Oral history interview with Walter Harney Sills [Army town]

              ARMY TOWN – ORAL HISTORIES1
INTERVIEWEE: Walter Harney Sills
INTERVIEWER: J. Stephen Catlett
DATE: February 3, 1993
[Begin Recording]
WS: Let me know when you’re taping me; I’ll watch my language.
JSC: [chuckles] Okay.
WS: Oh, found this yesterday. That’s a military [unclear] transportation[?] That was on a leave I went to, I lived in [?], Sweden, and they let me go to Stockholm for six days. And I came—I went down to Stockholm and when I came back, it was—The afternoon I came back was D-Day [June 6, 1944-first day of the invasion of Normandy].
We got into—into the house at six o’clock, and the phone rang at 6:05 and it was Stockholm on the phone saying, “Are you ready to go back to the United States? You be
on that train tomorrow morning.” [chuckles]
[Recording Device Testing Redacted]
JSC: You can talk off the record. [both chuckle]
WS: Well, I’ll tell you about that. When I was in the hospital—
[Recording Device Testing Redacted]
1 This recording was conducted by J. Stephen Catlett, Archivist at the Greensboro Historical Museum, as part of the research for the Army Town: Greensboro 1943-1946 exhibit that was held at the Greensboro Historical Museum from November 1993 until November 1995. Excerpts from this recorded were played in the Army Town exhibit, as well as in the current (2014) Voices of a City: Greensboro North Carolina. WS: —I had to go, in the course of seven months—I had to go through a lot of psychiatrists.
JSC: You mean, down in—in Houston, is that where you—
WS: Everywhere, everywhere. Yeah. No, I was in the hospital first at Hempstead, Long Island [Mitchel Air Force Base, aka Mitchel Field], and then I was transferred to Moore General in Asheville, Swannanoa, and then I was sent to Nashville, Tennessee for rest and recuperation; I hadn’t had enough rest and recuperation, so they decided that I needed some more. And then I went to Fort Bragg for orders; and then I was sent down to Miami Beach for rest and recuperation, and then I was assigned to Houston. And everywhere I went I had to see psychiatrists because I was one of the returnees—combat returnees—and there were—It was a new field, more or less, and so they had found all these psychiatrists and they had to give them something to do. [chuckles]
JSC: How did you feel about it, I mean did you feel, personally, that you were in good mental health?
WS: Oh, sure, I knew I was all right. There wasn’t any problem with me. I told them, I said—They kept bugging me and bugging me and I said, “Captain, I’m all right. There’s not anything the matter with me.”
“Well, that’s what everybody says,” he said. [chuckles] But he said, “You may be sicker than you think.”
[Recording Device Testing Redacted]
JSC: Let’s don’t go back over everything but one, one thing I’m particularly interested in is your, your comments about what the men—really how the base functioned while you were here, in terms of the men being assembled and, you know, what they actually were
doing, what was happening on the base when you were actually here.
WS: Well, when I first came in, to ORD [Overseas Replacement Depot], as I told you, the colonel had been here before, had been re-assigned, and we had a new commanding officer. And he had been sent down here for the express purpose of building up morale in this post. And I was assigned—I chose out of a field of about fifty assignments—I chose public relations, and I became assistant public relations officer of ORD and I—
JSC: And who was your immediate superior?
WS: There was a first lieutenant by the name of Nail—n-a-i-l, and he was administrative officer, non-rated administrative officer, and from somewhere in the country other than North Carolina. And he was the—he was the—he had been trained to be a public relations officer. With me it was just a side line, and I chose it because I lived in Greensboro all my life and I knew the state and I knew the town and I’d been in the army longer than the public relations officer had been in.
And so, he was on leave when I took over, and when he came back and found me sitting at his desk, in his chair, he took a dim view of— [chuckles] He thought I was trying to take his place, which I had no idea of doing. But anyway, we got along fine after that, after he was convinced that I wasn’t out—I wasn’t out to send him overseas, well, everything was fine.
So I just—what my job particularly was to do whatever Colonel Younts wanted done in public relations and he made it perfectly clear to me when I took the job that if the civic clubs of Greensboro, or Durham, or Winston-Salem—or anywhere in North Carolina—any civic club that wanted a speaker for their programs, was going to get a speaker for their programs and was going to be a man from ORD, or he was going to be a man who was coming through, or re-assignment, it was going to be a combat man, he was going to be a rated officer, and he was going to have something to say, and we were going to cooperate fully with the civic clubs.
And the colonel also said that if you can’t find such a man to do the job, I would suggest that you keep a speech in your top drawer and have it ready because if you can’t find somebody, you are the somebody that’s gonna go make the speech. So more times than not, I was the one that made the speech.
And in those days, we [unclear] beefsteak and—the normal diet was not exactly what it is in regular times, and they served a lot of weenies and baked beans [chuckles] I remember just about to come out my ears but I didn’t make any complaints, everything went fine, I loved the job. It was just—
JSC: Now, tell me again why the morale was low.
WS: Well, the morale was kinda low—I guess it was because anybody that’s been overseas fighting and they come back to this country—they saw a lot of things that—that were—they felt was wrong, or they felt they had been fighting for something maybe that the people over here didn’t know we for fighting for. And, in other words, there was a let-down from the high that they had been on over there, and there was such a difference between us and the people we were over there associated with—these conquered people—it just—you’re bound to have had a let-down. It wasn’t the people over here’s fault, and it wasn’t the returnees’ fault. But it was just a case of different situations.
And so I think having these fellas come back through ORD had a lot to do with the morale of the post. And another thing, people—the permanent party personnel were not so sure how long they were going to be permanent party, and they might be shipped overseas, and some wanted to be and some of them didn’t want to be, you know, so—
[Speaking Simultaneously] WS: There was a little uneasiness there— in other words, things were in a turmoil, and when Colonel Lewis came out with that famous order, “It has come to the attention of this command that low morale exists on this post. This practice will cease immediately or disciplinary action will result.” And as I told you, the line to the chaplain’s office was three blocks long; everybody was in line to get their card punched. [chuckles]
JSC: Now would that—do you think that would have had a—would the morale, I mean—would that have had more of an effect on the permanent party personnel as opposed to just the [unclear]—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
WS: No, I don’t think so. I think it was—Everybody was in a state of confusion about that time because Germany was in the throes of defeat and they were getting ready to surrender, and then they did surrender, and of course that and—we had brought these people back from overseas, a lot of them, and so now were having to tell them, that now that you’re back from Europe you can expect to go to Asia and Japan.
And you tell a man that’s been overseas for two years fighting the Germans that now that he’s back and he’s a hero and done his job, now you’re going to reward him by sending him off to fight the Japanese, who hadn’t been totally defeated yet.
JSC: Yes.
WS: That didn’t go over, [chuckles] not very well.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
JSC: [unclear]
WS: You had some—you had morale but I wouldn’t exactly say it was exactly high.
JSC: [chuckles]
WS: And you were willing—Well, you may not have been willing to go but you had to go so you went. Well, that was the situation as it existed; now, I don’t think very many people got re-assigned to Japan. I think that the interim between the German surrender and the Japanese surrender was too short a period of time to do have—to make any mass difference.
JSC: Yes. You came in April of ‘45—
WS: April, ’45.
JSC: You were a month or so—a month before VE [Victory in Europe] Day—
WS: A month—I was here about a month before VE Day and then there would have been, let’s see, June, July, August—about three months before the Japanese surrendered.
JSC: What was the—Do you remember the mood on the base, or maybe in town in general? VE Day, I take it, from the—I mean there was a celebration, of course the war wasn’t over, so—I mean there was still a lot—
WS: Oh well, we had a big celebration for VE Day, and then when the time came for VJ [Victory Over Japan] Day we really had a celebration. They had troops from all over marching down the street. We had flowers[?], and we had everybody in Greensboro was out on the street, on Elm Street, and I’ve got pictures showing—of all those people out on the streets. Incidentally, Carol Martin took some of them.
JSC: Yes. Now—
WS: I was with Carol and his staff when we went up to take pictures; I was taking them primarily for the camp and for the—for my own personal use, I used my own camera. And we had photographers from ORD, and Carol at that time was representing The Daily News and Record. Big celebration.
JSC: Explain, if you would, about the—how the ORD functioned in terms of its mission to assemble the men and so forth.
WS: Well, the men were sent in here from all over the United States and, of course, from overseas, too. They came—it was—ORD simply meant Overseas Replacement Depot, and this is where they gathered them all and maybe outfitted them if they didn’t have equipment, and sent them out to the different stations that were calling for them. The need for so many here, and so many there and we put them on a train and they caught the boat or the plane or whatever and went to the place they were assigned to go.
And they returned the same way—they came back through Greensboro on their return, and went to whatever station—they either got a discharge or they were, most times, they were just re-assigned to some other station, either overseas or stateside.
JSC: You were here during Colonel Younts’ time, and I imagine then, with his administration, that the base had a pretty good reputation as a—
WS: Well Colonel Younts was a nice, easy-going, get along type of person, and he was strictly public relations, he had been postmaster in Charlotte before the war, and he was a politician, there’s no question about that, but he was a good politician, and he tried to run the camp for the GI’s like he was supposed to be doing. And nothing was too good for the home folks, or whatever the home folks wanted that the military could deliver— that’s what he wanted to do. He wanted to keep everything running nice and smooth and easy. He wanted the men here to be welcomed into the city itself, and incidentally, ORD was the largest military air force, air corps establishment complete within city limits of any in the United States.
JSC: What—if you went back in your mind now and placed yourself on the base, what— how would you characterize it, in terms of—I mean just—sort of typical military base type [unclear]
[Speaking Simultaneously]
WS: Well, it was not as much—It was not what I would call a typical military base town—not when you compare it with maybe San Antonio, with the camp that they had there before the war, and Fort Bragg, for instance, Fayetteville, and, like El Paso, with Fort Bliss there, and Biggs Field. And this was a new thing for the people of Greensboro compared to when you got Engine 42 and as basic training command, Number 10.
The people around here—They would take the soldiers into their homes for dinner, and they had USO clubs, and beside the USO they had the personal touch of people from different clubs, and everybody tried to make the soldiers feel appreciated and wanted and find a home away from home in Greensboro, forever how long it’s going to be.
And a lot of girls that were living here in Greensboro met their husbands right here in ORD. My sister was one of them.
JSC: What about entertainment on the base, what—
WS: Oh, we had—We had probably the best entertainment—as good entertainment as it was in the war. We had Bob Hope out here; we had Frances Langford. We had— you name it, we had them.
JSC: What type of on-base facilities were there, do you remember?
WS: Sir?
JSC: What type of on-base recreational facilities were there?
WS: Oh well, we had a lot of local performers; we had a baseball team—ORD baseball team.
JSC: Was that still going when you were—
WS: Oh, yeah. We had a football team, we had all the recreation that you could want—of course we didn’t have any ice-skating or that kind of thing. And we didn’t have very many plays but they did put on—they had— at the ORD club, which was mainly for transient officers.
JSC: Officer’s club?
WS: Officer’s club—ORD officer’s club. And then they had the permanent party club officer’s club, and of course they had the enlisted club—both types. And I can speak from experience on the ORD club for the, for the transients—that’s where I went because that’s where all the people I knew where coming back from overseas and I’d run into some of my old friends, from overseas. And I saw my old classmates in training.
JSC: Now, can officers go to, like, the service clubs for the enlisted men, or—
WS: Well, they can, I guess they could, but they would feel out of—it was just—To me, it was always I was invading their premises.
JSC: Yes.
WS: And if they were—they were assigned to work in the ORD club, that was fine. But you just come in, they were uncomfortable and the officer was uncomfortable. And it was not exactly a class distinction so much as it was a discipline thing. One group of people had to give the orders and the other group of people had to take the orders and execute them, and it just didn’t—familiarity breeds contempt. And so, therefore, you had to have—in the system we have in the military you had to have the officers class, and you had to have the enlisteds class.
JSC: Yes.
And I’ve always maintained, if you wanted to know what was going on on a post the best thing to do was to go find yourself a sergeant. They were the ones that run the army. The officers just thought they did.
JSC: [chuckles] Do you have any—do you think the entertainment available to the enlisted men was good or better—
WS: Oh yeah, I think it was all about the same. I don’t think— if anything I guess the enlisted men got first call. Now when we’ll have—have a big star come here like Bob Hope, or somebody or like that, and it went around as troops[?], you know Bing Crosby, and Bob Hope, and Frances Langford, and Larry Adler, and played the harmonica, and Jack Benny—all those people. They put on their acts and they did a marvelous job, and they’d go from one post to another post, they’d go overseas.
JSC: My understanding is—
WS: All the people would be gathered together—officers, enlisted men, and everybody—all in one place.
JSC: Now when you were here, wasn’t there a big tent—Do you remember that?
WS: Yeah, they had a—
JS: They brought some type of tent—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
WS: They also had all these theaters. But most times, as I recall—I know overseas I saw in Tripoli—I was in Tripoli, North Africa—and we had Jack Benny over there, and just a few weeks later, we had Bob Hope and Frances Langford in Algiers [Algeria]. And they—You’ve seen films of—showing all the GI’s [General Infantry], and the officers—and of course the jokes would all be against the officers and in favor of the GI’s, and that used to get a lot of laughs.
JS: Yes. Now what other type of recreation was there—Were there—did—could the troops—could the enlisted men or officers go swimming somewhere, or—
WS: Oh yeah, we had the camp—I think it was for officers first—no, I’m not sure about it cause I never went there—Lake Herman off of the—I think it was off of Reidsville Road.
JS: Yes.
WS: And that’s where they used to go swimming; they had a clubhouse there, and a very nice place. I did—I used to—I flew over it several times but I don’t believe I ever went out there while I was in operations.
JS: Yes.
WS: I just didn’t have the time. And besides, I was home. [chuckles] And we had to—for—they had—in the clubs on the base—they could serve alcoholic beverages. That was—Greensboro was dry, or rather supposed to be dry. We could serve beer and wine. We couldn’t serve no hard liquor, but you could go to Durham [NC] and get it or—and bring it back—or you go to Danville [VA] but then that was sort of curtailed by the fact that your ration on gasoline—the whiskey was probably plentiful but the gas was [unclear] Anyway, we had a lot of bootleggers in Greensboro around that time, and—
JS: Now you didn’t live on base then, you lived at home.
WS: I lived at home, yeah. [unclear] where I was born.
JS: Did you ever have any reason to go into a barracks, or do you remember any of the—
WS: Very seldom, because my job didn’t require me to train the troops. I was mainly as a lecturer, giving speeches to the civic clubs.
JS: What—can you picture the buildings out there that you were familiar with? What did they look like?
[Speaking Simultaneously]
WS: Well most of them—They were wooden shacks—We call them tar paper shacks, and they were put up hastily and they were well built, as far as that’s concerned, but they were not permanent built.
JS: What color, do you remember colors? Where they like—
WS: Like everything else, olive drab, I think, so far as you could. You know, the army used to use an awful lot of paint, because their slogan was, “If it moves salute it, if it don’t move, paint it.”
JS: [chuckles]
WS: No, usually the only kind of paint they had was olive drab and they slapped that on everything, see. And they even painted the bushes green in the fall and the winter. [both chuckle]
JS: What’s your memory of, if any, of the women on base, I guess either the nurses, or—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
WS: Well, in ORD, they employed an awful lot of civilians and they came from this whole area to work at the base—They had them in the warehouse area and they had them in headquarters—anywhere there was something being administered we had to have stenographers and we had to have clerks. The women were the ones that filled those jobs.
And also, they were welcomed at the ORD club or the permanent par—I mean they were, in those days, you didn’t—a woman didn’t go there by herself, she had an escort. Well, my Lord, they had plenty of escorts out at ORD.
JS: [chuckles]
WS: All they had to do was—they’d bring them out in trucks if you—if they wanted, and shepherd them into the clubs, and then from then on it was up to the GI’s and the officers.
JS: Now what about women in the military; what type of military women worked in—
WS: Well, we had—We had a contingent of WACs [Women’s Army Corps], whose billet was right out here about where Summit Shopping Center is now, right in that area. A little bit south of what—right around Sullivan Street. I never had much contact—of course we had infirmary, and sort of a hospital here, not a big hospital. But, we had nurses assigned, and there was a, I recall, one that I recall most was a WAC captain. She was in charge of all the WACs here, and I don’t remember another. I’m sure there were a few lieutenants, but captain was the highest rank I heard of at that time in the military in Greensboro. There wasn’t many much higher.
JSC: What about the blacks or African Americans on base, did they have separate quarters and all of that—
WS: Well, they had—Yes, of course, they had a lot—a lot of those here, but mostly they were at other facilities, not here, especially overseas we had a lot—They were usually in service organizations.
JSC: Yeah, I’ve got a picture here, I don’t—I don’t know too much about it, other that there was, you know—
WS: All right. And that’s the band—ORD band. Now, I don’t recall them being here when I was here.
JSC: Did—Did the blacks have their own service club? I believe they did.
WS: Well, I don’t know. I really don’t know about that.
JSC: That’s, of course, is the [unclear]—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
WS: All right, now that’s the band. This picture here is a—It says BTC [Basic Training Center] 10, but the only difference when it went from a training command to the overseas replacement depot is the gate was left the same—They just took the letters down and put ORD up. That was the only change that I know of. But you see, I didn’t know it, really, when I—When it was BTC 10, I was in training or overseas.
JSC: Does—Do you know where that was?
WS: Oh, yeah. I remember this well. This is the ORD club. This is [unclear]—Jerry DeFelice took this picture and he was in our—He was attached to our office. He’s the—He was in charge of the photographic section, and we took pictures of everything.
And this was the main theater that we used—ORD club. It stood right there, about where Summit—where Oscar Burnett had Summit Shopping Center—office.
JSC: Yes.
WS: Later on, if I’m not mistaken. Right about in that area.
JSC: Now what—what type of events occurred in this—
WS: Dances, mostly.
JSC: Mostly?
WS: Yeah. And of course they had some entertainment. They had a club officer, and an assistant club officer, and it was well—well-decorated.
JSC: Yes.
WS: Everything was nice, it was all done—it wasn’t—I mean, you could tell it was sort of temporary stuff but it was—As you can see from that picture, it was classical, it was well done. Nice club. I imagine, I don’t know, two or three hundred people in there, I guess.
JSC: I think that might be the warehouse—
[shows photograph]
WS: All right, now that’s the warehouse area. And over here in these tents, I don’t really know [unclear]—Now we did have at one time—We had POW’s [Prisoners of War]. Germans, mainly. And maybe some Italians, I don’t know. Mainly Germans, I think. They were not too far up this way, in a barbed wire enclosure and they were detailed as work—They did work.
JSC: Now when soldiers would come back and were being separated out, they’re—what—some of their equipment would be going back to the air force, right?
WS: Oh, yeah.
JSC: Would it be stored in these warehouses, too?
WS: Well, you know, I don’t know—I got out—See, I was relieved from active duty on the 26th of September, which I was one of the first to get out, after VJ Day. It was done as a matter of points. You got so many points for overseas duty, you got so many for how long you’d been in and this kind of thing. So I was relatively high on the list to get out.
JSC: Here’s another.
[shows photograph]
WS: All right, yes sir, I can tell you this one here. This is headquarters. This group of buildings right—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
WS: That’s Colonel Younts’ office back in there.
JSC: Now were you right in there—
WS: We were exactly across the street from headquarters, and this picture here is taken—All right, here’s—here’s the headquarters, and here’s Summit Avenue. Not Summit—
JSC: Bessemer—
WS: Bessemer Avenue.
JSC: Yes.
WS: And that automobile—Let me see it. That automobile right there? That’s my automobile—Studebaker Commander, 1938—
JSC: I’ll be.
WS: Green Hornet, that’s what we called it. [chuckles]
JSC: So you were at work.
WS: I was at work, right across the street.
JSC: What would be, like, a typical day? You would [unclear]—When would you get on—Did you have to be there at 8 or 9?
WS: Well, after I was assigned to the lecture circuit, and every—every morning we got there at eight o’clock in the morning, to the office. And we had—went to lunch at twelve [p.m.] I believe it was 12—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
JSC: Would there be a morning meeting, or—
WS: Well, it just depends. Now, usually around nine o’clock I’d be—I had a regular routine of going over to the theater to give my lecture. I gave one in the morning, one in the afternoon. At first, and then just finally one in the morning. And time I—By the time the lecture got over with was probably time—about lunchtime. Got through all the frills and everything. I mean not the lecture didn’t last that long, about an hour. And they herd the men in, you see, and lock the door. [chuckles] So it wasn’t exactly a case of whether they wanted to go or they didn’t; we tried to make it interesting.
JSC: So just about every morning you would give a talk?
WS: Yeah, yeah. As the men were brought in, you see, every day or so we have a new group coming in. And this was the theater where we did all the—the orientation I believe they called it.
JSC: Okay. The one we just looked at earlier?
WS: No, that was the ORD club, this was the theater. This was up there on—off where Homewood Avenue is now.
JSC: Yes.
WS: Homewood or Homeland, whatever it is now. [unclear] Got another picture there?
[shows photograph]
WS: Yeah, I remember that one well.
JSC: But, wait, continue then so—when would you have your mess, or lunch, or whatever you call it?
WS: Well, I’d go home.
JSC: Oh, you’d go home?
WS: And most of the—A lot of people would go down to Mayfair Cafeteria. Oh, yeah.
JSC: Now was that a popular eating place?
WS: Oh, yeah, yeah. And, of course, we had all these restaurants in Greensboro [unclear], and people that’d never served beer before started serving it when ORD and BTC came to town.
JSC: Yes.
WS: And that went day and night. Of course at lunchtime a lot of the people came in but, I don’t recall it—
JSC: Now could just officers eat off base?
WS: No, no I don’t think so. It’d all depend on what your job was. I know, as being an officer, I don’t know there’s anything else.
JSC: Right.
WS: Now I can tell you what it was like being a cadet. You didn’t go nowhere [sic] and you didn’t do anything. [both chuckle] Except work and work and work.
JSC: What would a typical afternoon be like, then, when you came in?
WS: Well, some time was spent—we published a paper—the public relations department published a paper called The Rotator.
JSC: That was the name when you were there; it had had other names.
WS: It had other names before, but it ended up being The Rotator. So—
JSC: So you were involved in—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
WS: I was involved in that, and I was—I was involved in writing the colonel’s column. See, if people get the idea that the colonel writes the column—He doesn’t write the column.
JSC: Yes.
WS: They had a person assigned to doing the column who was a very good newspaper man in civilian life, and a very good writer. And he would write these, what I considered, excellent, speeches or whatev— [Speaking Simultaneously]
JSC: Yes. Commentary, editorial—
WS: Column, column—
JSC: Okay.
WS: —under the colonel’s column logo. And send them over across the street to headquarters, and about two or three hours would elapse, and they’d come back marked all up in red pencil saying, “I don’t like this; this is not what I want.”
And so—I can recall the sergeant right now, he’d fly off the handle and jump up and down and beat his head against the wall and say, “I wish somebody else had this job” and so, I said one day, I just thought I’d try to calm him down, you know, I said, “ Well Flannigan[?],” I said, “Why don’t you just assign somebody else if you don’t like it?” Well [unclear], “You think you can do it?” I said, “I don’t know, but I’ll be glad to give it a try.” I said “I ain’t doing much else around here.” [laughs]
And so he said, “All right.” So, I said, “You know—you know as well as I do I’m not—I haven’t got the background you’ve got. You’re the man to write the column but I said, “I don’t believe you’re exactly expressing what Colonel Younts wants, and I don’t know that I can, but I think maybe I can. And I’ll be glad to take it on.” “Well, be my guest.” he says.
So, from then on I was the colonel. I sent—I sent it over—I sent [unclear] first column and I used a lot of fight[?] expressions— [chuckles] “Of the people, for the people, and by the people,” and all that sort of stuff, you know, and since I have a historical trivia mind, I could come up with quotations that sounded good and patriotic and so forth and so on, and no matter what the subject was I would work in a few of those quotations, and so the first column I sent over there, it wasn’t there 15 minutes before the runner came back over, and had on, in red pencil at the top, “Now this is more like it. This is what I want.”
JSC: [chuckles]
WS: And Flannigan[?] says, “I give up.” [chuckles] He said, “I give up. That’s the worst mess I’ve ever heard.” I said, “I agree with you, entirely.” But he says, “From my standpoint, you can have it. You take the job.” So for the last four or five months I was the colonel, as far as the colonel’s column was concerned. I wrote some pretty good stuff, too. Most of it was tripe. [laughs] But me and the colonel got along great. I liked him; he liked me, and—
JSC: Now what—Would you have to go out sort of like a—news story or interview people—
WC: Oh yeah, we had—we had a—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
JSC: So you would do that [unclear]—
WC: —arrangement—We had a arrangement with the Daily News, we’d get wire stories from them that we could use, and somebody was always running back and forth from the news [Daily News] back to the base. They worked very closely with us; I think they may have printed a paper, I’m not sure. I think they did.
JSC: Yeah, I think they did.
WC: And we—All the sports they covered—their sports editors would cover our—and our own sports editors would cover the—the games that were played out there like the baseball team. We had some real good baseball players.
JSC: It must have been difficult, I mean as the war was winding down I’m sure people were coming in and out—
WS: Well, you see all these guys were in the service.
JSC: Right.
WS: And [unclear], if a guy was real good baseball player and he—he was an integral part of a baseball team someplace, somehow or other it always was arranged that he could stay on for a season—.
JSC: [laughs]
WS: —before he got shipped out somewhere. I don’t know— See, I wasn’t in there so I can’t say, but it always seemed to me that the better you were the longer you could stay. [both chuckle]
JSC: So that pretty much took up your whole day just working on the paper and—
WS: Yeah, the paper—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
JS: —giving a talk—
WS: That—that and of course there’d be other things came up from time to time and there’d be answering the phone and anybody call and ordered a speaker, they’d refer them to our office and either Captain Nail would take the call or I’d take the call if he wasn’t there.
Then we did the photographic section, the darkroom and everything was in the back. And I would collaborate with them, I—In fact, they were teaching me what they knew about developing and so forth, and I enjoyed it. In fact, to me, it was more training than it was anything else. I enjoyed it, thoroughly. I learned how to develop pictures, and I learned how to print pictures, and I took a few. I just had a ball.
JSC: Yes.
WC: And, every time they had a lot of civic groups would come out to the camp, and since I knew most of the business people in Greensboro, they would use me to make them welcome at the camp. I went around, took them one place to the other, and one—one afternoon, just before the end of the war, they had a big thing out here at the airport, and they flew in a lot of airplanes, different types—fighters, and transport planes, they had some C-47’s, C-46’s, and they had a B-17, a B-24.
They had a whole bunch of airplanes, and they brought the civilians out—all the civilians came out to see what was going on—I mean, we had a mob—must have been thirty or forty thousand people out there. And among them, of course, the VIP’s. Julian—Julian Price was, he sort of headed of the list, and his two grandchildren, Mr. [unclear], Mr. [unclear] daughters were sort of in my custody. I was assigned to take care of them for the—during the day.
JSC: Yes.
WC: And so I tried to interest them in airplanes and so forth but, I think that’s pretty much of a lost cause because they were teenagers and they weren’t particularly interested in airplanes at that time.
JSC: Yes.
WS: And they certainly wasn’t interested in me, I was an old fogey—I was twenty-nine years old—almost thirty. [laughs] No, but we did—I got pictures showing all—what, seeing Mr. Price being shown through the airplanes.
JSC: Yes.
WS: [unclear] I rode out that day with Colonel Younts and then I rode back with him, too. As I say, he and I had a few things in common that he and Captain Nail didn’t have, and Nail said to me, “If you would do this, I would be eternally grateful; I cannot stand that man.” [laughs] JSC: That’s interesting. I guess everybody [unclear]—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
WS: Oh, everybody had—you know—
JSC: I guess when you were there, there probably wasn’t a lot of marching, this type of thing going on, was there?
[shows photograph]
WS: Well now, this would be—
JSC: During basic training days.
WS: I would say this is BTC.
JSC: Yes.
WS: Yeah, yeah, ‘cause—See, these are, well, they look like infantry, course they’re air corps, they had to be. Now here’s a guy here, he’s a—This guy’s either a major or a colonel, I can’t tell. I mean he was a lieutenant colonel. And this fella here is—He looks like a lieutenant, I’m pretty sure he is.
JSC: I’ve been told by some people that there was a lot of—just—there was marching around just in the neighborhood, you know, adjacent to the base. Those, of course, are out—
WS: Was what?
JSC: It looks like they’re going out on the highway, or—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
WS: Yeah, their maneuvers—Well, I don’t know whether we called them maneuvers or not—
the infantry—now they got full packs on, and they are training to be soldiers.
JSC: Yes.
WS: This would be the early part of their soldiering, I suppose. Although, as a cadet I never wore a pack on my back except when I was being disciplined. I got a demerit—
JSC: Now you didn’t do basic training here in Greensboro—
WS: Oh, no.
JSC: What—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
WS: Maxwell Field.
JSC: Air force basic training wasn’t as rigorous, or how would you characterize it?
WS: Air force training was—now this was air force—
JSC: Yes.
WS: —but this was the basic training. Now, of course, we got basic training in the aviation cadet schools, like at Maxwell Field, or later on Selman Field in Monroe, Louisiana, the different places that they had air force installations.
JSC: Yes.
WS: They were mainly training. But now, for instance, at Gunter Field and Maxwell Field—they were both in Montgomery[AL]—and they were training pilots, in the final analysis.
And, of course they took in—We were sent first to Craig Field because they didn’t have room enough for us at Maxwell. So they sent us over to Selma—Craig Field— and we did the marching—We learned our—e learned our right foot from our left foot and how to salute and who to salute and all that kind of—In other words, we were all a bunch of civilians that, all of a sudden, we were in the army.
JSC: Now were you—Were those air force people you were with?
WS: Oh, yeah, army air corps.
JSC: Okay—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
JSC: [unclear] people going into the regular army had their own basic training, too, then?
WS: Well, it all depends. Of course, I don’t know the signal corps—I think, though—I think the army, outside of the air corps—I think the army had—It was all basic training. And they were doing what these boys seem to be doing—these look more like infantry boys than they do—of course they said, they said—Now these were not cadets, you understand, these were, these were training to be corps men.
JSC: Yes.
WS: They were going to be the, well—
JSC: The support personnel for the air force.
WS: That’s right. Now, as a cadet you signed up for air training, air corps training, and in case—in my case—if I did not make pilot training—if I did not finish pilot training—if I was washed up—then I could say to the air corps, “I would like to be released and shipped, sent back to civilian life.” I had that right. And they’d say, “Certainly.” And so they would release me and I’d put my civilian clothes back on and I’d get on the train, and when I got to the railroad station at home I would find the Draft Board sitting out front waiting to greet me.
JSC: Yes.
WS: And they’d say, “How are you, mister? You’ve come to the right place— now you’re in the army.” [chuckles] “We just drafted you.”
JSC: Did—
WS: But I never got that far; I washed out but I said, “I’d like to stay here and I want to be a bombadier,” so they made me a navigator.
JSC: [chuckles]
WS: That’s because I was so good at mathematics, that the reason I didn’t graduate with my class in high school was because I couldn’t do mathematics very well. [chuckles] The army has a way of doing things, make—let’s say they provide the incentive. When you know if you don’t do your job, you and nine other men are going to die, you’re pretty well—You have an incentive, there is no question about it.
JSC: Yes.
WS: I did more math than I ever thought I could do. And I did it well.
JSC: Yes. Now, there wasn’t—When you were here at base, there wasn’t really a lot of marching around [unclear] going on—
WS: No, no, very seldom I saw that—But then, I wouldn’t see that—I was over—I was in—
JSC: Headquarters area—
WS: —two places. I was either over in headquarters building, or I was across the street in public relations.
JSC: Yes.
WS: And I went back and forth—those two. Very rarely I went anywhere else—maybe the airport—I used to go out to the airport once a month to do my flying—get my flying pay.
JSC: Yes.
WS: They had a few trainers out there, and they had a—training planes, I mean. And some of the flying officers coming back from overseas—they had to get their flying in, too, and there’d be pilots, and there’d be always plenty of pilots to get in that basic training and flying you around for four hours. They got their time in; I got my time in. I did the navigating; they did the piloting, and to tell you the truth I did a better job of navigation than they did flying, I think.
JSC: [chuckles]
WS: I had some—I flew some combat missions that were a lot tamer, [both chuckle] than flying those training missions [unclear].
JSC: Was access to the base pretty strict? I mean, in that sense was the base—I mean the military—I mean the civilians didn’t really have easy access to the base, did they?
WS: I think they had to have a pass.
JSC: Yes.
WS: You see, there again, I don’t know. I never stopped to think about it. All I know is, that I’d drive up in my car—there’d be a sentry on the gate, and he’d salute and pass me through, see.
JSC: So you didn’t—You didn’t have a sticker on your car, or—
WS: Well—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
JSC: [unclear]
WS: I didn’t have any sticker on the car. I just had—maybe on my uniform—
JSC: Uniform, and they knew who you were—
WS: —and I’d pull up and there’s the sentry and he’d say—[perhaps does a salute?] , and so I’d go on through.
JSC: Yes.
WS: And when I got ready to leave, why, it was—they just—that’s what [unclear] [chuckles]. They just wave you on out the gate. But I would say that this was a very good installation. It never was meant to be permanent.
JSC: Yes.
WS: Not to my knowledge. Now the one at Goldsboro, Seymour Johnson [Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, Goldsboro, NC], that was developed into a permanent base; it’s still there. Fort Bragg [NC], of course, was an old, old training base. It’s going to be there from now on; they’ve got permanent buildings all over the place.
JSC: Yes.
WS: You ever been down to Fort Bragg? That’s huge.
JSC: A long—years ago.
Do you remember the controversy over—about the—I guess it would been in ’46, when the base—there was a lot of people in town that wanted the base to leave. They were, I guess they were looking forward to developing the property, and other did—you know there were other people didn’t want it to leave so soon—
WS: Well, the people who were working out at the camp—They wanted it continued. The people who owned the property, like the Cones—the Cones owned the property.
JSC: Yes.
WS: But they gave it to the, to the government or, leased it to the government, let’s say. And then, came time to go back to civilian life, they sold it to various investors. They didn’t want it back, or if they did—I don’t know what the deal was, but anyway, I know that Oscar Burnett and the Bessemer Improvement Company—they went in on the ground floor and they developed it. Such as Summit Shopping Center was their development. JSC: I’m going to talk to Fred Williams; he was a lawyer that worked with Bessemer [unclear] and he knows all about that aspect of it.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
WS: But it didn’t take long, by the end of ’46 it was pretty near gone. And they—see, I got out—let’s see, let’s put it this way—I have—I was not then discharged, nor have I ever been discharged, I’m still in air force—air corps, air force, whatever you want to call it.
JSC: Yes.
WS: I’ve never asked for a discharge. I’d been retired, yes, but I’m in the retired reserve. Of course that means, as my wife so crudely puts it, “By the time they call you up, the war’s lost.” [both chuckle] “Should they ever call you up the war’s already lost [unclear]”.
So, I—I—You know it’s hard to get out of habit. I would go by the store after I got out and, at least once or two or three times a week, I’d go out to ORD to see my old buddies. And I’d be out there—In fact, that went on pretty much all during 1946. And I made trips there long as the camp was there I used to go see them. And gradually, one by one, they were getting enough points and they were being pulled out and discharged and sent off home.
JSC: That created a lot of problems for Colonel Younts, because more and more men were circling through here, he was losing a lot of his—
WS: Oh, yeah, yeah—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
JSC: —his experienced administrators.
WS: But then, you see, there was really not much replacement to do. You could always count on a certain number of people wanting to stay in. As a matter of fact, they probably had more people wanting to stay in than wanted—well, not—left up to themselves, there would have been a awfully lot of people who would have stayed in the military. But, we had not thousands, we had millions of people. And they all had to be sent back to civilian life.
JSC: Yes.
WS: They got their ruptured duck and went home. [chuckles] Yeah, you know what the ruptured duck is?
JSC: I’ve heard that—
WS: That was that little gold pin they gave you to put in your lapel, and it was supposed to be an eagle—We called it a ruptured duck. [chuckles] That’s what it looked like. It was standing on one foot, as I recall.
JSC: Now, when you were here on the base did you—were you involved in your shoe business at all? Did you—
WS: Oh yeah, yeah. See, only difference it meant for me was instead of—In the shoe business, I’d get down to work at 9:30, ordinarily.
JSC: Yes.
WS: And I’d get off at six o’clock. But—and, of course, I would go—I’d get there earlier and I’d stay later than that, but I was my own boss, I could do as I pleased. But, in the army, when I was stationed out here the first thing I would do in the morning—I’d get up about five o’clock in the morning—I’d go down to the store and I’d stay there until about quarter to eight. And I’d do all the things that you normally would do—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
WS: Sir?
JSC: Who was managing it before you came back here?
WS: Well, we had three elderly men who had been with my father for many years, and I gave the orders. My mother was working down there then, but she didn’t try to interfere at all. She carried—Before I got here she carried the orders down to the staff and my father gave the [unclear].
JSC: Oh.
WS: He handled everything from the [unclear]. Not because he wanted to but because he had to. And so, especially in 1945 he just got to the point he couldn’t go back.
JSC: Yes.
WS: Forty-four—he was there in ‘44—almost to ’44, when I got home, he was working at the store, part-time. Then he got so he couldn’t do it. When I would—I would—what we call making up the cash and the deposits—I’d get all that stuff done and somebody would make the deposit—no, I’d come home at—I’d come back to the store at lunchtime—until a quarter to eight I was at the store.
JSC: Yes.
WS: In that fifteen minutes I made it over to ORD and went in to report to my army job.
JSC: You had a full day—
WS: At twelve o’clock, I left the camp and came in, eat, and I went to the store, to see how things were going, and how much business they had done and so forth, and see where we could manage to get a few more pairs of shoes here, yonder, and everywhere. Everything was in tight supply. At one o’clock I was back at the camp and I stayed until five. That was just in time—I could get back to the store and check them out and be sure everything was all right and lock the door and go home. If I didn’t stay down to the store [unclear].
JSC: Speaking of selling shoes, what—what impact, if any, did the military base and the soldiers have on, say retail in Greensboro? Soldiers weren’t necessarily buying a lot of goods, or were they? When you had your own—you didn’t have civilian stuff—
WS: Didn’t have what?
JSC: Soldiers weren’t really buying civilian clothes—
WS: Oh no, no—
JSC: So it didn’t really—did the war help the shoe—
WS: Oh yes, in other words, the soldiers being in town here helped the town because, while they may not per se be buying shoes, from me, or stockings, which they probably did buy from me if we had them, but once a month we’d get a shipment of nylons. It wasn’t a very big shipment. One day I came in to town, from the camp, I went to—I was going to—I parked over there back of the Mayfair Cafeteria [unclear] walk on up to the store. So I get to the—Gaston Street which is Friendly Avenue now—
[Recording Device Conversation Redacted]
JSC: They—You were talking about going up to your store, about the nylons?
WS: Yeah. Okay, so there was a line going down around the corner to Mayfair, down toward Davie Street; and I first encountered the line down there in front of Fisher-Harrison [Fisher-Harrison Printing Company], which is right back of Mayfair.
[Testing Recording Device Redacted]
WS: So as I—I came up Gaston Street toward Elm, there was all these people in line. And I looked at them; I went around the corner, I thought “Well, Mayfair’s going to be busy today.” Well, some of them were in the Mayfair line but—there was a—the line branched off there, and part went in the Mayfair, and the part of it went all the way up to Jefferson Square. Far as I could see up the street— there they were, lined up.
And so I kept walking, and I got closer to the store, and I said to somebody “What are y’all in line for?” and they said “I don’t know. [unclear] I don’t know. I just got in it. Anytime I see a line, I get in it.”
JSC: Yes.
WS: So I asked somebody else—somebody—I noticed they was going in the store. And so I said to somebody, I said “Are you—Can you tell me why you’re in this line?” and they said “Well, they got some nylons in at that store up there and we’re in line to get some nylons.”
I said “Oh.” So I go in the store and I’ve got on my uniform. I go in the store; there’s my mother selling the hose as fast as she can pull them out. One pair to a customer. They came three-pack—three pair in a box, and she had—I don’t know, maybe—maybe she had a gross, I don’t know; I doubt it. But anyway, we counted up and how many—I went back and counted how many pair of hose she had left, regardless of size—any of them. So, she was still going ahead selling them and people coming in—in line. One pair [unclear] and they pay for ‘em—out they go.
So I counted—I figured for everybody in that line, each one of them got one pair of hose, how many—where would the line stop—.
JSC: Yes.
WS: —when they ran out. So I counted out—we got about where the brown hills used to be and I went by, counting them all, and I get down to this lady and I said “Well,” I said “there’ll be no more hose.”
“What do you mean, there’ll be no more hose?” I said “I mean that there’s only hose left to be sold down to right here. If everybody buys one pair of hose, this stops right here—that’s when we’re going to run out.”
“Well, how do you know so much about it? Are you in the army?” I said “Yes.”
“Well, what do you know about what this is going on?” I said “Because I also happen to be a part owner of the store.”
JSC: [chuckles]
WS: They say “Well, I’m going to stay right where I am.” I said “Be my guest.” Nobody got out of line; that’s the truth. They all stayed there. And, of course, eventually, just like I said they got to the front door. I went on back to camp. I said “I don’t want no part of this.” [both chuckle]
JS: Do you think—Do you think there were any people that didn’t like the base being here, or—?
WS: Oh, I think there’s bound to be some people that didn’t like the base here. But you see, if you ran a restaurant here in town, and you—the soldiers came in and—ate with you, bought beer from you—in other words, y’all did business, or you’re a photographer and you took a picture—all that money was going to the townspeople, and the townspeople were buying things from all these other people in town. And so, it helped the economy—what helps one is going to help all—
JSC: Yes.
WS: —sooner or later. And so, from that standpoint [coughs], yes, it did help the town.
JSC: I haven’t come across informa—too much information that there was really a lot of negatives about the base, I mean—
WS: Well, there was.
JSC: It could have been—I’m not sure there was, and you can tell me, but—
WS: Well—
JSC: Do you think that being air force base as opposed to a marine or army—
WS: Oh, no, I don’t think—I don’t think—I was—I lived in Beaufort, South Carolina, 1941, that’s about 5 miles from Parris Island [Parris Island Marine Corps Recruiting Depot]. And, of course, they had Marines all over the place there. I was with them every day; I worked down there, as a civilian. But I don’t think the branch of the service had one thing to do with it.
There was—Well, just take for instance, I’ve often marveled at how the English put up with us, all of a sudden we dump one million—at least one million—airmen—over there in a, in a—a country that ain’t as big as North Carolina. Or if it is, it’s just slightly bigger. With different social attitudes, and different pay scales. I know they must have been right up to here with us, I mean, I’ve often marveled that they did as well, and I’ve often wondered if we would have done as well as they did, had the situation been reversed.
JSC: Yes. WS: Of course, they knew that we were over there trying to help them, at the same time we were helping ourselves.
JSC: Yes.
WS: And they were being inconvenienced but they were so grateful that we were over there fighting with them against a common enemy.
JSC: Okay, that leads to—
WS: But we had friction even then.
JSC: Yeah. What about psychologically though, when—I bet early in the war when the threat is real, I mean there was a lot more—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
WS: [unclear]
JSC: Comraderie—
WS: For what—
JSC: They were looking—
WS: For what they said at the beginning, when they first put the camp here there was nothing those boys couldn’t get, I mean, everybody was gung-ho; everybody was patriotic. They all had victory gardens, they had this, and rationing, and they’d do anything in this world—patriotism was a one hundred and fifty percent [unclear]. Now that’s the way it was in Selma, Alabama when I was there.
JSC: Yes.
WS: I was there six weeks, and they never had a cadet in town until we got there; and when we got to Monroe, Louisiana, we were the first cadets to hit the field. They didn’t even have the stickers off of the window glass; that’s why they sent me down there, that was my specialty, taking the stickers off the window glass in the barrack.
JSC: [chuckles]
WS: Someday they’re going to erect a statue to me. [both chuckle] My job was mainly opening new camps.
JSC: Yes.
WS: Just being a aviation cadet was secondary.
JSC: Okay, so then, as the war progressed, and it became obvious that we’re going to win—we didn’t know when—and then VE Day came, I imagine there was, I would think that maybe there was begin a change [unclear]—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
WS: Well, of course, there were certain people—You know you can’t please all the people all the time.
JSC: —that way.
WS: Was it Lincoln that said “You can please some of the people all the time. You can please all the people some of the time, but you can’t please all the people all the time.” So that’s about the way it was.
Now there were—I know there were people here that I knew, and when I came here to work at the camp, these people would tell me “I wish they’d take them all out of here, and get them—take them back where they belong”.
And I said “Well, as long as this war is going on, they belong right here [tapping noise], wherever the army wants to send them.”
JSC: Yes.
WS: I [unclear] no patience with the people that—Here they were, they were living in this community and making money off of the facilities, and supposed to be supporting the war effort, and yet they were biting the hand that fed them, so to speak.
JSC: Yes.
WS: Because it was a inconvenience, and it was an inconvenience, I’m sure. It was certainly a horrible inconvenience to the British. To have to put up with Americans after all that stuff the Germans had dumped on them, and—We are not an easy people to get along with.
JSC: Well, my question would be—it seems like—what would be the difference between the inconvenience of the war in general and the inconvenience of the base here in Greensboro—What other demands did it put on the populace, do you think?
WS: Well— JSC: Like rationing and everything and all of those—it had nothing really to do with the base, per se.
WS: Had Greensboro been closer to the fighting front, there would have been a good deal more patriotism, and good will between the two than there was being three thousand miles away from—
JSC: Yes.
WS: —the action.
JSC: Yes.
WS: And I would say, generally speaking, I would say probably ninety-five percent of the people in this town were very much in favor of what we were doing here—the air force being here.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
JSC: Now did—
WS: They wanted—
JSC: [unclear] a few that you came in contact with that—
WS: Well, every one of them was trying—I think people who had sons and daughters in the service, all over the world, who lived here in Greensboro—they were trying to do for these boys what they hoped somebody was doing for their son and daughter.
JSC: Yes.
WS: I mean—and I don’t know—you just had to be a part of it in those days from nineteen—from December the 7th, 1941 until September of 1945, you just couldn’t envision people being so together. When they talk about a war is a terrible thing and I’ll grant you—there’s no such thing as a good war. But, if there ever was a good war, it had to be World War II, because people took care of the troops. If you had on a uniform it didn’t make no difference where you were, you were a hero. And justly so, I think. You didn’t go where you wanted to go in the army; you went where you were told to go.
JSC: Yes.
WS: And maybe you came back, and maybe you didn’t. It was just that simple. And nobody—I never saw anybody in the service that got a round-trip ticket. JSC: [chuckles]
WS: Overseas. I know one thing; it’s an adventure that you never forget.
JSC: Let me show you this, which I don’t think I’ve show you before—this is Colonel—Colonel Younts’ collection, but—they had this—this is one of the volumes—
[shows photograph]
WS: Separation process.
JSC: Yes.
WS: Oh, yeah.
JSC: You know, you may have even been involved with putting it together, as far as that goes.
WS: I don’t think so. [both chuckle]
[noise]
WS: Oh, yeah.
JSC: See all types of things in there, but there are photographs, as well.
WS: Got that one up-side-down. That looks—Oh, yeah, yeah.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
WS: [unclear]
JSC: But this is a—this is a—the whole [unclear], and photographs of Zero Day.
WS: I’m seeing this for the first time.
JSC: Really?
WS: Yup.
[both looking at photographs]
JSC: That’s down at the depot [unclear].
WS: Yup. And this [reads from photograph] incoming officers and enlisted men report here.
Well, I do recall being in one of these pictures here—Well see, as I told you I was relieved of active duty, but I went through the same process that everybody else did, and I was handed a—
JSC: Where did you separate out?
WS: Right out here.
[looking at document]
JSC: Here?
WS: Colonel Younts gave me my separation and I—I took—I was in charge of the photographer who took that picture.
JSC: You remember that one?
WS: Yes. I took them all over to Winston. This is Salem College; I’ve got that picture, that Jerry—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
JSC: Someone told me—I mean they thought it was Greensboro College but you’re saying but you’re saying it’s Salem—
WS: No, that’s not Greensboro College, because Greensboro College at that time had a rotunda. See?
JSC: Yeah, I know what you’re talking about. I’ve seen it but I’ve forgotten when it—didn’t it burn, or something happen—
WS: It burned.
[Conversation while searching for item redacted]
WS: But anyway—
JSC: So Salem—
WS: That is Salem. Because I remember taking them over. We went through R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Factory, and they all got to see—They all got complimentary cigarettes, and they went through the factory, and I—for the first time in my life, I’d been through a tobacco factory and I saw them making cigarettes.
JSC: Yes.
[shows photograph]
JSC: That’s not you, is it?
WS: No. No, that’s not me.
JSC: Okay. separate, seperatee?
WS: But I recognize these. You see that [unclear]—
JSC: You’ve got that one—There’s one photograph of you I want to borrow. You remember—I think I remember seeing it where you’re—oh, maybe that one. I need to take a—get a copy of that.
WS: Okay. You see this? [shows photograph] They have this over here and they have another one over here—
JSC: Yes.
WS: —that had to do with what I was talking about. And so I’d go “tap, tap” on this one, and while—then I’d go over to this one.
JSC: Yes.
WS: And while I was over here, they were turning this one around. See it worked on a pivot. And they put them on pegs from behind.
[viewing photograph] WS: Yeah, that was the theater I worked in.
[viewing other photographs]
WS: That’s the first time I’ve ever seen this.
JSC: I don’t know who put it together but it was in his collection. It’s really—
WS: There’s the [unclear] air force, and that’s the Flying Tigers, that would be the Fourteenth
Air Force.
JSC: Were all these signs made just by [unclear]—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
WS: Yeah, they were made there on the base. And Parella[?] did most—he was in charge—Sergeant Parella was in charge of the graphic—I guess you call them graphic displays. He did this one or he had his people do it. He did a—he put out a [unclear]. Very good.
[viewing materials]
JSC: Did he—Did he become, or stay an artist [unclear]—
WS: Oh yeah, he went back to civilian life and he was—he was a good artist; that’s why they got him.
JSC: This is a wonderful record you know [unclear]—
WS: Yes, it is. Now you see how—see how those things were built?
JSC: Yes.
WS: It was rough. But they were comfortable enough. They were better than [unclear]. I think we had a few of those out here, too. [unclear] in England that’s what we had, just the huts.
JSC: Yes.
WS; All right. [reading] Enlisted men returning to—
JSC: That’s Colonel Younts
WS: All right, that’s Colonel Younts right there—
JSC: He had a distinctive nose.
WS: Huh?
JSC: He had a distinctive nose.
WS: Yes, he did. Yes, he did. He was not exactly what I—Well, now Parella’s outfit did this whole thing. I remember distinctly; that was back of headquarters. That’s where I got my separation, right there. In fact, they—public relations took a picture of me getting my separation. They used to tease me because they said I was a politician, so was Colonel Younts, and we’d probably be battling for the Democratic nomination for governor. In those days I did have—
JSC: I was talking to a civic group and a lady came up and I had this—I was showing the type of things we had and she said “That’s—that’s me at the desk.” She—her name’s Lillian Spencer Steele. And she said “There I am. There’s my friend.” Of course that was—
WS: All right, now a lot of these girls married these soldiers.
JSC: All the paperwork.
WS: [reading] Have you been a prisoner of war, an internee, escapee, or evader? He said “No. I said “Yes.” This was done on 29th of October, ’45. See I—that was, that was exactly—mine was the 26th of September, ’45, but it was termination date of—My termination date was November the 14th , 1945. That’s when I had my terminal leave.
And I was paid five hundred dollars per year for every year I was in the service. I was—because I was commissioned ORC, Officer Reserve Corps. See, most of them—in other words I went in—I applied before the war—before we got into the war. I applied in 1940, and although I’d had no previous military training, I was assigned to ORC because I was in there early and I applied as a volunteer, and I wanted to go str—I wanted to go straight to officer training, which was all the same thing. You got the—fact of the matter is.
[viewing item]
WS: That’s the ones they pinned on me, April the 10th, 1943. It went right up here, and of course it wasn’t—this was bent, later on. And my roommate pinned mine on me and I pinned his on him. And we both pinned each others’ bars on. We got them gold bars and the silver wings, and we were the biggest things on that post, believe me.
JSC: Yes.
And after—Shortly after that, we went out the door, and there was all the enlisted men at Selman Field out there waiting for us, and they salute you—the first salute got a dollar. So you had your dollar in your hand, and when you first got it saluted, you give them a dollar. I’ll never forget that.
JSC: Maybe you could bring this down sometime and I could copy that right while you’re waiting—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
WS: Sure. Sure. All right, sure.
JSC: —instead of just taking it.
WS: I’ll be glad to—
JSC: I think that might be one of [unclear]. Is there another one of you get—talking in front of the troops? Is that the one I remember—I remember—
WS: I believe that’s it but maybe there is another one; let me see here. [looking at photograph] I think these are tremendous right here. Who said that? That’s the tactical officer, see—the big push—this poor guy’s trying to do push-ups and they’re all there forcing him.
JSC: Yes.
WS: Like the guy that broke his leg going over the obstacle course? And he lay there on the ground and the lieutenant rushed up and he said “What’s wrong with you?”
He said “I broke my leg, sir.” He says “Well, don’t just lie there, start doing push-ups.” [both chuckle]
[viewing photographs]
WS: That’s where all the vaccines [unclear] too, believe me. All the big guys got the little uniforms and all the little ones got [unclear]— All right, now that’s my man, there. Psychiatrist. [chuckles] Now that looks like Colonel Lewis [both chuckle] Now here I am as a cadet in Montgomery, Alabama. That’s my graduation folder. Yeah, there we are. Yeah. How about that? That all right?
JSC: Well, what I think I need to do is make a—I want to make a negative of it.
WS: Oh, sure. You want to photograph that or this, don’t make no difference.
JSC: No, that, that would need to, at some point, photograph it if I want to get a good quality—
WS: It would be better here?
JSC: Yes. But I don’t need to—maybe you can just bring it down and I can do it.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
WS: Yeah, I’ll be glad to. That’s the best picture I ever had made.
JSC: That is good. I want to get a copy of that—
WS: I took two week after, two weeks after I was graduated. Tucson, Arizona. I should have got that photographer’s name and address. I thought I had some more here. [viewing photograph] You know what that means? That’s all right. This is war.
JSC: Yes.
WS: He just killed a chicken. [chuckles] And this is what I ate on the 10th of October, 1943. At the Cafe—Hotel Lemonia, Lemonia. [? Churchill used to always stay there at Marrakesh.
JSC: Yes.
[viewing photographs]
WS: That’s Marrakesh. I got well-acquainted with those wogs believe me. I ain’t got no use for them. [The word “wogs” could be considered offensive]
Oh, here we all are, out in the desert.
That’s over the Alps.
That’s one of them going down.
That’s formation.
Another —that’s put the wing-tip in the [unclear].
There the bombs are falling.
That’s what happened.
Now I developed all these pictures.
JSC: Oh, you did?
WS: Yeah, from the training I got from Jerry. That was overseas. Here’s my group.
JSC: Yes.
WS: I got the picture up on the wall. My CO [commanding officer]. I don’t see him. I knew all these guys, and the thing about it is eighty percent of them are dead and never left England. That was a rough time.
I thought I had some more—that was a—that boy’s dead, he got—he was our first casualty.
JSC: Yes.
WC: No, he wasn’t. Schmidt and [unclear] went down first. That was my first mission on the Tower of Pisa.
JSC: Oh, really?
WC: You know what they told us that morning? They said “You’re going to hit Pisa. And if you—If you hit the tower, don’t come home.” [chuckles]
[viewing photographs]
WS: That’s in Houston. That’s me. With my bombadier.
This guy was from my group.
That’s me again.
I knew him. And this guy lived at the same house I did.
That’s Gillespie [?]. I still talk to him. I was in Houston so long, and you see my bombadier was Jewish, and everybody he knew in Houston was Jewish, too, and every now and then I went around with him somewhere I would get a [unclear] [both chuckle]
That’s my office. You asked about the [unclear]. See it was—the tar-paper shack had some sort of paper on it.
JSC: Yes.
WS: But I’d be willing to bet— That’s me in the Studebaker. That’s not Dot, that girl’s [unclear] and I was taking her home.
JSC: I see. There’s another area—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
WS: Greensboro College. There’s a warehouse there—
JSC: Now who would have taken that? Do you think?
WS: I took that one—
JSC: When you were travelling around in your plane?
WS: Yes. I took it from BTC. From, from the base—
JSC: I want to get a copy of that, too.
WS: All right, now there’s Colonel Younts and this is the fellow in charge of the warehouse. He was a lieutenant colonel.
And that’s me with my cousin, the day I went over and took them over to see the cigarettes?
JSC: Yes.
WS: He worked for R.J. Reynolds. He was my first cousin, once removed.
There’s a C47. [military transport aircraft] See? See all these people? This was that date.
That’s a B17. [four-engine heavy bomber aircraft] See all the people lined up? See?
JSC: Yes.
WS: All right, here’s ORD. There’s the theater. I remember—
JSC: Okay, I’m going to need to get copies of these, too, if I can.
WS: See, we—I took the picture [unclear]—I was leaning out the side—took it with an old Belinda[?] 620.
JSC: Where—is this Bessemer here, though? No. The road’s curving up.
WS: Well now, let’s see. No, here’s Bessemer.
JSC: Okay. Well, what theater—what would you call that?
[Speaking Simultaneously]
WS: I’m trying to think [unclear]—
JSC: —[unclear] the map I have.
WS: I’m trying to think. I believe, let me see, trying to get myself oriented. See, they had four theaters and they all looked alike. I think this is the one I performed in, but it may not have been.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
WS: There’s the chapel—
JSC: —you took it, though.
WS: There’s the chapel. Huh?
JSC: I mean you probably took that, though, I mean—[unclear]
WS: Oh, I took it; I took the picture but I don’t remember how—All right, here’s the airport, the way it used to look. There’s all our planes out there. There was some commercials coming—there were commercial flights in here.
JSC: I thought they eliminated most of those. WS: Well, they eliminated a lot of them but there’s still—I still flew in here for leave on a commercial flight.
JSC: I may need to borrow this.
WS: Oh, yeah.
JSC: So I can have time to make some negatives of some of these photographs.
WS: Now, I’ll tell you who took these—Jerry and his crowd took these—
JSC: Oh, did they?
WS: Yes. All right here, now I don’t think I took this; I think I used theirs. This is VJ [Victory Over Japan] Day.
JSC: VJ Day. See I don’t have that image, that’s terrific.
WS: VJ Day. There they are again, some more of them.
JSC: I’d forgotten all of these were in here. I think you showed me this before—
WC: This was right after troops had got through marching and the festivities were over. I got another picture showing crossing the square.
Oh, there I am. That’s Colonel Younts, right there, and that’s me.
JSC: Yes. Were you with a large group that were being separated that day?
[Speaking Simultaneously]
WC: Yes, fairly big, yeah.
JSC: Yes.
[viewing photographs]
WC: That’s right after I made captain.
That was my unit here in Greensboro.
That was state headquarters, selective service.
This is Kentucky.
That was my Studebaker, 1950 Studebaker convertible.
JSC: Sharp car.
WS: Huh?
JSC: Looks like a sharp car.
WS: Oh man, that’s one thing I was noted for, I always got a sharp automobile.
JSC: [chuckles]
WS: All right, this is the one I brought home to Dot. She—see, Dot always went with me on my active duty.
JSC: Yes.
WS: So she was at the motel and I brought her this picture back, and I said here—I said “Would you like to see a picture of the boys?” and she said “Boys? When?” [both chuckle] Yes, I’m in here somewhere. That’s Harry Cunningham, he’s dead. That’s Bill [?], he got killed with him. There I am, right there. That’s us. That was 1957. Quonset Point, Rhode Island. There I am, just gotten back from overseas.
JSC: That’s a great album.
WS: This is what I had for Christmas dinner. Christmas, 1942.
JSC: Not too many people can remember what they had for Christmas dinner in ’42.
WS: I’ll bet you there ain’t nobody but me.
JSC: [laughs]
WS: That’s General Hanson[?] He was a National Guard.
JSC: Yes.
WS: That’s Mike Fleming, he was a navy captain.
JSC: Oh, that’s [unclear].
WS: Yeah, that’s Mike. You know Mike. JSC: Yeah, I’ve met him. He’s been on our board.
WS: All right, that’s—I forget what that fellow’s name was out at A&T. You didn’t know I taught at A&T, did you?
JSC: No.
WS: I taught navigation out there for about 5 or 6 months.
[speaking simultaneously]
JSC: What year was that? When was that?
WS: 1950. That’s General Green[?], of course.
That’s Eddie Smith. The fireman that died; he had cancer.
That’s Stanley Frank.
And that’s Dr. Milner. We had just given him this award, by the Guilford Courthouse.
That’s Jessie Marshall, lieutenant colonel, A&T[?]
That’s [unclear] Saint Peter.
That’s Mike.
And that’s my old friend, [unclear], air force.
There’s Colonel Brooks, Marine Corps, right here.
This is a—I had taken it out at the high school stadium—ROTC [Reserve Officers’ Training Corps].
And this is a parade that— my wife was the one that put this on.
JSC: Yes.
WS: [unclear] got the credit but Dot did the work.
JSC: [chuckles]
WS: A good show—they did a good job [unclear] [noise]
That’s me.
That’s John Barney.
That’s Paul.
And that’s Bill Pittman [?]
And that boy is—oh, what’s his name? [unclear], he went back to Washington.
JSC: That’s a great album.
WS: What?
JSC: I said that’s a great album.
WS: Yeah, I wouldn’t take a lot for that—
JSC: Looks like there’s five or six photographs I’d like to be able to make negatives—
WS: Yeah, anything you want, I’ll be glad to let you all have it. Now I want to ask you this one. You’re not going to leave right now, are you?
[Speaking Simultaneously]
JSC: Oh, in just a few—
WS: You got some more—you got some more?
JSC: No, I’m basically—I’m basically done.
WS: Any other questions you want, I’m here to answer them, if I can.
JSC: You’ve been great. Fantastic. I can’t think of any other, anything really, additional—
WS: Oh, I was going to tell you what happened when I was giving the lecture. And the nurses
came in and the nurses and doctors came in, sat in the back. Well, they came in just about the time that I had come to the raunchiest part of that monologue. And I looked at them, I said to myself, I said “Well, I’m about to tell these jokes but I’m set up to tell them.”
JSC: You were ordered to tell them—
WS: Ordered—As a matter of fact, this joke right here—this worst one—was given to me by the colonel, and then told to put it in here, to liven it up a bit. And I said ”I know I’ve got a problem here,” but I said “orders are orders.” And I said “Besides that, these—these army nurses—if they’re like most army nurses that I’ve known—they know all about this stuff, I don’t have to tell them, they probably heard it before.”
Well, I go ahead with my lecture just as scheduled. And I was just about—I’d just gotten to that raunchy part, and before I got through with the raunchy part, the nurses got up and trooped out, along with the medical officer. And when I got backstage about 15 minutes later, there was the colonel—not Colonel Younts—this was a lieutenant colonel, who’s name I prefer not to divulge. Anyway, he was chewing me out; he just raved.
“Do you know they’re going to—they’ve been in here—the medical corps has been over here chewing me out about your language, and those terrible jokes that you tell [unclear] and I insist that you stop immediately.”
I said “Well,” I said “sure I’ll be glad to do that, Colonel. But why in the world would you do such a thing as that?” I said “You gave me the joke.”
“I gave you the jokes?”
I said “Yes, sir, you gave me the joke.”
JSC: [chuckles]
WS: “Well, I don’t remember it.” I said “Well, I remember it.” I said “Here it is in your own handwriting.” I said “I figured this was going to come about some day, and I got it right here.”
He said “Well, there’ll be no more if it.” I said “Yes, sir.” [laughs] That’s the way it goes.
JSC: Oh, me. Isn’t that typical?
WS: Oh, sure. Pass the buck, you know. That was the way it was. But I will have to say this, I have thoroughly enjoyed the army, and I wanted to stay in, but I know now that I would have been wrong had I stayed in. I mean, what do you do for an encore? You been in the greatest war in history, you functioned as best you could and done your job as best you knew how, and you were pretty lucky. You got a few breaks and you got home alive.
Why don’t you get out while you’re at the top?
JSC: Yes.
WS: Why wait until they kick you out?
JSC: That’s that—yeah, [unclear] I wonder how much—there must have been a lot of let-down for the soldiers that stayed in—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
WS: Anything that I did after World War II in the army had to have been anti-climax. I mean, how do you—How do you follow an act like that?
JSC: Well, I don’t think you could.
WS: And besides, I wouldn’t have ever met my wife.
JSC: Where did you meet her?
WS: I met her at the Plantation Club in 19—in the fall of 1946. And it took me ’47, ’48, and part of ’49 to convince her that she should marry me. And she gave me the ring back twice.
JSC: [chuckles]
WS: And after we got married, I said “Why didn’t you give it back to me the third time?” and she said “I was afraid you wouldn’t ask me again.” [both laugh]
JSC: Is she local?
WS: Huh?
JSC: What’s her maiden name?
WS: Sisk. s-i-s-k. She was from Bessemer city, down near Kings Mountain.
JSC: Yes.
WS: She’s the greatest, I’ll tell you one thing.
JSC: That’s great.
WS: And I say, everything after—
[Recorder Turned Off]