HomeMy WebLinkAboutBill Kling Transcription #2City of College Station
Heritage Programs Oral History
Interviewee: Bill Kling
Interviewer: Tom Turbiville
Place: College Station, Texas
Project: Veterans of the Valley
Transcriber: Brooke Linsenbardt
00:00: Tom Turbiville (TT): Last week we told you about B.J. Bill Kling of Bryan. His service in the European theatre in World War II. Talked about how the engineering skills he used
in his career were honed during the war. Knowing how and where to aim the guns, gave the Allies a distinct advantage. Hi, I’m Tom Turbiville. This is Bravo Brazos Valley. Later in the
war, Bill’s 102nd infantry unit was involved in interrogation of German prisoners. And the questions asked, well they’re not what you would expect.
00:31: Bill King (BK): Well one, one of the common things that we tried to interrupt was the hot meal that a soldier got in, in the winter time. And cold weather was, is a real morale
booster. If he’s eating cold meal in a foxhole all the time, it, it’s, it gets pretty dreary. So if he can meet, even in small groups, with some of his compadres and have a hot meal,
even if it’s nothin’ but a hot cup of coffee. It’s a tremendous morale booster. We realized that early on and made it an, an effort to interrupt this. So one of the questions that we
would typically ask was, “Do you have a hot meal every day? And, and what time is it?” We wouldn’t try to ask them the, the military capabilities of their unit because they were well-versed
in the Geneva Convention. But, but you would ask, what most people would consider irrelevant questions which once you fit them together, form a patter. I, I think we were effective
in doing this.
TT: Kling’s war time career included action in the northern edges of the Battle of the Bulge. It’s impossible to tell all the facets of his service. One event he does recall is the boat
ride home from Europe. He thought maybe his time was up then, because of the weather.
02:00: BK: We left out of Marseilles, France. Sailed through the, Straits of Gibraltar. And headed for the Virginia coast. Not too far out, we ran into a storm. This is in January, December
and January of ’45, ’46. The weather got so bad that sailors were not allowed, or none of us were allowed out on deck, except in an emergency situation. And then that was with safety
harness on. The lines that you could see outside the, the ship. The seawater would freeze to wear they were 46 inches in diameter. The waves were fifty, sixty feet high. You’d look
out the port hole and you’d looked up to see the, the crest of the wave when the ship was down in the trough of the wave. Which I think wisely, turned south and added about a week to
our time coming back. There were four of us that played Bridge all the time on there. And for a long time, and maybe somewhere around the house, I still got the score pad. We were,
we were up to, almost 40,000 points.
TT: B.J. Bill Kling and his wife Floris have been married 57 years. He entered A&M as a 30 year old freshman. Graduated in 1953. Went to work for the railroad in St. Louis before an
old professor offered him a job in Bryan. He started Kling Engineering in 1975. Thank you for your service, B.J. Bill Kling. I’m Tom Tubiville. This is Bravo Brazos Valley. Brought
to you by Meis and Associates.
[Meis and Associates commercial]