World War II, European Theater
Eugene Adkins (Army Air Corps/Air Force) Audio Documents
Eugene Adkins was born in Unicoi County in 1919, and in his youth he developed a fascination with aircraft and flying. His father was a career Army man, and Adkins enlisted at Fort Oglethorpe’s Civilian Cadet Training Camp in 1936. This camp trained him for the cavalry, and while he was determined to fly, his training aided his development as a soldier. Adkins joined the Army Air Corps in 1940 and became a rear turret gunner on B-18 bombers. He then learned to work on B-17s as “floating crew,” filling in where needed. He operated the gun turrets aboard the Memphis Belle for several missions until he was injured in the line of duty. He later reenlisted in the Air Force and flew as a crew chief during the Korean War.
Earl Ailor (Army) Audio
James J. Akins (Army Air Corps) Audio
POW
Richard T. Alexander (I) (Army) Audio | Transcript
Born in 1917, childhood in Nashville, New York City, Berlin; father worked as an educator; spent a year in Germany beginning in 1925; recalls inflation in the Weimar Republic; attended school in Germany in 1930; describes Hitler’s rise to power and National Socialist initiatives like Winterhilfe; emotional lift Hitler gave Germans; drafted on October 20, 1942 in Canton, North Carolina; Tennessee Maneuvers, 1943; 83rd Division Artillery, aerial liaison artillery observer; Omaha Beach, Normandy to east of the Elbe River, 1944 to October, 1945; Recipient of Air Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster, Bronze Star, and Silver Star.
Richard T. Alexander (II) (Army) Audio | Transcript
Post-war; how his father came to be in the Office of Military Government in Germany after the war, until 1951; German education system; return visits to Germany; University of Tennessee (EdD, 1955); Returned to math and science teaching post in Haywood County, NC and part-time at Adelphi University until 1957; Professor at Ball State University in Muncie, IN until retirement in 1982.
Eliel Archilla () Audio
Paul Arndt Audio
Arthur Arseneault (Navy/Merchant Marine) Audio | Transcript
Father in the Navy as a pharmacist mate from 1918 to 1946; Arsenault born in Somerville, MA in 1924; Growing up in New England; Living in Guam as a military dependent in early 1930s; Boy Scout in New England as a teenager; thoughts on skipping grades in school, postgraduate high school classes, and working construction before old enough for military service at the start of World War II; father’s service in World War II as a hospital administrator in New York; Attending Merchant Marine Academy at Hyannis, MA in March 1943; Pre-commissioning training in the Gulf of Mexico in 1944 on USS Griggs; duty as superintendent of shipbuilding in New York and New Jersey in spring of 1945; Combat Information Center officer at Treasure Island, CA and attending deep sea diving school in summer 1945; carrying men back from Europe after World War II on board USS LeJeune; Explosive Ordinance Disposal School at Indianhead, MD in 1946; Frogman in Underwater Demolition Team at Little Creek, VA; UDT duty on USS Pocono in Mediterranean and Persian Gulf in 1948; on battleship USS Mississippi doing oceanographic and research work in the Pacific; Scripps Institution of Oceanography at La Jolla, CA and Northwestern University in 1952. Meeting wife while she was a navy nurse in San Diego; Oceanographic work in North Atlantic; Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA; Sonar School in Key West, FL in 1954; officer on the destroyer USS Haynesworth in the Mediterranean; Explosive Ordinance Disposal Officer in Charleston, SC; recovery opertaions for dropped nuclear weapon off the coast of Savannah, GA and Hunter Air Force base in 1958; 2nd Air and Naval Gunfire Liaison Company with Army Airborne Divisions from 1963 to 1965 that involved the intervention in the 1965 Dominican Civil War with the 82nd; reflections on weather at sea, family’s military service, raising a family while in the military; retirement after 25 years at the same time Vietnam is escalating; post-service work with Boy Scouts of America in 1966, Department of Health for Georgia from 1967 to 1970, and Cobb County, GA police department until 1987; retirement in Knoxville and community work with civic organizations like the Boy Scouts and the Military Order of the World Wars.
Francis O. Ayers (Army) Audio | Transcript
Born December 31, 1925 in Pittsburgh, PA; father worked for Gulf Oil Corporation as a traffic manager, and mother stayed at home; enlisted Dec. 1943, U.S. Army; 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division; attitudes toward death upon enlisting; time in England and France prior to combat; Battle of the Bulge, Ardennes, Christmas in 1944; Two weeks leave in London; studied Business Administration at Waynesburg College, 1950-53; Factory Engineer Representative, 1953-59, and Sales Engineer 1959-1973.
Erlene Aytes () Audio
Sam Balloff (Army) Audio | Transcript
Born 1923, LaFollette, TN; recollection of parents’ emigration to America, mother from Romania, father from Russia; father owned a clothing store called Balloff’s; childhood in LaFollette; Jewish practices; attended private Presbyterian school at McCallie Boarding School in Chattanooga, 1940-41; recalls impact of Oak Ridge on LaFollette; attended Vanderbilt, 1941-42; Zeta Beta Tau fraternity; enlisted Dec. 1942; 78th Infantry Division, 309th Field Artillery service battery, truck driver; Battle of the Bulge, Remagen Bridge; Aachen to Kassel; discharged, February 1946; returned to Vanderbilt following the war; continued working for his father’s store; opened additional stores in Oak Ridge and Knoxville.
Adolph Barnaby () Audio
Colonel
Veda Bateman (Red Cross) Audio | Transcript
Originally from Canada, but living in Tennessee during World War II; volunteering with the Red Cross; working in Europe towards the war’s end in 1945; Red Cross showmobile performer for the Army of Occupation in Germany until 1946; Tour with the Red Cross in Pusan, Korea; returns to Tennessee and earns a Doctorate from the University of Tennessee in 1960.
Edward A. Barniskis () Audio
Richard Barrick (Army) Audio | Transcript
Born 1925, childhood in St. Louis, MO; father died shortly after birth, working mother, raised by aunt; drafted 1943 after high school in Kansas City, MO; 3rd Army, 49th Armored Infantry Regiment, forward observer scout; Trained at Camp Polk, LA; arrived D-Day plus 60, Battle of the Bulge, Bronze Star; discusses post-war life and reunions with unit.
Philip Benziger (Army Air Corps) Audio | Transcript
Family tied to Knoxville history going back to before the Civil War; Growing up in Knoxville in the 1920s and 1930s; attended UT Knoxville before the war; working for TVA when Pearl Harbor happened; volunteering in the Army Air Corps; Training across the US as a pilot and then a tail gunner; assigned to a B-24 bomber in the 758th squadron of the 459th Bomb Group; deployment to European Theater by flying down to Brazil and then over to West Africa; Flying out of captured German Air Bases in Italy; 50 Missions including over Rome, Vienna and Ploiesti, Romania. Returning home and going back to school at UT Knoxville; working all around the world as a geologist on hydroelectric projects for Charles T. Main Company out of Boston, MA; getting out of Iran during the revolution while working on a project.
Sidney Bishop (Army) Audio | Transcript
Born July 17, 1921 in Milledgeville, Tennessee; father was a farmer; Volunteered for service on October 28, 1942; Served in Company A, 18th Tank Battalion, 8th Armored Division. Saw combat in France in 1945; Crossed the Roer River in February 1945, Crossed the Rhine on March 26th and helped eliminate the Ruhr Pocket. Discusses post-war life and active engagement in veterans organizations.
William F. Bopp (Army) Audio
Bugler, Company A, 7th Armored Infantry Battalion, 8th Infantry Division
Joseph B. Boyd (Army Air Corps/Air Force) Audio
71st Squadron, 1st Fighter Group, 15th Air Force
Lewis E. Brown () Audio
William “Bill” Bryan (Marine Corps) Audio
Jason R. Byrd (Army) Audio
Arthur D. Byrne () Audio
William F. Cashin Audio
Stephen Cassell (Army) Audio
71st Infantry Division, 66th Infantry Regiment
William E. “Bill” Chamberlain () Audio
Edward W. Chandler (Army) Audio
3rd Army
Simon Chilewich (I) (Army) Audio | Transcript
Born April, 1919 in Bialystok, Poland; father worked in the family’s animal/cattle hide business; grew up in a Warsaw ghetto; encounters with anti-Semitism; grandparents emigrated to Palestine, 1928; graduated gymnasium (high school) in Poland, 1936; moved to England to attend London School of Economics and simultaneously the Royal Academy of the Dramatic Arts; recollections of Winston Churchill; student culture in London; response to the Munich Pact; arrived in the United States on September 5, 1939 on the Champlain; lost 138 family members to the Holocaust; found work in Andrews, North Carolina in 1940 supplying sole leather to the Army; father begins new business in hides futures trading; drafted to Camp Lee, Virginia, 1943; Intelligence School, Camp Ritchie, MD; attains rank of Master Sergeant.
James L. Clark (Army Medical Corps) Audio
Charles H. Coolidge (Army) Audio | Transcript
Prewar life in Signal Mountain and Chattanooga, TN; family owned Chattanooga Printing & Engraving Co.; enlistment, June 1942; basic training, Ft. McClellan, AL; Camp Edwards, MA; assigned 36th Infantry Division, 141st Infantry Regiment, 3rd Battalion, M Company; 27 months overseas; North Africa—Oran, Casablanca; Italy—Salerno, San Pietro, Rapido River, Monte Cassino, Anzio, Silver Star action at Velletri; France— Medal of Honor action at Hill 623, near Belmont-sur-Buttant in the Vosges Mountains; Germany; Austria; also awarded Bronze Star; postwar, returned to Chattanooga; Contact Rep. for the Veterans Administration; returned to Chattanooga Printing and Engraving, 1949; manager and partner, 1974 to retirement.
Charles H. Coolidge (II) (Army) Audio | Transcript
Action at Salerno, Italy and death of friend, Joe DelaGarza; miscommunication on the front at San Pietro, Italy; truce at Rapido River, Italy; civilians and their homes during combat in the winter of 1944, France (navigating artillery fire and close call with a defective artillery shell); moving off the front at the Siegfried Line; battlefield presentation of the Medal of Honor in Ulm, Germany; transitioning to civilian life; applying military skills and training after war.
Harley Cooper (Army Air Force) Audio
Grady Corley (Army) Audio | Transcript
Born in Greenwood, South Carolina, 1916; parents worked in cotton mill; moved to Virginia, then back to Kingsport; began working as a paper boy for the Bristol Herald Courier around 1930; left high school in 1934; found work at Eastman Company, yarn production and machine maintenance; enlisted in Army National Guard, Feb. 1941; Trained at Camp Forrest, TN, Fort Sill, OK, and Camp Roberts, CA; 191st Field Artillery Battalion; artillery mechanic; deployed to Europe April, 1944; C Battery, 959th Field Artillery Battalion attached to the XIX Corp; Landed Omaha Beach, June 24, 1944; post-war, returned to job at Eastman; retired as foreman in Fiber Divisions Maintenance after 45 years of service.
Elliott C. Cutler Jr. () Audio
Clarence J. Daniels () Audio
Kurt and Margo David (Army) Audio | Transcript
Born in 1920 in Germany; father was German Army officer, World War I and worked for Amoco Oil; Germany in 1930s; he emigrated to U.S. in 1940 while parents fled to Uruguay during the Third Reich; born and attended grammar school in Zwingenberg; expelled from gymnasium in 1936 because he was Jewish; reactions to American society; could not join the U.S. Army because he was registered as an enemy alien; became an agent for the Counter Intelligence Corps, 1943; C.I.C. school, Camp Ritchie, MD; interrogated Gestapo members; thoughts on French collaborators; experiences of being Jewish during World War II; reconstruction in Germany following the war; Post-war, salesman and resided in Chicago. (Wife Margot Wolf David also participates in interview; born in Germany.)
Dr. Elvyn V. Davidson (Medical Corps) Audio | Transcript
Born 1923 in Rockaway Beach, Long Island; grew up in an Italian and black neighborhood in New York; raised in both Protestant and Catholic church; attended Stuyvesant Science & Math Academy; recalls the Harlem Riots; relationship with Adam Clayton Powell; found work in the Photostatic department of the War Department on Wall Street; rebellion against public transportation through jitney committees; attended Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, 1941; volunteered at the age of 18 in 1942; assigned to Fort Riley, Kansas with Joe Louis and Jackie Robinson; Army Special Training Program – University of Nebraska, Wilberforce program, Camp Polk; 92nd Division “Buffalo Soldiers” 370th Regiment, F Company in North Africa, Italy; encounters with Ghurkhas (from Nepal); issues with race relations in the army; thoughts on medical care in the field; member of Japanese occupation forces; visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki; Discharged January, 1946; Returned to Lincoln University to complete degree; completed medical studies at Meharry Medical College, Nashville; Married in Knoxville; Internship and surgical residency at Harlem Hospital, NY—was on duty there when Martin Luther King, Jr. was brought in after being stabbed; returned to Knoxville; began work at Oak Ridge Hospital emergency room, 1958-61; Hospitals still segregated; Opened private practice in Knoxville, 1959; Also, in 1959 began working 3 months a year as on-call surgeon, UT Hospital, for several years; semi-retired in 1990.
Fred Davis (Army) Audio | Transcript
Born 1922 and raised in Sharps Chapel, Union County, Tennessee; Horace Maynard High School; worked in his father’s general store; enlisted March 1943; Basic training at Camp Cooke, California; U.S. Army, 488th Quartermaster Depot, Headquarters; Promoted to corporal, sergeant, first sergeant; arrived England, October, 1943; positive experiences in London; D-Day +14; supplied Patton’s Third Army while in France; Extended stay in Reims, France; impressions of Patton, France, American supply lines; Recalls interactions with German civilians upon arrival in Berlin; Postwar, took over family general store in Sharps Chapel, moved to Maynardville, closed store in 1976, simultaneously maintained four farms; opened hardware store in 1989.
Washington McCalvin Davis (Army) Documents
Davis was born in Knoxville, TN in 1921 amidst the struggles of the Jim Crow South. He attended Knoxville College in 1939, and while in college his brother was killed by police officers for protesting his own mistreatment. Davis joined the military in 1943 as a private at Camp Forrest, TN. He served in the European Theater beginning in 1944 as a battalion sergeant major for a segregated unit, and he also served with the Quartermaster, Signal Corps, and the Field Artillery. He landed in France amongst the first assault troops seven days after D-Day, and in 1944 he received orders to join the battle in the Pacific Theater. After the war he returned to Knoxville, graduated from Knoxville College with a degree in Sociology, served the community in both his home state of Tennessee and his adoptive state of California, and published his memoirs. Davis passed away in Nevada in 2005.
Jacob D. DeShazer () Audio
Presentation at USS Mastin Reunion; Doolittle’s Raiders; 1 of 8 Raiders captured and tortured, 1 of 4 that survived
Andrew Dolan (Army Air Corps) Audio | Transcript
Born in Haddonfield, New Jersey in 1918; parents were Irish immigrants; father was a school teacher at the Bancroft School in Haddonfield; childhood in New Jersey; worked for Philadelphia Record in the promotions department before WWII; joined Pennsylvania National Guard Air Corps in January 1941; served in 103rd Observation Squadron in photo interpretation; performed anti-submarine surveillance on Atlantic Coast after the attack on Pearl Harbor; transfers to Army Air Corps 33rd Reconnaissance Squadron in 1943; shipped to England in Spring of 1944 to conduct photo reconnaissance at Chalgrove Airfield, England before D-Day; landed at Omaha Beach in August 1944; description of work with photo interpretation as US Army advances through France and Germany; experiences with V-1 “Buzz Bombs” and V-2 Rockets; VE-Day in Brunswick, Germany; post-war refugees; leaves Europe in October 1945 and experience returning home; returned to work for the Philadelphia Record; worked for Food Fair supermarkets in advertising for fifteen years; participation in veteran associations and activities; returned to Europe to visit after war; moved to Crossville, TN after retirement.
Herschel M. Downs () Audio
Donald D. Duncan () Audio
Bruce Dunsha () Audio
Jeffie W. “Jim” Duty (Army) Audio
106th Infantry; Buzzing in audio comes from machinery inside Duty’s print shop, where the interview was recorded.
H. Haley Ector () Audio
Robert C. “Dink” Eldridge (Army) Audio
104th Infantry Division, 750th Tank Battalion
Donovan Enos (Army Air Corps) Audio | Transcript
Family history in Michigan; Growing up during the Great Depression; Army Aviation Cadet Program at Michigan State University before war; Remembering FDR; Basic Training at Miami Beach, FL; Advanced Training at Clemson University; Officer and Pilot/Flight training at Montgomery, AL, Greenwood, MS, and Eglin Field, FL in Spring of 1944; Running into flight training friends in post-war; P47 training at Richmond, VA with 1st Air Force in July 1944; Deployment to England as a replacement fighter pilot with 9th Air Force; Brother in 276th Combat Engineers deployed at the same time and meeting in Belgium during war; fifty missions with 405th Fighters with example of fighting Germans over Metz, France; German Civilians vs. German Military treatment of downed US pilots; Getting shot down on on April 13, 1945 on a mission in the Remagen, Germany area. 320th Holding Hospital then transferred back to England; Rehabilitation on the French Riviera and finding out brother had been killed at Remagen at end of the war; Returning to Michigan State to finish Civil Engineering degree; Finding work in engineering equipment sales in Michigan; Work with Barton Malow Company in Detroit, the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, and hospital in Joplin, Missouri; Retirement in Fayetteville, NC and move to Tennessee.
Grace E. Farley () Audio
231st Station Hospital
Thomas “Tom” Ferebee () Audio
Marvin Flitcroft () Audio
Winston Folk (Navy) Audio
Rear Admiral, US Navy
Pat Fox () Audio
Robert C. Fraim () Audio
Ben Franklin (I) (Army) Audio | Transcript
Born and raised in Knoxville, Tennessee; Native American heritage; Father wounded in World War I; visited Cherokee reservations with his grandfather; Committed to the Democratic Party; early life in Knoxville; Enlisted at 16 two days after Pearl Harbor (total stranger signed his papers); Joined 1st Infantry Division (Big Red One) in May, 1942—16th Regiment, 3rd Battalion, I Company; North Africa, Sicily, France, Belgium, Germany, Czechoslovakia; After his service visited the parents of Mark Dickerson, his best friend who was killed during the war; Went A.W.O.L. while in Paris and Licata.
Ben Franklin (II) Audio | Transcript
Basic training at Camp Wheeler, GA; Machine gun training; Joined the boxing team while in Sicily; Invasion of North Africa; Comments on French-Arab relations while stationed in Oran; offers opinions about the French; Kasserine Pass, Tunisia; Read books to pass time on the front; Notes the significant amount of friendly fire and the nature of the air-ground cooperation; Number of encounters with German POWs; Thoughts on German soldiers; Battle of the Hurtgen Forest; Receive passes to Paris.
Ben Franklin (III) (Army) Audio | Transcript
>Paris; Rejoined regiment headed to Mons, Belgium; Entered into Germany in September of 1944, Battle at Aachen; demoted from staff sergeant but later restored after Havre; Hurtgen Forest; Battle of the Bulge; Ruhr Valley; Experiences with insubordination as a staff sergeant; Interaction with German civilians and Russian soldiers; Berlin Blockade of 1946; Still in Germany, meets wife there in 1946; Returned stateside in November, 1948; Promoted to First Sergeant; Volunteered to go to Korea, but was assigned to a unit in France instead.
Henry Fribourg (French-Jewish Refugee; Korean War – US Army) Audio | Transcript
Childhood and family history in France; Fleeing to Southern France during German Invasion in 1940; Occupation and life under Vichy France; Journey to escape to North America through North Africa and Portugal; Schooling in Cuba during the war; New York City at the end of war; Undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Graduate School at Cornell and Iowa State; Active duty in Korean War working in biochemistry projects for the US Army; Agent Orange; University of Tennessee Agricultural Professor for 40 years working in forage crops.
Joseph Gallo () Audio
Jimmy Gentry (Army) Audio | Transcript
Born in what is now Wyatt Hall, TN on November 28, 1925 near Franklin; father died when he was eleven; He and siblings found ways to make extra money by selling animal pelts and walnuts; Church of Christ services; Father supported Roosevelt, but he did not; Recalls rationing and the effects of World War II on Franklin; Joined the Army shortly after one brother was KIA, Itay; Basic training at Camp Blanding, FL; Assigned to the 42nd Infantry (Rainbow) Division when he arrived in Pettincourt, France; 232th Infantry Regiment, 2nd, Battalion, E Company; Battle of the Bulge; Part of liberation of Dachau concentration camp in 1945; Visited Austria and Italy following the war; Met Ezra Pound while visiting Genoa; Returned to Tennessee in March, 1946; Married in August 1946; Post-war memories of Dachau; Began college at Vanderbilt, transferred to Tennessee Tech, then transferred again to Peabody College for Teachers in order to take a job as a high school football coach; Benefits of G.I. Bill; Later attended the National Science Foundation program at Middle Tennessee State University; Taught at Brentwood Academy during desegregation; Traveled back to Germany to visit. Retired, but went back to Brentwood Academy as Athletic Director; Retired again 1999.
Dr. Robert H. Gentry () Audio
Walter Welch Gentry (Army, Combat Engineer) Documents
Walter Welch Gentry (April 14, 1922 – Feb. 2, 1945) was born in Kingsport, Tennessee. He attended the University of Tennessee for Engineering from 1939 to 1942 and then graduated from the University of Michigan and their ROTC program. He enlisted in the United States Army immediately after graduating in 1943 and was trained as combat engineer and officer at Camp Shelby in Mississippi. 1stLt. Gentry served in command of C Company of the 290th Engineer Combat Battalion attached to the 7th Army. He was deployed to Europe during the war. First reported missing, he was later confirmed killed in action on February 2, 1945 while fighting in France. Walter W. Gentry is buried at Greenwood Cemetery in Knoxville, Tennessee and many of his personal artifacts from his wartime service are located in the Walter W. Gentry Collection at the Betsey B. Creekmore Special Collections at the University of Tennessee.
Garland D. Godby () Audio
Paul E. Gomer (Navy) Audio
USS Nevada
John Gorman (Army) Audio | Transcript
Childhood in Mannsboro, TN; rural life; Great Depression; education, Rhodes College, Memphis, TN; training Fort Oglethorpe, GA and Camp Blanding, FL; assignment to 63rd Infantry Division, February 1945; fighting in Germany, Florsheim, Mannheim; impressions of German civilians; return to the United States, 1946; post war life.
Oliver C. Gregorie () Audio
Dr. John Anders Hansen, Jr. (Army) Documents
Dr. John Hansen was born in Frederick, MD in 1908. He graduated from Franklin and Marshall College in 1929 with an English degree and began teaching at the high school level while pursuing a Master’s degree from Yale University. Though his teaching role would have exempted him from the draft, Hansen registered as a student and was put into active service. Hansen was commissioned as an officer, and he was trained as an infantryman, an artilleryman, and an aircraft spotter, as well as a commanding officer in each of these areas. He was deployed to the European Theater towards the end of the conflict, and he fought in the Ruhr area against German forces. He eventually rose to the rank of Captain by the end of the war, and in 1946 he retired from military life as a Major. Upon his return stateside, Hansen returned to his career teaching English while completing his PhD at Yale. From 1947 until 1978 he taught English at the University of Tennessee, eventually reaching the title of a full Professor of English. He retired in 1978 at 70 years old and passed away in May 1988.
Charles Robert “Bob” Harmon (I) (Army) Audio | Transcript
Born April 12, 1925; Grew up in Olympia, Washington; Father managed a freight lines dock, stable income; Mother worked there too, then at department store; Family’s military history; Catholic high school, graduated 1943; Wanted to join Marines or Merchant Marines to serve country; Discusses Japanese friends; Signed up to attend Army Specialized Training Program for engineering school, but program was cut in early 1944; Joined the 80th division, 319th Infantry as a part of an anti-tank company; Infantry training at Fort Benning; Relationship with his rifle; Fort Dix; Normandy, August 1944, and the “Breakout;” Germany, 1945; Dicusses conditions of the soldiers, mail, provisions, civilians.
Bob Harmon (II) (Army) Audio | Transcript
Germany, Spring 1945. Occupation force for 8 months after V-E Day: Austria, Germany, & the Sudetenland.
Bob Harmon (III) (Army) Audio | Transcript
Nov. 1944, Delme Ridge. 1945, slave labor camps: Kaiserslautern, Mauthausen, Ebensee. Various discussion of war experience in general & more on previous topics covered in Parts I & II.
H.E. Harris Jr. (Navy) Audio
USS Thurston; also in Pacific Theater
Stephen Harris () Audio
John Hartwell (Army) Audio
A Company, 7th Armored Infantry, 8th Armored Division
Birch “Hank” Park Henderson, Jr. (Army) Audio Documents
Birch ‘Hank” Park Henderson Jr. was born in June 10, 1913 in Knoxville, TN. As a young man, Henderson worked as a billing clerk at a grocery store before he was drafted into the Army in 1941. He went to basic training at Camp Wheeler in Georgia, and he was assigned to the Medical Detachment of the 22nd Infantry Regiment as a first aid man and litter bearer. In July 1942 Henderson was promoted to corporal and worked as a supply clerk until his 1944, wen he traded his rank of Corporal to the rank of Technician Five, a rank was reserved for enlisted soldiers with specific skill sets but who were not specifically trained to be combat leaders. On D-Day in 1944, Henderson Jr. landed on Utah Beach with the 3rd Battalion 22nd Infantry Regiment 4th Division, whom he served with for the remainder of the war. He received multiple awards including the; Infantry Medical Badge, 5 Battle Stars, the Bronze Star, 3rd Battalion Unit Citation, and the 22nd Infantry Unit Citation.Henderson returned to Knoxville after his service, working in the grocery business until his passing in March 2006 at 92 years old.
Homer E. Henley () Audio
Robert Hooper () Audio
E.L. “Jim” Horton () Audio
William House (Army Air Force) Audio
94th Troop Carrier Squadron
HQ Battery 194 Audio
Dan Q. James () Audio
Frank R. Johnson (Army Medical) Audio
5th Army, 8th Evacuation Hospital Unit
J.D. “Jack” Jones (Army) Audio
3rd Infantry Division
Brice W. Jordan (Army Air Force) Audio
194th Glider Infantry
Clifford Edward Keenan (Army) 82nd Airborne Div. Documents
From Gibson County, Tennessee, Keenan served as a Private in the 505th Parachute Infantry, 82nd Airborne Division. He participated in Operation Husky I and Operation Avalanche during the Sicily-Italian Campaign. He was killed in action on June 6th, 1944 when dropping into Normandy during D-Day.
John E. Kesterson (Medical Corps) Audio | Transcript
Born in 1918 in LaFollette, TN; dad was a pharmacist; educational experiences, including when local Roma immigrants burned the school; TVA, prewar Knoxville; graduated high school and enrolled at UT at the age of 16, graduated at 19; attended Vanderbilt Medical School, surgical residency was in the Veterans Administration Hospital in Nashville, completed in 1943; inducted into Army Medical Corps as a First Lieutenant in 1944; training at Camp Barkley in Abilene, TX, Ream General Hospital in Palm Beach, FL, Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN; Assigned to Ft. Bragg, 114th General Hospital as chief of anesthesia; 114th Field Hospital in Kidderminster, Scotland; 84th field hospital, France; postwar: Newton Baker General Hospital, WV; discharged 1947; Opened a general surgical practice in Knoxville, TN and worked at various hospitals, Knox General, Baptist Regional, Fort Sanders, and St. Marys; a surgical pioneer who taught his procedures to other surgeons in the region.
Wallace Key () Audio
Avery F. King () Audio
Dr. Milton M. Klein ( Army Air Corps) Documents Audio | Transcript
Born in New York City in 1917; Hungarian-Jewish family; father worked as a tinsmith in Europe and as a mechanic in America; talks about his family and immigrant communities and life in New York City; primary school; Boy Scouts; Depression years; anti-Semitism in America; talks about Socialist Party in New York City; B.A. and M.A. at City College, Manhattan; Oxford Oaths and student clashes; discusses New York libraries and intellectual communities; New York World’s Fair; high school teacher at George Washington High School and Ford Foundation grant; graduate school at Columbia University; registered in 1940, Air Force training at Keesler Field, MS in 1942; Air Transport Command, Squadron Clerk/Typist, Presque Isle Field, ME; promoted to Staff Sergeant; Officer Candidate School, Miami Beach, FL; Special Services Officer and Assistant Personnel Officer, Edmonton, Alberta field; Historical Officer of the North Atlantic Wing, Manchester, NH; promoted to Captain; decommissioned, 1946; postwar, civilian historian, Mitchell Field; PhD at Columbia; Dean of Graduate Studies, State University of New York at Fredonia; Professor of History, including at the University of Tennessee from 1969-1988 and served as the university historian from 1988-1997.
Cecelia S. Koch (Medical Corps) Audio | Transcript
Born in England, moved to Canada and grew up in Saskatchewan; St. Boniface Hospital, Winnipeg, ’39-’42; Mount Sinai Hospital, Cleveland; enlisted in Army Nurse Corps, 1943; classes and work at the station hospital at Fort Benjamin Harrison, IN; maneuvers in Yuma, AZ, 5 January to 12 March, 1944; 105th Evacuation Hospital; Fort Jackson, SC, 16 March to 10 August, 1944; Camp Kilmer, NY, August, 1944; England, France, Holland, Belgium, Germany; awarded the Soldier’s Medal, 1945; Occupied Germany; return home, July, 1946; post-war, general duty nurse and OB nurse, 1952-1985.
Maurice Kunselman (Army) Audio Documents
Maurice “Bill” Kunselman was born in Meadville, Pennsylvania in 1921. In 1941, Kunselman enlisted as a private in the Army National Guard rather than waiting to be drafted. He was among the first troops assigned to Fort Hood in September 1942, and much of his training there involved construction work to complete the development of the base. He was called to service with the 424th Infantry, 106th Division in Belgium, and he would eventually rise to the rank of Sergeant with the “tank destroyers.” Kunselman fought in the Battle of the Bulge, and he received the Bronze Star for his actions in that offensive. After his service, he returned to Pennsylvania, and in 1944 he married his wife Lois, with whom he would spend 69 years and have four children. Kunselman and his family moved to Knoxville, closer to Lois’s family in Arkansas, and he began to work in Oak Ridge as an engineer, working on many early atomic energy projects. After his retirement, he designed custom house plans for Oak Ridge residents before his passing in 2013, just months after his wife’s death.
Thomas Vernon Land (Army Air Corps) Audio
445th Bomb Group
Hugo Lang (Army) Audio | Transcript
Born in 1923 in Arnsbach, Germany; Jewish family; father was a cattle dealer; talks about his father and uncle’s service in WWI; childhood experiences; anti-Semitism in Germany; talks about how supportive the German-Jewish community was; forced labor; fled Germany in 1941 (some of his family had left earlier); part of his family was deported to a concentration camp in Poland; talks about the Holocaust and what he knew at the time; life in Jersey City and impressions of America; worked in manufacturing; drafted into the army in 1944, training at Fort Dix, Fort McClellan; served as interrogator and translator in the 28th; talks about his fear of being captured (because of his German-Jewish heritage); Bastogne and the Battle of the Bulge; describes his work in the army; talks about the nature of war; captured, describes interrogation and life as a POW; Malmedy Massacre; liberated in April 1945; retuned to the States in May 1945; reunited with sister who survived a concentration camp in 1946; vocational school in Elizabeth, NJ; worked for Bristol Myers for thirty years; took trips to Germany in 1969, 1972, and 1988, talks about post-war Germany; talks about his children and family.
Paul H. Lankford () Audio
Luke Lea () Audio
Harry Leake () Documents
Harry Leake was born in Knoxville, TN in 1909. After graduating high school he attended the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and then he moved to the New England area where he met his wife, Margaret, around 1939. Leake worked for a New York glove company when he was drafted in the early 1940s. He spent his military service as a mess hall manager, working in an important support role in the European Theater, mostly in Italy. Upon his return stateside, Leake married Margaret and moved to Bedford, MA. Leake returned to Italy with his wife a decade after his service in 1955, even returning to Anzio, the site of the majority of his service during the war. Leake died in February 1990.
Arthur D. Lewis () Audio
Frances Lovelace (Navy) Audio Documents
Frances Lovelace, born Frances Pauline Smith, was born in Wheat Community, TN in 1918. After high school, she earned a teaching certificate from Lincoln Memorial University and taught for five years before enlisting in the Navy WAVES program in 1943. After Naval training at Smith College in Massachusetts, she was stationed at Charleston Naval Base, working at the headquarters. She lived in Charleston for a little over two years, before requesting a transfer to San Diego, where she moved shortly after V-J Day and only spent a few months there. Upon release from active duty, Smith wanted to move into civil service in Honolulu, Hawaii. However, when she returned home to what had become Oak Ridge, she reunited with her high school sweetheart, William ‘Bill’ Lovelace, and was married on the day she was supposed to leave for Hawaii. After briefly working at Oak Ridge, she returned to the classroom. Then, upon the birth of her son, Joe David, she took five years off from teaching to earn a bachelor’s degree in childhood education from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She spent the years following teaching in Knox County Schools. Her husband passed in 1987, and she remarried in 1992 before moving to Florida, where she died in 2003.
Buford Longmire (Army) Audio | Transcript
Childhood, Knoxville, TN; Great Depression and Tennessee Valley Authority; enlistment, 1942; training at Fort Benning, GA and Camp Polk, LA; assignment to 7th Armored Division; deployment to Europe, June 1944; recollections of General Patton; fighting in France, August 1944; Chartres, Metz; St. Vith, Malmedy, Battle of the Bulge; recollections of Belgian civilians; Germany, return to the United States; post war life.
Jim Lovett () Audio
William Lubbeck (Wehrmacht) Audio | Transcript
Childhood on a farm near Luneburg, Germany; life during the Great Depression and the Third Reich’s early years; enlistment in the Wehrmacht, 1939; assignment to the 58th Infantry Division, 154th Infantry Regiment; invasion of France, 1940; invasion of Russia, June 1941, 58th Infantry’s activity as part of Army Group North; fighting around Lake Peipus; impressions of Soviet soldiers; battle of Volkhov; brother captured in France, 1944 and sent to a POW camp in the United States; discussion of treatment of prisoners on the eastern and western fronts; officer school at the War Academy in Dresden; discussion of food and news of defeat at Stalingrad; recollections of Nazi propaganda; retreat and destruction of unit at Memel; transport to northern Germany and capture by British forces; return to family farm in Soviet zone of occupation; travels back and forth across the Iron Curtain; emigration to Canada and later the United States; post-war life.
W. Ralph Lufkin (Army) Audio
Edwin Lusk (Army) Audio | Transcript
Born and raised in Grundy County, Tennessee in 1918 in a farming family; moved to Knoxville in 1937; attended the University of Tennessee in ROTC; Army Training at Fort Bragg, North Carolina and commissioned as a 1st Lieutenant; officer in B Company, 60th Infantry Regiment, 9th Infantry Division; Sent to North Africa for Operation Torch; Morrocco in November 1942; Battle of Port Lyautey; Fighting across North Africa; Wounded at the Battle of Maknassey; returned stateside and reassigned as a combat instructor at bases like Camp Butler, North Carolina and Fort Benning, Georgia retired Lieutenant Colonel and returned to UT in the Agricultural College on the GI Bill; Work with US Bureau of Soils and twenty-five years with Prudential Insurance Company in Alabama.
Don Mackerer (Army) Audio
9th Infantry, 39th Regiment
Charles H. Manning () Audio
J. Norman Mansfield Jr. () Audio
B-17 Missions
Charles Russ Martin (Army) Audio
POW in North Africa and Italy
George Massey () Audio
Robert L. May (Army) Audio
Fred N. McConnell (Army Air Corps) Audio | Transcript
Childhood, New Castle, PA; Family background; Childhood during the Great Depression; enlistement, 1942; pre-flight training San Antonio, Texas; flight training Parks Air College, East St. Louis, Winfield, Kansas,and Lackland, Texas; B-26 training, Del Rio, Texas; assignment to 386h Medium Bomb Group, Beaumont-sur-Oise, France & St. Trond Belgium; Battle of the Bulge; discussion of missions and “Terror Day,” February 22, 1945; VE-Day; final mission to pick up POWs; preparations for deployment to Pacific Theater; VJ-Day & return to the United States; post war life.
James W. McDonald () Audio
Robert E. McDonald (Army) Audio
6th Cavalry
Mary N. McFee () Audio
George R. McIntosh (Army) Audio | Transcript
Prewar life in Nashville, TN; Lipscomb High School; drafted in 1944; basic training at Camp Van Dorn, MS; E Company, 2nd Battalion, 253rd Regiment, 63rd Infantry Division; Colmar, France, Rhineland, and Saar campaigns, Germany; Purple Heart and Bronze Star recipient; active in unit tennis tournaments, qualified for Wimbledon; post-war at Lipscomb College, 1946-1949; agent with National Life Insurance Company in Nashville; retired as V.P. in 1990.
Allston “Al” Metcalf () Audio
Walter S. Mietus () Audio
Francis “Herb” Miller () Audio
Jesse Miller (Army) Audio | Transcript
Born 1919 Hagerstown, Maryland; childhood in York, Pennsylvania; plumbing school; Pipefitters/Plumbers Union 250; work at Three Mile Island; history of the 238th Combat Engineers Association and reunions; enlistment in the Army, 1942; basic Training, Plattsburg, New York; transport to England; D-Day; combat experiences; Miller’s opinion on the differences between current conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq versus World War II; end of World War II; construction of redeployment camps (Cigarette Camps); directing work crews comprised of German prisoners of war; views on West Point educated officers versus regular Army officers; returned to United States, 1945; demobilization at Indian Town Gap, Pennsylvania; marriage and post-war life; returned to Europe in the 1990s with veterans and their reception by Belgian citizens; retirement.
Daniel Minehan (Army) Audio
314 Field Artillery Battalion
Peyton Morgan () Audio
Charles Morton Jr. (Army) Audio | Transcript
Born in 1918 in Nashville, TN; grandfather was Civil War veteran, was wounded at Shiloh; father worked for Postal Service in Nashville; talks about family life, childhood, and teenage experiences; talks about race relations; worked at local Ford dealership; bought a dealership in 1941; talks about what he thought of FDR; entered army in 1941; basic training at Fort Belvoir, engineer training at Fort Benning, Camp Edwards; 531st Engineer Shore Battalion; invasion of North Africa; talks about his encounters with enemy soldiers; invasion of Sicily; Salerno Bay; France, D-Day, Utah Beach; Aachen; talks about his dislike of “strategic bombing”; talks about his opinion of Germans; returned to the dealership after the war; talks about a family trip to Germany in 1989.
Charles E. Murphy (Army) Audio
1st Infantry Division, 1st Engineer Combat Battalion
Clayton Narveson (Marines) Audio | Transcript
Born and raised in Austin, Minnesota; Growing up in poverty during the Great Depression; Training with the 2nd Marine Division in San Diego, California; More training and assignment to a M Company, Mortar Squad in New Zealand; Battle of Tarawa; training in Hawaii for Saipan when LST exploded and hospitalization caused him to miss leaving with 2nd Marine Division; transferring to the 4th Marine Division; Invasion of Iwo Jima; remembers seeing the raising of the flag over the island; Furlough home when the war ended; GI Bill for College at St. Paul College of Law in Minnesota; working as a legal investigator in Southern California and Albuquerque, New Mexico; retirement in Maryville, Tennessee.
Johnny L. Nelson () Audio
Lindsey Nelson (Army) Audio Documents
Lindsey Nelson was born in May of 1919 in Pulaski, TN. After high school, Nelson attended the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. He got free room and board in exchange for tutoring the football players – under football coach Robert Neyland. Upon graduation from the University in 1941, Neyland was commissioned into the army for WWII as a second lieutenant with the 9th Infantry Division in Fort Bragg. During his tour in North Africa, Sicily, and Europe, Nelson served as a public relations officer with his division. In 1945, Nelson was released from active duty and he returned home and worked as a journalist, including a stint as a sports reporter in Columbia, TN and broadcaster for the New York Mets and San Francisco Giants. Nelson received several honors, including being named National Sportscaster of the Year 5 times and being inducted into the Professional Football Hall of Fame. Nelson died on June 10, 1995 in Atlanta, Georgia and to commemorate his memory, the UT baseball stadium is named after him.
Rodney Q. Nelson Jr. (Navy) Audio | Transcript
Born in Covington County, MS in 1916; attended the University of Mississippi; worked for American Airlines in Nashville and New Orleans; joined the Navy in 1941; reported to Chicago for officer’s training in May 1942; transferred to Norfolk, Virginia; USS Dorothy Dix; North Africa Invasion, Morocco; returned to Norfolk and was appointed captain of a LCIL ship; next mission was to Algeria, Tunisia, Sicily, Salerno; talks about his ship hitting a mine; talks about different types of naval crafts; returned to Boston and reported to Olathe to Naval Transport Command; was then stationed at Bunker Hill Naval Air Station in Indiana; got married in September 1945; demobilized in 1946; went back to work for American Airlines in Indianapolis; medically retired in 1949 due to injuries suffered from the mine blast; talks about relations between the Navy and Navy Reserves.
John W. Nipper ( Army Air Corps) Audio | Transcript
Born in Knox County, TN on September 16, 1924; grandfather was a Baptist minister from Texas; father was born in Knox County and worked as a machinist at ALCOA; mother was a music teacher; talks about his family’s opinions of FDR and the New Deal; talks about childhood and the Depression; talks about educational years and the strict disciplinary policies; worked at ALCOA and TVA-Spring City after high school to save money for college; talks about his memories of learning about Pearl Harbor; entered UT in 1942; talks about memories of UT days; enlisted in February 1943 and took the Air Force exam; talks about how he meet his wife; training in Miami, FL, then to Nashville, Maryville College, and Maxwell Field, AL; more training at Malden, MO, Spence Field in Moultrie, GA, Eglin Field, FL, Camp Springs, MD, and Millville, NJ; shipped out from New York; talks about a horrible storm at sea; stopped in Southhampton, England before heading to France; flew P-47s as part of the 371st Fighter Group; talks about close calls; talks about the Air Force in comparison to the other branches; talks about being stationed in Linz, Austria at the end of the war and taking lots of joy flights all over Europe; attended UT after the war on the G.I. Bill; worked for DuPont and Chandler & Company before starting his own business.
William J. “Bill” Oatman (Army) Audio
Infantry
Joseph K. Orr () Audio
Fred Owens () Audio
Howard Ownby () Audio
Ordway Perry (Army) Documents
Private First Class Ordway Perry (March 24, 1925) served in the Army and Army Air Force in WWII. He was raised in Shell Creek, Carter County, TN. He was a member of the 311th Infantry Regiment and the 78th Infantry Division. He is buried in the Henri-Chapelle American Cemetary in Belgium. He died days before his 20th birthday on March 10th, 1945. He is the great-great uncle of one of our center’s 2023 interns.
Richard W. Peters () Audio
John B. Phelps (Army) Audio
65th Infantry Division; 9th Infantry Division
William Phelps (Army; 101st Airborne) Video
William Phelps was born and raised in Tennessee, and he was drafted into the U.S. army during World War II. Phelps served with the 101st Airborne Division at some of the most momentous moments of the war. He was there for D-Day. He helped liberate the Netherlands from the Nazis. And he fought at the Battle of the Bulge. In his own words, he “wanted to kill Hitler.”
Ulysses Phillips () Audio
Dr. James L. Pointer (Army) Audio | Transcript
Born April 15, 1921 in Heiskell, TN; father was a logger and farmer, mother was a housewife; talks about childhood and life on the farm; describes local community and living conditions; impact of the TVA and WPA; discusses early schooling; recounts interracial interactions in the community; education at Norris High School; discusses the Great Depression and national politics; participated in FFA in high school; joined the army upon finishing high school; training at Fort McPherson and work at an induction center; Air Force cadet training in Springfield, MA; discusses hazing in the military; 9th Armored Division at Camp Polk, Louisiana; OCS and Fort Benning; Camp Gruber, Oklahoma; departed from Fort Dix for Marseilles in 1944; Strasbourg, France; Maginot Line; impressions of German soldiers; Battle of the Bois D’Ohlunqen; treatment of POWs on both sides; crossed into Germany at Dahn; ended up in Würzburg, where he was injured; talks about soldiers raiding German wine and food cellars; talks about his encounters with friendly Germans; recovered at a hospital in Daytona Beach; enrolled at University of Tennessee in 1946; worked as a Professor of Agriculture at University of Tennessee.
Jacob J. Presser (Army) Audio | Transcript
Born 1918, Providence, RI; Great Depression; Jewish life in Providence; Rhode Island College; enlistment, 1940; basic training, Fort Ord, OR; assignment to 103rd Artillery, 20th Division; arrival in Brest, France; clerical work on unit’s staff; contact with German prisoners of war and civilians; post war life.
John C. Pulliam () Audio
Richard S. Raby () Audio
Frank M. Ray () Audio
POW shot down May 20th, 1944 over Yugoslavia; in his interview he discusses his friend, Charles B. Sewell (who also has materials in our collection) and their shared time in a POW camp
Quilla Reed (Army Air Force) Audio
Harold C. Reese () Audio
Marion Richards (Army) Audio
Army Nurse
Clinton E. Riddle (Army) Audio | Transcript
East Tenn. native; 1/325th Glider Infantry Reg. 82nd Airborne; 194th Glider, 17th Airborne (post-war until discharge); North Africa, Sicily, Italy, Normandy, Netherlands, Germany.
William G. Robbins () Audio
Leroy L. Robison () Audio
Russell Roberts () Audio
Elizabeth Katherine Rogers (Army) Documents
Rogers was born in 1909 in Sevierville, TN. She was the oldest of six children, and her father was a physician who passed away in 1923. This left Rogers to help her mom raise her siblings. Rogers graduated from high school in 1927 and moved to Johnson City in 1932. She worked during the 1930s as a nurse at a veteran’s home, assisting those who fought in World War I. In 1943, at the age of 34, Rogers enlisted as a nurse in the Army. She deployed to France for WW2 and rose to the rank of Captain. On her return home, she married Walter Guy King in Fredericksburg, VA. She passed away in 1985 in Berkley, WV.
Thomas G. Rosell () Audio
Colonel
Glenn D. Ross () Audio
John E. Russell (Army/Army Air Force) Documents
Private John Edward Russell was born on 18 April 1908 to James A. Russell and Sallie Katherine Webb. He was the brother of Walter Clyde Russell, Carl Worley Russell, Nellie Maude Russell, Robert Lee Russell, Mary G. Russell, Emma Lou Russell, Roscoe Franklin Russell and Paul William Russell. He married Ethel Lou Galliher on 27 December 1932 in Bristol, Virginia. Ethel died in 1938. Private Russell served in the Army Air Force with the 325th Glider Regiment in the 82nd Airborne during World War II. At 36, Private Russell entered the service in March 1942, receiving basic training at Camp Claiborne, LA & Fort Bragg, NC. He was wounded in Belgium by a burst of an enemy artillery shell while his unit was occupying a front line position. He received the Purple Heart for his service, though he died of his wounds on January 5th, 1945 in Belgium. He is buried in Elizabethton, TN.
Robert E. Russell (Army) Audio
334th Infantry
Bob Ryerson () Audio
Stephen Salley (Army) Audio | Transcript
Enlisted in 1940; Training at Fort Jay, New York and Fort Devens, Massachusetts; Assignment to 1st Infantry Division; 1941 Maneuvers in North Carolina; Stationed in Britain in August 1942; Operation Torch and Invasion of North Africa; Battles of Oran, Arzew, and Sidi Bel Abbes fighting against French Foreign Legion; Battles of Algiers, Tunis at Hill 609523, El Guettar and Kasserine Pass; Invasion of Sicily and Battle of Gila; D-Day and Battle of St. Lo; wounded in Normandy; Reassigned to an ordinance unit overseeing POW camps in France; discharge at Camp Devons; living after the war in Kingsport, Tennessee.
Trond Sandvik () Audio
Born in Mamsos, Norway, and living there during the German invasion of Norway. His interview recounts his and his family’s experiences during World War II and post war; later moved to Nashville
Clarke Sawdey () Audio
William Schmidt (Army) Audio | Transcript
Childhood in St. Paul, MN; enlistment, 1943; training, Fort Bragg; assignment to the 100th Infantry Division; Battle of Raon L’etape; Lorraine campaign; Maginot Line; captured by German troops; Prisoner of war camps, Ludwigsburg, Muhlsburg, Bad Scandau, Hohenstein, Germany; conditions inside camps; labor details; liberation; post war civilian life.
Joseph P. Shannon () Audio
Irwin J. Shapiro () Audio
Jay Sharp () Audio
Bernard Shorr () Audio
Franklin W. Shires () Audio
Doug Simon () Audio
John Smith () Audio
George W. Smith (Navy) Audio
USS Helms, Water Tender, Pearl Harbor
Richard Smyser (Army) Audio
Betty J. Sparks (Army) Audio | Transcript
Born 1920, Harrisburg, PA; family life, father’s Post Traumatic Stress from his service in WW I in the 28th Infantry Division; parent’s political affiliations and impressions of Roosevelt; Great Depression; nursing school, University of Pennsylvania, 1938-1941; enlistment in Navy, 1941; Nursing Cadet Corps, promotion to lieutenant; working relationship with male orderlies; training in hospitals in Philadelphia and Norfolk, VA.; assignment to Special Navy Advance Group 56; deployment to Scotland; leave in London and interaction with British; treatment of casualties from the D-Day invasion; treatment of wounded German prisoners; return to the United States; post war life.
M.E. Springer (Army Air Corps) Audio | Transcript
Prewar life in Missouri; Univ. of Missouri, Columbia; ROTC; enlisted, August 1942; training in Medical Corps and OCS, 236th station hospital, 1943; 56th Field Hospital assigned to the 9th Air Force; England on D-Day; Oct. 1944, France (LeBourget and Valenciennes); Battle of the Bulge; Belgium and Germany (Kaldenkirchen); returned home, April 1946; postwar Japan occupation force, 1946, as a civilian soil scientist on MacArthur’s staff; University of California-Berkley, 1949-1953, PhD; Professor of Soils, University of Tennessee, 1957-1979; honorary lifetime member of Knoxville Track Club; Senior Olympics; USA Track and Field Hall of Fame, 2006.
Harold Steele (Army) Audio
89th Division
C.E. “Clayton” Storeby (Army Air Corps) Audio
101st Airborne
Frank R. Strang () Audio
Eugene Swartz (Army) Audio | Transcript
Father’s service in the US Army during World War I; prewar life in Luxembourg; political and social atmosphere in interwar Europe; flight from Luxembourg and return to the United States; World’s Fair, New York; wartime life in Washington, D.C. as a teenager; military training in Arkansas and New Jersey; selection for Army Intelligence; attached to the 79th Infantry Division, training in Tennessee; sent to the Military Intelligence Camp, Camp Ritchie, California; work with Jewish émigrés; travel to ETO, assignment to SHAEF Military Intelligence Division and attachment to the 35th Infantry Division; Battle of the Bulge and return to Luxembourg; interrogation of German prisoners and assessment of their morale; postwar atmosphere in Germany; Cold War Vienna; worked with CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency in their China section; nuclear war games at Black Rock; logistical assessments of Soviet Union.
Eldred Swingen (I) (Army) Audio | Transcript
Childhood, Cooperstown, ND; Great Depression; education, University of North Dakota; Chicago World’s Fair; impressions of war in Europe prior to 1941.
Eldred Swingen (II) (Army) Audio | Transcript
Enlistment, 1941; training Fort Bragg, NC; Fort Sill, ND; assignment to 905th Field Artillery battalion; deployment to France, August 1944; Battle of the Bulge; recollections of German prisoners; return to United States; post war life.
James C. Talley (Army Air Corps) Audio Audio | Transcript
Childhood; education at the University of Tennessee; navigator training at Kessler Field, MI, Ellington Field, FL, and Kansas City; assignment to 306th Bomb Group, Thurleigh, England; B-17s; recollections of actor Jimmy Stewart, who served with the 306th Bomb Group; bombing missions over Germany; Operation Market Garden; wounded in action; hospital conditions in England and the United States; post war life.
Helen Tarr (Medical Corps) Audio | Transcript
Childhood, Norwich, CT; Great Depression; Nursing School, Hartford, CT; Army Nursing Corps, 1943; assignment to 69th Evac Hospital, Cirencester, England; recollections of locals; discussion of casualties from the Normandy invasion; deployment to France, December 1945 with 200th General Field Hospital; return to the United States, 1946. Post war life.
Lonas Tarr (Army Air Corps) Audio | Transcript
Childhood, Jefferson City, TN; family background; father’s medical practice; childhood activities; Carson Newman College; Great Depression; enlistment 1941; training at Fort Oglethorpe; flight training at Shaw Field, SC. and Valdosta, GA.; assignment to Air Transport Command; Ferry Command; delivery of B-24 and B-25 bombers to India, Iran, and Egypt; discussion of lend lease aircraft to the Soviet Union; notes assignment of prewar pilots from American Airlines and Eastern Airlines (TWA) in Air Transport Command; deployment to England, France, and Italy; impressions of English civilians; airlifts during Battle of the Bulge; V-E Day; return to the United States; Berlin Airlift; career with American Airlines; post war life.
John J. Thomas (Army) Audio
95th Engineering Division, 379th Combat Regiment
John Towle (Army Air Corps) Audio | Transcript
Born, 1921, Knoxville, TN; childhood, Great Depression; Tennessee Valley Authority; enlistment, Air Force, training Fort Oglethorpe; flight training Keesler Field; gunnery school, Utah, training with B-17s, Burbank, CA.; deployment 709th Squadron, 447th Bomb Group; Rattlesden, England; recollections of V-1 and V-2 rocket attacks on England; missions to attack Frankfurt, Germany; preparations for missions; Big Week, February, 1944; Schweinfurt, shot down over Orly, France, February, 1944; hidden by French civilians in Hericourt France; interactions with Resistance and efforts to escape German occupied France; life in hiding; liberated by British troops; return to the United States; training on A-20s; post war life.
Gerald J. Tureen () Audio
Last survivor of the capture of the PM of Hungary and the Crown of St. Stephen; HQ Battery 194 FA Gp
USS Kanawha Reunion Audio
Donated by Wesley William McGill from his ship reunion
George Melvin Valentine (Army) Audio
761st Tank Battalion
Casper Vecchione () Audio
Native of Sicily, attempted to enlist but was rejected based on citizenship status; later drafted
Ronald H. “Dutch” Veltman (Navy) Audio
Served in US Navy from 1940-1949; Medical Corpsman aboard the USS Hornet
Obert C. Vickery () Audio
Clarence Waltermath () Audio
T.J. Weesner () Audio
Rev. Riland N. West () Audio
Dr. George Wheeler (Army) Audio
8th Armored Division, 7th Armored Infantry Batallion
Walter S. White () Audio
Edgar C. Wilson (I) (Army) Audio | Transcript
Born 1914, Powell, TN; family background and childhood; Tennessee Valley Authority; Great Depression; Milligan College, 1933-1935; career as a school teacher; enlistment, 1941; training at Fort Oglethorpe and Fort Sill; Officer Candidate School; Artillery Liaison Officer, 314th Artillery, 80th Infantry Division; transport to England.
Edgar C. Wilson (II) (Army) Audio | Transcript
Arrival in France, July 1944; interactions with French civilians; Moselle River campaign; awarded the silver star, artillery protocols; motives for fighting and combat experiences; leave to the United States, December 1944; perception of war in the United States; discussion of the surrender of Weimar, Germany; German prisoners and discussion of perception of SS; Austria; interactions with German civilians.
Edgar C. Wilson (III) (Army) Audio | Transcript
Discussion of combat motivation; role of religion among soldiers; Moselle River campaign; guarding German prisoners and impressions of them; return to the United States; work with Veterans’ Association Farm Training Program; retirement; post war travels and return to battlefields in Europe; membership in veterans’ organizations; impressions of World War II Memorial, Washington, D.C.
John J. Wise (Army) Audio
9th Infantry Division
Francis A Woolfrey () Audio
World War II, Pacific Theater
Artie H. Akers (Navy) Audio
USS Angelfish submariner
Josh H. Allen () Audio
China-Burma-India Theater; Supply Officer for Chinese Troops
William B. Allen (Marine Corps) Audio
Saipan, Tinian, Iwo Jima
Dario Antonucci (Army) Audio | Transcript
Born in 1924, St. Marco Argentano, in the province of Cosenza in the Calabria region of southern Italy; Family of farmers; Father Angelo was a WWI veteran; Father and mother’s marriage arranged by family; Father came to America in 1923, worked and became citizen; returned to Italy, 1929; Mother passed away 1935; Father returns to work in U.S.; Life under Mussolini; Father returns to Italy and moves children to U.S. in 1937; Attended School #3 (later became Steele School) and Baldwin High School in NY; Enlisted in the Army Air Corps, November, 1942 after graduation; Processed at Camp Upton; Basic training, Miami Beach, FL; Radio Operator training, Sioux Falls, SD; Radio mechanic training, Traux Field, Madison, WI; P-39 and P-38 training in CA; Special training in air control/direction finder, and homing; Assigned to 51st Fighter Control Squadron, 10th Air Force; Departed for China-Burma-India (CBI) Theater of Operations, April, 1944; Spent 16 months in jungles of Burma; No fresh food, snakes, evidence of Japanese atrocities; Worked closely with Army Corps of Engineers; Flew “The Hump” as a radio operator; Many aircraft lost in January, 1945 due to bad weather; Last unit to leave Burma in December, 1945; S.S. Callan return to Seattle, WA; Discharged Feb. 9, 1946 at Fort Dix, NY; Enrolled at night school at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, graduated in 1959 with Masters in Electrical Engineering; Married in 1951; Worked in the electrical and microwave research and development field, Sylvania Research Labs, 1952-1960;
Foster D. Arnett (Army) Audio | Transcript
Born in Knoxville, TN on November 28, 1920; father a traveling salesman; discusses impact of the Great Depression; TVA; member of the Methodist Church; Studied History and Political Science at the University of Tennessee in 1939-42; ROTC at University of Tennessee; Commissioned as a Second Lieutenant, 1942; trained at Camp Wheeler, Fort Hamilton; Camp Upton; Paratrooper in World War II; 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment; Wounded in the Philippines; Served in New Guinea; “Pathfinder” at the Leyte Gulf Campaign; post-war lawyer; University of Virginia School of Law, 1948; Silver Star.
William F. Baggerman (Air Force) Audio
2nd Air Force; 20th Air Force HQ Squadron, 21st Bomber Command
Lawrence S. “Tom” Barker, Jr. (Marines) Audio
2nd Marine Division
Gordon R. Beem (Navy) Audio | Transcript
Born February 1, 1927 in Niles, Ohio; Father a veteran of the 130th Ohio Engineers in World War I; Describes WPA in Maine; Description of naval scene in Portland, Maine in World War II; enlisted in the Navy on Dec. 6, 1944; Asiatic-Pacific Campaign; Served on the U.S.S. Athene; GI Bill; Bowdoin College; Participant in the Korean War as Air Force Sergeant; 4th Interceptor Wing; Retired major of the U.S. Air Force; Stationed in Wieshaden, Germany in 1950s-60s; Returned to Loring Air Force Base, Maine.
G. Gordon Bonnyman (Army) Audio | Transcript
Born Fall 1919 in Knoxville, Tennessee; father worked for Campbell Coal Mining Company; Member of the Catholic Church; Early life in Knoxville; Attended school at French Boarding School in 1930s; attended Princeton in 1941; studied engineering; Battery Officer School at Fort Sill, Oklahoma; 97th Field Artillery Battalion; 4th Field Artillery Division; trained at Fort Bragg, NC; battery commander with Merrill’s Marauders; contracted malaria; later 112th Infantry Division; Wounded at Michenau; contracted dysentery; wounded again in 1944; traveled through Calcutta to U.S.; taught mule packing at Fort Riley, KS.
Charles Bray (I) (Navy) Audio | Transcript
Born in Hitchita, Oklahoma, 1921; father a farmer; life on the farm in Hitchita; activities with Civilian Conservation Corps; discussion of Works Progress Administration and other New Deal programs; visit to Chattanooga, Tennessee; February 1942 takes civil service position in Washington, D.C.; work in Veterans’ Administration; joins Navy, June 1942; assigned as a clerk to the Naval Department; discussion of Naval war room and impressions of General Staff; volunteers for active service; boot camp, Bainbridge, Maryland Navigation School, Samson, NY; assignment to destroyer USS Shannon, September 1944; travel to Pacific Theater; life on board ship; participation in the invasion of Iwo Jima and Okinawa; kamikaze attacks; fire support during invasions; mine sweeping; early post war Japan, visits to Sasebo and Nagasaki; return voyage to the United States; transfer to the Office of Naval Intelligence; discussion of the origins of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Charles Bray (II) (Navy) Audio | Transcript
Central Intelligence Agency, 1948; cover identities of agents; CIA culture and off duty activities; composition of early CIA personnel; influence of former FBI personnel on CIA; J. Edgar Hoover and FBI professional culture; communications intelligence from Eastern Bloc and code breaking; Germany, 1954; interception and translation of East German radio signals; tunnel into East Berlin; assignment to Taiwan and interception of Chinese radio signals; financing of operatives; reassignment to Miami, Florida, 1965; discussion of CIA operations against Cuba prior to his arrival in Miami; returns to CIA headquarters 1968; Vietnam, 1970-1972; support of South Vietnamese expatriates after 1975; changes within CIA post-Vietnam.
Carl V. Bretz (Army) Audio | Transcript
Growing up near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania during the Depression; Turned 18 and inducted into the Army in 1944; Fort Belvoir, Virginia for Basic Training; Typist Training at Camp Reynolds, Pennsylvania; stationed as a typist at Camp Rucker, Alabama and Camp Shelby in Mississippi until start of 1945; Sent to Hawaii in 1945 and was there when Atomic Bombs were dropped on Japan; Deployed to Nagasaki, Japan during post-war occupation and survey of Atomic Bomb aftermath; G.I. Bill for undergraduate and seminary school at Albright College in Reading, Pennsylvania; Graduate School for Psychology Religion at Boston University, Massachusetts; career working in mental health institutions in New Hampshire, Iowa, Massachusetts, and Alabama; living in Alabama under Governor George Wallace and during the Civil Rights movement; retirement to Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
W.E. Brewer () Audio
Fred V. Brown (Army) Audio
Quartermaster, 1st Army Corps
Charlie Burchett (Marine Corps) Audio
William I. Butler (Air Force) Audio | Transcript
Pre-war life in Martin, TN; Weakley County; farming; University of Tennessee Agricultural College, 1938 to mid-1941; drafted and sent to Ft. Oglethorpe; Savannah Air Base, ordnance of the 27th Bomb Group; Departed Savannah for the Philippines, October, 1941; Arrived Philippines 18 days prior to Japanese attack; Surrender of Bataan; taken prisoner and begins Bataan Death March; Held at Cabanatuan Prison Camp; also imprisoned for several months in Bililibid prison; Liberation on September 4th, 1945; Return home to Martin, TN; Graduated University of Tennessee, 1947; Worked for Agricultural Extension Service in Benton County, TN; 20 years with Pet Milk Company; Agricultural Extension Service, 1968, Hardin County, TN; Retired 1985.
Rev. Melvin Carr (Navy) Audio | Transcript
Born in Sugarlands, Tennessee; father a World War I veteran in Meuse-Argonne Campaign; worked as a CCC medic at Camp Sugarlands in summer 1942; enlisted in U.S. Navy January 7, 1943; trained in San Diego; sent to Aleutians in May 1943; served aboard the U.S.S. Pennsylvania battleship; served in Australia; served at Leyte Gulf; Luzon; Surigao Sea Straight Battle; ship torpedoed in August 1945; Postwar; worked at Oak Ridge, TN as a security guard; Pastor of Baptist Church for 47 years.
David Dale Dickey (Army) Audio | Transcript
Born in Williamston, NC, 1927; father a minister and WW I veteran; also grew up in Morristown, TN; life on the home front, warÂ’s impact on returning veterans; changes in American society after 1945, segregation; Merchant Marine Cadet School, Pass Christian, MS, 1945; student, University of Tennessee-Knoxville, 1946; enlisted Army 1946 Fort Oglethorpe, GA; Infantry training, Fort McClellan, AL; Paratrooper training, Fort Benning, GA; training injuries and reassignment; 1946-1947 occupation duty in the Philippines; encounters with Filipinos; propaganda images of the Japanese and interactions with POWs; return to University of Tennessee-Knoxville, graduation 1950; newspaper reporter in Knoxville 1950s-1970s; life in city; Chamber of Commerce; Executive Director Industrial Development Board; freelance writer 1970s-1990s.
Rev. Buck Donaldson (Navy) Audio | Transcript
Born August 23, 1925 in New Verda, Louisiana; father was a country doctor; enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1942 in Shreveport; trained in San Diego; attends radio school in Los Angeles; active in the Zoot Suit War; served in the Tahiti Islands (Tasmania); Karachi India; Marshall Islands; Admiralty Islands; Palau Islands; Saipan; engaged in the Invasion of Peleliu; served aboard the U.S.S. Cape Canso and U.S.S. Cyrus Adler; joined the Fleet Post Office in the navy; traveled all over the world with Fleet Post Office; served on the U.S.S. Suison; postwar; missionary, pastor; Vanderbilt Student Director; served in Africa with family.
George A. Eddleman (Army) Audio
Louis “Kayo” Erwin (Navy) Audio | Transcript
Born 1925 in Rhea County, Tennessee; childhood on family farm in Meigs County, TN; teenage years going to school and working in Chattanooga, TN; enlisted in Navy December 26, 1942 at the age of 17; assigned to USS Indianapolis after boot camp in 1943; worked in multiple positions on crew operating five-inch guns; record of action at Saipan, Tinian, Tarawa, and Iwo Jima; experience with kamikaze impact at Okinawa; daily life on board the Indianapolis; torpedoed by Japanese submarine on route to Leyte after delivery of atomic bomb components to Guam on July 13th, 1945; survival in water before rescue by the Cecil J. Doyle and taken to Guam for recovery; discharged and returned home to Chattanooga, TN in 1946; life after war working for Ellis Distributing Company; post-war legacy of the Indianapolis and the trial of Captain Charles McVay.
William Hayden Ettinger (Army Signal Corps) Audio
161st Signal Photo Company
Cecil L. Forinash (Army) Audio
45th Infantry Division, 2nd Observation Squadron
Grady Gallant (Marines) Audio | Transcript
Born in June 14, 1920 in Gadsen, AL; early life in Alabama and Florida; enlisted with the United States Marine Corps on September 3, 1941; basic training; served with the Fleet Marine Force from 1941 until 1945; describes assault on Iwo Jima; postwar; journalism school at Emory University; career in journalism; work as author; discussion of books The Friendly Dead and On Valor’s Side.
Albert Gill (Air Force) Audio | Transcript
Born 1921, Fort Smith, AK; childhood in Charleston and Columbia, South Carolina; Great Depression; enlistment in the Aviation Cadet Program, October 1942; basic training Fort Jackson, Aviation Cadet Program, University of Tennessee Knoxville and Maxwell Field; pilot training, Jackson, TN and Fort Meyers, FL; training with B-24s; 307th Bomb Group, 13th Airforce; deployment to Noemfoor, and Morotai, New Guinea; camps life; bombing raids on Balikpapan and the Philippines; leave to Australia and encounters with Australians; Battle of Leyte Gulf; Japanese atrocities on Palawan, VJ day; return to the United States; Post War life; activities with veterans’ groups.
Richard L. Graham (Army) Audio | Transcript
Born in Hazel Green, AL, 1923; father a World War I veteran; studied Agriculture Administration at Auburn in 1942; ROTC; enlisted in Army, 1943; trained at Fort Bragg and Fort Leonard Wood; 475th Infantry Regiment, Company G of “Mars Task Force”; route from Newport News, Cape Town, Bombay, Burma; arrived in Burma in June 1944; march through Burma toward the Burma Road; promoted to Sergeant; march from August 1944- Spring 1945; encountered combat in Myitkinya; travels home through China, India; Egypt; returned to Huntsville, AL; married with three daughters; real estate agent.
Walter M. Higgs (Army Air Force) Audio
17th Bomber Squadron, 27th Bombardment Group; POW
Clarence Higgins (Navy) USS St. Louis Documents
Clarence Higgins was from Erwin, Tennessee. He enlisted in the US Navy in 1940 and was stationed on the USS St. Louis (CL-49) at Pearl Harbor. He was at Pearl Harbor during the attack by the Japanese on December 7th, 1941 with the USS St. Louis narrowly escaping destruction. He was later promoted to Electrician’s Mate, 1st Class and served on three submarines in the Pacific during World War II. After the war, he was a school teacher in Unicoi County, Tennessee before graduating from the University of Tennessee Law School and becoming an attorney.
Ray H. Higgins (Navy) Audio | Transcript
Born June 18, 1921 in Woodbury, TN; grandfather a Union veteran of the Civil War; trained as a radio operator; Radio school in Boston, 1942-43; enlisted as a radio operator for the U.S. Navy; trained on the U.S. towboat, Vicksburg; training on the Mississippi River, Chicago to Mississippi; sent to Port Hueneme, California in 1944; worked on U.S.S. Christopher S. Flanagan and U.S.S. William H. Taggett; Ensign; sent from Hawaii to Marianas Islands; Yokohoma Japan; experience at Eniwetok, Phillipines; Mindanao; Manila; Luzon; Postwar; Southern Fire and Casualty Company in Knoxville; owned own business for twenty years.
Robert M. Howes (Navy) Audio
USS Dayton
Charles Kelley () Audio
John E. Kesterson (Medical Corps) Audio | Transcript
Surgeon, Medical Corps; 114th Gen hospital, UK; 84th field hospital, France; Served in Philippines, Newton Baker Gen Hospital, Mayo Clinic.
F.B. Kuhlman (Army Paratrooper) Audio
424th Infantry, 106th Division, Bronze Star, Battle of the Bulge
F. Joseph Marin (Navy) Audio
USS Alabama
Delbert Marks (Marines) Audio
Also fought in Korean War; POW
Gordon A. Mason (Navy) Audio
Pearl Harbor Survivor
William A. McClain (Navy) Audio
USS Tabberer
William Wesley McGill (Navy) Audio
USS Colorado; USS Kanawha
Robert Neyland (Army, China-Burma-India, UTK Football coach) Documents
From Greenville, Texas, Robert Neyland graduated from West Point in 1916 and served with the Army during World War I. He worked as a professor of Military Science and football coach for the University of Tennessee, starting in 1926. He was recalled into active service during World War II. He served as a district engineer in Norfolk, Virginia before being sent to the China-Burma-India Theater in 1944. He retired as a Brigadier General and worked for UTK Athletics until his death in 1962.
Charley T. Odom (Navy) Audio | Transcript
Pre-war life; Great Depression; work at Standard Oil Company; Pre-war Navy life, training, and experiences aboard the USS Stone, a World War I era submarine; left Navy 1940 and worked for the Merchant Marine; returned to Navy 1942; assigned to USS Billfish; life on board a submarine in combat conditions; Perth, Australia; Post-war; service on a Navy tanker ship during the Korean War; duty as an Instructor at naval schools in New London, Connecticut, and San Diego and Tiburon, California; Jimmy Carter as one of his naval students; retired from the Navy 1956 and taught at Fulton High School, Knoxville; received his undergraduate degree from the University of Tennessee, 1976; work in writing group in Knoxville and activities in veterans’ organizations.
Philip Oliver (Marines) Audio
VMJ-153 Squadron, Marine Air Group 25 (MAG-25)
P. Neal O’ Steen (Navy) Audio | Transcript
Prewar life in Bedford County, TN; Enlisted Jan. 1941; Philadelphia Naval Hospital until Dec. 7, 1941; Naval Recruitment Station, Philadelphia until June, 1943; Sole medical staffer aboard USS ATR-23, rescue tug, in eastern Pacific, 1943-1946, Pharmacist’s Mate, First Class; U.S. Navy Reserve 1947-1951; Korean War at Norfolk Naval Air Station 1950-1951, Chief Hospital Corpsman; Postwar; UT-Knoxville, Class of ’50, Journalism; Kingsport Times, Norfolk Virginian-Pilot; Director of Publications at UT-Knoxville, 1957-1985.
Thomas N. Parlon (Navy) Audio | Transcript
Childhood in Lafayette, Indiana; Prohibition; Great Depression; education at Perdue University; Navy 1941, training Great Lakes, Illinois; officer’s commission; U.S.S. William K. Vanderbilt; Fiji Islands, South Pacific; sinking of ship; assigned to U.S.S. Abercrombie; reassignment to U.S.S. Mormactern; escort of supply ships from Wellington, New Zealand to the South Pacific; life on board ship; post war civilian life.
Edward Phares (Navy) Audio
USS San Diego
Lavoy E. Phillips () Audio
28th Bomber Squadron, Bronze Star
Harwell Proffitt (Navy) Audio
Charles Seay (Air Force) Audio | Transcript
Childhood, Lebanon, TN; family history, experiences during the Great Depression; ROTC; enlistment as aviation cadet, 1941; training at Camp Tullahoma OK., Fort Oglethorpe, GA., and Visalia, CA.; training with B-25 bombers at Greenville, SC.; trained by veterans of the Doolittle Raid; assigned to 70th Squadron, 13th Airforce, Pacific Theater; Henderson Field, Guadalcanal; bombing raids against Japan; encounter with a Japanese prisoner; Rabaul; supply runs to Australia; night raids; Russell Islands, Bougainville; Port Moresby; impressions of Australian airforce, interactions with island inhabitants; relationship to crew; supersitions among crew; V-J Day; return to United States; G.I. Bill; university; post war career.
Leslie C. Schneider (Marines) Audio
1st Division, 5th Regiment
Sam Smith (I) (Navajo Code Talker) Audio | Transcript
Navajo Nation family history and growing up on the Reservation in the Gallup, NM and Cornfields, AZ communities; Educated at Ganado Mission School, Fort Wingate Indian School, Albuquerque Indian School; At age 17, enlisted in U.S. Marine Corps, April 3, 1943; Departure and homecoming ceremonies on the Reservation; Basic Training at San Diego; Camp Pendleton and Code Talkers school; 4th Signal Company, HQ Battalion, 4th Marine Division in the Pacific.
Sam Smith (II) (Navajo Code Talker) Audio | Transcript
Navajo Code Talker and combat communications; Combat in the Marshall Islands, Saipan, Tinian, and Iwo Jima from January 1944 to March 1945; Post-war homecoming; Marries into Acoma tribe, builds first home; Various jobs—Santa Fe Railroad, Navajo water resources, heavy equipment foreman, Chief Ranger; Special Officer for FBI; Director of heavy equipment reconditioning center for Navajo Tribe; reunions; Windtalkers, the movie.
Lemuel Sparks (Navy Chaplain) Audio | Transcript
Born 1917, Newport, TN; childhood; impressions of Tennessee Valley Authority; Great Depression; tobacco farming; business school; Roanoke College, Salem, VA.; Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary, Columbia, SC.; school fraternities; enlistment as chaplain, 1942; Navy, training at Great Lakes Naval Center; promotion to lieutenant, junior grade; assignment to U.S.S. Sangamon; strafing attack, Philippines; duties as Chaplain; Sangamon hit by kamikaze at Okinawa, May 4, 1945; reassignment to U.S.S. Fall River; return to the United States; post war life.
Eben A Stephenson (Army Air Corps) Audio
18th Fighter Group
Durward B. Swanson (Army Air Force) Audio | Transcript
Troup County, Georgia farming, largely cotton; moved to Dublin, Virginia when father got a job working as a superintendent doing dam construction during the Depression; Enlisted in Army Air Corps/Force in 1939; training at Fort Benning, Georgia; stationed at Wheeler and Hickam Fields in Hawaii; working as a motorcycle police during the Attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7 1941; training in Maintenance and Bomber Crew at Chanute Field, Illinois; deployed to Pacific with 23rd Bomb Squadron, 5th Bombardment Group, 7th Air Force; Engaged a Japanese fleet while being transferred to Midway; hit a destroyer and aircraft carrier before having to ditch plane in the ocean; severely wounded and one of only three survivors; rehabilitation back at Kennedy General in Memphis, Tennessee; Post war music career involving stars like Hank Williams Sr. and Porter Wagoner; Goes into building dams and bridges as a superintendent like father; spent retirement between North Georgia and Maryville, Tennessee.
Thomas T. Tidwell (Navy) Audio
USS Patrol Craft Escort
George B. Wallace (Army Air Corps/ Air Force) Audio
16th CC Squadron; China-India-Burma Theater
Harmer C. Weichel (Army) Audio
149th Infantry Division, 1st Battalion
Bill White (Marines) Audio | Transcript
Born, 1924, Athens, TN; childhood; enlistment in Marines, 1941; training San Diego, volunteered for Special Airborne Infantry; training; deployment to a Raider battalion, Second Marine Division; Tulagi, Tanambogo and Gavutu; Guadalcanal; discussion of jungle fighting and Raider tactics; interactions with locals in New Zealand; tensions between American and Commonwealth troops; Tarawa; instructor, jungle warfare school, Parris Island; VJ Day, efforts to run a veteran candidate in McMinn County, TN; tensions between veterans and police; Battle of Athens, TN; hired as a deputy with the Athens Sherriff’s Department; Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and readjustment to civilian life.
Howard K. Williams (Navy) Audio | Transcript
Pre-war life in Blackstone, VA; National Youth Administration school at Manassas 1941; Received exemption and sent to shipbuilding apprentice school at Newport News, VA1941; Stayed on at Newport News as civilian shipbuilder; Exemption ended, 1943; Enlisted in U.S. Navy, March 1944; Basic training, Bainbridge, MD; Further training at Gulfport, MS; Motor Machinist Mate, LCVPs [Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel]; More training, Oceanside, CA; USS LaGrange APA 124, January, 1945; Okinawa and adjacent islands; Kamikazes; Stayed in Navy until May of 1946; Postwar in VA, FL- drafting, 30 years with Bethlehem Steel estimating and sales; Retired to TN.
Roscoe C. Word (Navy/Marine Corps) Audio
USS Hoping, POW, Bataan; wife also interviewed on tape
World War II, Stateside
Joe Billig (Army) Audio
Richard Lowell Blanchard WNOX Radio Station Documents
From Palmer, Illinois, Blanchard moved to Knoxville, Tennessee in 1936 after attending the University of Illinois. He worked as an emcee for WNOX for two decades and throughout World War. Blanchard was never drafted, but served in local politics during the war while also continuing war time broadcasts through the radio station. He also worked as a broadcaster for the UT Volunteer sports teams, the Knoxville Bears and Smokies baseball teams.
Harold Diftler (Navy) Audio | Transcript
Born December 14, 1927 in Knoxville, TN at Fort Sanders Hospital; father immigrated to U.S. from Austria; uncle a World War I veteran for the Central Powers Jewish family; Jewish community in Knoxville; Participated in ROTC at Knoxville High School; graduated high school in 1945; drafted into U.S. Navy; trained at Fort Oglethorpe, GA and in California in 1946; active in navy March-June 1946; guard duty in the navy; attended dental school in 1954; established a dental practice.
Stanley Duhan (I) (Navy) Audio | Transcript
Born March 12, 1926 in New Rochelle, NY; mother from Philadelphia; father from Latvia; Jewish family; early life in urban New York; studied mechanical engineering at Virginia Tech; drafted into U.S. Navy; trained at the Finger Lakes Region, MI in 1944; trained in Chicago and Gulf Port, MS in April, 1945; attended radio school at the naval station in Millington, TN; discharged 1946; G.I. Bill to finish school at Virginia Tech; became engineer in Seymour, CT; remained in reserves with Floyd Bennett Field on Long Island, NY; Industrial Engineer; trained as a reservist during Korean War; Installation Squad; Worked on the Titan and Atlas Projects in 1960s; worked for TVA.
Stanley Duhan (II) (Navy) Audio | Transcript
Postwar engineering school at Virginia Tech; commissioned as a reserve Airforce officer during the Korean War; training at Floyd Bennett Field, NY; composition of reserve unit; differences between Navy and Airforce; enlistment in Air Guard after Korean War; engineering work in military related industries; work designing componets for ICBMs and CH-47 helicopter; work with the Department of Energy and Tennessee Valley Authority; impressions of reports from Vietnam regarding equipment; design of missle silos; activities with veterans’ organziations.
Lionel Greer (Army) Audio | Transcript
Born in 1923 in the Bronx; Hungarian heritage; parents immigrated through Ellis Island; childhood in the Bronx; studied French and German in high school; ROTC; worked as an accountant; served in U.S. Air Force; trained at Fort Dix; stationed in Atlantic City; AGCT Degree in June 1942; studied at City College School of Business (Baruch College); navigator; second lieutenant; radar school in Victorville, CA.
Aston M. Kennedy (Tennessee State Guard) Audio
1st Battalion, 3rd Regiment
Ellen Cleminshaw Weaver (Manhattan Project) Civilian Chemist Documents
Ellen Weaver was a female chemist from Oberlin, Ohio who worked in Oak Ridge, Tennessee on the Manhattan Project. Weaver went on to earn a PhD at California State and worked as faculty at San Jose State University. She also served as president of the Association of Women in Science.
Ed Westcott (Manhattan Project) Army Corps of Engineers, Photographer Documents
Ed Westcott was from Chattanooga, Tennessee. He worked as a photographer for the Army Corps of Engineers on New Deal projects like the WPA before the war. He was posted as the only photographer given full access to document the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee during World War II. He continued to work for the Atomic Energy Commission after the war.
W. Lewis Wood (Navy) Audio | Transcript
Seamen U.S. Navy in World War II; Second Lt. U.S. Army Infantry, 1951-52