Wallace Axel "Bud" Streed

STREED, Wallace Axel "Bud".

Wallace "Bud" Axel Streed was born in Proctor, Minnesota, on October 25th 1922. He is the son of Axel Edward & Hilda Maria [Henriksson] Streed. He graduated from Proctor High School at age seventeen in 1940.

Mr. Streed served in the U.S. Army during World War II. He received a letter from the draft board when he was twenty, in 1943. He boarded a bus in Proctor and went with other recruits down to Fort Snelling in Minnespolis, Minnesota. He was assigned to the Army Air Forces in Lincoln, Nebraska, and was subsequently reassigned to the ASTP (Army Specialized Training Program).

PVT Stree studied mechanical engineering at the Colorado School of Mining in Golden, Colorado, and completed a year’s coursework in six months. At that time, the ASTP of which he was a part closed down, and he was sent to the infantry instead.

He rose to the rank of Private First Class during his service. While in Colorado he married Marjorie Jean [Oren] on November 27th, 1943 in Denver.

PFC Streed had been a meat cutter in civilian life, and in the Army he was often assigned to be a cook. He was sent to Little Rock, Arkansas, where he joined the 66th Infantry Division. They were moved to Camp Rucker, Alabama, and then to Camp Shanks, New York.

His unit boarded the USS George Washington and traveled to Dorchester, England, where they stayed for about a month. He was assigned to the L Company of the 264th and crossed the English Channel to Cherbourg, France. In France, PFC. Streed was a runner, carrying messages and maps up to the front line. He spent 180 days on the front line.

After the war, PFC Streed was in Arles, France, and later in Austria. He oversaw a POW camp in Austria. He was honorably discharged on March 12th 1946.

He was decorated with the following medals:

• Bronze Battle Star,
• Good Conduct Medal,
• Combat Infantryman Badge,
• American Campaign Medal,
• European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal with one Battle Star,
• World War II Victory Medal, -and-
• two Overseas Service Bars.

 

After the war he returned home. 

Mr. Steed died on December 9th 2015 at 93 years of age in Duluth, Minnesota. He is buried at Park Hill Cemetery in Duluth.

Source(s): Veterans’ Memorial Hall veteran history form (above); oral interview with Veterans’ Memorial Hall. (below).

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Albert J. Amatuzio Research Center | Veterans Memorial Hall (vets-hall.org)

Page 1 WWII Draft Registration Cards - Fold3

Wallace Axel “Bud” Streed (1922-2015) - Find a Grave Memorial

U.S., Obituary Collection, 1930-Current - Ancestry.com

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Mr. Streed recalled an incident at the POW camp that he administered in Austria:

“A lady came walking into the camp, and she had a little boy about nine or ten years old with her. I asked her what she wanted, and she said she heard her husband was here.

“I said, ‘Oh, what is his name?’ She told me, and I said, ‘Yes, he is here. He will be back after a little while when they come back from work.’ I said, ‘You are welcome to stay.’ So she stayed there, and they came back, and they had their little reunion. I asked her, ‘What are you going to do now?’ Well, she didn’t know what she was going to do, so I said, ‘Wow, would you like to cook for these GI’s? There are twenty of them.’

“‘Oh, I can do that.’

“I told her, ‘I will have the menu printed for you in German so you will know what to fix. We can fix up a place in the storage room so you have a place to stay.’ And she said that would be fine. I told her, ‘We have twenty GI’s, 150 prisoners, and you will be in a shack all by yourself at night—I don’t think we can do that. I think probably we had better have your husband stay with you.’

“They were there until I left the company and was on my way home.”

Source: Interview with Veterans’ Memorial Hall (below)

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Wallace A. Streed of Proctor entered the U.S. Army on June 2, 1943. He served as a private first class with Company L of the 264th Infantry Regiment of the 66th Infantry Division. He describes his military service:

“On November 15, 1944, the division left for England aboard a captured World War II-era German passenger liner renamed the SS George Washington. We arrived in Southampton, England, on the 22nd and were billeted at Dorchester until December 25.

“We left our Christmas dinner on the table to return to Southampton to guard two English wooden canal ships, one of which was the Leopoldville, which later was torpedoed about three miles off Cherbourg, France, with a loss of more than 500 lives. I was supposed to be on that ship, but a mix-up in boarding caused me to get another ship.

“We landed in Cherbourg on December 26 and from there went to Arles until the 31st. Next, we were committed to the front line at St. Nazaire and Lorient on the Brest Peninsula, where about 50,000 Germans were bottled up. I was a runner for L Company, 264th Infantry Regiment. We were on front-line duty continuously until the end of the war. As a runner, I was running messages and papers to the command post of the 264th. The Germans surrendered to us May 10 and 11, 1945.

“There was an underground tunnel and pillboxes all around Lorient and St. Nazaire. With another GI and a lieutenant, I was given the duty of going through this fortification to make sure no one was in there and also to look for booby traps.

“On V-E Day, a truck loaded with spirits came to our bivouac area. Almost everyone drank more than they could handle. Our officers had their command post in what looked like a root cellar. One of our guys, who had too much to drink, began jumping up and down on the CP, calling the captain names and demanding he come out so he could shoot him. The rest of the company was standing around in a big circle.

“I decided something had to be done, so I laid down my rifle, walked up to the man, and said, 'Give me your rifle.’ He looked at me for a minute, then handed over his weapon. I led him back to the table of booze, and we talked for awhile. As far as I know, nothing was done about this incident.

“Our next move was to the Rhine River at Remagen and then to Koblenz and on to Winnenden. In June 1945, the division went to southern France to process troops to be sent to Asia. In September, after V-J Day, the camp was closed. I was sent to the 42nd Infantry Division in Austria. On February 26, 1946, I was shipped to Le Javie, France, and arrived in the U.S. on March 7.”

Mr. Streed was decorated with the Bronze Star Medal, Combat Infantryman Badge, Good Conduct Medal, American Campaign Medal, European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal with one bronze battle star, World War II Victory Medal and two overseas service bars. He was discharged on March 12, 1946.

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Below is an oral interview with Wallace A. "Bud" Streed.

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May 15, 2008

Oral History Interview with:
Wallace Streed (WW II Vet)
Born: October 25, 1922

Interviewed by:
Dan Hartman
Program Director of Veterans Memorial Hall

Transcribed by:
Karin Swor
Program Assistant of Veterans Memorial Hall

D.H. Dan Hartman
W.S. Wallace Streed

D.H. Today is May 15 on a Thursday of 2008. We are doing an interview with Wallace Streed. If I can have for the record, your last name and spell it out.

W.S. Streed S-T-R-E-E-D

D.H. Streed, OK, Also what year were you born?

W.S. 10-25-22

D.H. You were a veteran of World War II, correct?

W.S. Right.

D.H. You served in the Army?

W.S. Yes.

D.H. What division were you part of?

W.S. When I first went in I was sent to the Air Force. From the Air Force they sent me to the ASTP program.

D.H. Was it called the Air Force then or was it the Army Air Corp?

W.S. At that time it was the Army Air Corp.

D.H. OK.

W.S. I went to Lincoln, Nebraska to the College there. They gave me all kinds of tests and then they decided to send me to the ASTP program studying mechanical engineering at the school of mines in Colorado. I was there for, while the first thing that happened there, we had a chemistry professor that gave us orientation. He said look at the guy along side, he won’t be here three months from now. We have 500 guys, if you are in the top half you stayed if you were in the lower half you go, regardless of grades. So I survived that, then I was there until; we did a year of college in six months. Then the Army decided that we wouldn’t be of any value to the war effort so they closed up all the ASTP programs and sent us all to the infantry.

D.H. May I ask what did the ASTP program stand for?

W.S. Army Specialized Training Program.

D.H. Ok

W.S. You had to have, in order to go to Officer’s Training School you had to have an IQ of 110, and to get into ASTP you had to be above that, so that is why they sent us there.

D.H. Is that what the Lincoln, Nebraska testing was about then?

W.S. Yeah, they never did give me an offer to go to Officer’s Training, they just talked about ASTP and I was very happy because I wanted to go to college when I graduated from high school, but I couldn’t go I didn’t have any money.

D.H. So this was an opportunity for you to go to college then?

W.S. Yeah.

D.H. Well then I am going to back up a little bit then. When you served you served in the 66th infantry division, correct?

W.S. From ASTP we went to Little Rock, Arkansas and we were in the 66th division. The Army had promised us that if we ever failed college or what ever happened, something happened we could always go back to our original outfit. They just cut an order and everybody went to the infantry. Even people that went back to school for more training before they went back to their outfits, they went too.

D.H. That was just kind of the way it was. I am going to bring you a little bit back. I am going to start this off by asking just some basic background questions. Your family, were your mother and father both from the United States originally?

W.S. Well, my mother was Swedish, she was born and raised in Finland. So she was what they call a Swede Finn. My father was born in Duluth. He was killed in a car accident when I was 22 months old.

D.H. But he was from Duluth originally?

W.S. He was killed in an accident when I was 22 months old so I never knew him. My mother remarried, it was 1924 when he was killed, my mother remarried in 1929 to a fellow by the name of Joel Eklund. He had a grocery store in Proctor. He was my father from that time on.

D.H. What grocery store did he own in Proctor?

W.S. Well, it was at that time it was Eklunds then he joined the Super Value outfit and so we had Eklunds Super Valu. I bought him out in 1955 and became the owner of that store. I operated it until 1969, the fall of 1969 and I could see that the big stores were taking over all the little ones so I just closed it up. I took my money and ran.

D.H. Do you think this was a wise decision still?

W.S. Well, it was the only decision I had to make. I couldn’t make a lot of decisions. Then I went to work for New York Life, I was an agent for them, and I still am. I retired in 1990.

D.H. Back to your family, Joel Ecklund what background was he?

W.S. He came from Sweden.

D.H. He was a Swede. Your mother actually originally came from Finland to Duluth. Is that where she and your father met at?

W.S. No, my mother came here when she was 16. She came to Proctor and my father worked in Proctor at time and that is where they met, I presume dancing. They loved to dance I guess.

D.H. You don’t know where by chance they met. Did they meet in Proctor?

W.S. Well, my dad was a meat cutter and after my father died she would get her groceries from Art Eklund who owned the store at the time. She had no money and every once and a while he would just mark the grocery bill paid. I presume that is where they met.

D.H. That would make sense. What religious background were your parents?

W.S. Lutheran.

D.H. Lutheran, are you still Lutheran?

W.S. Yes

D.H. You grew up as a kid in the 1920’s, was that a pretty fun time growing up?

W.S. Great time.

D.H. What were some of the things you did to have fun with the other guys?

W.S. Well, we didn’t have any money so we made our fun. We had a lot of fun. Then I had people that more or less took me in. One fellow in Proctor that used, for a couple of years he had a place in Fond du Lac and he would take me down there in the summer time and I would spend my summers down there. Then there was a fellow by the name of Albert Eklund who was the brother of the fellow that started the grocery store. He lived up on the Rose road, farming, and I would go up there and stay all the time.

D.H. Was that a pretty fun place?

W.S. Yes

D.H. Did you swim? What were some of the activities that you did?

W.S. No, we hunted, partridge, rabbits and if the dog was up there we would go out and hunt woodchucks. He would find the woodchucks in the rock pile and I would dig out the rocks until you could get at the woodchuck and kill it then we would go to another rock pile.

D.H. Was hunting one of the more entertaining things you did?

W.S. Well that, hunting and fishing. It was a lot of hunting and fishing.

D.H. Was there any neighborhood sports that you would play with any other kids?

W.S. No, at that time we would play like tin can alley. All the kids that showed up would play. Sometimes we would play baseball, and if 10 kids showed up we played baseball and if 20 showed up we would all play baseball.

D.H. It didn’t matter everyone played.

W.S. Everybody played.

D.H. Was that probably the most popular sport with your friends, baseball?

W.S. Yeah, baseball and a game like tin can alley.

D.H. How do you play tin can alley?

W.S. Something about, I don’t remember, but kick the can and everybody would go and hide then somebody goes and finds them. Annie eh over throwing a ball over the roof of a building. That was another thing we played. We had a lot of fun.

D.H. It is entertaining that even today we still play the same games.

W.S. It was a good time to grow up.

D.H. In the 1930’s when you got more into your teenage years, started living through the depression, could you tell the depression was on compared to the 1920’s?

W.S. Well, it was still on until 1937.

D.H. I meant like when the depression hit could you tell that it hit?

W.S. We didn’t know anything about it. We just knew we didn’t have any money.

D.H. You didn’t have any money in the first place so there really wasn’t that much of a difference?

W.S. No, we didn’t know we were in a depression. Us kids didn’t know.

D.H. Who were some of the kids, when you would go to hang out with your friends, where would you meet your friends at, school?

W.S. At school.

D.H. OK, do you ever hang out with any of those guys anymore?

W.S. No, no they are all dead.

D.H. When you grew up in the 1930’s as a teenager, what did you do for fun then?

W.S. Chase girls! Cloquet was a good place to go.

D.H. Is that where the girls were?

W.S. Yeah, lots of girls. We bought a Model T Ford for $15.00 because it had a battery
and good tires. We would run it until it died and then we would buy another one. One of the kids that had a little bit of money, his dad did. His dad also had a grocery store he seemed to be able to get the $15.00 for the Model T Ford.

D.H. Still, in today’s terms $15.00 sounds pretty cheap for a car, different times to. So you would drive around and this is what you tried to pick up girls in?

W.S. Pick up girls and Hermantown was another place, we used to go to Hermantown. They didn’t have any school in Hermantown in those days, any high school. Those kids used to come to Proctor and we got acquainted with them and used to hang around with those guys.

D.H. Did you ever go to Duluth?

W.S. Yeah, I used to go do skating. In the wintertime I used to go to Harrison. Which was a nice place to go. In the summertime I would go roller-skating at the Curling Club. That is where I met my wife.

D.H. What was the full name of the Curling Club and where was that?

W.S. Down there where the Armory is.

D.H. At the old Armory?

W.S. No, there were two different buildings.

D.H. And that is where you met your wife?

W.S. Yeah.

D.H. Did you meet her before you went to World War II?

W.S. Yes

D.H. Do you know what year by chance you met her?

W.S. Oh, 1940 when I graduated from High School. We got married in Denver in November 27, 1943 when I was going to school there.

D.H. When you grew up in the 1930’s and 1920’s how different is Duluth and the region compared to now?

W.S. I don’t think there was any less people, probably more people. But there was a lot less automobiles. Everybody was in the same boat and so they just, everybody made out.

D.H. What do you mean by the same boat?

W.S. They were mostly all poor. It was either the poor or the rich there was either the poor or the rich.

D.H. There was a big divide between the two?

W.S. Where I lived in Proctor, there were two kinds of people. Those that were in business and those that worked for the Mesabi Railroad. Most of the people on the Mesabi Railroad were laid off except for the supervisors. There was quite a class distinct between the supervisors and the other people.

D.H. Was there any animosity between these two groups? You could tell the difference?

W.S. Just the haves and the have-nots.

D.H. Was there anything that is different today that you actually miss? That was around here in the 1920’s and 30’s?

W.S. No, my stepfather was building this cabin in 1930 so from 1930 I have been.

D.H. Was here?

W.S. Yes.

D.H. So this has actually been in the family since 1930?

W.S. Yeah, well it has.

D.H. That is pretty neat, I think, personally. I kind of want to go back. In your teenage years, did you ever go to movies? This was the era of movies.

W.S. Oh yes, all the time.

D.H. Was that a common place you would take girls on a date?

W.S. Yeah, go to a movie and go out to eat.

D.H. Did you go to movies in Proctor or Cloquet?

W.S. Well we used to go to the Garrick in Duluth. It was a great place to go. Then the Norshore, that was a nice place to go. Then they had smoking up in the balcony and the ceiling was like a sky moving all the time, it had the stars. Very nice, it was a beautiful place and all the first line movies were there. It didn’t cost much.

D.H. How much was an average movie back then?

W.S. Maybe .25 or .35 cents. Then during when we were younger, every Saturday, you could get into a movie, matinee, with an empty coffee can, Arco Coffee can. This was at the Star Theater in the West End.

D.H. Why?

W.S. That was your ticket.

D.H. I mean, why was that important for them to have?

W.S. Arco Coffee sponsored it.

D.H. Oh

W.S. They just bought out all the movie houses in town, Duluth, Proctor and Cloquet.

D.H. That was actually a good marketing idea.

W.S. Yeah, you bring an Arco Coffee can and you got in the movie. After the movie was over they would dump them in the back yard and we would pick them up and save them for the next Saturday.

D.H. What were some of your favorite movies that you remember, of that time?

W.S. One was a John Wayne movie and we had the great actors. Loretta Young and Edward G. Robinson. All the good ones, very good movies.

D.H. All the old classics. Did you bring your wife to some of the movies in Duluth?

W.S. Oh yes, we would go at least once a week.

D.H. So movies were a pretty common thing?

W.S. Yeah, that was a big thing and roller-skating.

D.H. And roller-skating. Where did you roller skate at?

W.S. At the Curling Club in Duluth and Pike Lake had a roller rink and so did Cloquet have a roller rink.

D.H. Was there any of them that was particularly good?

W.S. Well the best one was Duluth it was large, very large.

D.H. How long ago was the Curling Club building taken down?

W. S. I don’t know. I don’t know if it was in the 40’s when I was in the service, or after that I have no idea.

D.H. In the mid 30’s when the depression was on and FDR was the president, what were peoples take on FDR? Did people actually pay attention to politics much? Did they feel like he was doing a good job?

W.S. Oh yeah, he and Churchill were the best. He saved this country.

D.H. Was that a pretty strong held belief amongst people?

W.S. Yeah

D.H. What did you think when FDR said we weren’t going to war, did you believe him that we weren’t?

W.S. Well at the time.

D.H. Do you remember when he said that?

W.S. Yeah, at the time the United States was trying to be neutral but they were trying to supply the allied nations with their war material. They were doing a very good job until Japan decided that they should take a crack at the United States. But they were a little premature.

D.H. Had you signed up for the military before Pearl Harbor?

W.S. No, I was drafted in 43.

D.H. Before Pearl Harbor did you think war was coming?

W.S. Well, we had an idea. I remember very well December 7. Marge and I were walking down Superior Street when we heard the news.

D.H. Do you remember where on Superior Street you were just out of curiosity?

W.S. Probably between 2nd and 3rd Avenue West by Snyder Drug Store.

D.H. You remember real well.

W.S. Yeah, my wife worked there.

D.H. OK

W.S. So I think that is about where we were when.

D.H. So you worked at Snyder Drug when you were a teenager?

W.S. No, I was a meat cutter.
D.H. Meat cutter?

W.S. I started work for public market. They had five stores in Duluth at that time.

D.H. You worked at the one downtown?

W.S. Yeah, where Ficthner is now, 132 West First Street. I worked at all the other ones too.

D.H. Your wife, did she work too?

W.S. Yeah she was working at Snyder’s, then she worked at a clothing store, I can’t think of the name right now, a very good name, prominent name in Duluth. They had a large store in the West End.

D.H. So you remember Pearl Harbor, the day it happened?

W.S. Oh yes.

D.H. How did you hear about it, was it in the newspaper?

W.S. I don’t know, people were just talking about it, shouting about it and you know, we were just walking down Superior Street and all of a sudden we were at war. I suppose it was the public that heard the radio and were talking about it.

D.H. What was your immediate gut reaction to that?

W.S. Well, that we are going to have to get going and one day I would be in the service.

D.H. Were you and your future wife a little worried about it at the time?

W.S. No, we didn’t know anything about a war so why worry.

D.H. So you just kind of lived your lives until it forced you into it. You were drafted in 1943?

W.S. Yes

D.H. Up until 1943 were you still working as a meat cutter?

W.S. Yes, I was still a meat cutter.

D.H. Every year before because you were 18 by 1940 or 1939.

W.S. I graduated when I was 17.

D.H. 17. How old were you when you were drafted?

W.S. 19, I was 20.

D.H. Ok, were there prior drafts that you missed out?

W.S. Yeah, there was. I remember I was working in Duluth and I was an alternate for the Draft where they have so many guys going in the service, then they would have alternate, if somebody missed because they were sick or something you would be the one to go. I was an alternate for a couple of drafts until finally they had to move me up into the drafts.

D.H. When you were an alternate I imagine that was kind of a high anxiety time? Were you worried?

W.S. No, I wasn’t worried.

D.H. You were just, OK.

W.S. Just something you had to do when it came.

D.H. When you were finally drafted in 1943 tell me what happened, like did you get a letter in the mail, how were you notified?

W.S. Yeah, we got a letter in the mail and we were suppose to report to the Village Hall in Proctor on such and such a day, it is in that book there, and get on the bus and go down to Fort Snelling.

D.H. Now, I think, since we have an interesting, what I think I am going to do is I am actually going to go through your story and then when we are done with your story and then when we are done with your story then I will go through this. Or does this kind of chronologically go through your story?

W.S. Yeah

D.H. Does It? So it kind of starts in the beginning and goes to the end? The book does?

W.S. Yes

D.H. So, should we actually do the book first?

W.S. Whatever you want to do. It makes no difference to me. Like here now one of my introductions per noted is: these are the guys I went in the service with.

D.H. OK, we will start here then, we will start with this. So this is actually your induction letter?

W.S. Yes

D.H. I will be honest this is pretty incredible; I haven’t seen one of these. I have seen remakes but I have not seen an original. So that is pretty neat.

W.S. Is that right?

D.H. These are the guys that were called up with you?

W.S. Yup

D.H. Did you stay with any of these guys?

W.S. Well no, we all went in different ways.

D.H. But some of these guys were friends of yours?

W.S. Oh yes, some of them weren’t from Proctor some of them were from all around the country.

D.H. OK, anything else you want to talk about on these two pages?

W.S. No

D.H. Ok, so when you showed up to the Village Hall, where did you go from there?

W.S. Fort Snelling

D.H. Fort Snelling? And how long were you down in the Twin Cities?

W.S. I think we got there on a Thursday or Friday and we were to be shipped out to wherever we were going to go. So I decided we wouldn’t be shipped out until Monday so I went back home.

D.H. Was that the first time you had been to the Twin Cities?

W.S. No, I was their once before, 37.

D.H. What did you think of it when you first went?

W.S. Well, we didn’t see anything of it we were just at Fort Snelling and then got on a train and away we went.

D.H. You didn’t drive down you took a train back and forth between the Twin Cities and Duluth?
W.S. Bus

D.H. A bus, OK. Is this an invitation for a formal; are these to your wife?

W.S. I suppose, yes.

D.H. What happened after Fort Snelling, tell me the journey from Fort Snelling?

W.S. We went down to Lincoln, Nebraska and I was in the Air Force.

D.H. This is where you did the testing, correct?

W.S. Yes

D.H. What was the purpose behind the testing? Why did they want to test you?

W.S. I don’t know. I suppose it was when we were taking those intelligence tests and so forth and so on. My IQ was like 117 or over and so I was just picked out of the group to take these tests for specialized training.

D.H. How long were you in Lincoln, Nebraska?

W.S. Oh, I would say we were there for about two months.

D.H. What did you think of Nebraska? Was it a fun place?

W.S. Oh Yeah

D.H. What did you guys do for fun?

W.S. Well, I, while I was there, for some reason or another they always picked out my name and I was driving truck so I was driving around the town quite a bit.

D.H. You guys would go around and see the town?

W.S. Yup, see the girls and get acquainted. Then they had an agricultural school outside of Lincoln and we went from Lincoln, Nebraska from the Memory of Love Library that we were builted in, in Lincoln and that was right by their stadium, their football stadium. From there we went out to the Agricultural College, we were there for a while, more tests, all different kinds of tests.

D.H. Just like physical fitness tests to mental tests?

W.S. Mental and how quick you could solve problems, and stuff like that.

D.H. So almost two months of testing, then? That is pretty tough.
W.S. From there we went all over the country. I happened to go to Colorado.

D.H. What were some of the funnier things that you remember in Lincoln?

W.S. Oh just driving around and roller-skating.

D.H. Was there a better roller skating rink there than there was in Duluth?

W.S. No

D.H. Duluth was better?

W.S. But every Saturday we had a 25-mile hike in the morning. When the hike was over we were off for the rest of the day. We would go to town and go roller-skating.

D.H. It is a long workout and then to go roller-skating.

W.S. Yup

D.H. What time did you guys start that morning hike at?

W.S. About 7 o’clock after we went to breakfast.

D.H. I see these letters are from 1943, who are these letters from or to who?

W.S. They are to my wife.

D.H. From you, right?

W.S. Right

D.H. This is a photo of you in the Air Force. Was this taken in early 1943?

W.S. I would say so.

D.H. How often did you write back and forth between you and your wife?

W.S. Oh, at least a few times a week.

D.H. I can’t imagine that you guys talked too much by phone back then, or did you?

W.S. No

D.H. So this was your main form of communication?

W.S. Yes
D.H. Did you write to your parents ever back then?

W.S. Yes, I wrote to my mother.

D.H. More than you wrote to your wife?

W.S. No, No

D.H. About how often do you think, you’d write to your mother? About once every two weeks?

W.S. My mother maybe once a month.

D.H. Still that is pretty good writing every, twice a week that is quite a bit. Did your wife, I imagine write back to you?

W.S. Oh Yeah

D.H. Did you guys keep most of your letters?

W.S. I guess so.

D.H. That’s good! I like this envelope here, Lincoln, Nebraska; it is kind of an antique envelope. Is there any story behind this, Uncle Sam?

W.S. No, I suppose it is one of the Goodhue Guys.

D.H. Any story behind this bear?

W.S. That is in Golden, Colorado, up in the mountains where Buffalo Bill is buried. They have that mounted bear there.

D.H. So you guys just took some photos next to the bear it looks like then? Was Golden, Colorado your first stop in Colorado then?

W.S. Yup

D.H. How long were you in Golden, Colorado?

W.S. We were there from; it was either six or seven months.

D.H. Explain to me what happened in Golden, Colorado at that time.

W.S. Well, we were going to school. We went to school from eight o’clock in the morning to ten at night. We would have Saturday afternoon off.

D.H. You didn’t have Sunday off?

W.S. Well Sunday too. On our off time we mostly, mostly we’d, there was like a Bridgeman’s downtown in Golden and we would go down there and have sundae’s or something. They had a nice pool hall. We would go play pool. That was our recreation.

D.H. Was the schooling pretty intense?

W.S. Oh yes,

D.H. A lot of studying?

W.S. Yeah, it was a lot of studying and lots of, every week you would have a test and if you failed the test you would be shipped out.

D.H. Where would you go if you were shipped out?

W.S. A lot of guys went to Ft. Ord. We never knew where they went they were just gone. The next day they were gone, that’s all.

D.H. Did you ever hear from any of your friends who were actually over in Europe or in the Pacific during this time?

W.S. Well, yeah, I had one friend. He died not to long ago; I used to hear from him at least once a year. He was a Baptist Minister.

D.H. When he was serving he wrote letters back and forth to you?

W.S. Yeah

D.H. Did he serve in the European Theater?

W.S. Yeah, we were in the 66th division, we were both runners.

D.H. Oh, you were both in the same one.

W.S. He took the upper bunk and I took the lower bunk.

D.H. When you were in Colorado still, did you ever hear of any of your friends overseas at that point?

W.S. Well, the only one that I ever heard of was a fellow, he was going to school there, he was from Duluth, graduated from Denfeld, and same year as my wife and his name was Od Lee.

D.H. You heard from him every once and a while?
W.S. No, I used to see him once and a while after we got out of the service, he worked for the Mesabi Railroad and I would run into him once and a while but then he disappeared and I never seen him again.

D.H. I know you said your wife came and you guys got married in Colorado?

W.S. Yeah

D.H. You said in 43, correct?

W.S. Yeah

D.H. Did you get married in Golden, Colorado?

W.S. No, I got married in Denver.

D.H. OK, in Denver.

W.S. Golden was a town like Proctor. It was in fact the first capitol of Colorado. It was a gold mining town.

D.H. Hence the name Golden.

W.S. Coors brewery is there.

D.H. OK, was it there then? Was it a fun place to go to?

W.S. Well, I never went there, I didn’t drink beer, but the guys used to go there every Saturday afternoon and drink beer. They had free beer.

D.H. Just for the veterans, or anybody?

W.S. Anybody

D.H. Where did you go from Golden?

W.S. Little Rock, Arkansas, 66th division.

D.H. So you didn’t go to Denver?

W.S. No, from Golden, they closed the school we just got on the train and went to Little Rock.

D.H. So when your wife came and you got married you weren’t in Denver at the time?

W.S. Yeah, we were in Denver, we had probably, this is our, this is what we did every day.

D.H. It looks like a pretty vigorous class. Were there certain classes that you enjoyed more?

W.S. No, a lot of them were classes that I had done in high school, plain geometry, solid geometry, trigonometry and then I knew. I just had a feeling that the school was going to close so I intentionally flunked the test. I figured they would ship me back to my outfit. They called me into the office, the Colonel was sitting there, and he said, “Why did you flunk this test?” I said,” I want to go back to the Air Force, school is going to close.” He said, “no it isn’t, school isn’t going to close” I said, “yes it is.” He said, “you just stay here, you go back to school you will be alright.” And sure enough, I don’t think it was a month later it closed up.

D.H. Why did it close up?

W.S. Well, because we would never graduate before we would be of any use to the war effort.

D.H. Oh, and you saw that the war was coming to a close?

W.S. Well, it was in 44, the beginning of 44, and we wouldn’t graduate until about 46
And the war would be over by then. The government knew that so they closed it up. The only ones that stayed in specialized training were the doctors. Those that were studying to be a MD.

D.H. I want to once again reiterate this is impressive that you actually have your class pass, your actual book on your Army Specialized Training Program and you actually have a class schedule. I think historically speaking this is great, honestly this is great and you did a good job organizing it. Is this the letter on the Army Specialized Training letter?

W.S. Yeah

D.H. Is this a friend of yours?

W.S. His name is Bob Manona.

D.H. Was he a classmate of yours?

W.S. Yeah, he was a classmate from New York. This fellow here, his name is Eddie Stevens; he was born and raised in Austria.

D.H. In Austria?

W.S. He lived right around the corner from Heady Lamar.

D.H. How did he end up back here then?

W.S. Well, his parents decided that Hitler was going to invade Austria so they went, the family went from Austria to Egypt and across North Africa and ended up in New York and he was New York and he got drafted.

D.H. Was it kind of neat to be serving with guys from all over the country?

W.S. What?

D.H. I imagine this is the first time that you met people from all over the country and the world. Was it kind of interesting to meet these guys?

W.S. Yeah, he was the best man at our wedding. He is a good guy but he flunked out of school.

D.H. On purpose?

W.S. No, he didn’t make it after about six months; no it wasn’t six months because they were cutting them out. They told us there was 500 in the class and they only wanted 250 of us to survive. So he was one of them some where along the line shipped to Ft. Ord, California and I never heard from him again.

D.H. But he was your best man at the wedding?

W.S. Yeah, I don’t know what happened to him. All I know is he probably went to the Pacific someplace.

D.H. Because he went to California, is that why?

W.S. Yes, and they ship all those guys to the infantry.

D.H. So, this is your actual wedding photo?

W.S. Yeah, that is our wedding picture.

D.H. Was this out of the Duluth News paper, or what newspaper was this in?

W.S. Yeah, it is the Duluth newspaper. Probably. This is the house we rented in Golden. We rented that for $15.00 per month.

D.H. Really? That’s incredible. Actually, I take it this is a summer shot and this is a winter shot.

W.S. Yeah

D.H. How did your wife like moving to Colorado?

W.S. She liked it. We thought about going back after the war was over, but I guess we are glad we didn’t because, Golden was 20 miles from Denver and there were little towns along the way. They had a streetcar that run from Golden to Denver, pickup people and drop them off. Now there is so many Hispanics and colored and everything like that and it is one big city from Golden down to Denver.

D.H. It has changed a lot.

W.S. I don’t know if I would care to be there or not.

D.H. Was there any mountains close by?

W.S. Oh yes.

D.H. Did you ever go skiing?

W.S. Yeah

D.H. Did you ski actually growing up here in Duluth too, or not?

W.S. Yeah we skied a lot there and a lot in Austria.

D.H. Really, like cross-country or downhill?

W.S. Downhill.

D.H. When you went overseas you actually skied too, also? You skied in Austria?

W.S. Yes

D.H. We will talk about this later when we get there then. That will probably be a neat story.

W.S. This fellow here he was from Nashwauk. His name is Frank Peachua, he happened to be CQ that day and I took a picture of him.

D.H. Where is this picture at?

W.S. Our house is right there where we rented and this is the Mesa right behind the house.

D.H. Oh, is this on top of the Mesa?
W.S. No, this on top on the other side there. It is where Buffalo Bill is buried.

D.H. Were there any benefits to be married in the military at that time?

W.S. No, not really.

D.H. OK, I imagine you were happy to at least be together?

W.S. Oh yes

D.H. I imagine that cut down on you having to drive guys around.

W.S. Yeah. This is a fellow that was in our outfit at AST Program and he was from Minneapolis. He got sick and they discharged him and he went back to the cities and he went to school.

D.H. Did you know him personally then?

W.S. Yeah

D.H. Is there any story about these family allowances that you want to talk about?

W.S. No, I think that is something about Marge’s rations.

D.H. That is a ration book right there.

W.S. Yeah, that is a ration book.

D.H. Do you want to describe the ration system at all?

W.S. Well they had points, I think there was red and green and each family would get so many of these stamps.

D.H. All families, right?

W.S. Yeah, to buy what they needed. At work we would take in these stamps and we would have to count them at the end of the day and then deposit them in the bank. Send them in to be deposited. I was thinking they couldn’t possibility check all these stores that are sending in, depositing all these stamps, so I think we put about 500 in an envelope and weigh them. From that point on I would just weigh them, never counted them. I had the U.S.S. Paducah as a customer and they didn’t have stamps. They would call up and order a hindquarter of beef. You would be surprised the amount of beef the Paducah ordered, because all they had to do was call and say I have to have a hindquarter of beef and they would send it to me.

D.H. So you actually brought the meet to the guys on the Paducah?
W.S. Yeah, so then when I went in the service the boss asked me, “how in the world did you get so many stamps, in your bank account, at the bank?” I said” well, if I tell you, somebody might ask you some day and you will be able to tell them and if I don’t tell you won’t know how I did it.” So I had stamps like crazy, in the bank account.

D.H. So that worked out in your favor, then kind of?

W.S. Well, it worked out in the boss’s favor because it was just something.

D.H. Do you ever remember seeing the U.S.S. Paducah?

W.S. Oh yeah.

D.H. Did you ever go on the ship?

W.S. I don’t recall that I did.

D.H. But you definitely remember it?

W.S. What we would do, at that time the store had deliveries and the delivery man would just come and pick up the stuff and bring it down there.

D.H. OK, it is just interesting to me because I have done four or five oral interviews with guys on the Paducah. So it is always interesting to see.

W.S. No, I was never on there.

D.H. Did you ever think of joining any of the reserve units?

W.S. No

D.H. You just wanted to wait until your time was called?

W.S. I was not a good soldier.

D.H. Are these some of the places you went?

W.S. Yeah, in Denver.

D.H. Did you take your honeymoon in Denver?

W.S. Well, we didn’t have a honeymoon. We went to our Wedding in a streetcar and we went home to our apartment in a streetcar.

D.H. You guys obviously went to some of the places there?

W.S. Well, these are just stuff that we picked up along the way that, you know, advertising that different places had.

D.H. So you didn’t check out any of these museums?

W.S. No, well I think we did. Come to think of it we did, there was a place up, I think northern part of town, Colfax Avenue and that is where we got married. They had a different Museum up there that we went to.

D.H. Do you remember what the museum was called?

W.S. No

D.H. Did you enjoy the museum?

W.S. Oh Yeah.

D.H. Any certain thing you remember about it?

W.S. Well, seeing the different things. That is when we ended up in Little Rock.

D.H. Did your wife come with you to Little Rock?

W.S. What?

D.H. Your wife, did she come with you to Little Rock?

W.S. No, she went home.

D.H. OK Home, as in?

W.S. Duluth.

D.H. Ok, in Little Rock that is where you got put in with the 66th?

W.S. Yes

D.H. This is the 66th patch, correct?

W.S. Right

D.H. How did you like Little Rock?

W.S. I didn’t, where we were I didn’t like it at all. Where we were at it was either up or down hills and full of rocks.

D.H. It wasn’t an enjoyable experience for you at all, then?

W.S. No, it was WWI hutches and it was wintertime and no heat, it was tough.

D.H. You went home to visit your wife while you were in Little Rock?

W.S. No

D.H. It says you received your furlough and you will arrive in Duluth on Sunday. Oh no that was Alabama.

W.S. That was Alabama. The 66th division went from Little Rock to Camp Rucker, Alabama and that was when I finally got a furlough to go home for two weeks.

D.H. How long were you in Little Rock?

W.S. Oh I don’t know, probably six, eight months.

D.H. Six, eight months, so this is a good time but you said you just didn’t enjoy it much?

W.S. No

D.H. How about Alabama, was that any better?

W.S. No, a lot of snakes and a lot of, in the summertime it got hot.

D.H. A little hotter than it is in Minnesota in the summer?

W.S. Oh yes, we were only 40 miles from Tampa, Florida. Just north of Florida a little ways it was real bad.

D.H. What type of activities did you do in Alabama? Like what was the Military training you for?

W.S. It was infantry training and bibwacs. You would have week ends off and we were only suppose to go 40 miles from camp but we would stretch it a little bit and go down to Panama City and lay on the beach. If you had the money to get a motel room you couldn’t get one anyway they were all filled up so we would sleep on the beach.

D.H. That was OK?

W.S. Sure

D.H. I have heard good things about that beach was it enjoyable?

W.S. Oh yeah, wake up early in the morning and watch the big sea turtles going back into the water. They would be up on the land in the evening and would be walking back in the water. Large ones!

D.H. How often would you guys do that?

W.S. Maybe every couple three weeks or something like that. When I got to Alabama I was, well we were out in the field doing drills and that stuff and they called my name and brought me back into the kitchen, the company kitchen and they have had several whole lambs laying in the kitchen and the cooks didn’t know what to do with them. I said what do you want to do with them? They said well we would like to have roasts. I said I will fix them up so that the guys, nobody liked lamb in the service, everybody was against lamb, they didn’t want anything to do with it.

D.H. Why was that?

W.S. I don’t know, well I said I will fix them up so they don’t even know what they are eating. So I boned them out and rolled them and stuffed, put onions and celery and carrots inside and rolled them up. Sliced them up real good and everybody ate the lamb and didn’t know what they were eating.

D.H. So you’re past occupation helped you out pretty good?

W.S. So then from that point on I more or less worked in the kitchen.

D.H. Did you enjoy that?

W.S. Oh yeah, because you had more time to yourself and you had, I mean I didn’t have to do any of the hard work it was easy work in the kitchen.

D.H. Plus you had food to.

W.S. What?

D.H. You had food too.

W.S. Yeah, it was good. The cooks always slept, in every barracks the first and second floor, You would have rooms at the end of the barracks and the cooks would sleep in there so you had your own room.

D.H. So that was nice. This is a picture of your wife I imagine?

W.S. Did she ever come and visit you in Alabama or in Little Rock? Oh yeah, not in Little Rock but in Alabama twice. Once or twice. She came there one time and stayed for a while then she came down again when I was going to get a furlough and we came back to Duluth together
D.H. Ok, did you ever bring her down to Panama City?

W.S. I don’t know.

D.H. Its sounds like a fun thing. This is obviously her ticket on the rail line and the bus?
These are your actual clothing material and this is a training guide? How often did this Camp Rucker newspaper come out?

W.S. Probably once a week or every other week.

D.H. Was this something you read pretty thourghly?

W.S. Yeah

D.H. I see this thing from Broadway did you guys go to New York?

W.S. Yeah, from Camp Rucker, when they were going to ship is overseas and we went to Camp Shanks, New Jersey or was it New York. Where was Camp Shanks?

D.H. How long were you in Alabama, about six months?

W.S. Quite some time because it was November of 44 that we shipped overseas. So think it was October that we went to Camp Shanks.

D.H. What did they train you for at Camp Shanks, just to get ready?

W.S. Well, there again I was lucky. They made me a cook and we were feeding 5,000 people each meal where I was cooking. We had 14 guys cooking and 150 KP’s.

D.H. What is a KP?

W.S. Kitchen Police, they would wash the pots and pans.

D.H. OK, what did KP actually stand for or did it stand for Kitchen Police?

W.S. Yeah

D.H. And they actually washed pots and pans.

W.S. They were the slaves. In those days we had coal stoves and there was 14 of them, seven in a row back to back. We would actually, in the morning, for breakfast we would have scrambled eggs, we would have fried eggs and we would have boiled eggs. The guy that wanted fried eggs we would actually fry them for him right in front as they were going through the line.

D.H. Really
W.S. They had good chow there. The fellows that would come back from overseas we would have T-bone steaks for them.

D.H. So you definitely treated the guys that came back a little bit better?

W.S. So we were there for it must have been three weeks or more.

D.H. How did you find out that you were going to be moved overseas?

W.S. Well, when we left Camp Rucker we knew we were going overseas. We just stopped at Camp Shanks to get, waiting for a boat.

D.H. Did you enjoy New York when you were there?

W.S. Oh yeah

D.H. Obviously you went to Broadway it looks like.

W.S. Yeah, actually we would go over the fence every night and go into New York.

D.H. Were you not suppose to?

W.S. Oh no

D.H. But it was pretty common it sounds like?

W.S. I think so, there was three or four of us that would take off and go into New York.

D.H. What were some of the most entertaining things about New York?

W.S. Well, we used to of course visit the taverns, the roller rink; they had big ones there.

D.H. I imagine they were better than Duluth’s.

W.S. They were bigger.

D.H. So these are some of your souvenir shots from over in New York?

W.S. Yeah, these are some of the cooks I worked with.

D.H. OK, Do you remember the day that you were actually sent off?

W.S. It would be, probably be around let’s see, around the 20th of November 1944.

D.H. Were you shipped on the U.S.S. George Washington at the time?

W.S. Yes

D.H. What did you think of the ship?

W.S. Well it was a luxury liner in WWI that belonged to Germany and the United States captured the ship and made it into a troop ship.

D.H. Did we capture it during WWI or WWII?

W.S. Yeah, WWI it was captured and made it into a troop ship for WWII.

D.H. Was it a pretty nice ship?

W.S. Oh, yes, real nice.

D.H. How many guys fit on that one boat?

W.S. I have no idea how many there was but there was probably the whole division or ½, no the whole division was on the boat.

D.H. Was this actually on the Washington here?

W.S. Yeah

D.H. Some units that I talked to they weren’t allowed to actually take photos.

W.S. What’s that?

D.H. Some units they weren’t allowed to take photos, but you guys were?

W.S. I didn’t have a camera of my own and these are some photos that I got from some other guys.

D.H. This is you guys crossing the Atlantic?

W.S. Yes

D.H. These are great photos. Is there any certain story behind these photos?

W.S. No, just pictures of us guys on a boat.

D.H. Was it pretty cold?

W.S. No, when we went overseas we went from New York City and we went south to the Azores, we were in a convoy, we went south to the Azores then across the Atlantic southern route. We landed in South Hampton, England.
D.H. During this time when you were crossing the Atlantic were you guys worried about any of the German U-boats?

W.S. Well, we had a big convoy and once and a while they would be dropping depth charges and stuff like that, you know. At one time I heard they forced one U-boat to surface in the middle of the convoy. I didn’t see it but I heard about it.

D.H. Was it something you guys talked about on the ship?

W.S. No, going over on the ship to, there again they called me off and made me a meat cutter. I was cutting meat on the ship and for the soldiers, you know. It was a good job and it made the day go faster, and at the same time I was able to eat with the crew and I was able to take fresh water showers with the crew. Where as the other guys were taking salt-water showers.

D.H. Fresh water I imagine is much better?

W.S. Oh yes, so it was. They had me doing that as soon as I got on the ship and I wasn’t there more than a few hours, they called me in and I was a cook.

D.H. So did you ever think that your meat cutting experience would ever help you out so much?

W.S. No. I didn’t. It just, I don’t know why, they must have had in my service record, they must have had the fact that I was a meat cutter, because I was always called out when they needed one.

D.H. So this in England, right here?

W.S. Yeah

D.H. What did you think of England?

W.S. Oh it was nice. We were in an area called Door Chester. A small town and most of the houses had thatched roofs.

D.H. What did you think when you first saw it?

W.S. It was quaint, you know, pretty quaint.

D.H. Was it pretty different than you expected?

W.S. Yes, yes the people of course were different.

D.H. What was different about the people?

W.S. Well, the biggest thing was the fact that there was no class distinction, no color distinction. The colored boys were treated pretty good. The girls didn’t mind going out with colored guys at all. I remember when we first got into England; we were marching down the street to our barracks, where we were going to stay. As we were going down the street, there was a colored officer and he and this white lady were kind of making out right there on the street, kissing and hugging. I remember as we were marching, the 1st Sergeant seen that and called us all to attention and we had to march in formation until we got passed them Then there was a time when the 101st, which you don’t hear about that at all. The colored guys were trying to invade a dance they had on Saturday night and they hung 12 colored guys from the lamppost.

D.H. For trying to go to the dance?

W.S. Yeah, the 101st did that.

D.H. The 101st Airborne?

W.S. Yeah, that was up in the northern part of England.

D.H. I have never heard of it. So you interacted with a lot of other divisions, it sounds like?

W.S. No, I wasn’t.

D.H. But I mean like you heard about these guys from the 101st?

W.S. Yeah, we heard about it. When we were in England we couldn’t have pocketknives or anything when we went to town.

D.H. What was the reasoning, because you were going to get into a fight?

W.S. Well, so you wouldn’t get in a fight and cut somebody. They were very stricked about that.

D.H. The English people were they nice to you?

W.S. Oh yes, they were very nice to us. In fact they were overly nice I would say.

D.H. Were there a lot of guys in your unit hooking up with some of the English girls? Was that kind of a common thing?

W.S. What’s that?

D.H. I have heard of a lot of veterans that went to England they ended up chasing girls over there too.
W.S. Oh yes, yeah there was a lot of that. Especially, they would get a weekend pass; I never got a weekend pass. I finally got one and I went up to the CQ to get my pass from the Sergeant up there in charge and he said all passes are canceled, you are all going overseas. That was Christmas Eve.

D.H. How long were you in England before you got sent?

W.S. Well, from about the 27th of November until 25th of December.

D.H. That’s right, your Christmas. So it took seven days to cross the Atlantic?

W.S. Yeah

D.H. Before I forget, was there a lot of guys that got seasick trying to cross the Atlantic?

W.S. Oh yes, yes, yes, they were just terrible. The lower part of the ship where the guys were sleeping, the bunks used to be six high. When I got down there I decided I was going up in the top bunk. Each area had these 55-gallon drums for the guys to throw up in. I never got sick but I went to look one day, after we had been out there three, four days, five days what ever, to see how full that barrel was getting, and I helped it out a little bit. But I never got sick, and most of the time I didn’t sleep in my bunk I slept, I would go up on deck, it was warm and I would get next to the conning tower that is where the heat was coming from and that was where I would sleep.

D.H. I take it; it was less bouncy up on top?

W.S. Well, it wasn’t bouncy at all because the ship was so big it would just plow through the water.

D.H. But some guys were still getting pretty sick?

W.S. Oh yes, I had one guy, I saw one guy that was just like a silver color. They were carrying him to the hospital, the ship’s hospital, it was just terrible the guys getting sick. But most of them got sick when they were in the chow line, they would smell that food, and just the smell of the food would make them seasick, plus the rolling of the ship. It would roll back and forth it wouldn’t bounce around so much.

D.H. I am going to bring you back to England again. Was there anything special about England that you want to make sure you talk about that I haven’t made you bring up already? Like any certain memory of England that you thought was funny or interesting?

W.S. No, nothing that was out of the ordinary. We would just go around and look at stuff, nothing exciting.

D.H. OK, so then where did you go from there?

W.S. Well like I said on Christmas Eve, we left our Turkey dinner on the table, we got on the ships and got to South Hampton and our outfit, my company, was suppose to get on the ship, it was called the Cheshire.

D.H. Was this an English ship?

W.S. English wooden channel boat. They had all kinds of mix up in the loading at that time and so we ended up getting on the ship called the Leopoldville.

D.H. Was this just your company?

W.S. No, it was probably about half a division.

D.H. OK, what company were you in?

W.S. I was L Company of the 264th, 66th infantry.

D.H. Do you want to describe the Leopoldville at all?

W.S. What’s that?

D.H. Do you want to describe the ship you crossed in? Was it a fairly large ship?

W.S. No, it was a small wooden channel boat.

D.H. Still a small wooden ship?

W.S. About three miles out of Cherbourg the Cheshire was torpedoed.

D.H. Which was the one you were supposed to be on?

W.S. They lost about 800 men that night. We were up on the deck of the Leopoldville, well I happened to be up in the, you know the bells rang and everything so we all got up, we were in the holds, and went up on deck and stood on deck. I happened to be looking at the forward part of the ship and I saw the torpedo go right in front of us.

D.H. So you actually saw the torpedo?

W.S. Yeah, it missed us. Then the time after that I thought did I actually see that or didn’t I? Was I just dreaming or did I see it? Well then I met a fellow in Moose Lake when I moved down here that was also on the ship. He was up in the front of the ship the same as I was. He asked me, “Did you see that torpedo go by?” I said “Yes, I seen it but I wasn’t sure, after a couple of years, if I seen it or not.

D.H. That had to be pretty exciting when you saw that torpedo go by?

W.S. Yeah, it looked like it went by in front of the ship, like from here to the water.

D.H. Man, pretty big, I imagine? Was it pretty close to the surface?

W.S. Yeah, yeah it was close up to the surface because this was at night, right around close to midnight.

D.H. When did you find out that the Cheshire was hit by a torpedo?

W.S. When it was hit. It was right along side of us.

D.H. Oh, you saw it get hit?

W.S. We didn’t see it get hit but we heard it. We heard the torpedo blasts and that is when they sounded the alarm and we all went up on deck.

D.H. I imagine that would be a scary experience at the time, or were you more worried about the Cheshire?

W.S. No, it wasn’t a scary experience because, very orderly, everybody took their time and got up on deck and stood there. We could see the Cheshire over off in the distance a little bit, and it was spinning around just like a cork. Of course we couldn’t help them because we were full of people and there wasn’t, that I seen, any destroyer escorts or anything around them that came close to them. We sat there for a long time and then finally started up the motors and went into Sherborge.

D.H. How long of a boat ride was it from?

W.S. Well, I suppose it was like about, a good 36 hours, I think.

D.H. 36 hours? Was everyone pretty excited when you guys actually got to land?

W.S. What’s that?

D.H. Were you guys excited when you saw land?

W.S. Well, everybody was very calm and we got to the dock in Sherborge and we got off the ship. It was a big long concrete dock, and we were all interested. On the dock across from us was a hospital ship and they were loading wounded and they have these two wheel carts with a slab on top of it. From the time we got there, and we were there for several hours, they were wheeling these guys in that ship and all of them came and their feet were not covered with a blanket or anything they all had frozen feet. It went on for hours loading that ship, it was just unbelievable. So we were busy watching that and pretty soon, we must have been there for eight to ten hours I suppose then they loaded us all in trucks and we went to an airfield by Renz, France. We pitched our tents; we were sleeping in pup tents. Colder than hell! We would take three guys, one would take half a tent, each man had half a tent, so we would have one half of the tent on the ground and the other two. We would sleep three of us in the tent, the guy that slept in the middle he got kind of warm so he didn’t freeze so much. We would take turns sleeping in the middle. Then News Year Eve we got loaded on trucks again and we took off up to the front line near Loiret, France on the Breast Peninsula and we were rolling along and pretty soon you could hear some machine guns, and of course all the truck drivers were colored guys. All the trucks just stopped and the truck drivers said you have to get out and walk from here we ain’t going up there.

D.H. Oh really?

W.S. Yeah, so we must have walked about three miles in the middle of the night. Then during the day, the last day we were in Wrens Airfield we had some sort of, well the first day we were in there, they were calling the guys trying to find out who had died, who was living and who was missing and so forth and so on. After that was over they called my name, and they said step forward, you are a runner. I asked one of the guys “What the hell is a runner?” he said, “you will find out.” So I was a runner all during the fest ivies I suppose you call them.

D.H. So it sounds like when you were made a runner it wasn’t arbitrary, just kind of stand forward and you are a runner then the next person and they would just assign positions?

W.S. Yeah, everybody else was part of the infantry platoons, you know. I was a runner and as such I was back at the battalion and then taking messages and maps and stuff up to the front lines. We only had to go every fourth day. You made one trip and then you got three days off.

D.H. Were you happy that you were made a runner?

W.S. No, I didn’t know what the job was.

D.H. I mean, after you had had it for a while?

W.S. Well, I was a little bit happy because I was on my own and I was not responsible to anybody and nobody was responsible to me, the only thing I had to do was make sure I got up to the front line delivered my messages and got back home again, back again without getting killed.

D.H. Was that pretty challenging?

W.S. It was at times, yeah. There was one intersection we went through this town of Henny Boint, of course we were always walking you know, and the Germans had an 88 gun zeroed in on the intersection of this town and so we would kind of crawl up to the thing and look both ways to see if there was any obstructions then back up a little ways and then run like hell. Usually to make it across before the Germans would fire a round you got across.

D.H. You were OK with that, you were used to doing it?

W.S. Yeah, another time we, there was a jeep going up to the front line and I got a ride with the jeep. We were going across this field and it was muddier than heck and the thing was churning in the mud, they got, they were shooting mortars at us and the rounds were dropping right behind us as we were going across the field because it was all muddy and they dropped down in the mud and didn’t cause any damage. That was a little bit scary.

D.H. It sounds like it. Lets go back to your journey when you first got into the front lines. Where did you guys move along through France and what did you think of France and the people there?

W.S. Well, you were up there and you were there you had to stay right where you were. We did get a chance to go to town, a few times. We would load up in a truck, a bunch of us and they would take us. We did go to towns like Quimpare. We got to see one of the old Roman Coliseum’s that they had built in France during the Roman, well that was in, I think Compare, I think that was the capitol of France at that time. The Roman’s owned almost all of France at that time and they built this big coliseum. It looked like the one you see in the picture, I think there is a picture in there someplace.

D.H. Yeah, there are actually your orders too. Who are some of these guys here, is this actually in France?

W.S. No, this is a fellow that was a minister, Bruce Cummings was his name. This fellow over here, Collins was his last name, Bill Collins. Those are pictures of myself.

D.H. You earned your Bronze Star at what point, was it early on?

W.S. I don’t know I got it 50 years after I got of the service.

D.H. So when you received the Bronze Star what did they say you earned it for?

W.S. All they said it was in conjunction with the Combat Infantry Badge and sent it to me in the mail, and that was it.

D.H. Usually there is a little bit more to that.

W.S. Well, what happened, I don’t know if you ever knew John Brown, he was a service officer in Carlton, Carlton County Service Officer and a good friend of mine. I called him up one day and said I am looking at my discharge papers and I didn’t get these medal that they talk about in my discharge. He said, “you didn’t” I said “no”. Then he said I will send you some applications, you fill them out and send them in, probably a year or so before you get the medals but you will get them. So it was probably more than a year that is when I got the Bronze Star and the service medals. I had the Good Conduct Medal and the Combat Infantry Badge, I got that overseas, you had to be up on the front line for four months before you got that. So I got that, in fact, one day when I was at, the supply sergeant said I have a Bronze Star for you. So he gave it to me, and I left it when we moved out of there, I left it. I said hell I don’t; I am not supposed to have a Bronze Star, so I left it. Then I got this one with my name on it.

D.H. But there wasn’t any certain action that you did?

W.S. No, not that I remember. Well we all got the Bronze Battle Star; I said the only thing I can think of is because I stayed alive. If I had been dead I never would have got it.

D.H. That is true. Any stories behind these photos right here, of this group of guys?

W.S. It was in France, different places in France.

D.H. OK, Camp Phillip Morris what was that?

W.S. That was on the way home.

D.H. So on the other side, are these near the end of the trip?

W.S. Well those are, the kids have them mixed up a little bit, these are when I was up in Germany when the war was over and I was, they sent me to the 42nd division.

D.H. OK, I just want to make sure I include all the.

W.S. This is after the war was over in Marseilles. It was our job to re deploy the troops to the Pacific.

D.H. I will get to this later; I don’t want to skip too much in France. So keep talking about what was going on in France. You were running messages back and forth between the front.

W.S. Yeah

D.H. Who would you usually report the messages back too?

W.S. Well what I would do is take the package or whatever they gave me, I would pick them up at battalion headquarters and then I would take them up to what they called the command post, drop them off and they would distribute them there.

D.H. You weren’t given a jeep to do this you walked back and forth?

W.S. Yeah, a lot of times I wouldn’t even take my rifle I just had a knife with me in my boot.

D.H. I imagine a compass was pretty handy?

W.S. Well, we didn’t have a compass either.

D.H. You didn’t have a compass?

W.S. No, I was probably only one of the two fellows that knew their way around the woods a little bit, most of them were from New England and never off on a gravel road, probably. So, I was able, I didn’t have any trouble getting around.

D.H. How long were you in France before you started moving it sounds like? Where did you go from France? Did you go right Germany after that?

W.S. No, when the war was over in France we were shipped to Marseilles, France
and our outfit was processing troops for re deployment to the Pacific. The 66th division, the whole division was processing troops. We had three camps, I was at Arles.

D.H. Was the war in Europe still going on at this point?

W.S. No, the war was over then.

D.H. It was?

W.S. They were sending the troops from Europe to the Pacific. This camp that I was in was mostly colored guys, truck drivers, that we were processing. We would take them in and take their clothes away. Then they made me cook again.

D.H. Were you happy about that?

W.S. Well, yeah because we had Germans that were doing the cooking, POW’s, and I was in charge of the POW camp, actually. The one camp I was locked up with the POW’s.

D.H. Why were you locked up?

W.S. I was in charge of that camp and so they closed the gate and pad locked it and I was in there with them Germans. I was the only GI in there.

D.H. I am going to go back a little bit. When you heard that Hitler died, did you feel like the war was coming to a close? When it finally ended were you excited for it, did you guys celebrate?

W.S. Well the thing is you see the war in Europe ended the 9th of May and our war didn’t end until the 10th and 11th. On the 10th and 11th in the morning the Germans, we had 50,000 Germans bottled up. Ours was a holding action; we were just keeping these bottled up. Well on the 9th, 10th and 11th they in the morning they emptied all our cannons. They were shooting to beat hell, getting artillery fire. Our artillery sunk 10 ships while we were there.

D.H. Really?

W.S. Yeah, we had these piper cubs for artillery spotting and the spotters would go up in the piper cubs and if they saw ships come into the harbor then they would call in the artillery to shoot at them. They actually shot, sunk, 10 ships in the harbor at Laurette.

D.H. When the shooting was finally done on the 11th were you happy then?

W.S. Oh yeah, because on the 11th we.

D.H. I mean did you have some drinks that night I imagine?

W.S. We had, well we were at a field, our company took us to a field and the German soldiers were coming past us. They were putting their rifles, so we had like a haystack for the rifles that they put there. Of course they had a lot of money and some of the guys that had cigarettes were getting as much as $400.00 a carton for cigarettes that day. I didn’t have any cigarettes so I didn’t get no $400.00. But if you had a carton of cigarettes you could get up to $400.00 for it because they had nothing but money that was all they had. So they went back then the truck came, they made a big long table, the truck came. It was full of booze and you could just go up there and help yourself to anything you wanted. They had everything you could think

D.H. Where did the truck of booze come from?

W.S. I don’t know

D.H. You didn’t mind.

W.S. No, so everybody could go fill your canteen full and there was a funny thing, that day, everybody got drunk, that wanted to. The officer, there was like a root cellar in this field, and the officers had their command post in this root cellar. One of the guys by the name of Thompson, he was from, I don’t know, from Kentucky or Tennessee or someplace like that. He got drunk and he was on the top of this root cellar thing you know, and he said come out captain you SOB, I am going to kill you, I am going to shoot you, he was just raising cane about he was going to kill the captain. Of course everybody was standing in a big circle just looking at this situation. I looked and thought, well somebody has to do something, so I set my rifle down and I walked up and I got up on top of this dug out, and I said Thompson give me your gun, he looked at me for a minute then he gave me his gun. Then we walked back to the table with all the booze and had another drink and I don’t know what ever happened to Thompson after that, never seen him again.

D.H. It sounds like you guys definitely had a celebration then for sure.

W.S. Yeah, yeah, I don’t know if Thompson ever, if they ever did anything to him or not, but I never seen him again.

D.H. Either way it sounds like it was a good thing that you did that? Or else who knows what would have happened.

W.S. I didn’t know what was going to happen, you know, so I thought somebody needs to do something so I just put my rifle down and went up, it was about from here to the shore, maybe a little farther, that I had to walk to that thing and told him to give me his gun, he looked at me for a minute then he handed me his gun, I put my arm around him and said lets go have a drink.

D.H. That is a good story. So what did you guys do after that?

W.S. Well, after the war was over is when we went to Marseiie to process troops for redeployment. We were there from. I think May until September.

D.H. Did you think you were going to go over to Japan?

W.S. Well, there was one outfit that came through and Lieutenant asked me if I wanted to go? He said I will fix it up so you can join in my outfit and you can go with me. I said no, I will stay here with my own outfit. I wasn’t going to volunteer to go, no way in hell.

D.H. Earlier when you said you weren’t a good soldier, why do you say this? It sounds like you were a pretty good soldier.

W.S. Well, I don’t think so because I didn’t enjoy the Army. I went AWOL several times for a day or so. The first weekend I was in the Army I went AWOL.

D.H. You came back voluntarily?

W.S. Sure, then the time I had a physical for overseas I was in town without a pass and I came back and, where have you been? Everybody had a physical for overseas. I said I was up in the other end of campground sleeping; I just woke up and walked back home again. They couldn’t prove anything so they said OK and I had a physical all by myself the next day.

D.H. It sounds like you definitely came back though.

W.S. Oh yeah, I always came back. In New York we would go over and jump the fence and go to town.

D.H. I imagine you got some pretty good stories in all that.

W.S. What?

D.H. You must have had some good memories from going to New York?

W.S. Oh yeah, yeah.

D.H. When you were helping with the redeployment, I will move you back to there again, was it a little bit easier knowing the war was over in Europe?

W.S. Yeah, while we were processing troops, you know, like I say, we were there until September well in August is when the war was over in Japan. That was a hell of a night. Everybody was celebrating, shooting going on and it everybody was celebrating that night, but no booze. Then they closed up that camp and then I was shipped to the 42nd division and sent to Austria.

D.H. What do you think of Austria?

W.S. Nice, nice the people were nice, nice country, it was up in the Alps, we went skiing almost every day and there they made me a cook again.

D.H. That doesn’t sound like a bad thing though.

W.S. I was a cook at one town called Middleton; I was there for a while. Then they sent me up in the mountains, we had 150 prisoners, we had 20 GI’s and it was like a little logging camp. A cook shack here and warehouse and two rows. One side was American troops and the other side was prisoners of war. I think prisoners were doing, they were clearing for a power line from Salzburg to Vienna, right up on top of the mountains, we were 11 miles from Italy at that time. They had these 100; all these prisoners, and the guys used to walk them out to where they had to work and then guard them all day and walk them back at night. Well, it got so that these prisoners didn’t have any place to go. They had to cook their own food, they had a big kettle out in the middle of the yard here, they cooked their food. So the guys didn’t even go with them they would send them out by themselves and they would come back.

D.H. So the prisoners they didn’t put up too many fights?

W.S. No, no. they were nice guys; they were all Austrians, SS Troopers. Then one day just before I left, I was in charge of the kitchen, in the meanwhile while I was there we would go hunting every day, deer hunting, we would shoot deer and they would take them in and I would cut them up. Then we would make roasts, chops and stuff. Then we would trade with the natives for potatoes because all we had was those dried potatoes. Then we had potatoes, gravy and meat that worked out real good. One time one of the guys by the name of Boone shot a stag, it dressed out over 400 lbs., it was big. We cut it up and had the horns up on the water bag and a couple of French guys, we were in a French zone then, came by an they were talking to one of the prisoners and wanted to know who shot the stag. They pointed, I was standing in the door of the eat shanty, they said well he was one of the guys. I just reached over with my foot and put rifle cartage in the chamber, of my rifle. He stood there for a while and looked at me then decided he didn’t want to tackle me, so they took off and went down the road. Then a couple days later a lady came walking in to the camp and she had a little boy about 9,10 years old with her. I asked her what she wanted and she said she heard her husband was here. I said oh, what is his name? She told me and I said yeas he is here, he will be back after a little while when they come back from work. I said you are welcome to stay, so she stayed there and they came back and they had their little reunion. I asked her, what are you going to do now? Well, she didn’t know what she was going to do so I said how would you like to cook for these GI’s, there are 20 of them, Oh, yeah, I can do that. I told her I would have the menu printed for you in German so you would know what to fix. We can fix up a place in the storage room so you have a place to stay and she said that would be fine. I told her we have 20 GI’s, 150 prisoners and you will be a shack all by yourself at night. I don’t think we can do that, I think probably we had better have your husband stay with you. Well that was fine and they were there until I left the company and was on my way home. They shipped me from there down to Salzburg. I was in Salzburg for a few months. There again I was, they made a cook out of me when I got down there, so I was cooking. But then when I was there I met a fellow I went to high school with, he was driving a tank retriever.

D.H. You met a guy from high school in Salzburg?

W.S. Yeah

D.H. I bet that was kind of?

W.S. Yeah, I was sitting in the hotel one night having a beer with the guys and I looked up at the door, it was all-dark, and here in the door, his name was Bob Provinski. He had two Red Cross girls with him and I hollered at him you know. The next day we went to the motor pool and we swiped an ambulance. We could go in the gas station and get gas for that. We made every darn ski lodge in that part of Austria for the next few days.

D.H. Was the skiing pretty good?

W.S. Yeah, and we slept one night at that castle that was in the Sound of Music.

D.H. You stayed there? Nice

W.S. Yeah, not to far from there was a cable car that went up into the mountains, 1500 feet or something like that. Up there they had a Chalet and a ski resort and the officers were having skiing lessons and they had some people from Austria that were giving them skiing
lessons if they wanted so we took a cable car up there and went skiing for the day.

D.H. You don’t hear that too often. That is pretty fun.

W.S. And up there, you know, there was snow on the ground and you didn’t have to have a coat on, it was that warm.

D.H. That is different then here.

W.S. It looked like Lake Tahoe area, those places.

D.H. Did you have the wooden skies?

W.S. Yeah, we had military skies.

D.H. Those weren’t too easy to come by, I imagine, or were they?

W.S. Oh yeah.

D.H. Can you tell me anything about these things you have here?

W.S. This is before, when we left France, we went up to the Relogin Bridge. You heard of that? Our outfit where the bridge crossed the Rhine River.

D.H. I want you to talk about it a little bit if you can.

W.S. This train stopped there and we spent a little time there. It was, well at the end of the bridge there was stone towers on each side that connected the cables for the bridge. Just all kind of spent rounds were lying on the ground there. From there we went to

D.H. Did you yourself see any combat in that area?

W.S. No, it was after the war, right after, maybe about the 15th of May. From there, from Belgium we went, first of all we went all through France, southern France, Luxenburg, Belgium Reamogen River and we stayed at Cologne for a couple of weeks and then we went to a place called
Winigen on the Moselle. It was where they had a lot of wine; vineyards and they made a lot of wine.

D.H. Did you try some wine while you were there?

W.S. Oh, yes, practically too much. We couldn’t drink the water, you didn’t dare drink the water but you could drink the wine, so it was morning, noon and night. This little town, quaint little town, I don’t know if, yeah it is Winnegin.

D.H. There is a little napkin here from Winnegin, too.
W.S. Yeah, that is the beer house there.

D.H. Was the wine pretty good?

W.S. Oh yeah, they had two kinds of wine, red wine and white wine.

D.H. Were you a red or white fan?

W.S. It didn’t make any difference we just. What we would do, along the Rhine River they had a lot of caves and in these caves they would have large vats of wine. One time we took and shot a hole up on the top and let the wine pour out and catch it in the helmets or anything you had to catch it in. we washed in it, shaved in it.

D.H. You washed in the wine?

W.S. Yup

D.H. I have never heard that before, either.

W.S. And we shaved in it, drank it. From Winigen on the Moselle we went to Austria. That is when we ended up in Austria.

D.H. Where are these shots? Where you are on a beach?

W.S. This is down in Marcelle, France. A fellow by the name of Deeds, he was one of the cooks; this is three of the cooks there.

D.H. It looks like you had a pretty good time on the beach there?

W.S. Oh yeah, we were down on the Caribbean, no not the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, white sand.

D.H. Have you ever been back to any of these places?

W.S. No

D.H. It sounds like you had a pretty good time at some of these places for sure?

W.S. Oh yeah, we had a lot of fun down there in France. We got to see quite a bit, well we were there from July, no June until September. On weekends we would go to these different towns and then once and a while there would be trucks going down to the beach and we would go to the beach and spend the day in Marcelle.

D.H. That doesn’t sound bad to me.

W.S. No, we had a lot of fun.
D.H. How long were you in Austria before you were sent back? Is this the Coliseum?

W.S. Yeah, I was in Austria from May, I must have been up there for a couple of months.

D.H. OK, and it was from there that you were actually sent back to the U.S.?

W.S. No, well yes, from up in the Alps then I was sent to Salzburg and then we. I was cooking up there in this outfit, some engineer outfit; the patch is up there underneath that Air Corp patch. I can’t remember what the name of the outfit was, waiting for our numbers to come up. Waiting for, you know you had to have points to go home, so you had to wait until your points. I think I had 58 points so when the time came they shipped us to Le Havre and then from Le Havre we got on a Liberty Ship and went, it took us 13 days to go from Le Havre Harb to New York. I want to say 7 days forward and 6 days up and down. It was rough crossing the North Atlantic, it was tough.

D.H. Much tougher than going over?

W.S. Oh yes, well we were on a small ship, those Liberty ships; they were making them up in Duluth.

D.H. How big of a ship, do you remember the name of the ship?

W.S. No, all I know is a Liberty Ship that’s all. They had one song; they played Sioux City Sue day and night all the way over, 13 days.

D.H. I bet you got sick of the song?

W.S. Oh, it was terrible.

D.H. When you came back to New York did you go straight to Duluth from there?

W.S. Yes, as I remember, we got to New York and then got on the trains and ended up at Camp McCoy, Wisconsin. That is where we got discharged. There again there was a short period of time when we got a clean discharge you didn’t have to sign up for the Reserves or anything. I was discharged in that time. I remember this last person that was interviewing me, some guy interviewing me, and when he got done he said “now you are a civilian, and you will be out of camp before 5 o’clock this afternoon or you are going to jail.”

D.H. I bet that was kind of a nice thing to hear?

W.S. What?

D.H. Were you kind of happy to be out?

W.S. Yeah, I was and we took a bus from there to the cities and I met my wife at the cities, down in the cities and we got reacquainted.

D.H. Life moved on from there, I imagine?

W.S. Yeah

D.H. Were there any other stories that I haven’t said yet or that I haven’t asked you about during your war experience?

W.S. No, not really.

D.H. OK, then I will ask you, what is with the drawings here?

W.S. That is some of my work.

D.H. Did you draw these when you were overseas?

W.S. Yes

D.H. Nice, these look good. Are these supposed to be your wife?

W.S. No, just a picture of the stars and stripes.

D.H. Oh, OK, they look pretty good.

W.S. There is my wife.

D.H. Did you draw before?

W.S. No

D.H. Just something to pass the time?

W.S. Yeah, I never drew before and haven’t since.

D.H. You didn’t draw afterwards at all?

W.S. No

D.H. When you served overseas did you have a certain photo that was always carried with you, of your wife?

W.S. Yeah, this one hetr, I had several of them, one time in France, Southern France when we were down processing troops, we were all out to some gathering of some sort and about a half a mile away we could see smoke coming up, something was burning. Well when we got back to our area our tent had burned up and all of our stuff had burnt up. That was one of the two pictures that had survived.

D.H. I can see the little burn mark right there.

W.S. Yeah, they had to issue us new clothes and new tent. Life goes on.

D.H. Yeah,

W.S. This picture was taken in Austria.

D.H. Were these falls pretty impressive? Did you see these falls yourself?

W.S. This was one of the Hotels over there.

D.H. The impression you give me is that Austria was a pretty neat place?

W.S. Yeah

D.H. Was it one of your favorite places you were at, overseas?

W.S. I would say it is, it was the most favorite place. This is fellow by the name of Livingston I got to know him.

D.H. This is you guys skiing actually?

W.S. Yes

D.H. Chime in, did you ride these cables?

W.S. Yeah, that was the one I was telling you about, we rode.

D.H. Oh man, is this your shot?

W.S. What?

D.H. Did you guys actually take these photos?

W.S. No, I never did, I don’t know where I got them, I have no idea.

D.H. OK, it had to be kind of neat, you get sent off to war and you are skiing up in Austria?

W.S. There is Eldewise. One of the POW’s up there gave me that.

D.H. As a gift?

W.S. Yeah, they don’t give those to everybody; you have to consider a special friend, when they give them to you.

D.H. Well, I will tell you, the story you told me about the cook and the German POW and his wife, I think that was a great story.

W.S. These are Russian girls that were cooking in the main, I didn’t cook there, but that was the main where we had the division headquarters.

D.H. Did you ever meet some of these people, then?

W.S. Oh, yeah, I knew them. If you notice.

D.H. So you mixed with the Russians at one point?

W.S. Well, these girls were POW’s and they got a job helping in the kitchen. I got a kick out it, they all wore silk stockings. In those days you couldn’t buy silk stockings for nothing. But the officers would get silk stockings and they would trade them with the girls for certain things. So these 3 girls had silk stockings all the time.

W.S. I didn’t see anything but I just noticed that.

D.H. This particular gift there was a certain thing; you just became friends with the guy?

W.S. No, he was just one of the POW’s there. There is this town called Newkirken, it was one of the towns I was at when I was cooking.

D.H. It seems to me you cooked a lot when you were in the service, when you came back did you cook again or were you sick of cooking?

W.S. No, I never cooked again, that was the end of it.

D.H. This was a card to your wife?

W.S. Yes

D.H. You guys kept such a good record of the return cards. It looks like your wife did a good job keeping stuff and you did to, is that true?

W.S. I would send it home and she took care of it. Here is a Valentine.

D.H. Did you actually draw this?

W.S. What?

D.H. Did you draw the figurines?

W.S. Yeah

D.H. It is too bad you don’t, your good at it. Boy you guys kept a lot of your records. Tell me if I pass a special message that you want to talk about?

W.S. These are just Western Union messages that we sent back and forth. I told them not to write any more letters and don’t send me any more mail, I am on my way.

D.H. You are on your way home.

W.S. Yes

D.H. I bet that was a good message for them to receive?

W.S. Yeah

D.H. Otherwise, is there any other stories at all that you want me to have for historic record.

W.S. No, not that I can think of.

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Other Source(s):

Wallace Axel “Bud” Streed (1922-2015) - Find A Grave Memorial

 

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