Oral History Interview with Roger Williams

Philpot: This is Jonathan Philpot, it is February 23rd, 2008. I’m here in the American Legion with…Roger Williams and we’re going to talk about his World War II experience.

Williams: Yeah, so… Philpot: If you just want to go ahead and introduce yourself.

Williams: Yeah. I’m Roger Williams, I’m originally from Menifee County, which now I live in Clark County, which is Winchester. I…I’m 84 years old and what else do we need to talk about?

Philpot: Oh…well, we, we can go all over the place, it’s not, you know, radio or anything, doesn’t have to be real formal [Laughter – Williams] but I…I guess let’s start with…what branch of the service did you go into?

Williams: I was with, in the army. I went in December in forty…two, and I was in until—I was in three years. I got out in December 1:00of ’45, and I was in the 625th Ordnance Ammunition Company. When they made these up, they made up three companies, the 624th, the 623rd, 624th, 625th. The 623rd went to the Pacific, the 624th and 625th went to the European situation over there. I stayed with, with the company for, until I was sent back in about, I think it was at…December of forty…five. So some of the boys, I was with them for almost three years, and our principal thing was handling ammunition. We trained for that, unless emergencies come up. Once we had to handle gasoline, runway material for planes, also blankets, 2:00winter come in, they had to be blankets moved so we handled them.

Philpot: Okay. Did you enlist, or were you drafted, or… Williams: I was drafted. I was drafted in Menifee County in December and it was ninety-six of us, the best I can remember, three Greyhound Bus loads went out of there. They lowered the draft age to eighteen and a half and that caught me [Chuckles – Philpot]. There was four of us boys had graduated from Frenchburg high school there and…May of ’42. Three of us went in the army and the other boy he joined the navy, and so that’s then.

Philpot: Did they let you pick or did, did you, you, the army was it for you?

Williams: The army was where it was at that time. They was drafted, 3:00some of the older people, I was with some which was older than me which I was a, I was just nineteen when I went in, and there was some fellows I was with which was up in the thirty-two or three, maybe 34 years old. All the company I was with, most of them was Kentucky, West Virginia, and Ohio boys. Our cadre they was made up different states on ( ) and they was really from Aberdeen, Maryland, which was a ordnance ammunition place which they work in. It was our, our principal thing was, was the ammunition. So we handled anything from 22-shells up to two thousand pound bombs, different type, all types of artillery shells, but we…and…that’s about it.

Philpot: Okay…where 4:00did, well actually what, what were you doing but before the, before the army [Laughter – Williams] came calling?

Williams: Well I just got out of high school and I stayed around home there and farmed, up until…(clears throat). I had a brother, Cash, he went in, in June before I did and we stayed, and we was, except for moving, we was within probably a hundred, a hundred and fifty miles of each other. I was in Louisia…I was in Texas and he was over in Louisiana, and we left there, we went to New York, and then we went to England, and he was there in England there, then I went on in the invasion of Normandy and he followed up, he was with the General Hospital and during that period of time…on his birthday in nineteen and forty-five, we got together. 5:00There was a boy in my company which knew a fellow was with him, so we got an overnight pass and went up and seen him, and so it was quite a reunion to see him at that time.

Philpot: What, what was his job?

Williams: He was with the General Hospital, my brother was, he was a, and he thought maybe that I was…somebody had told him his brother was there and he thought maybe he’d been hurt and was sent in there at the hospital. But I was, I very much alive and going.

Philpot: Okay…did you, when you, when you left did you…you know, I guess your parents, but did you leave anybody else behind? Did you have a girlfriend or anything or… Williams: No, not necessary, no [Chuckling], it was just a [Chuckling]… Philpot: One person I asked that to said…he said, yes, but he wasn’t, he wasn’t gone long before he got [Chuckling] he got a letter 6:00and… Williams: Oh [Chuckling].

Philpot: …he never did, didn’t have a girlfriend anymore.

Williams: Well, you always look forward to letters from different ones. As some of the boys used to say from the girlfriends or the wives, you always kept them for…that was like dessert.

Philpot: Did they read all the others first, and… Williams: Read the others first and kept them for dessert.

Philpot: Did…did you write back and forth with your parents much or… Williams: Yeah, I usually got once a week nearly, my mother would write me and my father would, and my sister, I had three sisters, and, so… Philpot: Did…let’s see, so you said they, they sent you to England, is that right?

Williams: Yes, uh-huh. Yeah we went out of New York across the North Atlantic. I was in a convoy, I think it was three troops ships, we was in the center. We had twenty-seven escorts around us when we crossed the North Atlantic. 7:00But back at that time the U-boats are pretty strong out there. They was sinking stuff right along. But we was pretty well escorted across. I forget what kind of plane, but we usually had planes circling around with a…the plane—the ships was inside of us, we, just like in the middle when we cross the—that was in January of…’43.

Philpot: Did…did you get to see England any, or you know, they left you off the boat anywhere, or… Williams: Huh…well when we got off—well we pulled into Ireland, but then we didn’t unload anything, we went up to Scotland. We got off at Scotland, come down through Scotland and down to…in England, stopped at a town named Exeter, we was there probably…maybe a week or something like that, we went on down to Falmouth. And we was there in Falmouth, that’s where we took some of our mo…training things which, and…they had a…we lived at it, we had barracks ready right in Falmouth which was right 8:00on the south coast. During the time I was down there, I went to—you’ve heard of Saint Ives, it’s…we went to Saint Ives, well I’ve been down to Saint Ives, that’s right down in Land’s End on a very tip of England, the western part is right there. Saint Ives, As I was going to Saint Ives, I met a man with seven wives, I ought to remember that, and, but we was right on the coast there, took further training, we was training for, and then when they got ready to cross the channel into France for the invasion. We loaded up about four days. I think it was on the second or third of June. We was supposed to went in on the fifth of June but we didn’t…they held us up a day. So we was on little ship there, it wasn’t too big. I think it was about 65 9:00men and equipment on it. We had the different services, we had signal corps boys, we had medical boys, we had engineers, and we had ammunition boys, there was fifteen of us, fourteen men and an officer, I was in with the detachment. And the reason they’d done those smaller units was in case a ship got lost or whole unit you lost out. So then…after we crossed there, where I went in on Utah Beach, which was a southern beach there, which I was, I think my watch stopped. I don’t remember now what time it was, but it might have been up in the early part of the morning. The days were long at that time and I can say it was the longest day in that part. And we went in, what it was 10:00we had the first truck on our ship was about a ton of TNT on it. That was the engineers’ to blow the stuff up with. After it was off, the officer we had, I think he was about the first one off the boat, and we scattered in like a covey of quail and we was probably a hour getting together after we got inside. We were going up the beach when our boat hit the, really the land parts, soon as the ramp hit the sand, it dropped. I was very fortunate only about knee deep in water, something like that, which we went in pretty light, we didn’t have too much to carry, a few rations and a, I think I had one blanket and my rifle, and that was about it. But as I went in, and as we was crossing the channel though, the boat right in front of us hit a mine and it was a Higgins boat between that boat and the one we was on, and it just stood it up on its end. I seen one man, he must have went twenty or thirty feet in the air, 11:00across the water, which he was…and I seen some coming in holding their rifles up, some lost their rifles, water, wet, which we had a, kind of a Mae West life jacket on up under the arms to keep us…if you got it on your belt or down too low, it’d drown you. So I got rid of that pretty quick after I hit, hit the beach. I think I hit the sand four or five times before I got off the beach. The Germans were shelling one way, the Americans were shelling the other and as we come in, we come by the battleship Texas, was out there shelling, and so we just were hoping the shell didn’t drop short. So… Philpot: Thew, ( ). So…all 12:00right here we go. So, as far as being in, in, in ordnance goes is, is really I guess you helped fire the artillery as, or… Williams: No, we were just a…issuing unit.

Philpot: Oh, okay.

Williams: We handled it, stored it, issued it out. I’ve issued…I have even been on a box loading truck up with officers, colonels, I’ve even had colonels on one end of the box, me at the other, they was ready, they would tell us ahead, did you see where that smoke is at, that’s where this is going. We was close to units like that.

Philpot: Okay.

Williams: Of course they shelled us some, a while after we got in there, but they, they bombed us and shelled us at times there.

Philpot: So… Williams: One thing about when I was in there. Along in the evenings when they, you’d get back and (wait?) the wounded and things, and you’d see them coming out 13:00hauling anyway they could get them out, and you was wondering if there is anybody up ahead of you, or whether they’d send them all back or they died. But we was right by a…a evacuation hospital there. They bombed us one night there, they hit everything except our ammunition. They hit a gasoline dump, set it on fire, they hit the hospital some, and they hit some other things there, but now that’s very stressful as you go through a bombing.

Philpot: I’m sure!

Williams: You’re in your foxholes, they drop the flares and you would see every corner in it. They dropped those bombs them whistling bombs, it sounded like it was coming right down on you with your walk the distance.

Philpot: Was that called the screaming meemies or… Williams: Them was screaming bomb, I don’t know, they just (imitates the sound) thu-u-u-u-u, you hear them coming down, you think, boy them’s going to hit us here. And the flares when them burned 14:00out they made another circle and dropped off some more, the Germans did, and they bombed us several nights before they got moved up by the, ahead of us. I d…one day I was sitting there, I mean I was in where the ammunition was, I looked up and I think it was three German planes coming strafing. I hit the ground, that’s the first thing I knowed when I heard something like that, to hit the ground. I had my hands out, one of them; I felt it burn. I eased up enough to pull it over and I see I wasn’t shot in the hand. I reckon a bullet had hit close to it and knocked some gravel or something on my hand, and that’s…I dropped in foxholes a few times and shrapnel hit over behind me. And to go through that is pretty nerve racking.

Philpot: I would…I would imagine it would be.

Williams: Yeah.

Philpot: So, 15:00where did…where did you end up after, after England?

Williams: After England, well…after we went into France then we (clears throat) we usually worked around the rail heads or unloading or loading ammunition, but our first setup was, was in a railroad yard there in (Charington?) and we was unloading most of this off and shipped it on ahead of us there in the camp. They’d truck it in there, out of those nets where they unloaded it out of the ships (clears throat) that was their job to, to unload it and reload it on. Then later on we moved on up into a, a place called Soisson up there. We had a big ammuniti…—well the biggest ammunition dumps—I mean place in Europe. We had over a hundred mile of roadway with ammunition on it, stacked back. 16:00We usually stacked it about thirty-ton stacks, tried to k…where one, one, if one exploded it wouldn’t detonate the next one to it, and I’ve seen thirty-ton stacks of TNT go up and that shakes the ground around you. So… Philpot: Were you able to get out of France pretty quick, or… Williams: Well we stayed in France. We moved on up in to…Soisson, that’s where we had a big amm…—one of the ammunition dumps there, and we stayed there until the war was over… Philpot: Oh, okay.

Williams: …and then we shipped…some of the ammunition on up into Germany, they were storing some up there. Some of it we loaded on, and…was shipping it to Pacific. One time there we loaded…I don’t know…I think it was five car-loads of ammunition, and they sent it the wrong way, the wrong ( ) so there was about four or five of us 17:00had to go up into Belgium, up to Antwerp, Belgium up to the seaport there to catch this ammunition, resent it so it would go to the right place. One time, the little railroad cars over in France was, you had to watch them or you’d overload them. They have five-ton, ten-ton cars and they, a few twenty-ton cars, I’ve even saw some over there that were sent over there in the first World War was still in use, they had one old steam locomotive up there we sent over there. I saw that for I was around the railheads or railroad yards a whole lot, but this one car if you would load it too much, which w…the—our fellows was really supervising, we had Polish workers sometimes or the other workers and they would—we had to watch them pretty close so they would load the cars to our specification. We would have to make them level it off, if you didn’t watch them they’d load all on one end of the car, and then we’d have to shift it around so that we (won’t?) make them do that. And we used to handle about a train load a day, 18:00that was about our…and we worked twenty-four hours a day, used to work twelve-hour shifts, one shift would come on, we’d just switch, and that’s…but then when the…the war was over there, and after we sh…shifted this back ammunition I did, I went up in a three-day pass when I have been to…Luxembourg, which I done that, I was up in Belgium. I didn’t get up in, into Germany, I seen over into Germany though from up there. I was up in the Maginot Line, that was a…suppose to have been a thing between France and Germany which we built, I was out in it for, touring, so.

Philpot: Did you get to…have any contact with any of the civilian folks? 19:00Williams: Well, over there in, in Soisson, we had one fellow there, he was an interpreter and he went over in the first World War, and he stayed over there. He was, I think he said he was from up in Ohio, but he stayed and married a woman over there and they was using him as, as an interpreter over there, and one or two of the little, and we had one little fellow there and he could speak, I think it was four or five languages, and…but we usually had interpreters. But the company I was with we had some fellows could speak French, we had some could speak po…Polish, we had some could speak Italian, and they was, those like that was usually on…other 20:00assignments, because they used them as interpreters, and… Philpot: Were the…like the French people and…I don’t know what you call [Chuckling] people from Belgium…could the native people there, were they happy you kicked… Williams: They just pretty… Philpot: …the Germans out?

Williams: …yeah, yeah, they was pretty well cooperative as far as that goes, yeah, they wa’n’t too bad. We used to could take, you could take a bar of soap and trade it for anything hardly, or a Hershey bar, candy bars was...

Philpot: They, they—I didn’t…they were that short on soap though?

Williams: Oh yeah, yeah. I got one, one-dollar bill in my pocket now that I got other there, I give, I think it was, it, what it was I give them, I give him for it, it was, I, it may have been a bar of soap, but I didn’t have no American money with me, I’d turned it all in, and I thought that, and I still got it in my pocket, I carried it all of this time. I now and then take it out and show it to someone I said, now that money was overseas, 21:00and I give something or another for it, but I won this dollar-bill back. I got a silver dollar that I carried with me all the time in my billfold; I take it over, so.

Philpot: Well let’s see, there’s some aw…often… Williams: Yeah.

Philpot: …simple questions I thought I, I’d like to ask. So let’s see…did you get any, any medals or citations, that kind of thing?

Williams: Well, I didn’t get a purple heart but I didn’t, I did, purple heart cost you something which we was ( ) several things. I, I’ve got three, I think I have three battle stars, battle stars, you was in an area where they considered a battle. I think it was five or six battles in France and moved on in to Germany, but we was entitled to wear three battle, three battle stars. I also got a arrowhead, and a arrowhead 22:00mean amphibious invasion, you can have that. And we used to could wear a, a seahorse. That was an amphibious, that’s when you make an invasion.

Philpot: Right-right.

Williams: Now.

Philpot: So did, did you have a lot of points from all that? A lot of people I talk to talk about points, you know, getting a point.

Williams: Well…the poin…some of that was you, you know, you come back with points, and your age or something another, if you was married it was something another, like that—I think I only had sixty-eight or sixty-nine and that was about the lowest. All these other fellows was old and everything like that.

Philpot: Right-right.

Williams: When we’d rotate coming back.

Philpot: So, because you were younger then, is this… Williams: That’s it, you was younger and then if you won the m…we had some of us was married, and, but the younger you was, the less points, and I was—there 23:00was only boy that was younger than I was at the time in the company, and he’s been dead for a little while, I mean he died ( ) but I was the youngest one.

Philpot: Okay, let’s see…did, did you find…were, were the—you know what were some of the biggest differences between you, or you know, the Americans, and like say the French and the Belgians, I guess that’s what they call them.

Williams: Well, I don’t know much about that, but some of these people were, were right good workers and some wasn’t. But we had kind of ( ), the Polish, the Polish, we had the more Polish I guess than anything in that, we didn’t have too many Italians. We had an Italian that used to be a barber for us and he was a good haircut, and we had in our kitchen, they had some…Germans 24:00that was, was bakers, they used to come in about at two-thirty in the morning, something like that, breakfast, we’d have freshly made rolls and things like that, but that was later on when we got that. When we was in England, we never got no white bread, it was all dark bread. We got over into France, they brought some bakers was in there, we got some white bread and it was eaten just like you would angel food cake. It was white, boys are talking about that, that…I know one time we got a lot of flour, we had pancakes forty mornings in a row. Well I could eat a pretty good bunch to start with and last I couldn’t hardly even look at one.

Philpot: I was about to ask if that, that was a good thing, if by the end you re…( ).

Williams: That’s it, you… Philpot: you never care to see another one.

Williams: No.

Philpot: Boy it was, well, it sounds like you got to eat relatively well then, you didn’t have to… Williams: Huh, now… 25:00Philpot: …C-rations or K-rations?

Williams: Yeah, I r…we was, yeah we used to have a, a ration and some things like that but we was pretty well up in that part as far as our eating things, except when you was in transit or something like that, before you got setup. They tried to…well we used to get a ration for fruit and some of it I think come out of Spain, Spain was the ( ) of thing over there, oranges, and…I know during (clears throat) the winter over there, the boys were working out in all kinds of weather, which when we was at in France, was more like the, our climate here in Kentucky. It could be pretty for a few days 26:00and then get bad, snow, or something like that. What happened to us over, this winter come on and caught us with a bunch of ammunition (back in thieves?). They’d take these old trucks and put them in reverse and run them just back as far as they could go, load them up, winch them out and that was it. So…but the boys I was with, they was old country boys, most of them was, they didn’t know nothing but work, so.

Philpot: Was it…was it humid, I mean just you were talking about the weather…was it humid there the way it is here?

Williams: About like it is here, yeah, uh-huh, yeah. And the wea…at the winter times we was there, through that and it was about like it is here, snowing, they didn’t have no roads 27:00they used to take on these little hills and things like that, they’d just take dirt right out of the bank and throw it over the roads sometimes, to get them passable.

Philpot: Did…let’s see…some of these questions are just so obvious I’m sort of like, well I’m not going to (answer?) there and… Williams: What’s that?

Philpot: I said some of these questions… Williams: Yeah… Philpot: …I’m just kind of… Williams: …go ahead.

Philpot: …obvious is, well, you know, it’s like did you feel pressure or stress?

Williams: Well… Philpot: Things like… Williams: …you know, back when we was young, you didn’t know much in a way. The other boys was in the same boat as you was in, pretty near, they just put many in there, and they was country boys or something like that, they was, I don’t know, they was a pretty good bun…and ours was just out of high school that was all in, just got out of high school. We had some boys with us they couldn’t read and write, which they used to call them the awkward squad, they’d put a hand, a rock 28:00in one hand, the left hand, other, instead of saying left or right, it’d be rock hand, the other hand, rock hand, and other hand and, but they got along all right, we…had a, a sergeant, he set up classes for them to kind of, a little bit like that, he worked with them, and, and we had boys could do almost anything, it didn’t matter what it was, I know they, one time over there, they bought a, or traded and got a cow from the, an old French there. We had a boy out here, on the levy here, in Montgomery County, old (Orville Washkins?) and he said he could dress it, so he did. We had extra meat there. We could take a bar of soap and go out here and the French, one bar of soap 29:00and you’d get two or three dozen eggs on to, or sack of potatoes, but they discouraged that, they said but we want a little something different, so.

Philpot: Was the, was, did they use the bar of soap to, to just sold it for themselves?

Williams: They, they had no soap available there.

Philpot: Not at all.

Williams: And candy bars was another thing, they didn’t have no candy bars, and cigarettes was a big thing. Well I used to have one of the boys, he didn’t get no, he didn’t get enough cigarettes, he smoked, I didn’t smoke myself. I used to give my cigarettes and he gave me his candy bars. See they kind of rationed us so, I think it was two packs a week or something like that.

Philpot: Right, right. 30:00Williams: …two or three bars of candy, and they shipped, sent a bunch of coca-colas in bottles there, we’d get one or two of them a week. But old, (Ishmael Hudson?) and he was from Menifee County I, he was in my company at the time. But he always wanted cigarettes, so I didn’t need them myself, I didn’t, but, they’d ration these out to us.

Philpot: Okay…well, let’s see…what did you think of your officers and, and fellow soldiers?

Williams: Well our officers was, well our company commander before he come in he was a bank, he worked for a bank, and I forget what we had, I think we had six officers and we was, our company would made up between a hundred and eighty and two hundred and ten, I think we could be ten percent over, which would make a 31:00company over two hundred in our company there. And our officers was…was…pretty nice. We had one from, let’s see I think I had two from Texas, one from Minnesota, one from Idaho, and one from Oklahoma I believe it was. They was scattered around, but they was just people you had to put up with, that some of those sergeants were good but sometimes they’d kind of buck each other, they two of them tried to outdo each other. You had that. I was, where your company, our company was made up of four platoons, and I was in one of the service platoons, there was two service platoons, and then there is one was made up of our office personnel, cooks and people like that, motor pool was another. I was with, in one of what they called the working battalion 32:00and we took our basic training there in Texas. I was in Camp Matthew, which was a new camp. We even cleaned up the barracks, cleaned the paint off the windows and everything when I was there. After our basic training we moved on down to…to…I’ll think of it in a minute, that is, it was right down about the central part of Texas, down at…camp, camp, camp…well it was out—the tank destroyer is what it was, we’ve, and we was down there, it was a north camp and a south (training?), camp…Fort Hood is what it was, Fort Hood is where we was at. And we was at north camp which was, was a new camp, the old camp was the south camp, which was about twenty miles south, 33:00and we used to get the ammunition—now that was, that was our job, unload it, store it, issue it out to these, the other different units, so, and it was hot down there, when we was there. You could sweat but you’d never knowed it. It dried you off. Some of the boys said it, be a raining, sand blowing in your eyes down there. But when the sun went down, you almost had to have a blanket at that time. When the sun come up, it was hot.

Philpot: How, how long were you there at Fort Hood?

Williams: I was there about…nine months. Well I went down there in January of, Camp Matthew, for and we was there at Camp Matthew we took our basic took our basic, then we moved down to Fort Hood and we was there about…the early part of…December. 34:00When we left there it was warm, we come up into, on the train, up in the…I guess Nebraska, up north, started cold, in between those railroad cars you’d think it was different thing, got into New York and it was cold. We’d come out of the south, we liked to froze up there. One of these officers took us out night, on a night drill and got us lost, we walked a little too far [Chuckling]. We had one, he couldn’t, didn’t know much about directions, he’d…but it…after that why (clears throat) so I tell some of them while I was at Camp Shanks New York (clears throat) I was on KP up there once, they put me to peeling potatoes, I peeled a thou…I think I peeled thousand pound of potatoes that day, but I had a big potato peeler put in about fifty pound at a time. If you didn’t leave them too long, if you [Chuckling] left them too long, you had marbles [Chuckles – Philpot], so you had to watch them. But they fed 35:00twenty-four hours a day, so that was a big thing there, in those.

Philpot: Well let me ask you. Do you, do you remember…where you were and what you were doing when you, when you heard the war was over?

Williams: Well, yeah, we was just kind of awaiting until it was over.

Philpot: Did you, I mean was it sort of kind of the writing was on the wall, you expected it was going ( )… Williams: Well things just, they didn’t know what to do hardly with us when they, they got over, we knew, we’d been shipping stuff and was storing some of this stuff in, into Germany, and some of this other we would load those ship for the Pacific, then when that come up we just stopped with our stuff and we didn’t have much to do, we was, we was trying to figure out how to destroy some of this ammunition and what to do with it so we timed ourselves on how long it took to do this or do that to it, take it apart. That 36:00was kind of part of our training for us to destroy unfit ammunition.

Philpot: I guess so, so because they stopped shipping it around and they stopped… Williams: That’s right… Philpot: …because they didn’t need it.

Williams: …they didn’t know what to do with it. So that’s uh-huh…yeah.

Philpot: Okay.

Williams: And I stayed, I was in France exactly eighteen months to the day. I went in on the 6th of June, left there the 6th of December. And coming back home, I was on, they put us on the, on these liberty ships they called them. There’s the “Richard Rush?” was the name of, and it didn’t rush. It took us fourteen days I think to come from Le Havre, France to New York, the one little boat out there just bouncing around, it was a lot different than when we was in the convoy. 37:00Philpot: Did that make you seasick coming back?

Williams: No, I didn’t get sick, but I got sick going over. Yes, we was going on some of them going like a urp, urp, I said that’s where you’re going, we are going to Europe, get the, at the tables a eating, a wave would go things are, the boat rock, you may have somebody else’s tray in front of you if you don’t [Chuckling] watch, so.

Philpot: What was it like…when you got back?

Williams: Well, we was just glad to get back and then hardly know what things. They tried to get me to enlist but I mean to stay longer, offered me a promotion and things, I said, I’ve about had enough. So, I just said I’m gonna go back. So then they processed me out ( ) I got out on, 38:00I think I got into Fort Knox on, I got out Christmas Day, I was all day Christmas Day in 1945, I was getting out of the army, and they processed us, paid us up, give us an envelop there and said, here, you got a hundred dollars here, you can put it in the envelope and send it home or you can put it, mustering out day, and there, bag it—I mean everything is there we can take them out over there and express home, or we can bring it, if you had a duffle bag there, give us the ticket back to our destination, which I was coming on the Greyhound Bus out of Louisville. While I was in though, I, I come home twice on furlough that was out of Texas riding a train, 39:00we come in, into Mount Sterling here that’s where the train was running. So I was with, I think there was four or five boys from Montgomery County here around this area, I think. There was two of us I think come back on furlough.

Philpot: So…what, what did you do…as far as for, I mean what, what, what did you do for a living once you got back?

Williams: Well, I didn’t hardly know what I wanted to do ( ) or, we had, Dad had a farm there and he had a store, so I worked around the farm, we had, I remember I was, and I wasn’t married at that time, so I was out of the army about a year and I got married, on, in December and the day I was gone, I, I 40:00had my application for Columbia Gas they come to get me to go to work. I got married on a Saturday I think it was, they come to get me on a Saturday. Monday I went to the doctor, was examined and Tuesday I went to work for Columbia Gas, but it was all old Central Kentucky Natural Gas Company at the time. I got paid one day, I think I worked from the thirty-first and I got one check, eight dollars and twenty-four cents, they took out eight cents social security, I had one percent at that time. So the first check I got was for eight dollars and twenty-four cents, I made eight dollars and thirty-two cents. And so that’s the kind of what it was, and then I worked for them for forty years 41:00and retired in nineteen and eighty…six, I believe it was, I went to work at, in…’46 and retired in ’86, worked forty…forty years, and so that’s about…part of my life.

Philpot: Well, let’s see, is there…anything else we, we haven’t talked about or, or brought up that… Williams: No, that’s… Philpot: …that you think we should talk about?

Williams: Well… Philpot: Anything you want to add?

Williams: [Laughing] I don’t know. As I tell some of them I’ve, I’ve waited half of my time awaiting, I said wait for this, of hurry up and wait for that. And I’m still doing that, it seemed like to me. People in the hospital, I go up the emergency room and you’re there waiting, so it’s just hurry up and wait. And I tell some of them, I’ve waited over half of my life 42:00for this or that. But I guess it’s good that y…I’m still able to wait.

Philpot: Well, all right, that sounds like a, a good, good thought… Williams: Well… Philpot: …to end it on.

Williams: …I don’t know, it’s just, it’s kind of hard (for me?) to go over some of this stuff.

Philpot: Sure, sure, I think it would be.

Williams: What you’ve gone through and away and I’ve slept just about anywheres you can mention, I’ve slept in graveyards, I’ve slept in boxcars, I’ve slept in foxholes, and…for…and I think some of that I s…I’m feeling now, a little rheumatism and arthritis. I’m going to lay part it on to that, of sleeping on the ground. I would have to tell you one thing though, I talked about blankets, I had sixteen blankets one time, 43:00most of them was under, I slept on them, had the other throwed over. What was done, people moving out, they’d leave blankets (go ahead? just put them on here?) and then when you left, all you took was two, what you needed. So that was it, leave them for somebody else, and, and you have good buddies and you have bad buddies in the army, or anywheres like that, boys take care of me, I think. So you kind of have to take care of yourself. A good soldier never gets caught short but I did pay for one of those steel helmet somebody ( ) but I never got to ( ), I think I had two for a long time. You never got to call short, and the same way with eating. I used to always keep canned food or something where you have to go hungry. I, 44:00I don’t know if, about to lost contact with all the boys that I was with, so many of them died. We used to have reunions about every year, and then they got older, they couldn’t travel, this and that so, we stopped that, and one boy I was with, I saw him last week, he lives over there in Winchester now, he is. His wife is in the nursing home and he was visiting her and I saw him. And there was four or five from here in this county here, that I was with, but they are all dead, they just…and so that’s kind of the…way it is. But our company it, well, they bombed where we was at over there in England, and they killed several there, 45:00and then like I was telling you about all this ship, I think it was thirteen. So we lost to not be a combat airfield, we lost quite a bit, as far as that goes.

Philpot: That was when they, they sank the, the LSTs?

Williams: Yeah, uh-huh, yeah. All them going in on the invasion, I don’t think, the three squads, or the three detachments, I don’t think if any of them got a scratch, being able to do that.

Philpot: Yeah, that was really lucky.

Williams: Yeah, yeah, yeah, one of the first soldiers to step out and hit the beach out ( ) which one of the beach, and they was just this much of here up, that’s all there was, they was dead, parachutists ( ). That was the first place I seen the, a ID I got in there, ( ) there, this fellow they moved it there, the meds come along, took his rifle and bayonet and dropped it down there on the ground put one of these glasses up there with a tube on it, put it in his arm, 46:00put a tag on it, they, I don’t really, I reckon the, the other ( ) come along and pick him up a little later. But I’ve saw there again in this evacuation hospital where they would die at night time, and they would put them in a ( ) cover, lay them out there like you would a cord of wood. I’ve seen them stacked up there, that’d died. One day I was in there, and there was one died, and by the time they come by here, they got him down and put him on a ship. They was evacuating those to England and that’s kind of depressing when you see that.

Philpot: Oh yeah.

Williams: But now that’s a, it was a funny feeling going in there, on a foreign land, you know, you didn’t know whether you was going to have enough—see it was only about…I think around fifty-five or sixty thousand US troops went in on D-Day, and that’s just about like a football game over here at UK, about fifty, that’s less than, less than what’s over there, it just sounds like a lot, but you scatter 47:00them over the United States see ( ) when you’re there. When you go to think about it, boy I was the lucky one, you think. Have some…to think.

Philpot: Well, do you want to…we, we can wrap it up there, I guess.

Williams: Well, I was going to be in the outset, that kind of catches the…the main things, in a way.

Philpot: Well, I appreciate you… Williams: Yeah.

Philpot: …talking with me and… Williams: Yeah.

Philpot: …I’ll…we’ll, we’ll let you look at the release form that we talked about at the beginning and… Williams: Yeah.

Philpot: …then we’ll call it done. Thank you again for everything.

Williams: Yeah.

“END OF INTERVIEW”