough, did you… Tincher: Yeah.

Philpot: Did you have to do any of that yourself, or… Tincher: Yeah, I remember one occasion. We had, we usually hooked ropes or wires to their feet and drug them over to it, and I hooked this wire around one of his foot and started to drag him and the whole foot just came off, and I didn’t like that too much [Chuckling].

Philpot: No, no, I would imagine. How do you…just do what you have to do, or how did you deal with that kind of thing?

Tincher: Yeah, you had to do it, so, there wasn’t much you could do except get them buried at, and we were glad to get them buried, because they sure was stinking.

Philpot: Okay. What about any, any…taste, I, I guess, what, what was the food like while you were there?

Tincher: Well, we, we had plenty to eat, such as it was, C-rations and K-rations, and they found at the last, before the war was over, we got those ten in one rations, they were good. 14:00Philpot: Could you explain what a C-ration, or, or a K-ration is, like what would be in it?

Tincher: Well, they would be the C, big hardy crackers and little cans of some kind of meat, and that was about it, three cig…three cigarettes, there were three cigarettes in it, they couldn’t do that now, though [Chuckling].

Philpot: Was it common? Did, did everybody smoke pretty much?

Tincher: Most of them, most of them did, yeah. I smoked but I smoked cigars.

Philpot: What…who, were you able to get cigars at all?

Tincher: No, I, I, I took a half a box with me every time we went on an invasion, because they took up so much room and you packet that’s about all you could take, and they didn’t last too long.

Philpot: Okay. What, what else did you…as far as room in the pack, what else did you have in there?

Tincher: Well, we had an extra pair of trousers, dungarees, an extra shirt, a couple pair of socks, and I usually put in a couple of hand grenades in mine with it and we didn’t need all them clothes, they’s going to get dirty the next day anyway. 15:00Philpot: Did…the hand grenades, I mean, did you ever have to use them?

Tincher: Oh yeah.

Philpot: Was there…let’s see…what, you, you mentioned that a ten-in-one ration. What was that?

Tincher: Oh they had cans of stuff like bacon, and different kinds of meat, and I forgot what all they were, but they had cans, had them in cans, and it was, it was rations for one meal for ten men, and they were big cans, and it, it was pretty decent ration, considering what we had, had been used to, you know.

Philpot: Did…was somebody responsible for carrying that and giving it out, or did they (issue them?)?

Tincher: Well, what they did, they had…had aboard these ships 16:00out in the harbor, and they would bring them in by the…the smaller ships, land—whether was it landing ships, then bring them in and stacked them up on the beach, and then…we would go down, one or two at a time pick up what we had to get, and then sometimes they’d bring some up to us.

Philpot: So…were you ever, yeah, I, I don’t really know a whole lot about military life, you know, much less during an invasion but, well did, did you ever have sort of peaceful times? I mean were you able to, when, kind of eat in peace or anything like that?

Tincher: Oh yeah, there was times, you would stand on the front line so long, and then you—they’d pull you off and replace you with some other people, and you sat back there and take it easy and eat, but…you still would catch artillery and mortar fire back there.

Philpot: Okay. 17:00Well it says, what was your supply situation like, and were you, did you ever run short with that, or… Tincher: Well, most of the time, we had plenty of supplies; we didn’t have much problem with that. The problem we had was getting them up on the frontlines.

Philpot: Whose…whose job was it, to do that?

Tincher: Well they had, I don’t know what they call those boys, they would bring, bring them up so far and then we had to go back and get them, and…we, we usually had plenty to eat, such as it was, and…the las…the last ship I was on going to Hiwo Jima, was…one of the new…troop ships and we even had fresh water showers on the first time we ever had a ship with freshwater showers, and it had showers one time a day. The other had saltwater showers, and that old rough soap 18:00you used like sandpaper, and this, this was a USS Hinsdale, and it got hit twice where got of.

Philpot: Was it hit, what was it hit by?

Tincher: Well, we figured it was…shore batteries, and one marine captain was killed and one sailor and some others wounded. It was a good ship. I liked that one.

Philpot: What, what rank did you have?

Tincher: And I went to Sergeant. In the marine corps you don’t get promoted a whole lot, it’s, of course, the way you get promoted is when they get knocked off and so you got to have a man replaced and that’s how a lot—I mean, you know, combat zone that’s how a lot of them got promoted.

Philpot: So… Tincher: A lot of times it’d be a corporal, or a company commander, they’d be so many people knocked of.

Philpot: So really you didn’t want to be promoted.

Tincher: No (Coughs). We didn’t want to be an officer at all, they [Chuckling] they was, that was the first pick killed. 19:00Philpot: How, how did they, was there some, some visual way that they could tell who the officer was?

Tincher: Well, they wouldn’t, they wouldn’t wear their…bars, but on the back of the dungaree, they had a semi circle, and it had numbers in the middle of it, and those numbers would, would designate, you didn’t, they designate…the…rank that they had, like, one PFC, two corporals, three sergeants, on up to captains and lieutenants and that’s, if they could see your back, they could tell you who you were.

Philpot: So they caught on to that pretty quick, huh.

Tincher: Yeah.

Philpot: Was that…I guess was that in general fighting when, when a lot of that would happen, or did they have snipers, or… Tincher: Yeah we had, they had snipers everywhere, and…of course, in f…regular fighting you would have, have that. 20:00Philpot: Okay. [Chuckling] well, did you feel pressure or stress?

Tincher: [Laughing] Oh, Lord yes. I heard people say I wasn’t scared, but I’m going to tell you, I was scared half to death.

Philpot: And… Tincher: …you never get used to that.

Philpot: A lot of people said they weren’t scared, or… Tincher: [Chuckling] Yeah! And this, this were two ( ) [Chuckling]. They were either lying, or, or they weren’t there.

Philpot: [Chuckling] that’s…it seems about right, I’d say.

Tincher: I know I was scared.

Philpot: Was, was that something that you just…what—was it kind 21:00of all the time, or was it, you know… Tincher: Oh, all the time. But you, you eventually get…you don’t really get used to it, but you get to where you just go along with it.

Philpot: Okay…this is sort of a…cultural question, I guess, but…what was your, your favorite music during the war years?

Tincher: I still like the old country music.

Philpot: Any singers in particular?

Tincher: Huh, no, not really.

Philpot: Okay. Did you have any opportunity to, I mean did you have, you know, get to listen to records or anything like that during your down time, or… Tincher: No, we, in the down time, we were either training more, or going to classes, or something to…you know, still learn more about combat.

Philpot: Was that all the cla…were all the classes about combat? 22:00Tincher: Yes.

Philpot: Did they teach you anything, I guess about the Japanese in, in terms of how to fight over anything?

Tincher: Yeah, quite a bit of it was, as, as they learned, they would teach you and tell you about it, tell you what to expect and what to do when it did happen.

Philpot: Okay.

Tincher: They were tough little rascals though [Chuckling].

Philpot: Yeah, I’ve, so…was that, was it hard to, to fight them, or, or, or increase their, I don’t know really how to ask, say what I am thinking but, because they were so different from you, is, was that… Tincher: Yeah, they, they would…have charges, they’d come right at you and you either had to—you had to kill them, wasn’t no way of it, of course that was when they made those charges, that was to our, our advantage to get rid of a lot of them. But they, they didn’t worry about charging you now, they, you didn’t scare them, you have to give them credit for that. And…we, we didn’t take a lot of prisoners. They wouldn’t surrender, and, on Saipan, they had it bottled up on the back, upper end of the island, and they had a bunch of machine guns set up in case they tried 23:00to break out, and they did try to break out and they just about slaughtered them all, and had a bunch of civilians up in there with them, and they had told them what all we would do to them if we captured them, and they had…women with those kids jumping over the cliff up there, they was afraid of us. They should know we wouldn’t though.

Philpot: Did…did you see a lot of civilians then on… Tincher: Yeah, quite a few on, there weren’t too many in the Marshall’s, of course at Marshall’s was just a little, two little islands, they, we thought they were bad, but they weren’t [Chuckling] compared to the others, but there was quite a few civilians on Saipan and Tinian. Iwo Jima didn’t have a lot, and Iwo Jima was…they bombed and shelled that island for 24:00seventy-seven consecutive days (clears throat) and…we thought it was going to be a pushover, [Chuckling] they were everything but. They were underground, like a bunch of moles, they at Mount Suribachi, the extinct volcano, they even had an underground…railroad, a little narrow gauge railroad, and that’s, of course, up on the top of Mount Suribachi is where they raised the flag.

Philpot: These…did that make them fighting them different then, could they move around them ( )?

Tincher: Oh yeah, and you’d run them in the hole here, and they’s come out over here, and you toss, you could toss smoke grenades in there, smoke would come out over here and over there, you thought they were going to smoke them out, but you didn’t bother them. They were, they were fixed, Iwo Jima was fixed for us.

Philpot: How long were you there?

Tincher: Mm, I think a little over a month.

Philpot: So it took, it took a long time to clear the… Tincher: Yeah…they… Philpot: …the ( ).

Tincher: …they were, they were tough little rascals and you had to do it 25:00the hard way, we lost about, around seven thousand men killed, and then I don’t know how many got wounded.

Philpot: Of the…the first two islands you were on, what, what made them so much easier than the, the other one?

Tincher: Well, to start with, they were smaller, and they didn’t have, they, as much equipment on it as they did on the others, I don’t believe, and they didn’t have any tanks and things like that, so we took those pretty quick. Roi and Namur, that was the two islands in the Marshalls.

Philpot: So…as a machine gunner did you, did you basically set up sort of a nest then, or, or, or how would you use them ( )?

Tincher: Yeah, well it… Philpot: …in combat?

Tincher: They would have them situated where there was different corners, at different places, and…they pretty well situated that way they could take care of them and then when they got back to the—the average life of a machine gunner is eight minutes, 26:00and (coughs) – excuse me.

Philpot: Sure.

Tincher: When I got back to the Hawaiian Islands after the Marshalls, I got out of that outfit, I [Chuckling] asked the colonel to get me out of there and he said “I g…I put you in the rifle company.” I said “I’ll take it over a machine gun.” Philpot: So…what why is the lifespan so short?

Tincher: Well they threw everything they had at machine gun, artillery, mortars, and their machine guns and everything, but they, I mean they, the machine gunners didn’t last long.

Philpot: I guess this so, so for a…a regular soldier then, this is—would be before automatic weapons then. Did you, did you have like once you were in the rifle corps, is that like…what sort of weapon did you use?

Tincher: Well, we had mostly M-1s and carbines and VARs, and I had an M-1. That old M-1 was a good one. If you could see him, 27:00you could hit him, it was, it was that accurate, at a distance.

Philpot: Did…so did, did you have to, to do anymore fighting once you were in the…rifle corps?

Tincher: Oh yeah, that—I got out of that after the Marshalls Islands, I hit Saipan, Tinian, Iwo Jima in the, in the…rifle platoon.

Philpot: Oh okay, I see. So let’s see…kind it goes back to your, your life before you left, did you have a, a movie that, that was your favorite before you left?

Tincher: No, I don’t think so, we didn’t go to too many movies back then.

Philpot: And…how about a, a sports team?

Tincher: Oh I like Kentucky Wild Cats [Chuckling].

Philpot: Now, were you able to hear anything about them, you know, while you were gone, or… Tincher: Occasionally, we would, yeah. Some of us, some of them would write me a letter and tell me about it. 28:00I got several letters from home.

Philpot: Did you have any, anybody else besides your wife that, that wrote you?

Tincher: Oh yeah, my mother and dad, and brother, uncles and aunts.

Philpot: Was there, was there anything that you did, you know, for good luck? You know… Tincher: No, I never did believe much in [Chuckling] good luck but I was lucky, anyway.

Philpot: Okay. How about any, any of your…you know, your buddies that you were there with, did they have… Tincher: They… Philpot: …good luck charms of any kind?

Tincher: Oh yeah, they, a lot of them had good luck charms, some of them had forty (flowers?) about tore up and they carried them and different things.

Philpot: Okay. What did you do…when you got to go on leave?

Tincher: Well I just mostly rested to tell you the truth, we were tired, 29:00we—when we wa’n’t…in combat, we were training and when you get a day off, you’d go downtown and eat, like a good, eat a good meal, drink a beer, and I wanted a drink of wine, that’s all I had to drink. And then, I, I always went out in the country, and looked at the farming. I’d go to that pineapple fields, and duck fa…duck farms and…sugar cane fields, I enjoyed that out in the country more than most of them did. Of course I was an old farmer to start with [Chuckling].

Philpot: Did—I was going to say, did that remind you of home, or… Tincher: Well, yes, quite a bit different from our home, but, I, I mean our farming at home, but, yeah it was, you know, similar as far as work goes, with the vehicles and things. [ [Sound Interference] Philpot: Sorry about that, it’s my cell phone, I was keeping that on to, 30:00to keep up with the time… Tincher: Huh, yeah.

Philpot: …I have to make a note and then the, the buzzing in the interview, the, the phone was… Tincher: Interfering with it.

Philpot: I am going to put that somewhere else, so it won’t do that again. Let’s see…do you…were there any sort of humorous or unusual events, did, you know, did you all play pranks on each other, or… Tincher: Oh occasionally they would do it, tie your socks up and things like that, put socks in your shirt—I mean…something in your socks and different things, but they was all done in fun.

Philpot: Was that mostly just to pass the time, or did, did people do things to sort of bring a prank on themselves for having that… Tincher: Well, sort to pass the time and they always wanted to do pull a prank on somebody.

Philpot: Okay. What did you think of your…your officers and 31:00fellow soldiers?

Tincher: Well, we had some good ones. They all stuck together, and…helped each other, officers were good, and we, we didn’t, I don’t think we had any bad ones. Sometimes they made you do things you didn’t really want to, but, [Chuckling] it, if you could think about it later it was necessary. Yeah, it was necessary most of the time.

Philpot: Could you, could you give me an example of something that, you know, like that?

Tincher: Well, you needed to go up and try to find out where a sniper was, or something like that and you, you didn’t like to do that, but, but still you, it, it was necessary. Somebody had to do it.

Philpot: Okay. Is there anybody in particular you really thought a lot of, or… Tincher: (Coughs) Yeah, several, several there, 32:00I had a good friend by the name of (Mazzoni?). We was, we was together about all the time and then, you know, I g…I, I got one friend and I can’t think of his name, it’s been so long [Chuckling]. Dave (Aultman?) that’s his name, yeah, he was all right. He worked in the first sergeant’s office, and…when we had a rest period on Saipan, he would get me to go down to the division post office and had you to get the mail sorted and bring it up. And the next day I was back up.

Philpot: Okay, let’s see…how did you feel about women in the military?

Tincher: Women?

Philpot: Women?

Tincher: Oh yeah we, we didn’t have any in the military when I was in, and…I really didn’t think they belonged there, but I, I know now that they had jobs that they, they could do and needed to do that would save 33:00some men from doing it, like leaving for combat.

Philpot: Right. How did you feel about them working in the factories?

Tincher: Well, it was necessary, they had to do it, they had to…they had to work, because it wasn’t enough men to go around, what was left was just kids, more or less, and old men, is too old for the military and they didn’t, they couldn’t work right, you know, the young ones did, but the women did a good job.

Philpot: Okay. Well we’re, we’re basically into the, the, these questions are sort of target for, for after…after your, your service time. How long did you—we’ve talked about it out there, but how, how long did you say that you were in?

Tincher: I was in from…let’s see ’43 to forty—yeah, ’43, 34:00’44 and ’45. I came out in ’45, I got discharged me…Great Lakes Naval Hospital in ’45 up, I think it was October, the coldest place in the world [Chuckling].

Philpot: Was that…was that from you hip injury?

Tincher: Yeah.

Philpot: If, if you, you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, but…how, how did you get injured?

Tincher: I better not talk about it.

Philpot: Okay, that’s fine. Could you…do you remember the, the day the war ended, you know, both victory in Europe Day, and… Tincher: Oh yeah!

Philpot: …and did you enjoy it?

Tincher: Yeah I remember that. I was—let’s see where wa…I was in the hospital, I was running around on my crutches, and I threw one of them to celebrate 35:00[Chuckling]. Somebody had to get it for me [Laughter – Philpot and Tincher].

Philpot: Was that on…in Europe or… Tincher: That was… Philpot: …Japan?

Tincher: …that was…well that was Japan, and of…I was on the Hawaiian Island in the hospital then, yeah, that’s where that was.

Philpot: Okay. Let’s see, well, once you, once you got out…of the hospital, did you, did you go back to work, or… Tincher: Yeah I went, went back to farming, tried to farm, and I had trouble with my hip. I had to do something else, so I got a job and…left farming.

Philpot: What, what, where did you get a job?

Tincher: Well I got a job at, let’s see, well I worked for Kroger for a while, and I worked for the government for a while, and I retired from the federal government. I retired on disability with that hip.

Philpot: Okay. Is there anybody that, that you made friends with while you were in the service that you still 36:00talk to today?

Tincher: No, it’s, I’ve lost count of most of them. I was in Jerry’s Restaurant, I think it was, anyway, here in Mount Sterling one day, and one of my best buddies came through and he was from New York, and I ran into him, and that’s the only time I ever saw him or got to be in touch with, and there was another boy out here, at Comargo somewhere there was a, he…drove one of the boats that took us in for the landings and I ran, ran into him a couple of times but outside of that, there wasn’t too many of them left.

Philpot: Okay. Well, if, given…where we are, it’s sort of a silly question, I guess, but…did you join a veteran’s organization? 37:00Tincher: Oh yeah, the DAV, and the American Legion, and, let’s see, who, it seems like it was three of them, the American legion, DAV, anyway I belong to those now. I’ve been there a long time.

Philpot: Did you join the VFW?

Tincher: Yeah, that’s what I was trying of, the VFW, I joined it.

Philpot: Is there a, a particular reason that you wanted to join the organizations?

Tincher: Well, I wanted to keep up with the military and thought maybe eventually some time I’d get to run in to some people I was in the service with.

Philpot: How do you, how, how did you like it?

Tincher: Oh, I liked it. I used to be here, I was adjutant here at this post for right smart while.

Philpot: Okay. Do you…do you ever go to any reunions or anything like that?

Tincher: I never found out any we ever had. I don’t know, I would like to go so I get to maybe see some of my old friends, but I’ve never found out any that they ever had that, 38:00you know, I was with.

Philpot: Okay. How did you—this is a big question, I guess. How did your service and experiences overseas affect your life?

Tincher: Hum. That’s a good question [Chuckling].

Philpot: It’s a little bit much to hit somebody with right off, isn’t it?

Tincher: Yeah well it’s, it’s…well, it sort of bothered me a lot, that, that’s one thing still bothers me (Coughs).

Philpot: Okay, let’s see. This is…these are for later years…I’m not sure how many of these we want to necessarily get into but…do you feel like it’s, it’s important for students to you know, 39:00study the history and, you know, learn about…all of this?

Tincher: Yeah, I think so, I think they should, and I think every person that finishes high school should spend at least a year in the military.

Philpot: Okay.

Tincher: It would teach them quite a bit, and sort of cool some of them down. [Chuckling] Philpot: Okay…what would you say has…or if anything, I mean, has changed in, in the sense of community over the last sixty years, as far as, in other words, are we still each other’s, you know, our, our brothers’ keepers?

Tincher: Well I don’t think it’s been all that much, not a whole lot.

Philpot: Okay. Let’s see…Well 40:00if you could…we, we’re pretty much toward, towards the end…of, of these but, but we know, we are not bound to these by any means. If you could share a piece of wisdom with coming generations, what would it be and why?

Tincher: Well, I think they ought to try, everyone of them try, should try them a vacation—I mean a va…education and…I think, like I said before, they should spend at least one year in the military. I think it would teach them a lot.

Philpot: What, what do you think people, you know, kids would learn in the military?

Tincher: Well they’d learn to, take care of business, take care of themselves, take care of their friends, and…learning what, 41:00what the military has gone through before.

Philpot: Okay. Well is, is there anything you’d like to add that we have not talked about, or, or that you want to say about your, you know, your experience?

Tincher: Well, my, my wife told me not to tell this but [Chuckling] we were (Coughs), we were on Tinian, and we were advancing forward, and we were hugging that old tank so we couldn’t get hit (whoever?) sniper fire, and this old woman came out of a hole over here with a club and she started beating this old boy, oh she was beating him half dead. He said I don’t want to have to kill this woman, and finally he just backhanded her like that, she went backwards and down she went, back in that hole she went, and we found out later that we was going through her potato, sweet potato patch, tearing it up [Chuckling]. 42:00Philpot: Did you have…was that pretty unusual for that kind of thing, or did you… Tincher: Yeah, the civilians never did bother us. In fact, they were really tickled that we were there, because the Japanese had treated them so bad, and unmerciful sometimes, and they were glad, of course a lot of civilians got killed. It’s un…I mean, you just can’t help it when your shelling and throwing mortars in them, and there’s bound to be some of them killed, and…it’s, it’s a bad thing, and you have to do this, see little kids killed, women, but, that had to go with it.

Philpot: Is, is that normally how it worked as far as the, the invasion fighting, like you would try to follow behind the tanks sort of?

Tincher: Oh I did that there, yeah. I mean, it, it’ll keep the men in front of you from hitting you with the rifle, and…it wa…[Chuckling] we were following that, a tank up through there, and of course he was turning in his potato patch, but anyway 43:00that’s, that’s what we usually did if we could. Of course there wasn’t enough tanks for everybody to get behind it, but you enjoyed getting behind when you could.

Philpot: As far as the…what did the, the civilians do then once you won? I mean, was there… Tincher: Oh they would run back to us and surrender real quick. I mean, even during the war, during the fighting. They would sneak out and surrender, specially at night, and I tell you what, there was a lot, a lot of men you’d give them a knife, and at night they’d go out and slaughter a lot of Japs. They hated those Japs.

Philpot: So the civilians would do that.

Tincher: Yeah, yeah they would. But of course they ha…like I said, they treated, they had treated the civilians so mean, so rough, and didn’t feed them too good, and what they had is mostly what they raised, that’s the reason that lady was out there.

Philpot: Did, so the reason the civilians wanted to…surrender, did, did you all take them off the island then, ( )?

Tincher: No, they, they built a 44:00big…compound over there and enclosed it with wire and put them in there so the Japs couldn’t get to them, and then after we left, after we was leaving they turned them loose and, and they w…they fed them good, took care of them. And I think they did a lot of stuff for them, you know, helped build them their houses and things, because we destroyed about every house on this islands, had to because the Japs were in there.

Philpot: Did…did it, did the Japanese ever tried to…attack that, that compound where you had the civilians?

Tincher: No, I, I can’t remember any time that they ever tried that. Of course they had it way down from where the fighting was still continuing. They brought it down close to the beach, so that they couldn’t…we could knock them off before they got to them.

Philpot: Okay. All right, well…anything else that you want to talk about or anything?

Tincher: No, I can’t think of anything 45:00except, I was one lucky bird [Chuckling].

Philpot: Well…in that case, I’ll, I’ll get you to sign that release form we talked about earlier… Tincher: Okay.

Philpot: …and…I’ll just go ahead and turn this off and thank you very much for talking to me.

Tincher: I was glad to.

“END OF INTERVIEW”