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HomeMy WebLinkAboutArnold Folterman TranscriptionCity of College Station Heritage Programs Oral History Interviewee: Arnold Folterman Interviewer: Tom Turbiville Transcriber: Brooke Linsenbardt Place: College Station, Texas Project: Veterans of the Valley 00:00: Tom Turberville (TT): I’m a, I’m gonna put this right there. Keep that right there. And. So how are you? 00:00:08: Arnold Folterman (AF): Well. I guess I’m all right. [chuckle] TT: You guess you’re all right. 00:00:13: AF: Yeah. TT: Well tell about me, about your ser-, you were in the third Army. 00:00:16: AF: Yes sir. TT: At, in Patton’s Army right? 00:00:19: AF: 80th Infantry. TT: Tell me about where you’re from and sort of where you grew up and went to school and, and wherever, and sort of before getting into the service. 00:00:29: AF: I was born in Washington County. A-hill. [chuckle] TT: Yeah, right. 00:00:35: AF: My folks moved to, to Lyons on a farm between Lyons and Caldwell. And I spent eighteen years there until I was drafted into the service. I went to school in Lyons. And they, did away with the school and consolidated with Somerville. TT: I see. 00:00:57: AF: So I went two years in Somerville. And, I was a little bit behind. And I got my little ol’ pink slip. [chuckle] And so I, I stayed in school to finish the 1943 year, and then I, reported for medical, Ar-, Army physical. In June, I believe in June, June 19th. And then I, went home till July the 4th, to get everything that I wanted to get done and I reported to San Ton [San Antonio] on July 5th in. TT: Of ’43? 00:01:37: AF: ’43. TT: So you reported to Fort Sam? 00:01:39: AF: Fort Sam. And from there they shipped me to Camp [inaudible], California. To a anti-aircraft, .40 millimeter anti-aircraft training center. Took my basic there in .40 millimeter training. TT: Oh, huh-huh. 00:01:57: AF: I finished there. They transferred us to Fort Bliss, Texas. TT: In El Paso? 00:02:03: AF: El Paso. And. We were in a, type of a Armor Infantry I guess you would say. It was ar-, armored half-tracks, with machine guns mounted on the four, four quads of, qua-, machine gun quads, .50 caliber. We trained in those. It took some additional infantry training, and some night problem work. And then they shipped me to Camp Chafee, Arkansas. And, on the train ride from Camp Chafee, Arkansas to, from El Paso. From Fort Bliss to, Camp Chafee, Arkansas, I was looking out my air conditioned train window. ‘Cause it was open you know, [chuckle] for fresh air. And what’d I see, but a sign that says Dime Box, Texas. TT: I’ll be darned. 00:03:05: AF: Caldwell, Texas came up next. Hearne, Texas came up next. And we de-trained there, took a thirty minute exercise session. Got on the train again went up through east Texas to Camp Chafee, Arkansas. TT: I’ll be darned. 0:03:22: We trained sixteen weeks of advanced infantry training there. And, shortly after D-Day, they shipped us to Camp [inaudible], Maryland. I’ve never heard of it before. And we did some advanced, live-fire infantry tactic training there for several weeks. I don’t, two, three, four weeks, something like that. And then was loaded on a troop transport. It was a freighter that was converted to carry freight and troops. And it was probably about five hundred of us on that freighter. TT: That’s a long ride. 00:04:07: AF: That was a mess. It was just steaming hot down there and everybody was seasick and smelled like. [chuckle] TT: Oh man, yeah, yeah. 00:04:15: AF: It took us, took us ten days. ‘Cause we was traveling in a, in a Navy convoy. TT: So you didn’t get one of those nice, converted cruise ships like some of ‘em got. You were in a [chuckle], you were in an old freighter. 00:04:30: AF: I, I was, I was ready to get off that thing when we got to England. [chuckle] TT: Barely a place to sit. So you went from, from Maryland to, to England. 00:04:38: AF: To England. And I think it was Liverpool, I, I don’t. After I left the states, I was lost most the time. I didn’t know where I was at. [chuckle] And we stayed in a, replacement Liverpool there for about two weeks I guess. You know, they, taking shots and what have you and stuff. And getting’ us briefed for what to look for. And then we loaded on a small ship of some time. Cra-, crossed the channel and debarked into a landing craft and went ashore on Omaha Beach. Of course that was already cleared out, just a dry landing there. And then we mo-, we. 00:05:20: TT: About what date, do, do you know what date that was about? 00:05:24: AF: Oh it was. Somewhere in early September. TT: Okay. Of ’44. 00:05:33: AF: Of ’44. TT: Right, okay. 00:05:36: And we, we, we hiked in about five or six miles I’d guess. Close to[inaudible] or somewhere to another staging area. And then took the last bath we had in a cold, running stream of water. [chuckle] TT: Oh my goodness. 00:05:53: AF: In one of the French farmer’s irrigation ditches. And then from there, well we, they sent us to a different infantry divisions that we was gonna serve replacement for and I went to the 80th Infantry Division. TT: 80th Infantry. 00:06:08: AF: And they were just over, just across the Moselle River when, going down through there. And that’s where I got my first taste of. TT: So talk about that. What kind of resistance were you, did you experience and, and what. 00:06:29: AF: Just. TT: You were just, you, you were. What was your, your job? Were, did you carry a rifle? Or were you? 00:06:34: AF: I did, I did. Yeah, I was a infantryman and I was placed in an ammunition and pioneer platoon is what they called it. In the headquarters’ company. But it was actually engineering outfit. And, I just did whatever. Dig, dug holes, packed piggy-back stuff around. And, they had, they had some real heavy fighting just before we crossed the, before I got there to the Moselle River. On Mousson Hill and. Some other place there. Had, had pretty, pretty heavy casualties is the reason I went in to [inaudible]. TT: What hill was that? Mousson? 00:07:20: AF: Pont-Pont-à-Mousson. TT: Pont-à-Mousson. 00:07:22: AF: Pont-à-Mousson. TT: Okay. 00:07:24: AF: And, after that, we, moved a little ways toward the Seille River. And we stayed there about ten days in a, a defensive position like, brought in supplies and stuff so we could move, move further. Of course as we crossed Moselle River, George Patton’s tanks ran out of gasoline. And he wasn’t able to move till such time that he was, there was a free place to supply us for those tanks. And when we moved out of the, on the, across the Seille River, it was. Oh it had rained like three or four days, just steady downpour. And when we moved out of our positions to go to where we were supposed to cross the Seille. About a mile, we were on a little old gravel road, and about a mile we had to wade water from anywhere from ankle-deep to shoulder, armpit-deep. Because the river had backed out. And they didn’t want to get into, they, they, we could go down that road and not be seen see. So we had to still in that thing. And we had one little short guy that he had to get ahold two of us, tall one because his pack kept floating him up and he’d drift off. He had to hold on to the taller boys so. [chuckle] TT: So this is about a mile that you? 00:08:56: AF: Yeah, about a mile. TT: And which river was this? 00:08:59: AF: The Seille. The Seille River. TT: The Seille. Now this was getting towards the time of year that it was starting to get pretty cold, wasn’t it? 00:09:04: AF: Ooh. It was cold. This is early November. TT: Right. We weren’t into December yet, or Battle of the Bulge-type cold, but it was still getting pretty cold. 00:09:12: AF: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was pretty cold. TT: Yeah. 00:09:16: And. Then we, right when we crossed the Seille, we got into the Maginot Line. And then after that, I’m not sure just oh where, what, what happened, but. Then we, on December the 6th I think it was, they pulled us out of the line and 80th that had been in constant contact with enemy for 102 days. They had pulled us out of there and, and sent us to some town in France where we got new, new uniforms, new boots. TT: Take a bath. 00:09:58: AF: Take a bath. Take a hot shower. Five minutes. And we stayed there I think about ten, ten days maybe. And then, then we had orders to, to move out and relieve another infantry division. And we moved out and they were in infa-, their positions. They were moving out to be, go back to relief duty. Orders were changed, we turned around and came back, got on the quartermaster trucks. They went and got back in their old foxholes. By then it had started raining and clouds were right down at ground level. Had orders to get on those trucks and they going to Luxembourg. Battle of the Bulge had, had developed. Before the, quartermaster drivers, this is going on you know back, way behind the front where there was no danger as much to anything. Unless airplanes, but it’s so fogged in they, there wasn’t any, any of those flying. And when the orders came to, to move out, it was, all lights, full headlights will be utilized on every truck in this convey. And we hadn’t seen a light, a bright light in six or eight months. So you know what, we thought of George Patton. [chuckle] But after, after we got through the ordeal, we realized why and it was a good, good move. You know, figured it out, he was a sharp old boy. Because he knew they couldn’t spot us. And it, then it started snowing. And by the time we got to Luxembourg to get off the trucks, we were just froze. But anyway, we traveled 150 miles in about ten hours time. The Army convey, they is moving. But those trucks were running about twenty miles an hour because they could see where they’re going. TT: Right. 00:12:09: AF: We was set up and waiting in Luxembourg. And, the Germans didn’t even know we was there, but the division was all set, artillery in place and everything. And fooled ‘em up pretty bad. And, then, somewhere after that, a few days after that we’ll, we, were moving into make contact with troops in Bastogne. And that was roughest territory I ever saw that was gullies and creeks and just looked like Navasota river bottom. But anyway, when, our outfit actually never made contact with 101st. But our regimental commander was, killed there. Because he was, came up to survey the situation and I was carrying hot food up to the rifle companies. And the company commander told him, “Colonel don’t go as far as you go.” But he didn’t listen. He probably had a mission and then a little while we heard Burke guns take off and that was it. TT: What was his name? 00:13:36: AF: I believe he was called [McBicker?]. TT: [McBicker?]? 00:13:40: AF: [McBicker?]. TT: And he was your regimental commander? 00:13:42: AF: Yeah, regimental commander. TT: Right, right. When everybody ever talks about the Bulge, the thing they talk about is the weather, how cold it was. 00:13:51: AF: Oh yeah. TT: Indescribable, how cold it was. 00:13:54: AF: The first, first guy that got off the truck. Well you normally you know, you just grab a seat and hop off. And the first two guys they fall, they fall off like a chuck of ice. Mostly fro-, just about froze. So everybody had [chuckle] had, had help getting off the truck like a bunch of old ladies. TT: How’d you stay warm? How, or not warm, how did you stay, keep from frostbite or from? 00:14:19: AF: Well I’m glad we didn’t, I’m, well I’m glad we didn’t go any farther because it would, that would have developed shortly after that. But we put on everything and we finally, the thing that helped us the mo-, most, was to take our raincoats and put those on and pull it up around our head. ‘Cause that. And the trucks didn’t have any tarps on them or anything. Were open, opened in the back. And that cold wind was just tearing us up. TT: Right. So your unit, what kind of resistance did it encounter during the Bulge or during the 102 days or? 00:14:56: AF: Well, well 102 days, it was sporadic. At times, it was pretty bad, sometimes it wasn’t. After, after Moselle River crossing, well, I was with my ammunition and pioneer truck that I served on, with, you know, to help carry supplies out and stuff. It, got bogged down and the Germans let us have a pretty good taste of their artillery and mortar fire. The truck driver was wounded and, he finally managed to back his truck out of the uh, mud, back to the road. And normally they wouldn’t put a truck in a town [inaudible], but not a small town anyway. Because it was easier to see it in a town. They tried to keep it in, in the you know, concealed camouflage and bushes or something. And anyway he, he pulled his truck into there. Well they continued to pound us with mortars or whatever it was. They set the truck on fire. Well its, they quit then, they knew what, they got what they was after. Of course I lost my only pair of britches, extra britches I had [chuckle]. TT: When they set the truck on fire? Oh my goodness. 00:16:26: AF: It, but all my things was on the truck see? And one, one of the, one of, one of our jeep drivers, [inaudible] jeep driver got killed there. Had a direct hit by a artillery shell. TT: About, were you wounded? 00:16:42: AF: Well, I was, I was hit, but it wasn’t, it wasn’t very serious. I, it didn’t, I kept going. Went to the aid station, got some powder put on it and. TT: Where were you hit? 00:16:55: AF: Right above the kidney on the right side. TT: Just shrapnel or? 00:16:59: AF: Yeah. Well, all it was, it was a [inaudible] we did that. And so. TT: It didn’t knock you down or anything? 00:17:05: AF: Oh no, no. It just, like something set me on fire back there. It was hot. And I knew something had happened so I went to the aid station, medic. Well when I got there, what, what they was working on, I, I didn’t need to stay around. TT: Right. 00:17:21: AF: It was a lot worse than I was. TT: Yeah, sure. 00:17:23: So, just went on with regular duties there, minus the truck. TT: Yeah, yeah. So you would your duties whenever big holes, deliver a lot of food and everything and you did this all with a rifle on your back? 00:17:34:AF: Yeah. Yeah, oh yeah. And, then, when we got into the, s-, boys getting ready for the [inaudible] Maginot Line, a Maginot [inaudible] line. I was sent to the demolition school. To, they taught me how to make different type of charges. And they had one that was particularly, used at that time because it was, they called it uh, I forgot what they called it. But it, it was, the explosives were formed so that they would like a beehive. It was built up high, and then it was open. That would cause that force to go down and penetrate in one place in order to pop those lids and stuff on the, on the hill boxes. And, I did get to use, use that on the, it was the [inaudible] River crossing. The, rifle troops had overrun the German ammunition [dump?], had probably 4,-500 hundred rounds of amm-, artillery ammunition. So they sent me and another guy up there with a central charge and blew that thing up. And we, we went up, set it off. What it didn’t, it didn’t blow like it was supposed to ‘cause we didn’t have enough explosives because the ammunition that was stored there was stored in boxes see. And we didn’t have time to try to set that up. We just had to put, put our charges in there and go. So we went back, they sent us back again, with, about twice as much, German T.N.T. that we, that was, we had before. But it did blow then. It was like a, air was full of artillery shells flying up in the air. Spewing flames and stuff out of the powder it had set off. We, we, fixed it where they couldn’t use it. That was the only that I really used any of, real training there. And the other time, when we got to Kassel, Germany, we, were about a mile I guess, a mile, two miles out of Kassel in a small community there. They, they looked, looked me up and they handed me a bazooka. And another guy had two rounds of bazooka ammunition and told us there was six Tiger Royals comin’ down that road over there. We’re to go over there and, you know, delay ‘em. Well I thought he needed how to fire and load a bazooka. But he didn’t know anything about it and I had never fired one. That was, we was supposed to got that training in Arkansas, but they shipped us out before we completed it. So I, I had no earthly idea what to do, do with that bazooka. [chuckle] TT: Right. Huh. 00:20:53: AF: But those six Tiger Royals, they came, came within several hundred yards of where we were at, but there was a railroad track there. And they were running abreast to that railroad track. Well when they went over that railroad embankment, all the, well the ground was quivering and shaking with those things where we were at. Because they’re huge monsters. And when they went over that railroad track, the gasoline moved to the back of their tanks and the intake, all six of them just shut off. Dead quiet. We couldn’t figure out what happened, but that’s the way it was. If, if that, that hadn’t happened, we would’ve been dead trouble. They had set all of our T-Ds along, off some other place. Six, 6-10, 6, 6-10 T., T-D battalion. But they had been sent to another miss-, on another mission. We were just sitting on our [doughboysies?]. [chuckle] Just with a couple of sticks [inaudible]. TT: Right, right. 00:21:59: AF: But. Anyway that, we came out of that all right. That Kassel is a funny town. I got to see part of it. But it had been bombed and it was, it set off one of those fire storms. And it, it was, the buildings were, were there, but they were just completely burned out inside. Just nothing but four walls standing. So then we moved back down towards Nuremberg. I don’t know why we went that a-way, but anyway that’s the way they wanted us to go. And we stayed in Nuremberg, oh probably two, three days, something like that. Kinda got some new supplies and stuff. And, then we moved on down and went into Austria. That was a, goofiest river crossing I ever made. Before that, we crossed rivers like, I don’t know, there were nothing but rivers where we was going through. But every time we crossed one, we were right up against another one. They weren’t big but they were rivers. That river was the Inns River. TT: The Inns? 00:23:14: AF: Inn., I-N-N. And we crossed a town called Braunau. It was the birthplace, place of Adolf Hitler. TT: In Austria? 00:23:25: AF: In Austria. And when we got there to get a-, go across the river, the whole town was turned out on the riverbank. Greetin’ us. [chuckle] TT: I’ll be darned. 00:23:35: AF: And Burgermeister told everybody to put out the word, everybody in that town, get out there and welcome us in. [chuckle] And, and they, they, they had a P.W. camp there and I got a picture somewhere I believe. But anyway, it was two G.I.s. I guess when the Germans realized that we were crossing the river that was, it was, that was it. They opened the gates at P.W. camp. And these two guys, commander, the horse and buggy, had two black stone fire hats. And he comes riding his, riding his brown out. [chuckles] He was having a ball. TT: Uh-huh. [chuckle] That was the P.O.W. camp in Braunau? 00:24:24: Yeah, well it was right outside of Braunau on the, it’s over by the side of the town. It was right close to there. Then we went off into, something that looked like Navasota River bottom. Again, I got a picture of that. [gets up] Here that, I, I thought it was the Navasota River bottom. That’s when we received orders that cease all military operations. TT: Right. 00:24:54: AF: The war has ended. TT: This is when you were still in, in Austria? 00:24:59: AF: Yeah, somewhere in Austria I think. TT: Huh-huh. Right. Did you have much, or any, did you, personally come in, in contact with Patton? 00:25:14: AF: So, General Patton one time that was riding, around the, after it. What was the other crossing? We were in a pretty heavy causalities trying to go over. I can’t remember what the name of that thing was, but it was long, old, grass. You know, ground. And that’s. TT: I see the [inaudible] path. 00:25:47: AF: Yeah. [chuckle] TT: Now these were, these were P.O.W.s or these were? 00:25:51: AF: No, these were buddies of mine. TT: Oh, these are buddies of yours, yeah. 00:25:53: AF: Yeah we same stuff. TT: And that was at Braunau or at the, camp? 00:25:58: AF: Out, outside of Braunau, down in some kind of forest or something. TT: So these were two friends of yours? 00:26:03: AF: Yeah. TT: Yeah. [chuckle] That’s good. I might wanna scan it. I’m gonna get some pictures from you and take ‘em and scan ‘em for the show, so. 00:26:13: AF: Any, anyway that, that mound of dirt that we couldn’t get over, that’s when General Patton came up. And, he personally walk to wherever he wanted to go and observe the thing. And we then we sit there for another two, a day or two, or three days, I don’t remember how this, how long. And then they, took the s-, squadron down to company headquarters or platoon down headquarters. And they gave us a briefing as to what he was, had set up to take that. He took it. TT: Yeah. 00:26:51: AF: This, guy that was on the show here a while back, the artillery man? TT: Hmm-hmm. 00:26:58: AF: He talked about how much stuff they could fire. He must have been in that because when it, that thing started off four o’clock in the morning, the whole sky lit up. And it just, like it was never end. And when, when they got through it, they just walked over. There wasn’t, there wasn’t nothing but stumps and trees standing on that thing. He just, blew it off. The top of the dirt. TT: Yeah. Wow. 00:27:29: AF: He wanted it. And he, he saved a lot of guys’ lives there of course. We had to try to take it a couple of times, and they had pretty heavy casualties so. TT: Hmm-hmm. Yeah. So are you, when you got the word that the, that the war was over, then what, what happened? How long before you came home? Or what were your duties after that? 00:27:48: AF: After that, we, we went to a little town called Mauerkrichen, Austria. And we, we, we had, I’d post along the roads. And the German’s Sixth Army surrendered to the American Third Army. And the, we sit there for about three days, day and night, and those Germans came driving in in their trucks, bringing all their artillery and stuff. Well I got pictures of quite a bit of that. TT: They were just anxious to surrender right? 00:28:26: AF: Oh yeah, they was, because the Russians. TT: The Russians were. 00:28:29: AF: Russians were, were on ‘em on the other side. They didn’t have any option. That was the only way out. TT: Right. 00:28:34: AF: And they was 100 and I think they said 120,000 in that Sixth German Army. TT: Yeah. 00:28:42: AF: And. At that, at the end they had a rail, a railroad track out there somewhere. I don’t know whether it was just a normal track they just put trains on it, or whether they built on out there or what. But anyway, they went through a discharge procedure there. They go, got ‘em to park their vehicles and their, their guns and all that stuff in certain areas in the fields and stuff. It was a big valley out there. And it was just loaded with, German equipment. And then there was this train, they had different cars. And I was in the car that had to inspect all of their baggage that they carried, their knapsacks and stuff for guns, cameras, knifes, and anything that looked you know, suspicious or that we might need to check further. And see that they all got a haircut and dusted in D.D.T. I [inaudible]. [chuckle] TT: [chuckle] Yeah. 00:29:46: AF: But I don’t know how long that lasted. About a week, a couple of weeks I guess before we got. Then when they got through there, then they’d send on down the line to put ‘em on trucks, to probably get the towns I guess in different areas. After that, then we, got, sent to Czechoslovakia. We stayed there about a month I guess. And we stayed in a high-rise hotel that was in Marienbad [Marianske Lazne], Czechoslovakia. It was kind of like mineral wells, mineral baths stuff. So the, the elite of Europe had come to party and take their mineral baths and stuff. And the only thing was a few bullet holes in the depot roof. Other than that, the town wasn’t touched at all. All the hotels were. So we filled ‘em with G.I.s, but we didn’t stay there a month. I guess they figured out how much it was costing them. [chuckle] We got moved to an old, dirty P.W. camp. [chuckle] To stay there and set up roa-, set up road blocks with the Russians on the border of Austria and Czechoslovakia. TT: I see. 00:31:10: AF: And, then we moved, back to a place, (Sankt Pölten?) Austria. In, Adolf had a Hitler youth school there. Big army-type thing you know. And they moved the whole regiment I guess it was, into that, into that. We stayed there for, until, we d-,d-, sent back home. TT: Sent back home. 00:31:37: AF: Yeah. TT: So you came back home, when? In 1945? Or? 00:31:41: AF: In 19, yeah latter part. I got in, I was discharged on January the 20-, 24th I believe 1946. TT: ’46. So you came back home and came back where? Where were you stationed when you came back home? 00:31:58: AF: Uh, I just came into Fort Dix, New Jersey, and they s-,s-,s-, scattered us out to different areas, or places closer to home. And I went to Camp Fannin, Texas. That’s where I got my discharge. TT: Where is that? 00:32:16: TT: Camp Fannin is, somewhere up around Paris. TT: I see. 00:32:21: TT: Okay, no wait, I came through Paris. TT: Yeah. And that’s where you got your discharge? 00:32:25: AF: I, I got discharged. And then I just took a bus. No I took the train to Caldwell. And the first night to Caldwell, there was no buses or nothing out of there so I just crawled into the, the [inaudible] Railroad Station and hold up, made me a pillow, and went to sleep. [chuckle] TT: Went to sleep. 00:32:45: AF: Till the next morning to get to, got out of the bus station, got a bus, came on home. TT: To S-, Somerville? 00:32:51: AF: Lyons, Lyons, to Lyons. Yeah. TT: Yeah, to Lyons. And then what happened? Then what, what, what was your, what did you do after that? What was your job, what was your career? 00:33:02: AF: Well after that, I worked in the little grocery store, meat market in Lyons for six months. And then a buddy of mine found a job over here with [inaudible] at that time. And I cam-, we came over here together and worked a service station for, about a s-, about a si-, six months or a year or something like that. TT: Where? Here, here in Bryan? 00:33:29: AF: In Bryan. It was right, right down there across from city hall. It used to be uh 30th, 30th and Texas Avenue was where it was. And, then, while I was working there, a guy, a kid li-, worked that was in the boarding house, stayed in the boarding house. It was Scott’s Boarding House. Six, six single men had rooms in there. He’d come over at night and talk with us on the night shift. He found out that I had also picked up some telephone experience. He was working for the telephone company at that time. He told me about that. And I went up applied. I was hired and went to work for [Established Stage?] Telephone Company. I stayed there until they sold, sold the company about twelve years later I guess. Then G.T.E. bought it out. And I continued to work for them in different capacities. Cable Supply Serve, exchange repairman, switching technician and, the, last, last, thing I did was a toll network analyzer. I worked for, on special circuits. But I retired in 1989. TT: In ‘89? 00:34:57: AF: Yeah. TT: With the, with the phone company? 00:35:00: AF: Yeah. TT: I see. 00:35:01: AF: Forty, forty-one years, forty-one plus years. TT: What, how long have you and Minnie been married? 0035:11: AF: [Sigh] I married in 1950. So it’d be 56 years. TT: Okay. So after you were, here, here, you meet her in Bryan? Or in, in Lyons or? 00:35:22: AF: I, I found her out in Snook. [chuckle] TT: Found her in Snook. Wasn’t far away. 00:35:27: AF: Yeah. A friend of mine that had lived in Lyons, he was working for this used car salesman over here. And, and he knew I didn’t have nothing to do. He was having a prospect, well he’d come by and pick me up. We’d go try send him a vehi-, somebody him a vehicle he had. And so he got to know one girl out there and then she had a friend, and Minnie was the friend so I got, he put me on a blind date and that was, that was it. [chuckle] TT: And that was it. 00:35:59: AF: That was it. TT: Now you all have kids or grandkids and? 00:36:03: AF: Yeah we, we, we had four children. Two girls and two boys. Our oldest daughter was the, the one that got killed in Mer, Weimar. Was murdered in Weimar. TT: Oh my goodness. 00:36:18: AF: Yeah. The railroad killer. The railroad. TT: Yeah. Yeah. 00:36:24: AF: Her and her husband. He was due, she, he was a minister for her church in Weimar. TT: Right, right. 00:36:30: AF: They were murdered down there. And our old son, he worked as a game warden for twenty-some, some-odd years. He retired here last year. Youngest son is working for Texas Digitals out of College Station. And our youngest daughter is a, works for First National Bank in Bryan, Bryan. And we got nine, ten grandkids. And one great-grandkid. TT: Oh my goodness. 00:37:09: AF: So I got a herd of ‘em. TT: Who’s the, the Marine here? 00:37:14: AF: That is our youngest grandson. And he’s in Camp Te-. Oh. Peddle, Peddleton? TT: Pendleton in California? 00:37:29: AF: California. Yeah. He’s, he’s going here too, through his final training period of, for, with the Navy Seals. TT: I See. 00:37:42: AF: So he, he wanted. He, he was too, too dull around here and he wanted something. [chuckle] So he, he had his fill here lately. Hopefully he’ll back it if he’s made all the rest of it. TT: Yeah. Now the bigger picture is that? 00:37:59: AF: That, that’s me. TT: Is that you? 00:38:01: AF: That was me. Yeah. TT: So that was, that was. 00:38:03: AF: I didn’t, I didn’t even have whiskers to shave at that time. [chuckle]. And the other pictures. Minnie’s uncle from World War II, I. World War I. TT: World War I. Uh-huh. 00:38:16: AF: Yeah. TT: So how old would you have been in that picture? 00:38:22: AF: I was, about eighteen and a half years old. I was eighteen in December and that was made in probably first part of September. TT: So that was during your, your training right? 00:38:34: AF: Yeah. Ye, ye, yeah. Ba-, ba-, basic training. TT: Right. Let me see what kind of pictures you got. 00:38:41: AF: Okay. [shuffle] 00:38:54: AF: I put ‘em in, in there because it gets kind of trashed over here. TT: Yeah. Oh yeah. That’s, that’s a good thing. [shuffle] 00:39:23: AF: Okay. This is a, a [inaudible] Northern German Sixth Army. Surrendered us. That’s their stuff that they, they brought in. TT: Yeah. And this is your division, was the 8-80 right? 00:39:42: AF: The 80th Infantry. 80th Infantry. [looking at pictures] TT: Wow. 00:39:58: AF: That’s the Hitler Youth school there. We were in regular Army barracks type. I can tell you it was very elaborate. TT: Now did you collect these papers just while you were going through these towns? Is that? 00:40:15: AF: No, they the, the, the divisions. They gave ‘em to us. TT: I see. 00:40:20: AF: They put one out every so often. And everybody who had the option to, to take one if they wanted to. TT: Wow. Some amazing things here. [silence] What else you got here? You got, you got some artifacts here right? 00:40:56: AF: This is, this is a training, training company. One of the anti, anti aircraft artillery training school. TT: Camp Callan? 00:41:08: AF: Camp Callan, Callan, California. And I’m right down here somewhere [inaudible]. TT: Which one do you think you are? 00:41:18: AF: Right there. TT: That’s you right there? Yeah. [silence] I’m gonna take this one [inaudible], I don’t know if I can scan the whole thing, but I can scan the part of it where you’re here and I can. Yeah, that’s good. Camp Callan. Wow, that’s a lot of guys. 00:41:37: AF: Yeah. [Mumble] Eighty-something. TT: Yeah. 00:41:43: AF: This is, during the bayonets. TT: Huh-huh. How’d you come by these? 00:41:50: AF: Well when I was in that search, when I was in that search car, [chuckle] I relieved them of a couple of. TT: Right. 00:42:00: AF: I wanted one with, with a scabbard but only one had the scabbard attached to it. TT: Wow. Yeah. I might get you bring these with you when you come on, on Wednesday. Watch the flag. 00:42:17: AF: I’ll bring one of them. And this is, I don’t know where I, I think I found that in the Hitler Youth school somewhere in the. TT: This is a Nazi flag? 00:42:25: AF: Yes. TT: Oh boy. And this was in the Hitler Youth school? 00:42:30: AF: Yeah. It was in one of their closets or something. TT: Wow. My goodness. Look at that. Geez. Yeah I want you to bring that with you also. Wow. That is something there. And you got that in the Hitler Youth school? 00:42:57: AF: Yeah. TT: Just hanging in the closet huh. 00:42:59: AF: Yeah it was in, somewhere in the building there. I just don’t remember just where, how, where it was at. But, now that’s a so-, that’s a so- I think it’s a [inaudible] and it’s got Nuremburg. TT: Right. 00:43:15: AF: And those, that, that stuff I just get to, get laying stuff laying all around. Creeks and stuff over abandoned in all the buildings. TT: Right. [shuffle] TT: What’s that? Is that just a armband, or what is that? 00:43:45: AF: Uh, I don’t remember what that was. TT: Huh-huh. Just something else you found? 00:43:48: Yeah, just a, just something that lying around somewhere. TT: Yeah. 00:43:54: AF: That’s a. Got a box full of just junk, like I say. You, you just find [inaudible], they had metals and stuff for everything [chuckle] imaginable. TT: Right. 00:44:11: That’s Kaiser Wilhelm. TT: Huh-huh. Oh my goodness. Yeah, I, I’d bring this box with you and we’ll just show these things. Or show some of them. 00:44:30: AF: Yeah. TT: Yeah. Yeah. 00:44:34: AF: This here was, hold on, a German paratrooper who bit the dust. Battle of the Bulge. He was laying out the side and a couple of feet off the ground. TT: Wow. [Shuffle] TT: This is just sort of a history of the 80th? 00:45:01: AF: Yeah. I’ve gotta, a book here. It, it, it can give us quite a bit of information. This is a reproduction of that book. But reason I did, that book was getting old kind of brittle too. But the. The first, first eight pages is, deals with the conception of the division, when it was organized. First formed. And then the rest of the [inaudible]. And after that, then it pick up at the battle of [inaudible] that [inaudible]. That’s the first main battle of France that the division was in. TT: But, it. So you, you, you would’ve been involved in that right? 00:45:48: AF: No, I wasn’t. TT: No, no, you weren’t there yet. That’s right, that’s right, that’s right, you weren’t there yet. 00:45:53: AF: That was, latter part of August I believe. And I boarded about the fifteenth, somewhere at the middle of September. TT: Right. Of ’44. [silence] 00:46:19: AF: Here’s Battle of the Bulge. TT: I’ll borrow that from you. And. Do you have any other picture, like I say, you got some more pictures in there? Some pictures of you? Is this a, is this a smaller of that? 00:46:43: Yeah. TT: Good, yeah, I’ll wanna get that and scan it. Let’s see what else you got there. 00:46:47: AF: This is, this is, this is a old original book. It’s, it’s quite a bit smaller than. TT: Oh the same book? 00:46:55: AF: Yeah. But it’s getting real, real brittle. TT: Oh okay. Yeah. But it’s the same thing that’s over here. 00:47:02: AF: You wanna take that book with you? TT: Yeah, yeah, I’d like to. Just give me some background. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Lot of. And. [Shuffle] TT: Is that you? 00:47:22: AF: Yeah. It’s in [city in Austria], somewhere in [city in Austria], Austria after the war. TT: Good. I like pictures of the. These are anti-aircraft or? 00:4732: AF: That is German artillery defenses that are, that you know came in when the Si-, Ar-, Sixth Army surrendered. TT: Right. And that’s a good picture. 00:47:42: AF: Close to, close to where we were. TT: Right. This here? 00:47:49: AF: Oh let me see that. Yeah, that probably me, Camp Callan, Camp Callan, California. TT: Now here’s some other, here’s the guy in the top hat. 00:47:58: AF: Yeah. [chuckle] That, that’s when we got the news that it was over with. TT: Yeah. Are you one of those guys? Or did you just take the picture? 00:48:08: AF: No I, I took the picture. TT: I see. 00:48:12: AF: That’s just a postcard. That, that’s the hotel I stayed in. TT: Oh the one in. 00:48:18: AF: Austria. Czechoslovakia. TT: Czechoslovakia. 00:48:22: AF: Yeah. Stayed in 26 hotels in that, that, that town over there. TT: What’s this? 00:48:28: AF: That’s a P.O. box. TT: Oh okay. That’s a German P.O. box? 00:48:33: Yeah. I don’t remember whether it’s a Mag-, I think it’s Maginot Line P.O. Box. TT: Huh-huh. That’s interesting. [chuckle] I like, I like that. 00:48:53: AF: That, that thing there, take it out. I’ll give you one of these if you want. TT: Yeah. 00:49:04: AF: I’ll also give you. Why didn’t I do the. TT: Oh okay, just sort of a synopsis. 00:49:11: AF: Yeah. Yeah. Basically what I said. TT: Yeah, good, good. This really helps me out a lot. That way I can. And this is sort of your itinerary in, in, in Europe. 00:49:23: AF: Yeah. It, it, it follows us this, this sheet here. That’s, that’s the only I had a associative days or time. TT: So this was the 80th, and then you just sort of made this from that kind of a date thing? That’s great. 00:49:39: AF: That, that, that’s all I had to guide me as to where I was at really at, in specific time. TT: Yeah, right. So how old are you? 00:49:49: AF: I’ll be 82 in December. TT: I see. I see. [silence] Well you look good for 82. 00:50:03: AF: Eh. I feel pretty good. [chuckle] TT: So how long have you, how long have y’all lived in this house? 00:50:09: AF: About fifty years. TT: Is that right. So you, you all, moved here pretty, pretty soon after you got married I guess? 00:50:19: AF: Yeah, we, we got married in ’50-, in ’52. We built the house here in ’55. We moved in and we’ve been here ever since. We’ll be here 51 years. TT: Yeah, yeah. And your daughter’s, your, your daughter’s name that works for First National. What’s her name? 00:50:36: AF: Kim. TT: Kim. 00:50:37: AF: Callaway. TT: Kim Callaway. Right. 00:50:39: AF: Like Lake Callaway. TT: Lake Callaway, right. Right. And your two sons names are? 00:50:44: AF: Kirby is the youngest one and he works for Texas Digital. Keith is the oldest one and he worked for, worked for Texas Parks and Wildlife as a game warden. For 20, 24, 25 years. And now he’s working for Robertson County Sheriff’s Department. TT: Oh I see. And, and your oldest daughter’s name was, what was her name? 00:51:10: AF: Karen. TT: Karen? 00:51:11: AF: Karen. TT: And. Well this is great, this is a great story. I love to tell stories of just, when you were, you were a doughboy right? You were, you were just a infantry guy on the ground just doing his job. 00:51:27: AF: Just low as you could get? [chuckle] TT: Were you scared? 00:51:32: AF: [chuckle] TT: Sure. 00:51:34: AF: Only met one guy that said he wasn’t scared. TT: And he was lying? 00:51:37: AF: No. [chuckle] I don’t believe he was. It was a, a young man from Kentucky. And, we worked on the, crossing the Seille river. And, we were piggybacking ammunition and water and rations down to, as close as we could get to the river. And, on the way, on the trip back from taking their load down, the Germans unleashed a volley of [inaudible] on ‘em. And when he got to, we got to the, the, to where we was in the buildings, he still talking about it. I said, “Well were you scared?” And he, the other ones with ‘em said, “He don’t know what scared is.” [chuckle] He said, “No.” He says, “I really wasn’t scared,” he said, “but I thought.” He said, “It was. It was light enough to shoot [nash?] and I thought I’d rode craps.” [chuckle] TT: Did you, did you ever think you’d rode craps? 00:52:52: AF: Well with that guy I was doing there, in that, that bogged-down truck I was, I was wondering. TT: Right. That was the scariest part right. 00:53:00: AF: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. TT: Yeah. 00:53:04: AF: And another, another a was, right before we went into Germany. We went into this little town. And it, we got into the town, they really let us have it with some mortar fire and stuff. There was other troops in there already. Anyway we finally found a place that wasn’t preoccupied in a, in a building. And, about midnight, Captain Chitwood, who’s, he had been in charge of the I. and R.—the intelligence and reconnaissance. But, I don’t know why he selected me. He came and got me and I went with him. We went into cemetery. We checked all the crypts, big grave tombstones and stuff. And then we went up into the bell tower of the church because artillery and, or mortar fire was hittin’ everywhere but right there. And we figured that this, they had a spotter in that bell tower. He had me stay on the ground and he says, “I’ll take care of anything that’s upstairs.” And he went upstairs. And, but there was nothing there. The next morning before daylight, we found out why we had such a heavy rain of mortar or artillery fire. In the, in the, in that time they were setting up a humongous artillery piece. I don’t know what they call, Big Bertha. Something like that. But it’s a .280 millimeter artillery. Just setting it up, a little ways out of the, out of, out of the, out of the buildings. And then that morning, they fired that dude off. And we thought we had had a direct hit because it blew the whole top off of that building we was in. The [inaudible], velocity. It just sheered that thing off the top. [chuckle] TT: Wow. 00:55:21: AF: If you can imagine what all those clay tiles sounded like. All the roofs were clay tile. TT: Right. 00:55:23: I was scared then. TT: Yeah, yeah, yeah I bet. 00:55:33: AF: That, that thing, they only fired one round. But I think it was about 20 to 30 miles that that thing was capable of. It was just a psychological thing see, ‘cause that shell was big enough that it would probably sound like a, a bomb that a plane might have dropped. And they, they had those Krauts wondering where that thing came from. TT: Right. Right. Right. [chuckle] Wow. Well it’s a great story. What we’re going to, what we do, we tape this on, on Wednesday at 1:30, over at KAMU on campus. Do you know where that is? 00:56:16: AF: That’s right behind Kyle Field. TT: Right, right. If you go on, if you go on George Bush and turn into campus there on Houston Street which is right there by the former students’ building there. It’s the one-story building that’s right there on the left. Is KAMU. 00:56:31: AF: Yeah. I, I used to go in there every once and a while. We had, we had a special circuit that went out of there to, to William Penn. The transmitter’s. Power out there. TT: Sure. Yeah. Right, well that’s the building. It’s still there, that one-story building. And you can park back behind it if you want. You can just pull in behind the building and park back there. And there’s a, there’s a, a door on the back of the building. There’s a ramp and a door back there, you can just go in the back door. You can park. There, there’s some places that say 24 Hour Reserved, and you can park in one of those. Those are reserved for guests of KAMU, so you can park in one of those. And. So if you could be there around 1:15 on Wednesday. And just wear whatever you want to wear. Just a collared shirt or whatever, whatever you want to wear is just fine. And we just, you’ve seen the show, you know pretty much what we do. You’re sitting in a chair, I’m sitting in a chair and, and we’ll just, I’ll just sort of lead you in the conversation and from subject to subject, and we go about 27 and a half minutes. And we’ll throw some of these pictures on there and it’s just a conversation between you and I, and we just sort of go straight through it. And then it’ll be, it’ll actually be on the air. We’re, we’re running about oh anywhere from about five to six weeks ahead right now. So it, it won’t be on the air until probably December sometime. Sometime in December more than likely. 00:57:54: AF: Well you have to have a little leeway. TT: Yeah, yeah, yes, so it’ll be a while before it’s on the air. But I’ll get you tape and DVDs of it and all that kind of stuff so you can share it with your family. And I’ll. So. And I appreciate you’re letting me tell your story. I think it’s a, I think it’s a good one. It’s a, just a, a guy that just, you know went in and, and did his duty and served his country and went into harms’ way. And then came back and was a working man for a living. 00:58:18: AF: Just, just wasn’t, just was, wasn’t meant to be to not come back. TT: Right, right, right. You were one of the, one of the fortunate ones who came back. And, I guess you, you knew a few who didn’t come back so yeah, right. As is war is. So, so, so we’ll do it and I will return these things. 00:58:40: AF: Down on the old road that they were afraid the Germans was gonna find it. It was grown over, but it was still had the brickwork. A lot of ‘em were made out of brick. And on this road there was two humongous pine trees about that big a round. So they decided they was gonna drop those pine trees across that road in case they’d came down through there with trucks and stuff. You know they would have to. And it was a steep drop off the. They would have to do some, some time delay there. So anyway I got sent out on that detail. Me and three other guys to give those engineers coverage in case there were some Krauts out there in the snowbank. And we looked like car babies sitting out there on the snow banks in our [inaudible] drab uniform. And I was wondering what these guys had a guitar case for. It was a chainsaw. A chainsaw. And when that, they fired that thing up my hair just. [chuckle] TT: Oh man ‘cause it was cold and then he made it louder probably right. Yeah, yeah. 00:59:52: AF: It did [inaudible] That thing fired off, shew. [chuckle] TT: I bet that cut down the pine trees and put ‘em in the road. 00:59:58: AF: Just, just like that. They knew what they was doing. They just. That thing fell across the road. TT: And you were there just with a rifle just to provide them cover? 01:00:05: AF: Yeah. We just took position for [inaudible] you know, in case they ever got fired on. And we got fire and we [inaudible]. TT: Yeah. That’s interesting. Yeah. Oh I’m glad you added that. We’ll talk about it now. 01:00:19: AF: I didn’t even know what was in there. TT: Yeah. [Shuffle] 01:00:57: [Same recording from 00:39:00-01:21:56]