Oral History Interview with Bluford "Buddy" Smith and Helen Smith

My name is Theresa Osborne, and I am here for the Oral History Commission, and I am speaking to Mr. Bluford “Buddy” Smith, of Hi Hat, Kentucky. Is that correct? [Smith: Yes.] Okay, and the date today is September 29, is that correct? And it’s about 2:30 in the afternoon, in Mr. Smith’s home.

Osborne:Now, what were you going to tell me about?

Smith:Well, if you want to start at the beginning, why, no need to tell you these things until the time comes.

Osborne:All right.

Smith:Anyway, you wanted sort of a history to start with.

Osborne:Where were you born?

Smith:Well, my family was coal miners. 1:00We followed the coal mining camps. I lived in several of the mining camps up through West Virginia. I was born at Big Creek, West Virginia, close to Chapmansville, about twelve miles north of Logan, West Virginia. My father was a mine foreman for different mining companies. Back in ’31, the Depression years, all the mines in this country were shut down…just all over this country. So the mine shut down over in West Virginia, and my dad came over, he and his family, and bought the coal mines in Ligand, in Garrard, Kentucky, and I being the oldest one of the family—there was just seventeen in our family— Osborne:Oh, my goodness! 2:00Smith:I was the oldest boy. And I had to go to work early. So when I was twelve years old, my dad took to mine at Ligand, and the mine shut down for about three months, and I helped pump the mines. I ran the motor in the mines, and took care of the pump. My father and I were the only two working at the time. I was there about three and a half months. And later, when I was fourteen years old, we moved from Ligand to Hi Hat and they put in new mines here and I started working the mines when I was fourteen years old. I walked. From Ligand down here’s four miles. I walked four miles, worked nine hours a day, and then walked back home. I got all of thirty cents an hour, it was $2.70 a day.

Osborne:When were you born?

Smith:I was born on December 19, 1922. 3:00Osborne:So where did you go to…did you get to go to school?

Smith:I went to grade school somewhat in West Virginia; I think I was in the third grade or something. I was about nine years old [ ] just right after, and…but I went to… I worked in the mines, and went to school. Our schools were seven months long, and I worked five months in the mines each year, from the time I was fourteen years old, and then in ’37, I finished my fifth grade, there at Hi Hat, and I finished the sixth grade here. I walked to Wheelwright. 4:00School started in July, and seven months is up in January, so I got my report card two weeks early, and I walked six and a half miles to Wheelwright and took the seventh grade.

Osborne:Now did you do that every day?

Smith:I did that…I walked up there and back everyday for…until…and then when, at the end of that, I worked about two months—something like that—in the mines, until the grade school started again here. I started—took the eighth grade then one month, and walked down to Pricey. There wasn’t no roads, if you remember, back then. It just was a—the creek was a road out here, up to Wheelwright, and back down to McDowell. They started running a bus, and built them a new road from McDowell up to Hi Hat in ’38, 5:00and I walked to Price and started in the first year. I finished the sixth, seventh, and eighth all in one year, and started first year of high school.

Osborne:My goodness.

Smith:Then I went to…when that was over, I went to Morehead, and took a summer term, and come back, so I was three and a half years in high school.

Osborne:Oh goodness.

Smith:Graduated from high school, and I was college, and had a half year of college when I graduated from high school. And had another half year, and then in December the 7th, in ’41, the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor. I finished my semester, that was about two more weeks, and then I left there, and I worked the mines two months, and then joined the Army Signal Corp.

Osborne:Okay. So you joined…did they have drafts 6:00back then?

Smith:Oh yes. But, I knew I was going to have to go to Army—I’d been cannon fodder, with no education as far as the military was concerned. So I joined the Army Signal Corp, and went to Lexington Signal Depot. Finished that and went to, they shipped me to Dayton, Ohio [ ] in American Airlines. When the Army confiscated all of the ham radios in the United States, and flew them to Dayton, Ohio, put them in a warehouse, and I worked there to take the radios—the ham radios—then we were rebuilding them, and had to draw the schematic diagrams, and catalogue all the parts for them, and ship them out on the islands, to be used for relay 7:00stations for the Air Force. I stayed there, and in the fall of ’42, I had a warrant officer rating. A warrant officer in the Army is a civilian, so I had a chance to resign or go on into the regular Army. And they allowed me, the Army allowed me to come home, see, so I could make [ ]. You can go home—I’d just gotten married [ ], and said you can go home if you wish, but we would tell you going into the Army, if you don’t, we will have you back here in two weeks. We’ll turn you into the draft board, 8:00and you’ll be back in two weeks. [ ] go home. So, I said, well, I don’t know where I’m going to be for the next three or four years in the Army, with a big war going on, so I want to go home. So I got to stay home until January, of ’63 [sic]. I went back to work in the mines until January ’63, and then the Army sent my draft in, and drafted me back into the Army, and they sent me to Louisiana. I had finished an FM radio course in the Signal Corp. When Patton went into North Africa, the British were getting the socks beat off of them, so Patton sent out and picked up some of their vehicles to see what was going on. Every time they’d have a storm, the British…Germans would attack the British, 9:00and the British were getting the socks beat off of them, so Patton pick up these vehicles, took the radios out and sent them to Bell Laboratories. Bell Laboratories checked them, said they’re nothing but FM radio that was invented in the United States in 1926. Hitler picked up on it and used them—static-free radios—and the British had nothing but static. So, they sent the radios back to the British, the German radios and one that they had built to replace it with, they sent them to the Signal Depot, at Avon, where I was stationed. And I was in the first FM radio class that was ever give in the United States. There was eighteen of us in class. They’d sent some of our instructors up to Bell Laboratories, and when they came back, 10:00they started this FM class, and I was in that. So since I’d finished the FM classes, I was authorized to work on FM radios. National Guard units had been activated in, and put in the Army during World War II, you see, so the National Guard from Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, south Chicago, and Springfield—there were three units—they put them together and sent them to Louisiana to train. Down there they took their horses, their horse-drawn cavalry, and they took the horses away, and gave them armored cars, and half tracks, and tanks and what have you. So the Army sent me, they…when I was…they actually sent the draft for me, and they sent me back then 11:00to Louisiana to install the radios in the tanks. So I stayed there with them all during the war [ ]. I was their radio repairman, and what have you for the rest of the war. So I went overseas with them [ ], and I went in the invasion of France twice [ ]. They put me on a troop ship, and going in the invasion, and what ship I was on was either torpedoed or some said it was a mine, some say it was torpedoes, whatever, but there was four ships hit at the same time. We were on these old liberty ships, which is slow tubs, and the convoy from England had run off and left us. We started out the first day, and they…we wound up behind so we went back in the second, 12:00they started us in front the next time, but it was the second convoy, so we wound up…for we got into about two hours off the coast of France, all these slow ships were behind, but they hit four of them. Well, they run a Red Cross ship up beside of it—the one I was on didn’t sink completely. They had locks in it and the back end of it went under the water, so they had to jump off of that one onto the Red Cross ship. It was bringing some wounded men back from France, and so they took us back to England. And ten days later, we had new equipment, and they shipped us back in again. That time we went in on a LST, landing ship tanks. And 13:00let’s pause this thing awhile[tape interruption].

Osborne:Okay [tape restarts].

Smith:If that’s what you want now.

Osborne:Yes.

Smith:That’s a long story, if you want it.

Osborne:We sure want it!

Smith:Well, let me get in breath. In the meantime, I’ll show you a picture of my troop.

Osborne:There you are.

Smith:C. F. Smith and Buford [ ], I’m trying to find.

Osborne:Sure wish there was…[ ]. Okay. 14:00Smith:That was taken at the end of the war. That was [ ] troops there. This was in…I’ve got a history book—that picture’s in a history book.

Osborne:Who’s the little dog?

Smith:That was our mascot.

Osborne:Oh.

Smith:Went to Paris on a pass, and they got that dog and brought with them. It was everybody’s dog. That was at the end of the war…that there…you’re getting the story ahead of you.

Osborne:Okay, but I just want to write this dog…what the troop was. 15:00Smith:Anyway, [ ] the story about the invading part. The put us on the LST, and told us, now whatever you do, don’t set the brakes on your vehicles. So, my vehicle sat on the top deck; everybody else’s was down in the hole. And, so people lolled around on it, so they put the emergency brake back on it, so I was the last one off aboard the ship. We sat outside—in fact—the story…we went into France, got in at night. Germans… that we went to [ ], sort 16:00of lost from the convoy. And we went up a cove into German territory, and the German speedboat came out to visit us, and turned the ship around when they saw us coming back out, and [ ] went on up the beach away, sat outside that beach until the tide came back in. So, we could see all that, everything that was going on on the beach. So when the tide come in, run up on the beach, [ ] doors open, everybody debarked the thing [ ]. By that time, we were…several weeks late—we weren’t in the first wave of the worst. And the rest of my outfit had laid the beach, was there two weeks before I did, because we had gone back to England, got new equipment and 17:00put on a different boat. So, as we got off the boat, I was the last man off, and their jeep hit down near the water, where the floater bays back up somewhat. Man on the…kind of everybody off—had jumped on the back of my jeep, and when it hit, he came tumbling over the front, and hit his head against the…dashboard on the jeep, split his head open and knocked him out. So, that was the first incident we had. The second one, because we had several men was killed on the boat, when it went down. And…you don’t need these little details, about that anyway…that’s taking up your time, I guess.

Osborne:Oh, anything that you want to tell us.

Smith:Okay, this was…my interest in [ ]. So I go to the jeep—got out of that, and started on up the beach, 18:00and the emergency brake stuck on the jeep, and it wouldn’t pull. So, captain come back looking for me. He run behind me, and we pushed that jeep up there, and got the emergency brake out on it. When I got to the top of the beach, our outfit was about two miles inland, something like two and a half miles inland, the fighting was. And we got there, so we put this man off at an aid station. They just cut his hair off, sewed it up, didn’t give him anything, put him back on the jeep and said he’d be all right. So away we went with him.

Osborne:No kidding.

Smith:When we got to where the unit was, they give me a sixteen inch screwdriver, and a mine detector, and said, “Clear that field, over there—we want to put some vehicles in it.” So I started clearing mines out of the field—that was the first job I got.

Osborne:So…how do you…you’ve got a mine detector, which is a thing on the end…?

Smith:Mine 19:00detector—I had taught mine detector classes in England, so it come my lot to clean the mine, to clear the fields for vehicles, so we started from that. So, we fought through the hedge rows in France, and all through that and we actually—when we broke through there—after that, we…went all the way across the [ ] and down through, down the [ ] half-way down and turned back, then we went to…towards Paris, France. We were in Paris, France fourteen days, waiting for the French Second Army Division to go into town, because they would let us—GI’s—go into Paris. 20:00I fought all the way across Germany and France, and over into Austria. I have pictures here of the entrance of Salzburg, Austria, we were the first men into Salzburg, Austria. I spent several months in Austria, then, before I came back overseas. But that’s just a rough sketch of what went on.

Osborne:Well, we like to hear all the stories, and the details.

Smith:I couldn’t think of all them stories [laughter]. I have pictures here of everything. Here’s the pictures…all kind of pictures here. These are actual pictures that were taken during the battle, see. Here’s a picture, right here…here’s 21:00a paper thing—one of our reunions, in Illinois.

Osborne:Oh, okay.

Smith:That’s a picture of the first tank into Salzburg, Austria.

Osborne:Oh, goodness. This is interesting.

Smith:I’ve got a history book here, that’s got these pictures in the history book. I donated one of the history books to the Floyd County Library.

Osborne:Your nephew said that there was…I think you where you in Belgium?

Smith:No, my brother-in-law was in Belgium; I was in Austria.

Osborne:Okay, well there was something about you and capturing….

Smith:Well, 22:00there’s things here—this whole history of what went all…you see I didn’t go into detail of all the things that was done. But we liberated King of Belgium—King Leopold of Belgium, during the war—our unit did. I’ve got pictures of him and his wife here. That story right there that I showed you; he was supposed to come with us. Well, to start with, he came to New York. He was…King Leopold was a king of Belgium but he was in exile, and he had a son. And the son—we were honor guards for the king’s palace there in Austria, when we liberated him from Germany. And their little boy came out and played ball with us 23:00sometime. And so he said if I ever come to America, I’ll look some of you boys up. So he came to—he was in Michigan, Detroit, Michigan, and it come out in the paper, said the king and his wife spent more time with the Cecil New of the 106th Cavalry that he played catch with during the war—said spent more time with him than he did with the governor.

Osborne:[Laughs].

Smith:So, the boy came back to our reunion, and he was telling about it, and had pictures of the king, and all of them. He was sitting at the table taking to me and my wife. I said, I asked him, I said, “You work for Cadillac?” He said, “Yeah.” I said, “Do you know Ed Stewart, works for Cadillac…don’t know what division he’s in.” “Oh yeah,” he says, “I had to go in and see him…that’s my boss. I had 24:00to go see him before I…to get off from work to come down here.” I said, “Well, that’s his sister you’re sitting beside there.” [laughter].

Osborne:Oh!

Smith:So, anyway, it’s a big world.

Osborne:It is.

Smith:But, there’s all kind of stories [ ] things that we did. And things that I had to…I don’t like to tell all these things, though, I…they bring some memories and so forth. But I’ll show you some of these pictures, and let you get your own idea of it. Now this right here—that’s one of the—maybe 25:00you’ll see better [ ] things in here with that.

Osborne:Where were these taken?

Smith:Be better to show you in here. Right here…this is similar to this one, and it’s got the writing right there. Let me show you this page, and I’ll tell you something about it. This is a Lieutenant right there—I’ve got a good picture of him here somewhere.

Osborne:Yeah, right there.

Smith:Pick it up there, 26:00and I’ll show you something. I’ll read what it says on the back of this one here, and then…. It says, “106th Cavalry, cleaning out snipers from a [ ]—that’s the name of the town. Lieutenant Ben Hale, is lying on the sidewalk having been killed by a sniper a few hours earlier.

Osborne:Oh, goodness.

Smith:You see that man laying in water…the street?

Osborne:I sure do, yeah.

Smith:His mother came every year to our reunion. 27:00We have about seven hundred of them pictures that we put on the wall. She’d walk up and look at that picture. We got a great big one, like that. And she’d look at that picture, but nobody never did tell her that that was her son, laying there. Helen: She only had the one. Smith: She just had one son, but there’s a lot of interesting story about that one too. There was a platoon of Army cars and half tracks, firing…actually firing.

Osborne:[ ] France.

Smith:[ ] France. That’s action pictures—guns were fired when this picture was taken. You know, I’ll tell you what that is—that’s an amphibious truck that they used during the invasion. That thing would come out [ ] parked out here, and wait for the tide to come 28:00in, these things would come out and unload, guns and ammunition, men, and everything, and then take off right back up…go inland, unload, and come back. That’s bivouac area there [ ].

Osborne:That’s the same big picture.

Smith:Let’s see what it says on the other side of that now. Troops from 106th, 171st Squadron, 106th Cavalry Group attacking a town in tanks and armored cars, see, there were attacking—that’s a picture that’s had [ ]. So King Leopold sent his…was supposed 29:00to come to our reunion, but something was going on in his country, so he couldn’t make it, so he sent his top attaché to be with his. He and I set up at the head, since I’m their captain, so I set and talked to this attaché all during this meeting, see. He was the top—in other words—the president would sent Lady whatever her name is—so he came. The King couldn’t make it, so he sent someone else. That’s the half track [ ] attack there. There’s a German tank turned upside down.

Osborne:Danube River.

Smith:They’re crossing the Danube River, see. You 30:00attack in the river just before we cross it. Now here, I’ll show you how we got across.

Osborne:Oh, …on the Rhine River.

Smith:That’s crossing the Rhine River. We pulled up beside the river—my outfit pulled up to the river about seven o’clock in the evening; they came down in front of us with dozer and started unloading these [ ]. Before you come to a river crossing, or something like that, they’d start bringing these things up from behind. You could see these big barges coming up, and you’d know there’s a river crossing coming up. So they come in with dozers, went down over…build a road down the hill, put them things in to float, and put them together. At six o’clock the next morning, we crossed the river. We pulled up to the edge of the river at seven o’clock in the evening; six o’clock the next morning, we went across.

Osborne:Oh goodness.

Smith:There it is again…the bridge blowed up here, that’s a different one 31:00[ ].

Osborne:But that’s crossing the Rhine.

Smith:This one up here is crossing the Rhine; this one is crossing the Danube River too. This right here, I’ve got a picture, a 4 x 8, I’ve got—we’re rebuilding a jeep and got it done. Right here’s where—this is one that we rebuilt here. That’s built exactly like the one I had. It’s got…right here it is—a better shot of it. They got my wife’s name on the side of it, see there?

Osborne:Oh.

Smith:And that’s the way I had it. This is an exact replica of the one that I drove up in the invasions. It’s got my wife’s name on it, so they brought—we rebuilt it, and it’s in New York right now, and they take it to all of the parades, and…I guess it’s at a parade in New York right—today. We had one last week, but 32:00they brought this jeep here, and had her picture beside of it, so the original Vada—that’s her name on the side of it there.

Osborne:And her name is…?

Smith:Vada, that’s her middle name.

Osborne:Okay, her middle name is Vada, V-A-D-A?

Smith:Yes, and then see, it’s shown on that vehicle there.

Osborne:Yes, it’s on there.

Smith:All the vehicles, boys put their…some kind of a name of them. One of the big deals in England was to watch all them jeeps and vehicles go by, and copy the name down, and see who could try and get the most names off the vehicles.

Osborne:[Laughs.] Can we take just one little break and ask what is your…what is your…you’re his wife. What is your full name?

Helen:Helen Vada. My first name’s Helen, H-E-L-E-N.

Osborne:What was your maiden name?

Helen:Stewart. S-T-E-W-A-R-T.

Osborne:Okay.

Helen:My people were from Carter County, around Grayson, in that area.

Smith:Here’s some new boys 33:00coming into the….

Helen:And you didn’t tell her the day you were, you were shipwrecked at sea, our daughter was born.

Osborne:Oh! Well, tell me about that. I’ve got to hear that story.

Smith:Well, there’s a Lieutenant, Wayne Cowan, was a troop…well, he wasn’t a troop commander; my troop commander was a captain, but he was a platoon leader. His wife was pregnant, and this was before we started on the invasion. He censored all the mail going back and forth, and he knew that Helen was expecting a baby, and so he…his wife had a pair of twins. Oh, he rode me high—oh, I’ve already got mine, I’ve got twin boys [laughter]. So when the ship was wrecked, and I got back to England that Helen had had a little girl, 34:00see [laughter].

Osborne:Well, I’m sure you think a lot of her, even if she… Smith:Well, you mean the daughter. She was a…she works in Louisville now. She’s a counselor for the state. She has four offices, one in Louisville, one in LaGrange, one in Fort Knox, and another one.

Osborne:And what was that one? Did you say something about that it?

Smith:This is in November 19th in ’44, near Vancourt, near Alsace, France. 35:00Anyhow, that’s some of the boys coming in, new men. I showed her that one. That’s what the town looked like, when we went through. See the rubbish and everything. Look at the people’s faces here—you can see if they were grinning or not.

Osborne:No, they weren’t grinning.

Smith:And, that’s what the town’s looked like—they were torn to pieces. Nothing but junk. And this is camouflage, showing how we camouflaged for the winter. And that’s actual pictures of the vehicles.

Osborne:Who took these pictures?

Smith:Well, all of us.

Osborne:Okay.

Smith:This 36:00is a boy that they said the king spent more time with him than he did the governors. That was taken over in Austria, there…showing that liberty, that was our uniforms we had in the wintertime. You take that coat off and turn it around, and it was that color. Turned it the other way, it was white.

Osborne:Oh, my goodness. When I first saw the picture, I didn’t even see the guy standing there.

Smith:That was camouflaged clothes. When it come a snow, we’d whitewash our tanks when it snowed. You wear them what time it snowed, when the snow was off, you turned it the other way—you turned it right side out.

Osborne:German snipers surrender near Coburg.

Smith:I’ll show you one over here. 37:00Now that’s the way it look there. That right there was radio tubes, and crystals and parts of the radios, that I repaired. That’s all my spare parts that I had, and this machine down here on the side.

Osborne:Yeah.

Smith:But that was a bomb here, they would shell us, and the shells would come over here, and one officers [ ] stop out of vehicles and getting in the ditches over here, one time when shelled. And that wasn’t funny.

Osborne:No!

Smith:There’s a German…an American plane down, a P-57…a P-47.

Helen:[ ].

Smith:There’s a German plane down. I was, right here…a false pocket. The Americans killed about a hundred and fifty thousand Germans right through this valley here. 38:00There’s horses around there, and everything. They had horse-drawn cavalry ahead of us, and everything. Everything they had wasn’t mechanized, because you can see that. Two or three things you’ve seen horses there, and this is an actual picture taken, as we went through there. And the American planes stopped this road up—like going across Abner Mountain, you know—just a two [ ] road, and we run this whole German division back through there, the Germans or their armies, whatever it was that they called it. And they blocked it off and then we bombed them, and shelled them, and we had to go through there, and we took a dozer and pushed the dead off the road, and you see the [ ] piled off there. 39:00I’ll tell you something about this outfit here. Near Briedenbock, Alsace, France cavalry, third infantry division taking German prisoners in the Maginot Line. That was the Maginot Line, but we had a…there was…after we passed over there in Germany, there was a…I’ll have to tell it anyhow…get in my head the way it was. Right there, that’s the first tank going into Salzburg, Austria. See the bridge, why we had to cross the river this way? 40:00The bridge was all blowed, and there’s a railroad train—there was a train on the railroad bridge had engines on that, and they took all the track up, and we were someplace [ ]. This is St. [ ], Austria…that’s where I was…no that’s Bridenbach. The Germans had this part; we had this part over here. The town, let’s see…this sector of the town was held by 106th Cavalry Group, and the hillside and wooded land was held by the Germans.

Osborne:Hmm, from the church overlooking the town. 41:00Smith:This big church, must have taken a picture out through there.

Osborne:Now you were talking about the tanks crossing the river into Salzburg. Did they… were they able to get through the hole?

Smith:That was the first vehicle in there. We went though, let’s see—here’s a story about it right here. Here’s the king and the queen and their court. That’s King Leopold of Belgium.

Osborne:He had a very nice looking wife didn’t he?

Smith:She was twenty-six years old and he was fifty-four. After the war was over, this was in St. 42:00[ ] in Austria, there was a big lake there. These people lived on one side of that lake. You can see some of the houses out through here on the side of the lake, and we had to clean up all of our vehicles—took them to that lake and washed.

Osborne:Everybody got a bath, including the vehicles! [Laughter].

Smith:[ ].

Osborne:[ ]. Now were they, were you able to drive the tanks across the whole way.

Smith:The tanks went across the river, and back up the other side. The bridge was all blowed, you see. This was the first tank that they got into Salzburg, Austria. We took off before the infantry…we was fighting with the infantry unit. We were—we were a recon unit, been out ahead of the infantry, or anything, and [ ] them to see what was there, and the infantry followed us. So we got Austria. 43:00Osborne:So is part of the Signal Corp…were you involved in the fighting? Or just involved in communications?

Smith:I was involved…I was with a re-con unit that done the fighting—wasn’t no…everybody fought.

Osborne:Okay.

Smith:There’s a picture out of the paper; read what it says.

Osborne:“Bluford Smith of Hi Hat and Rex Geahart of Price attended the Golden Victory Anniversary of 106th Cavalry Group, and Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, June 22 and 25th. During the war, Smith served as a sergeant radio repairman for the unit. G was a tank gunner corporal. A number of local men served in the 106th Cavalry Group in Europe in 1944-45, including Paul 44:00R. Hale, of west Prestonsburg, Ed Dawahare of Wheelwright, and Roy B. Hannon of Erlanger. The 106th Cavalry Group participated in the Normandy campaign, and the drive across France with Patton’s Third Army. The unit served under the command of the First French Army, in eastern France and with the US Seventh Army in the drive across Germany and into Austria. The 106th Cavalry liberated Salzburg on May 4, 1945, and freed King Leopold of Belgium and his family near the war’s end. The group meets annually in Champaign. Smith has held the office of chaplain for a number of years.” Smith:Now, doesn’t that tell you the whole story there, that I’ve try for an hour to tell you?

Osborne:[Laughter], I know but I want to hear your version of it.

Smith:But that would take a long time.

Osborne:That’s okay—that’s what I’m here for.

Smith:Bring back a lot of memories, 45:00and all that. I don’t even think about things, until something happens, or somebody, kind of resembles what went on, and then it goes through my mind again, and thirty minutes from that time, it’s gone again, and so…during the last sixty years, I’ve rehashed the whole trip, in little bitty [ ] time and…build the second jeep—we got this one in New York. Right here, I’ll show you this. Here it is on display, at West Point. See that?

Osborne:Oh, yeah.

Smith:And I’ll show you something else, here. When I was…one thing I got, that’s this… 46:00that last picture. One of the things that I did do, I put all of my men in the foxholes—my radio operators, and my officer got a pretty good write-up in the papers, and so forth, but I did the work. I went to [ ]. They had armored telephone cable that they put on the highways, dropped on the highways. You can look at them if you want to. They put in around in…across the highways, when tanks and things ran over it, it wouldn’t hurt it…armored cable. So 47:00I asked for a piece of that Army cable. I wanted to put my men underground. He wouldn’t give it to me, so I said, well, just so we don’t lose nothing, I just went by, got out of the jeep, got my axe, cut me a 150-foot piece out of a ditch line—they had all their telephone lines in a week, after you’d take a territory, the ditches would all be full of telephone lines, big rolls of it, because the shells [ ] they didn’t try to repair it, they just ran another cable and just keep filling the ditches with them. So I took a…I cut out 150-feet of cable, and built a remote control to operate my radios from the foxhole, and I put my men underground. Come out in Stars and Stripes that Captain So and So has his radio 48:00operators in the foxhole, with his men. Of course, I got a citation for it, eventually. I got a citation from the Army, said due to Sergeant Smith’s [ ] knowledge of radio electronics, we were never out of communications for a period longer than fifteen minutes throughout the whole campaign of Europe.

Osborne:Oh, my goodness.

Smith:And I had that put on my wall, when I put in a radio shop later, and my house burned, and I lost it.

Helen:But I’ve got a copy [ ].

Smith:I’ve got a picture here of that someplace…let’s see…it’s a big picture. [Loud noise]. 49:00You’re out of business right now [laughs].

Osborne:For a moment I am!

Smith:We should have gotten an extension cord for you. Those papers I had there was…it’s in the way, isn’t it? Extension cord, plug it in to you. I had some pictures here.

Osborne:She knows which picture you want.

Smith:There’s a picture I took over in France. The war was over—I had hair then, look at that! [Laughter]. 50:00Osborne:We all like it when we got hair, don’t we?

Smith:Here, I’m trying to look for a bigger picture of this. That’s on display at…that’s an artifact that I give the boy in New York to ride on his—to keep that on his jeep. There’s artifacts there that I gave him everyone of those things, and he’s got a big…here it is. He displays that with that jeep. That was in New York… Osborne:That’s interesting.

Smith:That’s just a …I have no idea. That’s a bazooka shell that I fired out in Texas when I was in training. 51:00That’s a training bazooka— Osborne:Wasn’t a live round?

Smith:It wasn’t a live round, there wasn’t no powder in this end of it, see. After it went through the target, I went out and picked it up and took it home. Right here is a radio that I got dropped to the French Underground forces, and before the invasion of France that they would—this was different frequencies and different stations, see. So each man in this unit, the French Underground, that’s been an American ensign, a British captain, and a Canadian that they got to organize the French Underground forces. Before we went through, they blowed bridges, and all kinds of things. So after we got through 52:00liberating them, this is what came to our unit. They brought his crew with him, they had those vehicles, looked kind of like the Taliban riding a whole bunch of them in one vehicle, you know. They came out there where we were bivouaced [ ] and he wanted a carbine. He said he was going home, and wanted to take it to his daddy. He said my job’s over with, so he…I got him a carbine and give it to him.

Osborne:Is a carbine a rifle?

Smith:That’s the guns that we used, you know. So he gave me this radio. That was the one that they carried with him, and everything, and I brought it home just to show, and I gave it to this boy—he keeps it on that jeep, and shows it. He’s got a big write-up about it, and…..There was a man come to 53:00Kentucky called me one day, he said, you know a man came up and looked at that radio, and he told exactly what it was. He had worked with it here in the United States, see, when he built the radio. He was one of the manufacturers that built that radio and everything. He recognized it at one of these shows. But this what we had… this was the way we cooked our dinner. [ ] stove—this was canteen cup that we carried on the side. I give him that. He’s the unit remote control that I built…that’s one of them that I rebuilt when I come back. This piece come out of a tank. And the tank, the commander of the tank would stand up on top of the tank, and would use a microphone and talk from one tank to another or whatever, and I figured if he could stand up there and talk to that, use that radio, I could use it out in the field, so I took one of these out of a tank. It was in the invasion of France, 54:00and the tank hit a mine. I crawled in and I took the radios out to get spare parts. Everytime we’d lose a vehicle like that, I’d take the radios, and get them repaired. If I had to change the radio in a tank, and it under fire, I’d jerk that radio out, and stick in another one. And I had to have something to put in there, see, so that….In the meantime, when I took the radios out, I got me one of these boxes—two or three of them, so that we’d have them, and I’d put the mike and stuff on it, and put 150 foot of cable on the other end of it, go out there and plug it into the radios, take that cable out here, and the operator could take a shell casing, lock or something, sit it up there and put his…we didn’t use speakers, now, because every time a big shell come in, it busted every speaker up. First shell went off, you lost every speaker you had. We 55:00used this hand unit, that we sit there—we had key to operate, see. You plug a key into it, and speaker and a microphone, or you can put a key in an earphone and a key. So that’s what we used out there. The news of that—well it went on the Stars and Stripes.

Osborne:Wow, that’s neat. That’s neat.

Smith:I give him this thing here, radio, a canteen, and a stove. He got all kinds of things that I give him. I give him a field telephone, one of the field telephones. He’s got it someplace; it’ll be showed it on the jeep here. See if it’s on there. Yeah, he’s got this one set up just like I had mine fixed, you see. See that [ ] on the side of it? 56:00 Osborne:Yes.

Smith:I met him, after he got that thing fixed. Here’s something else I gave him. This wench, [ ] winch on the front of a jeep…never did see one with a winch on it, but I had one of them in a barrel over here; I kept it for forty years. I had it in a barrel of oil, and I gave it to him. He sent me that picture after he got it fixed—after he got that on there, he sent that picture. Here’s the picture before he…there’s what it looked like before he put the winch on, see.

Osborne:Well, now, what was the purpose the winch?

Smith:Well, it’d pull you out of a mud hole, or anything.

Osborne:Okay.

Smith:Out west, they call that a stump-puller, and that amphibious vehicle I showed you awhile ago, that’s the way…that’s what they’ve got on them. Like get up to the beach, or to cross a river or something like that, if they can’t get up, they run up there and tie a rope onto a tree, 57:00and pull it on up.

Osborne:Okay.

Smith:That’s what that’s for.

Osborne:Yeah.

Smith:See, you’ve got a rope there to go with it. There’s a picture of my jeep when I was over—that was taken of me over in Austria….St. [ ] Austria. That’s just a few things to show you that I was there, you know.

Osborne:Oh, yeah, I knew you were. Well, now your nephew wanted me to ask about the time that you captured that whole division, or platoon, I guess it was there on the Mangiot Line?

Smith:Well, no it wasn’t the Mangiot Line—that was after we went…that was over in Germany.

Osborne:Okay.

Smith:I had a…at Metz, France…we went around Metz, we were driving, the whole Army driving the Germans out of Metz, 58:00and my outfit went around the side, to keep them from coming out. And I was sent as an advance vehicle—they’d send somebody out. They wouldn’t want a vehicle to sit on a highway. If you went out, if you were going to move a unit, moving up, somebody had to go out ahead where they were going to go, and have everything set up, different places for them to pull off—you couldn’t pull four or five hundred vehicles and men off the road, and let them sit there on the road until somebody come up. If you did, you could get strafed or so forth. So I was ahead in the advance detail, and went into a salt factory. When I ran in that salt factory, the Germans started with shelling with mortars. They weren’t trying to hit me, they were going across the fields, on the other side of me. So when the unit came up, 59:00I reported it, about it, where they were coming from—the shells and like that, but when the unit moved in there, no more shells came in or anything. So one of the boys got hurt, and the medics was back, a couple of miles back from us. A wooded area you had to go through to get back to the medics, and I took this boy back to the medics. Captain was having a CP meeting, a command meeting. They’d all gather up at night and get orders, and so forth, for the next day or whatever, and he said, “Smitty, you going back through that?” It was getting dark and late in the evening, “Are you going back through that wooded area?” Yeah. He said, “Well hang around a minute because I want to go through with you, because it’s dangerous to drive through there by yourself.” Okay. So we started through, and there was a side road that went off of it. I pulled up and there was three 60:00officers, German officers, dressed in dress uniform…it looked like they’d just come out of a show room, or something. Their weapons on the side, and everything, and they flagged me. I stopped. They wanted to surrender a battalion of men. So I got a battalion of men surrendered—eight hundred men. And captain stopped way back from me, and wanted to know what I was doing. He said, “Disarm those people.” I said, “I don’t want to disarm them…they’re wanting to surrender a battalion of men. Well, tell them to come on out here. Captain says to bring them on out. He said…see I had a radio in my car, and he had one…and he said, “We can’t do that. It’ll take an hour to get them all gathered up.” I told him, and he said, “Tell him we’ll wait right here for him.” [Laughter]. So 61:00in the meantime, he said, “I’ll wait here, you run up there and get us an armored car or something and bring it down here.” So I went and got an armored car. It had a 37 mm cannon on it, and six wheels. He said, “Just park it here, and turn the gun right down that road.” In just a few minutes, about an hour later, I sat there and waited for them, and they came marching out, and I told them where to go. I marched them back down this, about three miles, to the headquarters, and they put ropes up and lined them all up on the mountain, and had them go up there and sit down. Next thing was to try to find something for them to eat.

Osborne:[ ]. You were trying to find them something to eat.

Smith:That’s a picture of Germans. Bragging about what Hitler promised them, and that’s what they got…eating a horse that was killed…butchering horses.

Osborne:Oh gracious! I know where Frankenstein is! I’ve actually lived near there. You were talking about that they had their eight hundred men, and you were trying to find them something to eat. 62:00Smith:The Army was having to find something to feed them, so they got rid of them, see, [laughter], because they didn’t know how they were going to feed eight hundred men.

Osborne:An extra eight hundred for dinner, huh?

Smith:But I ran into all kinds of things like that. Right here’s a story. 63:00Here’s some pictures that I took of the boys when we were leaving Austria. And I know everyone of these boys here. That’s my buddies. The war was over, and we were leaving Austria, getting on the trucks to go. That’s the ones…you see, we had a point system. And whoever had the most points got to go home first, see. And so this was the boys…that was the boys with the first points there going out. I took their pictures, of course, I wasn’t too happy to see them leave, but this is…..This boy, in New York, he’s from New York, there’s…we fought through his town there in Germany, 64:00I think. There’s a story in here, where he tells all about—tells all about—tells his story of it, see. Maybe it’s here some place. Well, this here’s what I…a story when I met Patton in France. When we first went to France, you know, Patton was having problems in England with some people. They wouldn’t let him, give him the Third Armored Division until way up, we’d done fought through the [ ] Forest and everything, but he was there, and they had a bogus army, called it the Eighteenth [ ] that come into France after the…and Patton was supposed to have come in there. The Germans were afraid of Patton, because he’d whipped the socks off of them in North Africa, 65:00and he knew people were giving a lot of problems every time anything would happen, why they’d put it [ ] news, Patton had done so and so. He’s supposed to have cussed somebody out, or said something bad about the Germans, or the French, or something and the news people picked up on that, and gave him a hard time. Some kid would swear that he had the shell shock, you know, and he’d bawled out good, and called him a coward, and so forth. The news people were there, so they put that in the paper [ ]. So they were trying to get him fired, you know. He came to England, come to France, I guess, he was just a skeleton—all he had was headquarters, he didn’t have an army or nothing, 66:00and I came through one morning about two o’clock with…had a German prisoner on the front of my jeep. They started me out with three jeeps, and the town the Germans had come in and taken the town over, and a Frenchmen run out to flag me as I was going through, and he told me, he said, you can’t get on there, the Germans just took that part of town. You come this way…he showed me how to get out of town, to go around it, and get out. So these other two jeeps, didn’t…they….I don’t know where they went, must have turned and went back or something, but I followed this boy’s directions and got out of town. But I picked up a German prisoner, in the meantime and had him on the front of the jeep. Two motorcycles run out, one of them across the road, and one this way, and they flagged me, and had MPs on them. I stopped and they said, “The General wants to speak to you.” 67:00So, I said, “Yes sir.” So a command car pulled up beside here, the command car pulled up. General Patton stood up in it. And, of course, I was in the jeep, now. This story says that I got out of the jeep, and ran over to him. I didn’t do that. I just saluted him. I stayed in the jeep, because I had a prisoner on the front of it. And he got up close enough to talk to me, see. And he said, “Where’d you get that damn Heinie?” He cussed every breath he spoke to you, he cussed. “Where’d you get that damn Heinie?” That’s what he called that German. I told him where I got him, and he said, “Where’s your outfit?” I said, “Well, they’re on the move.” I told him where they were when I was dispatched to go into this town, but I couldn’t get through town, the Germans took the town over—you can’t go that way, 68:00because the Germans….but I’m the only fellow that got through. I said, “Two more jeeps followed me someplace,” but I said, “I don’t know where they’re at,” whether they got through [ ]. I said, “Just don’t go that direction, because you’ll get in trouble.” And he said, “Hell, son, you’re doing a damn good job.” And that’s what happened [ ]. I met him right in the battlefield, right on the front line, nosing around by himself. He had two motorcycles with him. Then, just a little while after that, they gave him the Third Army, and we were attached to the Third Army.

Helen:[ ] …picture you’re looking for….

Smith:What’s that?

Helen:That picture you’re looking for on the [ ]….

Smith:Oh, that picture of what, now? 69:00Helen:…the Bronze Star, when they were presenting that to you.

Smith:Oh, I’ve got one of them right here.

Helen:[ ]. Would you like a Coke?

Smith:Give her one—she dried up!

Osborne:[Laughs]. Well you’re the one doing all the talking! You may be the one that needs the Coke.

Smith:[ ]…there’s copies of them. I showed one of me getting a… Osborne:So how many—how long were you in Europe?

Smith:Twenty-four months in Europe. I get letters from these people every month, or every month or two, and it says, two hundred and eighty-six days 70:00of constant battle throughout the heart of Europe. So I was in battle for two hundred and eighty-six days.

Helen:Have you found your Bronze Star thing?

Smith:I found one there while ago.

Osborne: Well, you were telling me on the phone about a fellow that was, I guess he was from Germany.

Smith:Yes, that’s this boy right here—I showed his picture.

Osborne:And something about he was wanting to find—he comes to your reunion.

Smith:He came to our reunion said that he was looking for the man that fired that 75 mm round through his grandmother’s window. He’s the one that built this jeep. He’s the one…he’s an American. His father was American—there’s a story right there about it, 71:00if you want to read it.

Helen:Well, he was born in Germany.

Smith:He was born in Germany, himself, and his grandfather owned a big grist mill…saw mill…was it a water mill. I know it was in Florida.

Helen:The Germans ran, didn’t they? They were [ ].

Smith:He came up to us—he come sat down beside my wife and me. I said, “Are you still looking for the gentleman that fired that round through your window?” He said, “Yeah.” I said, “Well, we had eighteen tanks there that day.” And Rex Geahart, my neighbor here, was, he was a gunner on one of the tanks. “You’ve got about as close as you’ll ever get…you got down to number eighteen.” 72:00 Osborne:[Laughter].

Smith:So anyway, he told us the story about his…you can read the story. I got a copy of what he told us someplace right here [ ].

Osborne:It’s probably in that group of stories that were…that you showed [ ].

Smith:I’m sure I had a picture of it—I give you one there awhile ago. That was a….I’m looking for typewritten pages there.

Osborne:There’s typewritten pages on the back of that pile of papers, right there at your elbow—there you go, the ones with the paperclip, right there.

Smith:Yeah, here’s another thing I wrote. 73:00Osborne:Oh, okay.

Helen:I’ll always remember them [ ].

Osborne:So, were you ever wounded?

Smith:Well, when the ship wrecked up, why I was blowed up against the ceiling, and everybody was knocked out deader than a [ ]. But I come to before a lot of them did, and I thought everybody was dead. A concussion will kill you, to knock you out. I wouldn’t accept a Purple Heart 74:00for it, but…not worthy. You know, later, I could have gotten an extra five points for it, I’d have took it. Give me a pencil here a minute.

Osborne:Here’s a pencil.

Smith:Okay.

Osborne:Have you got any more copies of those stories?

Smith:No, I just—this gentleman wrote these stories himself, the one I was telling you about. But there’s one in here that tells his story. This says “as told by Reuben Smith.” That’s the story, he asked the questions, and he wrote these things up himself. 75:00The Tales of the 106th Cavalry Group compiled by Norm [ ]. That’s supplied by somebody else, you see. He’s a real good hand at writing these things, though. I tell you what you could do—you could take these and then send them back to.

Osborne:Well, I was wondering if you’d be willing to let me do that.

Smith:You don’t have time to read them right now.

Osborne:No.

Smith:This [ ] story of what I had to do. Right here it says, 76:00“Buddy and another trooper were sent to set up a bivouac. They proceeded through this town and to the outskirts on the other side, adjacent to some woods. The other trooper got hurt. Buddy brought him back to the medics. After dropping him off, the major told Buddy to return to the potential bivouac area, set up and complete your mission. Upon his return, three officers in full dress uniform were standing in the road, and flagged Buddy down. They were officers from elements of the Hungarian Division, and they told Buddy they wanted to surrender. From the jeep, several hundred yards to the rear, an officer inquired about what his fellows wanted. Buddy told them they wanted to surrender. The officer said to bring them down, which 77:00Buddy relayed to the Hungarians. They said that was not possible, since it would take them several hours to get all of the troops together, to effect a surrender. Relaying the message, the officer told him to stay there and wait for them. After waiting and hour and a half, a column of over eight hundred troops surrendered to Tech Sergeant Bluford “Buddy” Smith of Hi Hat, Kentucky. There’s several stories in there, that you get some idea of what….

Helen:Is the one—the Bronze Star thing?

Smith:That’s my daddy pinning the Bronze Star on me.

Osborne:Now you got the Bronze Star for putting the….

Smith:Well, for all the things I did, you know. I stayed a whole two years fighting, you know, and I got a Bronze Star. But 78:00what I started to tell you—I was sent down to Louisiana to fix all the radios in the tanks. They didn’t have anybody; in fact, they were just getting the radios. They let me stay at home, and they told me they’d have me back there in two weeks, but, until they got the radios shipped down to Louisiana, they didn’t need me. So they let me stay home almost two months. But when they needed me, they come back, and they sent me down there from—they sent me through to Cincinnati, Camp Atterbury…no, anyhow, just south of Cincinnati and I was there two days, and then right on down to Louisiana. But they didn’t send my orders, 79:00because the orders had to go through the chain…I was there—I just went in. I didn’t tell them why I was there, or nothing, see. But I did…wound up working on the radios. I hadn’t told her what I’d done, but I wasn’t taking my basic training and then of an evening…the sergeant found out that I knew what the radios were, you know. They got these radios and started putting them in the tanks, to see if they’d work, and I…it’s a long story.

Osborne:Well, that’s okay.

Smith:I was taking my basic training. And we were confined to the area; everybody was confined to the area on the basic training, so I went to the day room, 80:00just loafing around and the sergeant that was charge of the day room that evening, he would sit and listen to the radio. I asked him, I said, “What you after?” He said, “Well, they’re out there…ten miles out there—you can’t talk that far. I said, “That radio will talk that far.” And he had this one out of the jeep, and it was sitting out on the table, and I said, “Let me look at the radio for you just a minute.” “No,” he said, “you mess that up and I’d have to pay for it.” I said, “I know that radio.” I said, you have ECO kit that goes with it? “Well, I don’t know what that is.” I said, “Well, there’s a kit that comes with the radios. See if you can find one.” Now he got it out, and I got some [ ] and tools out of it, opened it up and it jerked it out, and I retuned his radio, because I knew what I was doing. I retuned it on the station he was on, and put it back in. “Now try it.” 81:00“Why Serge…I didn’t know you was out here tonight.” Well, I found myself something. So that evening—the next evening—when I got off from duty, he was standing there. “Come on [ ] boy, let’s go.” So I had to go work on the radios—I tuned them all up, the Unit. My troop had perfect communication—nobody else getting anything, so they started loaning me out to the other. One evening, the two MPs came and picked me up, and took me down to command headquarters. Then the Colonel said, “Hey, (I knew what they wanted)—one on each side of me, “are you an FBI agent, an undercover agent, or something?” I said, “No.” “Well, why are you getting mail from Washington, DC, Army Headquarters in Washington?” I said, “I don’t get any.” He said, “I know you don’t; I’ve got it stacked up over here.” Osborne:[Laughter]. 82:00Smith:Had all my orders, and everything [laughter]. I got along pretty good after that. Of course, I give up my officer’s status in order to get to go home—within two weeks of that. Cost me my army officer’s status.

Osborne:Well….

Smith:I had to go back in as a PFC, and go up through the ranks.

Osborne:What rank did you leave as?

Smith:I was a Technician, Sergeant Technician. I was the technician in charge of equipment. I was a three-strip sergeant, but I was a technical.

Helen:I always did like this picture here….I guess because he had then [laughter].

Osborne:That hair’s important, isn’t it?

Smith:That’s over in France. 83:00There was a barber—a woman barber—we’d go in and get your haircut, and she’d take your picture.

Osborne:Oh.

Smith:And plaster your hair down with some kind of heavy axle grease, or something.

Helen:Now you did look this, didn’t you all this stuff….

Smith:[ ]. This is a coal mining thing…that’s a motor in the mines and that’s my wife—that little girl sitting on there—her daddy and her uncle.

Osborne:And who are all those other kids?

Helen:My cousins, and some of my sisters.

Smith:That’s two men, and their kids.

Helen:Do you know what they done? My uncle had a little bit of pull at the mines—he let us go to the mines on Sundays.

Smith:He was superintendent of the mines.

Helen:Yes, and he let us lay down in a car….

Smith:He was a mine foreman—her 84:00daddy there. This is where we lived up at Ligand, that’s the mines there, and that’s the shop building and this is the locomotive. That’s why I was telling you about running one of these when I was twelve years old—in the same mines up there.

Helen:But now they would never have permitted that. We laid down in the car and they said, “Don’t raise your head up, whatever you do, and don’t…look, shut your eyes.” I did and it felt like that top was coming in on us.

Smith:There was another one of them stories, there now…a written story that you should have…the boy that tells the story when we fought though his town in Germany. We fought through his town in Germany, and he…three 85:00jeeps come in the yard, after the fighting was over, and so the momma had to take all the kids and hide out. After the fighting….

Helen:They went to the woods, didn’t they?

Smith:That’s the first truck mines ever made in West Virginia, before we moved here about 1908.

Osborne:You were saying that the Germans were coming through and ….

Smith:The Americans had come through, and the Germans…he lived in Germany, his mother and dad and all of them were Germans. He was, I believe he said, six and a half years old. We were fighting up here on the back of the mountain—back through there, and the boy was down here next to the river, there was this grist mill, and a farm, you know. And he just turned the tank around there and fired three rounds through the…just to shake everybody up, you know. 86:00He didn’t know that there was a German officer and nine soldiers in back of the building. And he said, this German officer—they’d all come in there the night before—we was pushing them, you see, and they come in there the night before, took up, and the German officer was sitting at the table. He’d made his mother fix him breakfast. And [ ] said she’d put something on the table and walked back to the other end of the kitchen, a shell come right through the window, right in front of this officer. Needless to say, he got up and left [laughter]. He went through the window, through the wall over here, through the water tank, and out another window, and hit a mail box and exploded. And said Momma got the kids and took off with them, said they had some French soldiers, prisoners that took care of everything 87:00at the farm. Said one of them had one of these fellows up [ ] when one of those shells, the shrapnel just tore him all the pieces. After the battle was over—you see them where those stories are—after the battle was over, everything slowed down. Everybody started coming back home, and he got…they started coming back home so three jeeps come in the yard, and he remembered the kind of numbers they had on, and everything. And then after he come back, he was a major in the United States. His daddy was American, and he picked up one of these jeeps, and rebuilt it just exactly the way that, when they looked back there, so he got pictures of mine, to copy his from, see. And that’s the one that’s on display, and you see that picture. 88:00 Osborne:Yes.

Smith:There’s some pictures there, in front of it. That’s when he brought it here to get Vada to stand up beside it. Now this—now he’s—there’s a story about that in here.

Osborne:I’m sure it’s right here in this pile of stuff. You nephew also said there was something about somebody getting a first jeep ride, in your jeep. Who got their first jeep ride? Was that King Leopold’s son?

Smith:Oh, no…I don’t remember that deal.

Osborne:Okay, all right.

Smith:I was on…in other words, we were guards for the palace 89:00there, and his boy would come out—he called it playing catch, but we’d play ball with him, like that. And a general, was his name [ ], but anyway, we captured Hermann Goering vehicle, and drove it—just to take along with us, [ ] but when we got into Austria, we still had that. That boy was playing with it, you know, that big old, it was a staff car—had two wheels…four wheels in the back and front and chauffeur sat out front…a Hermann Goering car. And we kept that thing, so 90:00the colonel got it, and gave it to the queen. We didn’t need it—Hermann Goering’s old car. And we drove that thing around. So he come there, he got in with the king and queen there—come in one night, she was driving that thing, had his helmet on, and he was drunk leaned over the side [laughter]. He went down to Italy—he had an Italian speedboat. He got up there at one of them [ ] and put it on that lake. And when he opened that thing up, everybody else had to get out of the way. It just about threw all the water out of the lake. The lake was four or five hundred feet wide, you know…a nice, [ ] lake. And you could tell when he was around, he would ride that boat up and down that lake.

Helen:Who was that?

Smith:That general [ ] and 91:00he’s the one that signed my citation that I got.

Osborne:Now was this still during the war, or was this after the war?

Smith:The war was over. It was after the war. We ended up in Austria at this big lake on Saint [ ], and it was a great big old long lake. And the Germans had a training place there—a naval training base—on that lake, where they trained new boys. So we took them all as prisoners.

Helen:I just now thought where your pictures are…Deanna took them in a big….

Smith:Yeah, some of these things there…the reunion dinner speaker Lieutenant…that’s just one of our….

Osborne:So when you came back after the war, then did you go back into mining?

Smith:I come back…I got in on….and 92:00by the way, my wife’s wedding anniversary is on Halloween night, October 31.

Helen:[Laughs] His wife’s anniversary….

Smith:When I come back from the Army Signal Corp—I got home on Halloween night. And I stayed home until January. When I got out of the Army, I got home on Halloween night.

Osborne:Hmmm. Wow, that’s a good anniversary present.

Smith:Friday night, I tell you…Halloween night was our wedding anniversary, and I think all that time, I only missed one Halloween when I was overseas, I couldn’t get home, but I was over there for twenty-four months. But the way I left, and got back, I only missed one Halloween out of that whole deal. I got home on Halloween night, a Friday night, and I went back to work Monday, 93:00at the coal mines. My job was waiting for me.

Helen:And then tell her the rest of the story…what you eventually went into, along with the mine.

Smith:Well, I…after I…Monday I went to work, and the next Saturday, I drove down to Huntington, West Virginia to try to buy equipment to put a radio shop in. Well, the sold me what they had there, but you couldn’t get anything—everything was rationed, parts were rationed, and everything else. They took my name, and everything. So they told a boy, some meter, a vacuum tube volt meter, something that I needed real bad, and they sold one to a man in Prestonsburg. The said it’s the only one we had, got in, but…so they took my name down, and didn’t know me from nobody. 94:00So I came back to Prestonsburg, and stopped at this man’s house, and bought everything he had—his whole shop, and everything, and loaded it up, and brought on up to Hi Hat, and put me in a radio shop. Well, Wednesday of the next week, that company down there sent me another outfit just like it. And I had to send it back, because I’d already bought one. So I went in the radio business—that was in ’45. I worked in the mines, and repaired radios. So in 1949, they started putting a TV station in Huntington, West Virginia. So I ‘d work until I got off at the mines at 2:30 in the evening, drive to Huntington, West Virginia, and take television classes, under the…. RCA sent their engineer to Huntington, set up a class in a hotel—forget the name of the hotel, it was the only one that had there at that time—but we 95:00put antenna on top of the roof, and we were picking up Cincinnati stations, and the first television to come into Huntington, West Virginia—was shipped, and we got it, and had to put it together come in two boxes that they send you. They’d send you the chassis in one box, and a picture tube in another. You had to put that all together—you had to build it yourself, after you got it. There was a monitor at the station, at WSAZ station had a monitor—they didn’t have a television set—they had a monitor in the station, but we had a television set that we put together there, [ ] it, had to line it all up and everything. And I would leave down there—class was over at 11:00, drive back home—it’s 120 miles—drive home, work the next day, go back the next day. 96:00So when that was…when they put the station in, then, nobody could get television, except around town, you know. They could set up an antenna. And I bought a television set—the first one that came around. At the top of that hill out there, run a line off my house [ ] and I put a cable up the hill, and I watched Joe Lewis get whipped at my house, his last fight.

Osborne:Oh goodness.

Smith:I had cable run off the hill. People come from every place to look at the television.

Helen:Let me explain to her how he would go up on the hill to check the signal…are you, you’re not recording that, are you?

Osborne:Yeah.

Smith:So we put the line in—no 97:00such a thing as a field stress meter, or anything like that, so I carried the television back atop of that hill.

Osborne:Oh my goodness [laughs]!

Smith:And run the line back there, and set the television up—had a special box [ ], and carried back up there, and oriented the antenna, and everything and bring the television back home. And, so it went from that…I got…they started sending me equipment through the Huntington station…Huntington Electronic Supply, in Huntington, and two or three places I’d get equipment from. They’d give me equipment, I’d test it, and send back and make reports on it for cable. That’s where…how the got cable systems all got started. Not just by me, but everybody else was doing the same thing, you see…trying to get the picture. But when they put the station in, everybody in the mountains couldn’t get a picture. So we had to develop something else. 98:00[ ] go back where the picture was on top of the mountain, and run it off to the valley. So I put a television cable in here, and then I hooked my neighbor on it, and the next neighbor, and the next neighbor, so…I went to [ ] equipment to put in a tower back on the mountain, and put in…it cost four hundred dollars for the equipment to put the antenna and cable off the hill; of course, it costs more than that now, but then, it was four hundred dollars. But I hooked ten customers on it and got my four hundred dollars back—charged them forty dollars apiece. And I started charging four dollars a month, so I got forty dollars, and then I had my four hundred dollars back, and forty dollars a month, I mean four dollars a month that we could use, see—ten of them….

Osborne:That’s forty dollars.

Smith:Then I hooked up ten more, spent my four hundred dollars 99:00and hooked up ten more, ten more, and ten more. Kept it forty years, raised two kids through college, sold it and got ….I won’t tell that.

Osborne:[Laughs]. Well, you got more than four hundred dollars back out of it.

Smith:I got my four hundred dollars. At the end of the time, I still had four hundred dollars, you see. I got it back several times.

Helen:Did you tell her how you checked the signal? I had to shoot the gun when it came through.

Smith:To start off with, of hooking these antennas up, I’d…she’d have a picture at home, and I’d go up there to adjust the antenna. When I’d get a good picture on it, she’s shoot the pistol, see. 100:00Osborne:[Laughs]. That’s good! So you just had to keep going around, and around, and around until she…you couldn’t go very fast, could you? I remember those days of TV antennas—a little bit more, a little bit more…[laughter].

Smith:So I…it come out, people come out with a field stress meter, which you had to plug it in the wall—you know, had to have power for it. We didn’t have no power on top of the mountain, of course. So I’m at the mines—I went to work in the mines—we had battery lights. Well, when I was overseas, I had an incident then, so…I had the…we needed—the Army every time it would go into a town, it would take over the radio station, and call it armed service station. They’d play music on it, though. So 101:00I went in, got a radio, and wired the power supply out of a jeep—wired it up so I could get 110 volts out of it, and plug the radio in it. Put some filters in it, to get some noise out, and all that stuff—I knew what to do. So I had a radio in my jeep. Well, a Lieutenant came along and caught me—I didn’t know…take that in and give it to the Captain. I said, “The Captain can’t use that.” “Well, take it in there and give it to him anyhow.” Well, I had to use my jeep—I had my jeep wired so I could plug it into the radio, and get 110 volts out of it. So Captain would use it for a while, but when he had to give me orders to do something, radio broke out or something, I had to go—wherever the problem was. I took my jeep and that took his radio. 102:00So after that, I decided I wouldn’t be done that way anymore, so I went into a German house, and I got a big radio. I took all the guts out of it, took the entire transformer out and threw it away, and got a 12-volt battery that we had in vehicles you know. I had my 12-volt batteries up in line to it to light the tubes up, and then I put these…we had a battery pack in a jeep, a 150-volts a dry cell battery. So I had access to supplies, so I took a 150-volt battery and wired that battery to work the plate to the tubes. A radio tube has got two voltages—you got a high voltage there and you’ve got 6-volt to run the battery. So I wired that up, and I’d take those big speakers, 103:00and I’d hang it out on the side of a German truck—I’ve got a picture of it here some place. Captured a German truck and made a radio shop in it. And assigned a driver to drive that truck, and I repaired the radios—I had a shop that went right along with us…had the radios, and I’d bring them in and repair them there, and I kept the extra ones. Some place here is a picture of a truck that I had in Salzburg, Austria. We parked at Salzburg, Austria. It’ll be here someplace. But I knew how to redo things like that, so I built me battery-power supply 104:00by doing the same thing…I’d go up in the mines, and get the mining batteries, tear them apart, and rebuild the field transmitter, so I could carry on top of the mountain—built my own.

Osborne:So while you were running your TV, or your cable company, did you also work in the mines?

Smith:Worked in the mines all the time.

Osborne:Okay, and what did you do in the mines?

Smith:I started off as the water boy, in 1936, 105:00I started off as the water boy—and in 1963, I was the superintendent and I shut the mines down, and worked it out. I went from water boy to superintendent.

Osborne:Would it be right there in that manila envelope?

Smith:There’s a picture of Vada. Now here’s the [ ] we’re building one now…this is what we got built, just like this—exactly like that right there. I’m going to drive it in the parade, week after next.

Osborne:Oh, okay.

Smith:In the Jenny Wiley parade, coming up, we’ve got it ready—I’ve got four new tires laying there to put on it. 106:00Osborne:So is your jeep here, now?

Smith:Yeah, I’ve got one down here I’ve rebuilt. I keep it in my garage for 37 years, and I decided to rebuild it. Now here is something…this is the accomplishment letter—that’s from my colonel after the war was over, he wrote us a letter. You might read that; he’s something that goes with it. This tells the number of boys that was killed, and their names, and addresses. That’s how many we lost. 107:00Here’s the story that you’re wanting to see. That’s what you were wanting to see there. This is part of it too.

Osborne:So, you started…you worked in the mine at, at….

Smith:I started, like I said, years ago, when I come back from the Army, I got back to work in the mines, and I worked as long as there was any mines—in other words, when 108:00the seam of coal worked out, we shut the mines down, and I was the first man on the job, and I was the last man on the job. When we moved down here when [ ] was starting this new lines out here, I come with my dad down here and we started mining—January, 1936. Well, I worked here off and on until I went to the Army; when I come back, I went back to work, and I worked then until they shut it down in 1963.

Helen:Did you tell about your sons taking over and helping you when they got out of college?

Osborne:How many children do you all have?

Smith:Two—he took over the cable system, actually, when 109:00he got out of college, and stayed right with it. Still cries because he sold it [laughter].

Helen:We’ll never let him [ ]—he loved that work.

Smith:Well, everybody makes mistakes, some good—some bad.

Osborne:So, how did you all meet, or when did you all get married?

Smith:Oh, no, we growed—we come in this world together. You don’t want to hear that now—that’s the part that was in the movies.

Osborne:That’s the part that’s going to be in the movies? [Laughs].

Smith:It would have been in the movies—yes. She lived at Lillian; come here in 1922—that’s the years that she was born, and I was born…1922. 110:00I come over here when I was nine years old: I come in 1932. She was selling the Grit Paper— Osborne:She was selling the Grit Paper?

SmithShe and her sister sold the Grit Paper. So when the train run, every Friday—the Grit Paper came in on Friday, and then just after the train…see there’s only one was…you either go up the creek, or you down, see. The train would go up there and stop, and then it would come back out. The train set there for awhile and it would pull back out. There’s a trestle up here, went across from one line to another, when I was working when I twelve, I’d come out of that mine with the motor, and go into the other mines and work all night, then come back and go to the other, all by myself. 111:00But, [ ] trestle, I looked down the road, and set down and watched down the road, and these two little girls come up and goes to peddling papers. I run off that bridge—I was about nineteen years old, ran off that bridge right back to the house. These mining companies, they didn’t have bathrooms in then. Everybody had to stand out in back of the house with a washbowl and a towel. I went up there and I run my hand over my face, and grabbed that wash stuff, like all that dirt on that towel, you see, then it’d leave a big black place on the towel, and it would have ring this way. I’d run out the front door to meet the Grit Paper girls. And see, she still hasn’t got away from me [laughter].

Helen:He’s still hanging on.

Osborne:So how long have you all been married?

Smith:Come Halloween night? What is it, Granny…sixty-five years.

Helen:Yes, sixty-five years.

Osborne:Well, what’s the secret to a long 112:00 marriage?

Smith:Get you one you’re afraid of! [Laughter]. I always said you get you one of them little hillbilly girls, and you’ve had it…there’s no way to get rid of them. I went to…got me a job in the mines, you know, and started to work that next morning. Went in on a man trip, and the motorman stopped the motor. “Now, Smitty, I’m going to tell you something.” This is a [ ] where everybody worked hard, you know. “This is a job that you work out. You’ve got a nice-looking little woman down there. If you ever starve one to death, you can’t never get another one…you’re going to have to work, and keep her up. You can beat one to death, you can run her off, you can do whatever you want to, but if you ever starve one to death, you can’t never get another.” 113:00 [Laughter].

Osborne:Oh, goodness!!! Lord, now what do I ask? So when you started working in the mines, where they doing hand loading.

Smith:Hand loading, yes. I loaded coal for the gang work. We loaded—we had on the gang, now, I loaded—I’ve done all kind of work in the mines. I’ve done company work, I’ve laid track, I’ve been with the engineers—drug the chain for engineers, I’ve done everything. But for the gang work, he would get ten men, give them a motor, machine and ten bank cars, and a section of the mine. And everybody worked, see. We had six loaders, machine crew was 114:00two men, that cut the coal, and two of them would haul the coal. That’s the loader man, brakeman, and machine man, his helper. The had six loaders—I was one of the six loaders. And our quota was 180 times a day. Those six men loaded 180 tons a day. You’d load 30 tons a man. When you got your 30 tons of coal laid, you could come outside. We always got out, off early, nearly every day…with nothing but a shovel.

Osborne:Now, did you all have…did you all have….

Smith:Rail mines, and make drop-bottom cars that would hold five tons a car. And you load twelve of them cars would get you sixty tons. You see two men load together, and two more men load in another place, and two in another place—we’ve cleaned up that one, 115:00and then we’d go to the next one. We had to lay all the track from the…they had company men that would lay the big long rails—the thirty foot rails. At the end of that thirty foot, we’d have to mine another thirty feet. We’d load that small jumpers to keep our cars up. We set all the safety timbers and then if it was a bad top, they had to set eight by eight timbers. And they floored it with timbers. The company men [ ] eight by eights, we set all the safety timbers. That’s what we called “dead work.” You got all that kind of work besides loading thirty tons of coal everyday.

Osborne:Now did you all use machines like to get the coal out? You didn’t do any pony mines, or anything like that?

Smith:We had all kinds. We had pony mines, but this particular 116:00mine right here, we had steel rails in it, but we at Ligand, now, we had ponies. That was my first job. I had mines—like I said when I went I when I was twelve years old—my company job was to take care of the pony. I was the stable man. I’d go to school, and after school each day I’d feed, I’d fix…the pony didn’t come out of the mine until six o’clock at night. See, he went in at six o’clock in the morning, and they worked twelve hours. I would feed the ponies and everything in the morning, have the food in there. Then I’d leave. When I’d come back of the evening, then all their food would be in the boxes, and water and everything—I did that. My dad never did give me a dime to school, I worked my own way. Like I said, I had a year and a half of college, when the war broke out. 117:00Osborne:What were you majoring in?

Smith:Whatever.

Osborne:You were doing your general ed work stuff.

Smith:I went into electronics. I went to the World Fair in 1939, and I watched I television up there. They had the first television—I saw one of the first televisions that was ever made. And they had an antenna on top of the Empire State Building, and it was…they said they had a television set at the World’s Fair, 1939, I got the chance to go. And the TV—they had a TV station, the only station in the world, now, was in New York. And the Empire State Building was the site of the antenna, on top of that building. And they could reach out 24 118:00miles, as [ ] pick up a picture. And, so, I’ll tell you something else. One of my instructors was an engineer in a radio station in Cincinnati, WLW. When we were back here, we could pick up Nashville, Tennessee, three or four stations was all you could get off the radio. You had to put an antenna from one side of the mountain to the other, take pop bottles and tie between the insulators and drop the wires straight down to your house before you could get anything. And Cincinnati came on the air with an experimental station, that had a 750,000 watt station in Cincinnati; weren’t allowed to turn it on until after six o’clock in the evening, and it could run until six o’clock the next morning. But when they turned it on, that was the only thing you could get—it 119:00would drown everything else out. And the instructors sitting back in that station, they had a [ ] scope there and you could see the pictures, I mean the signals. And had streetcars in Cincinnati—that’s something you don’t see anymore. Huntington had streetcars, and Cincinnati, Louisville, and so forth, but every time a streetcar turned a curve around town, the signal would reflect from that streetcar back to the radio station. And they got to studying it, and they tell you that the British had radar first; radar came to Cincinnati High. Radar was discovered at Cincinnati High, because an experimental radio station would put out so much signal, 120:00that it would reflect from the streetcars, when they turned the curve. So they could tell which one it was—tell how long the streetcar was, and how fast it was going when it turned the curve.

Osborne:Wow.

Smith:So that’s the first place that ever had radar.

Helen:How did you find that out?

Smith:My instructor was the one of the people that did that.

Osborne:Okay, and that was when, in what year?

Smith:That was in…’34, ’35 and ’36.

Osborne:Okay.

Smith:And then when they say it was the British was the first one to discover radar, well, you could watch television and pick up streetcars with it, instead of our planes, you know [laughter].

Osborne:First used it with streetcars, huh? Now, did your mines ever use goats, or did they just use ponies? 121:00Smith:We had ponies up here, and in truck mines up here in the holler, I had ponies in my mines, and a pony is a [ ] thing in the world. We had ponies in another mine up here and I had a little mule, in one of my mines. It was one that…a circus had brought some small mules through here, and I bought two or three of them, and let them work in the mines. And it here’s something else I started to tell you about. It’s slipped my mind, now…we talked about the radar, and the first television. 122:00But Atwater…that engineer that was working for Atwater Kent and when they went over the England, I told you in 1939, we had television in New York. Well, in 1944… ’43 and ’44, this engineer from Atwater Kent went over to England and put a transmitter in a B-25 bomber, and he flew over the coast of Normandy during the invasion, and Eisenhower and the officers in charge of the war, set there and watched the invasion on television. There weren’t any televisions out for public at that time. Public television didn’t come out until 1946. And I put a television 123:00right off that hill in 1949—three years later. Four years later, I had a cable system. Hi Hat had cable television in 1950.

Osborne:1950.

Helen:I believe we had about…over 2,000 customers.

Smith:I started off with me, and my neighbors, up this line here, and then neighbors down across the hill, there, and it just kept running and when I ended up, I had sixty-four miles of cable, and had over 2,000 customers on it.

Osborne:And have you all always lived right here?

Smith:Well, we lived down here when we got married. And when I come back from the Army, we never lived together until after I come back from the Army.

Helen:Not very long, 124:00anyway. We were in Colleen, Texas for awhile.

Smith:But my dad built her a company—when I went to the Army, the company I worked for built her a house, so when she came back from Texas—she was with me out in Texas, and I went overseas—and they built her a little two-room house down here. She’s in that when I come back from the Army. And I moved from there up here, in this same bottom, I moved right over there. That house burned down, and my dad had this, and my mother lived here, she passed away. My dad had a farm over in Ohio, so he went back over there, and I bought this house, after my house burned down. So I just lived right here at Hi Hat, ever since—all our married life’s been at Hi Hat. We lived four miles up the creek before that. There was a mining camp up there, but it’s all gone now.

Osborne:What was the name of that mining camp? 125:00Smith:It was…Hi Hat Elkhorn Coal Company—it was that same company that come from West Virginia, over here in ’31, you see. My dad came in ’31, and we bought—the family came over January of ’32. Well, I don’t know if you get a story all of that crap or not.

Helen:I thought they called that Blue Beaver.

Smith:Well…Blue Beaver was a camp—there’s two mining companies up there, originally, and my dad during the Depression, bought both of those mines, him and [ ] did. Bought the one at Garrard, and these two up here, and started them back up. Well, they come over here and started the company and shut down in West Virginia—they come over here and bought these two and then they called him, and he came over. He was 126:00the man that did the mining, the company was someplace else, you know. And he was the company representative that moved around the mines. He worked for them over in West Virginia.

Osborne:Okay.

Smith:He worked for them over in West Virginia.

Osborne:Well, did you ever have any problems with any Indian disputes or anything in your mines?

Smith:No, I belonged to a union for years here. I was union man, and my dad was a foreman, no problem there.

Osborne:You know, in Harlan County, lots of times you’ll get…..

Smith:Well, they did have that problem in Harlan County, but we didn’t have those problems right in here. Our people was meaner in this part of the country than they were over there. What happened—the local people resented the people that come in to work—friction 127:00and all like that, and there was…the mining camps were bad anyway. They put up…the company owned the stores, they owned all the houses—they rented the houses. Of course, my dad was the general foreman, he rented all the houses, and he was a…just…he was in charge of the stores, and the doctors, and the offices, and all that kind of stuff. But company had their own money, they called it script, and had…when we were in West Virginia, it was…we lived in Logan County, where that script had an ‘L’ in it. When we moved to Ligand, they brought the same script with them, it had the ‘L’ in it, see—Ligand Mining Company, Logan Mining Company. But 128:00the company was the Elkhorn Mining Company, and the Elkhorn Mining Company Ligand, and when we moved down here, it was the Hi Hat, see. Because Elkhorn owned the coal that they had leased from them.

Osborne:So you were telling me way back that you were the oldest of seventeen children?

Smith:No, I was the oldest boy.

Helen:Part of them died at birth.

Smith:Several of them died—the oldest…I guess, there’s…let’s see, we’ve got one girl left, haven’t we now…Helrose. My oldest sister died last spring, last January. I had a brother that died last fall, and one died four years before that. And we had a little girl that died up here in the holler, 129:00she was about three years old. There’s several of them….

Helen:Four boys and one girl left, I believe.

Osborne:So how many brothers did you have?

Smith:Ten boys and six girls.

Helen:That was a single marriage.

Osborne:Oh, was he married more than once?

Helen:No, that’s what I meant.

Smith:My mother had seventeen children. They were all single births—weren’t any twins.

Osborne:I know you were the oldest boy, but you were the number what in the line?

Smith:Well, the ones that lived to mature, I’ve got one sister older than me, and one sister older than me died 130:00in 1918 during the…flu epidemic. One died in the flu epidemic. They didn’t all live…and by the way, there was only one died out of her family, and they had thirteen. Her family was thirteen, and my family was seventeen. Used to big families, you know—people had big families.

Osborne:Well, is there anything else that you can think of that you want to tell me about?

Smith:Oh I could think of a lot of stuff [laughter] but….

Helen:He could talk all night.

Osborne:Well, I…how about if you want to talk some more, maybe we can schedule a sequel here.

Smith:Well, I tell you, if I was ever to tell you anything else, I’d tell you the story of my wedding, but I’d better not tell that one. 131:00Osborne:Oh, come on, we’ve got time for the wedding story....[laughter].

Helen:Don’t you dare, don’t you dare [laughter].

Smith:We catch her gone sometime, I’ll tell you the wedding story [laughter].

Osborne:Catch her gone…[laughter].

Helen:That is awful [laughter].

Osborne:I don’t know.

Smith:Have you turned that off?

Osborne:No, I haven’t yet.

Smith:Well, I won’t give you that wedding on that.

Osborne:Okay.

Helen:No you don’t [laughter].

Smith:You can laugh about it want to, but you don’t want it wrote down.

Osborne:One of the things…I would love to get some copies of some of the pictures that you’ve got for the Oral History Commission. Is there anyway we could figure out… Smith:Well, I tell you, I’ve got a book—there’s a history of it. Helen look right there in that thing, see if there isn’t one of those history books right there. It’s got all of this stuff in it.

Osborne:It’s got all these pictures and stuff in it?

Smith:Yeah, all these things.

Helen:I don’t know…I haven’t seen one right here.

Smith:Yeah, it’s laying right in there.

Helen:I put a bunch of those books in the back. 132:00Smith:There was two in there. I bought one in…they reprinted them, and when they did I bought an extra one, and took it down to the library, and donated it to the library. It’s got the whole history…it’s the history of the unit [ ]. That letter is from the colonel right there, that you saw awhile ago, tells you…maps and everything where we went into Normandy, and site where we went into [ ] and went down…we went to [ ] down to 133:00[ ] and it shows right here, there’s several troops. My troop went all the way down, almost down to the end of it, and come back and through Touraine, through Le Mans, Fountainbleau, Paris, Nancy, France. Nancy, France—I hear Nancy, Nancy’s where…went from Nancy to Metz…[ ] pockets, where they killed all the Germans there, a whole army of them. Caught them in there, and blocked it off, and killed a whole bunch of them. [ ].

Helen:Did she see them?

Smith:I showed her that. Nuremberg, Bomberg, back to Nuremberg, and Salzburg. Now here’s where we ended up in Salzburg over in Austria. And some of our boys went down through the Alps Mountains, to Italy, and then back, but my buddy, Rex Geahart, down here next door, his picture’s on these things here—he 134:00was a gunner on a tank. They took the tank battalion on down there. There was an uprising, and they went down there and straightened that out, and then they come back.

Osborne:Now is Mr. Geahart still alive?

Smith:No, he died about four years ago. Here’s my colonel—that’s his picture. Chapter I, Normandy, Chapter II, The Run Through France, Chapter III, [ ] Force, I didn’t tell you anything about that, and then your winter campaign. And Chapter V says The End, and Glossary, Accommodations and the Apex…that’s where you find pictures, in there. There’s a story about it there, and then over here’s some of the other places we went through. It’s more maps, you see. So, it’s got it all in there…there’s 135:00some pictures, right here.

Helen:If I had known about what kind of pictures you wanted, I wouldn’t have put those away.

Smith:A [ ] gun’s fire. We had…a [ ] gun was a tank [ ] with a 75 mm gun on it, that lobbed a shell out there. In all those pictures through there, you’ve got… Osborne:Would you mind if I borrowed this book?

Smith:I don’t know how well I can trust you—there isn’t another book like that [laughter].

Helen:He’s got two of those.

Smith:[Laughing]…don’t tell her that!

Helen:No, we’ve got two. 136:00I think that was the first one we got.

Osborne:Do they have a place where you can buy these?

Smith:No, we had them printed, and they give us…each man one, and then about ten years ago, we had a reprint of them. And then you could by the reprint for $50. I bought one, and then I bought an extra one to give to the library.

Osborne:I don’t think there’s any way…I brought my digital camera, so I could take a picture of you guys, but I don’t know that I can get good pictures of your photographs, and those are some really wonderful photos.

Smith:I’ve got a big one that I’m taking with me. There’s a picture of it in there—a picture of it in here, if I can find it. 137:00Helen:That big one up there.

Smith:That big one we had up there [ ] that jeep. I’m featuring it with the jeep—I’ve got to take that jeep over to this parade, and set it over there for people to look at, and then we’ve got this big picture, a 4 X 8 picture, a great big one—that covers a whole wall. I’ll show you a picture of it in a minute.

Helen:All the people in that thing Smith:Two German prisoners [ ]. That’s the way when I met Patton. I had one of them, there’s a bar that stands up in front of that and they sit there and hold to that bar—you can see the end of it sticking up above their heads.

Osborne:Now is a copy of that picture in this book?

Smith:Yeah, they’re all in there. This one right here…I’m quite sure it’s in there. 138:00Well, we’d take that jeep and sit that picture up right beside it where you can see it and look at the jeep and then look and then look at the picture. When I get back I’m going to take it to the restaurant out here, it’s got all of the GI’s that they can find in the county’s pictures in there, so I’m going to take that and put it on the wall, and put it down there.

Osborne:Well, if there’s not anything else that you can think of to tell me, then we’ll….

Smith:You don’t want to hear that wedding [laughter].

Osborne:I probably do, but I don’t know that you’re going to tell me [laughter].

END OF INTERVIEW