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“We shall come home victorious,” stories of WWII veterans · Cultural Wars | America Out Loud News

• 0:04
  In this political Coliseum, we slay the rising beast with the big sword of truth that transcends hypocrisy and censorship.
• 0:16
  It's time to unleash yourself from the tyrants of media propaganda on the America Out Loud Talk Radio Network.
• 0:26
  This is Unleashed the Political News Hour.
• 0:32
  Welcome to Unleashed the Political News Hour.
• 0:36
  I'm your host, Mayor Dub.
• 0:39
  And today's topic, uh, today's show is going to be all about World War II.
• 0:47
  And I wanted to do this show in appreciation for military appreciation month, uh, which is happening during the entire month of May.
• 0:58
  And I thought it would be great to highlight the stories of veterans who fought in one of the most pivotal wars uh within the world's history.
• 1:13
  Uh before I introduce my guest, I just want to give a timeline to refresh all of our memories on World War II.
• 1:21
  Uh, World War II began on September 1st, 1939 with Germany's invasion of Poland, and the war lasted for roughly six years and concluded on September 2nd, 1945 with Japan's surrender.
• 1:41
  The war was fought between the Axis powers and the Allied powers across Europe, Asia, and the Atlantic Pacific Oceans.
• 1:51
  And within those six years, there are many key dates, there are many milestones and many battles that mark that time period.
• 2:01
  My guest today is somebody who knows those timelines very well because she went and interviewed 3 men and women who uh had either fought in one of those battles or family members who recalled their loved ones being part of our history.
• 2:29
  So without any further delay, I'm gonna bring her on right now.
• 2:33
  Uh, author Janice Allen, her book is We Shall Come Home Victorious Stories of World War II Veterans.
• 2:44
  Janice, thank you so much for joining me today.
• 2:48
  My pleasure, Mayor Deb.
• 2:50
  Well, look, uh, you sent me uh a little uh summary of several of the stories, and I want to go through as many as we can today, and uh just kind of starting off I want to ask you why did you write this book number one, and where did you get the title name from?
• 3:19
  All right, I wrote the book um primarily to honor my father who served in World War II.
• 3:27
  He never talked to me much of any about his service in World War II that I can remember, but he did talk to my mother, and after his death, she wrote down for me everything she could remember that he had told her during his service.
• 3:46
  And uh so I used that in my book, and um I didn't get to thank him or honor him or learn about his service during his lifetime, so I decided I could do it afterward.
• 4:00
  And then in 2016, in the small mountain town of Brevard, North Carolina, where my husband Mike and I live, um we learned in the newspaper of a temporary exhibit of artifacts of World Wars One and Two that was being put up for just three weeks in a storefront in our downtown.
• 4:25
  And it was in mid-October, and it was going to have its final day on Veterans Day, which was November uh 11th.
• 4:33
  And so during that three weeks, this man whose name was Emic Cassiado, he was just a collector of artifacts, and he wanted to share them with the community.
• 4:43
  Well, Mike and I went in there one day to tour his museum, and we were just so touched and impressed by all the things that he had collected, and he was able to tell stories about many of them.
• 4:56
  In other words, he knew the veterans who carried those guns or were wore their uniforms, and his goal was to get a get a permanent space to display these artifacts in order to honor the people who had fought in those two wars.
• 5:13
  And so we, of course, wanted to help him because we thought this would was a great project.
• 5:18
  So we walked out, and we knew that we could donate money, and that was certainly welcome because he needed to rent a space.
• 5:25
  And so we paused on the sidewalk, and my husband is a writer and I'm a writer, and he said to me, I know another thing we could do.
• 5:36
  We could go and find veterans in this community and ask them to tell us their stories and then publish them.
• 5:42
  And that could be another, that could be another contribution to the museum, the stories.
• 5:48
  And um, so that's what we did.
• 5:51
  And um, we were lucky that once we started asking questions, um, people would bring their fathers, their uncles, their grandfathers in and introduce them to um this man who had this temporary exhibit, and he would call up me on the telephone and say, Hey Janice, I got another one for you.
• 6:12
  You're ready, write down this number.
• 6:15
  And so uh this was some one who had come in to see his exhibits, and he said, Hey, we're collecting stories from World War II veterans.
• 6:23
  Would you be willing to talk to somebody?
• 6:25
  So the first book that I published uh included 17 stories.
• 6:30
  It some of them were people I met locally and were able to talk to live, but then also the story of my dad.
• 6:39
  He was already past, had already passed away by then, and my um father-in-law, and so I got 17 stories and published them.
• 6:48
  Once that book was out and was being sold for the museum as an honor project where the proceeds went to the museum, people started buying the books, and then they would call me and say, Hey, I know another veteran and another and another.
• 7:00
  And another and another.
• 7:01
  And this happened over a period of years.
• 7:01
  And this happened over a period of years.
• 7:03
  The book, the first book of 17 stories came out in 2017.
• 7:03
  The book, the first book of 17 stories came out in 2017, and the more stories I got, the when I got new stories, and I would publish a new edition and another new edition to include more stories.
• 7:08
  And the more stories I got, the when I got new stories, then I would publish a new edition and another new edition to include more stories.
• 7:17
  So now it's uh the seventh edition and has 40 stories in it.
• 7:17
  So now it's uh the seventh edition and has 40 stories in it.
• 7:22
  Wow, that's just amazing.
• 7:22
  Wow, that's just amazing.
• 7:24
  And so many um things that I love about this story is number one.
• 7:24
  And so many um things that I love about this story is number one, there was a veteran who was collecting items who had this great idea.
• 7:34
  And people within your community in Brevard jumped on board, including you and your husband to take a simple idea of one collector and turn it into what is now the Veterans History Museum of the Carolinas.
• 7:51
  Um, and the other thing I love too about this story is that all the proceeds from your book, We Shall Come Home Victorious Stories of World War II Veterans, all the proceeds from the book sales go to the Veterans History Museum, which is just such a testament to uh your giving back to the veterans and the community.
• 8:15
  Thank you.
• 8:16
  May I give you the website of that museum?
• 8:18
  Yes, please do.
• 8:20
  It is the veterans museum.org.
• 8:28
  Got it.
• 8:28
  Um, I will also include that in the podcast link for folks who um want to see that and and connect to it.
• 8:35
  And and the other point that I want to focus on, uh the title of your book.
• 8:42
  Uh you you have a story behind why you named it as such.
• 8:47
  Tell the listeners what that story is.
• 8:51
  Thank you.
• 8:52
  My mother received a small record in the mail, which my father sent her when he was on leave from serving in the Pacific.
• 9:06
  When he was on leave, he went to San Diego and he spent his leave time.
• 9:10
  He did not go home because home was in North Carolina and he didn't have the money or the time to go all the way to the East Coast.
• 9:18
  So in San Diego, he found a recording booth where he could go in and speak a message, put in his money, and out would pop this little plastic record that if you look, it's very small, it's about five inches in diameter, but it would remind you if you've seen those very old 78 RPM records with the black threads, and you can feel the threads.
• 9:44
  And uh it's like it's the the idea of the photo booth.
• 9:48
  You know, you go in and you put money in it, and it pops out some photos.
• 9:52
  So two of those recordings came out, and he put them in an envelope and mail them to her.
• 9:58
  And we had those in our home for all the years that I was growing up, but we couldn't play it because it was too some of the threads were torn off and ripped, and it was just too rough.
• 10:09
  But we knew that that it came from my father in 1944.
• 10:14
  So after I became interested, so interested in in veterans after starting to write the book, I found someone who could take the sound off that recording and put it onto a CD for me, which was just amazing.
• 10:29
  And so I now can listen to my father's words, and part of his love letter to my mother was this don't you worry about a thing.
• 10:41
  We shall come home victorious.
• 10:44
  Wow.
• 10:46
  And then he went on to give his send his love to other family members.
• 10:49
  And that just, I mean, I get I got goosebumps just now when I was telling you those words.
• 10:55
  And um, as I interviewed more of these veterans and I asked them to tell me, looking back on your service in World War II, were you scared?
• 11:05
  Was it a big sacrifice?
• 11:07
  Could you know, could you just everything uh all the time you were thinking of will I make it out of this alive?
• 11:14
  What was going on?
• 11:15
  And using different words, every single one of them expressed some version of I knew we would win, we were there to do a job, we were trained to do a job.
• 11:29
  I'm happy that I could help, and I'm proud of my service.
• 11:33
  But there nobody ever said to me, out of all those 33 people who I interviewed in person, well, I was scared and I didn't know, you know, I thought we might lose.
• 11:44
  So I decided, well, of my small sample of World War II veterans, this is what they all felt.
• 11:51
  We shall come home victorious.
• 11:53
  Well, and I I saw that when I was reading the summary of the different stories.
• 11:58
  I got the same sense that they all knew we were going to be victorious in this in this war.
• 12:04
  And that is just really something when you think about it, how many people you interviewed, and they all had the same mindset going in.
• 12:14
  Right.
• 12:15
  All right.
• 12:16
  So we have uh lots of stories to talk about, and that's what we're gonna get into uh in the rest of the show.
• 12:24
  Uh, I want to read, though, your book's dedication, what you have written to set the tone going forward.
• 12:31
  You wrote, this book is dedicated to the World War II veterans who answered the call of duty.
• 12:37
  They saved our nation.
• 12:38
  They saved Western civilization.
• 12:41
  May we honor them by preserving and protecting our constitutional republic that gives us the blessings of liberty.
• 12:49
  Very well written, Janice Allen.
• 12:52
  Uh, please stay tuned, everyone.
• 12:54
  More stories to come about our brave World War II veterans with author Janice Allen.
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• 15:50
  Joining me today is author Janice Allen.
• 15:54
  She uh put together a book of 40 stories from veterans.
• 16:00
  And I am going to start off with one of those stories.
• 16:05
  Ladies first is the story of Elizabeth Allen Churchill Frogsham Tilston.
• 16:14
  And she joined the British Army's Auxiliary Transport Service in the north of England in 1942.
• 16:24
  Let's start there, Janice.
• 16:26
  Uh, this interview.
• 16:28
  What uh in particular stuck out to you uh in her story.
• 16:34
  What was so interesting about Elizabeth was um that she served in the British Army, but she was living here in the United States.
• 16:47
  She had after the war, she had come here many years ago, but she um had such a prominent British accent, and she was so proud of what she had done.
• 17:00
  Um, as you know, in World War II, there weren't women in combat, but there were um many services that they could participate in on the ground.
• 17:11
  Um she became an ambulance driver in the north of England.
• 17:17
  She was only 17, so she had to get her parents' signature and able to join.
• 17:22
  But she wanted to join up because some of her older friends and uh boys, mostly 18-year-olds were joining.
• 17:29
  In fact, she had a boyfriend who joined the uh RAF and was a pilot, and she later married him, and I'll talk about him in just a moment.
• 17:38
  She said uh her job as an ambulance driver was picking up wounded allied soldiers at the port in Liverpool and taking them to area hospitals.
• 17:51
  And um, she said, not many people could drive in those days because not many people had cars.
• 18:01
  But she said, we had a car, and my father taught me how to drive.
• 18:06
  So when I had to persuade him to let me join the army, I said, Well, Dad, it's your fault.
• 18:11
  You taught me how to drive, and I can drive an ambulance, and I can do that.
• 18:14
  So the boys can all go off and fight.
• 18:17
  She said, um her most thrilling part of driving was when she got to drive in the tunnel under the river from Liberpool to Birkenhead.
• 18:30
  And she just thought that driving under a river in a long tunnel tunnel was so exciting.
• 18:35
  She said, I was really a good driver, and I always thought what I did was really fantastic because I was only 17.
• 18:43
  But one day her boss said to her when she reported to work, you're not going to drive an ambulance today.
• 18:49
  You're going to drive General Charles de Gaulle using that, and he pointed Jaguar.
• 18:58
  Oh.
• 18:58
  Wow.
• 18:59
  That's what you used if you were driving Charles de Gaulle.
• 19:03
  And um many people may remember that he was the head, he was the leader of the free French in exile.
• 19:11
  So he went to London and stayed for the duration of the war because he was a very prominent figure, and it would have been so easy for the Germans to um kidnap him.
• 19:22
  And that's what some of the kings and queens of the countries in Scandinavia, several London was full of leaders who were in exile from their countries that were occupied, and he was one of them.
• 19:34
  But he was touring the north of England, so she got to drive him.
• 19:37
  And when she told me that, I thought I could just visualize this jaguar, uh, which was you know the top of the line of the British vehicles.
• 19:46
  And I said, Um, Elizabeth, what color was your jaguar?
• 19:50
  She said, Army.
• 19:51
  And I thought, Army.
• 19:53
  I said, okay, I know it was an army vehicle, but what color was it?
• 19:57
  She said, Army.
• 19:59
  And then I realized army was the color of green that they used to describe military vehicles.
• 20:07
  And then I'll talk to her more about that later.
• 20:10
  So a jacket, a uniform, a helmet, a car could just be called army, and that meant green.
• 20:16
  Oh, that's interesting.
• 20:17
  I I didn't know that.
• 20:18
  No, I didn't know it for a long time.
• 20:21
  So she said, Um, here's what would happen when I for that week that I had General DeGaulle.
• 20:26
  I picked him up and drove him around.
• 20:28
  He was a big man, and we all remember pictures of him.
• 20:31
  He was always a head taller than everybody else.
• 20:33
  Remember when um Paris was liberated.
• 20:36
  We have seen pictures of him walking down the street, and he was so much taller than Eisenhower.
• 20:41
  He was a big man, and he sat in the back seat.
• 20:43
  He didn't talk much, but if I asked him a question, he would answer me very nicely.
• 20:47
  He spoke English.
• 20:49
  She said at the end of the week, he stood up and shook hands with me and said, Thank you.
• 20:52
  And that was it.
• 20:54
  So he was very formal, but she got to say that she knew General de Gaulle.
• 20:58
  She also said, while I was in training in the Army, we always had many classes to attend.
• 21:00
  In training in the army, we always had many classes to attend.
• 21:03
  And I met Princess Elizabeth in one of my classes before she became Queen Elizabeth.
• 21:03
  And I met Princess Elizabeth in one of my classes before she became Queen Elizabeth.
• 21:11
  And she said there were only six people in my class.
• 21:11
  And she said there were only six people in my class.
• 21:15
  So we got to become quite close.
• 21:15
  So we got to become quite close.
• 21:17
  She said, I met her several times after the war, and she stayed in touch.
• 21:18
  She said I met her several times after the war, and she stayed in touch.
• 21:22
  And when I was interviewing Elizabeth in her home, she showed me some invitations that she had framed where the queen, who then was Queen.
• 21:22
  And when I was interviewing Elizabeth in her home, she showed me some invitations that she had framed where the Queen, who then was queen after afterward, uh had invited her to some of the formal gatherings at the uh palace.
• 21:36
  So she knew Queen Elizabeth and she knew General De Gaulle.
• 21:40
  That's she was that's really uh that's really an interesting life experience, both of those.
• 21:47
  Yes.
• 21:48
  After the war was over, she said, um my job as an ambulance driver was really sad because the prisoners, the English and the Allied prisoners of war that had been kept in Germany for years, where they were mistreated and starving and sick, those are the ones who were coming into Liverpool that I was able to pick up.
• 22:12
  She said I didn't have to put them on stretchers.
• 22:14
  There were other people there to do that, but it saddened me so much to see these people who were nearly dead after the war.
• 22:21
  It was just such a it was just so hard.
• 22:23
  She said, But I only had to drive, and I was proud.
• 22:27
  She said, I then got engaged to my boyfriend, the RF RAF pilot.
• 22:33
  And when he was on leave, he would come and follow me on his motorcycle when I was driving the ambulance to make sure nothing happened to me and that I got there all right.
• 22:42
  We were married and later moved to the United States because of his business.
• 22:46
  And she said, right now I'm 91 and I'm still driving.
• 22:50
  I've only had one accident in my life, and it wasn't my fault.
• 22:54
  Wow.
• 22:55
  The only really an incredible story.
• 22:58
  Um, she uh she lives in Bravard today.
• 23:02
  Yes, she did.
• 23:02
  She actually lived in my neighborhood.
• 23:04
  Wow.
• 23:05
  But I but I didn't know her until some people found out that I was collecting stories and they introduced me to her.
• 23:11
  She was a real character.
• 23:13
  One time I was taking, I picked her up to take her to an event where we were going to take her to the museum where we had a professional photographer who was going to make uh pictures, portraits, just headshots of all these World War II veterans so that we could frame them and put them on the wall.
• 23:29
  And she was really fussing with her appearance, and should I wear this?
• 23:32
  And what about this?
• 23:33
  What color?
• 23:34
  And just as we were uh walking out the door from her apartment, she went up to a mirror on the wall and looked got real close to it and looked closely, and then she looked at me and said, I should have had a facelift somewhere along the way.
• 23:50
  Oh 99 at that time.
• 23:55
  What an incredible life, uh, life story she had.
• 23:59
  And you know, one of the other things that I think is so great about you putting these stories together is imagine if you didn't do this project when that individual passes away.
• 24:12
  Oftentimes those stories pass away as well and get forgotten.
• 24:17
  But what you've done now, Janice, is you've really uh solidified the survival of those stories by compiling them all together in this wonderful book.
• 24:26
  So I really applaud you for that.
• 24:28
  It's it's really, I think, just uh a great project you put together.
• 24:32
  Thank you.
• 24:33
  The mission statement of the Veterans History Museum of the Carolinas is honor, educate, preserve.
• 24:41
  And I feel that when you listen to a veteran, you give them your time, you show interest, you're that you're honoring them.
• 24:48
  If people read my book or listen to this podcast, they are being educated about perhaps some things they didn't know and to preserve it for all of the future generations as you've just noted.
• 25:02
  All right, and on that note, I want to go to uh the next veteran story, U.S.
• 25:09
  Army Infantry man, Lawrence Hoffman.
• 25:12
  He was born in Brooklyn, New York.
• 25:15
  And you had sent something to me where Hoffman said this.
• 25:20
  Hoffman said, When I was drafted in 1943, I was given a choice to go to Europe or to the Pacific.
• 25:28
  And I said, I want to kill Nazis.
• 25:32
  They're killing Jews.
• 25:33
  I'm a Jew, so I want to fight the Nazis.
• 25:37
  And uh the rest is history.
• 25:39
  I'm gonna have you get into the part of the story where he gets to Germany as the war ended, and he comes upon a couple of concentration camps that they his uh uh unit didn't know existed.
• 25:56
  So take us to that point in his interview where he talks about what he found at these concentration camps.
• 26:03
  Okay, he said the camps were surrounded by high fences, maybe 50 or 60 prisoners in each camp.
• 26:10
  The people started coming out, they were just skin and bones, some had bones actually sticking out of their skin.
• 26:16
  The Nazis had made them work in the fields.
• 26:18
  We saw a lot of dead bodies out in the fields, but those still alive were so sick and hungry and many couldn't even walk.
• 26:25
  We gave them the MREs, the meals ready to eat that we had been issued, and then we set up our cooking equipment and cooked hot meals for them.
• 26:33
  They were so happy to see us.
• 26:35
  They knew then they were free to go home to see their own people.
• 26:39
  The German guards, they told us had already fled.
• 26:42
  They knew the war was over and they did not want to be captured by the Americans.
• 26:47
  While I was doing that interview, Larry's wife and um daughter and son-in-law were sitting in the room just outside where the interview was, but they could hear.
• 27:00
  And when the interview broke up, I went out, and Larry's wife was just sitting in very quietly crying, and she said he never told us about liberating those concentration camps.
• 27:14
  So it was the first time that she was hearing this story that her husband told um internally for all that time.
• 27:23
  And I guess, and this is you know, an opinion.
• 27:26
  Why do you think that Larry never shared those stories with his wife or his family until that time when you were interviewing him?
• 27:37
  Well, from what I gathered from many of these veterans, they wanted to protect their families from the ugliness of war that they had experienced.
• 27:51
  Um we know about PTSD now, and we know about what was called shell shock from World War One.
• 28:00
  One.
• 28:01
  But World War II veterans seemed to have handled what they saw and what they experienced by just as you said, internalizing it and being silent.
• 28:01
  But World War II veterans seem to have handled what they saw and what they experienced by just, as you said, internalizing it and being silent.
• 28:14
  They wanted that part of their lives to be gone.
• 28:14
  They wanted that part of their lives to be gone.
• 28:17
  They came home.
• 28:17
  They came home, they started families, they were able to go to school with the GI Bill.
• 28:18
  They started families.
• 28:20
  They were able to go to school with the GI Bill.
• 28:23
  And I think so many of them just they called upon their own strength to just say, we did it.
• 28:23
  And I think so many of them just they they called upon their own strength to just say, we did it.
• 28:30
  We won the war.
• 28:31
  Now it's time to focus on family and their personal lives.
• 28:36
  You know, I I just on this on a side note, that has to be extremely difficult for anyone who saw what he um, you know, shared with you when they reached these concentration camps and the conditions of uh human beings, uh, their brothers essentially.
• 28:54
  Uh just I I can't imagine carrying that throughout a lifetime, uh, seeing what he saw and uh being able to function.
• 29:04
  And and he did that because he had a long career then as a New York City policeman, right?
• 29:12
  And uh where he and his wife then you say moved to Florida and then Brevard after retirement.
• 29:19
  Um you give us an update today.
• 29:24
  On Larry, yeah.
• 29:26
  He is um he has dementia.
• 29:30
  He is healthy physically.
• 29:33
  Um, but he is not able to come to the events that we have at the museum anymore.
• 29:38
  He now lives with his daughter and son-in-law here in Brevard.
• 29:42
  Great.
• 29:43
  Well, he's definitely had a full life and one he should be very proud of.
• 29:50
  All right, moving on to Charles Dixon.
• 29:56
  Uh he was a paratrooper for the US Army 82nd Airborne.
• 30:03
  And he said um a lot of interesting things in what you had sent me.
• 30:09
  I want to just one of the things that stuck out to me is uh how he got in to being a jumper.
• 30:19
  He was at basic training, he was a private, making 21 dollars a month.
• 30:24
  And by the time they took out six dollars and forty cents for insurance, he didn't have but $12 a month to spend.
• 30:32
  So let's use that as our jumping off point for why he told you he became a paratrooper.
• 30:42
  Yes, that $50 a month more sounded good, he said.
• 30:45
  So I decided if I was going to get killed, I might as well die with money in my pocket.
• 30:50
  So I went to jump school and graduated in April of 44.
• 30:55
  And we re we know that D Day, June 6th, was coming up just in um two months or less from then.
• 31:04
  And um, so he completed his training.
• 31:08
  He went over there and hope he was ready on June 5th in the wee hours right after midnight.
• 31:15
  So he said, We were the first paratroops to jump into Normandy.
• 31:19
  There were about 800 planes with 20 men in each plane.
• 31:22
  We loaded up on June 5th and jumped in the night in the dark.
• 31:26
  If you're smart and can see the ground or when you're about to hit the ground, you pull your chute right then.
• 31:33
  It's sort of like preparing yourself to get off an escalator.
• 31:36
  He said, But if you miss the timing, you could shake all the fillings out of your teeth.
• 31:41
  Wow.
• 31:42
  And then I go ahead.
• 31:44
  The part about then there's something called a clicker.
• 31:48
  I didn't know about this, the clicker.
• 31:51
  So tell us what he said about that and explain to the audience what that is.
• 31:55
  All the paratroops had these little metal objects that um had a little lever on it that when you press it, it would go kind of like a clicking sound that you can make with your mouth.
• 32:10
  And they were called Buster Brown clickers.
• 32:12
  I do not know why they were called that.
• 32:14
  I remembered that Buster Brown was a brand of shoes for children way back in the day.
• 32:20
  So uh I'd like to know what that is, and uh maybe I can find out.
• 32:24
  But he said they they issued clickers to all of us, and our instructions were it's dark, you get on the ground, you bury your parachute so that the Germans can't find it because they're out there looking for you.
• 32:37
  And if you hear some movement in the bushes, it might be one of your buddies because one of the first things you're supposed to do is um get together with the other paratroops, get together and see if you can account for everybody.
• 32:51
  So you just click your clicker, it makes a very low noise.
• 32:56
  And if you hear someone click back, you know that's your friend, you know, that's your buddy.
• 33:00
  And he said, but if they don't click back, you kill them.
• 33:07
  You shoot to kill, because it's a German.
• 33:10
  And he still had it.
• 33:11
  And during the interview, he clicked his little clicker.
• 33:14
  That was something he brought home with him, and he still had 80 years later.
• 33:18
  Oh yeah, that I learned learned something new every day.
• 33:21
  Uh, didn't know about the clickers.
• 33:24
  And then one more interesting point where he talks about one of the jumpers getting hung up on the steeple of a church.
• 33:33
  Tell us about that.
• 33:35
  Yes, hung by his parachute.
• 33:37
  And he said he just hung there and played dead so the Germans would not shoot him.
• 33:42
  Finally, when it was safe, we went in there and got him.
• 33:45
  But he was there for about half a day.
• 33:47
  And for those who have seen the movie, the longest day, you'll remember this scene was recreated by a jumper hanging there on that steeple.
• 33:57
  And the actor from long ago, Red Buttons was the man who played that paratrooper.
• 34:04
  I mean, just an amazing story, right?
• 34:07
  Uh, these young men perish, you know, parachuting into enemy territory in the you know, the night skies, having to communicate with this Buster Brown clicker.
• 34:21
  Uh, it's just when you think about it, I mean what it takes to do that.
• 34:26
  Um, such bravery and and courage and faith.
• 34:31
  Uh, I I just uh am amazed when I was reading all of these stories.
• 34:37
  Yep.
• 34:38
  They're definitely my heroes.
• 34:41
  All right.
• 34:41
  Well, on that note, Janice, we are going to take a break.
• 34:46
  Uh, everyone stick around, a few more great stories that uh Janice wants to get to.
• 34:53
  And uh we will be returning after this short break.
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• 37:03
  So during the break, uh I was curious about the Buster Brown clickers that Janice had brought up that one of the veterans shared as part of his story.
• 37:16
  And evidently these Buster Brown clickers were small handheld mechanical noisemakers that were used as promotional premiums by the Buster Brown shoe company throughout the early to mid-20th century.
• 37:33
  So that's pretty interesting, Janice, right?
• 37:36
  Yes.
• 37:38
  Yeah.
• 37:38
  And uh it almost uh I remember uh going to Bust Around stores when I was a kid and getting shoes from them.
• 37:47
  Uh and I know that you had mentioned uh during the break that these clickers are being sold on eBay as well.
• 37:56
  Yes, yes.
• 37:57
  Now, what I would love to know is where did they did Butcher Brand copy them from the Army paratroopers or vice versa?
• 38:07
  Hmm.
• 38:08
  Well, you know what?
• 38:09
  That's uh something we'll we'll give that as homework to all the listeners who might be interested in exploring that a little further.
• 38:18
  That's a good idea.
• 38:20
  Yeah, but uh, but that's a great story.
• 38:22
  Um and speaking of great stories, I know we have a few more I want to talk about.
• 38:28
  I'm gonna start off with Sanford Sandy Groendike to join the Army Air Corps in 1943 and served as a B-17 bomber pilot in Europe.
• 38:42
  So tell me about your interview with him.
• 38:45
  Okay.
• 38:46
  As he told me, his plane was hit by German fire, and he was over Germany.
• 38:52
  Um, there was a bombardier in the nose of the plane, which was positioned right under where the pilot was sitting, and he was killed immediately.
• 39:02
  But Sandy was forced to make an emergency landing, and he was able to land safely in a farmer's field in Germany, and uh, except for the bombardier, all the other um members of his crew survived.
• 39:18
  But he said, as soon as they got out of the plane, they started seeing people, the local farmers, people were running toward them.
• 39:25
  And it he what he learned later is civilians in Germany were trained or told anyway that if a plane comes down and that there are survivors, you get these allied crew members, and you lock them up somewhere and let us know until the German police could come and get them and then imprison them.
• 39:49
  So he said, This is what happened to them.
• 39:50
  He said, Oh, they were really friendly.
• 39:52
  They just came out.
• 39:53
  Of course, they spoke German and Sandy and his crew spoke English, but they had guns, and they indicated that they wanted them to follow the the farmer to a place where he was going to keep them.
• 40:07
  And this place was a grain silo.
• 40:11
  It was an empty grain silo.
• 40:14
  So imagine we all know what a large round building or I don't know if you call it a building.
• 40:20
  It's a it's a large place where a lot of grain could be stored.
• 40:24
  So they were kind of knocking around in there, and uh they spent the night there and they were fed, and the next day the Germans um uh police came and got them and took them to prison, interrogated them, and they kept them in solitary confinement for about six days.
• 40:41
  But he said after that, we weren't treated badly.
• 40:43
  Once they got us out of the out of solitary, we were fed well.
• 40:48
  They there were already American prisoners there, and they found out who could cook, and they became the cooks, so they had a job.
• 40:54
  He said he was there for nine months, and he said we received Red Cross packages.
• 40:59
  Those were always dependable.
• 41:00
  He said, But the sad part about it was we ate things that we got from Red Cross, but we could see through the fence.
• 41:08
  German people outside the prison gates were starving.
• 41:12
  And they would come up and try to get us to give them food through the fence if they could, because we had the Red Cross food, and they did not.
• 41:21
  And he said, pretty soon we had heard the Allies had landed on D-Day, and they were making their way up through France, and they were, of course, headed for Germany because that was the goal to get to Berlin.
• 41:33
  So we knew it was just a matter of time.
• 41:36
  And um, he said we had things in those red pars um red cross parcels that we could trade.
• 41:42
  He said they always sent five packs of cigarettes in uh in a box, and some of us did not smoke, so we would use those cigarettes to trade to the German prison guards for things that we wanted them to bring us from the outside.
• 41:58
  And there was one uh person, uh one American in there who knew how to build a radio.
• 42:00
  Uh person, uh, one American in there who knew how to build a radio.
• 42:04
  He knew if he could get certain items by trading cigarettes and getting his buddies to trade for cigarettes, he could get every little piece of equipment he needed to make a radio, and he did.
• 42:04
  He knew if he could get certain items by trading cigarettes and getting his buddies to trade for cigarettes, he could get every little piece of equipment he needed to make a radio, and he did.
• 42:16
  So they could secretly listen to the BBC, and that's how they knew that the Allies were coming in.
• 42:16
  So they could secretly listen to the BBC, and that's how they knew that the Allies were coming, and that's how they kept up on their war news.
• 42:22
  That's how they kept up on their war news.
• 42:24
  And somehow they got a hold of a typewriter that was in an office somewhere, and someone would write.
• 42:24
  And somehow they got a hold of a typewriter that was in an office somewhere, and someone would write down the news that they had heard on BBC.
• 42:32
  So they had one copy.
• 42:34
  So they had an internal prison newspaper that they could pass around.
• 42:38
  And he said, miraculously, the Germans never saw that paper, and they never found out what they were doing.
• 42:43
  When liberation came, it was from German soldiers, not Americans.
• 42:47
  He said they got there, but they were a drunken mob.
• 42:50
  He said they would come in and they would push their sleeves up, and they would have half a dozen watches up their arm from the wrist all the way up.
• 42:59
  They had taken these from the German people, German civilians, so that they could sell them because they wanted to buy something alcoholic.
• 43:07
  And he said they would come in and they would show us these watches as if we had something to sell, and they would say, shnops, yeah.
• 43:15
  He said they were just burning.
• 43:17
  He said, uh, they would just be yelling at us.
• 43:20
  And um, and he said, another reason that we knew that the Russians were close is we saw the Germans who were our prison uh guards burning all the records.
• 43:31
  So we knew.
• 43:34
  So they knew it sounded like that they were going to be liberated.
• 43:39
  But they would only do that if they knew that they could, and they did not want any evidence of what they had done.
• 43:44
  Wow.
• 43:45
  Yeah, you know what's interesting in the story is that uh he said that they were actually receiving better treatment, such as by being fed uh inside this prison, as opposed to the German people who were outside of the prison gates.
• 44:05
  And Germany's economy was in terrible shape, all the money was going to fuel the war effort, and uh uh some of the towns had been bombed by the Allies, of course, by then, and so they were in a depression.
• 44:20
  You know, the other the other thing that's interesting is this uh the watches.
• 44:25
  Uh thing that you don't read about in history books, and it's interesting because I'm sure how many um service members came back home with one of those watches that used to belong to a German civilian, and they were now wearing that.
• 44:45
  And I'm sure those watches still exist within those families, but but what a history, right, behind those watches.
• 44:53
  When you think about it.
• 44:56
  Yeah.
• 44:57
  All right.
• 44:58
  Uh Milt Fletcher uh served as sergeant first class in the 184th infantry division of the U.S.
• 45:06
  Army Reserves.
• 45:07
  Uh, he served as a rifleman and fought in the last battle of World War II in the Battle of Okinawa.
• 45:16
  Tell us about that interview.
• 45:18
  Okay.
• 45:19
  Milt always says the Battle of Okinawa was the bloodiest battle of World War II and the last battle of World War II.
• 45:27
  He said he was told that his division had already had a 110% casualty rate.
• 45:34
  And he said, wait, how can that be?
• 45:37
  That doesn't make good sense math-wise.
• 45:39
  And so the answer that he was given was well, the replacements get shot pretty fast.
• 45:45
  And I knew I was one of those replacements.
• 45:49
  He said the life expectancy when we got there, they told us was 90 minutes.
• 45:55
  But he said, I never got a scratch except for one time I injured by my knee by stepping into a post hole.
• 46:02
  So he said he was very lucky.
• 46:04
  He said that when the first atomic bomb was dropped and they heard news of it on Hiroshima, he said, we thought maybe this was just a ploy.
• 46:12
  This was something that was news that was being spread to get the uh Japanese to surrender.
• 46:17
  And of course, soldiers in the field didn't have a very reliable way of getting news.
• 46:21
  They knew what was happening around them, but they were uh they didn't know if they could rely on something to be a rumor or true.
• 46:30
  But he said, when we were told that the second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, we knew it was real, and that meant for us that the war was over.
• 46:39
  But he wasn't done fighting.
• 46:41
  He said after that battle, his unit was sent to Seoul, Korea to receive the surrender of the Japanese army in Korea.
• 46:50
  And this was the wonderful thing that the wonderful gift that I had from all these veterans telling me their stories is I learned some parts of history that I knew nothing about.
• 47:02
  Korea had been occupied by the Japanese since 1910.
• 47:08
  So at that point, for 35 years, Korea had been under the rule of Japanese who were who did not treat them well, and he said the Koreans were treated almost like slaves.
• 47:21
  The Japanese controlled everything, the government, the banking system, the transportation, the schools, and the Koreans were forced to work.
• 47:30
  But after 35 years, they had no ability and no experience in running things.
• 47:36
  So the the other interesting fact is we all know about the surrender of the Japanese to General MacArthur on the battleship in the Pacific, and that's what that's the iconic image of the surrender of the Japanese.
• 47:54
  Well, it happened also in Seoul, Korea, but that fact gets lost in history because it was it was just the surrender of the Japanese who were in Korea occupying Korea.
• 48:09
  But he said, I will never forget when we got there before this formal surrender, the Japanese flag was flying on a tall flagpole in Seoul, which was the capital.
• 48:20
  We saw our army, the American army bring it down, put on the American flag and raise the American flag.
• 48:29
  And that was the end of the war for him.
• 48:32
  And the Americans stayed there to train the Koreans to begin to run all these essential parts of government and business and society until they could get their feet on the ground.
• 48:44
  And then, of course, the Americans left.
• 48:47
  But of course, we still have troops in Korea, as you know.
• 48:50
  So he said, Milt said, you know, looking back, I'm here for my country.
• 48:55
  I love my country.
• 48:56
  It's been good to me.
• 48:57
  It gave me an undergraduate degree, a graduate degree, and helped me buy a home.
• 49:00
  Degree and helped me buy a home.
• 49:02
  I even have new hearing aids from the VA, and I'm a happy person.
• 49:02
  I even have new hearing aids from the VA, and I'm a happy person.
• 49:06
  I've had a good life and a full life.
• 49:06
  I've had a good life and a full life.
• 49:09
  And I like to tell people about that quote because it this is the common thread that runs through the look backward of every single World War II veteran who I met.
• 49:09
  And I like to tell people about that quote because it this is the common thread that runs through the look backward of every single World War II veteran who I met.
• 49:25
  Yeah.
• 49:25
  Yeah, and it's interesting because I also highlighted that quote.
• 49:26
  And it's interesting because I also highlighted that quote.
• 49:30
  And I think it I felt the same thing when I was reading through these stories that that was what everyone was thinking.
• 49:41
  All right.
• 49:42
  Uh let's move on to P-47 pilot Ed Catrell, U.S.
• 49:49
  Army Air Corps served as a fighter pilot from 1942 to 1945.
• 49:56
  Tell us about Ed's story.
• 49:59
  Okay.
• 50:00
  Um Ed was serving with the this was in the Battle of the Bulge.
• 50:04
  This was toward the end of the war.
• 50:06
  This was in December of 1944.
• 50:09
  And his base was Belgium.
• 50:11
  And they had built makeshift runways for these planes to be able to take off and land.
• 50:19
  And so he was a pilot in our dogfight with the German Luftwaffe, ME 109 fighters during the Battle of the Bulge.
• 50:26
  His engine was shot, and oil immediately covered his windshield so that he couldn't see a thing.
• 50:32
  It was a single-engine plane.
• 50:35
  And he thought, okay, this is it.
• 50:37
  And then it was all of a sudden he saw one of those German pilots in his ME 109 pull up on his right side.
• 50:43
  And then he saw another one pull up on his left side.
• 50:46
  So he said, I figured at that point this was it.
• 50:49
  I'm a goner.
• 50:50
  And he said, but then he noticed something really unusual.
• 50:53
  On the right side, he saw the pilot was looking in at him.
• 50:57
  And he said, he made the okay sign that is universal, where you put your index finger to your thumb and you make a circle, and your other three things are fingers are just sticking up.
• 51:10
  And he said, that was the okay sign.
• 51:12
  And I thought, what does this mean?
• 51:13
  And then he said, I looked on my left side, and the other pilot was doing the same thing.
• 51:18
  And then these two pilots coordinated, made a figure eight behind me.
• 51:24
  They peeled off, they went the opposite way and allowed me to keep flying to my safety in Belgium.
• 51:30
  He said, I don't know why they did it.
• 51:33
  Ed gave this talk to groups many times before he sadly passed away last um March.
• 51:40
  And every time the first question after his talk was, why did these pilots let you live?
• 51:46
  And he said, I don't know.
• 51:47
  He said, but being a pilot myself, I can only imagine maybe it was the honor of one pilot to another.
• 51:54
  They knew that my plane was crippled.
• 51:57
  Uh may or may not make it back, but why kill me when I was already um damaged?
• 52:03
  And he always said, I wish I could meet those two pilots, but I know I never will.
• 52:08
  Yeah, and I I just want to stop for a minute with that story.
• 52:12
  Uh when I read that, I had the the same thought, you know, why why did they let him go?
• 52:20
  And I, you know, obviously we can just speculate at this point.
• 52:24
  We don't know, but you know, maybe um it had something to do with that honor code of um, you know, that he was discussing or that he mentioned.
• 52:34
  But that was uh one of those moments in life that I thought, wow, just if they hadn't let him live, um, you know, that life wouldn't have existed and we wouldn't be sitting here today talking about what he went on to do.
• 52:50
  So I'll I'll let you continue on with his story.
• 52:53
  Yes, you're absolutely right.
• 52:56
  Um he said that there wasn't they didn't have radar back then, but there he was with a half shot out engine and couldn't see through his windshield, but he was able to get radio contact and uh to get directions back to one of the friendly airfields in Belgium.
• 53:11
  So he did a dead stick landing when the engine was sputtering and almost dead, but he made it.
• 53:16
  He said, I got out of that plane and kissed the ground.
• 53:19
  And he said the next day my mechanic told me after inspecting the plane that eight of the 18 cylinders of my engine had been shot out.
• 53:28
  And it was a Pratt and Whitney engine, and he always said that Pratt and Whitney engine kept me going and saved my life.
• 53:36
  And something interesting.
• 53:38
  Um within 30 miles of here and where Ed lived, there's a Pratt and Whitney manufacturing plant who makes jet engines now.
• 53:50
  And so my husband, Mike McCarthy, who's also a museum volunteer, was able to introduce Ed to the management over at Pratt and Whitney.
• 53:59
  Uh and they um, of course, were delighted to hear his story and learn that their company's dependable engine saved his life.
• 54:08
  And so they sent a videographer to his home so that he could tell this story.
• 54:13
  And then they sent it to um their employees all over the world to play that to uh share that story.
• 54:20
  Wow, what it what an incredible tie-in.
• 54:22
  And and I want to jump to something that you wrote that Ed said, uh, he said, if you weren't able to join the fighting, you worked in the factories, you took care of helping each other out, you did rationing whatever was needed to make sure the United States survived.
• 54:39
  And we are getting ready to wrap up the show.
• 54:43
  I when you were interviewing him and he said this, what what did you think about how that relates to maybe where we are today as a country?
• 54:55
  He in saying that everybody did their share, even if it was rationing back home, his attitude was he didn't, he's not a hero.
• 55:04
  It took everybody, even the people at home, and he was quick to give other people credit.
• 55:08
  And he said, I talk about this experience because to preserve the freedom of this country, um, we all have to do our part.
• 55:17
  And he said, I really wish our country now could get back to where we were back then, because when the country was in trouble, everybody pitched in, there was no bickering and arguing about whether to go, what to do.
• 55:30
  And he said, I feel sad that our country has changed so much.
• 55:35
  And I think that is a great note to end on.
• 55:39
  But before we do, Janice, could you tell the listeners uh the name of your book, where they can find you, find your book.
• 55:50
  All right, yes.
• 55:51
  The book title is We Shall Come Home Victorious Stories of World War II veterans, and it is on Amazon.
• 56:00
  And uh, if you visit Brevard, North Carolina, come into the museum, and it's the copies are for sale there too.
• 56:00
  And uh if you visit Brevard, North Carolina, come into the museum and it's the copies are for sale there too.
• 56:09
  And I I do hope that uh people take the show and share it so others can perhaps learn something like I have learned today, and uh keep these stories going because I think that if we know our history, uh it gives us a better chance of moving forward.
• 56:09
  And I I do hope that uh people take the show and share it so others can perhaps learn something like I have learned today and uh keep these stories going because I think that if we know our history, uh it gives us a better chance of moving forward so we don't repeat uh many of the same mistakes that that we have in the past.
• 56:29
  So we do.
• 56:35
  And that is why history is so important to uh to keep going forward.
• 56:40
  Janice, thank you so much for taking the time out to discuss these stories today.
• 56:46
  And until next time, everyone, be good to each other and God bless you.