>> This is James Newberry,
and I'm here with Guy Gunther on Wednesday July 9th,
2014, at the Sturgis Library
at Kennesaw State University.
And Mr. Gunther, do you agree to this interview?
>> Beg your pardon?
>> Do you agree to this interview?
>> Yes, I do.
>> Could you state your full name, please?
>> Guy Theron Gunther, Jr.
>> And Mr. Gunther,
when and where were you born?
>> I was born in Lawrenceville,
Georgia on June the 6th, 1918.
>> And where did you grow up?
>> East Atlanta.
>> So could you describe for me East Atlanta,
and Atlanta in the 1920s,
1930s when you were growing up?
>> I can't do much in the 20s,
but the latter 20s.
I can, yes. It's eastern part of Atlanta, Georgia.
It's near East Lake.
It's between East Lake and East Atlanta City.
And I grew up on Marbut Avenue,
1535 Marbut Avenue,
which is in the dead end of the street.
And we didn't have much back in those days.
And we bought the house.
My father bought the house for $2,995.
And we paid $100 a month, I think.
But we had it rough.
He was a policeman, and of course,
they didn't pay him very much money.
>> And what were your parents' names?
>> Guy Theron Gunther,
Sr. and Mamie Madge Gutter.
>> What did your mother do?
>> She was a housekeeper.
>> And did you have siblings?
>> I have a brother and a sister living.
>> So how was
your family affected by the Great Depression?
>> As bad as you could possibly be.
We had it rough,
but I was a kid,
so it didn't matter much to me.
When we would return from school,
my mother would have a pile
of vegetable soup in the wintertime,
or a big baked sweet potato with a blob
of margarine in it
for us to eat when we got home from school.
Of course, they didn't feed you at school in those days,
and we weren't able to carry
lunches because we didn't have that much food.
>> So what did you eat at school?
>> We didn't eat. We did without.
We would go from eight o'clock in
the morning till two in the afternoon.
>> And can you tell me a little bit about
the school you went to when you were young?
>> Well, the elementary school,
and then I went to Murphy High School.
That's a junior school.
And then I went to Tech High School,
and then I went to Georgia Tech.
>> And what did you study at Georgia Tech?
>> Electrical Engineering.
>> And when you completed your degree
>> I never completed.
I was working while I was going to Tech.
I went to night school.
And the war came along in 1942.
They sent me an invitation to join the army.
They drafted me. I was
traveling for General Electric Company at the time.
I was the youngest salesman ever put on the road.
I had Macon Columbus, Augusta South.
But there weren't many people in
Georgia in that part of the country then.
But I did all right.
>> What kind of a salesman were you?
>> Electrical appliances.
Well back those days,
electrical supplies: wire,
switch gear, transformers,
all types of stuff to run an electric operation.
>> And you were successful?
>> Yes. I made made my quota for two years,
and then I had to go into service.
>> And when did you meet your future wife?
>> I met her at Ormewood Presbyterian Church
in 1930, I think it was.
>> So you were still young?
>> A little young, yeah.
>> What was her name?
>> Evelyn Davis.
>> Do you remember
when you heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor?
>> Yes. I was at
Tenaza's drive-in with a bunch of buddies,
and I had a bunch of half bottles
of whiskey in the trunk of the car.
And we all got pretty well soused.
>> And that was after you heard the news?
>> Yes.
>> And what was going through your head at the time?
>> Well, we thought the world's coming to an end.
We didn't know what to think.
We knew we were all going into service.
So that life didn't look too bright for us.
>> Did you want to fight?
>> Yes. I wanted to go in.
>> So can you tell me about being drafted?
>> Well, Evelyn and I went
together for 11 years before we were married,
because we had several interruptions.
What was the question now?
>> Can you tell me about being drafted?
>> Excuse me. I was traveling for General Electric,
and I got a call from my mother in Albany, Georgia,
telling me that I had an invitation to join
the army from President Roosevelt.
So that was in July of '41.
And I was to go in January the 2nd of 1942.
It was wrong. It was September.
I had applied in July at
the Naval Air Station to go to flight school,
and they didn't have an opening until April,
excuse me, February of '42.
So they put me on hold and
they drafted me and they wouldn't
give me a 30 day deferment.
So I had to go in the army.
And I was fortunate enough to get in the Air Force.
It was in Chanute,
no, not Chanute field.
I was in Texas.
The worst part of Texas.
>> Sheppard Field?
>> Sheppard Field.
>> How do you describe Sheppard Field?
>> The rear end of an elephant.
>> Why is that?
>> It would rain on your head,
sand was blowing in your face,
and you were standing in water up to your knees.
It was a horrible place.
>> And that's where you started training?
>> Yes. And I had enough college
so they would let me go to Link Instructor School,
which was a school for
training pilots to fly instruments.
And we learned to fly the Link instructor,
which was a container like a box.
And you'd put the pilot in the box and you
could twirl him around and rock him up and down,
and he had to fly instruments.
And you'd give him courses to take, courses to fly.
Of course, we didn't know anything about flying.
We had no training,
but we knew how to ride the Link.
So I went to Chanute Field,
and I graduated there in three months.
And they sent me to Savannah Air Base for instructing.
And I tried to transfer from the Air Force to
the Navy en route to or when I got to Savannah.
But while I was ordering route down there,
they changed the rules so that you couldn't
transfer from one branch of
the service to the other for flight training.
So I was stuck.
>> Why did you want to transfer to the Navy?
>> I wanted to fly for the Navy.
I thought it'd be more pleasurable and more informative.
And I could sleep between white sheets at night.
>> So you said you were at Chanute Field?
>> Chanute.
>> Where was that?
>> It's in Champaign, Illinois.
>> And that's where the link instructor class was?
>> Yeah. It was one of them.
We had all kinds of schools.
We had a mechanic school and several other schools.
>> And what did you do in Savannah?
>> Taught pilots to fly a Link, fly estimates.
And I was only there for 60 days, I guess it was.
And I went over to
the school officer's office to take
a test for the Link for some training.
It didn't matter what.
I couldn't take pilot training
because they had too long a line waiting to learn to fly.
So I went over and I took a test
for the armored division,
and passed it,
and I told the school officer I just had to fly.
So I went back to my Link office.
He called me that afternoon and he said,
"Hey guy, how would you like to be a glider pilot?"
I said, "What is that?"
[LAUGHTER] He said, "You fly without injures."
I said, "Well, do you fly?"
Yeah. I said, "Can you go overseas?"
He said, "Yes."
I said, "I'm for it."
So I went back to
the office to take another training test.
They ran me through another test
for the glider pilot training.
And the following Saturday we cleared
the base in Savannah and I drove to
Atlanta and spent the night with my family.
And next morning, we drove to Hays, Kansas.
There's a college there,
I think it was for girls back then.
Teachers College.
And they gave us our primary training there.
And that consisted of
flying Cubs, Aeroncas, Taylorcrafts.
And that means nothing to you,
but do to people that know about flying.
And we had to fly from land and wheat fields.
They would outline the most [inaudible] parts.
And we'd have to land at
night from1,000-6,000 feet deadstick.
Which means you kill
the engine and pull the prop up so it stops windmilling,
and then you go on and land.
That's part of the training.
We had a lot of other training too.
We had a lot of day training.
And that lasted for six weeks, I think it was.
And after that, we went to Lubbock,
Texas for basic training and advanced training.
There they trained us
in Aeroncas with the engine removed.
They put a person,
put the instructor in the middle of two students,
and we landed those Aeroncas
without any engines for a while and did
the basic training and then we went
into advanced and they had some sailplanes that we flew,
which were a lot of fun.
And then towards the end of the training,
they brought in CG-4As.
And that was interesting.
The people who had brought them in were fighter pilots,
and they had never flown a glider,
and they were scared to death of it.
And they were supposed to instruct us,
but they were too frightened.
So we instructed ourselves.
So we taught ourselves to fly
CG-4As which was the one we used throughout the war.
It carried 13 troops, pilot and co-pilot.
Or it would carry a Jeep,
or it would carry a 155 millimeter howitzer.
Or it would carry
a small 2200 pounds
and 1,000 pounds bulldozer,
which meant it was overloaded by 2,000 pounds.
And the ones that got to fly that were dead ducks.
[LAUGHTER]
There were 109
of us in the first class at Lubbock.
That was South Plains Air Force they called it.
And we were supposed to remain as instructors.
We graduated in November 10, 1942,
and we get orders to transfer us to Austin,
Texas, where we had a lot of fun with the girls.
I told my CO that I was getting married
that following Saturday.
Evelyn was coming,
going to fly out to
San Antonio and we had a chaplain to marry us.
And he said, I can't tell you anything.
This is Friday night,
but you won't be here Saturday.
This was the following Saturday.
And I said, okay, I'll call Evelyn.
So I called her and told her at 9:00 o'clock
Friday night not to come.
So that postponed our wedding.
And the next morning before
daylight we were on two trains going to
Virginia and we sailed out of Virginia
on December 1st, I believe it was.
>> How did Evelyn feel about
the marriage being postponed then?
>> She was upset. [LAUGHTER] But
that was the second time.
We tried to marry when I was
17 and her folks sent her off to college,
and my folks said you aren't going to
bring another woman in the house.
So that settled that.
That was the first time.
This was the second time. Third time.
The second time,
I started traveling for GE at 21 years of age and I said,
I don't know whether I can make it or not.
Let's wait and see if I make it.
So two years later,
when I got my notice,
they were drafting me.
We were in Albany,
Georgia, getting ready to buy a place down there.
So that postponed it the second time.
This was a third postponement.
>> Was she beginning to wonder if you'd ever marry?
>> If I'd ever marry?
>> Was Evelyn beginning
to wonder if you'd ever get married?
>> We were dedicated,
but I'm sure she wondered.
She didn't know whether I was coming back or not.
>> So you shipped out of Virginia?
>> Yeah, Norfolk Virginia.
On the Mariposa.
And that was a beautiful luxury liner.
Very fast, 21 knots.
And we went over without an escort
because we had submarines all over
the place, German subs.
We were aboard the Mariposa 43 days, I think it was.
And we went around the Cape of Good Hope into Egypt.
We landed in [inaudible] Egypt 43 days later.
And in [inaudible] Egypt
which is where we were stationed,
we had nothing to do.
They had no gliders.
They didn't know what to do with us,
but they wanted us overseas.
So we were on a British base,
and the food was horrible.
We had steak once a week,
it was camel steak,
and that comes from
dead camels that are
too old to work anymore and they kill them.
And the more you chew the
merrier that one got in your mouth.
So the food was terrible.
We stayed there for 30 days,
I guess it was,
and had a great time.
And I met the family of King Farouk over there.
We were in Cairo.
Three of us boys,
and we were in the mosque,
and this is a sideline anyway.
We met these young people
and we had on our pinks and greens.
That's the uniform we wore.
It looked like something out of Hollywood.
They wanted to take us over to one of
their benches for tea that
evening and we'd all be drinking.
And Tom Lockard was with us and Tom was a six foot,
two state trooper from California.
And he was about drunk and he comes over to beat
them and he burps some big loud burp.
Well, in that mausoleum,
it just re-vibrates from wall to wall to wall.
So he'd embarrassed a fool out of me and I
apologized and told him we weren't in any condition.
A couple that something I shouldn't bring up.
Anyway, after Egypt,
we went to Tripoli too.
We stayed there in a couple of weeks, I guess it was.
And we went to Blida,
Algeria which is 60 kilometers outside of Algiers.
And we flew copilot on C-47s while we were there.
And we would find flights from Blida to Casablanca,
Blida to Gibraltar, Blida to Cairo,
and they were long flights, boring.
And we stayed there for 30 days.
And then they gave me an assignment to
take eight glider pilots
down to Accra,
South Africa which is on the Gold Coast.
We assembles two gliders down
there and we're going to fly back
to Blida which would be
the longest towing flight in history.
We assembled the gliders in 30 days and flew
them back to Blida.
And when we landed there,
the gliders are all over the field.
While we were in Accra,
the Allies had opened the Mediterranean,
so ships could go in and out and they had
dumped a bunch of gliders in Casablanca to be assembled.
So we had a historian with us to write everything.
See, he wrote about the birds and the bees in
the jungle and in the mountains
and sends little squib about gliders,
he didn't do much for us.
So we didn't get any credit for that,
the longest glider flight in history, towed flight.
>> And did you meet
other historical figures while you were in Egypt?
>> No. I only met the family of Farouk.
I started meeting different people
after we got back from that horrible flight.
We flew one day over the desert 11 hours,
and that was rough bouncing back and forth.
Everybody got sick and you'd fly while one threw up,
and then he'd stop
throwing up and the other would get in there.
So it was horrible. Anyway, after that,
they sent us to Kairouan,
transferred the group over there to train
the British glider pilots to fly our CG-4A,
which we did for 30 days, I guess it was.
And while we were doing that,
we got to meet General Montgomery,
who had gotten credit for winning the war in the desert.
He was the worst general the British ever had,
but he's a little bitty short guy,
one of these guys that takes apples to school teacher.
[LAUGHTER]
And after that,
we would trade the British glider pilots.
On Friday nights,
they got to arrange their scotch.
And if they give us a ratio of scotch,
we'd let them fly from the left seat.
And then they came up with the Bishop
to Sicily and 36 or well,
more than that volunteered to fly as copilot
with the Bishop into Sicily, which we did.
Out of the 36,
16 of us got back.
And the reason for that is
the American copilot went into
the Bay of Syracuse and go over the land in Syracuse,
and then had an aircraft fire,
and I got hit in the face and the leg.
And they said, "We can't go ahead.
It's too hard, too difficult, so release," I said,
"Then we'll land in the water."
He said, "That's too bad.
Either you release or we're going to release you."
At about that time the rope came flying back towards us,
so we had to land in the water.
We were in the water overnight,
holding the hole to the glider.
And there was the British Colonel Lieutenant
in charge of the Armored Division,
we would take it in.
Said that, "Lieutenant,
will you pray for us?"
And I said, "Hell no, pray for yourself.
I'm scared to death,
[LAUGHTER]
I'm praying for me."
Three of the boys came up to him and said,
"We want to sail the shore."
He said, "I can't say that."
He went to asked me and said,
"What do you think, Lieutenant?"
I said, "If they could make it, let them go."
And so they did.
Well, we never heard the boy from them.
I'll bring it up later.
And we were picked up the next day by a Greek Destroyer,
and they took me into Algiers to the hospital.
And of course, all I'm thinking they know to do
in these army hospitals is cut
your leg off if something's wrong with you.
And that's what bothers me about
all the veterans coming
back from the war in Afghanistan,
and then they'd taking so many legs off.
They were going to take my leg off because I had
gangrene seeded in my groin and
I had it done as big as my fist in purple and blue,
those beautiful colors going down my leg to the knee.
So I got up, and
when they told me it doesn't look good,
I dressed and went back to my base and there was
a lieutenant brought a yellow doctor.
I told him to put hot [inaudible] on my leg,
I thought that would cure it and they did.
And he operated on me [NOISE] two days later.
He didn't operate, just punctured the area and let it
drain and which hurt like the [inaudible].
It would get well in Tunisia.
We were in Tunisia
then because the things were so dirty over there.
And I went back to Sicily or rather
the group moved over to Sicily.
After the operation,
we've been in the desert as
well and it healed in 30 days.
So it shows you've got good
[inaudible] there. You're okay.
Anyway, we were in Sicily and I wrote
a letter to Washington complaining about Sergeant Sam.
That's what we called him as a nick name for
this General Louis, [inaudible] me.
And they set me up to
9th Troop Care command in Palermo, Sicily,
to fly these old 40 year old men around the island,
the officers and field grade officers,
and [inaudible] 24.
So I did that for a couple of three months.
And then they sent
me back to the base to get
ready to send us up to England.
This is the latter part of '43 and refers to '44.
And while there,
a C-54 came over with President Roosevelt in it.
And he came over
to do whatever he was going to do to Patton.
And the bunch of generals wait there
for him and when Patton came up,
they all walked away from him,
they wouldn't have anything to do with it.
So when President Roosevelt got out of his C-54,
they put a [inaudible] that
covered whatever board over
his seat in the jeep so he could sit at it.
And they drove up to the Generals and
spoke to all and he says,
George, get in the back and ride around with me.
[LAUGHTER]
That was a reparable.
So after that, it had been an hour.
We were stationed at Castle
[inaudible] and the power pilots,
there was a big difference
between power pilots and [inaudible] pilots.
They got all the breaks and we didn't get any.
They were in permit barracks in town.
We were in tents on the airport.
And we had an officer's club set up and had a bar,
and they wanted us to use our bar for
President Roosevelt and General Patton and the others.
And we told them they could do anything,
pay us [LAUGHTER] for it.
So President Roosevelt, I'll never forget it.
He says, Boys, we don't get whiskies.
I was like, this isn't home anymore.
We [inaudible] all over here to you,
and he waked and Patton said,
give me another one,
you god damn martinis.
And he looked at me [LAUGHTER] and he said,
boy, don't I know you?
I said, no, sir. I had met him before.
But that's another story.
That's funny though, I'll tell you.
Before I left command,
General Williams called me and said,
do you know anybody speaks Italian?
And [NOISE] I said, yes, Aldo Goroni.
[NOISE] He's a captain
down at this field where I
[inaudible] his troops, train him.
And he said, call him, see if he'll go with us.
So I went over to Naples for Colonel Gavin's first star.
And of course, Aldo went.
Well, I flew down to that big field,
of course, no airport there.
I just landed on the field.
And Aldo was there, waiting in
one corner of this big damn field,
and here comes Patton and his jeep,
flags waving and sirens blowing and the lights flashing.
He gets out of the jeep.
He said, blah, blah, blah.
This is what he said.
He said, you'll kill all my troops.
[LAUGHTER]
What the hell are you doing down here anyway?
I said, General sent me down here to get Captain Goroni.
That [inaudible] so and so he didn't like
the general because he had a P-51 as a personal plane.
And anyway, when I get back he says,
get his blank blank airplane
out of here right now, I mean now.
I said, yes, sir. We got in,
turned the damn thing around and blasted
the hell out of it.
So that's why [LAUGHTER] I didn't want to
tell him that he had met me before.
I get back to the headquarters
and general calls me and says,
I figured he'd go [inaudible].
He said, guy, did you duct
him off good? I said, yes, sir.
[LAUGHTER]
That sounds like bull,
but that's true story.
Let's see. From there, we went up to England
in March of '44
to train for D-Day.
And they sent me down from my base.
We were based in [inaudible] 360 Troop Carrier Group.
I was in 36 Squadron.
And I can't think of the damn thing.
D-Day just blanked out on me.
I don't know why.
But we trained and we flew the pathfinder group,
82nd airborne into south
of the front, 25,30 miles south.
We didn't see the action much there.
And we were out of that.
By the way, the 5th of June
when the weather held up the invasion,
Eisenhower was at our base.
I did not meet him,
but I got to see him and we
were as close as I am to you right here.
He came over to our base to visit.
I can't think of the name [inaudible].
I've been trying for two days.
And [NOISE] we took
off at 12 o'clock at night
and landed at about 1:00 or 1:15.
And the only problems we had was a little bit of light,
fire and which we took care of it in
a hurry and we were out of there in five days.
>> How did you stay awake for the flight?
>> Well, we got in a little fight.
The fighting was up north of us.
>> But for the flight,
it was late at night.
>> Oh, 12 o'clock.
>> And how did you stay alert and awake?
>> You're scared to death.
[LAUGHTER] Well, we also took Benzotril.
You take a Benzotril with
a shot of scotch and your eyes get
that big [LAUGHTER] and you don't sleep for days.
>> And it was on your birthday?
>> Yeah. June the 6th.
And they sang happy birthday to me on the way over.
And then we worked our way out,
came back on one of the troop carriers, ships out there.
We were back in England in five or six days.
So we didn't do anything in Normandy,
you speak of, brag about.
>> How many troops were in your glider?
>> Thirteen.
>> After that, did you go back to the Mediterranean?
>> Yeah. I went back to my outfit. It's out of Reading.
I can't think of the name of it.
And they transferred me back to
360 Troop Carrier Group in
Cottesmore to prepare for an invasion of Southern France.
I went back and flew down.
I flew out of Reading again,
that's where I flew out of.
The D-Day that we went over to,
and the D-Day the night before,
this chaplain came up to me,
Fitzgerald, and he said,
Lieutenant, do you mind if I pray for you?
Said, I'm Catholic and I know you're a Protestant.
I said, I don't care I wish everybody would.
I'm scared to death. Anyway, after we got back,
he and I became big buddies.
He was going to go down to Italy with us.
We would go fly from England to
Italy for the Southern France invasion.
He's all set to go and I told him I'd take him to Rome
and we'd go see the Pope and all this start just talking.
They said we had
enough Catholic Catholic chaplains down in Italy,
we all did the bowl.
He did get to gothe least he thought.
We flew to southern Italy,
cut out of place for landing,
built us a field,
the lead to take off.
I was lying in the tent one day,
we were in tents,
and I hear a high pitched Irish voice.
It was Fitzgerald Holy, Lieutenant Gutter.
They had to send another flight down another plane,
and he got on it.
So I was able to take him into Rome to the,
we call it Garter,
it was a posters club.
We were sitting in the upstairs,
looking down on the dance floor and they'd bring
these little teenage girls in to do dances for
us and they'd have all flowers over
the upper part lower part and that'd be about all.
He was sitting there enjoying the hell out of it.
He looked right at me, I pulled back.
I was enjoying watching girls.
We weren't supposed to do that.
He said, you son of a bitch,
you tricked me, didn't you?
I said, don't worry about it.
Anyway, we got to seats and we got to
meet Pope John XII,
I think it was a little bitty guy.
Everybody kissed his ring.
Well, I didn't kiss his ring.
He asked me a couple of questions.
Pretty sharp guy.
Fitz got to meet him,
so that was a highlight for him being overseas.
After that, we went into Southern France,
and that was an easy mission.
We had anti-glider and anti-parachute poles,
pine trees that they'd
planted in this big field we were going to land in.
We landed the gliders in between
the poles and sheared the wings off,
which was advantage to us because
we stopped to have forward motion where we'd
get out of the glider there because there's
always somebody bad at you on the ground shooting at you.
Then after that, we went back to England
and we got ready for the Polish invasion,
biggest invasion we ever had, 1,876 gliders.
We went there in 21 of September, I believe it was.
We were in there 21 days.
It was a long deal,
but it worked out all right.
We held the bridge at Grove.
As we were flying in,
we went 45 miles behind the front.
We flew over vigil,
which is an aircraft for the Germans.
The pilot called me, said,
"Hey guy, he is shooting at me."
I said, "But they could do it to us."
Anyway, that was a good show.
We stayed there 21 days,
and then when I came out,
the glider pilot brought truck loads of
prisoners to a prison camp near Belgium in Belgium.
We stayed in Brussels so long,
they said, the MPs are over to get us.
None of us wanted to go back to England.
After that, they wouldn't let me go into Wiesel.
That was the last mission we pulled.
Why didn't you want to leave Brussels?
Fun. Beautiful women.
What would you say were the best parts of that time
flying those missions in Sicily,
in France, and in The Netherlands?
The Netherlands, they gave us milk there when we landed.
We never got the milk.
The farmers would bring the milk out to
us and they'd start pouring in
cups and bringing it out in teacups
and they start pouring out mesquite cups.
We just had a bowl. They were nice to us.
Did you meet the German prisoners?
I didn't meet them. We carried them in the trucks.
Did you have any communication at this time
with your family back home and Evelyn?
Oh, yeah. Evelyn and I
broke up overseas while I was overseas.
I thought D-Day would be rough.
I just wrote her and told her she ought
to start fighting somebody else.
But when I came back home,
well, before that,
we were in Reims,
France and then we had VE Day.
And that's funny. I had
a little motor scooters that I had mechanics,
maybe build for me that I designed in Paris.
I was a ride up and down the streets in
Paris on VE Day with
a beautiful young lady named
Madeline Evelyn on the back.
It had a ball.
Then they send us home and I went
home on a victory boat was horrible things.
When I got home,
Evelyn came over to the house to see me.
I didn't know she knew I was home.
Somebody told her. Anyway,
she said, you ought to go to
church tomorrow, and I said, yeah.
We went to church.
We started going back together again.
Then we had our first night out,
was at the Biltmore Hotel.
They had the patio outside the back.
They had a full bed every weekend and it was great.
She asked me if I was going to marry her.
I said, yeah, but when we get out of the service,
she said, I can't wait any longer.
I said, I'll give you an answer
tomorrow, which was Sunday.
I went home and I didn't sleep a damn week.
Got up in the morning and father's milking in the cow.
He said, let me finish stripping
this cow and we'll go up and tell your mama.
What I told brother, Jerry,
my sister. They cried.
You just been home of one day.
You don't know Evelyn well enough.
I known her 11 years.
I went over to her house to get
her and her folks were having breakfast.
Wehere's Evelyn? She's upstairs
getting dressed for church.
I went upstairs, she's sitting
there in that shimmy thing,
I call it in her skirt fixing her face.
I said, do you want to get married
next Saturday and she says, are you kidding?
I said, no. She said,
yes. That was it.
We had the wedding at her house.
We had 200 people there.
It was a real nice wedding. Had a chaplain.
Everybody's given her drinks
I belong to the Athletic Club.
We went out to East Lake and we
were all giving her drinks
and she'd get drunk every day.
She didn't get drunk, she got sick.
We didn't consummate the wedding until three days later.
>> So did you get a job after that when you got back?
What did you do?
>> Went back to GE.
>> Went back to GE?
>> Stayed with them six months.
Went in business myself.
Gunther Johnson Electric Supply Company.
And we sold wire, switch gear,
stuff for the electrical industry.
And then after three years,
my partner wanted to sell out.
And it was a buy-sell deal that I bought
first and he wanted all cash.
And I said, no, we broke.
You didn't live up to a gentleman's agreement.
I'll have to think about it.
So I decided to let him have it.
Well, he didn't have the cash.
He had four children.
So he had to pay me
my salary for a year before we could get it together.
And we had a branch in Savannah.
He closed Atlanta and kept Savannah
open so he could pay me off which was a mistake.
And then I went into business again now after that.
>> And can you tell me what that business is?
>> We sold appliances.
>> So tell me a little bit about your time in Cuba.
>> We went over there for 10 days,
ran out of money,
had to have the family wire me money.
We had a ball in Cuba.
But efore that, I met Batista.
I went over,
I bought a little airplane after we went in business,
and I flew over to Havana and I sold them a car load
of rubber electrician tape.
And he's a gentleman.
He was a [inaudible] and a fine man
as far as I was concerned.
Cuba went to hell after he left, of course.
>> So did you enjoy yourself in Havana?
What things did you do in Havana?
>> Well, when we
went over after I sold my business,
we just had a ball.
We went to nightclubs every night.
During the day we visited different places.
We just had a great time.
Very near beaches dice.
It's all a great country.
>> So tell me about your family today.
>> Well, I have two sons and a daughter.
One son's a chiropractor.
The other son is a preacher.
My daughter works for me.
And my daughter didn't have any children.
She doesn't want any.
She has horses and dogs,
and that's her life. She's married.
They've been married 34 years now. Very happy.
My son, the chiropractor,
he's the oldest.
He's doing well.
He just got married a couple of years ago
to the gal he should have married first time.
That was his fourth marriage.
And the preacher son,
took a church from less than 100-1,200 in 10 years.
He had 500,
600 kids attending on Sunday.
He had taken it from 100 members to 1,200 members.
And then he hired his pretty old secretary
and you know what happened, sir.
>> So who is running your business?
>> My grandson.
>> And what's his name?
>> Thierin.
>> So he's named after you?
>> Well, the middle name, yeah.
>> So when you think about your service in World War II,
how does that make you feel today?
>> I feel great. I feel like I should have done it.
I had a good time. They paid me.
>> And why did you share your experiences with me today?
>> I don't know.
>> Just felt like it?
>> I guess so. I liked you.
You were nice.
I'll tell you why, son.
You came over and you were nice and
polite and you seemed interested.
And I think somebody should be interested in World War II,
especially the [inaudible].
We were the asshole of the Air Force.
Excuse the French.
Nobody wanted to tow
us because they had to tow you at 120 miles an hour.
At 120 miles an hour at C47,
which towters ran hot.
It would still fly,
but it ran hot that scared them.
So they didn't want to tow us, but they had to.
They didn't have any choice.
When we graduated, we graduated as flight officers.
Well, there had never been a flight officer before.
So they paid us 20% overseas plane
and the regular officers only got
10% and that teed everybody off.
We were a bunch of Wild Indians,
I guess you might say, the [inaudible].
You had to be crazy to be one, I guess,
a little bit on the nutty side
to get into [inaudible] without an injury.
But we were doing our duty.
But getting back to you,
you were a nice young man and you seem interested.
And that's the reason I drove away the hell up here.
This is dumb.
I'm thinking driving up here here.
I'm driving up here to carry out a bunch of crap.
>> Thank you, Mr. Gunther.
>> You're welcome.