Center for Louisiana Studies Archival Catalog

Carol Mestayer, Lloyd Broussard, Louis Prince, 2 women, Jason Theriot, Hewitt Theriot:

Carol Mestayer
(2nd part) Starts off with Mestayer telling a story trying to get a train from Chicago to New Iberia

(3:20) Basic Training
-Took basic training at Fort Sheridan, 30 minutes out of Chicago; was allowed to go in every other weekend
-Was there in the beginning of 1943; first time Mestayer had pizza
-Had a girlfriend in Chicago but she couldn’t dance
-Every Saturday there was a dance on the base and that’s where he met her, her name was Helen Thompson

-Got back home from the war and couldn’t get a job
-Government gave them 52/20 (for 52 weeks paid $20 each week)
-Worked out in the Atchafalaya Basin for 9 months before the job “folded up”
-Went out into the Gulf to work until his contract was up
-Then drove a butane truck in 1947; had to sell in rations
-1948 went to work at Brown and Root and stayed there for 35 years

(10:04) Interview with Lloyd Broussard
-Worked on a tugboat for a while; last job was for 6 weeks and then quit
-Was walking by the high school’s draft board when Broussard and some friends (Homer and Angus) decided to join the Marines
-Went to New Orleans to pass the examinations and did; left December 26, 1942 for training
-Took a train to training and they came in at night; was in San Diego for basic for 8 weeks

-Went on to rifle training and then on to Saint Clementi to specialize
-Broussard wanted to go into air force mechanics or metal smith on airplanes
-Next day was sent to North Island on the naval base; had to march everywhere
-Stayed there for 3 months doing Marine Corp Supply and Naval Accounting (not what he wanted to do)
-Sent back to San Diego for a week and then shipped out; at sea for 18 days
-On a French Liner, “Roe Sham Boo” with 10,000 people on it; landed in some islands and no one knew where they were
-Found out it was Espiritu Santo island, south of Guadalcanal; there to stop the Japanese

-It was a rough spot there and they couldn’t get supplies through; one point had to furnish gasoline on a raft to fuel the planes
-Broussard’s job was to keep the planes running and flying; had a Seabee battalion
-Worked in a warehouse with Marine Corps supplies; sometimes they’d take things from the Army base
-Stayed there for 18 months before sending him back to the states to get a promotion
-Went back to San Diego and got a 30 day leave and then stayed there for a year
-Worked again in a warehouse with the personal effects of those that went over to Saipan

(23:55) On the islands
-There were natives, 3 types: a few Japanese, Tonkinese and black cannibals
-Tonkinese were dropped off in groups as the others that had been there for a year working were picked up
-The cannibals would come out of the jungle once a year to get medical treatment from the nuns; wore no clothes
-Tonkinese men wouldn’t work, they’d bring their wives to work in the coffee patches and then sleep
-Broussard would go into the jungle but they made a policy that they would not go into the jungle after 12 as it got dark fast

(29:08) looking at photos, medals

(31:01) Interview with Louis Prince
(part 1)

-Went into service June 19, 1944; took basic at Fort Bliss, Texas
-Went into the infantry and then overseas to Liverpool, England
-Crossed the English Channel into Leharve, France straight into battle
-Contracted pneumonia in Leache, Belgium and sent to Paris to get well
-Once well he was sent to the 78th infantry division, the Lightning division in Patton’s 3rd Army
-Back into combat at Wuppertal, Germany and stayed there for the rest of the war

-Was sent to Berlin to occupy for 7 months after the war; the city was mostly gone
-Had more trouble with the Russians after the war rather than the Germans
-Stayed in a big apartment building, ate well, better than when in combat
-Wore the same clothes in combat, full of scabies; no food or drinking water
-Found a 5 gallon peanut butter can one night and ate it he was so hungry; everybody was starving

-Left Europe in 1946, June (looking at photos Prince took)
-After the war ended, Prince’s outfit was in Kassel, Germany and they got ready to go fight the Japanese in the Pacific
-Happy to hear that the war was ending on that side too; everybody was scared
-Looking more at photos (others in the background talking too)

-When the war was over, joined the boxing team for the ETO Championship
-Got home by ship and landed in New York and discharged at Camp Shelby in Mississippi

Transcriptions Begin:

Carol Mestayer (7-15-2001)
Born July 23, 1923
397th Antiaircraft Regiment/100th Infantry

(This story appears at the end of Mr. Mestayer's interview. But it pertains to his time spent in Chicago on basic training.) We took our basic training at Fort Sheridan. And I had a girlfriend in Chicago. A beautiful girl who couldn't dance. Every Saturday, we had a big dance on the base. Busloads of girls would come to that fort. Each one of those girls had a chaperon. I would go every Saturday. They had good music- Big Band music. Big hall. And I notice that pretty girl against the wall about every Saturday. I said, "damn that's a pretty girl." I kept putting it off to ask her to go dance. Finally I got enough courage to go see if she wanted to dance. She said; "Aw ya man, I can dance." But she couldn't dance worth a shit. Two left feet. Pretty girl though. Her name was Helen…Helen Thompson. About 19 maybe 20. Pretty girl.

I got back and I couldn't get a job. The government gave us 52/20- 52 weeks for $20 a week. I went to work at the Atchafalaya Basin. I worked there for about 9 months. Then I worked in the Gulf. I drove a butane gas truck in '47. Then in '48 I went to work for Brown and Root. I stayed there for 35 years. And that's the end of my story.

Lloyd Broussard.
Born: Dec 24, 1924
Marines-Quarter Master
Espirito Santos- South Pacific

I worked on a tugboat for awhile and every two weeks the boss would come bring us something to eat or he would relieve us. So we had been gone for six weeks. We I finished that hitch I decided I would quit my job. So I came over here, I was walking down, in front of the high school. The draft board was after us. Homer and Angus (Dugas?) decided to join the Marines and they asked me if I wanted to join with them. I said," aw ya," not knowing any better. So I joined up. We were 5 or 6. We went to New Orleans to see if we could pass the examination. We all passed except Lloyd Ransonet and Sam Girard. The Dr. asked Sam why he couldn't pass he said, " Well I thought we come here to kill Japs, not eat them."

So we left from New Orleans on December 26, 1942. We went on the train; we got there that night. They showed us where we would sleep, and they said don't worry, you showed up late so we'll let y'all sleep late. That was the biggest joke I had ever heard. Next morning they had a speaker right over my top bunk, blowing. (Reveille). This was in San Diego. I took basic training for 8 weeks.

After basic we went to rifle training. Then after we got all that done we went to San Clementi. They took us out and they wanted to know what kind of school I wanted to go to. So I told them I would like to take up a coarse in airforce mechanic. They asked what would be my second choice. So I said I would like to be a metal smith on airplanes. The next day they sent me to North Island on the naval base. That was one of the worst parts of the whole thing, because we were one platoon of 62 people on a base with god knows how many people. Every where you'd go you had to march. So we stayed there for three months. They sent me to Marine Corp Supply and Naval Accounting. That's the two subjects that I took in school. Then they shipped us out. It took us 18 days. We were on the French liner, the Roe Sham Boo. We had 10,000 people on it. They brought us into some islands. We didn't stop anywhere; we went right on through. Come to find out it was Esperito Santose Island, just south of Guadalcanal, part of the Solomon's. That's where they stopped the Japs.

Things were pretty rough right there. See you couldn't get supplies through. Finally it got to the point where we had to furnish gasoline on a raft, a 50-gal drum, to keep those pilots flying. That was our job…to keep those planes operating you know. The army guys, when we first got there, built an airstrip using those steel mats. Then, when the Marines got there, they built a coral airstrip on the other end of the island. A real good job. We had a SeeBee battalion that took care of all that.

I remember one time we were running short on supplies, see we would get naval supplies from one place and we'd get some food from the army and everything they didn't want to eat they would send to us, until we learn we could shoot cows. (Laughing) Anyway, my main job was to keep the airplanes flying. We had the F-4U. It turned out to be one of the better planes in the war.

From there we helped with what ever needed to be done. Now they put me in a warehouse. I handled all the Marine Corp supplies including your rifle, sacks, clothing, everything you owned you would get from there. And it was very interesting. We had to find places for everything, and when we couldn't find something, we found out where the Army had kept their base. One night our General said we were running low on gasoline and he told us to load up our caterpillars onto trucks, and we were going hunting tonight. See they would give us a list, and we had to have everything on that list or we couldn't go into combat. That's something about the Marines, it doesn't matter where it comes from they had to have it.

I stayed there for 18 months. I had even built me a washateria over there. They sent us two of them washing machines that you start with your foot. I asked the boss, "why don't you let me open up a washateria?" He said, "ok." So I opened me up a little business. I cut me a barrel in two. Fill it up with water and heat it up with a butane burner. I'd wash the cloths and hang it up on the line. The men would come pick it up that afternoon. And they would pay me so much apiece. I had good business going, but then we ran into something else.

What happen, was it got to be my turn to serve mess duty? So he called me into the office and he told me, "I hate to tell you this, but the way things are we are running short on promotions." He says, "now they are giving those boys Corporal rating when they get out of school." So here I was, I had spent a year and a half over there and the boys in the states were getting promotions not me. He told me, he said, "Don't worry, I'll find a way." So what they normally do is they'd send you to a place like that (the island) for 18 months, then they would send you back to the states for 18 months. One day he called me into the office and told that Santa Claus had passed.

They sent me back home for a 30-day leave, and then they sent me back to San Diego for about a year. In fact they were getting ready to send us into combat. We didn't really have that much training in that type of thing. And they sent me to stay in San Diego while the young boys in my outfit went to Saipan. They put me in charge of personnel effects. I had a big warehouse. So I stayed there until the war ended.

May I was doing a pretty good business with my washateria, I had made some money, but you see we had no use for money over there. Every thing was free, so when I left, I left my business behind.

I had joined up when I was 17, and I hadn't been home since. It was nice coming home, but then you think about going back.

(What is your wife's name?) (His wife said, "At the end of the 30 days I was worn out and glad to send him back. I was working all day; he was sleeping all day. Then we'd go out every night.")(What is her name?) Anne G.

They had three kinds of people on that island. They had a few Japs and they had the Tonganese. I don't know where they came from, but they would bring them there about every two years. They would drop off a load and pick up the rest. They would pay them twenty cents a day. Back in jungles they had the cannibals. Now they would come meet us once a year and they would meet us at the gates. (For trading and medical purposes. The nuns had a hospital near by to give medical relief.) They were colored people; they didn't wear many cloths, just a few leaves. They carried spears. They don't work very hard. They got a big ole machete, and they would go down in the jungle and bring their wives to work in the coffee patch. They wouldn't work at all. They'd nock off at noon.

Every once in awhile on Sunday afternoon after we had finished our work, we would travel down the island to an ole Frenchman's plantation. He was the over-seer for a coconut plantation. He had a little girl that was three and a little boy that was five. You wouldn't believe how well educated they were. You could talk to them about airplanes and stuff, cause they had seen all that you see. Well that old boy say he hadn't drank water in 20 years, so we'd bring him some water and he'd send us back with some jugs of wine and bananas. Well one time on our way back, we had to pass a slue in our little boat and we tip over. We hauled back to the old man's house, he say, " What happened." So we told him and he asked where we had passed to come here. We said the little slue, the way we always come, he said, "Well I just wanted to tell you that one of my nigas (helpers) got his leg cut off by a barracuda." (Laughing) Luckily we had our little boat, cause I don't know if we would have got back at all.

That's about the size of it. I can't say that I didn't enjoy it, but I don't think I want to do it again.

Louis Prince (7-15-2001)
Born: February 3, 1925
310th Regiment/78th Infantry

I went into service in 1944, June 19th. I took my basic training at Fort Bliss Texas. I was assigned to a 99mm gun, AA. From there I went into the infantry, then I went overseas. I landed in Liverpool England. Then we cross the (English) Channel into France, at Leharve France. From there I went straight into battle. I contracted pneumonia in Leache Belgium. So I was sent to Paris to a hospital. I stayed there for awhile until I got well, then they sent me to the 78th infantry division, the Lightning division, in (Patton's 3rd Army.) Wuppertal Germany, in the Rhur Pocket. I went right back into combat.

When I went into combat I stayed in the same cloths for 2 or 3 months. No time to change clothes. No place to wash. We were all full of scabies. No fresh drinking water, no shaving. But the worst thing is getting hungry with nothing to eat. One time, in Germany, I was so hungry that I couldn't sleep. So I got up, and there was this old tent, and I went inside looking for something to eat, and they had a big 5-gallon can of peanut butter. That's all they had. And it's hard swallow peanut butter by its self. Boy I ate and ate till I couldn't see. Then I couldn't look at peanut butter for years after that. In Germany in these little towns we would go to people's houses and tell them to get out and then take what little food they had. There wasn’t much. Everybody was starving.
I left Europe in June of 1946. Most of these pictures I took. I had a camera. (He has three photo albums full of pictures) That was the big three. (The whole city is destroyed and here is a mural of the big three…ironic.)

After the war our whole outfit was around Kassel Germany. We were getting ready to go to the Pacific to fight the Japs, when we received the word (Pacific war was ending) we were happy.

Somebody that would tell you that they never got scared, they were lying.

After the Germans surrendered my outfit was sent to Berlin. We occupied the city for 7 months. When I got there all I saw was piles of rubble and rocks where buildings once stood.

Berlin was all messed up, all bombed out. We had more trouble with the Russians than with the Germans. They (Russians) weren't civilized people. In Berlin, there were Americans, Germans, English, and Russians, but the Russian's weren't civilized at all. (Were your living quarters reasonable in Berlin?) Ya, where I was staying, it was a big apartment building. We stayed for 7 or 8 months. We had plenty to eat there, but before we got to Berlin, while in combat, we had nothing…we were starving. Cold, cold all the time!
The people who survived were starving. The Germans would beg us for a cigarette. They would follow us around and pick up cigarette butts on the ground to smoke it.
I joined the boxing team toward the end of the war. I fought for the ETO Championship in March 1945, but I lost. (What weight class did you box?) (Lightweight)

But the Russians were cruel people, cruel to the Germans. (Mr. Broussard says, "But they caught hell that winter before on the other front." Well, ya. (Mr. C. Mestayer replies, "If it wouldn't have been so cold, I think the Germans would have taken Russia, the whole bit…Stalingrad and Moscow…but it was so cold that they ran out of supplies.") They had no winter cloths.

(What would be worse: freezing cold, no drinking water, not being able to drink for a couple of days, dirty, not able to bath for months, hungry, not be able to eat for a few days?) Hunger, but it was all bad. I always said, that whenever I get back home, I'll eat anything you put on the table, (Except peanut butter!) I won't ask any questions.

Born and raised in Lorauville. Five in my family went to the war. Four were in combat. One went to Italy; the others went into the Pacific. Whitney, and Sidney, they used to call him Neg. There's only Sandy and I left.

When I went into Europe, I'd write home every time I had a chance. I had a girlfriend back home, I'd write to her, but nobody would ever write me back. I said well isn't that something, nobody cares for me. But I'd never stayed in the same place. I kept moving all the time. So finally at mail call one time, they called me, "Prince. Mail for you." It was a big ole box of mail. Boy I was happy. I sat down and started reading. Before I got through the Captain came in and told us, "come on, drop everything, we are leaving." I read about half, then we had to leave so I left the rest behind.

I left Berlin in May of ’46 to come back home. I came back on a troop ship. I landed in New York, camp Kilmer, New Jersey. We left on the USS Manhattan. I got back in June '46. I received my discharge papers from Camp Shelby in Mississippi and came to Loreauville Louisiana. I was lucky. I didn't stay in battle too long.

Rene Broussard, Jason Theriot:

-Joined the U.S. Navy on June 1, 1942; went to Great Lake, Illinois for basic training
-By July he was on the way to New York to board a Destroyer, “USS Jenkins”
-Patrolled the Atlantic coast for submarines from December to October
-Made contact with one submarine off the coast of Cuba
-Escorted 500 ships on the invasion of Casablanca, North Africa from October 26th to November 8th 1942
-On the 7th (day before) a submarine fired a torpedo at Broussard’s ship and missed them by 6 feet
-Gives dates and places/battles he was at in a timeline; battle stars he’s earned

(6:40) Sailed on two ships: “USS Jenkins” a destroyer and “USS Sitkoh Bay” an aircraft carrier
-Was a water pump tender in the engine room and worked on the boilers on “Jenkins”
-Made fresh water from sea water as a water tender on “Sitkoh Bay”
-Had 365 men on each ship

(9:44) Joining the Navy/Battle of Casablanca
-Had some friends that didn’t want to go into the army so he tagged along
-Went to New Orleans to sign up and while there the Navy supported them
-Initiated on June 1, 1942 and was on training for 6 weeks; kept a record of everything (is reading from it)

-Casablanca was the first real big push against the Germans in the beginning of the war
-General Rommel was taking parts of North Africa and going for the rest
-Europeans didn’t want that but the British were in Libya so America was asked to go in and help
-Escorted 500 ships to the battle; led as lead Destroyer for 21 destroyers, which is why they saw the torpedo being directed to them and were able to evade it in time

-The French in Africa were with the Germans and Italians at the time; were shooting guns that had been left there from World War I (1918)
-One shell did hit a cruiser and it went through the sleeping quarters and into the kitchen but never went off—might have been a dud

-Coming in within 7,000 yards of the beach the Germans started firing and did some damage to them then
-They had been shooting at them since 7:00 that morning and by 1:00 the Germans stopped
-Came to find out a battleship, “USS Massachusetts,” shot 3 shells into the radar control and shut the German artillery down

(15:50) Worked in the general quarters as a doctor
-Once in the Pacific was stationed on a .20 mm machine gun for general quarters
-“Jenkins” took part in the Battle of Guadalcanal, all the battles in the Southern Solomon Islands and Tarawa
-Fought every night with the Japanese; they were good
-Had to keep secret on how many ships they were sinking or damaging; no pictures to be taken
-After leaving “USS Jenkins” it hit a mine but did not sink and continued to be used till 1969 when it was scraped
-Not many destroyers went undamaged when in the Pacific

(22:00) Picked up a Marine pilot who had ditched his airplane in the ocean; had been about 10,000 feet when he had engine trouble
-He came down and crash-landed his plane right in Broussard’s ship wake; he jumped out and they rescued him
-The pilot was Jeff Deblanc from St. Martinsville

(24:07) Stories
-Patrolling off the East Coast of Guadalcanal one night and they could hear a loud plane above them (Washing Machine Charley) almost hit the ship; must have been lost in the dark
-Walter McHellhenny was a Lt. in the Marines and they met while Broussard was working at Avery Island
-He was in the Pacific; got into trouble a bit with those higher in command

(31:15) A Japanese Colonel came running at McHellhenny with a sword and it took a while for them to kill him as his clothes were too thick for bullets to pierce
-McHellhenny caught malaria and was sent to hospital in Australia

(35:40) Pearl Harbor Day
-Working as a landscaper at Avery Island when they heard; knew nothing about it or where it was
-While in school they would listen to the radio and hear what Hitler was doing and when he was invading the countries in Europe
-Did come to understanding that the attack on Pearl Harbor meant war
-Tried to get into the Marines but was too tall (6’ 6’’) and almost was too tall to get into the Navy
-Still grew 2 more inches after that and his clothes were too short

-Talking about the American Legion, VFW and family

(43:06) Coming back to the states
-Came back in 1945 and went back to school in Pennsylvania
-Was able to come back as he had enough points

-Knew that eventually if the war was ever to be over the Japanese needed to be defeated
-Wouldn’t have stopped if the bombs weren’t dropped
-At the time Broussard had no idea what “atomic” meant and how much damage it was capable of

-Talking of night and naval maneuvers of the U.S. and Japanese; certain battles
-Training he went through
-Always at sea, only got off twice to an island to gather supplies
-Family history from Canada
-Involvement with the VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars)

Transcription Begins:

Rene J. Broussard
Born: July 30, 1921
Iberia Parish
USS Jenkins/USS Sitkoh Bay- Engine room

When I was going to school at the old New Iberia High, Hitler was invading all those countries in Europe. We had a radio in the office and speakers in the classrooms. They would let us hear what Hitler was doing. They would let us listen in to the transmission for a lesson and we would have to answer question and write them done, like an assignment.

When the Japs attacked Pearl Harbor I was working on Avery Island and when I heard about it I didn't know what Pearl Harbor was. I had never heard of it before. I didn't know what it meant at the time. Sometime after that the Army would send me questionnaires. I filled out a few and sent them back, but I didn't what to join the Army, and the Marines wouldn't take me because I was too tall-6'6''. So I joined the Navy.

A friend of mine and I went to New Orleans in May to join the Navy. We stayed in New Orleans for a whole week while the Navy supported us. We were initiated on June 1, 1942. They put us on the Illinois Central and they sent us to the Great Lakes. I had my training there for six weeks. After training I was sent to Brooklyn, New York and assigned to a Destroyer.

The first ship I was on was the USS Jenkins. It was a Destroyer. It was a brand new ship; it had no battle scares. I worked in the engine room as a water-pump tender. It was a steam engine, so I took care of the boilers. It had 6,000 HP with twelve-foot props. We had 365 men on board.

We patrolled off the Atlantic coast for a couple months. We were patrolling for German submarines. We made contact one time with a sub off the coast of Cuba.

In 1942 the Germans, under General Rommel, took parts of North Africa and the Europeans didn't like that. He was going to take all of Africa, but the Americans stepped in to help. This was our first big campaign. The British were out there fighting in Libya. But in Casablanca on the west, the Germans had taken all of that. If they had taken all of Africa that would have cause some serious problems. So we went over there to help out the Europeans.

From October 26th to November 8th we escorted 500 ships on the invasion of Casablanca in North Africa. We were chosen as the lead destroyer for this mission. On November 7th, while crossing the Atlantic, a German submarine fired a torpedo at our ship and missed us by about six feet. We saw it coming in time, and our Captain was able to take evasive action to avoid it.

The Germans were having much success with the submarine warfare before America got involved in the war. They were all over the Atlantic. We started using the B-25 bombers to find and sink those German submarines. When we made the invasion of North Africa, Hitler told his U-boat Captains to get the hell out of our way, because we could have sunk a bunch of them.

When we landed on Casablanca the French were shooting at us. See the French in North Africa were with the Germans then. The French were shooting at us with American guns that were left behind in France after WWI in 1918. They had one shell that hit a cruiser and the detonator fell off. It went through the sleeping quarters and stopped in the kitchen. They looked on the shell and it read- "USA-1918." The shell fell apart. It might have been a dud, cause it didn't go off.

We came within 7,000 yards of the beach and the German coastal artillery started firing at us. We had a flag on top of our ship with a V for Victory and a 14-inch shell went right through it. The German guns did do some damage to our ships out there.

The Germans had been shooting at us since 7 o'clock that morning, and then around 1 o'clock that afternoon everything stopped. The big USS Massachuttses Battleship sent three shells at the enemy radar control and it shut everything down. Their artillery was useless after that.

We had a lot of guns on our ship. At general quarters I was stationed with the doctor, because I was trained in first aid. Later on when we hit the Pacific theatre I was stationed on a .20 mm machine gun for general quarters.

We returned to the states after the North African invasion and in December 1942 we were send to the South Pacific.

The Jenkins took part in the Battle of Guadalcanal, all of the battles of the Southern Solomon Islands, and Tarawa. We saw some serious naval battles over in the Pacific. We fought every night in the "Slot." The Japs were good. They were good fighters at night.

We damaged some of the enemy ships, but mostly it was kept secret. Some guys would draw a little Japanese ship on the sides of their ship with the number of hits made on the enemy or how many enemy ships they sunk, but we didn't take pictures of that. There were no cameras on board. All of that was kept a secret. They didn't want it to get out how many ships we were damaging and sinking.

One night we picked up a Marine pilot who had ditched his airplane in the ocean. He was up about 10,000 feet when he had engine trouble. So he came down and crash-landed his plane right in our wake. He jumped out with his May West jacket on and we rescued him. That pilot was Jeff Deblanc from St. Martinsville. He was awarded the Medal of Honor during the war. I met him sometime after the war. There was a story about it in the newspaper.

One night we were patrolling off the East Coast of Guadalcanal, and we would hear "Washing-Machine Charley." It was pitch dark and we couldn't see anything, but we could hear him. That airplane was noisy like a washing machine. It passed so close I could feel the wind move through my shirt. It almost hit our ship. He didn't know where the hell he was. He must have been lost in the dark.

We stayed at sea all the time, but I got to go on an island one time. It was Espirito Santos. I went with a guy to get some supplies from the big stores they had on that island.

There were not many destroyers that were undamaged by enemy fire in the Pacific. My ship hit a mine sometime after I was transferred to my other ship. The Jenkins fought in Korea and Vietnam.

I came back to the states at the end of December in 1943. I went to Fire Fighting School in Bremerton Washington in January. While I was there I ran into Joe Terrell from Avery Island. He was a Marine stationed on a ship up there.

On the second ship, the Escort Carrier USS Sitkoh Bay, I was a water tender. I made fresh water from seawater. We used special effect boilers for that. It would take salt water, boil it, and would transfer to fresh water. I was making 20,000 gallons in 24-hours. I made enough water for the showers, but all of the water had to be purified to go into the engines. It was steam powered, so the engines needed fresh water to run. We carried a bunch of airplanes and had a crew of about six hundred men on board.

We were transporting airplanes from the states to all over the Pacific. We carried a lot of the newer planes to the Pacific, like the P-51 and the F-7. We carried a lot of troops too.

Walter McHellhenny was a friend of mine. I met him at Avery Island when he was a LT. in the Marines. When the war broke out he was shipped to Camp Pendelton in California. He was shipped to the Pacific on a ship. He commanded a rifle company. He caught malaria and was shipped to a hospital in Australia. A Negro assaulted him there and Walter hit him over the head with a stick. The Army didn't like that, so they discharged him. He took off on a PT Boat and they couldn't find him for awhile.

He told me about this Japanese Colonel who came running at him with a sword and he was wearing some kind of padding on his body. He said those Marines were firing at him with machine guns and that Colonel kept coming. He finally fell dead right in front of Walter.

Those Japs were fierce, cruel people. They didn't give a damn about dying.

The Japs lost the war in the Pacific at Midway. The American code breakers had broken the Japanese Naval codes and we knew when and where the Japs were going to attack. The Japs came in with six aircraft carriers. We sunk four of them. Midway was the decisive turning point in the war.

Admiral Yamomoto told the military that they could only fight the Americans for six months. They had enough supplies and resources to fight the Americans for six months. They had a lot of soldiers over there in Asia, and they wanted to take Australia. They were building an airfield on Guadalcanal to land and refuel their planes to bomb and attack the ports of Australia, and they hoped to eventually take over that country. But the Americans stepped in and we stopped them at Guadalcanal.

The Americans were ready to invade Japan. We got as far as Okinawa and Iwo Jima. They were set to go, but then we dropped the Atomic bomb. The officers in Japan didn't want to fight any longer, they knew all hope was lost. We dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki and the Japs surrendered.

We would have lost a lot of lives if we had invaded Japan. Those Japs on those islands stayed there till after the war. Some of them were still held up in the jungles 10-years after the war ended. Those Jap officers just left them there.

I came home in 1945 and I went to school in Pennsylvania.

Dr. Agapito Castro, Jason Theriot, Hewitt Theriot:

-Dr. Castro was 10 years old, living in the Philippines (native) when Pearl Harbor happened; lived on the island of Luzon
-The first Japanese bombing on the Philippines was December 8 (in our time zone that was December 7-Pearl Harbor day)
-The Japanese forces came from Formosa, present day Taiwan
-First memories were around September-October when they would practice “black outs”
-Sirens would sound and they were supposed to turn lights off if it was at night
-His father had a radio that was strong enough to pick up the BBC station and that was how they learned about the comings of war

-First major memory of the war was December 10 and they were all sleeping, it was around 4 AM, and they heard 3 explosions
-Dr. Castro’s father brought them out into a grove of bamboo as it was thick and he figured the bamboo would be able to absorb the shock if a bomb landed close to them
-They stayed there till the sun came up
-His father was a judge and if anything happened in town he got the first reports, after the army
-Later that day he got a report on the bombings and one had hit a railroad and there was some people dead
-The bomb had ruined the railroad track and a train came upon it later that morning and detailed, killing a few people inside
-There was a camp about 2-3 miles from where the wreck had taken place, an Army camp, and that might have been the target or they were trying to cut off supplies to the camp

(4:10) Question: How did the Filipino people feel about the Japanese coming into their country?
-They still hate them now; resisted every way they could with the best guerillas and supported Macarthur

(5:11) at noon (Dec. 10) they left their home and went to their ancestral home in another town (grandparents’ home)
-That afternoon the Japanese began bombing Clark Field; Japanese planes were painted silver and stayed in “V” formation
-Crossed paths with soldiers from trucks on the roads, watching the bombings
-When they got to the house they saw a plane go down, Capt. Collin Kelly, after he shot down a Japanese plane that landed in a rice field
-Everyone began moving south to get away from the Japanese; they were invading and people were afraid
-Bataan surrendered in April 1942 and Corregidor in May of 1942

(10:56) September 21, 1944
-They hadn’t see any American planes for 4 years
-Heading out to the farm that morning, it was cloudy but they could hear the planes above them
-Then one of the planes came out of the clouds and they saw the “Stars and Stripes” on it
-They were bombing Clark Field

-With the Japanese invasion, Dr. Castro’s father was not able to practice his profession as a judge
-They had closed down their government and his family worked in the rice and sugarcane fields
-Japanese also took away his radio and they were only allowed to know what the Japanese told them
-The one thing they were not allowed to have was guns, they took all of those too

-Each town had a platoon of Japanese soldiers and they used Filipino military to help keep the peace

In Dr. Castro’s part of the country they had 3 types of guerillas:
-Bandits that robbed
-Ones supported by MacArthur
-And the Communists (started long before the war and were calling for reforms)
-All fought the Japanese

-The Communists guerillas still continued after the war and during that time, Dr. Castro felt more afraid than when the Japanese were occupying the area
-In 1944 the MacArthur gorillas came to Dr. Castro’s father and asked him to make a guerilla unit in their town as the submarines were giving them supplies and weapons
-By the time they were ready to make a unit the Americans came in

(16:58) the Americans
-The Marines were landing in the Lingayen Gulf, 100 miles from Dr. Castro’s family’s farm
-They could hear the shelling on the beaches; the Japanese fled to the mountains
-Eventually the Americans made it into the town and everyone went to see them
-They were dressed differently and had jeeps, they were the Alamo Scouts; had been sent ahead of the main army
-Dr. Castro was 14 years old at the time

(22:20) Japanese Occupation
-The Japanese came in and occupied the Philippines and each town had a platoon
-They stayed in the schoolhouses and there were guards 24/7 there; had rifles and bayonets
-Every time the natives passed them they had to bow; if not done right you were beaten

(25:20) Bataan Death March
-From Bataan the POWs were walked to San Fernando, Pampanga in April for about 30 miles
-Then they put them on railroad cars to a town, Capas; 6 miles from Dr. Castro’s town
-At Capas they did a head count and then walked to Camp O’Donnell, where the concentration camp was
-Dr. Castro did not see the first batch of POWs but others were telling them about the poor Americans
-After that they began to bring them food when they got off at Capas
-They’d wake up at midnight to make rice and put either chicken or eggs with it and wrapped it up in banana leaves and then haul it to Capas and get there by 7 AM
-The Japanese would not let them get close to the POWs;
-If they were Filipino POWs they were a bit lenient on them so they could throw/roll the food at them when they walked by;
-If caught throwing food to the American POWs they’d get beat by the rifle butt
-One time there was an entire group of American POWs and the Japanese commander let them go up and give food to them; they were reluctant as this was a first
-After they ate all the soldiers stood up and clapped their hands before they were sent off

-Talking of families, others they’ve interviewed, Larry Aucoin, those they are going to interview

(37:10) after the Americans came
-After the Alamo Scouts left the 37th Infantry Division came in; made their headquarters in his uncle’s house
-The artillery was placed at their farm and they shelled the hills around Clark Field
-Every night they dug foxholes waiting for the Japanese Bonsai charges

(38:12) Life under the Japanese/Stories
-Things did change, people lived in fear
-They were starving but so were the Japanese; production of rice was down as people were afraid to plant with planes being shot down into the fields
-They would do public hangings in the town plaza; mainly they were guerillas
-Tells a story about a “ghost,” a hiding POW that wore a sheet
-A story about an American dive bomber that parachuted into their field and was shot
-Most of the schools were closed and those that were open would brainwash you; his father never let him go (4 years)
-The idolization of MacArthur to the Filipinos
-There was no news coming so many thought they were not going to be saved, never saw any Americans for so long

Transcription Begins:

Dr. Agapito A. Castro (3/9/2002)
Philippine Native
1100 Andrew St.
Suite 201
New Iberia, La 70563

I was 10 years old when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. I was living on the island of Luzon. The first bombing of the Philippines was December 8th. Actually, December 8th, in our time zone, was December 7th in Pearl Harbor. It was a different attack force all together. The Japanese forces that attacked us came from Formosa, which is now Taiwan.
The attacks were concentrated mostly against the airfields. The biggest base was Clark AFB which was less than an hour's drive from where we lived.

I can remember two months before the attack, in October, our town started practicing "black outs". The sirens and church bells would sound off at night and everybody would turn their lights off. I remember looking out of our window and the whole town was dark.

The first memory that I have of actual war was on the morning of December 10. We were all sleeping and around 3 am in the morning we heard three loud explosions outside. So my father guided us outside and brought us down to a grove of bamboo behind the house. I asked him why the bamboo, and he told me because they were so thick and very thick roots. He figured if a bomb landed close to us, the bamboo would absorb most of the shock. We stayed there until the sun came up. There was no alarm, no sirens going off.

My father was the town judge. One of his duties was to investigate violent deaths. Early that morning the police led us to where the bombing took place. It seemed that the Japanese bombed a railroad track by our house. When the early morning train passed, it was derailed when it went over the bombed railroad. The locomotive and the railcars were lying on their side, wrecked, and I saw some dead people in the window. That was my first experience with the war.

At noon that day, on December 10, the whole family packed up our belongings and traveled to our ancestral home in another town and that's where we stayed. It was my grandparent's old house. That afternoon, the Japanese started bombing Clark Field. On our way there we saw a column of army trucks by the side of the road and the soldiers were all getting off the truck and scattering in the nearby rice field. They waved us to hurry up. They kept pointing at the sky and sure enough we saw nine silvery planes flying very high, in a tight "V" formation. We made it to our ancetrial home without incident.

The next day around noon, the Jap planes came again to raid Clark Air Force Base. I could see the black puff from the anti-aircraft shells among the high flying Jap planes. I saw a lone B-17 being chased by some Jap fighters. The B-17 was smoking and then I saw two parachutes come out of the plane. I lost sight of the B-17 and later on the local newspaper ran a story about the air battle. The American bomber was being piloted by Capt. Collin Kelly and the plain expoded in mid-air. Kelly was awarded the DSC for that action. He was the first American hero of WWII. (I have a painting of that battle scene and he signed it. The Japanese pilot who shot him down was Saburo Sakai, the famed Japanese Ace pilot of WWII, who also signed the painting) I witnessed this battle from my house. That afternoon my father and I went to see the remains of a Jap plane shot down during the noon raid. The plane plunged into a rice field creating a big hole. The stench of oil and gas and burnt flesh was nauseating.

When Batan surrendered in April 1942, the American and Filipino POW's were marched 30 miles in the heat of the April sun from Bataan to San Fernando, Pampanga. The prisoners, numbering in the thousands, were transported by rail cars to the small town of Capas. From there, they detrained and lined along the railroad track and had a headcount. After the headcount they were marched to the concentration camp, Camp O'Donnel. Capas was six miles from my town. This went on for days until all the prisoners from Bataan and Corregidor went through, and arrived at the camp. Our town elders got together and they decided that we should bring food to these starving people. Everynight the people in our town would wake up at midnight and start preparing food. We would wrap a big ball of boiled rice and put in a piece of meat and boiled egg in a big piece of banana leaf, and wrap all of that up. At about 4am we would ride on a ball cart to the town of Capas. It took about 2-3 hours to negotiate the distance on the slow bull cart. By 7am we would be in place. There was a rusty road that runs parallel to the railroad track where the POW's were detained and marched through.

The Japanese soldiers let us stay at a distance from across the road, and after the usual headcount, the Japs would march the POW's right close to us. We would then slip or throw the wrap food overhead to the POW's. If the Japs guards caught you they would jab you with their rifle butts, or kick and slap you. They caught the Mayor of our town and the Jap officer hit him with a lead pipe and broke his forearm. If the POW's were Filipino, the Jap guards were a little bit lenient. They looked the other way so long as the distribution is not flagrant. But they were very strict towards the American POW's. Anyone that was caught throwing food to the Americans would get a rifle butt across the face or chest.

When Corregidor surrendered, the Japs brought a train-load of American POW's. I remember a very emotional incident one morning. The train stopped and the soldiers were unloaded. They were all Americans. They let them squat down next to the train and then they counted them. The guards stood between the Americans and us. This one Japanese Captain, the one in command, motioned for us civilians to move in closer to bring food. We were reluctant, because this had never happened before. We ran up as quickly as we could to bring the Americans some food. Then the Captain blew his whistle and motioned us back. The Americans sat there and were eating this food, and soon after they all stood up at once, like somebody had given them an order. They all stood up, clapped their hands, and sat back down. The Japanese commander then ordered them to march out. It was very emotional.

When the Japanese invaded my country, a platoon was sent to my town. Each town in the Philippines had a contingent of Japanese soldiers, and the soldiers mostly stayed in the schoolhouse. In front of the school was a pillbox, and soldiers were standing guard twenty-four hours a day with their rifles and bayonets. The Japanese like to use bayonets to scare the people. And when you walked by them, you had to stop and bow. If you don't bow right, he's going to call you back and slap or kick you around a few times. They were very cruel.

The Japanese immediately confiscated all guns, weapons, and radios. The local newspaper was censored. The Japanese closed down the schools at the beginning of the war, but later on the schools reopened. My father did not let us go to school because the children were being brainwashed.

Each town in the Philippines had a town "plaza", or town square, in the middle of town, like the Boglani Plaza. There was a Catholic church on one side, a school on another side, and the municipal building on a third side. One morning after mass, as we were coming out of church, the Japanese came to the square and ordered all of us to gather around the square in a big circle. They brought in a prisoner in the middle of this square. They made everybody look up at him. They put a noose around his neck and hanged him by the flagpole. When the poor man stopped moving and was dead, they told the people they could go home.

Another time they did the same thing. This time they brought in a captured guerilla.

My father was not able to practice his profession. The Japanese closed down our government, so we moved to our ancestral home to farm rice and sugarcane. We had a newspaper, but the Japanese printed it, so they wrote what ever they wanted us to know. And they had confiscated my father's radio. The number one thing that you could not get caught with was a gun. You couldn't have any weapons. Each town had a Japanese garrison of maybe five soldiers, and they were in charge of security of that town.

For four years we never saw an American plane until one morning, September 21, 1944. I was going to our farm. It was a very cloudy day. We noticed there was a lot of activity in the air, there were a lot of planes hovering around. One of those planes came out of the clouds and we saw the Stars and Stripes, and I said, "God Damn these are Americans!" They were bombing Clark Field. We had been under the Japanese control all those years. It was just like the Gestapo in Germany. We lived in fear all the time.

The Americans were eventually brought to Cabanatuan. The Marines landed in Lingayen Gulf, about 100 miles from our farm. You could see and hear the shelling of the landing beaches. The Japanese were trying to evacuate into the mountains, and they told us there were some Americans in town. So we went to go see them, and they looked very different. They were dressed different and had a different kind of helmet. The guns were so different. And they had jeeps! They were the Alamo Scouts. They were going ahead of the main army forces. When the Americans landed in Lingayen Gulf, the gorillas informed MacArthur about the Americas prisoners at Cabantuan. He sent the Rangers in to get them out. It is the only successful prisoner of war rescued attempt of WWII. It was quite amazing story.

I remember when the Alamo Scouts came to my town, and when they moved out, the 37th Infantry Division came in, and their headquarters was in my uncle's house. They placed the artillery in our farm. They were shelling the hills around Clark Airfield. There were a bunch of big guns, 105 mm and 155 mm howitzers. I can remember the sounds of these big guns- Kaboom! Kaboom! Every night, when the sun would go down, the soldiers would start digging their foxholes. They were preparing for the nightly Japanese Bonsai attacks.

I remember one time this American dive-bomber was coming over us. He was attacking this satellite airfield a few miles from my house. The Americans were bombing all over so we were in our air-raid shelter. This American dropped his bomb and as he was pulling out he got hit by artillery. We saw a parachute open and the plane crashed. But the parachute didn't open all the way; he fell to the earth. He landed in the middle of our cane field, a few hundreds yards away from us. We were in our shelter watching him come down. This Japanese spotter was on top of the church and he saw this thing coming down. Immediately he shouted to the Japanese to go get him. My father and I saw this happening. So we crawled out to this man, but he was lying on the ground. He had broken both his legs. The Japanese came and shot him. They killed him right there and told us to load him onto a cart and bring him to the Japanese garrison. They could have given us some trouble, but luckily they didn't.

Sometime in January of 1945, when the Americans had captured Manila, was when our people were finally liberated and our government was reestablished. MacArthur came down and gave his speech and we raised our flag. The Filipino people believed that MacArthur was God. His father fought the Spaniards in the Philippines and he was a big general there. MacArthur became an aid-decamp to his dad and toured all of Asia. Then, he was stationed in the Philippines before he became Chief of Staff of the US Army. He and his wife lived in the Manila Hotel for years. His son was born there, so he had close ties to the Philippine people. Without MacArthur, the US Navy would have by-passed the Philippines and gone on to Formosa and then Japan. He fought that vigorously in front of President Roosevelt at a meeting in Pearl Harbor. He said that, 'we have a moral obligation to free the people of the Philippines. We promised to defend this country and we did not.'

My feeling is that Roosevelt wanted to start something to give him an excuse to help Britain fight the Nazi's. He needed an excuse, so that's my opinion about why he didn't warn about Pearl Harbor.

(How did the Filipino people feel about the Japanese coming into their country?) Hell, they still hate them today! We resisted every way we could. We had the best guerillas in that part of the world. They were all support by MacArthur.

When I first met Dr. Bernard, when I first moved to town, they introduced me to all the doctors, he said, "Aw, you from the Philippines." I said, "Yes." He said, "You ever been to Manila Bay?" I said, "Yes." He said, "Do remember that boat that was jetting out of the bay, the farthest one close to Corrigador?" I said, "Yes sir, I remember that one." He said, "Well I sunk that ship!" That's how we first met. The ship was still sitting there in Manila Bay after the war ended.

I've spoken with Larry Aucoin about the war. He was just a small boy like me during the war. He and his family were in the concentration camp at Santo Thomas, where my school was- the University of Santo Thomas. It was a Dominican school used by the Japanese as a concentration camp for foreign civilians. That's were he was. There was a book published, Rescue, and his father is mentioned there.

Caesar Comeaux, Jason Theriot, Hewitt Theriot:

-Was 17 years old when Pearl Harbor happened;
-Had been out with friends shooting and when he came home his parents told him "On el a geure" (We are at war)
-His older brother was in the National Guard and already at Camp Blanding, Florida
-Went to enlist in 1943 but was told to come back in when he was 18; drafted in February 14, 1944 and went into the Marines

-Sent to San Diego, California at the Marine station for 10 weeks; then went on leave for 10 days
-Was able to adjust in training and gained 30 lbs. while in service
-After boot camp and leave went to Camp Miramar, California (Air station) and started assigning them to as-needed-to places

-Started training as a mechanic on airplanes and out in the 3rd Air Wing on an escort carrier
-Went down to Honolulu for a “shakedown cruise” and while heading there the war ended
-Sent to Formosa and then Okinawa for occupation; afterwards went to Saipan
-Sailed on the CVE 110 “Salerno Bay”
-Came back to the states in December 1945

(6:20) In the Service
-Wasn’t that bad (at Saipan) and the sugarcane grows wild
-His mates thought he was crazy when he’d eat the cane, they thought it was grass
-After going back to the states they were put on another ship to do a “shakedown cruise” to Honolulu
-It was another aircraft carrier
-Station on one of the main islands for Hawaii

-On the aircraft carrier the pilots would practice flying
-His job was to keep them running and clean
-Carried about 30-40 planes; torpedo bombers and fighter planes
-If doing major overhaul they got to fly with them
-Came back to the states after a few months

-Had to spread the news to the islands of the war ending
-Would take precautions in keeping lights off at night and looking to submarines
-Never knew who knew the war was over or not

(11:06) Before Enlistment
-Couldn’t buy tires or gas but that didn’t bother him as a teenager
-He worked washing clothes and delivering them by bike
-Sometimes heard the news of the death someone or someone gone MIA but didn’t get much word
-Parents couldn’t read or write so they never got the newspapers; taught himself English

-Older brother in National Guard and he went through Europe and Africa
-Kept in touch through letters
-After the war and they both came home, never talked about it; never saw battle so not much to tell on his side
-The service was a learning experience since he never went to high school
-Mother had 12 children and in the 6th grade he had to quit school to help support the family

(20:55) Discharged and the War Ending
-Came back home on the Southern Pacific railroad; bought his own ticket
-Rode from California to home

-Was in Califronia when the bombs were dropped; heard it over the radio on the ship
-People were on the streets celebrating; they were allowed to get off the ship for the day
-Next day had to get back on the ship and head out

(Tape begins to distort at the end when Comeaux and Theriot are talking about experiences and voices change)

Transcription Begins:

Caesar Comeaux
Born: December 3, 1925
New Iberia
Marine-Aviation Mechanic

I remember Pearl Harbor. In 1941 I had just made 17-years old. When I came home that day my mother and father told me, "On el a geure"- We are at war.

By brother Homer was in the National Guard and I think he was already at Camp Blanding Florida and naturally my parents were concerned.

I went to enlist in October 1943, and the enlisting officer asked me when I would turn 18. So I told him I would be turning 18 in December. So he told me to go home and enjoy myself and wait till I was 18 for the draft. On February 14, 1944 I was drafted and went into the Marines.

I went to San Diego California at the Marine station there for 10 weeks for boot camp. I was in pretty good shape before I went to boot camp. I had been washing cloths and delivering cloths on my bicycle to help support my family before I was drafted. I made $3.25 a week and I would give that to my mother. She had 12 children. I was just a little shrimp but I put on about 30 lbs. in the service. I was able to handle the training. And then I came home on leave for 10 days.

I went back to California and trained to be a mechanic on airplanes. I was with the 3rd Air Wing on an escort carrier - the CVE 110 Salerno Bay. We went on a shake down cruise to Honolulu. The war ended while we were going there. They announced that we had dropped the bombs on Japan and I could not believe how many people were killed. It was unbelievable, but I had never heard anything about an Atomic bomb. When we came back to California we were able to go into the city and it looked like there was a million people in the streets celebrating.

We went to Formosa for occupation and to Okinawa. We hit a typhoon there. And we went to Saipan.

There was still a sense of danger in the Pacific. We had to go through battle conditions regularly. The war was over but they still had some Japanese out there that had not heard the news. We had lights out at night and everything. There were still some radicals (Japanese) out there.

On those islands the sugar cane grows wild. I used to chew sugar cane and those guys thought I was crazy. They thought I was eating grass.

While we were at sea the pilots would practice flying from our ship. We must have had carried 40 planes: torpedo bombers and fighter planes - F4U's and Mustangs. When we would do a major overhaul of the plane we would have to fly with the pilot.

We came back to the states in December 1945. They put us on another carrier for another shake down cruise in January. We went to Honolulu. We were stationed in Hawaii for awhile.

Back home we really didn't have the news communication that they have today. We had radio and we would hear about somebody getting killed or MIA and we felt sorry for the families, but we were not well informed. It was really just by word of mouth. My parents couldn't read or write and they didn't speak English, so we didn't get the newspapers. I had to learn to speak English on my own.

I was fortunate that I wasn't involved in any major attack, but we were scheduled to go to Japan. I had quit school in the sixth grade to go to work to help my family, so for me the service was a learning experience.

My brother was in Italy and we kept up with him through letters. When we both got back from the war we really didn't talk much about it. I haven't talked about my experience to anyone really.

I was discharged in California and I came home on the Southern Pacific.

Lynn J. Curry, Jason Theriot, Mrs. Curry, another woman:

-Stories of living on Bayou Chene
-Curry comes from a family of 9, his wife a family of 12 (maiden name of Larson)
-Curry’s house was where they held parties and played music
-They used coal oil lamps or a Delco plant later
-Only 3 teachers for 7 grades; 3 churches: Catholic, Baptist and a Methodist—all for 100 families
-Lots of trapping for fish or wild game; Curry had chickens, hogs and cows
-Had to use the bayou channels to get to the towns to trade; went to Catahoula, St. Martinville, New Iberia and Plaquemine

(21:11) the Draft/Training
-All the men in Bayou Chene were drafted under St. Martinville parish; only 2 men did not go because of failed tests
-Turned 18 when they drafted him (1944)
-They had radios and newspapers so they knew there was a war going on
-Sent down to New Orleans then to Fort Hood, Texas for basic training

-Trained as regular infantry men
-Was put in the 82nd Airborne glider-born as an infantry replacement once overseas
-They had a pilot, copilot and 10 other men in the gliders
-Had to hold it right when landing or it could be bad

-Overseas was sent straight to France (towards the end of 1944?)
-Curry was sent to a paratrooper outfit and right into the fighting; first time he had ever seen one

(31:41)
-Story of meeting those from Bayou Chene that were his next door neighbors; Ranger Smith and Cecil Verret
-Was in the Battle of the Bulge; wouldn’t trade for anything the experience he had but he wouldn’t do it again

(36:20)
-Never trained in a glider before his first mission
-Being a glider had more pay though
-Something Curry will never get to do again

(37:11) story of how one of his buddies was sniped in Germany

(39:26)
-Curry’s first trip on a glider was into a combat mission
-Loaded up in France and landed in Germany (might have been the Battle of the Bulge?)
-Story of a man, General Gavin, was a fine man according to Curry
-Story of having to salute to the brass for a meeting and saw General Montgomery

-It was slightly uneasy flying the gliders
-Sometimes the canvas would tear while flying
-Most of Curry’s combat happened during the winter

-Reading from his discharge papers

-Entered the service at the end of 1944
-Did 6 weeks of training and then immediately sent overseas
-Might have landed sometime between August-October
-Took part of 3 campaigns so his letters were never sent and only 1 picture

Transcription Begins:

Lynn J. Curry
Born: 1926
Bayou Chene, Louisiana
Co. L/325th Glider Infantry/82nd Airborne Division

[wife] I lived about a half a mile down the bayou from Lynn. I come from a family of 12, he comes from a family of 9. There was no medicine. We didn’t take all of these nerve pills. Very low-key life. For our entertainment, we had parties with live music or it was recorded on an old graphophone. His house was the house where everybody ganged up. We got married in 1949 and we were the last ones to be married in the little Methodists Church.

My father was a carpenter. He also had nets, hook nets, and he fished.

[wife] We had a Delco Plant later on, but before that we used coal-oil lamps. The way that we kept cool at night was we used a window fan and when the motor would run out of gas that was end of the fan, because nobody got up to fill it during the middle of the night. It was hot, there were a lot of mosquitos, and it was cold. We didn’t fool with anything to protect yourself. [[no mosquito repellent]]

[wife] We had three teachers for the seven grades. Most of the teachers came from the surrounding towns. And most of them married boys from out there. I was a Larson.

[wife] My momma’s grandmother came from Germany and my daddy’s people came from Utah. We had some family from New York. His family came from Maryland.

[wife] They had a Catholic Church, a Methodist Church, and a Baptist Church. There were about 100 families. All of the priest would have to come in by boat, only on Sunday. We had a police constable out there, but there were no doctors or lawyers.

[wife] There was a lot of trapping back there. But we were particular with the fish and wild game. We only ate catfish or gaspargoo, and squirrels and rabbits. We ate crawfish and crabs a few times. It wasn’t something that we lived on everyday. He had chickens and hogs and cows. You had a lot of choice of game out there, but we only ate the mallards and the wood ducks.

[wife] We lived on a house in Lake Deautrive. We didn’t know about hurricanes back then. We just called them bad storms. We a bad storm would come; we’d have to get off of the houseboat.

[wife] My daddy had a grocery store and he would come into town twice a week and bring us fresh vegetables. Everything had to be brought over on a boat: sacks of corn, gas, whatever you needed to live on for the week. But we didn’t have any ice, so he had to go into town to ice down whatever fish that he caught. He’d pitchfork them into an ice-downed truck and bring to the market in New Iberia. He did his drinking when he went to town. My mother was very stick. She never allowed alcohol in the house.

[wife] We had radios that operated by battery, and that’s how we communicated with each other in the community.

My daddy built a lot of boats, batto’s, pirogues, houses, and clocks. He had no education, but he had a good head. He didn’t have any power tools. They cut down trees in the basin and bring those into town to be stripped.

You didn’t have to lock up your shed at night. If your neighbor needed your shovel, and you weren’t home, he’d come over and pick up the shovel and do what he had to do. And if you met him at the grocery store he’d say to you, “Hey, I picked up your shovel and I’ll be bringing it back in a day or so.” That’s the way we operated. We didn’t have anything stolen. Every body depended on each other.

I’m part Irish and part Spanish. My grandfather did a lot of timber work. He built the house that I grew up in.

We had newspapers so we knew there was a war going on. The mail carrier would come twice a week and he’d bring newspapers. There was a draft board in St. Martinville and we lived in St. Martinville Parish. They knew where we were. When I turned 18, they drafted me. That was in 1944. I went to New Orleans then I took my basic training at Fort Hood, Texas. I trained for six weeks and then they sent me overseas as a replacement.

I was assigned to the 82nd Airborne in the gliders (glider-born infantry). They tow us up there and then cut us loose and we’d glide into battle. After the war, they had a big ole fella named Johnson who came to our church. He said, “I was a paratrooper and jumped out of airplanes. Lynn Curry was in the gliders…he was a lot crazier that I was.”

It was real dangerous. They had a pilot and a copilot and about maybe 10 of us in there. Once they cut you loose up, there was nothing you could do but just glide on in there.

As soon as we got in France, they put me with gliders. I didn’t object to it because it was a little more pay. That was the first time that I had ever seen a glider. I’ll put it this way, I wasn’t sissy-fied. I felt slightly uneasy about it.

I wasn’t trained in the glider. They had the gliders there waiting and they loaded up about 8 or 10 people in there. We glided into Germany. We landed in the south end of a field where we would be fighting.

General Gavin was with us then. He was some fine man. I was in a foxhole and man it was cold. I was freezing to death. I saw this man coming toward me and I could see that he had an American uniform on. And I didn’t know who he was until he got closer and then I recognized him and I hadn’t saluted him. I just thought it was a regular GI, so I figured, well I’m gonna get reamed out for this. He walked up to me and said, “How you doing son? Are you getting enough to eat?” I said yes. “Well mighty fine, ya’ll doing a good job. Keep it up.”

The Germans were in a house not far from where our holes were dug. This was in Germany. We had a foxhole, this buddy and I. We got up and walked out of it. He was looking for souvenirs. He started back toward the foxhole, and a German sniper shot him in the back. He was bleeding, so I ran to get a medic, who was a couple of hundred feet or so in the back. So they taught us to run zigzag—less chance of getting hit. So I ran zigzag and bullets were hitting all around me, but none of them ever hit me. So I got a medic and we started back over there, but the guy was dead.

On the way back to camp in France, they had a canteen set up where they magazines, radios, and all kinds of eates. When I signed in, I had to write my name and where I was from and all that. There was a guy standing behind he and he said, “I’m in the service with a boy from the same place that you are from.” I said, “That would have to be Ranger Smith.” He said, “Yeah, that’s who it is. If you want to follow me, I’ll show you where he’s at.” So I said, “Okay, let’s go.” Now mind you, I haven’t seen this guy in I don’t know how long. He was laying up in his bunk and I walked in and he said, “Well, well; ole Curry.” That’s the way he said. He got out of his bunk and he said, “I know where Cecil (Verret) is, would you like to go and see him?” I said yeah. So we walked across France, that was a long ways. We found ole Cecil, he was camped out there a good ways. So we talked for awhile out there and I finally caught the bus back to camp. (All three men were neighbors from Bayou Chene) Back home, Cecil lived on side of the bayou and Ranger Smith lived right here, and I lived right here. And we all met up over there. What are the chances? That was one in a million.

I wouldn’t take a million dollars for the experience that I had, but I wouldn’t want to do it again.

Beulah/Buella Dugas (Laviolette), Jason Theriot, Hewitt Theriot, Dugas’ grandson:

-Had to stop going to school to work to help support the family; was sewing uniforms at the factory in St. Martinville
-Then word got out that welders were needed so Dugas volunteered; trained in Lafayette at a school and stayed there for 6 weeks
-Had 2 brothers in the war and a few other relatives
-After training was sent to New Orleans and stayed with an aunt and an uncle
-Worked at the Delta Shipyards and her sister worked at Higgins so they got a place together; Dugas was 18 at the time
-Made the big ships, Liberty ships and stayed in New Orleans for 2 years

-Started off at tacking and then went to welding straight lines
-Worked at that for about 6 months before being allowed to work overhead and the bottom decks
-Paid .75 cents an hour and by the time she left she was getting $2.25 an hour, top pay for a qualified welder
-Worked 8 hours a day from 3 pm to 12 am; they had three shifts working 24 hours a day
-Built the ships like in an assembly line that it would get closer to the water (typically 3 weeks for 1 ship)

-Worked there for 2 years
-Took a bus and then walked to the shipyard
-Was scared of the Navy boys when she got off at midnight while walking back
-Wore trousers and something on her head, always had to be covered
-Just knew that they were making ships and slept most of the day so didn’t keep up with the news

-Left New Orleans and the shipyard in 1944 to get married (21 years old); her husband was not in the service as he had to stay behind to work on the family farm
-Her husband wanted to join up but his younger brother beat him to it and someone had to stay behind
-Dugas went to work for the war for her parents to help to support them and pride for her country

(26:00)
-Only spoke French when visiting home or at her aunt and uncle’s but hardly ever at all
-When finished with the ships they’d “champagne it” and send it off
-Wore a badge in order to get into the shipyard

(25:53) Taking pictures
-Outlining what Theriot plans to do with her story
-Comparing the home front and the service
-Looking at photos
-Talking about the lack of knowledge of WWII veterans’’ stories
-Theriot’s work and upcoming book

Transcription Begins:

Beulah Laviolette Dugas
2406 Coteau Holmes Rd.
St. Martinville, LA 70582
Rosie the Riveter
Delta Ship Yards, New Orleans
Interview conducted by Jason P. Theriot

We had eleven children in my family and some of my brothers and relatives were fighting the war overseas. So it was a time when our family was very close.

I tried to make a little money for my family because we were so poor. I started off sewing uniforms for the soldiers at the factory in St. Martinville. They came and said that they needed welders in the shipyards. So I volunteered. I went and trained for six weeks at a welding school in Lafayette.

I was eighteen when I went to work for Delta shipyards in New Orleans in 1942. My sister was up the river working at Higgins and we had a little place together. There were people working at both places who were from all over; most of them were from Louisiana.

[Annette Dugas (Beulah’s sister) worked at Higgins Ship yard for two years. She was employed as a machinist, but later move up to shipping and receiving. She didn’t see her husband, Nolan Dugas, for three and a half years during the war.]

I welded on the big Liberty ships. We were there in the deep water of the Industrial canal. I started off tacking because they wanted to see how much I had learned at school. Then I had to weld a straight line. Gradually they moved me up. It was about six months before I could weld overhead and on the bottom decks. There were men welders, too. But the men and the women were the same; we did the same work. I wore trousers, and gloves, and something to protect my head. And we had to wear our badge to get into the shipyard.

When I started I was making seventy-five cents an hour. By the time I left, I was making $2.25 an hour—that was top pay for a qualified welder. I worked eight hours a day. At Delta there were three shifts working twenty-four hours a day. It was like an assembly line. We were building one ship every three weeks. We had a big ceremony to launch each new ship.

We took the bus to work every afternoon. I got off of my shift at midnight. But I was afraid of all the Navy boys. I was from the country and had never been to a big city before, so for me I was a little scared about that.

I worked at Delta for two years. There were a lot of people working there and at Higgins. Those ships we were building were important for the war.

I left Delta in 1944 to come home and get married. My husband was the youngest boy on the farm, so he had to stay behind.

Everybody contributed to that war. But we were very poor, and working at the shipyards helped out our parents. I sent most of my paychecks home, but I kept a little war bond and bought a baby bed for my first child with that.

Samuel J. Delcambre, Jason Theriot, Hewitt Theriot, Mrs. Delcambre:

-Talking about the members of his crew; those that are still alive and those that have passed on and how
-Showing a handkerchief that had a map with locations of Allies sown into it so if they were shot down they could use the handkerchief to find their way back to safety
-If captured they could dissolve it by using their blood so the enemy would not be able to find their locations
-Reading from an article that detailed one of Delcambre’s missions (from “Air Force Journal” Oct. 1943)

(6:11) Telling the story of how his good friend that was a captain was captured and was a POW
-Origins of the name of Delcambre’s plane “Jerk’s Natural”; their pilot’s name was Jerstad so his nickname was “Jerk”
-Showing photos; he was able to use his address as the serial number and his parents’ names
-Talking of how he and his wife met
-Reading from Delcambre’s passport/discharge papers (H. Theriot is talking to Mrs. Delcambre at the same time)

(12:11) “Ted’s Traveling Circus,” a book
-Looking through photos in the book
-Picking out photos for Theriot to use in his book
-Talking about their grandson who is working overseas in mining
-Delcambre’s finding his papers for his medals

(19:40) Talking all over each other
-Discussing the war and how ready the men were to fight; ill-prepared and not trained though
-Majored in electrical engineering at Southwestern
-Flew to England and took a ship back to New York; “Queen Mary” with 17 thousand men on it

Tom Derouen, Jason Theriot, Hewitt Theriot:

-Summer of 1941 graduated from Texas A&M with a masters
-Hired at A&M and taught till March 1942 when he was called into the service; had received a commission from LSU in 1939
-In the service took basic at Fort Benning, Georgia; was a second Lieutenant and the youngest there (in his 20s)
-Already assigned to the 90th Infantry Division at Camp Barkley, Texas; spent a year and half there
-Moved over to the deserts of California and Arizona for 6 months before going to Fort Dix, New Jersey; took 10 days on a troop train

-While at Camp Barkley they would leave Monday morning for maneuvers in the hills and stayed outside until Friday or Saturday
-Slept on the ground, made their own latrines, dug holes for garbage
-Had to march out 15-20 miles and back each time (1942)
-1943 went to Fort Dix and stayed till March 1944
-Was loaded onto ships to Europe; was sea sick the whole time

-Landed in England and prepared for an invasion
-Had practice invasions at Devonshire, the Slapton Sands; it was a disaster
-When Derouen’s regiment, the 357th landed, everything was fine but the next regiment (either 359th or 358th) never came in
-Germans had snuck in on PT boats in the waterways and sunk the regiments’ boats; lost over 600 men before the actual invasion
-It was kept quiet so the morale would stay up; learned of it 20 years later

(9:30) Invasion
-Loaded onto boats at Whales, Bathe England
-Kept them in a big compound for a week as they loaded up
-Derouen made the invasion; “it’s not a pretty thing….I don’t like to talk about it much”
-Thinks he landed at Utah beach
-Landed next to the 9th, 4th and 1st divisions; each country had their own beach
-Was just a platoon leader for a heavy weapons company; attached to K Company under Capt. Woodrow Allen from Texas
-Fought with rifles most of the time and not machine guns (only had 4)

-Got in skirmishes with the Germans all the time
-In the hedgerows in France they were close to each other; Germans were prepared already with 88 mm canons, heavy casualties on the Allies side
-Derouen stayed in France until May 1945
-Before the invasion General Patton and General Middleton spoke to them
-Took about 6 weeks for them to break out of Normandy; the 90th split and some went to Cherbourg and the rest to Paris
-Still attached to K Company
-Half the time they didn’t know where they were or what they were doing; the orders changed a lot
-Casualties were high; Captain Allen was promoted to Battalion Commander and was killed the next day
-The mind went haywire with all the killing and bombing; men dying left and right of you

(17:05) Going Across the English Channel
-On a big ship and then went down a net to a Higgins boat
-Planes were passing over them
-Thought he was ready for adventure but he was scared
-You shot in the bushes because you were scared and maybe you shot a German or maybe a civilian

(19:12) Living in England
-Didn’t see much of England; trained all the time
-Only the elderly, women and children were left as all the men went into service; they were bombed every night
-American soldiers however criticized them calling them backwards; caused a lot of fights

(22:49)
-Had to march everywhere
-Derouen did not last the whole campaign in Normandy; was wounded on July 10th, 1944
-Was on guard patrol in the morning and crossing a hedgerow and he slipped and fell and his carbine shot off into his leg
-Spent about 6 months in England in a hospital; was not able to go back into the 90th division
-Was put in charge of training a company of soldiers on how to shoot; trained 200 men for 4-6 weeks
-Worked with other officers and sometimes they were trouble and did not do what was ordered; Derouen was in charge

(29:00) Talking
-Hewitt Theriot telling of his experiences; Derouen and Theriot comparing
-Looking at a map that was drawn on a cricket bat that Derouen used while at the hospital; inscribed: “HMS Deminion Monarch, Gen. Collins, March 1944”
-The bombing of Sainte-Mère-Église
-Staying at the hospital and therapy
-Back at the states stayed at the Augusta George resort hotel hospital for another 6 months; very well taken care of there
-Didn’t like the French, too lazy; German POWs workers messed around a lot
-Teaching at Texas A&M in 1941; born in New Iberia
-While at war, in England, ran into Butch Kennedy from LSU (football), was a paratrooper (47:10)
-Knew Eddie Gatto (killed in Normandy) and he was a good friend of Hewitt Theriot; stories about him
-Also both knew an All American football palyer from LSU, Tim Cavanaugh
-Before going back to the states Derouen stayed at a ski lodge in Switzerland
-How he met his wife, Lela in July 1946; married a year later

Transcription Begins:

Tom Derouen
New Iberia, LA
Company K, 357th Regiment, 90th Infantry Division
Utah Beach
Interview conducted on July 15, 2001

In the summer of 1941, I graduated with a masters from Texas AM. They hired me to teach. I taught till March '42, when I was called into the service. I received my commission from LSU in 1939. I took basic at Frt. Benning Georgia. I went to school there with a bunch of officers, some were Col. and Lt. Col. I was a second Lt. Some of those Col.'s were 40, 50-years old. One time I was shaving in the bathroom, when one of these big Col.'s walked in and stood next to me. His face was all red, and I said " Good morning sir" and he said " Son that is a matter of opinion." He had been out the night before and he had a hang over. I was in my 20's.

I had already been assigned to the 90th Inf.Division. They were organizing the division at Camp Barkley TX, south of Abilene. I went there after basic and spent a year and a half there. From camp Barkley we moved to the desert of California and Arizona for 6 months. From there we went to Frt. Dix New Jersey on Christmas Day. The train ride there was a troop train and it took ten days and we never got off.

In the desert we would sleep outside in tents. We didn't have any buildings to live in. In the morning we would leave on maneuvers all day. I learned how to live outside. At Barkley we would leave on Monday morning and would stay till Friday or Saturday morning. We stayed out there and slept on the ground. We made our own latrine, to urinate and defecate. We dug another hole to bury the garbage. We had to march 15-20 miles out. This was 1942. We walked there and walked back. We didn't like that. In 1943 we came to Frt. Dix. We stayed till about March. (Mr. Derouen is having difficulty remembering the time-line of his training in the states. He pauses and excuses himself.) Let me go get something, it will help me remember.

(He comes back holding a thin piece of wood about a foot long and 3" wide.) I own 35 acres right here" (of cattle grazing land near Avery Isl. The piece of wood seems to refresh his memory. He sits back down, more confidant now, gently rubbing the piece with his thumb. He corrects his early mistake.)

Uh… We kept training at Fort Dix. It was cold as heck out there. There was snow and ice on the ground. We left on March 22, 1944, we loaded up on some ships to go to Europe. In Liverpool England we landed. I was so sick, so sea sick on that ship I hardly ate. But they had good food on there. They had eggs. You never get eggs in the United States, maybe powdered eggs, but anyhow we landed in England and prepared for the Invasion. I didn't know what it was. In May we had a practice invasion at Devonshire England at what they call Slapton Sands. It was somewhat similar to the beaches in Normandy. What happened at that practice invasion was a disaster. I didn't know it, but my regiment, the 357th made our landing with packs and everything OK, but the 359 or 358 had a disaster. The Germans, with small PT boats, snuck in there and the navy was supposed to be guarding that water-way, but they somehow got in. And they sunk some of those boats that the troops were in and we lost over 600 men…drowned…before the invasion. They kept it quiet. Gen. Ike ordered this to keep morale up, nothing was said about it until about 20 years after I got back, I read it in the paper. The people at Devonshire didn't know what was happening, but I saw what was going on. I could see the bombs, the splashing of the water and I thought that was just part of the excersise. We lost 600 men right there.

We loaded onto boats at Whales, Bathe England. They put us in a big compound for a week or so, until we could load up on ships to go make the invasion. I made the invasion. It's not a pretty thing. They talk about this movie (Saving Private Ryan.), something about uh… They thought I should go see that…I don't want to go see that. I was part of it and I don't need to go relive the misery! I don't like to talk about that much.

Utah Beach. I was next to the 9th divisions and the 4th and the 1st, the big red one. Americans had Omaha and Utah. The Canadians had a beach; the English had a beach. I was a platoon leader for a heavy weapons company, with machine guns. I was attached to an infantry company, K Company, under Capt. Woodrow Allen. He was a tall Texas AM man. I had just graduated from AM. He was a few years older than me, and he was the company commander. A dern good man. I was in support of him. I had 4 machine guns, water-cooled. Only one time we set up. Most of the time we fought with rifles. These men carried the tri-pod on their back; one man carried the barrel. You carried a carbine or a rifle to protect yourself. We got in skirmishes with the Germans all the time. In the hedgerows in France, we would be close to each other, about from here to my fence over there (He points toward an old wooden fence outside of his glass sliding door, about 20 yards away) sometimes even closer. The hedgerows had shrubbery growing, like lagustrums. It was a fence, for property line. The Germans would be right on the other side of that, we'd been marching and the Germans were all set up with 88 mm cannons, rapid-fire rifles, all kinds of stuff. So we had heavy casualties. We stayed till May of 1945.

Before the invasion, back in England, Gen. Patton, and Gen. Middleton talked to us about the invasion. Well, Patton he was a ruff-n-tuff sort of fellow. I remember one statement he made, "don't wait till you see the whites of their eyes, shoot the SOB's before that." Then Middleton spoke. He was a Corp Commander, Third Army.

It was about 6 weeks before we broke out of Normandy. Some of us (the 90th) went to Cherbourg; the rest of us went south, all the way to Paris. I didn't know what was going on. You didn't know where you were half the time. They changed the orders all the time. Casualties were high even in the higher-ranking. Col. Sheeggie, the Regimental Commander was killed. Your mind just goes haywire with all that killing and bombing, your losing your men right and left. Captain Allen was promoted to Battalion Commander and the next day he was killed.

(He goes back to the voyage across the English Channel.) We were on a big ship, and we would go down a net to the little Higgins boats, the boats made in New Orleans. Planes were passing over. At that time in my life I was very young and ready for adventure and excitement. It didn' t take long. But I was kinna scared myself, I WAS SCARED! I won't lie to you. Americans are strange people. They talk about if you shoot in the bushes, you might shoot some civilians, women and children, but hell you don't know what's in those bushes, you're scared as hell, and you have to protect yourself! I hear about that in the news media. News makes a big deal out of it. Hell I know that I shot in some bushes many a times, I don't know if I killed somebody or not, I probably have. I've seen some of my men kill some Germans right out. That still worries me, it stays on my mind.

Living in England, well we didn't get to see too much of England, we trained all the time. We'd march through the countryside 5 or 10 miles a day, for excersise. What was left in England was old people, women young and older who were left to do the work. I admired the British people, because all their young men were in the service, they were fighting in the war. Also, they were getting bombed almost every night, so they did the best they could. But the American soldiers criticized them; they are backwards, they don't know how to do anything. One time, after the V-E Day, in Salisbury England, a British Crack-fighting unit came home. The Americans were at this big dance hall partying. They had the biggest fight between the two, and they beat the tar out of the Americans. That made the newspaper.

On July 10, 1944 I was wounded crossing a hedgerow. I was on guard detail. I was going to check on that. It was kind of drizzling and it was early in the morning. I slipped and fell, I was carrying my carbine with the barrel down, to keep the water from getting into the gun. That gun went off and a bullet cracked the bone in my leg and I spent at least six months in England in a hospital. Till this day I wear support hoes, cause it swells up. After that, they put me training a company of soldiers who were going to Europe. We were doing what they called Liberty Service. I was with other officers and NCO's who had fought in Europe and who could return. I trained 200 men how to be disciplined and how to shoot a rifle, automatic machine guns. I trained them for 4-6 weeks and then they went off. I told them to write me letters and let me know how they were doing, and some of them did. They tell me they appreciate the misery that I put them through. (No doubt his tuff training help save some of their lives)

(The piece of wood is a cricket board. He played cricket in the hospital. On the back is a map and an inscription- HMS Deminion Monarch. Gen. Collins, March 1944. The map depicts his journey across the channel to Normandy and the little towns he must have traveled through during the breakout.) St. Mare Eglise was a town of about 5,000, it was completely destroyed, I mean just rubble. We went right through it.

(He gets up again, walks into the hallway and comes right back with a small prayer book and a picture of himself in uniform in April 1945.)

I went back to the States and they sent me to Augusta George, to a hospital there. It was a resort hotel that the Army made a hospital out of it. It was a good-time place, let's put it that way. While I was there they straightened out my leg. They had a golf coarse, swimming pool, a dinning hall, gymnasium, and a chapel. At night they would have a nightclub. The nurses would come. (The Army took care of him on the way out!)

(During his interview, Mr. Derouen describes his feelings toward the British; how he admires them and describes why, he also talks about the French people, who he doesn't care for very much. He says the French take two hours for lunch. He also talks about a situation involving German prisoners; we take it up from here…)

One time some German prisoners were supposed to put supplies on a train. They were working kinna slow and I saw what they were doing, and I said "Look, if y'all don't get that train straighten out I'll take you behind those bushes and I'll show you what I’ll do to you." I meant it-and I didn't mean it. But I think he understood what I meant. For the longest time I hated Germans, even after the war, but my youngest daughter Michelle married a German from Germany. I didn't like him for a long time, but he is a fine young fellow, he works, they got married and have three beautiful children. He has a Ph.D. from LSU in Geography.

December 1941 I was teaching at Texas AM, I graduated June 6 1941 from AM, June 6 1944 was the invasion. I got my commission from LSU in 1939. I was born in New Iberia, across from the Evangeline funeral home. We lived in several places in New Iberia.

(I asked Mr. Derouen if he had ever ran into anyone from this area while traveling during the war) I wanted to tell y'all. I ran into Butch Kennedy, he played football for LSU when I was there. He was a husky fellow. He was a paratrooper. He got wounded in his thigh. We met in England and spent time together. I asked him, being a paratrooper, "how come you paratroopers are so brave", cause right after we made the invasion a lot of those paratroops had been dropped, and a lot of them landed in St. Mare Eglise, they were hanging from trees, dead, probably shot or what. The ones that landed were hunting for Germans. Butch told me, he said " You know, before me make that jump up there, we don't know whether that parachute is going to open or not, so when we hit the ground we feel safe and we are ready to take on anything". Y'all know Eddie Gatto. (Just then, my grandfather, Hewitt Theriot says out loud, "Don't tell me you know Eddie Gatto.") I didn't know him very well, but I know he died in Normandy. (My grandfather stands up from across the room and walks over to Mr. Derouen very excitedly and very happy to know of someone who knew his friend. He begins to tell a story that I first heard weeks ago about Eddie Gatto.) Hewitt says, 'It so happens that Gatto was my fraternity brother at LSU, Catholic fraternity at LSU, and we got to be very friendly. Recently a story appeared in the Times Picayune about Eddie. I have a son in New Orleans who I asked to go find Eddie Gatto's Grave and he did, wait I gotta go back. Some time after the war we went to the Normandy beachhead and I know that Eddie had died there so I went to the custodian at the grave. He had a book and I asked him I he could tell me where the grave of Mr. Eddie Gatto was. He said that I am so happy to tell you that the body of your friend was returned to New Orleans a few years ago'-Hewitt Theriot.

I ran into a football player in London, he was a big fellow, he was an all-American Tightend. I can't remember, but if you called his name…(Mr. Theriot says, " It wouldn't be Cavenauh?") "CAVENAUH. TIM CAVENAUH!" Mr. Derouen says loudly. We talked a little while in London. (Mr. Theriot says, "Tim Cavenauh, I can see him right now on the football field.")

(Feeling comfortable talking with us now, Mr. Derouen continues, excitedly…)Let me tell y'all about another little incident that happened to me just before I was shipped back to the United States. I was able to get a week's trip to Switzerland and the Army paid for it. 35 soldiers and officers could go on it. So we went up to a skiing resort in the Alps. But I couldn't ski because of my leg. But the hotel where we stayed was a girls ski club. At night they had an orchestra that played music and we could dance. These girls were Swiss and could speak broken English, but we got along good with them. I made friends with the ski instructor, and uh I really…(In the middle of his sentence he looks over, at his wife, whom is sitting across from the room.) she's look'n here now. (As he gently points towards his wife).

(About his wife) If you want to know the truth, I knew her since we were children, and when I got back to New Iberia in July, 1946, she lived right across the street from me, so my mama told me " why doncha take Lela out, so I took her out, and that was the beginning of the romance and a year later we were married. And Louisiana Tech gave me a job, they came to see me in the hospital in Georgia, and we had a little apartment there in Ruston. In 1948, LSU gave me a job.

I went to school from 1935-39. As a graduate Assistant in '39, I was paid $50 a month from TX AM to go study animal science. Room, board, and laundry was $30 a month. The second year I got a $10 increase, $60 dollars a month. I was saving all that money, and getting rich. Then in June 1941, they hired me to teach, they paid me between $300-$400 a month. I bought me a suit to wear. My first suit since I left New Iberia.

(Lela Derouen speaks) I was working for selective service; I was responsible for sending the boys off. Everyone was issued a draft number and when it was time, the board would review the files and pick the numbers of persons who were to go. They would send a notice by mail to your address.

(I asked him if he was informed as to the situation developing in Europe while he was at TX AM before the war.) Yes I was reading about it, I even tried to go in before my time. I wrote the war department and asked to go, they wrote back and said, 'when we get ready and we need you we'll call you.' You see I was in the cadet Corp at LSU. I was commissioned a 2nd Lt. I was on the regimental staff. We were well informed.

I wore an olive green square with a T and an O. It stands for 'Tuff Ombrey'.

Jeff Deblanc, Jason Theriot:

-Describing a seaplane wild dogfight in the air with German pilots
-Seacrest (Jim Seacrest, another pilot from Mississippi) noticed 2 German zeros and 2 bombers targeting one the U.S. ships; his wingman was Joe Foster
-Deblanc’s wingman was a man form New York, Jim Felton, was shot down and crashed into an island; he survived through the whole war
-Tells how he outmaneuvered one of the zeros, trying to free up Seacrest to go after the German bomber planes
-Was shot down by one of the zeros but the bombers missed their targets
-The fight probably took about half an hour

(8:25) Stuck on an island now and is trying to get back to his men (in Pacific)
-Found a hut and spent the night there; woke up the next morning surrounded by natives with machetes
-They were headhunters but Deblanc found that out later
-Showed him how to crack open a coconut; took him prisoner after he ate
-They put him in a covered caged in their village; kept it covered as the Japanese pilots were known to raze the villages if they saw any white people
-They may have been keeping him to trade with the Japanese later for rice
-He was traded to another village chief; this chief had connections to the coast watchers
-One of the men of this chief was a native coast watcher; they all spoke pigeon English
-Deblanc showing Theriot a spear and other things these natives gave him

(19:04) “U.S.S. Jenkins”
-Jan. 29 was given a pre-dawn take off to “scramble” some Japanese fighters (in the Guadalcanal)
-Too dark to see so they had to rely on the plane’s instruments; if not watching could fly into the water
-Knew he was going to the East and needed to go left to miss the mountains and return to the sea
-Engine began to fail that night in a fight and it ran out of oil so he needed to glide down to the water
-Decides he might have to jump out before hitting the land but recalls that early that morning another man in his squadron had to jump and his chute didn’t open
-The parachutes are replaced every 15 days or so and Deblanc didn’t know if his had been replaced or not recently so he chose to stay in the plane and glide it down to the water
-Notices that there’s ships (U.S.) everywhere fighting and churning up phosphorus; made a glowing runway for Deblanc
-Landed in front of “U.S.S. Jenkins,” the same ship that Rene Broussard from New Iberia was on (TH1-026)
-Told them to pick him after the battle was over in case they were sunk; they gave him a raft and picked up around dawn the next day
-Then on Jan. 31 (2 days later) was when he was shot down and on the island with the natives

(25:18) Return to the island story
-The native coast watchers took Deblanc by boat to a missionary church (Church of England)
-Met a missionary by the name Sylvester, also part of the coast watchers
-The next morning he had to leave as the Japanese were coming to check the church

(27:36) Getting off the island
-“That’s how I learned the British soldiers were the best fighters in the world”
-British soldier Henry Johnson picked up Deblanc from the church; they went through by trails in the jungle up the mountain
-While walking they saw a group of Japanese looking around below them, slowly heading up to where they were;
-At the time Deblanc had been wearing a Japanese uniform to hide himself (did nothing)
-So Deblanc and Johnson were trying to move out of the way of the Japanese but about 3 o’clock Johnson stops; he said it was time for tea and they stopped to have tea (never was caught by the Japanese)
-The coast watchers finally picked him up on the other side

(32:03) Spent 6 more weeks in combat and then sent back to states to teach pilots for another 6 weeks
-Got tired of it and joined up again in a squadron on a carrier; thought it’d be easier
-Had to fight Kamikazes and the weather
-Fought in the Pacific for 4 months
-Continued to teach into the Vietnam War
-Talks about his time teaching and flying
-Other aircrafts Deblanc flew in combat

(36:30) Talking about the country today and people’s stances on war and America
-How to overcome fear: “don’t panic;” environmental surroundings and background can be very helpful in one’s survival

(Cuts off into silence for the last 10 minutes)

***Disclaimer: recounting as a witness to an act of sexual abuse (55:06)***

Francis G. Doerle; Theriot

Pearl Harbor
-Was at Deer’s drive-in on East Main St., near a nightclub; on a date with his wife (girlfriend at the time)
-They were sitting there together that Sunday afternoon when they heard the news of Pearl Harbor
-People were going from car to car talking about it; it was the only thing talked about for days
-Already heard about the war from newsreels and a neighbor (Mr. Bernard) that had a TV with a 100 ft. antenna and could pick up other news stations

-Knew about what Germany was doing, had heard of Dunkirk
-Had heard of what the Japanese were doing to China but never saw them as an enemy like Germany
-Thinks Japan attacked the U.S. to stop us from declaring was on Germany
-Had a class A deferment so he couldn’t be drafted but signed up anyway since most his brothers and brother-in-laws were in the service too
-About 8 men from their family in the service and Doerle felt he should help too

-Worked for the Maritime Commissioner as a ship-building welder inspector at a shipyard in New Orleans
-They gave him the class 1-A deferment; built 6-7 liberty ships; worked as a fruit peddler on the side with his dad
His son David was born in February 1942 and a few months later Doerle told the draft board that he was leaving his job (and deferment) and be ready to send him off
-Was 24 years old at the time

In the Service (14:28)
-Oldest in his outfit, most were 18-19 years old or really 17 years old and had lied to join up
-Had no choice but to join the Army; wanted to join the Navy but the board said no
-Within 3 weeks after leaving his job shipped out to Camp Fanen Texas; stayed there for 10 weeks
-After basic sent to Camp Meade Maryland; outfitted with gear for overseas
-Shipped to Boston and put on a transport ship, “USS General Black” 10,000 on the boat
-Went through a terrible storm while crossing the Atlantic (sick the whole time)
-Were going to be replacements at the Battle of the Bulge; landed at Leharve France in a makeshift harbor and put on railroad cars
-When signing up, Doerle was with OJ Mannual (from Erath was a neighbor)
-They were together until split up in Nancy France; they were given rifles at Nancy

-They had landed in France in December 1944 and it was cold; they had issued clothes made from real wool
-After Nancy he was assigned to the 35th Infantry Division, 137th Regiment B Company, a rifle platoon
-January 1945 they were woken up and loaded into trucks; weren’t allowed to have the headlights on
-Drove till the next morning when they stopped to eat and continued on till evening
-Got off and it was ice and snow everywhere and each person was issued a white sheet to use a camouflage

Battle of the Bulge (33:00)
-They knew what was happening at the Bulge and the Germans were trying to break into Southern France
-They were there at the end of the battle to help push back
-When the Germans did break through, the 28th Division was completely destroyed
-Germans were strong people and very intelligent; the French were the opposite and lazy people
-Germans would change street signs and set traps to confuse or ambush the Americans
-Was at a town near the Ardennes Forest; the artillery and mortar shells would hit the trees and the branches would shatter
-Had to give their foxholes tops to keep from being wounded or killed by the falling debris
-The first night there was sent on patrol to capture Germans for interrogation; didn’t grab anyone for a few nights
-Had seen about 7 days of combat before reaching the Bulge; they didn’t tell them anything that was happening elsewhere

-One of his feet starting turning black but things started happening so he was taken from hospital after 5 days to help load/move ammunition trucks
-Couldn’t walk but he could drive—everyone needed to work
-Once into Germany they went through the Rhine Valley, Cologne and Recklinghausen; where he captured a German colonel
-Was at an outpost watching a bridge and saw some Germans near the CP and there was a colonel
-Another soldier took the colonel from him by threat
-Asked later if the German had been turned in by the other soldier and was told there was no German colonel prisoner (thinks the soldier killed the colonel)

***Mention of sexual assault and abuse***

***American soldiers were going crazy from fatigue and would destroy homes for no reason, loot and rape women; couldn’t stop them as they’d turn on you too; some did kill other Americans—sometimes they’d be fighting and those “crazy” soldiers would just shoot all their mates around them***

Firefighting and End of the War (55:43)
-Most of the time you don’t see who you’re killing; only saw once when he did kill a person
-Never saw the enemy face to face except when on patrol and when cleaning out towns
-Reached the Elbe River and stopped to let the Russians take over Berlin; Germans were surrendering by the truck loads to the Americans so not to be killed by the Russians
-Made a deal that in order to take German prisoners the Germans needed to surrender over American prisoners
-Took 10 days before the Russians took Berlin and Americans transported thousands of Germans by then
-Closer to the end of the war the Germans were easier to handle; only the SS Troops were difficult as life meant nothing to them

-Stopped at a town near the Rhine and found a well-stocked wine cellar; they had a nice time
-While there Doerle ‘s brother-in-law George came to visit; George was a warrant officer and was supplying three divisions
-George took Doerle to his CP that was a governor’s mansion and spent 2 days in luxury before being called back as they were crossing the river into Germany
-Took his first bath in three-four months
-Never saw or was in contact with is brothers; Harold was in the Air force; Paul was in the Navy in the Pacific
-Bobby was a Seabee in Okinawa construction battalion

Combat Life (1:09:00)
-Something not kept on the mind; especially the people you kill
-In situations like war each person has a different outlook and does what they feel was right; did what you had to do
-You don’t shoot someone eating lunch, you shoot someone who’s trying to kill you
-Always thought about what if he never made it back
-The war in Europe and the war in the Pacific were different
-Thinks the Pacific was probably tougher with having to take islands and fighting in jungles
-Europe was in cities and modern weapons to use (on land)
-Germans had more modern weapons than the Japanese; German machine guns fired 3-5 times faster than American’s machine guns

-Once crossing the German border, they advanced so fast into the territory their own artillery thought they were the enemy; sent off three volleys at Dorele’s outfit
-They were walking in the road in the open and the artillery thought they were retreating Germans
-Dorele knew the sound of American guns and knew they were shooting at them—but the 105 mm was slow so they had time to move out of the way (compared to the Germans’ guns)
-One guy was so badly shell-shocked just froze and fainted as everyone went to the ditches
-Another soldier ran in between volleys to grab him (confirms in TH1-043 that no one was killed or badly injured)
-Dorele’s outfit (35th) knew it was the 75th artillery unit ahead that was firing at them
-Was trying to call the CP to cease fire as the artillery were zeroing in on Dorele’s outfit's position
-Everyone was “hauling ass” to buildings and away from the road
-Dorele jumped a barbed wire fence with his gun, that got stuck in the mud and then 10 feet ahead of him a shell went off
-The shock caused bleeding to his ears (still has problems today) and he dove into the mud and made a mound to protect himself
-Finally they got through to the 75th to cease fire

-In the beginning of the war, carried a BAR until given a carbine; had a bazooka once to be used for German pillboxes
-Had to be careful when shooting at German tanks, the Panzer would just bounce the shells off

Transcription Begins:

Francis G. Doerle
Born November 21, 1920
35th Infantry Division
Battle of the Bulge

(December 7, 1941) I was at a place called Deer's drive-in on East Main St. There was a nightclub there. That afternoon, my wife, who I was just starting to court seriously, we were sitting there, it was a Sunday afternoon, and we heard that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. We thought about it a lot. Everybody was going from car to car. So we went about our evening as planned, and I took her home later and we talked about it a little bit with her parents. I came home the next day, and that was all that was on the news, that was all people were talking about.

Right in back of where I lived, Mr. Bernard had a tourist court and he was the only guy in town I knew who had a TV with a hundred-foot antenna. And he could pick up a few stations and we would watch the news (there), and at the movie pictures we would go to. During intermission they would show newsreels about the war.

Germany was walking all throughout Europe like there was no tomorrow. The only thing between Germany and us was Great Britain. That was it. Dunkirk had taken place shortly after that, so it was serious. I was aware of some of the stuff going on in China, although we were at war with Japan and Germany at the time. I wasn't worried about the Japanese. It wasn't a concern of mine. I never did figure them as the real enemy.

I had a class A deferment. I had a good job, but all my brothers were in the service, so I just decided that I had to get involved. I didn't feel comfortable staying here while all the men in my family were fighting in the war. I worked for the Maritime Commissioner as a ship-building welding inspector at the shipyard in New Orleans, so I was offered a deferment. I stayed for a while and helped build ships for the war. While I was there we built six liberty ships.

Before that I was working in the produce business here in town, and when I moved to New Orleans I was welding at the shipyard and conducting business for my dad at the French Market in the morning. I would go to the market at five in the morning to buy fruit and all kinds of fresh stuff. And my father would send a truck over there, and he'd call me and tell me what he needed the night before. After I would load the truck I would go to my other job at the shipyard.

My son David was born in February of 1944, and a few months after that I went to the draft board and told them I was leaving my job and to call me when they were ready for me. The draft board here knew that I was working in New Orleans, I stayed in touch with them every six months or so, but I had a deferment all that time. I was 24 years old when I decided to join.

The draft board was very strict and rightfully so, cause a lot of people would take off. Pete Oliver was on the board.

I signed up with OJ Manual from Erath. OJ and I got split up in a place called Nancy France. He was in a different outfit.

Within three weeks I was shipped to Camp Fanen Texas. (What made you chose the Amy?) I didn't, I asked for the Navy, but they said, "you got the Army." And that was it, when you got in that long line they didn't give you a choice. I took basic training for 10 weeks.

Most guys were from 18 or 19-years old in my outfit. I was the oldest guy in my platoon. Some lied about their age. There were some in there that were 17. This one kid named Ebiline was just 17.

At night, there was complete darkness (in combat). There were no headlights on cars or jeeps; you couldn't even light a match. This guy, Ebiline, started crying saying that he would never see his mother again. I told him he wouldn't if he didn't put out that cigarette. He had lit a cigarette in a foxhole. The next thing you know, you got an 88 in your pocket. And those Germans were so accurate with that gun. That was a hell of a gun.

After basic I came home for a few days then took a train to Camp Meade in Maryland. I got outfitted with all the gear I was going to need to go overseas with. From there I was shipped to Boston. I got on a ship (troop transport) in Boston and went through a hell of storm across the North Atlantic. I was on the USS General Black. There were about 10,000 troops on that ship. We went through the worst storm I had ever been in. It took the bow of the ship and bent it back like this. Fourteen days at sea. I stayed sick the whole time. Everybody was throwing up on everybody else. That was the worse (storm) I had ever been in. When we landed all I could do was suck on oranges; that was the only thing that I could keep down.

We had about 300 ships in that convoy with us. They were sending any and everything to the Battle of the Bulge as quick as they could.

We landed in December 1944. I was a replacement. I was to report to the 35th Infantry Division when I got to France. This was all during the Battle of the Bulge (December 16, 1944). They were taking replacements like crazy. I landed at Leharve France. From Leharve they put us in an ole railroad car, and old cattle car and shipped us off to where the fighting was all in the same day. There were 40 men in a cart.

Leharve was nothing but sunken ships and steel sticking up everywhere. It was a makeshift harbor that was erected in a hurry.

We stopped in Nancy France. This is where they handed me a rifle. It was snowing and ice (was) everywhere. It was cold cold. My gun was full of cosmaline. It's like a thick goo that they put on there to protect the gun while it was transported across the ocean. I had to clean it with gasoline. They said, "Son, I want to see that rifle shine."

They issued us plenty of clothes. It was all wool, real wool. I was assigned to a rifle platoon in the 137th Regiment, B Company. The headquarters was in Metz, France. That city was destroyed. Captain Azbell was the Commander of our company. I was ordered to report to the CP (Command Post). Angelo was my platoon sergeant. I still keep in touch with some of the guys from my outfit. We have reunions every year.

(The 35th was in combat at the Bulge. As men would get wounded or suffer from frostbite or battle fatigue, they would be sent to the back of the line. Replacements where they sent immediately to the front to replace these ranks.)

It was sometime after Christmas (’44); I'll never forget they woke us up in the middle of the night and we loaded on to trucks with all our gear. The truck had no lights and we drove down the road in the dark all night long until part of the next morning. We stopped in a little town where they feed us then we went back on the trucks and drove till late in the evening. When we got off finally, there was ice and snow everywhere. It was the coldest I had ever been in my life. They issued each of us a white sheet (snow camouflage).

We knew what was going on at the Bulge. And we knew they (Germans) were going to try to break out through southern France. But that didn't happen as you know. But we, the Americans weren't nervous about that. I wasn't there at the beginning when the Germans broke through; I was there at the end when we stopped them and pushed them back.

When they broke through, brother, let me tell you. The 28th (holding the line) was almost completely destroyed. The Germans were tuff soldiers. They were head and shoulders above us. There were some Americans, many of us, who thought that we were fighting the wrong people. The Germans were very intelligent people. It was Hitler's Nazi's that we wanted outta there.

The French weren't very smart people. They would shovel cow shit around the pipes that they were pumping water out of to keep the pipes from freezing, so it seeps down in the water-well. The cow shit would seep into the water-well. The French were lazy people.

The Germans were far more advanced than everybody else was. They were 20 years ahead of everybody. They had Autobahn highways, four lane highways. That's what gave Eisenhower the idea to build a highway system in the states years later.

The Germans, when they made their move, would turn the street signs around. It would confuse the Americans. A lot of Americans walked right into an ambush.

We got off in a little wooded town near the Ardennes Forest. The artillery and mortar shells would explode in the trees and the branches would shatter. (The flying pieces of shattered trees wounded and killed many Americans.) You had to build a top in your foxhole. I never dug a hole so fast in all my life. We used branches to cover the tops of our foxholes. We covered the tops with dirt.

That first night, my sergeant and I, Angelo Demem and about 5 others went on a patrol. Our orders were to find German's, capture them, and bring them back to the CP for interrogation. We stayed out pass the outpost for two or three nights looking for prisoners to take back. (The outpost was the farthest American post on the front line-closest to the enemy.) The Germans would walk by and we'd wait till they got close enough and then we'd stand up and shout, "Handy Ho you sons of bitches!" Handy Ho, you know, put your hands up. And we'd say, "Foshnell," which means put your hands up.

But we really didn't know anything. We didn't know where we were or want was happening elsewhere. They didn't tell you anything; you heard rumors, and that was about all. Some Sergeants might tell you a little bit about what was going on, if you got a chance to talk to him. See some of these guys had been on the line for months, some even since D-Day. I had only been there for 7 days, so I didn't know much.

My feet started to suffer. We were told to keep our feet dry, you know keep clean socks on. But I had one foot that turned black. I had to go into the hospital; I was off the line for about 5 days. This was later on. But they didn't keep me in the hospital. I helped move ammunition in trucks. I couldn't walk but I could ride. They needed every man that was fit to work, even those that were hurt. Till today I have to wear soles because my feet are nothing but bones.

I wore a long wool overcoat. Some weeks later I remember cutting it into a short coat because it was getting warmer. We were always on the move. I remember going into Germany after we got out of the cold, cold weather. We went into the Rhine Valley and crossed the Rhine River and went into Cologne. I went through Recklinghausen; that's where I got this colonel; I captured a German colonel.

I was out on an outpost watching the bridge with about 10 others guys and I came back into the CP, and I spotted some Germans near the CP. One of them was a Colonel. I took his pistol off of him; I still got it. Have you ever seen a good-looking German Luger?

This one guy in my outfit was really crazy. He did a lot of things in the war that wasn't right. I saw him kill other Americans. He killed some guys that were raping a woman. I saw him line them up and cut them down with a machine gun.

He took that German Colonel around the building and I followed him and he pulled a gun on me. He said, "Get your ass away or I'm gonna kill you." I checked with the CP later but they had no information on this Colonel. He was a high ranking German officer; he should have had some information. But he never got there. There was a lot of that going on.

I saw people going into other people's homes and destroying them. Beautiful things in these homes. They would knock things over and bust 'em and break 'em just for the hell of it. And you can't control most of it. Some of these guys were so off, so fatigued, that they're crazy, and they will turn on you. They will shoot you.

About a month or two later that same guy had a girl in a room and he made everybody get out. He raped her; he was out of his mind.

I got into a couple of firefights with the enemy. But mostly you don't see who you are killing. I only know of one guy that I actually shot and killed, because I went and checked him. The poor bastard had a picture of his family. You never really come face to face with the enemy, unless you are looking for a prisoner to capture at night. When you go on patrols at night you run face to face with them and when you are cleaning out a town you run into them. But a firefight that you know of, you rarely saw them.

Towards the end of the war up on the Elbe River I shot and wounded a German. I don't know if I killed him, but I know that I shot him. At night you could see the sky light up. You could tell there was a war going on. We were told to stop at the Elbe River to allow the Russians to take Berlin. And we did. The Germans were surrendering by the thousands. We could take all of them. It got to a point where we wouldn't take a German prisoner unless he brought an American prisoner with him. Truckloads of Germans tried to surrender. We agreed to take a truck of German if they brought us a truck load of Americans.

The Germans did not want to get captured by the Russians. The Russians would torture and kill them right there, because the Germans did the same thing to them. At the Yalta Conference Stalin and Roosevelt made a deal- the Russians would take Berlin. We stayed at the Elbe for 10 days waiting for them to take Berlin. We took a lot of prisoners in those 10 days.

Towards the end of the war the Germans were easier to handle because they knew it was kaput. They knew there was no chance for them to win. But we had to be real careful with the SS Troops (Nazi fanatics). They would kill you right there. They were the elite German soldiers who were Hitler's finest troops. Their life meant nothing to them.

I crossed the bridge at Remagen. It was the only bridge across the Rhine that the Germans didn't blow up. And we got there before they could take it out. It was the only bridge into Germany.

We rested in a little town near the Rhine for a few days. We ran into a wine cellar, so we had a good time. It was the finest wine in the world and every soldier had a case of red wine. My brother-in-law, George, found me there. He was a warrant officer. He was in charge of supplying all the men in our Corp. I got a call through the CP. He said, "Francis! God damn it, this is George!" I said, "George who?" He said, "George, your brother-in-law!" I said, "Well you SOB, what are you doing? Where the hell are you?" He said, "Never mind where I am. But don't you move cause I know where you are! And I'll be there in 30 minutes!" He drove up in a jeep with a driver. He was a big shot you know. I said, "George, where we going?" He said, "I talked to Captain Asbell. He said you can come spend a couple of days with me." I took a bath in a beautiful mansion, a castle that belonged to the mayor of the town. George was using that mansion as his CP. And I took a bath and I got in that tub and I soaked my ass in that tub for I don't know how long. It had been three or four months since I last took a bath.

We crossed that bridge a few days later. I went to Dusseldorf and Aachen. You should have seen Aachen. You would not believe it. There was not one roof on any building there. It was completely destroyed. Pitiful.

I was never in contact with any of my brothers during the war. Harold was in the Airforce flying the Hump (Himalayas). Paul was in the Navy, in the Pacific. Bobby was at Okinawa. He was a Seabee, a construction battalion.

(Tell me about combat life) It's something that you don't keep on your mind. The two people that I killed, I hardly think about it. Each person's different. You have to make up your mind. You are there to do a job and it's you are him. You decide what your responsibility is- to yourself, to wife, and family, to your children. You have to think of survival. I didn't relish the idea; it was something that I did automatically. If you saw a German and he didn't surrender right way, you gonna have to shoot him. You don't shoot somebody sitting down in a chair having lunch. You shoot somebody who's trying to kill you.

(Did you ever think that you might not make it back?) You think about that all the time. That's a given. Anybody who tells you that they not thinking about that is not being truthful.

The war in Europe was different from the war in the Pacific and elsewhere. In a lot of ways I think that it was tougher going from island to island. The European war was more of a modernized war. We were fighting in cities not in the jungle. The individual infantryman had a tougher time in the Far East. But the artillery part in Europe was worse. Those Germans could put an 88 in your pocket from 5 miles away.

That same little fella I was telling you about earlier, Ebiline…I saw him cut right in half. We were running from one building to another and the artillery was coming down and we ran into machine gun fire and Ebiline got hit and he folded over just like a piece of meat. The German machine guns (MG-42) fired 3 to 5 times faster than an American machine gun. It would go bbbblllllttttttt. American guns would go bum bum bum. That 17-year old boy got killed right there. I had to keep on running.

When we got into Germany itself I remember our own artillery thought we were the enemy because we had advanced so far. We were walking out in the open. They thought we were Germans retreating down the road. I heard these three volleys go off. I could tell it was an American 105mm. You could hear it coming. You got time to move cause it was slow moving. The Germans used those high velocity shells; you didn't hear them until it exploded. Anyway we were going down this road and I heard those volleys go off and I said, "Holly Shit!" And there was this guy who was kind of nervous; he was shell- shocked. He had taken about all he could take; he was about to blow up. But everybody was high-strung. Everybody up there had seen a lot, done a lot, and been through a lot. But this guy actually fell down right in the middle of the road. Everybody else jumped in the ditch when we heard those volleys. And this guy froze right there in the middle of the road. He was having a breakdown.

We started calling that artillery CP to tell them who we were and to tell them to stop. We knew who they were. They were the 75th. But before we could get them to stop firing we had to move quickly because they were zeroing in on that road, on our position. When those second volleys went off I jumped over a barbed wire fence with my rifle and a pack and all. And I cleared that fence like it wasn't there. I hurdled it. But the fence hit my gun and my barrel stuck in the mud. And man that was a no-no. Man one of those shells exploded about 10-feet in front of me and my ears started bleeding. I had enough awareness to get up and jump behind a mound of dirt for protection. We finally got through to those guys. To this day I am hard of hearing.

I was able to bring this Luger back to the states. I had to register it. It's a fine piece of work.

I carried a carbine after a while. I carried a BAR at the very beginning of the war. I fired it at some tanks. I also carried a bazooka. I fired it at German pillboxes. I saw a lot of German tanks. But you didn't want to be within 10 miles of those Panzers. Our shells would bounce off those Panzer tanks.

Howard Dugas, Theriot:
**technical difficulties in beginning; truly begins at 01:36; will jump and skip around throughout; highway and lawn care noises in background**

Pearl Harbor
-Was shooting pool that Sunday when someone ran in and told them the news
-Figured everything would be settled in a couple of days, they didn’t really know what was going on
-Had turned 18 and just graduated from high school so Dugas joined the Navy
-There was more volunteers than ships so new recruits were put in the Coast Guard
-There was a lot of areas along the coast and Lake Pontchartrain to patrol for submarine sightings

-Boot camp at Harrihan, La which was the New Orleans Army base
-They had to share as the Coast Guard had no place and things were moving fast
-Explained to them that the Coast Guard and Navy was one unit
-Sent to Lake Charles and ran small boats and kept the bridge closed or open for shipyard workers

-Started a new patrol in Cameron, La; couldn’t drive cars as it was a black out area to hide from submarines
-Assigned to a Destroyer Escort “SS Mosley,” for patrolling and standing watch; also patrolled on horse in swampy areas and to keep from having to use lights
-In the early part of the war German U-boats were sinking 1-3 freighters a day in the Atlantic
-This was before the Destroyer Escorts could take over for protection

-Patrolling on horseback Dugas thought it was too easy and asked to be assigned onto the “SS Mosley,” the Destroyer Escort (DE) they had been patrolling for
-Always on alert but most of the crew had no experience with sea duty and neither did Dugas
-The Captain had been an office man and had only 90 days of training in school before taking over their ship
-Once the crew felt comfortable manning the ship they went out to sea to Bermuda for a shakedown cruise; there might have been two ships that went

-A DE was established for escort duty and submarine warfare and maybe some aircrafts
-Had 3 one inch guns, a 40-mm and 20-mm machine guns, K-guns, depth charges and a hedgehog in the back
-Before leaving, a lot of assembling for operations was done along the East coast by Virginia, the Carolinas, and Massachusetts
-Also where the German U-boats, never saw one in the gulf
-Dugas’s group was the first to escort convoys using Des
-Escorted 90-100 freighters at a time bound to the Mediterranean; never lost a ship to engine breakdowns
-They knew submarines would follow them all the way to the Straits of Gibraltar waiting for them to stall or lose a ship in a breakdown to shoot them

-Made serval trips from January 1944 to May 1945 bringing men and materials

Missions (22:40)
-On one mission to North Africa and Italy was asked to break away on the African Coast and look for a fishing boat
-They didn’t know what language the other boat used so the Captain asked Dugas to speak some French but the other boat called back and asked “What’s the matter, you don’t speak English?!”

-Went by Casablanca but didn’t see Humphry Bogart or Ingrid Bergman
-The Germans were further east by then to Tunisia thanks to the British; Hitler had his forces spread out too thin

Only Mission with Severe Causalities (26:35)
-Around dusk in the Mediterranean the lead ship of the convoy had radar (to intercept enemy or friendly planes) and saw a blinking light of unidentified planes that were coming in too low
-They figured because it was getting dark that the planes were going to make one pass and try to hit the freights
-The planes were coming too low anyway for the ships at the front to shoot so they let the planes fly over; Germans were well organized
-A freight at the very back started shooting 20-mm with tracers that could be seen in the night and then everyone was shooting but it was too dark to tell where they were shooting at
-The first ship hit was a troop ship and it had bombs and about 600 soldiers on board and it was hit by a torpedo
-The second wave of attacks hit two merchant ships (materials) and third wave hit the screening ship, hit with a torpedo—all three were beached but not sunk
-Dugas’s ship, the Mosley, laid up smoke screens at dusk to confuse the planes but it was too late
-After that every night they laid up smoke screens in case they got attacked again but they weren’t, just a few submarines

-This trip might have been the third or fourth trip

-Another trip along the African Coast and at night the radar picked up a surface signal for a boat and sent a message out that a convoy was coming and to get out of the way
-15 minutes later a torpedo cut the lead ship in half; couldn’t stop to pick up survivors in the water, they had to keep going

-Lost a lot of people during the war; too inexperienced and many mistakes made, very unprepared compared to the Germans
-By the second to last trip the war was almost over and there wasn’t much need for materials being sent out all over, it was all concentrated in Europe by then
Didn’t have much news on how the war was going, sometimes picked up BCC broadcast yet they never said anything about the war but mostly heard Axis Sally (German propaganda)

-Passed through the Strait of Gibraltar (he thinks) 8 times

-The Mediterranean was beautiful and at night they could see the phosphorus in the clear waters; Dugas’s captain was always excited to it

(38:00) Shore Duty
-After about a year at sea, Dugas was transferred to shore duty in New York
-Really enjoyed it as New York was the place to be for entertainment, could do anything or see anything all year around
-Like music and sports and he could go see stuff anytime
-Was sent to Port Security School to learn to patrol docks and check ships for explosives and fire hazards
-The German submarines they figured had been pulled out of their waters and were closer to home, as submarine warfare started phasing out
-It was a good duty, as they could have fun and take breaks; “always a bunch of girls somewhere”

(42:00) Trip to Greenland
-Towards the end of Dugas’s service he was sent on a trip to Greenland
-Was aboard a Coast Guard Icebreaker—it had a knife at the bottom to break the ice

-They were going to check something out; the ship had already taken a trip to Greenland and captured a German radio station
-On the way an engine went out and a 4 day trip took 2 weeks
-The wind was against them and one engine couldn’t push through it and had to watch for icebergs constantly so someone had to stand outside to look for them
-No clue why he was picked to go on this trip; people were always being sent around, sometimes with no place to go
-Once in Greenland as they came in, had to help a fishing boat break out of the ice, they followed behind them for 2 days
-It was cold but they had good clothes of 3 layers; but the worst was when up in the bridge and the wind blew on their faces and burned them; it was always so windy

-Didn’t stay too long as they had to get the Captain of the North Atlantic patrol was stationed there but he had a nurse with him (his girlfriend) and they had to take her too
-Then they just killed some time as it was Christmas time and by protocol so much of the crew had time off and the radio stations stopped

(51:15) Back in Boston
-People were being sent home on the point system as the war was ending
-Was sent to Baltimore and was waiting around to be discharged back to New Orleans
-Took a train to New Orleans and his parents met him and took him back home to Parks; **tape starts skipping around**
-As things slowed down went to work off shore for a while
-Learned to how to cook and was cooking for the rig then and worked about 15-16 hours a day so he got some good money

(55:15) Talking about what he did after the rig, his leukemia, his family, and answering some questions from Theriot

**hard to hear with tape skipping and background noise**

Transcription Begins:

Howard Dugas (9/9/01)
Parks, La.
Born: 8/13/22
Coast Guard/USS Mosley (DE-321)
Atlantic Ocean going escort

On Pearl Harbor Day I was shooting pool in Parks, La. It was December 7th, a Sunday. Anyway, that's when we heard the news. Somebody came down the road and said that they bombed Pearl Harbor. We said, "Auh, we'll finish that thing in a couple of days." Nobody knew really what was going on.

I had graduated high school and I was 18-years old at the time, so I joined the navy with a friend of mine. We took a bus to New Orleans. There were a lot of volunteers. To begin with there weren't enough ships to assign everybody too, so that's one of the reasons why they put the new recruits in the Coast Guard. There were a lot of areas that needed to be patrolled along the coast. The Coast Guard had a lot of small craft and they were equipped for patrolling the waters. (There were subs all over the gulf.)

We were sent to boot camp in Harrihan, La., which is an Army base in New Orleans. Actually we had to share space with the Army, because the Coast Guard had no other place to train.
After boot camp I was sent to Lake Charles and we mostly ran small patrol boats, mainly to keep the bridge open at peek hours so that the shipyard workers could get to work faster.

Early on, ships were getting sunk off the coast [by submarines] because of the silhouette from the city lights. Later, we were sent to patrol the beach area near Cameron, La. That was a blackout area. (Bayou Boys-Torpedo Book.) We couldn't use cars or trucks to patrol at night, plus it was too swampy, so we used horseback to patrol. They called it the Animal Husbandry detail. We were about 15-20 men patrolling along Holly Beach. People were volunteering for the navy so fast, they didn’t have any place to put them. So they put us with this unit patrolling the coast until the navy could build enough ships. It was easy duty, but I wanted to do something more.

We were getting tired of sitting on the beach and riding horses. So a couple of us asked the chief to see if we could get assignment for sea duty. We had heard that they were building and commissioning destroyer escorts in Orange, Texas. And sure enough, a few days later we were assigned to a Destroyer Escort, the SS Mosley (DE-321).

We were very inexperienced. The Japanese caught us by surprise. The crews of the destroyer escorts were half navy and half coast guard. John Mcloud from Parks, La., was the storekeeper on the Mosley. He and I were friends.

We were always making preparations. We were on full alert, but a lot of that crew had no experience with sea duty. Being from South Louisiana I had been in small boats, but sea duty is really something different. Even the Captain was an office-man who they sent to a 90-day school before he took over the ship. But this was going on everywhere.

During the early part of the war, the German U-boats were sinking anywhere from 1 to 3 freighters in the Atlantic a week. These freighters didn't have any protection; they would sail on their own. This was before the Destroyer Escorts took over.

Once we felt comfortable enough to go to sea we went on a shake down cruise to Bermuda. That was nice, generally speaking. I think there was another DE with us. It was rough going there, but that's how you learn the ship, you go on a shake down cruise. There were only three cars on the island. Everybody traveled by bicycle. It was a beautiful place. The DE was established for escort duty and submarine warfare. We had three inch guns, and 40-mm and 20-mm machine guns for defense. We had K-guns on the stern to roll out depth charges, and we also had what they called a hedgehog. It was right in front of the flying bridge. It would (fire) shoot-up 24-small torpedoes at one time. We trained with all this while in Bermuda. We used as much of the equipment as we could while we were there.

The first mission was to escort a convoy out of Norfolk, Va., to Texas Gulf ports and back, which we did. Then starting in January 1944 we began escorting ships across the Atlantic through the Mediterranean and on to North Africa and Italy. Most of the convoy operations for the shipments of supplies and soldiers across the Atlantic were based along the coast of the Carolina's, Virginia, and Baltimore. That's where the convoys would assemble, and that's where a lot of U-boats would patrol. We were one of the first groups to escort convoys [using DE’s]. We were escorting 90 to 100 freighters at a time, bound for the Mediterranean. We had Navy ships and Coast Guard ships. In a year-and-a-half we made quite a few trips across the Atlantic (Starting January 1944 to May 1945). We made several trips. These convoys were bringing men and materials to the Mediterranean.

We were lucky though. None of freighters ever had engine troubles or breakdowns, so not one ship ever got left behind the convoy on the trip across the Atlantic. If one would have broke down, we couldn't have stopped for it. It would have been a sitting duck for the subs. Enemy submarines would follow us all the way to the Straits of Gibraltar.

Once we were ordered to break off from the convoy and sail along the African coast to look for an important fishing boat. (This fishing boat was friendly, so we pulled up to it and our Captain told me to speak French to them over the radio, and this other guy spoke Italian to them. The guy in the fishing boat came back and said, "What's the matter, you don't speak English!") We located the boat and escorted it to port.

And we went by Casablanca, but I didn't see Humphry Bogart or Ingrid Bergman. We stayed there at port for a couple of days. By this time the British had pushed the Germans further to the east in Tunisia. Hitler had his forces spread out too thin. I think that's one reason why he lost the war, because he was fighting on too many fronts and he ran out of gas.

(April 20, 1944) We were carrying everything in those convoys, even troops. In April we sailed with a convoy to North Africa. It was dusk as we passed through the Straits of Gibraltar along the Algerian coast. The lead ship picked up a surface contact in front of the convoy and sent a blinking light to the ship ahead of us to tell them that a convoy was coming—big mistake! German bombers attacked us in three waves. We used radar to recognize the enemy planes from friendly planes. But these planes were coming at us low to ground level and we couldn't identify them on the radar. They were coming at us from about 20-feet off the water. They were JU-88's. They came right down the line in our convoy and we were in front so we didn't shoot at them at first, but the ships behind us identified them as enemy and started shooting. One of the planes dropped a bomb and it hit a merchant ship carrying demolitions and troops. “The first attack blew the troop-loaded merchantmen Paul Hamilton out of the water, killing 580 men; the next wave hit two more merchant ships; and the final strike sank the screening ship Landsdale (DD-426) with a single torpedo. The Mosley laid covering smoke and opened up with anti-aircraft fire during the strikes. Her guns splashed one JU-88 and damaged another German bomber during the first strike.” (Source:) We got credit for that. We couldn’t stop to pick up survivors that were in the water; we had to keep going. There was lot of confusion and inexperience that caused this. After that incident we would put up barrage balloons and lay smoke screens at night for protection, and we never had another incident with German planes after that. But we ran into a few submarines.

One day we picked up a signal on with our sound gear. It was a German submarine. So we and another DE dropped dept charges. A little while later the debris came floating up; oil and trash from the sub. We were credited with, along with the other DE, for sinking that U-boat. That's what is terrible about war. A lot of people were lost during that war-50 million people died during WWII. On our last two trips we didn't have any problems, because the war was being concentrated in Europe. Hitler had pulled everything out of Africa and the Mediterranean and brought it all in close to Germany.
The Mediterranean was beautiful. At night you could see phosphorus in the clear waters.

(Inexperience and mistakes is what made the war last so long. We were unprepared in a lot of ways and our equipment wasn't as good as the Germans. There was no comparison between our tanks (Sherman) and the German tanks (Tiger/Panzer). The Germans had tanks, real tanks. Those things were monsters compared to the toys we had.) After about a year or so at sea they transfered a few of us to shore duty in New York. New York was a heck of place to be especially back in those days. I like music and sports, and New York was the place to be for all that. They had three ballrooms and all the great bands would come, and Madison Square Garden had great boxing fights. You could do whatever you wanted anytime of the year there.

While I was in New York they sent us to Port Security School. By this time the German submarine warfare had eased off. They sub's were also being pulled closer to Germany. We patrolled the docks and we checked ships for explosives and fire hazards. It was good duty. At the end of my service I went on a trip on a Coast Guard Icebreaker to Greenland. We were going to check something out over there. Before I went on that trip, this same ship and its crew had captured a German radio station in Greenland. We had engine trouble on the way. A four-day trip took us two weeks. It was real cold up there, but we had good clothing.

Back in Boston, the war was ending and they were sending people home on the point system. I got back to New Orleans on a train. And then I came home.

Robert Gerami, Theriot, Hewitt Theriot:

-Volunteered in Jeanerette with the National Guard; long before Pearl Harbor—early 1941?
-After passing the tests sent to Camp Blanding, Florida; trained in Company E, 156th Infantry Regiment, the 31st Division, and was the cook
-The camp was training draftees; Gerami was just a cook though so he was not part of these trainings
-Sent to Bowie, Texas to train some more before going to New York to be shipped out to England
-The whole 2nd battalion and a band came over on the ship “O’rentas Barrows”

-Snubb Derouen, from G Company, was with Gerami’s unit; he commanded Gerami’s company at one time
-Clay Penn, Warren Hebert, Wilson Clark, Norby Dooley, Jack Martin, Gerald Whattigny, were in E Company
-F Company was Breaux Bridge, G company was New Iberia, H company was Franklin; these four companies made up the 2nd battalion
-200 men to a company; but they were split in North Africa

(9:20) Spent 4 months in England, then went to North Africa and made MPs and then split, one half of the companies went to Italy
-In Italy Gerami was working in the police department as an interpreter as Gerami family was Italian and could also speak in French

-In England they were protecting the air bases; he was the cook so he didn’t do much but be a guard
-In North Africa at Oran they guarded German and Italian prisoners; stayed there for about 6 months
-Gerami was discharged in Oran 3 years later on the point system
-While there a large tent mess hall was built for them; had 2 Italian prisoners that helped him, G.G. and Rommell
-The men gave them their families’ addresses to give to their parents when Gerami went to Italy; their families welcomed them and cooked for them one night

(16:23) Gerami’s father died while he was in North Africa but he did not know until much later but he knew the army wouldn’t have let him go back for the funeral anyway
-The Red Cross had sent a telegram about his father’s death but he never got it
-Found out from Wilson Clark who had a letter from his wife telling him of Gerami’s father’s passing; eventually Gerami’s wife wrote to him about it
-His father was from Italy (Palermo?) and moved to Louisiana in Jeanerette for the sugar houses where he met his wife (Gerami’s mother)
-Was actually already married in Italy but left that woman and brought their two sons over to the US; those 2 half-brothers lived in Lafayette

-Spent most of his time at the camp cooking
-After being made MPs his company went to Italy to help secure it; this was where he worked in the police department
-They encircled Rome to run out the Germans; the Vatican was left untouched and they couldn’t go in anyway

(21:45) recounting his trips to England and Oran by ship; looking through different books at the pictures to help jog Gerami’s memory

-After Italy they went to France; doesn’t know why and never really questioned it
-Cooked mostly in England and North Africa and sometimes went around and did guard duty; tells some short stories
-Each company had 6 cooks and 3 cooked one day and the next had the day off as the other 3 cooked
-No one knew when they would go back home
-The Italians were nice, they never wanted to fight against the Americans, that was all Hitler
-More recapping his trips and work again with different retellings

(34:49) His Lt. came and told him that he could go home; the war was over by then (May 1945)
-Sent to Texas where he got his discharge papers and then went back home
-Talking about life before the war and growing up in Jeanerette
-Didn’t really try and get together with those he was with during the war
-Talking about his family

Transcription Begins:

Robert P. Gerami, Sr.
Jeanerette, La.
Company E, 156th Infantry Regiment, LA National Guard
Cook
Interview conducted by Jason P. Theriot

I volunteered for the National Guard here in Jeanerette. I was sent to Camp Blanding, Florida. We were Company E, (156th Infantry Regiment) 31st Division. I was a cook in the kitchen. We were in Florida training with draftees. We went to Camp Bowie, Texas and from there we went to New York and left for England. Our whole battalion (2nd) went over together, even the band. The O’rentas Barrows was the name of the ship.

We had the whole unit with us. Snubb Derouen, from G Company, was with us. He commanded our company at one time. Clay Penn, Warren Hebert, Wilson Clark, Norby Dooley, Jack Martin, Gerald Whattigny, all these guys were with us. We were E Company, F was Breaux Bridge, G was New Iberia, H was Franklin. Those four companies made up our battalion.

We spent four months in England, guarding and protecting the air bases there. I was the cook and the rest of the guys were acting as guards to keep the people safe. We went to Oran, North Africa in March of 1943. There was plenty going on over there. We were guarding the German and Italian prisoners. They built us a big tent, a big mess hall where I cooked. We had two Italian prisoners: G.G. and Rommell; they helped us clean up. They gave us their addresses back home in Italy and a letter to show their mama back home. We went to visit their parents [in Italy] and they welcomed us and cooked spaghetti and meatballs for us and gave us wine. We stayed there in Oran about six months.

My daddy died while I was overseas, but I didn’t find out till much later. Wilson Clark told me; that’s how I found out. I ran into him one time and he asked me about my daddy. I told him that my daddy was fine…and then he told me that his wife had written him a letter saying that my daddy had died. The army wouldn’t let me come home, and I don’t blame them. My daddy left from Italy [or Palermo?] to come here, and lived in Jeanerette.

We were split up and they made us MPs; half of us went to Italy, some went to Sicily. (The other half went to Corsica) We landed at Naples, and there was still fighting going on. In Italy I was sent to the police department to be an interpreter. I’m Italian, so I could speak Italian. I was raised with the French people and my wife was French, so I could speak a little French, too. They took me out of the kitchen to work as an interpreter.

The Italians liked the Americans. They didn’t want to fight…Hitler convinced them to fight.

Our forces encircled Rome and ran the Germans out of there. We bypassed the Vatican City; that was left untouched. We left from Italy and sailed to France, where we stayed till the end of the war. One day they told me it was time to come home, because I had the highest points in the unit; I had two kids, too. I shook hands with my lieutenant and told the boys goodbye. Gerald Whattigny told me to go see his wife when I got home. So I did and I told her that he was okay and that he would be home soon.

Three years overseas…that’s a long time yeah. After the first year you think that you never gonna get home. When they declared surrender and the war was over…boy, we were glad.

Charles "Charlie" Hagan; Theriot

-Hagan owned a barbershop; some family history of his father from Nebraska and mother from New Iberia
-The places where they lived; siblings and children he had

(02:47) Pearl Harbor
-He and his best friend, both married at the time, had gone to Avery Island that morning
-It was around noon as they were driving back that the radio announced the news; they had no idea where Pearl Harbor was
-At the time when he was in high school (learned this in debate club) was that the US had a small army
-The Democrats were trying to build it up as the Republicans were isolationists
-There was a peace time draft after he graduated from high school but Hagan wasn’t 21 yet
-So he went to LSU for engineering but failed in trigonometry and chemistry
-It was a hard time to get jobs now unless you could work in the oil field but one had to be weigh at least 180 lbs., and Hagan was too small

-Hagan’s half-brother was a barber and had a second chair open in shop at the time and needed an extra hand
-So he went to barber school and when finished had to work as an apprentice
-Came back home with his apprenticeship license and his father knew of a barber shop that Hagan could buy
-There was a second barber there that Hagan kept but he was an alcoholic so Hagan wouldn’t allow him to come in to work most times

-The war broke out and Hagan wasn’t 21 until July 1941 so he missed the June draft
-Later in the year there was another draft that caught him, but he was now married
-So he was given a classification of 3-A as they weren’t taking married men yet
-The next year of 1942 the draft broad started taking married men, Hagan’s classification changed to 1-A
-Hagan was already now thinking about voluntarily joining up to the air force
-When he did go to war, he had to shut down his barbershop but he had already paid for the next 3 months rent when he was drafted
-He told his father to either rent out the shop for extra money or continue to pay the rent—his father paid the rent the whole time Hagan was away

(11:29) Basic Training
-Draft in December 22, 1942 and had to report to the courthouse in New Iberia; there were 50 men and they were all sent to Lafayette to be examined
-If they passed the examination they were sworn into the army right then but if they failed, they were given classifications of 4-F and sent back home to wait to be called on later if need be
-Once sworn in they gave them 7 days to go home and get their affairs in order and then report to duty
-But they got some extra days for Christmas and really shipped out on January 3rd

-Took a bus to Camp Beauregard (there for a week) and in Hagan’s unit he had only one other person from New Iberia with him
-Was Harold Vilmore (he became a major’s jeep driver so he never saw him during the war)
-Vilmore was transferred to headquarters as Hagan was sent to A Battery
-Basic training was at Camp Stewart, Georgia; went by train and had to hike with all their baggage to the camp; it was a camp to build them up physically
-Was very insecure of his weight (125 lbs. by then) and height and doubted he could hold his own against about 200 lb. Nazi if it came to it

(17:14) Army Barber
-Was assigned as a barber for his unit at first as his captain knew his background
-Hagan would cut hair at night and not just for his unit but others within the camps
-Still had to do everything else everybody else would do but sometimes was given leave of his duties to go cut hair on army time
-Was paid, charged .50c a hair and everyone was allotted for 2 haircuts so they would pay $1 and Hagan would get 35% of the collections; sent them home to his wife

-Started getting weapons, a 40 mm machine guns; Hagan wound up as a generator operator
-The generator provided the electricity for the gun to be operated remotely and Hagan had to set it up and take it back down
-The halftracks had M-15 with a 37 caliber cannon on the back, plus two .50 caliber machine guns; the M-16 had a quad 50’s on the back
-Hagan was an extra so he was not assigned to any particular gun but had to be able to use either guns when needed
-Goes into detail on how each gun worked and mishaps when in combat as his unit was not really good

(25:47) Desert Maneuvers
-Sent across the country on a troop train and Hagan cut hair the whole way to California; not really sure where they were at
-There was no camp there but it was called “Camp Dump” as they were dumped off to go and build scaffoldings and showers for outfits (not clothes)
-They were part of the 9th Armored Division when they were doing maneuvers
-Sprained his ankle his last week of maneuvers and at the hospital met a famous actor that would talk and play pool with them
-Tells of his adventures of trying to find his outfit in the desert after he was discharged

(40:37) Different Trainings
-Jumping around to different camps for various trainings: amphibious, artillery—did exercises for different battle fronts in Europe and Africa
-They knew what was coming when they would go overseas
-Last camp was Camp Shanks (New York) waiting for a transport ship to England
-They were split up, A Battery (Hagan) and the cooks loaded up on a different ship while the rest of the batteries and headquarters went on a different ship
-Cut hair while they travelled
-Took 13 days to cross the ocean to Liverpool (February 1944) and went south to Bristol Bay to get supplies, weapons and halftracks

(49:45)
-Then went to a beach town and the batteries were separated again; one group went to marsh area while Hagan and others were a part of an invasion
-A and D Batteries were sent over the Channel on an LST with personnel and equipment
-Landed on Omaha Beach 3 weeks after D-Day; they joined up with Hagan’s outfit and CP
-Hagan was now a part of the 2nd platoon of A Battery

-St. Lo they had a bombing but Hagan had been told to stay to cut hair the next day; the CP was a mile from where the bombing was happening
-Ordered to find a foxhole from the retreating Germans to hide in

(audio cuts off at 57:30)

Transcription Begins:

When I was in high school, we had a debate club. I was on the affirmative side: Should the United States build up its Army to equal that of other nations? At that time the Democrats were trying to get our army built up and the Republicans were considered isolationists; they figured we had two oceans to defend us and that an army would just get us into war. I was the only one who really put up a good argument, but the teach called it a draw.

On Pearl Harbor Day, I had a good of mine—we were raised together on Fulton St.—we were inseparable friends coming up. He was married and I was married. We went to Avery Island. We were on our way back around noon and we were listening to the radio when they announced that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. I didn’t know were Pearl Harbor was; I didn’t anything about Pearl Harbor.

Back then, jobs were hard time around here, unless you were in the oil field. And I was a small man, so unless you weighed 180-pounds, you couldn’t get a job out here. So my brother was barber and he had a shop in Beaumont, Texas. He had two chairs, but he only operated one, and he could have used another barber. He kept mentioning that, so that’s why I decided to go be a barber.

I went to barber school and after I had to work as an apprentice. When I came out, I bought a shop from another barber and my daddy backed me up. After a while they had the peacetime draft come up, then the war broke out. I wasn’t 21 until July of ’41. I was married at the time; I had gotten married at barber school. So they gave me the classification of 3-A, as married. They weren’t taking married people then. But then later the next year, 1942, they started taken married people. That’s when they changed my classification to 1-A. I was drafted on December 22, 1942.

I had to shut my barbershop down. Fortunately, I had paid up on my rent for three months and my father kept paying the rent for me until I got back from the war.

I received my draft notice to report to the courthouse in New Iberia. There were about 50 of us. Then we took a bus to Lafayette to take an examination. If you failed the exam, they classified you as 4-F and sent you back home, where they might have called you up again later on. If you passed, you were sworn into the Army right then and there. They read us the articles of war and were then part of the Army. They gave us a seven-day leave to go home and take care of our business. After seven days, we were to report for duty.

We got an extra few days because of Christmas. On January 3, 1943, we took a bus to Camp Beauregard, which was the induction center. This is where they assigned you to your unit. Harold Vilmore and I were assigned to the 467th AAA. He went into headquarters, and I went into A battery. We were sent to Camp Stewart, Georgia.

It was just basic training. They built you up physically: hikes and obstacle course. It was military training. I felt insecure about my size. I was about 125 pounds. We went through bayonet training and all that. And I didn’t feel very secure; if I had to come up against a 200-pound Nazi and I had to battle against him, I didn’t feel too secure about that. Things like that ran through my mind.

So from the very beginning, I wound up as the barber. But the Army doesn’t have a barber; you got your haircut from the PX. But most of the units made barbers like me. Our captain assigned me as the barber, because he knew my background. I started cutting haircuts at night. Later on they had me cutting hair on Army time. It was beneficial because I made money. They gave me a roster of all the names in our battery. When it came time for payday, they’d come to me and if I had you down for two haircuts, then you paid me $1, fifty-cents a haircut. Then I take 35-percent out of that collection and I give that to the battery clerk. I took the rest. I sent all of that to my wife.

Then we started getting our weapons. The first weapons were these 40mm machine guns. I wound up as a generator operator. The generator provides the electricity for the gun to be operated remotely. So we trained with those for a while and then we got these halftracks. The M-15 had a 37 caliber cannon on the back, plus two .50 caliber machine guns. The M-16 had quad 50’s on the back. I was an extra so I wasn’t assigned to one particular gun, but I could be used on either of the guns.

We moved to California for six weeks of desert maneuvers with the 9th Armored Division. From there we moved to the east coast. We headed out of Camp Shanks, New York and board a transport ship for England. We landed in Liverpool in February 1944, and made it down south. We picked up our halftracks and went to a camp on Bristol Bay along the Channel.

We knew what was coming up; we knew we were going into France. Just before the invasion, the captain told me to give everybody a GI haircut. But just before, they separated some of us from the battalion: myself, the cooks, those who were assigned to a halftrack, plus all of D Battery personnel and their equipment. We went to one place and the battalion went to a marshaling area with their halftracks.

We wound up going over the Channel in an LST along with D battery personnel and equipment. We landed three weeks after D-Day. I ran into Al Duetney on Omaha beach. He was a photographer and had a print shop right here in New Iberia. At that time I joined up with the rest of my outfit.

I was part of 2nd platoon of A battery. The night before the bombing of St. Lo, I had reported to the CP and the captain told me to stay there and cut hair the following day. The CP was about a mile from where they were bombing. That morning the bombers started coming in. The ground was shaking. The captain told me to find a foxhole and get in it.

Charles Hagan, Theriot:

*picking up on the story of Hagan and Haas trying to get a plaque made in their battery’s honor for their action on D-Day*

(Official records saying one thing as the men knew another from their interviewed story)
-While in reality they had landed earlier on the beach and this was because the headquarters of the battalion landed around 9:30 AM and they filled out the action reports
-They listed the first units as coming in at around 9 AM; when the enemy gun had been knocked out well before then—big controversy

-Goes on to talk about different reunions and things he learned later about those he met during his time in the Army; mentions a few experiences and men he met while traveling after Bastogne

(13:50) End of the War
-Wound up in Czechoslovakia before going through Munich, Germany for occupation
-It was there that Hagan was told he had 79 points and could go home but the machine gun guy left so Hagan needed to take over it—still cut hair too

“I had a unique experience. I cut hair all over the States, I cut hair on the Atlantic Ocean, I cut hair in England, I cut hair in France, I cut it in Belgium, I cut hair in Holland, I cut hair in Luxemburg, I cut hair in Germany, I cut hair in Czechoslovakia. It didn’t make me a better barber but gave me a lot of experience. I carried my tools with me everywhere I went.”

-Looking at photos in books Theriot had, some which show Hagan cutting hair; some of Hagan’s personal photos; awards given; an article Hagan wrote

(20:42) slowly cuts off into silence

Transcription Begins:

Haas had to get all of his actions verified through the war department to allow this. They had to go through the history to document what was done. He got the report and took that to the War Monuments Commission and they approved it. It was controversial because the records show that we our outfit landed at 9:00 a.m. on D-Day. Actually, headquarters of the battalion landed around 9:30 a.m., so when they filled out the action reports, they listed the first units as coming in at around 9:00 a.m. Well, that enemy gun had been knocked out well before 9:00 a.m.

We started getting reports in the next day about the invasion.

I had a unique experience. I cut hair all over the States, I cut hair on the Atlantic Ocean, I cut hair in England, I cut hair in France, I cut it in Belgium, I cut hair in Holland, I cut hair in Luxemburg, I cut hair in Germany, I cut hair in Czechoslovakia. It didn’t make me a better barber and I gave me a lot of experience. I carried by tools with me every where I went.

Arceneaux talk about his introduction to music and how he became and accordion player.

1:48-Corey arcenaux originally played guitar (at 7-8 years old) but quickly prefered accordion.

4:00-He had mentor who taught him to play with all his fingers they practiced for seven month.

6:15-Arceneaux was a fan of Nathan WIlliams, he came to see him every week. One day Nathan williams brought him on stage

13:50-Arceneaux started a band at 17, he attended the holy rosary institute in lafayette. His first band struggled to find a steady guitar player.

15:37-Arceneaux was voted quietest kid in his school in 1993, he says he is very shy.

16:09-he won his first zydeco award in 1994

17:51-Corey Arceneaux's family initiated him to zydeco, they always listen to zydeco. His family took him to plaisance zydeco festival.

19:50-buckwheat has been one of his Idols.

26:30-Arceneaux does not speak french, only his grand parents on both side do, even his mother does speaks but not fluently

30.40-Arceneaux used to work as a DJ on KJCB radio station he even got an FCC licence for this.

35:39-His favourite musician at that time was Keith Frank

37:14-Arcenaux explains his song writing process.

47:00-Arcenaux talks about playing when he was under 21, he had issues when he was playing in casinos and bars.

Micheal Tisserand interviewed Bois Sec Ardoin for an arcticle on him and Canray Fontenot about Creole Music.

3:26-Bois Sec talk about the difference between Creole music and Cajun music.

Bois Sec Claims that he doesn't play Zydeco.

Bois Sec's Granchildren are also musicians, his grandson Chris Ardoin plays zydeco.

12:20-Bois Sec said he convinced belton richard to keep playing cajun music instead of shifting to swamp pop

Bois Sec says he feels good about the younger generations playing Cajun Music.

21:11: When Bois Sec was young, the clubs were segregated (split in two separete parts for black and white people)

26:29-Bois Sec started music by playing Triangle with Amede Ardoin at 

32:00-Michel Tisserand asks Bois Sec about his cousin Amede Ardoin

Bois Sec explains that Amede was liked by his family for being a great talented musician and he did not want to work hard.

34:44-"He didn't sweat much"

Amede had good relations with white people, he often played for them.

Bois Sec didn't have a record player at home, he could not listen to his cousin.

38:52-Bois Sec Talk about when Amede Ardoin was beat up by white men after a show.

Some white men did not like that a lady handed Amede a hankerchief when he was sweating a lot during his show. 

42:00-Ameded ardoin had to play dead so they would stop beating him, then we crawled to a man named Celestin Marcantel who helped him. 

According to Bois Sec Amede kept playing after he was beat up.

Later on, he got sick an started to become insane. He ended up at an asylum and died their a coupled years later. 

Barry Ancelet did a lot of work to find when and where Amede Ardoin died so he could have a grave to be remebered.

45:12-Bois Sec Talks about meeting and playng with Canray Fontenot

Bois Sec says him and Canray have a special chemistry  that they both cannot find with other musicians

55:10-Bois Sec says that some people wouldn't let him play blues at their houses because it makes people dance too close.

57:00-Bois Sec talks about Bon soir moreau, he doesn't know who wrote it.  He says it can be danced like a Blues, like a waltz or even like a two step.

58:52-Bois Sec talks about the styles of dancing

59:00-Bois Sec tells Tisserand about baisse bas

1:03:23-Bois Sec explain that music is a way to preserve the creole culture

1:07:47-Bois Sec and Canray were still in good health despite numerous health problems.

1:11:04-Despite not playing zydeco, bois sec already played at Plaisance zydeco festival

1:12:00-Bois Sec talks about Creole language. in music

1:15:53-According to Bois Sec every male in  the Ardoin family is a musician

1:17:42-Bois sec talks about emotions when singing

1:19:00-He has 14 kids

1:21:59-Bois Sec says he usually drinks whiskey when he performs "When you don't drink, you don't play"

1:24:00-Bois Sec talks about the Ardoin's family reunions

0:00-Lawrence Ardoin talks about his accordions and the technical issues he had during tours/recording sessions

6:54-Lawrence Ardoin talks about playing music when he was growing up and his childhood in duralde.

7.40-Lawrence did not hear good things about Amede when he was growing up

8:15-Lawrence calls Canray Fontenot's father Adam Acaze instead of Adam Fontenot

10:38-Lawrence played fiddle with his father (bois sec) when he was eleven but he did not like it. He stopped fiddle after Canray Fontenot quit performing.

Lawrence used to play in Lake Charles every friday

12:34-Lawrence played at the ardoin club (also called the Cowboy Club) in duralde

13:30-Back in the days people used to buy old houses to turn them into music clubs

16:00-Kids were welcome in the Zydeco clubs

16:40-Lawrence talk about the  baisse bas style of dancing

19:17-Lawrence talks about asking girls for a dance

20:30-Lawrence talks about Amede Ardoin

25:00-Lawrence Ardoin talks about house dances during Amede's time

26:40-Lawrence says his son Sean is a good entertainer and a good singer.

30:42-Lawrence talks what makes a song "sound" creole

31:40-Canray Fontenot was often drunk, the ardoins plyed "Mamou hot step" to sober him up.

32:38-Lawrence talks about a merry go round pulled by a mule in his town. People used to play music there.

38:05-Lawrence talks about mardi gras celebrations.

42:00-Lawrence talks about forming a band after his brother died

47:18-Lawrence talks about Boozoo Chavis and John Delafose

51:15-Lawrence talks about the rivalry between bands and the competion in music

53:40-Lawrence Ardoin talks about the racial segregation in the 1950, he says Eunice was very segregated

1:01:38-Lawrence talks about Chris first album (when he was only ten) for "maison de soul"

1:06:20-Lawrence claims that Boozoo cannot play his style, but he cannot play boozoo's style either

1:13:45-Lawrence talks about band etiquette 

1:27:24-"Zydeco is not a polished music, all the flaws are a part of it"

Milton Ardoin was Amede Ardoin's nephew

5:26-His father was Beaudoin Ardoin, he sang with Amede Ardoin

6:58:-Milton Ardoin explains Michael tisserands about the song "Mon bon vieux mari"

11:26-Milton Ardoin talks about Amede's death.

12:21-Milton was 20 when Amede died

12:36-Milton explain that 2 people were hired to kill Amede (Richard Miller and Elias Deville,  they beat him up and rolled over his head with their car close to Eunice (besides the "john deer place")

23:00-Amede played music at Milton's house, he played solo most of the time

24:50-Milton Ardoin tell about a time where Amede was shot by someone jealous of him.

32:26-Amede started the accodion after Milton's father (Amede's brother) gave him an accordion. Amede was still a child, his feet did not touch the ground when he was playing.

34:40-Milton could not visit Amede in Pineville hospital, because was working at the CC corps and he did not have a car.

36:45-Milton only visited Amede once. Amede was not the man he used to be. 

42:34-The two men that were hired to kill him were black

49:38-Milton tells about a time where Amede Ardoin was shot through a chruch window.

51:23:Amede Ardoin played for white and black people, mostly for white people. He also played with Dennis McGee who was a white fiddler.

52: 55-Amede worked im the fields with the rest of his family

53:04-Milton claims that Bois Sec never played triangle with Amede Ardoin

55:11-Milton was 16 years old when Amede got beaten up. Amede's mind was off after the accident.

58:20-Milton Ardoin's father did not go to chruch, his mother went to a baptist chruch. He does not remember Amede singing religious songs.

59:50-Milotjn Ardoin's Grand-Father (Amede's father) died when Amede was twelve. A bridge broke when he was crossing it with cows. His grand mother (Amede's mother) died when Amede was 30. She was very strict with Milton. 

1:03:31-Amede Ardoin never married, he did not have any official children

1:05:20-Milton Ardoin talks about "La valse des orphelins" to Michael TIsserand 

1:10:58-Amede could not play after his accident

1:15:09-Amede used to drink, he did not drink a lot because he was small.

1:20:00-When Amede had a cold, he would drink Castor oil to grease his throat so he could sing

0:15-The Ardoin brothers started a band in 1966 when morris came back from Mississipi.  They got together to increase their chances to all suceed in music without their father (Bois Sec). They played in Lake Charles, Lafayette and New Orleans. They named themselves the Ardoin Brothers aftert the Balfa Brothers. Morris talks about the formation of the band.

11:08-Michael Tisserands asks why Bois Sec Ardoin did not play at the Jazzfest. Morris says it's because he did not give an awnser to the Jazzfest organisation  . As he got old, Bois Sec always used to say he would stop playing but kept playing anyway.

16:50-Morris Ardoin starts to talk about when Amede got beat up and the racial segregation in Louisiana. People worked together but did not dance together. Black people could only enter white people parties as performing musicians.