Oral History Interview with James Legate

Shurtz: This is Clinton Shurtz, it is June 12th, at about…01:40. I’m in South Fulton, Tennessee talking to James Legate, the Kentucky Oral History Commission. James fought in World War II and so James tell me a little about, a little bit about yourself, where you grew up and, and a bit about your childhood, (Whispers) and everything.

Legate: Well I was born and raised in Graves County, Kentucky in Mayfield, and raised up around Mayfield and grew up there, and…I…I worked as a farmer for a lot, a lot of times, and then I worked for a dairy farm for a while, and then I got a job over to k…what they call a Kentucky and Tennessee Clay Company. That’s where my father worked and I worked there until I got in…until I got a call to go into the service. But before I went into the service, why, I was, I got married right after the—the war was declared, 1:00after December 7th, I believe it was. Well I got married in…December the 27th, that same year in 1941. And after that, why I s…continued to work in at the Clay Company until I got the call, which was in June of…’42, and…so…I went up to…Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana, I believe it was, for interrogation and all of this, you know, and examination, and…then they sent me home and said they would le…send me a letter to report at a certain time, at a, at a n…at another date. So…in…August of ’42, I received the call, and I went in the service. I had already been sworn in and everything. So, when I got back to…the place in Indiana where they put a whole bunch of us 2:00on a train and sent us to Texas, what they call…Camp Swift, in Austin, in Austin, Texas and so we stayed there for our, our basic training and a lot of other things with rifle…shooting and all of this, and…hand gre…hand grenades, and bayonets, bayonet fighting and all of this, and we stayed there for some time, quite some time, because it takes a long time to train a bunch of us guys. Then they got us ready and we went to what they called Louisiana Maneuvers down in the Louisiana swamps, Louisiana and Mississippi, and all down in there. And when I was through with those and…now dates is, a lot of dates slips my mind, because…lots of stuff is, just got away from me too, but…we stayed there and did our Louisiana maneuvers, crossing rivers, fighting across rivers, swamps, 3:00snakes, bugs, and everything else, and when we got through there, why they got us ready and sent us to Fort Sam Houston, Texas, just south of…Fort Sam Houston, Fort, Fort Sam Houston. There was a big military base there, it was a, more or less a garrison. So, that’s where we were for about seven or eight months. Then we went out, we would walk out on Mondays to a little place, what they called Camp (Sibolo?), or Camp Bliss, these two places and a lot of times we would go to (Sibolo?) and sometimes to where, all, it depended on what kind of training we had to do, and…then…we stayed there and completed our training in…in…in a, in a…Texas there, and to Fort Sam Houston and of course we’d walk in back on Fridays that, be in for the weekend at the garrison, clean up 4:00and all of this and get new equipment, if we needed any new equipment and everything. Then after we got through with training there, well they got us ready and sent us to California, and went in, in to California, out on the Mohave Desert, and we knew—just about knew then—when we went to the Mohave Desert we might be going to Africa. But…now there again, their minds were changed. We completed our nine months of training in the desert sands, and…and…mosquitoes and all whatever, then rattle snakes, sidewinders, bugs of all kinds, and…we completed out training there. Then they g…put us on a train, we went up the west coast and…and while traveling up the west coast, we didn’t know, have no idea where we were going up the west coast. So, 5:00we got up—that was in the later fall—it would be…to us it’d be winter-time, and…we got up into…the Dakotas and all up in there where our train pulled in to, with so much snow on the track and everything. Now we got…stranded there, or, well it was lucky it was nighttime so, we did pretty good, we got covered up and stayed covered until they got us hooked up again and we got heat back in the cars. Then we went on and…I forget where we changed train, Seattle, I believe it was, we changed trains, then we went to…Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. And the military…military…place there was what they called Indian Town Gap Military Reservations, it was named after Indian 6:00up there, Indians, they used to be in there, into Pennsylvania. So we did our s-s…lot of training there, and while we were there, they sent us down into Virginia, mule-pack training, and…packing for, you know, trails up the mountains, mountain climbing; we did a lot of that. I’ve got certificates in here yonder where I passed all the, all the stuff, and…then there we stayed, they got us ready for overseas, they would sent us to…Camp Miles Standish, I believe it was, in New York, and we stayed there for about three, three weeks and got new stuff, new all equipment, all additional, you know, and we sailed for overseas, we s…left there on August the 4th, o-o-o-h, I can’t think of the year now. But anyway, 7:00and so we sailed across taking f-f-four nights, three days, four nights to sail across. We landed in…France and…I mean in England. And…so we stayed there…for a while, then as we—they got us ready to go across the channel and for the invasion. Of course, the invasion taking was a little earlier. We wasn’t in the main invasion of it, but where we went in, in France was the Omaha Beach, where my division went in, and…of course there was still snipers and enemy, we would get eme…enemy fire along the coast line as, as we would try to, to…clear things up. Then we walked to, we were…after we’d 8:00gotten up on a…the height, we called it the high side, out and away from the r…the…channel, chan…and we come in contact with enemy fire and snipers and what have you along the way, but we went on to, right on to the front line, and we relieved the…fence—5th Infantry Division who had been part of the invasion, when they invaded…the…France. And…then…we were on the front lines for about two or three weeks, or maybe a month, then the 5th Infantry Division, they came up and re…relieved the 95th Infantry Division, and we pulled back to the rear echelons and got more personnel where we’d lost people, you know, and, in hand-to-hand combat, a lot of it was, and…d…liberating cities, you know, just one a little community after the other. 9:00And…and we, we was about two, two to three weeks, that’s there was, every night thing, we fought every night, there were no battles in the daytime at all. That was what’s funny with me, you know, as a war, but nighttime was the time that they, the enemy was trying to sneak in and found out where you are, how much you got, and who, where are you are, were, and everything like this, you know. But…so we finally made it across France, like I was relating to you a while ago, we came through this, what they call the city of Metz, and…it was a strong hold for the enemy, because they had a lot of enemy forces there and around the place, and it was hard to take. We tied—tried to take it several different ways and we always got, drove back from, from the city of Metz. But there, when I told you, I was talking about the fog and the clouds, we 10:00finally got a, a break in the, in the situation, and we moved up on that higher grounds which was a big mound that had, where it looked like where they had removed the top grounds off of something that they were digging, or mining, or something, you know. And we moved up on that high spot where we could get a dead eye view at the city, and we, of course, we called in mortar fire and field artillery and all of this, you know, and when the clouds did raise, and the fog left us, well that’s what happened, why we began to call in field artillery, which laid down the big shells and the mortars that would be a disrupting the infantry of the enemy, German infantry, and which was…they’re the stronghold where they were hold up. And…we were about six to seven days trying to take that city, and it w…run 11:00them out, the enemy out of the city. We finally did that and we got enough backup and everything, we finally cleared the city. And so we were on the march from there, taking about two or three days from where the city of Metz was, from the river, and…we had to cross the river then. Luckily it was that, the Germans hadn’t…bl…blown the bridges, and so after running them away, making them get on the run and move back, withdraw, so to speak, and…they crossed the river and just kept going, they didn’t even bother to blow the bridges and stop us from crossing the river, you see, so that helped us out quite a bit, because they was on the run and we was on the go, real fast. Of course this is, this is, this is moving fast, not just a little bit, after we finally got them out of, out of the city. So…we went across the river, got on the German side, 12:00and there, over there was hand-to-hand combat one night. I got b…I got a rifle shot through the arm and a bayonet through my leg, and I was, I was captured and taken prisoner. I, I, I, save my life, I can’t think of the name of the little whole town that we were liberating, but I could get a map and, but I, it didn’t make any difference anyway. But after that, why…I was captured and taken prisoner, they confiscated my rifle, everything that I had, and…they put me on a, in a, a great big automobile, open top automobile that was fired by wood, it was run by steam.

Shurtz: Hum!

Legate: And I thought man, they are behind time over here, in [Chuckling] Germany. But in on transportation you know, and taken to my first…a prison camp or interrogation center was 12-A, a prison camp 13:00and interrogation center—excuse me (Clears throat)—and, so I was interrogated there, I was put in a black hole for seven days and nights and…got one meal a day, a cup of juice or some kind of soup, and a cup of, a slice of brown bread and one cup of water, and that’s all we’d get twenty-four-hour period, no cover, except what blanket that I had of my own, and…in the dark, and so they’d come every morning and get you out and take you to the head officer and, this was a big…I don’t know what his rank was, but he was a well dressed man and…I think he was a colonel, or he might have been adjutant general, or something like that, but he had a lot of brass, a lot of brass on anyway, and he spoke English as good as I did. 14:00Geese, I said, well now, wait a minute, something going wrong here, Germans don’t speak very good English, not real Germans, you know. So…after four, four or five days of interrogation, of course they’d take us out, blindfold us, and they’d take us out to, tie us up to a pole, rifles would fire. Now I can’t say that they were killing prisoners of war, because I didn’t see any dead prisoners, but the rifles would fire and I thought any day this would be my, of course, these soldiers, German soldiers, was what they called the SS troopers, it was Hitler’s special service soldiers, mean, they were mean as red eyed dogs. So, but…I can’t, I can’t really say if they really shot somebody, but it, you could hear the rifles shooting. So they put me, put me back in the dark hole, 15:00and after so long a time, about six-seven nights, I guess it was, they came and got me and carried me before the, the same interrogation man, the officer and we talked and he says, “well I’ve been in, I’ve been talking to you, Legate, while you’ve been in here, you’ve been a nice guy.” I said, “well, I, I, I was brought up that way, to be nice to people.” And we sat there and talked a few minutes and I said, “now I have a question for you before we go any further.” I said, “where did you, where did you get your education?” He said, “the University of New York” [Laughing].

Shurtz: Whoa!

Legate: I say, “I, I figured you did, because your, your language, your English is not with like they are here in Germany. And of course I could speak German, I picked up German just that quick. 16:00French, I couldn’t, I couldn’t comprehend it [Chuckling], German I got it quick, so I could, I’d talk German. And from there, why they, they carried me to the prison, the prison part of the compound, and stayed there for about…I guess a month and a half, something like that, and they decided they was going to ship us from there to another prison camp that they had been formed and fixed (Clears throat), and so they put us on train and what they call (Clears throat) forty-and-eight box cars, it’s like people used to ship cattle in, here in the United States, by rail, used to be just…split…siding on. In other words there was space between the boards… Shurtz: Okay.

Legate: …where we could breath. They called them forty-and-eights. They were smaller than, a lot smaller than our rail cars over here. 17:00And so they stacked us in there just as long as you could stand one up, and that’s where, and we didn’t have no idea where we were going, and this is about three or four o’clock in the morning, got everything loaded, got all the prisoners loaded, doors closed and everything. The train began to pull out of the yard, and we heard airplanes, after it got daylight, we heard airplanes outside, we could, and they were strafing our train, the train where we, prisoners of war were. And the, before it got the whole train out of the yard at all, well they, they ca…it came to a halt, and then the German guards, they were on us then. They were elderly gentlemen, German people that they just made get in the army and serve. See, they make them get in the service over there, Germans, Germany did, whether they wanted to or not. So these were 18:00about fifty-sixty year old men, and so they opened the doors and we fell out, or rolled out of those cars just as quick as we could get out and we got out there, and on the side, had gone on each side of the railroad, we formed a P and a O and a W. Well, here the planes came back again, and as they flew over us once and flew on out and came back and they seen the POW formed in the, and of course at that time there was snow on the ground. It was easy to see then, and so they gave us a high flying, and they flew away and we wasn’t bothered with them. But they didn’t put us back on the train, we had to walk from where we hid, from, from 12-A there…I forget the name of the town, a pretty good size town, Luxem, Luxemberg, or something like that, I believe that’s what it was, and we walked from there all the way across Germany…four, see, 19:00five days and four nights, because that was on mo…m…in the morning when we were strafed. And…we got to the next POW camp and…of course I said it many time, it had turned real bitter cold, snow, you never seen such snow and, it was about, well, between my knees and stride the snow was that deep, and we were marching in column and right behind each other, and…of course they, the older men was with us and there was some of the…SS troopers with us too, and so we were marching on toward, we had no idea where we was going, so then after those periods of days and nights, we finally arrived at…another prison, prison camp, and I mean it was tent city, 20:00there was no buildings, it was a tent city, and…there was, we slept in a, they assigned us to a big old tent, you’ve seen circus tents? About, about the size of that, something like that, sleep three or four, five, maybe four hundred m…fellows, and the guards told us, it was, then it was thirty below zero, and we’d walked through that snow and slush. But during our trip walking, walked in snow knee deep and nearly straddle deep, of course we didn’t have leather boots then, we had shoes and lace up legging, leggings as you put on, lace up on the outside (Clears throat). Our feet was frozen, our legs were froze, I have no hair up to my knees on my legs at all. My left leg froze and busted, I’ve got a scar about that long, and…my feet 21:00were in such bad shape when I finally got to the prison camp, got or…got checked in and all of this mess that you have to go through with, paperwork, and…they…I, I told the, the head man of the tent, I says, “I’ve got to see a doctor, my feet is killing me.” And they had done turned black as that, right there, and blue and purple up my legs nearly to my knees, and that leg, one leg bursted. So they finally got me to the dispensary and I stayed in this dispensary about a week, and had German doctors, they wanted to amputate my feet. I said, and I talked with them, and one doctor, he could speak quite a bit of Eng…pretty good English. I told him, I says, “no, if you got anything else now that you can treat them with, I rather you try to save my feet, if you can. I wa…I can’t, it doesn’t make any difference 22:00what kind of shape they be in after…they get well, just as long as I got my feet.” So they did, so they treated it, and they wrapped my feet up to my knees, both with gauze and come in there with gallons of white stuff, it looked like buttermilk, and they shook it all up and they poured that stuff over my legs and baptized, about soaked that gauze until it was just running out of it. And then they wrapped them up real heavy and put a, something heavy, like our heavy bath towels, you know, wrapped them around them, and I laid there, in that dispensary for about a week, and maybe a little more. They’d come in there and check them, then the, then the doctor he checked them, and he said, “well, looking good, looking good,” you know, and I said, “well, great, great, thank you, thank you, I appreciated it.” And they had, of course they’d doctor them again, 23:00you know, but they’d leave off a little, I call it gauze each time, material that they were wrapping my legs and feet in, and they poured a little more of that stuff on there and let it set you know, and, I don’t know what it was but it did the trick [Laughing], they didn’t have to amputate, but…I still got my feet and, of course they give me a lot of trouble in the winter time, I have to keep them warm, they will hurt, they will get to hurting, my toes just like they’re froze, you know, cold, they get so cold, and…then we stayed there two and a half months, there about, and they decided they’d move us again, because on that front of the war, the Russians were moving in, they was going to liberate all the prison camps and the United States had to pay them five dollars a head for every prisoner, American prisoners they liberated. So they got, they put, they got us together again 24:00and we started our walk back across Germany, but we stopped fifteen miles south of Berlin, that first camp was Stalag 3-B. Now they moved us back and we stopped that time, and we got back to…the…that be, it would be our third prisoner of war camp, and…that’s, they, there would be three, Stalag 3-B…3A. So that’s where I was. And…we stayed there for…until, m-m-m-m, well, I can give you the months but I can’t give you the day, because it was in the month of…April of forty-y-y-y…five, because we were liberated in May 25:00of ’45, and the tanks b…we had a, we were kind of fu…kind of good too that, that…in the group where we were, we had a young man that was a wiz on…and he, he built a radio, a little radio that would pickup, and he would, he would get the, the news every day, every night and he would write it on paper and we’d pass it around. So we knew somebody was coming towards us. We suspected something too but we didn’t know really, because they had changed guard on us. Instead of the means ones, we had old men that could hardly walk, that was our guards. Well now this is kind of funny to change guards like this, you know, pull off your eligible, your younger men who was guard and they had the towers in each corner of the compounds 26:00and everything. And they pulled them out, all the, the men were so old they wouldn’t even climb up in the tower; they all stayed down on the ground and walked back and forth, good people. We talked to them, they were good people. They were made to go, come into the service, they didn’t want to be in there, and, and we were getting, and we would get a, while we were in this three, Stalag 3-A, we would receive Red Cross parcels from the United States, in each box there was a little box…that had candy bars, package of cigarettes…some hard, hard crackers, I mean HARD crackers [Laughing] to, to eat, and of course I didn’t smoke. So I would trade my cigarettes to the German guard for potatoes, and that way, and the other guys there was five of us that tried to bunk together and well 27:00slept on the ground, that’s what it was, we slept together. I’d trade for potatoes, each, another guy would trade for something else, and another one would trade for something else, and we’d take our helmets and, and build a fire out there and, and cook our own meal, sometimes. We’d just eat potatoes sometime and then whatever the other one got we’d just eat that. But we got meal, one meal a day from them, and it was cabbage soup one day, and a slice of brown bread and a cup of water. The next day we’d get a can, a turnip soup with a slice of brown bread and a cup of water. That was for twenty-four hours. And then we’d cook our own supper, we got out there and mix up us something to eat for supper, you know, and then we’d walk the compound for exercise, not just lay there, just like a lot of them did, at thirty below zero, you die, and we lost a lot of prisoners that way. But you know what? 28:00We’d go in there, somebody died during the night, we’d fall out at five o’clock in the morning, the Germans come and get us, the guards would, fall out each tent, line up in front of your tent, they’d pick those dead boys up and take them out there and hold them up in the line to get their head count, they’d get their meal for the day, you see. So that’s, that’s the way it was. So, when we, I started to say a while ago, as we’re seeing situations changing outside of our camp, we knew that something was going to take place, but we didn’t know when, or what time, or anything about it, like that you see. But this boy that had made the radio, that night, the night before we were liberated in May, he got the news that there was a liberation front coming from south 29:00of Berlin to liberate camp 3-A. We, we didn’t know who it was, we didn’t have no idea, and that, and the next morning, just after (bray?) day, we heard those big tanks coming, or we heard a big racket, we didn’t know what it was, and of course we were, came out to see what was taking place, you know, and of course they’d the boy didn’t even get breakfast that morning, and they’d done hightailed it, the enemy you see, and the tanks came rolling in, and they jammed holes all through them barbed wire fences and where we could get out. But they also told us, says, “don’t leave, because we would get five, five dollars a head for every American and French, and Canadian soldiers that they—prisoners—that they…relieved, 30:00you know. Well, the thing was, we five fellows that had gotten together earlier, a month earlier or so, we got us a map, a compass, and we saved up our little vittles to carry with us when we got out. The night that he gave us the information that the, the men who had the little radio, gave us the information that we were being re…liberated, the next morning, before the day, we were going to cut out and take out across country. But thank the Lord that just after daybreak these tanks come plowing through those big fences and man you talk about shouting Alleluia, we was all shouting out Alleluia, we were all [Laughing]. So we gathered ourselves together, of course they told us not to leave, but after they backed out, the people that 31:00liberated us just come driving those tanks through the fences, we wonder, who they were, of course they was American tanks, wondering who they are. So we got close enough to see, so they “ we want, we want to know who you are, was you American forces or who you are.” Threw that hatch open, big dude stood up, about ( ), you know, great big! Taking that helmet off and clipped that head around, her hair fell down on the soldiers, Russian women were driving tanks.

Shurtz: Whoa!

Legate: Drive right through those fences, I mean tore them down, boy and…we thanked them, you know, bowed and talked to them. We had a guy could speak Russian and I’d speak German and we had another guy in the five of us who could speak French, so we got along real good. So he talked his lingo with that Russian stuff, you know, and they gave us a high sign and she’d 32:00tuck her hair back under there and let their hood down and hatched it down and backed out of there and taking off. We five went back to our tent; we gathered up our stuff and we taken off [Laughing]. We walked out of there (Coughs). That was the second or third week in May of ’45 and…so we knew about where the American line was, because that fellow had told us the direction, so we got, right after we got out of camp, we stopped long enough to shoot us a point, a direction and we, ever so often, oh, five hundred or maybe, well, we tried to do a mile, we’d walk so long and then we’d shoot a direction to make sure we were traveling in the same direction we were supposed to go. And we did, and taking us…well, 33:00we started out in the daytime, in four days and three nights, the…the…fourth day, well I’ll get to that in a minute, but during that time, our travel across Germany, just weaving our way across, trying to get back to the American force, American lines, we’d run into different German soldiers, snipers and things like this, you know, we’d come into a town one night and it was pretty chilly, we didn’t want to sleep out if we didn’t have to, and we couldn’t find no place to sleep. So we knocked on a door, and s…and a lady come to the door, and or course I talked to her in German. She says, “Oh, that’s okay, I speak English too.” I said, “fine. We need a place to stay tonight,” I says, “there is five of us, and we are prisoners of war from 34:00(Exsetter?) Camp, just south of Berlin.” Her and her husband taken us to the basement and put us in a room off to, to the side, brought us some hot, something hot to drink and we boarded that night. To, be, come to find out the next morning she said, “the German soldiers had come to her house to look for five American prisoners of war to take them back to camp.” Shurtz: Whoa!

Legate: She says, “I don’t have it, I hadn’t seen nobody, I, I don’t know what you’re talking about,.” And the next morning, we got up and asked her, asked the couple says “everything clear outside, nobody outside,” she says, “nobody here, nobody here.” So we’re taken away, thanked them and taken off again.

Shurtz: Whoa!

Legate: And that was the only real close call that we had there. But it, it is taking time to walk back across the country you know, and 35:00stay oriented and travel in the right direction. The right, rode on a convoy one day for about half a day and ( ) about at midday until dark, and they were going to hang up too, you know, so, I forget what outfit that was, some…well anyway, it wa’n’t an infantry division, it was some kind of field outfit that was out there…just fooling around trying to find something to do really. So (Clears throat) we s…we spent the night there then after we got off that convoy, and the next morning we got up and we started out again, and this is the, this has been, I guess about the 3rd…third day, and we did come into some snipers then. We got, one of the guys got wounded, of course it wasn’t serious, just a flesh wound, we tended to that, and…we 36:00went on. So the fourth night, yeah the fourth night, we hung up again in a different…different place and different spot, we had to sleep outside then, and…we slept ( ).

Shurtz: It’s okay.

Legate: And we had to sleep outside that night, but the next morning we got up, it was…it was…the sun was shining. It was pretty warm outside; well it was to us, because we had been sleeping in the cold all the time anyway. So the, we started walking that day and shooting our bearings, make sure we stayed on the right direction, traveling in the right direction, and b…just about dark we were traveling down a little old, well it, looked like where the jeeps been running back and forth across the field and there was this trail across the field. Now we could see down a way that there was a car on the side, 37:00burned out, burned car. I told the guys, I said, “now,” I was staff sergeant at that time, I says, “we need to be real careful, we don’t know what that is, we know what it is, but we don’t know what’s behind that car.” And…so we cruised along, real slowly, real careful, separated so that they couldn’t get us all at one time, you know, if it was the enemy. And we got pretty close and they hollered, “halt!” I said, “hit the ground,” so we hit the ground, and…he hollered at us, says “who are you?” I says, “we are prisoners from a liberated prison camp, there is five of us.” He said, “who is in charge?” I said, “I am.” “Arise and be recognized.” So I sat up, of course I put my hands up, and when I got up to where he was, he was still behind the car. He said, “who are you?” 38:00I says, “I am James Legate from Kentucky, from the United States.” And I says, “I am a prisoner, I was a prisoner of war and we five have left a liberated prison of war camp,” and I said, “we’re trying to get back to the American forces from ( ).” He said, “you can come around the side of this, end of this vehicle, you got your dog tags?” I says, “I do.” And at that time I had a prisoner of war tag, I’ve lost it, I cannot find that thing anymore, but I had a prisoner of war tag. So, I lifted my my shirt, I put my tags out and he looked at them and he says, “tell, motion the guys to come.” And you don’t howler, you don’t say nothing much when you’re out in the field that way, you use motions, so I, I waved the guys in, but I gave them to spread thing just the same, because you can never tell who is laying out there in the field. So they came on up. 39:00Now he got right on the radio, or field telephone is what it was, it’s…and…called somebody and they sent a ammunition hauler out there and got us, and I mean in a hurry, they didn’t waste no time. They were there in well I’ll say six, five, six minutes anyway, and they, we, we didn’t even hesitate, we just jumped in that thing and laid down and he taken off like a stripped man going to the fire, and got us back to…where they were camped, and then they put us on a truck, a big, big truck and carried us to a field hospital back in, back behind the lines, way behind the lines. I don’t know how far it was about, oh it seemed to me like he drove for two hours, [Chuckling] I don’t know, you know. So, they put us in—we got there into the field hospital part, and started checking in and everything. 40:00Of course we didn’t have a billfolds or nothing but we had the, our dog tags and everything. And we got checked in, of course they could run the records on us and find out we were who we were, and…they shipped our clothing, we were eat…I had sores all over me where I had been eaten by bugs and bit by everything in the war you, and just crawling in lice, because you had no way to take a bath, thirty below zero, you can’t take no water [Chuckling] taking, take, can’t take a bath outside, and had no bath houses. The only baths there was, I mean this place to go out there and urinate and take a dump. So, they stripped our clothes, shaved our heads, shaved us everywhere, every hair we had they shaved off and give us some stuff to put on, and we bathed ourselves and stomped, and cried, and moaned, and groaned, because 41:00it burned so bad, and…we stayed there then three days, three to four days and they, and…gave us new clothes and…new shoes, we got boots that time, we didn’t have the, they did away with the legging, we got the boot that time.

Shurtz: Were these Am…Americans or who were these people that… Legate: These were Americans… Shurtz: …( ).

Legate: …yes these American, American side.

Shurtz: Okay.

Legate: And…see we’d gotten back there from, from the… Shurtz: Hum.

Legate: …liberated camp, American forces. And so they…they…the second or third morning after we had been there, but we got our baths, they gave us new clothing and…and new shoes, socks, underwear, supplied it all. We had a little bag with the, with the change of clothes in it, and…so (Clears throat) they came up about noon, I think it was and said, “we’ve 42:00got a load of prisoners to be flown to Le Havre, France, yeah that’s the name, Le Havre, France airport to—this afternoon. Do you want to go?” Well you know we wanted to go. So we all boarded that truck, truckload, they had enough for fill up a truck full and…so we, we tore out to the airfield, they put us on a A-20 that the paratroopers used to jump from, no doors or windows in that thing. All it had was benches down the side, and they put us in that thing, says “now put your seatbelts on and sit down.” And so we, we left there, he taxied it out across the air strip and finally got off. I began to think he wasn’t even going to get off the ground. So we flow—flew 43:00there for oh it seemed to me like a couple of hours and maybe longer and…we got to Le Havre, France. He says, “you want to see the ocean?” [Chuckling], some says yes, some said no [Chuckling] we want to land, but he flew out over, of course the old wings on that old plane just flopping up and down, the rudders things loose—excuse me—was loose on it, and we want to get out of this thing on the ground. But he flew us out over the ocean and come back and he sat down, and we got out. And we stayed there for about two day—two weeks. Of course we did have a b…a bath every day and doctored every day, trying to heal our sores up, you know. And…so they gave us new clothes again, we left ours there and…we got 44:00ready to sail home, they come by, about, after about two, two weeks or so, about two and a half and they said well, we’re going to board a ship, we’re going to send you home. They had a shipload of POWs that we loaded that day, and we pulled out of the harbor just about dark, and we went out in the ocean and anchored. And I said, “we don’t travel at night?” He said, “not tonight.” We found out why? Somebody, the enemy had mined the port and they, at nighttime you couldn’t see the mines that were out there. So he said we will have to travel out of here tomorrow. Now that’s, the sailors were telling us this, “we will travel tomorrow, we’ll start out here in the morning, so that we can see where we’re going because we don’t want to run into some mines out there,” and sure enough we did. We started out in about 45:00three hours out we came up on some mines. Well the navy got out there and got their guns they rode in on them blasted them out of the water and we continued our journey home, taking us about six nights, six—no five nights and, let me see, we’ve five nights—six nights and four days, and we were, we arrived in…New York, I was trying to think of the…well anyway, we arrived in New York Harbor, went pass the lady, as she stood out there, and of course we tied up that night, they wouldn’t let us off at night so we, we stayed on the boat that night and the next morning…they began to unload. It takes all, nearly all day to unload off of those things. So…then…we went to be interviewed there 46:00and…I don’t know what to call it, find out where you were from, where you were a prisoner of war, if you were wounded, or if you are disabled, or something like this, you know, they could put you in a different section and…I showed them my wounds and that I was a prisoner of war I had my tag, and they sent me back to where I was interrogated into the service, at, in to Indiana, and I stayed there about a week, and they gave me a pass home, furlough home, and gave me thirty days home. And so I, I left there and caught—went to…Fort Benjamin Harrison over there and caught a train out of…Harrisburg, Pennsylvania 47:00and came to—well at that time we had a train that ran from…Louisville to Fulton, and of course it stopped in Mayfield, and…so I got on the train and started home, got off at Mayfield. I got off the plane at five o’clock, four-thirty or five o’clock in the morning—the train rather, not the plane, the train—in Mayfield, four thirty or five o’clock that morning and there was a terrible storm, a terrible storm. Do you remember the plane being struck by lighting and fell in Brewers, Kentucky?

Shurtz: No.

Legate: Okay. That was in 1945 and…I was standing, I had gotten off of the train, of course Mayfield is my hometown, off the train and knew, I knew where I was going and I walked up to the service station where I used to trade before I went into the service, and it had 48:00a top over the outside where you, you could drive under it, you’d get your gas if it was raining, you know, and I was standing there, wishing somebody would come along, you know, five o’clock in the morning, not much going on. Well I heard a car coming, so I stepped out on the side of the street there, on the corner and I ( ) needed a ride and it started raining. It had been raining but it wasn’t raining at that time but it was thundering and lighting like crazy, and he stopped and picked me up. He said, “where are you going soldier?” I said about three miles out of town, on Highway 45. He says, “well I’m going that way.” I said, “well great!” And I thanked him for the ride and I showed him where I had to get off, you know, got out. And come to find out he had left Harrisburg the same morning that I got—went and got on the train [Laughing]. He was coming to…going 49:00to Memphis. I said, “well that’s, this is a lucky time,” I said, “and good to get a ride with you before the rain.” And…then when I got to my dad’s mother’s, well I got out of the car, and, and of course they knew I was coming home, and my wife and my daughter, that lady here…was there, and…that’s the first time I’d seen him since forty-y-y, forty-four.

Shurtz: Hum.

Legate: I spent…three Christmases and two Thanksgivings away from home, and two of them was in prison.

Shurtz: Did your family know that you were a prisoner? Did they have any way of… Legate: Yes.

Shurtz: …knowing that? Had they… Legate: After I was captured me…they classified as 50:00missing in action, my wife, I got the stuff in there…where my wife received a telegram from the war department that James R. Legate, Sergeant Legate is missing in action. They didn’t have no special time or anything like that, just missing in action, and further information, if they got it, they would forward it to them. Well, my mother told my wife all the time, says, “James is not dead. He is alive.” And…of course her—my wife’s name was Jessie, Jessie (Well?). She called her (Momo?). “(Mamma?) I believe he is alive too.” But they had nothing from me see, since I went across the channel into France, we couldn’t, we didn’t have time to write anything. But while I was in the states I corresponded all the time, used one card or a letter per week, you know. While I was in p…in prison camp you was allowed one card a week 51:00to you could write home, and…I don’t think my wife received but just one card is all she ever received, after I was established into a prison camp, into one prison camp, and I think that was at 3-B, the first one, seventeen miles from the Polish border. Then…after I got home and everything, why…then…on, on that subject, then later, about the missing in action…I’ve got the stuff in there but I, I, about thirty days or some like that afterwards, well they sent her another letter, they sent her a letter that time telling her that I was a prisoner of war, and they, they didn’t know what prison camp I was going to be in, but when if they found out, they would let her know. Well they tried to find out, my wife and them did, they’d go to the Salvation Army and different Red Cross and different places, but they didn’t have any m…information 52:00on where we were or anything like that. So…when she received the letter that I was a prisoner of war, my mother and my wife said, “I, I knew he was alive, but I knew he wasn’t dead.” Then I stayed on my thirty-day furlough, I boarded the train and went to Miami, Florida. I was there about two weeks, I guess, and (Pages turning sound)—getting there—about two weeks I stayed in Florida, they came in there one morning about five o’clock, woke us all up and said, “we have something that we need to put before you fellows,” there was about seven or eight of us I think we left from down there…huh, 53:00let me get their names right now, ‘Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Baltimore, Maryland wants someone to…wear gas protective clothing in a gas chamber.’ In other words be a guinea pig, you know. Then they also said, “if you volunteer for this, you will get so many points for volunteering and so many points for all the time that you’re there, you will be discharged earlier than you was supposed to be.” Of course they had a set time to discharge us, you know. And so I volunteered. Now my uncle that was in the first World War, he said, “James, don’t ever volunteer for anything.” 54:00So I never volunteered for nothing, but that come around, I said, well I want to go home. So I volunteered for this. Well what we did, ( ) they put us on a train, we went up the east coast. I mean we went up that east coast; that electric train flies, it don’t fool about. We got up there and they put us in a certain part of the camp there. Of course they was wooden buildings, nice and everything. And we’d go down about nine in the morning, and we checked in, we put on a suit of different—all kinds of suits, we did everything, and a gas mask and everything, and go to the gas chamber and sat in the gas chamber, we sat there so long. Of course…we couldn’t smell it or nothing, but we could, we could feel it, you know. If it came through the equipment, you know, protective clothing. 55:00But…evidently I got some through the protective clothing because I’ve got big black molds all over me… Shurtz: M-m-m.

Legate: …this deep. Well, you can’t see them but they’re all over my back, some of them the VA taking some of them off I had three of them that…wound up as cancerous, and…so we, we’d do that every day, we did this for about two weeks, and…finally they said…well the last day we had to go in there naked. I said, “Oh, wait a minute now, what kind of gas is this going to be?” He says “he won’t, you can breathe it, it won’t bother your breathing.” But it did. And…we sat in there for two hours then it come to the door and I says—of course they pumped all of that out before they let us come out—and they come in there and said 56:00“now, you go out there and sit in the waiting room, and if your skin clears up, like they think it should, you turned dark, I mean, I was, well I was dark to begin with, and I turned almost black, but I ( ) I am Indian anyway, I’m brown like crazy, and…I turned almost black. Here I sat, I sat after we came out of the gas chamber and I, I didn’t change much, and I’m the only one setting here and that guy come in and I said, “say! What’s going on here? I’m the only one left, and I ain’t ch…I haven’t changed color yet!” He come over there and looked at me all over, and I mean he gave me a good examination. He said, “I’ll be back.” He came back with a little whole needle with this little bitty b…something, I don’t know what was in that, some kind of fluid, put it in my arm. He said, “you got to wait thirty minutes.” 57:00So I sat there thirty more minutes and I turned back to my just regular brown color. I wasn’t black. And…he said, “get your clothes on, you’re dismissed.” He says, “we won’t need you no more, we’re through with you.” I said, “well thank you, thank you much.” And so the next morning then, that was later in the afternoon, the next morning a guy came around got us all, take us to the office and give us our discharge, and haul us out to the, where the train station was, carried us out to the train station, put on the train, everybody went their separate ways, and I got on my train, came home again, and on my way home I met a, a colonel and…of course he had that little eagle 58:00on his lapel showing that you’d been discharged, and…of course I am a Master Sergeant, with stripes on, and one of my medals, little ribbons such as this, that, had them all pinned on there, and he say, he say, walked up and he says—he introduced itself and he told me who he was, and I say, “well I’m master sergeant James Legate, I have been discharged, going down, going home to my wife and child.” “Boy,” he says—of course he was crippled in his left leg, he got his knee tore up, and he was stiff, he’d walk stiffly, and he saw that I was limping, of course I was still limping on my leg where a bayonet through, to my knee, behind my knee joint, went plumb through there bent it. 59:00It healed up real good though I had a lot of trouble with it, still do, I can’t squat down with it today (Clears throat), but anyway he says, “I tell you what, I’m not being discharged, I’m staying in, but” he said, “if you decide to…re-enlist, I’d like to have you as my driver.” He was going to be assigned to Fort Knox, Kentucky. He said “all I do is just travel from post to post in my vehicle and check and see if everything is running good, if they need anything, order it for them and such as this.” So he take my name and everything and I never did hear from him though. I said, “well, I’ll think about it, and I appreciate your, preha…appreciate your offer.” Of course being twenty-three, twenty-four year old you know, if you’re disability that’s not a bad job riding around [Chuckling]. But when I got home 60:00and told my wife, I says, “well I’ve got an offer, I can re-enlist and I can go to Fort…Knox and this colonel has offered that I would, give me the, to make me his chauffeur just tell him that I want to stay in the service.” She says, “AIN’T NO WAY!” [Laughing] she says, “NO!” And so that was my experience in, in all of my time.

Shurtz: Hum. Well, what did you do after military?

Legate: I, we…laid around a while, and…well, see, that was in October that I got discharged, the 19th of October ’45 (Clears throat) until spring was, back in those days winters came early, October, November winter begins. So we laid around then for, until spring, 61:00then I was, my wife and I would visit, we’d stay with my mother and dad a while and we’d go over to her mother’s and daddy’s a while, back and forth you know. Of course I was drawing…what do you call it? Severance pay or something (Clears throat), and she was working at the drugstore, my wife was, and…we were up, one weekend we were sitting at my mom’s and dad’s and…Mister Allen (Chlore?) from Mayfield, Kentucky, his two sons were in the marines corps, they were discharged and came home, they couldn’t find no work either. So he went out at the edge of town in Mayfield and he built a restaurant, a barbecue place, barbecue restaurant, that’s all it was, hamburgers, barbecues of all kinds, ribs, ham, barbecued ham, mouton, ev…anything, pimiento cheese, 62:00cheeseburgers, pimiento cheese and all of this he goes with the restaurant, no vegetables, just all sandwich things, and we worked there for…well, I worked there three-and-a-half years. My wife worked there five years. Of course I had a brother-in-law that was working for the Illinois Central Railroad here in Fulton, at, I was in Fulton at that time, and…so one weekend he, he and his wife came to see us and said, “I can get you a job on the railroad, do you want it?” I said, “well, you know I want to go to work on the railroad, well that’s good pay.” And of course we weren’t doing too bad in the restaurants, you know. Sometimes when the, the…people that owned the restaurant, if they wanted to go on vacation, why, my wife and I, we’d run the restaurant just like it was ours, you know. Of course we knew them anyway, they, they were friends. My uncle at that time was sheriff of Graves County, my daddy’s brother, and they were all good pals, you know. So we got, 63:00we did re…real, pretty good and I says, “well sure, you know I want to go to work the railroad.” So the wife and I packed up and moved to Fulton, I worked four years here at Fulton, then they transferred me to Paducah. I worked two-o-o…and a half years in Paducah and then there, I bid on a job, came back to Fulton with a paint gang and I worked the paint gang, I don’t know ten-fifteen years, and they finally combined the paint gang with the carpenter gang, and then I bid on the jobs for carpenter work and I went to work as a car…as a carpenter on a carpenter gang. Then…I got laid off, was off about two months, or three, and the…union man here in Fulton came to me said, “Legate, I got a job opening in Memphis, it’s on a paint gang.” I said, “well, that’s fine, it don’t matter.” 64:00So I went to work in Memphis, worked three-and-a-half years in Memphis, a job come open on carpenter gang here at home. Of course I knew the boss here and this carpenter gang here, and so I bid on the job to come home, just to get away from Memphis, that’s something else, that Memphis is. So I got away from there (Clears throat) and I, so they awarded me the job here, and I worked here, retired January the 6th, 1982 from the railroad. And that’s been my life.

Shurtz: Something I’ve been asking several veterans…so far…to get your wisdom since you, you know, being a World War II veteran what’s your take on, on our present military situation?

Legate: The… Shurtz: Iraq.

Legate: …the present military situation, I think that we have made a bad mistake, (Clears throat) now that’s my view. 65:00Shurtz: Tell me about… Legate: (Clears throat)—excuse me, I’ve had a terrible cold, and my second, I’ve been sick the whole month of May with bronchitis then wound up with a upper respiratory infection, laid in bed one weekend with, I, I feel, but just trying to clear up. But, I think we made a grea…a bad mistake by going over there, because all of those people are kinfolks, they hate each other, and I don’t think we’re going to settle the situation over there at all, but I, I don’t know. And this coming up, I don’t know about it [Laughing], I don’t know about what’s going to…I’m afraid we’re going to be in trouble again.

Shurtz: With, with what?

Legate: The election.

Shurtz: Oh, okay [Laughter – Legate and Shurtz].

Legate: You can’t say what, what’s, 66:00you know, just…or I’d be in trouble, I don’t want to get in trouble.

Shurtz: Well thanks for talking to me.

Legate: Well it’s been an interesting… Shurtz: I appreciate it.

Legate: …it’s been good to talk with you, I, I had no idea but if I had…is this still on?

Shurtz: Oh, okay.

“END OF INTERVIEW”