>> So today is April 19th, 2023.
My name is Adina Langer,
and I'm Curator of the Museum of History
and Holocaust Education at Kennesaw State University.
I'm here at the museum with
Charles Crowley for a Legacy Series Interview.
Could you please state your full name?
>> Charles Hall Crowley Junior.
And do you agree to this interview?
>> Yes.
>> Excellent. So let's
start by talking about your childhood.
Could you please tell me when,
and where you were born?
>> I was born March 31, 1926.
In Atlanta Georgia West end portion of Atlanta, Georgia.
In fact, it was at 838 North Cross Avenue.
That's still part of West end outside of Atlanta.
And, I think at that point,
I had one older sister,
and of course, mom and dad.
And when I was about a-year-and-a-half old,
Dad had been working with
whatever the telephone company name was at that time.
And he was laid off,
starting a work week of three days
and then a little after that,
let it go permanently.
And so that was a reason for us to move.
We moved back to a
little country town in mainland Georgia,
about 12 miles below Griffin,
and on the old Highway 41 now.
And [NOISE] at that point in time,
they built the school right across from
the house where we lived.
There was a consolidated screw,
grades one through 12.
And in fact,
my grandfather's yard had backed up to my father's yard,
so real close family style there.
>> And what were your parents' names?
>> Pardon.
>> Your parents. What were their names?
Well, my dad was Trevor Mark Crowley senior,
and my mother was Alma Rubin Duke,
and they married back in,
I think 1920,
somewhere along that in there.
[NOISE] But my mother put me in school at kindergarten,
they didn't have a kindergarten.
So I went into the first grade at age 5,
and that put me younger
than just about every one of my friends along the way.
And it was about 1935
that Telecom Company hired my dad back again.
[NOISE] And we moved back to Atlanta
still in about halfway
between the West end section and Chapter View section,
and I stayed there about three months
until dad had found a house to buy.
And that was a house over in
West end, 935 Oglethorpe Avenue.
And I started there, of course,
in the fourth, fifth and sixth.
The school system was not lined up the way it is today.
Went to People Street School
and then moved from there over
to Joe Brown Junior High School for the seven,
eighth and ninth grade.
And when I was in seventh,
halfway through the first year there,
I started playing trumpet in the band,
and so I played trumpet a good bit along the way.
And then when I graduated from Joe Brown,
I moved to Tech High School,
which was all the way across town
in the Northeast portion of Atlanta.
And along that line,
my dad had been a legionnaire for a long period of time.
And I played taps for
all the meetings and
miscellaneous activities that they took place with.
And so I was well acquainted being in the military band
of the Tech High School with
a close order drill and that thing.
And it turned out when I was 15,
there was a colonel in Washington.
Of course they were having all kinds of activities, 1942.
And this is how the American Legion got involved in this.
They thought that the veterans would
be the one to approach
to put together Georgia State guard camps.
And they appointed dad second lieutenant.
And he was doing such a good job of that.
I think he had about 15 or 20 at the time.
I happened to be one of them at age 15.
But, [NOISE] he
was doing such a good job that
they promoted him to first lieutenant.
And dad wanted to get back into war.
And he only had five dependents.
You can see the activity involved there.
But this colonel he was working
him to get him back in the army.
And he said he didn't want to come in as a private,
but he would like to be commissioned,
and lo and behold, [inaudible] arrangements.
And they appointed dad second lieutenant the Army.
And of course, this was a vital thing to organize
the Georgia State guard
because they were organized all over the country.
All were veterans, they knew what was needed.
In fact, a lot of sons of veterans,
like me, joined up.
And we met in a church parking lot and
a Capitol View on
Dale Street Dale Avenue, I forget which.
But we paraded around in the parking lot there.
And evening we had a seven o'clock meeting, I think.
And after about four or five attempts for some of
the people there to do the close order drill,
they looked at me and said,
you want to know something about this?
And I did. So I became
the close auto drill instructor at age 15. [LAUGHTER].
>> No. I want to hear more about your service.
But before we get too far into that,
I'd love to go back just a little bit,
and talk about how
you found out about the war to begin with.
Do you remember Pearl Harbor?
Do you remember hearing about the start of the war?
>> Yes. That was on Sunday,
I think, December 7th, [NOISE] '41. But of course,
I was quite young
then and all of
my friends were a year or two older than me.
And they were quitting school.
Some had already quit school,
graduated and were going directly into the military.
And so I lost awful lot of friends that way.
My ambition was to get in the Navy,
and our dad wanted me to go to
college and we didn't have any money to go to college.
So I graduated at 16.
[NOISE] And as a result of that,
I wanted something to do.
I had another whole year to wait,
even waiting on Dad's permission to join the Navy.
So Dad had already gone.
They had gone overseas,
stayed there almost four years.
But his replacement was Lieutenant McConnell,
and I asked him if he could make
some inquiries about what I could
do with the Georgia State guard.
And as a result of that,
he told me to go down to the State Capitol
and meet with Major Frank Foley.
And he thought he could help me.
So the next day,
I went down there and then met the Major Foley,
and up to that point,
nothing was ever mentioned about
radio operators or anything.
But I mentioned to him that,
even wanted to know what my qualifications were.
I said, "Well, I'm qualified most code with radio.
And he says, "I can use you."
[LAUGHTER] And he says,
go home and pack your bags
and meet me back down here tomorrow morning.
And he had three officers
going to Brunswick at that point in time,
and told me to run with them, which I did.
I was mostly quiet just listening to that conversation.
But we made it back to Brunswick without any problem.
And in meeting the people down there,
the the first sergeant came to meet me,
and he took me around and introduced me to a few people,
and told me what
the duties were and what we would be doing,
and how I would interact with the military.
And we had the base camp located there in Brunswick,
and the long story about that camp,
I believe that that was part of
the Roosevelt deal back in 1932
when Governor Roosevelt got to be elected president.
And some of the buildings we
occupied mostly were little square buildings
about 20 by 20,
and filled with bunks, mostly.
I think we had five of those buildings,
and one of them was a big bunk room,
and another one was a big bunk roof
half filled with supplies and that thing.
Another building had supplies in it of
ammunition firearms of all types,
and some office space and another one.
Jim Davis and his son junior Jim Davis,
he was a sergeant like me.
I had been promoted to a sergeant on arrival there.
And but Jim Davis Senior was a first sergeant,
and he was the king
of the group that had telling him about what to do,
and where to do it.
He made the assignments and that sort of thing.
We had had 21 sergeants.
We had a Major Van Debner,
I believe was his name,
Lieutenant Jensen, and all three of those,
are put in the in charge list,
which is a piece of paper that you have.
And so the numbers don't match up really because I put
the Junior Davis up with the people in charge,
because he was really
the one that was giving us hopefully orders.
We had one of the rooms, of course,
reserved for the radio equipment and that thing.
Everything was more score.
Back in those days there was no voice radio would be had.
This is just a thought that I had.
But I believe some of
those older buildings much
had been done adding to those buildings, but,
much of those 20 by 20 size buildings,
I believe were part of
the old CCC camps that the WPA put together back in,
I believe it was
maybe a year after Roosevelt became president,
but the base camp there was Army post.
It was company of the 144th infantry.
And of course, the military provided us.
We were eight in the military commissary,
and these buildings we were the ones,
I think they were added later
on to accommodate the military.
And of course they had mess hall and they had the trade,
and one building, nothing but showers.
And I ain't going in to the army portion of that group,
but one or two times,
there were a lot of buildings that were improved over
the 20, 20 size buildings.
And when my Sergeant Davis
told me what my duties would be,
and showed me around where
everything was in case I needed it,
none of the 20 by 20 buildings
had electricity or water or anything like that.
It was part of the group.
But they were so close to the road there in Brunswick,
that the buildings that were actively in use,
they did have telephones and
electricity and plumbing and that thing.
But my first assignment,
he told me it would be a few days.
He says, generally, we assign
people to one of the islands.
Most of them will be will be three week duration,
and there may be
something shorter based on circumstances.
But my first appointment was Ossabaw Island
and we had a radio station and at the beginning,
it was 14 islands that were being manned.
There were several of those islands were
unsuitable for patrolling on the beach.
Most of the islands that were not suitable,
there was either water standing
all the time or a lot of marshy areas.
And over time, they eliminated
several of those islands from being actively patrolled,
one of them was Sapelo, Black Blackbeard,
and Jekyll, and I
think there was another one and I
can't remember the name of that one.
But my first one was Ossabaw that was
just south of Savannah.
And the northern portion of the islands,
about half of them had a radio station
in Savannah that they made contact with.
And the southern half of the Islands,
we made contact with the radio station at Bundy.
So the radio station in Savannah,
I don't know of any military situation involvement,
but all of the Island of Ossabaw,
for example, there were about maybe 50 soldiers there.
Each one of them had some kind of rifle.
I think they were Lee–Enfield rifles,
but plenty of ammunition
to go around for whatever was needed.
And this was called my home front;a
situation where the original group of people there,
they strung a telephone line,
just laid it on the ground up and
down the area that they were patrolling.
And the larger islands that had
that type of operation also had a Jeep.
And our radios were used by six car batteries.
And the military had their own distribution set up.
I was not involved in that
because they took the van
back and forth that they worked with.
And the state guard people,
they had three boats that was
involved and carried
different people to different locations.
One of those boats was a yacht,
really the SS [inaudible] let
the Georgia State Guard on loan
have that boat and
they got a good driver to take care of it.
But that was a real pleasure of
riding on that boat out to one of the islands.
But the other two went up
the inland waterway basically to where it was necessary.
Those places usually had
a dock on the inland waterway side.
And of course, the army had the jeep and they would
meet us at the dock and take our supply.
At first, there was some gasoline involved
to take care of the jeeps and our alternators,
the generator mechanism to keep the batteries on charge.
And of course, we didn't need any gasoline.
Once the alternators failed,
they were just put out of use and forgotten about.
We didn't have a lot of maintenance equipment
or anything like that available.
But all three of my appointments
there were with army men.
I never did pair up with any of the state guard people,
so I was working directly with the army
at age 16 that I guess that's
the main focus of why I'm here.
An unheard of thing for kids,
16 years old to be eating in
an army mess hall and sleeping with the army at night.
But we got along quite well.
The one disadvantage that was talked
about frequently was the fact that
the state guard people
were all sergeants and they were paid,
army pay, $83 a month.
And all of the military people
that were working with the radios like me,
most of them were privates or PFCs.
And it was quite an honor to be
working with the army at that point in time.
And I got along with them real well.
After I got back from Mao, well,
I had a camera with him
but no film when I went to Ossabaw,
and when I came back from
Ossabaw about two or three
blocks away from the base camp,
there was some kind of store [inaudible].
it was a combination of
grocery store and drug store
and two or three other type stores.
But I was able to buy film for my camera,
made a little smaller pictures
about an inch and a half, something like that.
So I had a camera at that point in time.
So from then on,
I took about 10 pictures,
and copies of all of those pictures were in
the case that I gave you.
And it was quite a thing
to have some pictures of items back in those days.
When I got over the situation,
it was on little St. Simon
Island that I had been there
about two or three days and a Jeep showed
up with Navy people in it.
And they told us in a few days that we'd be replaced
with Navy people who had voice radios,
they rode horses, and had dogs,
and that we would all be replaced.
And as a result of that on April 20,
our work ended there.
And I was able to get back home.
The situation was well,
just working with the army was something special for me.
Let me tell you a little bit about a little comrade.
This deals with Ossabaw as well.
The situation there was quite primitive.
We had a building on Osva that
was maybe 20*30 overall
but there was a big room and in two side rooms.
One of the side rooms was
where we kept the radio equipment and
slept and the other side room was where the army slept.
And they had a big fireplace with
the old style iron swings and so forth.
That's where they did the cooking.
The army provided to cook all the meals and so forth.
A lot of canned goods,
we ate a lot of stew.
[LAUGHTER] The last two days there,
something happened to the boat coming up
there and it was delayed until the next day.
So our last two meals
were peanut butter and jelly on sale bridge.
[LAUGHTER] It was a fun situation to me, at least.
Had, well,
a couple of 100 feet away and then an outhouse.
And when I got to Little Cumberland Island,
they just short distance outside
of the bay area for
[inaudible] and it was the same situation.
There was a light house
that had been abandoned years earlier
and the house for the caretaker to live in was there.
And partially, it had been used,
all the windows and doors
and planks and what that were used for
firewood weren't used for
firewood for cooking on the fireplace.
And while over there,
I met my 17th birthday.
My mother had sent me a fruitcake and we only
had about maybe six or seven army people there.
It was a small beach to begin with.
But it was something they could walk over a moment.
There's a picture of it on there as well.
The sand dunes were
[inaudible] section and it went real high. The house.
The picture of the lighthouse is in there
but one of the men and me,
we were on top of the lighthouse at that point in time.
Couldn't tell who it was up there.
But it was a nice group of people to work with.
All of the chiefs in
charge of each one of the Island's army chiefs,
I guess they were all
first sergeants in that category anyway.
There were several sergeants in there that were above
the base sergeant situation.
All of them had Thompson sub machine guys and my dad had
a 45-coat revolver that
he had picked up from somebody after World War I.
And I brought that with me,
it was a lot of ammunition.
And I asked, Sergeant,
if I could bars Thompsons such a little while and go
down on the vasion practice shooting.
And he said, sure, go ahead.
So I did and about all was on
the beach little birds running around picking something.
And I shot a few.
Of course, the machine going went all over everywhere.
[LAUGHTER] So I never did hit
anything so I quit wasting ammunition,
took it back to him off to clean it but it was.
But the army people that I worked with was just great.
>> Were you paid for your work
in the Georgia State Guard?
>> Eighty three dollars a month.
>> So you were paid that same rate, $83 a month?
>> Yes. They couldn't afford to put people from
the Georgia State Guard on duty without it being
a permanent thing because if somebody wanted to go home,
they could just go home and then
trying to find a replacement like that,
it just wouldn't have worked out.
So they were about 16 army radio operators there.
But we needed at least 22 to cover all the islands.
If the army had been
able to scranz up more radio operators,
we wouldn't have been involved, I don't think.
>> And what were you listening for
or what were you trying
to get information out with the radio?
>> I had a headset. The mash code was all.
>> And so you were listening for signals from boats?
>> What we did, the two of us worked together.
And at daytime, we had
full hour shifts and in the daytime,
one hour shifts and, let me see.
Not one hour.
Anyway, one hour.
It was a lot more work at night because less visible.
And what happened during these calls,
the main station at either Savannah or
Brunswick would call each island individually,
and they had a code that had to be used for 24 hours.
And the 24 hours, it was changed.
And they would call each station with the old code,
and then they would respond
at the end of the message with a new code.
And we had to pick that code up and sign off
with that code for the next 24 hours.
But it worked out quite well.
It was such a change for me to
being in that area where there were no facilities.
And the picture that I
had gave before of Little Cumberland,
the house is completely gone.
It had been torn down later on after we were there.
But there was a lot of activity with
the Washington people getting the military organized.
There was a Colonel Lindsey Camp.
I believe he must have been appointed by the governor
but he was colonel
in charge of all of
the state guards for the State of Georgia.
And it worked out to the point
where few communications were handled,
and some of the people
that got there ahead of me were telling me that
some of the fishing boats had picked up on
the signals going in and
out from Brunswick that
they got involved after we all got through.
I don't know how that worked out but I
think they had a lot of fun with that anyway.
But it was quite a spell.
We finally got back home, April 20.
This started off, you maybe answer to this
that the original group was organized by,
I think it was Order 579
that created the first group
of State Guard people going out to the islands.
And just a few days later,
our second order was sent out.
I think there were seven more people added to that group.
But the State Guard was involved for
approximately 10 months from beginning to end.
And I was only involved
the last four months of all of the activity.
But when I got back home,
I still couldn't join the Navy.
I was only 17.
And I was waiting patiently from my dad
to send word that he finally approved.
And I think mom had written a letter telling him that,
you're going to have to decide on something pretty quick.
Anyway, by the time I got home there was
a letter that dad had sent to my mother.
He's going to do what he wants to do so that [LAUGHTER],
that tickle me no end.
My mother drove me down to the Navy recruiting station.
It was at the old train station in Atlanta,
old terminal station, which is long gone now.
But I finally got to sign up for the Navy.
They were in such a hurry getting
us through the physical.
But they were so early and wanted to
get through and get
that group out of there so another group would come in.
The fellow in charge,
he was standing about 20 feet away,
and he pulled out a watch and said,
"Y'all hear this?"
And everybody nodded.
Of course, nobody heard it.
[LAUGHTER] So he was testing our hearing.
[LAUGHTER] But that to that took place.
A lot of shortcuts made in the military.
The next day, my mother took
that back down there, I was fully packed,
and they show us in and gave us
orders to go to Barn Field in Pensacola.
That was about a 25 mile location to the Northwest,
I believe, from Pensacola.
This is where I had boot camp,
like they did a lot of other things,
they had shortened the
nine-week boot camp to three weeks,
and we were aweake doing something most of the time,
we didn't get much sleep,
but they had a really big enormous open field there.
They had two buildings that were two story buildings,
each one of them would probably hold
about five or 600 bed.
And of course, we would be out
on the field most of the day
doing all kind of exercises
and of course all the drill and that sort of thing.
And I was way ahead of
the crowd with the close-order drill,
and right at the end of the day,
they would line us all up and tell us
that after the close-order drill would end,
they would pick out those that made
mistakes and the last one standing
would get a head-start going back to
the back so he could use a nickel and buy himself a coke.
[LAUGHTER] Big deal.
But lo and behold,
I did that several days in a row [LAUGHTER] because
I had all the practice in
the military with a band and all.
But each one of us were assigned
washing space time and
my time to wash my clothes
was I think four o'clock in the morning,
something like that, and we
had a half hour to get in and get out,
so another group could come in.
Everything was shortened very much.
But when I got in I
had put in for radio school going to Jacksonville,
Florida and the chief in charge of the group said
the radio school had already started,
it was no way they could get me in it,
so they assigned me to work on the line there at
Pensacola Airfield and my job was servicing batteries,
putting water in the batteries.
They had a big squadron of batteries needed.
They were in the SAJ 2 category,
which was used as a photographic plan.
And while we were there,
there was another fellow with me,
we were together, and the chief of the tower came over,
they were sending people one at
a time to Fort Worth control tower school,
and they told me that the chief
wanted some help to clean up
the place because next day they were having inspection.
So this other fellow,
a friend of mine,
we volunteered to go and clean up the tower,
which we did, they showed us
where all the materials were.
We polished all the brass,
there was a lot of brass to polish in the navy.
But we had clean as clean as could be.
And the following day,
the chief came over and told us that he was real
proud of the grade that they
got at the inspection because of our work.
And he said "I
got something else that I'd like to tell you about."
He says, "They're not
sending our controllers which had other rates."
They didn't have a rating for our control tower operator.
"They're sending our people over to Fort Worth
and now they told us to quit doing that."
They wanted new men because
of need for the controllers there in Pensacola.
And they wanted to know if we want to
go to control tower operator school over in Pensacola.
And we both said "Yes."
And we told the first chief
there what we taking
place and he said, "Well, good luck."
So they sent us out of there,
put us on a train to Fort Worth.
And of course, it took us forever a day to get there
because any train that had regular passages on it,
our train was put on side-track
and sometime we waited 4, 5,
6 hours for whatever was on
there to get clear before we got back on the main track,
took us, I think, three days just to get to Fort Worth.
But when we got there,
when we met by a Navy lieutenant who took us
to building,it was a hotel about six storys high,
and I think they put us
all on the sixth floor on purpose,
I don't know, but he said,
"Breakfast at seven o'clock."
And we were waking up and so forth.
So we got up,
had our breakfast, and got out on the field,
and did all kind of calisthenics,
we were just up and down.
I think it was a four-week school, four weeks.
In any event, when we got through the school,
they told us they had assignments already and we would be
choosing our own assignment in the order
of our grades there in the control tower school.
Well, my friend and I wound
up right in the middle somewhere,
so we both were in the same crew
and they had vacancies in San Diego,
and I thought well,
San Diego was good.
I had my wife's aunt and uncle lived out there.
And that would be a good place to go overseas,
maybe if I wanted to.
And so we chose San Diego and finally, the backpacks,
we had been sleeping on hammocks
the first week and our system there of the airfield,
but they kept us with our hammocks,
and mattresses, and all of our gear,
and all that, it could
hardly be put on your shoulder, it was so heavy.
We finally made it out to San Diego and they had,
I don't know whether they put a special boat
out there to pick up us up or something,
but it was late in the afternoon,
they they were waiting on us and we got on
the boat and took us over to
North Island where the airport was.
>> Did you take a train all the way
across the country or was it an airplane?
>> Train.
>> Train?
>> Train. Slow train,
a lot of side tracks.
And it it took us I think
five or six days to get out just to Fort Worth.
But once we saw they had a chief,
he was he was called a master-at-arms, I think,
and he showed us where to sleep that night,
gave us a pass to get in the mess hall.
And they had so many people on the island.
They had two times to have meals.
And they had a third ticket
that would let you eat anytime
you went into the mess hall.
So they gave us one of those passes.
And we took our hammocks and mattresses up,
put them in the attic, and of course,
everything had our name painted on there
and with black ink.
We slept there that night and went to breakfast
the next morning and then went direct to
the control tower where we would be working.
And the personnel officer there his name Shoemaker.
He was one of the nicest people I ever met.
And he told us what to do from that point on.
And the control tower officer
was generally a person who had been overseas
and been wounded and had been sent back and
they knew very little about control tower operation.
We had a very busy field day.
And so some of
the control tower officers were the local people.
They would space them out a little bit till
some of these other people could
get everything together so
they wouldn't do anything wrong.
And the control tower was
located in what was known as the operations area.
And we had probably about 10 planes there.
There were all types of seaplanes, amphibians,
and regular long-runway planes.
And as a result of that,
they put us out on a line to help work with the planes.
We'd wash them, cleaned them up,
and some of the people
had assignments to crank them up and run them.
Those that didn't get run every day were in trouble,
so they needed to be run to create
an all-base for the engine to operate.
I got to do that a time or two
just trying to learn how to do everything.
And all of the younger people were
basically just part of
the beginning part of the service like a private.
And [NOISE] we had
to work on the line. Well, that was fine.
And I had been there probably about three months.
I could work in the tower maybe on the morning
and then go on the line
and work there other half of the day.
All of the low-level people had to work a full day.
Most of the senior people in
the tower when their tour was up,
it was so busy there that they got off.
They could do anything they wanted to.
Well, about two or three months after I had been there,
the tower officer said that they were going again giving
out exams for promotions for the next day so set in.
Well, I didn't know what that meant.
And, of course,
I was on the bottom grade.
Well, anyway, I sat down in the group and took it.
I didn't know what kind of test I was taking.
When I got through taking the test
and the next day the entire roster was opened.
I'd been promoted to third-class petty officer.
And that meant I skipped a couple of those on the bottom.
[LAUGHTER] But anyway, that made me feel real good.
And I found out that there was
a time element where you had to stay at
that level before you could go to the next level.
So obeyed by that rule
and while I was there I
went on up to make a first-class petty officer.
First, they put out a specialist Y arm insignia
to indicate control tower operator.
And then somebody upstairs on the whole Navy decided that
they needed a special wing like everybody else
had that would indicate control tower operator.
So they put a set of wings
in the middle and left out the specialist y part.
But we had a shift in the morning at say 8:00-12:00.
That crew got off and then we had another crew
come in at 12:00-4:00.
Those were the busiest item hours of the day.
Another group came in
at 4:00 and stayed all night until the next morning.
There was a bunch of us doing that rotation.
Of course, once I got to be a third-class petty officer,
I didn't go on the line and work very much.
I did because I had some friends out
there that I had met while I was working.
But it was a good time.
We had tremendous traffic.
When I first got there,
we had probably 2,000 landing and takeoffs a day.
I heard on several occasions that
this tower was one of three in the world busiest.
And when I got to be a first-class petty officer,
the job fell to me.
I took myself off the watch list and just went out
every day to stand
duty and make assignments and so forth,
and all the men reported to me at that point in time.
We had we had
five waves and about 18 controllers
at that point in time.
But anyway, I had to fill out.
We had five people working in the tower at all times.
And especially during
the daytime hours and nighttime hours,
not so much unless we had something scheduled.
But at one point there I was given
the responsibility of filling out a form that
had all of the takeoffs and last landings on it by count.
And it varied anywhere
from 2,000-2,200 landings in takeoffs per day.
And I think we probably wound up over that
some of that time to be able to average out the 2,000.
It was just a lot of traffic.
We had one occasion
to give you an idea of what the maximum situation was.
I was on the mic and we had our carrier,
the old Ranger that they sent out
about 20 miles or something like that,
20, 30, 40 miles, whatever.
I think they had moved it around a little bit.
But the planes would fly to
this carrier and say two or three weeks.
And one day when I was on the mic,
I got a call from our group commander.
He wanted landing instructions for 150 planes.
[LAUGHTER] So we had our regular traffic to
deal with and 150 more planes to land.
We had two runways that
crossed like this, 6,000 feet long.
They could accommodate all the planes
that were available at that time. On the flat top itself,
we had about a mile.
It was not exactly square,
but it was divided in
four quadrants and one landing and one take off.
So the smaller planes,
99% of the time were on that path landing and taking off.
But we had about 15 fields outside of San Diego.
Some of them 25, 30,
50 miles away, but they
had training at all of these places.
And they sent those people to
the different locations just to mix them up a little bit,
to give them enough training so they
could find their way no matter where they were.
And we had a lot of accidents.
Very unfortunate situation with
so many new pilots in training,
they would forget where they were.
Something would happen somehow now
and something go wrong with the plane and all,
but it was accident time just about every day.
And we lost probably about one pilot a week.
A lot of activity crammed into
a small space just resulted
in there. It couldn't be helped.
They had all of these people in training
and tried to get them out
and qualified as fast as they could.
So it was something we all understood.
And we had two crash Jeeps.
We had one that had square
black and white checks all over
it and that was
the only one we had when I first got there.
Later on, for just general information purposes,
they got a Jeep that had
the pilot radio type equipment in it.
So I could get in either one of those Jeeps and go out.
The end of the runway is on both north and west,
east-west runways were hidden by buildings.
They had buildings everywhere.
And so from the control trial,
they couldn't see the lineup of planes
at each one of these runways.
So we had a lookout spot on the end of
those runways with communication back to the main tower.
But the tower operator needed that information.
But at nighttime, it was a little different.
But I would get in the Jeep a lot of
times at night and go to the runway that we were
using or whatever we were using to check the pilots,
navigation lights,
and things like that to make sure they were all,
send a lot of them back to
the hangar to get something fixed.
It was just dangerous for planes to
land on top of one another, which happened occasionally.
Well, it was a sad situation to go through all of that,
but it was necessary.
We had to make runs,
pilots would call us every now and then and
tell us there's some junk on the runway
and we'd have to close the runway down
and send a Jeep to run
down the runway and pick up all the trash.
And usually, they were a
little smoke bombs about that long
that we physically positioned
properly and they would drop off when the plane landed.
And not too often,
but there was enough that every day we make
a run early in the morning down
the runway to catch all of that.
And well, Admiral had his headquarters over in
main port of San Diego and he had a special plane.
And he let us know early on
that he didn't say close a field,
but it meant close a field.
[LAUGHTER] He worded it in such a way that his time was
limited and he needed to get
to his office as quickly as possible.
So we closed the field.
He didn't want to see that,
but we closed the field every time.
He had a captain pilot and we knew the activity.
So we close the field to let him land anywhere
he wanted to live and take off,
he would just get out and go down the middle of
the flat top and go whichever he wanted to go.
And well, otherwise, we had
some mornings that the clouds
were real low and we would have to
coordinate our traffic with the Lindbergh Tower,
which was across the bay from us.
And of course, we had telephone contact with them.
It was a radio type message,
but we would call on that tower.
We had one, two or three planes ready to go and we'd need
a direction that give us a east,
northeast and so a
particular lane to get
these pilots in once they took off.
And so that gave us good coordination with Lindbergh.
We dealt very closely
with them when we had some low hanging clouds,
couldn't stand to have anybody run
into one another between the two airports.
And the place over at Lindbergh and of course,
they were building B-24's over there.
And when they got
their B-24's all checked out and ready to go,
they'd fly them over to our location.
And then we would equip,
we had a special group over there that equip
these planes so they could fly them to the South Pacific.
They put in drums of all and
the big windows normally would hold bombs.
And I think sometimes they had three crews on the planes.
Most of the time, I think they just had two crews.
But it was a necessary routine
to learn all of that stuff,
but it was a hard job for a new fella
coming onboard to pick up all of that.
It took months to really be able to handle that.
And especially when you were right in the middle
of a bunch of planes,
maybe 15 or 20 planes landing,
we had a test line crew there
that when the planes that needed repair got tested,
they would take them out on a test flight,
sometime more than one if
more than one item had to be tested.
But say when I did,
they would call in and say this is a test pilot,
so and so engine problem,
losing speed, whatever,
losing a lot of fluid, something like that.
Excuse me. And of course,
we didn't know where they were to tell
us why we were doing this,
but we would clear the field.
[NOISE] Where we could let
these people lay and wherever they wanted to.
We had another situation where the people that were
doing target shooting would be
probably already out in the area where they needed to be.
And they would have one of
the small planes, usually an F6F.
They laid out a target on the ground
and the part of that plane
would be or maybe 500 feet down the bed already.
[NOISE] He would take off and,
of course, that plane got called as they took off.
We had one or two situations where
that plane couldn't get
a speed that they fell and burned.
Most of the factories building planes in the, well,
it was catered all over the country
but the bulk of them were
in the Northeast portion of the United States.
They hired a lot of women pilots.
Being pilots were almost
unavailable, they were in the military.
But this one, she
called in for landing instructions and I told her
the met location and
all of them coming up the bale of
the landing was from the east or west.
And one other pilot and another plane,
of course, they all on the same frequency.
Listening to what was going on
and he made some crazy comment about,
I wonder who that is.
And the lady pilot,
when she got on a file approach,
I cleared on the land,
and, of course, there were probably
58 other planes there
so they couldn't tell which was which.
And she was in a P47,
which was the heavy-duty fighter bomber aircraft
that was made available at that time.
But the guy didn't say a word after that.
I heard some murmur like,
oh, or something like that.
But it was not unusual for
the people that fly these new planes just been built,
check down and all would fly them across
country and land at San Diego.
And we would tell them how to tax it down.
We had five docks and usually had transport carriers,
mostly jeep carriers, which would load
these planes and be
off to the South Pacific, some places.
And there were several situations
there that we got a land.
It was just funny. To me,
it wasn't funny at all because that was all they could.
They had to have pilots,
one of those things.
This was the lady that one of the pilots
called in one day and a tower.
I'm out of here and all I see is ocean.
And I said, you bypassed
your landing spot and he said, I sure did.
And I said, well, backpack
and give us a little call when they get within range.
And so he had been asleep,
and he put it on automatic pilot and
just if he hadn't have awakened up,
he would have gone
into the lotion and we would have never known about it.
But having keep track of all of that,
we even had pilots that would
land at one of the other airports that were in
our radio listening distance
and call us and tell us where they
were so that we would know how to
close out the flight plan
and where they were and so forth.
Anything was possible back in those days.
But I spent 2.5 years in San Diego and We
didn't have a chief when I got there
but the senior man made chief about
the last six months of
his duty there and play from beginning to,
you could tell it was slowing down just a little bit.
But anyway, they didn't replace him as chief.
They gave me the job of
handling the men and the waves that we had.
The waves by the way,
they didn't have room form on the base,
so they bought a house with the money that they
got for homes and
housing and bought a house home on Coronado.
And they bought a car so they could use it
for transportation back and forth.
And I forget what they named the car.
Gutter Run or something like that, I don't know.
It was something that they were familiar with.
But right there at the end,
I think we had a party on the beach and,
of course, everybody drinking beer.
I didn't drink beer. It was lousy tasting to me.
But anyway, they knew I was getting
ready to go and the waves
invited us back to their house and
they fed us all kind of [inaudible].
But time came for me to leave.
I was able to come home twice during that 2.5 years.
The first time I caught a flight from San Diego,
let me back up and say that one of the men that
I had worked with for a long period of time,
he had an eye problem and they
took him out of the control tower
and put him in the METS group.
That was a transport group or loaded on the planes.
And in my spare time,
since he was a good close friend,
I went down to help him load and unload.
And by having him down there,
I could find out when the next plane was dear in.
And we had a lot of people returning from overseas at
that time and a lot of
these officers would come up into the tower,
want to know what rides
we might be able to find for them.
And I didn't have to do many telephone and
I knew when the planes were coming in.
And I would call and I tell them.
I had somebody wanted to run.
But anyway, my first trip home,
I caught a ride to Kansas City.
And then I had to catch a train from there
on back to Atlanta.
But I lived at a college park at that time.
But the second time
around one of these photographic-type planes,
it was an SNV,
it held two pilots and five passengers.
And he had come in and I knew it.
And so I went over to the line sack where he
was talking to somebody over there.
And I told him I was going back to Atlanta,
could I catch a ride with you?
And he said, well,
I got to go up to a mirror bar somewhere and take care of
some business up there and then I leave and go back home.
And he says, just be here, be available.
So I got all my gear and went off line sight to wait on.
And they finally got through
their business and he had picked
up a woman Marine from someplace.
I don't know where he picked her up.
But anyway, we left Miraba and headed home.
We stopped at some place around Phoenix and went
to New Orleans and then on back to Atlanta.
And as a result,
I didn't have too much money to hand out for the ride.
I got halfway home anyway.
But when all that was over with,
when they got to discharge me,
they gave me a date.
And another friend of mine
that lived up in Ohio, we bought a car.
We bought a 19354 and we were going to drive home.
And about that time two
of people showed up wanting a ride.
So the four of us were going to ride.
But I was going to be discharged a week ahead of them.
So I just didn't show up at
the loading place for those people.
And I knew I was upsetting people
but I thought it best to do the right thing.
So the day before,
I met them at the right time.
The day before, fellow named Loa and I bought the car.
We drove up to San Pedro where we were going to be
discharged and parked the car
up and he called a ride back home.
And the ride back home looked like a brand
new Chrysler driven by chauffeur.
And we just had walked out on the highway,
stuck our thumb up,
and he slowed down and we caught up with him and he says,
"Fellows, I'm just a chauffeur here," and he said,
"I can't take you unless you pay me something."
And we said, "Well, what do you want?"
He said, "Five dollars will do."
So he's paid five dollars and got a brand
new Chrysler chauffeured all the way back into San Diego.
[LAUGHTER] We hit it real lucky there.
But anyway, we rode a train.
Took us hours upon hours to get up to San Pedro,
but we went through the process up there.
Took, I think,
four days to be processed.
They put us to work doing all kind of lodging here just
to use up time more or less.
But anyway, we finally got the discharge
and we were able to go out and get into that car.
We started driving late in the afternoon,
and we drove all the way to
Las Vegas and spent the night there.
We talked to the guy that owned the place
into a half-price situation.
We told him what we were doing and all.
And he said, "Okay."
He says, "All I got to do is put some new bed in and
I can still rent it out to somebody tonight."
So we slept there a few hours,
it wasn't long, and got up and headed for the,
I forget where the other place was that we stayed,
but when we got up toward Chicago,
one of the men lived in Chicago,
and so I insisted that
we drive in that direction to put him.
Pouring down rain,
he wouldn't let us drive down to his house.
It must have been a mile or two.
But it was pouring down rain.
So we kept going on the outskirts
of Chicago and on going down to Ohio,
and we met with Lowe's family.
They were glad to see him.
And I spent the night there.
And the next day I was just so anxious to get home.
They had a cherry tree out back.
And I picked a sack full of
cherries and got in my car and headed South.
And I was just a little bit North of Memphis.
I was so sleepy, I just had to go to sleep.
So I pulled off the road and locked
the car and got on the back seat, went to sleep.
And about five o'clock in the next morning,
I had parked alongside the railroad track.
[LAUGHTER] There came this train
blowing its horn and it scared me to death.
I didn't know where I was really.
But anyway, he passed on by and I decided that,
well, today is it, I got to go home.
So I went on down further
to find a place to eat
breakfast and then I drove the rest of the home.
Got home late in the afternoon.
My brakes had given out,
so I had to go real slow to get to my house.
And it was just right.
It was time to go.
But at the discharge location,
I had volunteered to stay in the reserve.
And they were glad to have me
experienced stay in reserve
as a first-class petty officer.
And I didn't have time in for chief.
So I knew I'd just have to wait my time.
But [NOISE] the situation
in Korea developed in October, '50.
And I didn't really think
early on that I was going to be recalled.
It just didn't enter my mind.
But they had us
scheduled out at the local air station for
some week of sea trials
where the pilots were just keeping up the situation.
It was an F6F squadron.
And I had become a member of
that keeping the pilots alarmed.
And but anyway, that broke loose and
that we had flown into
Pensacola and I'm going
to spend the night in empty barracks really.
And an officer came in and yelled out my name Crawley.
I raised up my hand and come over and said,
"Crawley, you have been recalled active duty.
You need to get back to Atlanta as quick as you can.
So things hadn't changed very much.
I thought, well, I'd have to go back to
the operations officer to find
out where Commander Ren was.
He was our group commander.
And he was still there.
And I told him that I had been recalled to active duty,
and I needed to get back to Atlanta.
And he said, "Well, we
got a flight going to Atlanta right now."
And he says they carried a lot of odds and ends,
but get your stuff and come back over here, which I did.
And so we flew back into Atlanta
got there real late.
I don't remember the time.
But I had a brother-in-law
there visit us with his family.
And when I called
and he was there
and so he came out to the airport and picked me up.
And I was finished building him a house.
And, of course,
I couldn't do anything in five days,
but I had a roof on it
and it was a second addition to the house.
But I had moved in.
We were working there every day trying to finish it up.
But anyway, I packed up everything the next day,
all of my sea stuff that I had and I went out
to the airport there in the assembly.
[NOISE] And they had us all
together and they told us to spread our stuff out,
we will have to have a full seat back.
And I had about half the stuff
already and it was summertime.
And I wasn't about to buy
a lot of stuff not knowing where I was going.
So I asked him, I says,
"Do you know where we're going?"
He says, "No, you need a full sea bag."
And I said, "Well, I'm
not going to carry a full sea bag.
I'm going to wait till I find out where I'm
going and buy what I need."
And he he was really upset with me, believe it or not.
[NOISE] And he told me to go into
personnel office and sit
there and wait on him, which I did.
And I waited until he had given all the instructions out.
It was rundown,
nobody was doing anything at that point in time.
The the guy in charge
was in the doctor's office was not playing golf.
I don't think the guy that
was there was his personnel officer.
But anyway, I told him I was told to come in.
He said, "Well just sit over there." So I waited.
The chief outside got rid of everybody,
came in, and got me.
And he says, "Are you ready to fill up your sea bag?"
I says, "If I know where I'm going, fine, I'll do it.
He says, "Well, I don't know where you're going."
I said, "Well, I think I'll just go home."
And [NOISE] he looked at
me like he didn't know what to do with me really.
And I he says, "Well,
you can go home if you want to,
but I'll send somebody after you."
And so I started to walk away and he called me back
and he says he
had already called the rest of the people back.
They were sitting there standing
back and he said, "Well,
we got your assignment,
and you'll be going to the Philippines." [NOISE] And a lot
of this group were going to other places.
Just two of us were going to the Philippines.
Anyway over time, they put me on a train and on a ship.
It was the USS Aultman.
I believe that was the name of it.
It was an old transport that had been reworked to
a very spacious place to accommodate a lot of men,
say about 5,000,
[LAUGHTER] hundreds and hundreds, I don't know how many.
But anyway, as we were getting ready to board ship,
they put all the first-class petty officers up
on the following upper deck,
and we had a room right by ourselves.
[NOISE] And they told the fellow that,
he had about six stripes on,
he was in charge.
So he passed all our orders to
us when we were to eat and that thing.
The rest of the time, we were just roaming
around the deck watching.
And we got about a half-a-day's ride
out of San Diego and a storm hit us,
and it was a terrible storm.
It had come in from
South Pacific area moving into just below Hawaii,
and it was ringing North.
It was a big, long storm.
And when we were driving straight into it,
we were going like this.
The front end would go up in the air about 40 feet,
and then the tail end would go up about 40 feet,
and the engines we still on
and they were shaking the whole ship.
As we turned to go
into Hawaii there were several hundred miles,
the ship was rolling from side to side, about 45 degrees.
I thought we were going to take on
water every time we did that.
But that took place probably about four,
five hours before it slighted up a little bit,
and then we were just bumping
around about the last two hours going into Hawaii.
But there was a lot of
sick people on that ship, [LAUGHTER] me included.
I lasted three days before I got sick.
They told us we'd be [NOISE] in Hawaii I
think about eight hours.
They had to unload a lot of
cargo and take on a lot of cargo.
And they told us ahead of time
that this was the only announcement we would have.
Get back in the ship on time.
We're not coming back for you.
So we had to stay close to the ship and keep an eye on
our watches to make sure we got back on the ship in time.
But we did, probably.
Then we went from Hawaii over to Guam.
And we had pretty much the same thing at Guam,
except most of the cargo that we took
off was replaced by men.
We had a lot of workers that had been
hired to work on I think it was a pineapple plantations.
And there was just hundreds and hundreds of them.
It took a long time to get unloaded and loaded.
Same thing happened there though.
We were told they weren't going to put out
any calls for us and be
back on ship or we get left behind.
We all got back on the ship on time.
[LAUGHTER] And we left Guam
and headed to one of the islands in South Pacific.
It was one of the islands that the atomic bomb
had been tested on and
all and I forget the name of that one,
but they didn't have dock facilities.
It was a low-lying island and water all around and no
docks and wasn't deep enough
around for a ship to come in to dock anyway.
So they had a tugboat,
a tug of a big flat boat out,
to do what loading and unloading,
and there wasn't too much of that.
I think we were there probably about three hours.
But once they turned us loose, we went on in,
and then within a few days,
we approached the Philippine Islands.
And we were going to Manila,
but the islands that we went through had a lot of
remains of the World War II ships that had been sunk,
a lot of them sticking out of the water,
some of them on the side tanks and all equipment.
And the local people there would go out every day
and use welding equipment
and all and tear up as much
as they could and take that back
in and they were selling it for cast iron.
And it wouldn't surprise me if some of that had been
sold back to the Japs over there but I don't know that.
But anyway, we went through several islands
over a number of hours and finally
wound up in Manila and they had a boat there
waiting for us and took us, let me see.
I forget how many men we had on that boat.
But anyway, they carried us back to Sangley Point,
which was the naval station located there.
And after we checked in,
I found out that one of
the chiefs that had been sent
over there was a radio operator.
He was not a control tower operator.
And so he told me he was going to
transfer out of the group
because he wasn't qualified to do that work.
Since I was first class,
they let me in charge of all the control tower operators.
We had I think about 17 or 18 at that time.
It was a small station,
not a lot of traffic.
The runway was about a mile long.
It was made out of mostly bad interwoven sections
of metal about this wide and about six feet long.
They would snap them together,
and they would stay in place once it was leveled off.
But anyway, somebody had told the Lieutenant Commander of
Operations Officer that their chief
was not a control tower operator.
He needed another chief.
He said I got too many chiefs already out.
[LAUGHTER] I'm not going to send for another one.
So that left me in charge
of all the control tower operators.
And we had two places to man.
We had the tower
and just one person in the tower at a time.
We didn't need two.
There wasn't that much traffic.
And most of my traffic was seaplane traffic.
And the operations desk
was the next place that had to be manned.
I decided I was more qualified to do work down there.
That's where the pilots came in to file flight plans.
They did their welding and
any briefings that they might need.
So I stayed there most of my time.
Every now and then when we had the seaplanes coming in,
the operations officer would
send for me and keep me in the tower.
He didn't trust some of our operators.
They hadn't been used to a large amount of traffic.
But our effort at Sangley Point
was a multifunction situation.
We had [NOISE] three groups of PBMs.
[NOISE] One group was at Sangley Point for rest purposes,
still in training but
rest purposes or keep it in training.
One of them, they had
a seaplane tender that would move around
and that was the location for
seven PBMs would be located there.
And they had another location that was near
Okinawa that I think
it stayed near Okinawa most of the time,
but it also moved around with a seaplane tender.
So every week, they shifted positions.
So the two most in the dangerous location
would wind up at Sangley Point for
a week before they had to go out again.
And we lost one plane there.
The plane was coming in at night and hit a log.
In an area like that, the dead trees
would find their way into
the bay and float downstream.
But anyway, the pilot hit that log,
he couldn't see it, but nothing they could do.
I think we lost three men
out of a group of about seven or eight.
But on another occasion,
we had our PBM it was amphibious,
land, water, and sea.
They had a colony of lepers
on an island just South of Manila.
And [NOISE] they used
to fly down supplies and things like that.
And unknown to them,
there was a really big rock,
about a 1,000-pound size rock,
big rock was submerged and it tied with
a little low but they still couldn't see the rock.
And most of the time down there,
they were able to get up on
the land with the wheels down and unload and load.
But this time around,
they hit that rock.
[NOISE] Punched a big hole in the middle of it.
And they had to send another plane down to
pick up the passengers and they sent
a tugboat down with a crane on it to
pick up the PBM and bring it back.
Of course, it was damaged so much it was out of service.
They flew a pilot crew back
to San Francisco and picked up
a new PBM and flew it out.
Well, I think that the island that they
stopped on was Kwajalein.
But it was right there and then we talked.
But anyway, that was [inaudible] I told you about.
But one day there
were three chiefs in the division supposedly.
I happened to be first class
and wasn't going to make chief anytime soon.
So these other two chiefs,
they treated me just like they treated one
another and I really appreciated that.
I got flight pay. We rotated the flight pay around.
I had to fly 30 minutes
each month to qualify for flight pay.
Most of my flying time was done
between where we were located there up to Clark Field.
Our mail was sent
from overseas somewhere and it wound up at Clark Field.
Usually, it was 89 or 1,200 pounds, well, a lot of mail.
So no flight plane was needed to fly up to get the mail.
I usually took care of that
to tell them how much mail was waiting on us.
But that's how I got my flight time in.
The last the last time around I didn't need 30 minutes.
It was under 30 minutes and I needed flight time.
And on the way back,
and an emergency broke loose and everybody was notified
that somebody had seen what they
thought might be a Jap sub.
And we were all ordered to [NOISE] zigzag
our course and on the way back
just to cover some territory
and get back and the next day,
go back out again for a full day, whatever was necessary.
And low and behold,
I volunteered for that.
I only needed 20-25 minutes flight pay
for my flight pay but I volunteered
the next day and I was one of the crew on a PBM.
I think it had eight of us on that.
We took rations with us to spend a day.
We spent 15 hours flying
all over the Philippines and we never did see anything.
We saw an awful lot of fishing boats.
The local people had built a lot of huts on
top of walkways that
they could go from one to the other and they lived there.
And fishing boats would just be there close by.
But we saw a lot of those people
out working during the day.
But we never did pick up anything that would even halfway
be considered a submarine.
But that was the end of my flying time and got another.
One of the chiefs called me one day and he says,
"I got far too many men that I don't need.
Can you use them?" I says,
"Yes, I'll take them."
So I got those four men and assigned them to one of
my old controllers so they
could get some expense with him before I got involved.
But on one occasion,
they told me that they had an R&R trip.
The ship was in [NOISE] I forget where they said it was,
but had to be due in our location,
probably in the next day or two.
And they were going to send the ship over
to Hong Kong to give us some relaxation time.
So I chose four of
the younger people that wanted to go and some
of those that hadn't
accepted me too well I didn't take them with me.
I didn't want to be bothered with them.
[LAUGHTER] But anyway,
I think it was four or five days we spent over in
Hong Kong and we did a lot of
photographic work over there
and shopping and what have you.
We bought all kinds of stuff.
Some of the older people,
you can't tell how old they are.
They look much younger than they are.
But this fellow, [NOISE]
we had asked somebody where we could buy some,
I forget now what they wanted, jade, I think.
And [NOISE] one of these men was about 10 feet behind us.
He heard that and he came
rushing up and bumped into us and said,
"I can take you anywhere you want to go."
[NOISE] So we said what we wanted to buy.
And over there, they had buildings upon buildings
[NOISE] that were like our mall situations.
They would have this building that they'd have
25 places in there for different people have shops.
And you could spend your day in there not seeing all.
But anyway, he took us through two of those
and I didn't I didn't buy anything there.
I wasn't interested in that.
So we just went along with the crowd.
But we spent,
like I said, four or five days,
I forget which, and then finally got back on the ship.
When we went down to get back on the ship,
some of these officers had bought household furniture,
[LAUGHTER] and they had big cranes that they
loaded all that furniture in some part of the boat.
And then we made it back and things
[NOISE] went back to normal pretty well.
Australia was sending flying boats up
to Okinawa or wherever
these ships were stationed up there.
These were seaplanes,
and they would always land out in
the ocean area away from away from the island.
They had people there that they could run out and get
them and bring them back in
where they could stay
overnight and they brought it to us.
They stayed with us and ate with us overnight,
and they'd get back out the next day.
And those planes were so loaded with gear,
wartime stuff, I don't know what all.
But they were so well loaded that it would
sometime take two or three miles
for the planes to get off the water.
They'd fly so low that you could see the stream for
a mile and then they would fly and leave a stream.
You could tell this way they left it,
but they would still fly low for
another couple of miles to gain altitude to get up
to the place wherever the boat was.
But it was an interesting thing.
We always managed to give
them provisions to eat on the way.
And most all of them had
these long mustaches that wrapped up on the end.
You could tell they were from
Australia just by looking at them.
They were they were just nice people to do business with.
And I got to know one or two of them pretty good,
but we always got a little quite well.
On one occasion [NOISE].
One of the chiefs came to me and said,
No, I got a job for you.
This was rare, very rare.
But he said once a year,
we give the people in
the division party and said you and next.
And I think he gave me 400 pistol.
And he said, you do whatever you want to provide
a lesson party for the division group and let us know.
So I checked out a truck went off on
the beach, which was selling.
I only went on the beach two or three times.
If if you wear the wrist watch on it,
you wouldn't come back with it because it would be
about 10 or 15 young boys just high or
low and about four or five women
gathered around one of the pulled your watch off.
I was warning ahead of time.
Don't take my watch with you.
But anyway, I checked out a truck
and started looking around and I
recognize a ne that some of the fellows in
my group would be going
to and I went there and asked him,
he said, I wanted them to close the place
down for a couple of hours where
people could come in and he says,
Well, I know I can close it down.
But he said, I can give you a place where they could go
to to get the beer
and the other customers going to the regular place.
And I said that'll be fine.
And so I don't think I gave him all of the 400
I think I kept 100 of it and I thought I was
doing pretty well to get that for 300 bucks, 300 pistol.
Anyway, I went back and notified everybody needed to
know the party would be held on that day.
And if they if they got there before 11:00,
well, I don't expect too much.
And anyway, but that day came,
I had gone by the mess hall and I got big this deep pans.
That that square with baked beans,
I got one with potato salad.
And I got one,
I think I had something else that don't what that was.
But I think it was some meat or a mixture of meat.
Anyway, when I was loading
unload that stuff I saw what we had.
I thought, Well, I pi not going to eat all of that.
What really happened next door to this place
that somebody was had a construction to
building a house and
in the latter part of the day, probably about 4:00.
Most everybody had had gone,
bunch of the local Navy people were still there.
But anyway, all of the people in
the other divisions they pretty well had gone.
And so I went next
door and we had a lot of food left over.
And I told the guy over there,
one or two of them that I had
some food left over from
my party if they wanted any of us,
I better come over and get it for I throw it away.
Everybody in that group searched and found their hats,
people sacks, whatever they could find.
And they rushed over there and started putting
all that food in their containers.
And about that time
the supervisor noticed it didn't have any employees.
I came over there and the labors,
I couldn't understand, thank goodness.
I spoke to them so abruptly that they
very slowly started going back over there,
numbering, of course, all the time.
But the I had
about four people from
my division left there and they said,
well, we're not through yet.
So I gave one of ten pass and I took off home.
And I think I had a I think I had 40,
56 some number of pesos left that I gave
back to the chief and checked the truck back in.
I was through the party
and I didn't have to go through that but once.
But that pretty well tell the story.
The right at the end.
I got worded that to go down to
the personnel office and I went down to the personnel SM
and they offered me
commission or an officer
if I would sign up for another four years.
And I had been I had been gone 22 months at that time.
I had a son back home that was
19 months old that I had never seen.
And I said, no, thank you, I'm going home.
So they put an end to that and I went
back and just shortly after that,
I got worked do the checkout process.
So I had to go around to the mastering arms and all of
the places where we ate and all of the places that
I had worked and
sit there had to sign out of all of these locations.
If you never had been there,
you had to sign out anyhow.
So I went to it was listed on a chart.
So I went around and checked out all of those places
and got my gear together and told
the boat was in dock or with Munelo
and I had taken three weeks to go out and this same boat,
USS Altman, three weeks there and they
spent time loaded and loaded in
three weeks back to San Francisco.
So we went back to the same rot that we came out for
but I didn't we didn't have the crowd,
but we had a lot of people that
were there at other locations that had been died.
So we had a good bunch of people on there.
And one thing I remember quite well.
They had in the mess area,
they had cases and cases and
cases of milk and quarter containers,
cardboard containers.
And when the officers complained about it being se,
they moved a bunch of
those cases out on the deck plus two years,
and all of them got chunked over board.
So that's what I remember about the Philippines.
And when I got back to San Francisco,
I found that that Delta and I forget now the airline.
It was Western something, I think.
But anyway, they had they they flew from
Atlanta to New Orleans and New Orleans to San Francisco.
And then the Delta pilots
would fly they stayed overnight or whatever.
They stayed over there the they
would fly back to New Orleans
and back to Atlanta and it cost $800.
And so no,
wait but I had $800, that's what I had.
The plane fare cost $300.
And I bought me
a ticket and I got on the plane and in New Orleans,
I found a USO house there
that let me stay in a room that cost $2,
and I still got that receipt by the way.
And but I was
I was a little uneasy staying
there because of the size of the place.
It must have been 50 people in there.
This is a great big room full of bucks.
And so anyway, next day I got out,
had breakfast and went got on the plane
and came around to Atlanta.
And when I got to Atlanta,
Atlanta airport had walkways
covered walkways and areas
that went out from the Atlanta terminal.
And that's where the planes
would load and unload at the end of these these ramps.
And I got on one of the ramps that was
open and went back to the ramp that was overhead covered.
And there was Sue,
my wife and Lamar, my son.
She was pushing him in a stroller.
He didn't recognize me, and that's for sure.
But while I was in the Philippines,
I had bought a camera.
And I had taken pictures over there and sent him
home and Sue had bought a projector.
So she would show the daughter
that I had earlier and Lamar the pictures.
And and her name is Anita.
But she came along later on
and I said not in those pictures,
but got back home and it felt so good.
>> Well, that's wonderful.
Well, I'm so happy that we can preserve your story here
at our museum and share it with our students.
>> Thank you. I appreciate
being here and who ever advise you to do this.
>> Absolutely. Thank you so much for
your time and for sharing with us.
>> Thank you.