Oral History Interview with Alvin Armstrong

Today is October the 24th, 2007, and I am here with Alvin Armstrong, at his residence in Lexington, Kentucky, and my name is Mary Reed. Mr. Armstrong is going to tell us about his military experience in World War II. So, Mr. Armstrong, what year did you join?

Armstrong: I was drafted in… Reed: You were drafted! Right.

Armstrong: …in April of…1941.

Reed: Now was that into the army?

Armstrong: Army.

Reed: Okay. All right, can you tell us then about your experience?

Armstrong: Well…the fellow in charge of the draft board, I met him on the street on Saturday and he said, “Alvin, you’re going to the army Tuesday.” I said, “wait just a minute, I’m not mad at nobody, I don’t believe in fighting, I don’t want to go to the Army.” And he said, “well you have two choices, go to the army 1:00or go to jail.” Reed: Whoa!

Armstrong: I said, “I’ll go to the army.” Reed: Yeah.

Armstrong: So they said I just had to go for one year and I spent four years, five months and twenty-two days in the military.

Reed: And you still remember exactly how many days, yeah.

Armstrong: Yes. And so I…I was inducted in, in Louisville at the post office, and I was shipped to Cincinnati and I got all of my military equipment, shipped back to Fort Knox for my basic training, then I…got through my basic training, they pulled me out of the group and made me a sergeant, and shipped the rest of them on out to another camp. So I had to train two different outfits after I got my training. I was called a drill sergeant, and the last ones we trained why, they asked us, sergeants 2:00to go with the guys we trained and we went to several different camps, I pulled two m…movers—maneuvers in Louisiana, one in the summer and one in the winter, and we shipped from there to San Diego, California. I spent several weeks there, amphibious training, and we left Camp (Cook?), I left San Diego and I went to Camp (Cook?), we was home guard there for several months, and they finally said, “we got to ship you overseas.” So, we left San…Seattle, Washington, and we went to the Hawaiian Islands, and when we got…went there, we was really scheduled to go to the Philippines in operation, but…we didn’t get in the Hawaiian Islands soon enough, so they pulled out the home guard out of the Hawaiian Islands and sent them in our place, and…and we had to be home guard 3:00for several months. And finally they was making up plans for the operation of Okinawa, and…they said, “we need to have tank flame throwers, to go to Okinawa and do it in the caves and the ledges, corral rock, nothing else would take the place of flame throwers. So we was made a flame thrower outfit, before we were seventy-five millimeter…tank outfit. So we s…spent several months cutting all the ammunition racks out, moving everything that was not needed in the flame thrower, and mounted all of our flame thrower equipment into the seventy-five millimeter tanks. There was very little training. We…loaded up and set sail and we didn’t know where to, 4:00and Tokyo Rose come on every day at twelve o’clock and…she told that the 713th Flame Thrower Battalion was going to, was headed for Okinawa. And we did not know it, until we heard her say it. And after four or five days, they come over the loud speakers that [Chuckling] she was exactly right, that we was going to Okinawa [Chuckles – Reed]. So I spent…a month or two on the ships making up the convoy. We stopped in a lot of different islands all up through the Pacific, and…we spent a whole week in the Philippines waiting for the rest of the troops to catch up with us. So, we set sails for Okinawa and pulled in there in the dark, and, and all night long they pounded the beaches with the big naval guns, 5:00and we knew that we was headed for a big fight. So Easter morning, at daylight, we started going ashore for the invasion. So, I thought I’d be smart and get in the back of the line and watch everything, and find out what was going on before I got involved, and lo and behold they called me from, from the back up to the front, filed the first mission of the 713th Flame Throwers.

Reed: They must have thought a lot of you.

Armstrong: And…they knew that I was an agriculture-type guy and knew the terrains and everything and, and was aware of what’s laying ahead of us. So about two lengths of a football field, we ran into opposition and we knew the war was on. We spent…several weeks 6:00and months at making our way through Okinawa. But the sad part of it was that Okinawa was the enemies’ artillery range, they had every inch of the island mapped out and if they knew where you was at you was in big trouble, and the bad part of our situation was, when we’d fire our mission, there’d be a big bellow of smoke roll into the air, and they knew exactly where we was at, and so you, here would come the artillery. So we had to fire our mission and turn around and scat out of there, and so, leave the poor infantry on the ground [Chuckling] to hold us. So this went on for…quite a lengthy time and about half way through the operation, a big typhoon hit Okinawa and…they 7:00have a hundred ( ) eighty mile-an-hour wind and it blew a lot of our medical records clear away, and never did could find them, and…after the typhoon had passed over, we went back to fighting again. And so, what would happen, if we would take a hill, when you’re fighting a, a defensive war is different from an offensive war. They were dug in and hid and we couldn’t find them, and so we had to, we had to get out in the open to get one of them to start shooting at us before we could find them. And so, my job was, as a c…tank commander is to make all the decisions and, and st…corrections and so forth right in the…middle of the operation. So we would go in 8:00(fire?) our missions and the…medics would pick up the dead and wounded, and they’d lay them on the back of my tank and I, I would back up as far as I could to get away from the enemy before I turned around and they still would shoot at them while they was on the back of our tanks. So it gives you a bad feeling when you go over the hill, then to the front lines and see all the dead laying on each side of the road and wonder if you’re going to be there with them the next morning. And so…this went on for quite a while. So along toward the last…they was using the flame throwers every day from daylight to dark, because they was so effective. So…finally we pushed them back to the ocean and they didn’t have any 9:00place else to go and a lot of them started to…giving out and coming over to our side. But…that’s a…sad situation to be in. I remember my algebra teacher said one time that war is the most horrible thing that ever come to the face of the earth, and I had to experience it. So there is things that happened to you there that you never get away from, sticks with you for the rest of your life. I said when I left there that I was going to forget all that that I had seen and the dead, but it followed me home and it’s just a thing that you can’t get it out, out of your sights. I’ve seen people go completely bananas, just as nut as a fruitcake, and I—you try to help them and do what you can, but 10:00you’d have to watch them and hold to them while they’d get up and walk right into the front line and get killed. But it’s…the thing that, where the guys spend days and nights and…and eating together, you learn to bond, there is a bond there that you don’t get anywhere else, because they’re guarding your back while you guarding their back. So that’s the reason that since we come home and we have our, our reunions every year that we’re just excited and appreciate each other so much. Of course we had to fight World War II over every time we get together… Reed: [Chuckles – Reed] Yeah.

Armstrong: …us old timers. But…I was president of the 713th Flame Thrower Battalion for about eight or ten years. So this past year I (clears 11:00throat) passed it on to somebody else. I felt like I had had it long enough. I was also [Chuckling] secretary and financial officer, so I had double duty. But I enjoyed it. All of my life, I’ve always said, if I am in the service of my fellow man, I am in the service of, of our God. And I believe that. But…as you get older, you, you watch a lot of the…fellows bear the testimony of the military and the wars and so forth, and it’s so easy to start to getting the teardrops to fall again.

Reed: Mm-mm. How many…years were you in the service?

Armstrong: Pardon?

Reed: How many years were you in the service?

Armstrong: Four years, five months… Reed: Oh!

Armstrong: …and twenty-two days.

Reed: (Whispers) That’s 12:00right. So you were in until the end of the war?

Armstrong: Yes.

Reed: Yeah.

Armstrong: I, I, I didn’t mention that after the war was over the two big bombs was dropped…we were getting prepared to invade Tokyo and they actually dropped the bombs, and they said the war was over. So we parked our tanks and grabbed up our personal gear and headed for South Korea. I was in charge of a big train station, in a little town called Yong Dong Po, it was the main rail center between the north and south, and I was in charge of that, clear up until Thanksgiving, and loaded on the ships and started for home. But…that’s an experience you wish you didn’t have, but since you, you’ve had it, you had [Chuckling] to do the best you can with it.

Reed: Mm-mm. 13:00Your flame throwers, can you describe what they were like?

Armstrong: The flame throwers were…(patent?) by an individual…what we would do is split our…seventy-five millimeter guns wide open, and all the flame, flame thrower equipment in there. It had to have valves and out on th…(coughs) out at the end of this barrel you have a great big sparkplug with a wide gap in it, and…and in the bottom of the tanks, you got four big barrels-like that holds about a hundred, a hundred-fifty gallon of napalm. And napalm is a…was made out of a hundred-octane gasoline, and it’s a red powder-like yellow, you put it in the barrel and agit…agitated it for a while and it’s just like red Jell-O, 14:00and when you fire it, we had to have three sealed tube bottles with pressure to blow the napalm out, and we could get…oh, a hundred-fifty, two-hundred feet with the flame thrower.

Reed: So this was on a tank, this wasn’t a tank on your back, or… Armstrong: No, there… Reed: Okay.

Armstrong: …was no portable tank and… Reed: Okay.

Armstrong: …it had a, it had an M-4 medium size tank… Reed: Okay.

Armstrong: …and…we had to really arrange all the equipment inside to fit the flame thrower equipment, and so…sometimes you would have…faulty valves or something that you had to come back and get it repaired, but…but they used a…a 15:00big high-pressure hose to carry the fu…fuel from the tanks out into, in the gun, and…and napalm, why would go, would travel just like a football. You had to arch it high and it’d go over and, and hit what you was after. See, the enemy had dug back in the mountain and had piled big high mounds of dirt out in front of the caves, and that when I’d go into the cave, it’d go around that mound of dirt and on in the caves. And what we had to do is back up to where the flame would go over the top of the mound of dirt and it would go right on in the caves then. And their theory, after we’d pushed them as far back as we could, their theory was to w…to 16:00wer…work and weave their way through the front lines and destroy American supplies and so forth, and, and most of them never did get through the lines. But…but it was just a made shift type thing and it turned out so successful and after when the war was over, we’ve, we got a presidential citation for our performance in Okinawa, and…since we would hold our meetings and everything in Lo…in Fort Knox, we decided to have a monumental marker put in with a plaque on it of the 713th Flame Throwers, and we was held so highly then, and I spent almost a year having this plaque put in and then we had a dedication of course. 17:00But every year, just a few days before Easter, which was D-Day for us, I, we go to Fort Knox and put a big wreath on the monumental marker. We’ve done that for twenty-five/thirty years.

Reed: Whoa! How many members were there?

Armstrong: Starting out, it was seven hundred and twenty-four officers and men, fifty-four tanks.

Reed: Whoa!

Armstrong: And now I’ve got less than a hundred men on my mailing list…have died. We’re losing oh, five, six, eight, tens every year. See, they’re all up in their mid-eighties and upper eighties. We got some that almost ninety years old.

Reed: They’ve lived, lived a long life.

Armstrong: I’ll be eighty-nine my next birthday, so, I’m up in that bracket too.

Reed: Yeah, yeah.

Armstrong: So I have to keep all my ducks in order.

Reed: [Laughter – Reed], yeah. 18:00So did the flame throwers go in and kind and cleared the way for the ground troops?

Armstrong: What would happen there, when the infantry—see we worked as a team, you had the infantry and the artillery, and the seventy-five millimeters and the flame throwers. We all worked as a team. And when the infantry would run in stiff position, they couldn’t take, they’d back up a little bit and let the flame throwers come in and show us where the targets were and we’d go after them.

Reed: Okay.

Armstrong: And we never went…hardly on our own to…to do anything by ourself. We had to have two seventy-five millimeter tanks, one on each side of us for, for protection, because our range was so low, short that…they could be just out of our reach and shoot 19:00us to death, and then the fi…and the seventy-five millimeters would take over from there. At one particular time, I had a…a picture of the Kentucky, the silhouette and everything pasted on the top of my antenna, it said on there, ‘United we Stand, Divided we Fall.’ And…I went into the edge of the mountains and burned out caves and pillbox and so forth, and there was an artillery, enemy artillery gun setting out in the valley. He started firing direct fire at me, and he was getting closer with every round he fired, and…when I got back, I seen where they’d shot my antenna off, blew my…air filters all off of the tank 20:00and then we were lucky to get back alive, because they was really pounding us good, and…the thing that hurt my feelings that to…knocked my fa…Kentucky flag down [Chuckles – Reed], I didn’t like that very good. But...

Reed: A true blue son [Laughter – Reed] Armstrong: Yeah, it hurt my feelings when they did that.

Reed: Okay. Were you married at the time you were drafted?

Armstrong: No, I was not married, no.

Reed: Okay.

Armstrong: I didn’t marry until I was…in fifty-two, I got married.

Reed: Okay.

Armstrong: And…my wife and I have a basketball team and two cheerleaders.

Reed: [Chuckles – Reed] I’ll say! How many children does that add up to?

Armstrong: Thirty-seven…grandchildren.

Reed: Good grief! Good grief.

Armstrong: That’s some of them. The one on the left there is…he 21:00went to Ukraine and adopted two kids. He has six of his own and he went and adopted two more, a boy and a girl.

Reed: my goodness!

Armstrong: And the boy is as smart as a tack, really sharp boy. He is the one right behind his mother… Reed: Okay.

Armstrong: …the first one down here. And…of course the girls are, give them tr…give them a hard time all the time, and running after them and talking to them and everything, but…then I have one son that has…two Chinese children, about three and four years old. One of them is down there at the bottom on the second ( ) on the left.

Reed: Well, you’re a real international family, it sounds like.

Armstrong: Well, I’ve always tried to be a role model all my life, even in the military 22:00when, when I come home, and my dad always told me, he said, “Allen, try to be good for something, no need of being good for nothing.” [Chuckles – Reed]. So I took his word ( ).

Reed: Now, did you have brothers that served in the war with you, or… Armstrong: Four boys in my family in all those was in the service.

Reed: At the same time…during...

Armstrong: Two of us, two of us was in…Iwo—my brother was in Europe…under Patton, and I was in the Pacific, and…the other two brothers was drafted later on, after we got home.

Reed: Oh, after you were home.

Armstrong: Peace, peacetime.

Reed: In peacetime.

Armstrong: Just two of us was in the war. And…General Buckner from Carrollton, Kentucky was, was in charge of the operations of Okinawa. And five minutes before 23:00he was dead I could put my arm on his shoulder, I was that close to him. And five minutes later come over the radio and General Buckner just got killed on artillery shell, and I couldn’t believe it. He hadn’t much more left my tank until he got hit. But…that’s war for you; you don’t know when you’re in somebody else’s sights.

Reed: Right.

Armstrong: I have seen…I’ve seen the time that…you’re lucky to be where you was at, at the right time. I was pulling in to my bivouac area, and I (clears throat) the way we worked it there, there then, was we’d pull a tank over a level piece of ground and then move it out and dig a about a two-foot hole big enough for four men to get in, then we would pull the tank back over the hole and pull our blankets underneath and just lay in that cold ground 24:00and sleep. And five minutes before I pulled into my bivouac area, there was an artillery shell landed right in the hole where we had dug. It blew our bedding, and our mess kits, all of our personal gear, it just blew it away.

Reed: Whew.

Armstrong: And…that’s, boy this was my lucky day.

Reed: Yes.

Armstrong: If it had been just, just two minutes later we would have got it.

Reed: Uh-huh.

Armstrong: Well, I’ve seen the time that…artillery was so bad that there was two tank pulled the tanks right up against each other and dug a big hole behind the tank away, away from the enemy line, and the, nine of them was in this hole sleeping and the artillery shell went in the ground under the tank, went two-foot under and come out in the hole and exploded 25:00where all those guys was sleeping. Nobody would go up there and identify those bodies but they all pounced on me to go up there and identify those guys. Man, I tell you that was tough!

Reed: I can imagine that would be a, a nightmare that keeps returning.

Armstrong: That’s the, that’s the one of the bad ones for me. My mail carrier is such a nice guy he comes up and put my mail in the bag behind the door.

Reed: That’s nice. Yeah, you have a little bit of a hill to get down to your mail.

Armstrong: Yeah, yeah.

Reed: Yeah.

Armstrong: I normally have trouble to get down that hill and back.

Reed: Especially when it’s wet like today.

Armstrong: When I moved here I w…I wasn’t having any trouble getting up and down the hill. I got two letters going out, I hope he gets them.

Reed: I’m sure he will.

Armstrong: Yeah.

Reed: I’ll get this for you. Oops, it looks like I brought a leaf ( ) Armstrong: Don’t worry about them leaves. 26:00Reed: …with me..

Armstrong: They’re coming and going [Chuckles – Reed]. I have a lot of mailmen, but he is a nice one I’ve ever seen.

Reed: It looks like mostly junk. It is so typical.

Armstrong: Yeah. Thank you.

Reed: Here you go, you’re welcome. Well… Armstrong: Anything else you needed to know?

Reed: Well I was… Armstrong: I’ve got all day, I don’t have [Laughter – Reed], I don’t have anything else to do.

Reed: [Laughter – Reed] you don’t have anything else to do, right. Well, I was going to ask you if there is anything else you want to tell me about, you know, your experiences or, that time?

Armstrong: A lot of people say they wasn’t scared when they’re going 27:00to the front line, but they are.

Reed: You’ve got to be.

Armstrong: They put up a shield and try to impress their mind that they are not scared, but everybody was scared to death. So they can’t tell me any different, I have been there. But…it’s sad to see those guys go completely nut. I had one guy around, grab me around the neck and hold on crying just never seen them before in my life.

Reed: Do you think the wars today are any different on the soldiers than they… Armstrong: Push, push button wars now.

Reed: Push button?

Armstrong: Yeah. Firing artillery, rockets, planes.

Reed: But yet so many of them have…trouble adjusting when they come back.

Armstrong: Mm-mm.

Reed: Do you think that that’s different today than it was during World War II?

Armstrong: I think they’ve got a treatment that 28:00helps them get over that, they go through certain training and so, treatment and so forth, trying to get some pulled out of it, but you never get it completely cleared up. Well, my wife and I went to New York one time, we took a tour of all through New York. We seen guys laying right beside the gutters on the street, just alcoholics and dope addicts, and the, the guide that told us and just about everyone of them are guys that come back from the war and couldn’t get over it. Trying to drown their sorrow and their experiences with alcohol and dope.

Reed: Well…my husband served during the Vietnam War, and I know so many people that I would just say are totally nuts from it, but yet I don’t remember people from the World War II era, 29:00which my father served in, as being nuts, they seemed to function well in the war, and the world unless it was hidden from me, and not talked about or… Armstrong: Sometimes they had to put them in a room and lock the doors so they can’t walk away and stuff like that, have no knowledge of what they’re doing (clears throat). And I have gone in the Veterans Administration several times to visit people that’s in there, and it’s really s…scary and touching, when I see those guys like that. Some of them are…they, the war comes back to them and they want to start fighting the guy next to them or bang their head against the wall and everything. I come back with a complex…I couldn’t leave it, I said I wasn’t even going to let any of that follow me home but it did. For months and months, I could be laying in the bed, if the wind blew the door to and made a popping noise, 30:00I’d jump out of that bed and start running around and around in bed looking for a foxhole to get in [Chuckling]. And that’s a bad situation. I got over a lot of it, but I still hear some loud popping noise I, I jump up in bed and look all around.

Reed: Hum. Was there any therapy or…offered to you all when you came back?

Armstrong: I tell you the way I felt (clears throat) most of them, whatever is bugging me, I, I will get over it eventually and I don’t want to go through no strenuous treatment, and…medication and everything. They experimented on some guys, you know, getting certain tru…drugs that ruined their mind. And, in, in the war, in the army rather they call it losing it when the guy goes nuts. 31:00Reed: Okay.

Armstrong: Losing it.

Reed: Okay.

Armstrong: But…I’m lucky to be as well off as I am. I’ve seen guys that, so much younger than me passing away, I feel like I’m, I’m, I’m really lucky to be as well off as I am. Now my driver got killed half way through the operation, and the last thing that I told him before he went in the front line, I said, “don’t get out of your tank for anything unless it’s on fire or you got hit and can’t move.” I said, “other than that stay in that tank.” But he hadn’t been gone twenty minutes or half an hour, over the radio that “J. R. (DeWitt?) got killed.” What? Sniper got him right through here and cut everything completely, and tear ( ) heart through the…and (other?), he was standing and talking to a lieutenant. The lieutenant called him on the radio and told him 32:00to come over and show him the target and everything that he needed to fire, and just as soon as he stepped up on that tank, the lieutenant got it right through here and he got it right through here. And he was a young fellow about twenty-two years old and had a wife and a little girl, and I had to go through all of his equipment and everything and pick out his personal stuff put it in a container and mark it so they’d shipped it back to his wife. Boy that was rough!

Reed: Now how old were you at this time?

Armstrong: I was drafted, and I, I turned twenty-one in May and [Chuckling] went to the Army in April.

Reed: Okay.

Armstrong: Boy they was sitting waiting for me, and soon as I [Chuckling] …turned around they got me [Chuckles - Reed]. I didn’t have a chance to…go nowhere [Chuckling]. But…I, on my twenty-fourth birthday I was on Okinawa then. 33:00Mother’s Day was…was a big day for me. Chocolate Drop Hill was one of the toughest hills they had in all of Oki…Okinawa. They were so well fortified and it was close to the capital of Okinawa, and they tried to do everything to, to take it, but I was right up on, right in the middle of that, I seen twelve, fifteen tanks just blowed all to pieces, and I was right up there [Chuckling] around them, burning out pillboxes and their theory was that we ought to give about three or four squirts with the flame thrower, and…they had told, they told their men to wait until we made those three or four spurts and then go after us with a satchel charge, It’s a square box about that big a square, full of…nai…gunpowder, 34:00and there was a tube of nitroglycerine right in the top. They’d run down by the tanks and hit that nitroglycerine and, and that’d go off and blow the tank all to pieces. A lot of them got hit that way, but [Chuckling] we got smart after we read, read some of their ‘Hot Poop Sheet’ they called it, they would put out, you know, on their side, we’d get those and the interpreter would tell us what they said. Said, now wait until they, they get through firing and you go get them. And we’d fire two or three or four rounds and sat there and wait, and here he’d come, we hit him with that flame thrower and he, he cartwheel right through the air, that nitroglycerine would go off, and he’d go with it. But they had, they had valued, living wasn’t, wasn’t important, just dying for their country was 35:00important to them. That’s the way they ( ). I told everybody, I’d rather be a living coward than a dead hero [Laughter – Reed]. You can smell the flowers then.

Reed: Now what do—you referred to a pillbox. What is a pillbox?

Armstrong: A pillbox is where they l…dig in the ground like two, two or three feet, and they put big logs, this big around, lay on this, just like they’s building a log house… Reed: Okay.

Armstrong: …and lay them on the end of each other. And then they’d pile dirt up against that, and they’d have a slot about like that where they’d stick barrel of the gun through… Reed: Oh, okay.

Armstrong: …and then, and then move it around and… Reed: Okay.

Armstrong: See, they had every inch of that island measured off and, and if they knew where you was at, you was in trouble. So…that’s what we had to deal with all the time. 36:00Reed: Now did they put roofs over these barricades, or those pillboxes?

Armstrong: Some of them was laid logs over the top, you know, just like a log house.

Reed: Okay.

Armstrong: And the logs were big enough that, it was hard for the shells to penetrate through. But they had a gun that was dangerous, called it a forty-seven millimeter, and they had their bullet so made, they could fire on an angle instead of ricocheting off like our gun would do, that bullet would turn like that, the lead on the end of the bullet would stick in the hole of the shell and they would turn and go right through that thing.

Reed: Huh!

Armstrong: The front of those tanks was, was two and half inch of steel and the back part of it was…two inch of steel, and…sometime those shells would go inside the turret and then it’d go round and around in the turret, 37:00wiping everything out as it went. We had one Mexican fellow from Chicago [Chuckling] he was a clown, I never did know what his name was, we called him Pedro, Lopez, Pasquale [Laughter – Armstrong and Reed] everything. Anytime we’d call him Yeah I’m okay [Chuckling] He was a tank driver and (clears throat) his tank got hit, a shell went right through the front of the…turret and hit the two big batteries, two batteries about that big and the two of them in there and the shell went right through there and blew those batteries up and that’s about that close to his head.

Reed: Whew!

Armstrong: He got battery acid in his eyes and, and the tank commander said, “get out and run for it, boy, this thing is going to burn up.” And he jumped out and, and he, he was running but he didn’t know which way he was going 38:00[Chuckling] because he couldn’t see. And we’d ask him, “Chico how did you know you was going in the right direction?” and he said, “every once in a while somebody would pass me just flying, just a flying [Laughter and Armstrong]. But they did…wash it out of his eye, and kept patches over them for a while and he got his eyesight back. But he is not…that battery acid is a, boy it’s potent there.

Reed: Yeah, he’d be awful.

Armstrong: Yeah, just like your car batteries.

Reed: Uh-huh. Did you write this information here?

Armstrong: Mm, I don’t have my glasses right now. Somebody got a little of the history of what, how the pla…of 39:00the…organization was organized and… Reed: Now that may have been your son-in-law… Armstrong: Did that come off of… Reed: …Kevin (Massey?)?

Armstrong: …the computer?

Reed: Uh-huh.

Armstrong: Now, my son, the one on the left there down on the left hand of ( ) he put a lot of stuff in the computer and I never did know exactly what he put in there.

Reed: Okay.

Armstrong: I think he, I think he got a hold of some of the history of the…713th.

Reed: Now this, this is a, your son-in-law Kevin (Massey?) sent this.

Armstrong: Oh yeah, yeah.

Reed: Now, if you would like that, you may have it.

Armstrong: I can take a look at that.

Reed: I can, I can download another copy myself. But I don’t know…that just came along with the information with your name and number and…so it could just be that it, it’s already in the c…you know, on the computer on the internet somehow 40:00and he just forwarded that information, but that is your division there so… Armstrong: Yeah, I co… Reed: …it doesn’t mention any names, but it kind of talks about the history of what the flame throwers were and, and where they served.

Armstrong: See where it show… Reed: Why don’t you just keep that copy?

Armstrong: Well, if you’re ain’t using them I’d appreciate it.

Reed: Yeah, sure.

Armstrong: I’m not, I’m sure that my son has…he had another guy out in…Illinois, I believe it is, Mr. Fox, say he talked back and put it on the computer all the time and…they worked up deals in putting the stuff in the computer system and…I send out a newsletter every year telling everybody where the reunion will be and what the cost would be and the hotel and dinners, always had a banquet and, at the end of our reunion, 41:00and so I’m sure that’s where some of this comes from.

Reed: Okay.

Armstrong: Would you be interested in seeing a little of the o…operation of Okinawa?

Reed: I would, yes I would.

Armstrong: I don’t know how your time runs.

Reed: Well I’m, I’m in Lexington for the day so I’m, it’s all right.

Armstrong: You’re holding ( ) Reed: But at this point, I think what I’ll do is just turn the recorder off and… Armstrong: Okay.

Reed: …and I’ll watch, yeah.

Armstrong: Okay.

“END OF TAPE 1, SIDE 1” “START OF TAPE 1, SIDE 2” (Music background sounds) ‘( ) the strength of Okinawa’s mountains, specially in the southern part of the island. ( ) men had a t…met the Americans as they came ashore without opposition. This would allow time to prepare for the coordination of the land and sea strike.’ Armstrong: They have a copy of this in the Patton Museum in Fort Knox. 42:00Narrator: ‘On March 4th, 1945… Armstrong: ( ) they wanted me to… Narrator: …at zero-nine-hundred hours… Armstrong: …wanted me to copy it off ( )… Narrator: …the 713th left Pearl Harbor for Okinawa.

Armstrong: …at the new Patton Museum they are building.

Narrator: Operation Okinawa was already under way by the time the 713th arrived at Iwo Jima… Armstrong: They are going to build to the side of the Patton Museum … Narrator: …on April 7th, 1945.

Armstrong: …and they are going to put this one tank flame thrower in there and they wanted all this history and everything to go with it.

Narrator: The Japanese had dug in deep to protect themselves from the bombardment from American military fire. In April 19th, 1945, the Japanese experienced the first terrifying attack from flame throwing M-4s. From that day on, a general cry went up and down the front lines, “hey Zippo come on!” The Japanese soldier, confident he was safe from even the power of the 75-millimeter gun, was surprised when the safe place… Armstrong: They had the smoke ( ) on that ( ) Narrator: …became a flaming trap.

Reed: Yeah.

Armstrong: Well that give them a…give us away, where we, where we was at. 43:00Reed: Uh-huh. [Gun fire and equipment movement sounds] Narrator: Because of it’s effectiveness, the blowtorch battalion earned the love and respect of the American foot soldier. The 713th Flame Thrower the infantry and other armored divisions worked and lived together as one unit. They successfully completed numerous missions that were ne…necessary to bring the Okinawan campaign to victorious end. [War sounds] Speaker: Wait to see the 713th Flame Thrower advance come up. When they’ve seen them, they was happy, and when they…what would happen, they had radios… 44:00Armstrong: Him and his wife both are dead.

Speaker: …on the back of the tank and the infantry was… Armstrong: ( ) Speaker: …follow the tank, and tell the tank where to go.

Armstrong: He was from North Carolina, I believe.

Reed: Huh!

Speaker: …and tell the tank where to shoot the flame. And this was how they close, they were walking together, so that, the tank protected the infantry, and yet the tank shot the flame out to kill the enemy. That was a good deal of Japanese that the flame throwers killed that the infantry didn’t have to, and the infantry didn’t, wouldn’t have to worry about them killing them. [Troops 45:00marching and artillery gun firing sounds] Armstrong: It was a rugged terrain, it was horrible to get through. [One minute fifteen seconds of tanks movement and gun battle sounds] 46:00Speaker: The ( ) whether there is going to be this or going to be that, and usually it was a case that they wanted to do something with the Japs because there was no secret about what the Japs was doing there with all the troops and their people on like 47:00that that they was conquering over there in the Pacific area, that they just wanted to get in there and eliminate the Japs the best way they could, and that this was it, this was it because there was, they came up with a, the bet as to why they were going to this, change it over into the flame throwers, and that was because of the situation came back that Okinawa was all full of tunnels and the Japs was all dug in and like that, and it’d be impossible to shoot and get at them, so they had to burn them out and this was the best way to get at it. So it was, this is what they went about and it would, it didn’t seem to create any problems or bad feelings against any ( ) personnel. 48:00[Battle sounds for one minute and 24 seconds] Reed: Now that, your flame throwers like start four stars that burned or was it… Armstrong: They burned there ( ) Reed: Okay, okay.

Armstrong: Put a little straw, ( ) and so… Reed: Right.

Armstrong: they lived in, they’d last longer, flames… Reed: Okay.

Speaker: And we were split up by the, to… Armstrong: The terrain was… Speaker: toward the hold up of the station, someone with A Company… Armstrong: …( ) administration.

Speaker: …someone with D Company… Armstrong: The rest ( ) out of it.

Speaker: …someone with D Company, and then we were to direct the firing of the tanks. If the infantry couldn’t get close enough told them that they could use 49:00their phone. We were in the back, a little further back and we had the, they called five-o-ten radios on our bags, and then we could stay in touch with all the tanks. Now when we called them, we told them exactly where the enemy was, because we always were on a high area where we could overlook the whole situation (coughs), and we could also see where all the fire was coming in from, where they, the fire power was, and that’s how we used to direct them. And many times we had—the, the fire [Chuckling] was so heavy that we had to jump on the tank and get the heck out of there with them, because it was getting too heavy. They, they co…the guns out-shot us, so sometimes we have to withdraw a little bit and then we called different tanks in, which the different tanks 50:00fired in a distance where we saw the flames, when the canon fires there is a slight flame, and we used to observe that, and if you used to see any of those light flames, right away, we’d take the coordinates on the map, we’d call it in, and they fire at that, and…within two or three rounds, they moved slightly and knocked them out. But that’s how we… Armstrong: The guy’s name is Eddie (Bonevichi?) [One minute of heavy moving machinery and artillery fire sounds] 51:00Armstrong: Those tanks weighed forty-five tons.

Reed: Forty-five tons. [Somber music playing] 52:00Speaker: The few we took back, we didn’t get too far with them, but we took some women and children, we took them back. But if he was a soldier, he didn’t have much of a chance. [Somber Music playing] 53:00Armstrong: ( ) waiting to come in to the marines, Japanese marines. They had a German Luger stuck in his belt, and she walked up with her hands up there like that, walked right into the crowd, turned that gun out and shot five guys before they could stop her ( ).

Reed: Whoa!

Armstrong: A lot of them would put hand grenades under their arms, they’d hold their arms down like that and hang ( ) walk right up in the crowd and blow themselves, stuff like that all the time. They got a ( ) there. [Music ceases. Artillery fire sounds] 54:00Announcer: ( ) 713th Flame Thrower Battalion, see, generals on down, only the highest praise for consistently outstanding record of performance. The unit received a presidential unit citation, as well as citations for individual missions. Here are some exerts from several of those citations.

Exert: The infantry’s Lieutenant Colonel Edward (Stare?), commanded the 713th, with invaluable assistance during each 55:00attack phase on the final drive against the enemy lines near (Cocky?). The flame thrower tanks were literally the straw that broke the camel’s back. Immediately after the flame thrower tanks had gone into action, the infantry was able to rapidly advance. He continued to praise the men of 713th, the courageous manner in which they performed and hope that in future operations, the 713th would be in support of his battalion. [Battle sounds] Exert: Colonel Seaton S. Hamilton of the 307th infantry expresses his appreciation for the 713th, for the excellent support rendered in the reduction of the Japanese strong point, in the outer (Shuri?) defense system. He continues to say that all personnel in the 713th gave the closest cooperation and aide to further the advance of the combat team, assisted in the capture 56:00of enemy positions. [Battle sounds] Exert: Another commendation came from the headquarters of the 763rd Tank Battalion. It stated that all members of the 713th should be commended for the fine performance during the period from April 8th, until April 30th, 1945. Each man and officer acted in a manner that brought the highest credit to the unit. All company commanders expressed the satisfaction of the ease and efficiency of the 713th ability to become an integral part of the 763rd battalion. The cooperation was at all time superior and they were always ready and willing to undertake any assigned mission, no matter how difficult the terrain, or complicated the mission. Even Major General G. L. Bradley expresses his appreciation of the excellent spirit and accomplishments of the 713th. 57:00[Battle and artillery sounds] Exert: Colonel John M. Finn commanding Officer of the 32nd Infantry, went into great details describing his appreciation. He stated that the flame thrower tanks were innovation to his regiment. They were effective against the Japanese position on (Skyland?) Ridge, which showed the true worth at coral caves on Hill 95. [gun-firing sounds] 58:00Exert: The Japanese were in position over the whole escarpment, the rugged caves and pinnacles offered natural defensive positions and cover. In many places, it was almost impossible to blast out defenders with artillery and mortar fire. He continues to say that it became apparent that the positions could only be taken at a great loss of life, and some means of routing out the enemy. The flame thrower tanks were brought forward, the flames licked into the caves and crevasses and burned many Japanese at their positions. The most remarkable affect was the terror instilled in the heart of the enemy. [Music playing]. 59:00Exert: Colonel Finn then continued to praise the men who manned the tanks. It was through their courage and devotion to duty that the tanks were moved into position where the flame could take effect. Where tanks could not reach the enemy positions, of the direct flame, the men did not hesitate to man the hoses and scale the coral cliffs to burn out the enemy. Two members of the 713th were awarded the Silver Star medal for their performances of duty, which took fine dedications all members of the 713th. The feelings of the Infantry frontline soldiers were illustrated by the remark, “these guys are okay, they’re willing to fight, and how.” [Battle sounds]. Even Major General A. B. Arnold 60:00was moved by the outstanding performance of the 713th. He sent a personal commendation battalion saying it gave me great pleasure in commending all officers and men of the 713th for the outstanding performance of duty against a bitterly resisting enemy. The contribution was very important to the winning of such battles as (the Yodi escarpment?) Hill 95, Hill 115, Hill 89, the ( ) Battle, the Shuri Line, and other strategic points during Operation Iceberg [Battle sounds] Exert: In seventy days of continuous operations on Okinawa, forty-one tanks were 61:00put out of commission by enemy actions. All but two were repaired and returned to service. Four-thousand-seven-hundred-eighty-eight Japanese were killed, and forty-nine captured. There (remains?) only flame throwing tank battalion seven-hundred-twenty-four officers and men, eighty men were killed in action and two-hundred-and-ten wounded, missing and injured in combat. ( ) Headquarters and the service company, A, B, C Companies and the medic detachment. [Battle sounds].

Speaker: Out in the northern part of Okinawa, was more flat terrain, and the Japanese didn’t 62:00have the opportunity to dig in, in the northern part like they did the southern part. This was basically the biggest obstacle that the United States Army had to take, become ( ) that the marines, they went to the north and they had relatively smoother operation going north. When the army went south, that’s where they met all the opposition with the Japs all dug in. They were dug in to the mountains and when the ar…the army would b…shell them, well then they’d go back into the caves as soon as they stopped shelling them they would come out, and they would start shooting at troops again. [Stars Spangle Banner starts playing in the background] prior to combat, the 713th maneuvered the pineapple fields of Hawaii. After the combat missions were completed in Okinawa, 63:00the 713th was sent to Korea as an occupational force. They continued to uphold the excellent reputation they had earned in Okinawa. [Music ceases playing] Armstrong: Put it on and rewind. [TV blasting ads] Reed: And now you got the TV on I guess, right?

Armstrong: Yeah I’ll turn it off.

“END OF INTERVIEW”