These are his words:
"It was October 1941. First we went to camp Atiberry, but we didn't stay there long, they shipped us to Camp Ulners, Texas. There must have been about two to three hundred guys there and they picked out, they named two people to come out, it was myself, Ugo Frisoni and Leon Monhoot. They put us in headquarters and the reason for this is both of us were trained in counting. I was an Indian guide and he was in boy scouts. And we trained for three months...The tape recorder died... My grandfather went on to explain all the different places he had been. At the point where I started to record again he was in Okinawa and had just been shot...
"Anyway, they got me on this jeep. And as I said to Captain Gaddy as we we pulling away, bullets just followed us all the way and could have killed all of us. But they got me, they took me to a clearing station, they had some hospital tents set up because a lot of people had been wounded. I was in this tent and uh, they worked on it. Just all they did was put gauze bandage through that, right through the leg.
"Through the hole?" I asked
Yes. They finally knew at last the bullet had come out the back. They had to keep that wound open. I was in that medical tent , I don't remember exactly how many days, not too long, cause then they put me on a hospital ship. Then on the hospital ship is when they started working on my leg. But I do remember this pain when they pulled the gauze out, I thought they were pulling my leg off because they were hitting all those nerves.
"It hurt that bad?" I asked
"ohhhhhhhh God (sort of laughing)!
"O-kay, so let me summarize, this happened on April 28th?"
"Yeah, it happened on April 28th.
"When did you land there in Okinawa? Did this happen right after you landed?"
"No, no I think we landed there after the first of April. So it was longer than that.
"And one day you were just going with your Corporal...?"
"Well I got an order to go and find out why our troops were not able to advance and I decided to go with him. I didn't have to go. During the time from April 1st, that was the landing, uh, during that time we had been shelled a lot up where we were in our observation post. I used to take them on the side of the ridge, during the day we were on the top of the ridge, and on the side of the ridges the Japanese people would bury their dead. And I found one and we would get in there at night and we just kicked the bones around and we just stayed there at night after all that shelling was done. At night they would shell that whole ridge. And I would just take my whole troops down there, my whole gang down there and kick everything around and it was after that when I got my orders to find out why our troops were not doing anything. We wanted to find out why.
"The Corporal got the order to go look?"
No, I got the order, my job was, I would send the Corporal, because he is the guy I had with me. I didn't have any Sergeants. So at that time, he was doing something else, so I decided to go with him. I was probably tired of just sitting there. I didn't have to be there. I could have been at head quarters.
"When you first got there you landed on shore in those dingy boats and then you all had to get on the beach and run?"
"We landed on the beach, we didn't know where to go, some Major or some Colonel or some General, told Lieutenants, the high-ranking, I was just a Tech-Sergeant. I didn't have as many stripes as these other guys did. So I just got orders after the Japs, most of the zeros (Japanese planes I think), a lot of them got hit.
"So after you got hit, was there a hospital on Okinawa?"
"No. There was a hospital ship. After the tents, there were all these wounded and they did what they could, then they put me on a hospital ship. And what I wanted to tell you what they did first thing, in the tent there, they put this Vaseline gauze to keep it open and when they pulled that Vaseline gauze out, hitting all those nerve centers... I thought they were pulling my leg right off my body. I still remember that. Right now I'm getting chills."
"I was in four different hospitals. They moved me to four different hospitals, three of them in the islands, one in Honolulu, one in ah.... I can't remember. From Honolulu I flew to Battle Creek, Michigan. And then I got a convalescent leave two or three times, thirty days and then I had to go back and they would check me again. I think a total of three months. It was months from when I got shot till I got back to Michigan.
"How long were you away from Grandma?"
"A total of six months. But then I was able to come home from Battle Creek, Michigan, which was nice. I went back and forth and finally they gave me a release.
"Was it hard when you came home, to get over it all?"
"Oh, I was glad to get away; there was no question about it. I wanted to know what happened to my guys, and we started to have reunions and I started to find out about what happened. I think the information I had received about a week after I was wounded the shooting ended in Okinawa. The Japanese gave up."
"So you went from Indiana, to Texas and then to the Hawaiian Islands and then where?"
"To Tari Tari and then to Cipan. I came home then and I got married. Then I went to Okinawa. It was my dad's birthday, I remember this plainly. It was April 28th, I was thinking about my dad, because I'd been home and I'd seen my dad and my mother and Florence too (my grandma). And then I got wounded. I still get a little disability pension. And I get this thing checked. See, I have no feeling here and my ankle swells up and when I am walking, that thing just gets big. A lot of nerves had been hit. I worked at it. I could have stayed home and not done anything. I made myself walk and I still do it, I'm still walking. I did get a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart."
"Where did you get the Bronze Star?"
"I got the Bronze Star on Makan Island. The Colonel had been hit. He was in this hole and had been shelled. We brought him back, this other guy and myself. We brought him back, on our way back to headquarters it was dark, night time and we tried to just lay out in the ground. While we were there, two Japanese kids walked into our area and this guy from New York said, "Let's kill the bastards!" And we cornered them and the big guy, the big Jap., he broke away. The New Yorker clubbed him over the head and the next day we took him in to headquarters."
"Cipan is where we didn't get to change our clothes for a month. We slept in water, or we rested, I don't know that we slept much. We had a tough time getting food. We killed cows that had been eating our dead bodies or at least were around them. I slept in water, every time you turned the water was cold. The water had a way of warming up a little if we didn't move."
During the remainder of our conversation, my grandpa kept commenting about nightmares and was concerned this conversation would bring them back.
The conversation did bring on nightmares and I remember when my grandma mentioned this to me during a phone conversation, it made me very sad. She told me it was okay and put my Grandpa on the phone. He told me that he had never talked about it and wanted to do so at least once, so not to be upset. He then changed the subject and asked about my life and how school was going. That's just like him after all, as my grandpa was a proud, respectful and stoic man who until then, had never spoke of the war. The same went for his work accomplishments. He was a successful Chief Engineer for Studebaker and then Ford Motor Company. I found out about one of his accomplishments, not from him, but while visiting the Henry Ford Museum and seeing his name on a plaque. As they say, he was one of the good ones, who always got his work done in order to take care of his family.
On this memorial day, he deserves to be remembered and honored not only for the type of soldier he was, but also the type of man he became. I am proud of my grandpa and miss him everyday.
I love you Grandpa. I wish you were here.
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