pleased and honored to gather mr. Ladd wicks thoughts and remembrances about his time in the United States Army during World War two now I'd like to begin Frank by asking you a little background information as to where you were born a little bit about growing up there a little bit about family life school and what what it was like where you grew up okay before I answer your question Jim I just like to say I'm very honored to be part of this veterans history project and I thank you very much for all the work you've had to do to get ready for this well this is a very special moment for me to be to be here today interviewing you so you know to relive things that happened sixty-four years ago is is heartwarming to me because it makes me think about my old comrades and arms in France so what I thought would be helpful to my listeners is first of all I just like to run down the seven major European campaigns and then give you what I think are the 12 success factors of how we won okay and please interrupt any time you would like and I'll slow down you might have to throw a lasso over me but no go ahead Frank all right you know I was I was born in vergis Minnesota June 11 1917 and I grew up in Fargo North Dakota I went to college at North Dakota State University and I got a scholarship that I business school and when I came home from Harvard I got a telegram saying please report to the Boston army base tomorrow for a physical exam before you are inducted into the army because I had taken ROTC in college and I I was a lieutenant a second lieutenant at this time well what was the date Frank you remember what the date was was it it was about December of 1914 so then I got this call this telegram early in and I reported for duty in the officer quartermaster general about the 20th of March 1941 this was almost a year before Pearl Harbor and we went to work in civilian clothes at that time and we didn't put on uniforms until the day after Pearl Harbor yeah and I got married on December 28th 1941 I our invitations went out after Pearl Harbor and I I didn't know whether I was going to get any leave or not so the next on Monday morning I went is he general my cousin it was my boss I said do you think it would be possible if I could get the weekend off of December 28th to get married and he looks at me and he says you know that ring he says I don't think the war is going to miss you that much you go ahead so we had a whole weekend for our honeymoon this is in Boston in Boston yeah Marion Boston wonderful how old were you then Frank 23 I was 23 then and that lasted 62 years and it was a it was a wonderful wedding and we had two children Ted was born in 1943 while I was in England and I hadn't I hadn't seen him til I came home and he was 2 years old but it took some getting acquainted who is this man yeah and he he says don't hold my mommy's hand and I said good for you Ted I'm glad you feel that way so but the the homecoming was wonderful Jim I think I'm one of the luckiest guys that ever went to war my younger brother was killed by a sniper on Peleliu island he was with the first Marine Division and he served in Guadalcanal New Guinea New Britain and he was in a hospital down in the Australia but he came back to his unit to go to this campaign and Peleliu but my brother-in-law was in the Navy I went in first then my brother went in then my brother-in-law went in and he was killed so in our family we had 33 percent casualties and I always feel that soldiers get more credit probably than they deserve because the people that stayed home did every job my mother and father and my two sisters lived in Fargo in North Dakota and when the war got going they picked up everything drove out to Tacoma Washington my mother was a typist at the Air Force Depot there in Tacoma my sister went down to Modesto California to be an occupational therapist my father was a joined the receiving department of the Seattle Tacoma shipbuilding corporation and my older sister worked with the Human Services Group in Tacoma and my wife was a volunteer at the newton-wellesley Hospital in in Wellesley so our family had a hundred percent of ten they were doing their job they were doing the job as they were asked and that's what the soldiers did yeah they did their job as they were asked but I think that the civilians worked so hard to provide the the the weapons the ammunition the trucks the ships the airplanes and all those things that we needed over there absolutely and I don't think they ever got as much credit as they deserve well for instance there were ten million young men that went into the services and ten million women took their place is a thrilling story and those folks are being interviewed for this veterans project so I say I thought they were yeah absolutely I'm glad they are I'm glad they are yep so take me what you are right at or you want to go to the go ahead you you got I was going to say you could pick up with your your draft notice and take us on through or you can you can give us an outline of that as well at the game though I have some notes here they're rough notes Jim I'm seven major European campaigns okay but I think people would like to hear about okay first the first campaign was d-day June 6 1944 and its code name was Overlord and I had a big part in that modestly I say that but I have 1500 trucks to haul the soldiers from where they were bivouacked to the the boats we had 4,000 landing craft to to haul to the various boats they were scattered all over southern England and Williard haul these to 4,000 landing craft and we never missed a pickup and we never missed a boat but we practiced 11 times 11 mounting exercises so that we could learn how to put a hundred and thirty thousand troops on four thousand landing craft in 30 hours and we had them all on the landing craft on June 5th because that was the date that was planned and but the weather was so bad the generalizes our deferred that for one day but these poor guys on these boats they bobbed up and down all day and all night and they were all seasick I had hauled 14 truckloads of vomit bags to take care of because they knew they were going to be sick those they were just small landing craft so tell me a little bit about what you did personally and the coordination of this this movement I mean were you were you present at the near the landing craft were you back at headquarters tell me kind of what your I I start off back in our in our headquarters in southern England but then I I took the the movement orders out to the various company commanders so that they would know what they're supposed to do because it told them exactly where to pick up which unit and what route to follow to go to the ships because President Roosevelt said he wanted the troops to be delivered to these ships in the best possible physical condition and we translated that that no soldier was to march more than a mile to get to his boat and we learned how to put these 130,000 troops and 20,000 vehicles on landing craft in 30 hours and as you know on in April see what we would do is we put these troops on the landing craft and send them out toward France and then we'd have them hook around and attack Slapton sands in southern England and the British had given us five miles of beach and five miles inland so the Navy would shell and one time they dropped a shell short and killed some people but an exercise tiger in in in April 7 juror 9 German e-boats got in the tail of our of a convoy going back to the United States and when they got opposite Slapton sands they left the convoy and got into our exercise and sunk for LSTs and we lost 754 men there's a monument to them on slapped ensigns today my wife I saw that you know and that was that was kept secret oh yes we didn't want to discourage anybody absolutely this is the same way on Christmas Eve 1944 the King Leopold will was sailing from Southampton to shurberg with twenty two hundred and fifty people to go into the Bulge and it just happened the submarine was sitting outside of shurberg and it's something the King Leopoldville and that was an unholy night and a quarter to five and you know on Christmas Eve most everyone is going to chow and a quarter to 5:00 and but we had PT boats barges tugboats anything they would float because there's only four miles offshore so they went out and they they rescued about 850 men and the rest of them went to the bottom and our trucks met America you know in the high end the harbor of shurberg to take him to a hospital we clean out one Hospital and but only these King Leopold Bill survivors in there so the data that would have been the December 44 December 44 okay so it's after the landing and so you had secured the port of shurberg right yeah it was a it would be for no it would have to be after the landings yeah and these reinforcements we're due to go to the both the bottom floor yeah because we used to get ten train loads of casualties a day from the Bulge in Sherbourne ten train loads but when you think about this d-day amphibious attack it's the most difficult kind of an attack you could have because you were hitting head-on and there was no way you could go around or fall back or anything else you had to land and go forward and [Music] we lost 11% about 130,000 troops in that and at d-day and when you think the first light on June 6th was at 516 and low tide was 525 HR was 6:30 the engineers went in at 6:33 and they had a half hour to do their job of cleaning channels because I'm sure you remember that there were all kinds of obstacles ago underwater and all of them were mined it was a very difficult task but the engineers did a terrific job but seconds and minutes were critical because the tide was coming in and between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m. the water rose 18 feet so they had to get the people in there and and out of there quick and starting from shurberg the Utah Beach came first they had two thousand feet of sand and then then Omaha Beach had seventy nine hundred feet and then eight miles further down there's the British beaches of gold Juno and sword and the the 4th Infantry Division landed on Utah and the 29th in the first division landed on Omaha but the night before the 82nd airborne and the hundred and first Airborne landed inland behind the the defenders and the 6th airborne British landed behind the British but the British landed three divisions and we landed three divisions and it's hard to describe the problems they had because general Rommel of the German army had been given the job of defending this this whole Atlantic wall and it was his thought that the only way they could stop us was to stop us in the water he said we must stop them in the water and unfortunately he got approval to go home that weekend to visit his wife on her birthday and his boss forget his name but his boss was away on some conference so there are two big generals were away and Rommel didn't get back until 10 o'clock at night on June 6th and that was to later and Rommel was heard to say if he was running the American landing he would have had it all wiped up in two weeks I don't know if he would or not but anyway I had a good friend in that Utah Beach lining his name was Eugene Kaffee Colonel Eugene caffee and he and general Theodore Roosevelt jr. were the first two men to step on Utah Beach and General Roosevelt had gone to France two or three times a week in a two-man submarine to reconnoiter to see how the Germans were placed back there but Rommel had built black houses that were eight foot thick reinforced concrete and we bombed the daylights out of them but they're still standing today and I've been in them and and they have it all laid out as to the since to every target so they had divisions all along the the Atlantic Wall and they knew where they were supposed to be firing so that they could stop us in the water and it was a they called a bloody Omaha now it wasn't this tough in Utah as it was in in Omaha but Omaha had about 20% casualties in Utah had about 11 but in June 6 7 & 8 we landed a hundred and forty thousand nine hundred eighty two people on that 50-mile landing zone but it was an it was really tough for everyone just imagine it was cloudy so the air the pilots couldn't see what they were looking down at and the general Maxwell Taylor was landed and he was wandering around all by himself and they had a neat way of identifying whether they were Friend or Foe they had these little clickers side of a crackerjack box and the if you heard something you'd click once and if they were friend they'd click twice so that they they minimize the difficulty somewhat but that's the first campaign and it was a bloody campaign the second campaign is the breakout and pursuit to the file ease gap we more or less surrounded thousands of Germans in this so-called Falaise pocket and the file ease gap started in July second and Paris fell on August 25th 44 and by August first a hundred thousand US and a hundred thousand Germans had died and we had captured fifty thousand German prisoners so we did well it's finally scab the third campaign was the Lorraine campaign the Seventh Army and the Third Army were the spear heads of the that Lorraine campaign and it was it's headed off toward Berlin and then that campaign was completed on the 22nd of December and the casualties were very heavy now I participated in that through General Patton and his Third Army they knew that they had these Germans pretty well surrounded but they needed a left hook as general Bradley would call it a left hook by a patent to sew it up but and pen man been committed to the eto yet but he said I need a hundred thousand tons of supplies brought from the beaches to shot before I jump off so general Eisenhower's assistant he's the general I don't remember his name but he called us in shurberg and said we have a big job for you come down to our headquarters in temporary headquarters and Valona in the woods and we went down and he says we want you to haul a hundred thousand tons of stuff from the beaches to shart in ten days and then Patton will jump off on the eleventh day to make a left hook and button up the Farley's gap and so he says what do you need he asked this of the base section commander that I was with and Colonel Wyman says and he surprised me he says well I'll let a long break speak for us he's our motor transport officer and he surprised the daylights out of me so I stood up this General was on a about a two foot platform and we are in the cheap seats on the floor and I said we think we need 8,500 trucks the general says we agree and I said then we need one-way roads going and coming your map shows that very well see one way was going and one way was coming and he says we agree and I said we need full command over all troops in our area he says we agree then I said in general we need full headlights you never saw such contempt in your life chairman he looked down at me and he says he young man I was 27 young man do you realize we've been fighting in for two years in Africa with blackout lights I said yes sir and I've read all about it in the infantry journals and all the problems that you had I said now I've been here seven weeks I've yet to see a German airplane and I said and you know what our bombers have done to the highways they were their deep holes in the highways so the Germans couldn't reinforce their own troops see we had him in between and I said he says well don't be a smart aleck I said I'm no smart aleck but I said I had 1500 trucks in England to mount the invasion and we never missed a pickup and we never missed a boat so we think we know a lot about operating trucks but I said that a teller will do we will do the best we can regardless your decision on one condition he says what's that I said to you go from this meeting to General Eisenhower and ask him if we can have headlights until we feel very strongly on this and but we'll do the best we can regardless we'll go home to shurberg you call us and tell us what general Eisenhower's decision is and it says you might add that we don't think that you'll get a hundred thousand tons down there there to charge unless we have headlight you know there were thieves all along the road if a convoy was going up a hill those fees would be on the trucks and admin loaded before they got to top Hill well anyway we went back to two shurberg and about 10-15 minutes later he called he says I don't understand it but I says to turn off the light to turn on the lights and that night the French thought the war was over and on the third day general Bradley came down to see how're you doing because he was Adams commander and he thought we're doing pretty good and I did too I got a I had all the all night long after our meeting in Valon I called company commanders and relieved them of what they were doing and told him to meet me at my office and shurberg at 8 o'clock the following morning and I tell him about a very exciting mission that they would have and that tell their men to take everything they've got because it'll be a permanent change and my idea was that we would we would haul from the beaches all the beats down the same low and then halfway between saint-lo and shark we've set up a bit like area so the driver number there was two drivers for every truck so that driver number one would go and pick up a load and come back to the bivouac driver number two would take it onto shot empty the Lord may be a load of prisoners and come back to the bivouac then then these guys could sleep in between time because there was a discussion in the beginning of whether we should have two men drive all the way per truck but one of my old friends say Colonel Pat said lad week they won't get any rest bouncing along and those trucks let one guy take it halfway and the other guy take it the other half so that's what we did but after after the initial run we turned this whole red ball highway over to the motor transport begin to run because they were set up to do this I had a couple men to help me but I couldn't continue that we were going 20 hours a day that wasn't that the before 19th the Negro truck drivers was that part of that yes yeah yes that's right and but we turn this over the motor transport big aid right and and after a week or so I was sick as a dog and they put me in the hospital in shurberg for ten days they thought I had a heart attack but it was just this stress rest so but everybody did everything they could but that's the red ball highway the Unleashed patent in the fibers pocket there and then the fourth the ring campaign was the third and the fourth was the Siegfried line campaign which lasted three and a half months there's in the Siegfried line there are three miles of tank traps traps you know made out of concrete and three mile deep Bell of anti-tank devices and about about the end of the Siegfried line campaign which lasted until from 26th of August to the 15th of December and Montgomery failed to live up to his promises he promised General Eisenhower that he would make Antwerp his first priority but he didn't and the Canadians came in and captured the port before they could blow it up but on the west side of the shell River the sixteen miles of shale River from the Atlantic into the Port of Antwerp and on the west side rather stream of the east side of the the shell River the Germans were there so it wasn't a full capture and when Montgomery had a favorite project called Market Garden and it was a total disaster and I hate to say this but I think he got what was coming to him then the fifth campaign was the Ardennes Forest or the Battle of the Bulge it was the major German counter-attack and they had 28 divisions they had a tremendous force they had been saving up for this counter-attack and it was the largest ground battle of World War two eighty one thousand US casualties resulted there and a hundred thousand German casualties Germans lost 800 tanks 800 and Patton all along suspected that this German counter-attack was going to occur so he had made contingency plans so at this general army commanders meeting Beatle Smith says can anybody any one of you get up there and help them out at Bastogne and he asked the British guard he says well I don't think that Montgomery could do anything because he's in the process of reorganizing and getting ready for going to further east when he came to Patton he says how about you George oh is that tape shut off go ahead okay yeah and he came to Patton and Patton says I can be there in 48 hours and Beetle Smith says be a realistic George they says no I suspected there by that because he was a student seeing most of these generals hi guys now Eisenhower patterned a lot of his stuff after General Grant and and these Germans had favorite successful army commanders of the of the past so Eisner had 85,000 men in his army going straight east he stopped him in their tracks turned him 90 degrees and went a hundred miles north to Bastogne and on December 28th he he blasted a a hole only 300 yards wide between the German defenders because the Germans had surrounded Bastogne but I gave him a lot of credit he they said and how do you think you can ask your guys to leave a battle the Battle of the Siegfried line and - a hundred miles to Bastogne he says they're soldiers they will do what I ask them to do and he was to me the hero of Bastogne and then the 6th campaign was the Rivier to the Rhine the it was the most successful and phoebius operation in the eto it started at st. tropez on the down on the riviera and they were this the southern front and they had the first french army the 7th US army with general patch and the 6th army group with lieutenant general Devers were fighting against the german 19th army and during that time the germans received a thousand airplanes a thousand airplane bombardment for forty-five minutes were two and a half 2,500 tons of bombs were dropped that's when they practically leveled Berlin it was really something then number seven was the last offensive it began in January 45 and it went to May 8th the IDI but Simpsons our ninth army and Montgomery's 21st Army Group 1st Canadian Army and were in this final offensive and hadn't captured a hundred thousand Germans west of the Rhine on the 23rd of March and Hodges army captured three hundred and seventeen thousand German prisoners and when they were captured see we didn't have supplies that's four hundred thousand men and one so what they would do is they would say right lay down your weapons right where you are they'll go back to your your bivouac and get your canteen and get your knives and forks and blankets and so forth and come back and they were afraid of the Russians so they did just that you know and most of those guys ended up in shurberg see what we we had almost two million German prisoners during World War Two in sherbert and we divide him up the Argent hardened Nazis would go to the United States troublemakers would go to the United States we had room for about four thousand and Normandy in Foucault ville we had a sixty six or sixty thousand camp and then one pen we had fifty German generals but they were had two deals because they were always belly aching but one of the things that interested me very much was at the end of the war before VE Day on the 12th of July President Roosevelt died where were you when that happened to have what was your feeling and being a friend of mine had given me a radio you know he went back to the United States and he he asked me if I had any use for his radio I said to like it I was in my room at the Hotel Normandy in Deauville and I I heard this it was really a kind of a shocking experience it's like when Kennedy died you know you can't believe it though and but on the 30th of April Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide in the bunker 50 feet under the the capital in Berlin and Mussolini was hanged in Italy and Churchill was voted out of office in June so all of these people that were the real leaders of World War two were gone and I shipped out of Antwerp with Colonel Kaffee on the Atlantic trader on the 20th of October I met Kathy in the hall one day at that time he was our deputy commander and he says lad League I understand you're going home I said yes sir he says how are you going they said I'm going on the green project the green project were the airplane project from out of Marseilles France to the United States and I thought that would be neat I had some contacts in Paris that would get me on that and he says you don't want to do that coffee if Kathy was a big gruff man he says you don't want to do that he says you look like hell you go home and they'll think you had been in a war so he says you come with me I have a tanker up at Antwerp we were in Brussels at the time I have a tank arrived at Antwerp and you come with me and we'll talk about d-day and other things on the way home which we did a very wonderful man but those are the seven major campaigns d-day breakout in pursuit of I'll ease the Lorraine campaign the Siegfried line campaign the Battle of the Bulge the Riviera to the Rhine the southern front and the last offensive now as you know I have a lot of opinions I think that them there were 12 reasons why we won I call him my 12 success factors as I saw them the first one was that we hadn't 50 new scientific weapons of war from radar to the atomic bomb the the ran devices um II W all these devices helped us knock out the submarines we could spot a submarine with these new scientific devices three miles away and Alfred Lee Loomis was a big New York financial genius and he wisely had sold all his holdings before the Wall Street Crash in 29 so he was loaded with money and he was a very creative man and one man in Washington says that no one person was responsible for our victory in Europe however no one was more responsible than Alfred Lee Lewis he he worked with them Karl Compton of the MIT radiation laboratory and with the head of the laboratory in California and he worked with military research groups and university labs and with British research groups and they came up with 5050 driven devices that for instance when the Germans would come to bomb London or Plymouth they could spot these planes they could determine their altitude their speed and their direction so they would call a the British fighters meet them as such in such a place at such and such a time and knock him out of the air and they did the same way with it with the submarines the second success factors were our air forces and our submarines our US air force and our 9th Air Force and the British air forces they could put a thousand planes in the air and the best defense against the German sub was an American sub one day I can remember when we were in Deauville eleven o'clock in the morning a thousand airplanes they were all us daylight bombers be seventeen seventeen they flew over Deauville headed for Germany and they just kept common uncommon and common and they went in bomb Essen and some of these other places where they even created fire storms you know it burned up the whole thing and the third factor in my opinion was that we won the Battle of the Atlantic when you think that we had a thirty five hundred mile supply line and that should prevent any army from beating them but we had wonderful Merchant Marines and they for instance 320 merchant ships were sunk in six months alone in 1940 and but they learned how to have better convoys and with the new weapons to spot submarines three or four miles away it saved our lifeline and then we had the artist arsenal of democracy this is what we talked about earlier were 10 million women took the place of 10 million young men and they met the needs for weapons ammo planes ships tanks trucks and so forth a fifth success factor was the fact that we won overlord or d-day in spite of the terrific storm in the channel on the 19th of June the biggest storm that channel had seen in a hundred years the coordinate of the book but because we didn't just Willie merely send a tremendous flotilla of boats and ships with a thousand airplanes we had about 7,000 Navy ships besides our 4,300 landing craft and we were practiced we knew how to how to control this gigantic Armada Atem 8,000 aircraft 700 that's seven tons 700 warships we had all sizes of warships and you're right how do you practice for an event of that magnitude you're right so you said in itself is a success that was that was Overlord that was us yeah and there was a man named Admiral moon that was the commanding officer the tenth amphibious force of the Navy he was a very very high standards one day he and I were working together at the Slapton sands beach and he said to me well Eric I wish things were going as well out there as they are in here I said thank you but anyway I think at the end of the war he committed suicide he thought he had failed you know a lot of people died and he thought if they were done better they they had fewer casualties and he might be right but on the other hand he did a terrific job and the sixth reason is that we had superior leadership and great allies when we we had President Roosevelt we had Secretary of War Stimson George see general joy see marshal Admiral King generalized our general Bradley Admiral moon general spats of the Air Force General Patton general Hodges and general Montgomery of the British and we had a great prime minister Britain he was he was it was a help and when you think of Hitler they were scared too definitely even waking him up to tell him that we had landed they didn't wake him up until 10 o'clock in the morning and we've been going since midnight with the air with the what they think and we had great allies the British the French the poles and a number of other smaller ones and and they all would listen to General Eisenhower even the bomber barons we called these big air Air Force generals bomber barons they didn't want anybody to tell them how to run their business but Eisenhower finally had to go to President Roosevelt to say their plan is good what they wanted to do is they wanted to bomb Germany into submission what eyes now and kill a lot of Germans but what I wanted to do was Dan these airplanes support our ground troops and finally Roosevelt had to step in and say Isner is the Supreme Commander and you do what he says and so that's we got great support from the Air Force and then we had soldiers sailors and airmen of the Allied expeditionary force were terrific we had 20 to 30 and million draftees and reserved and they fought like veterans and they were really heroes overlord just had to succeed and then we had the best logistics the head of our logistics was Lieutenant General John CH lead john c h we they used to call it Jesus Christ himself Li because he was the he was a big Eagle guy and then he had his own private railroad Trainmen called the alive he'd come roaring in to do an inspection in sherbert for instance and he would say I want you to set up mass at 6:00 a.m. at the not the Catholic Church but the what's the other church that has masses I don't know I'm a Catholic Frank yeah what's all right church that has masses he was one of them and everything had to be exactly the way John seriously had it but he in the in the eto we had three million 65,000 565 men and of that totaled nine hundred seventy nine thousand six hundred thirty-seven were in logistics under John CH Lee in Normandy base section where I was we had three hundred and sixty thousand men now do you know what logistics is all about no please tell me okay logistics means that having the right people and the right equipment at the right place at the right time and that's what we did better than anyone else and I say that modestly but I was a logistics man the seven Chiefs of services the chief engineer the chief quartermaster chief signal officer and so forth chief of ordnance they reported to AG for assistant chief of staff G for well they got Colonel Kemp who was my boss I was the deputy chief or they got him fired and general I ran made me G for so here was a logistics command dedicated to just logistics and he made me the head of logistics 27 years old the first thing I did was to call these Chiefs of services together and I said gentlemen we've been friends for a year and a half how many men were you doing talking about seven seven men okay but we had we had 360,000 all told I said now we've been we've been friends for a year and a half you got generally you you got Colonel Kemp fired and you could get me fired too but if you do you're liable to get a saluting daemon in here he might be a high-ranking full colonel that'll make your lives miserable so I ask you to do one thing don't take your problems to general R and take him to me he pays me to solve these problems and I said if I can't solve them we'll go together to general around and they were real gentlemen and they never went to travel around and we we did very well and when General Iran went to China to be head of the services apply in China general Coney came to be our commanding general and we have a lunch form and I went up to say hello I said welcome to Normandy base section general was this now general general Koenig koe n IG in Han Coney I said welcome to Normandy base section Ladwig is my name he says what's your job colonel I said I'm your g4 he looked me up and down he says well you're a pretty important guy I said well I don't know about that but I said I worked very hard and we've been doing pretty good well after lunch he got to achieve the staff aside and he says will you get me a new g4 he says the way I operate I want the g4 to be a high-ranking full colonel so I don't have to arbitrate all the arguments between the chief engineer and the chief quartermaster chief of ordnance so get me a high-ranking full colonel so they said okay we will but they were all my friends and at the end of a week he asked the chief how you coming on getting a new g4 and he says well we have one name but I don't think you'd like him he's okay keep trying well into the second week they write a base section commanders meeting in Paris and he asked him again how you doing in the g4 he says well I'm getting very good fire he says well I think you could stop looking I can't really fire that young fella if I can't find anything wrong in them but they were model citizens they made his life a dream might not bring him the problems and when I left even though he wanted to fire me when he came he says I went in to say goodbye to him when I was going home he says for whatever it's worth you gladly he says I have given you the highest efficiency rating of any officer that I rate one of the reasons was that after VE Day on May 8th and 9th generalized hour visited the German prison camps where our soldiers were being held prisoners and they called him ramp ramps recovered allied military personnel and he was so pained at the squalor that they were living in they were skin and bones a friend of mine had lost 70 pounds in a German prison camp up on the North Sea he said I want all of these prisoners out of every German prison camp by the end of the week I said it's federal normally base is not ready they were told to be ready for such a thing in the middle of June and this is the first of May he says I don't care I'm convinced that our men will be better off in American hands than the eye on these German hell holes so the sister has called me on the phone from bears he says can you take sixty six thousand ramps by the end of the week I thought for a minute I said what would general Corning say so I said yeah send him so I stood up walked down to the generals office and I said I just committed you to a tremendous job I said I committed us to accepting sixty six thousand ramps by the end of this week he said good for you so imagine running a hotel and getting 10,000 guests a day but I told him I said here's my plan we'll get all the engineering troops we can get up there to camp Lucky Strike and finish up that camp in four or five days and I said there's a an Armored Division sitting down at La and rwan doing nothing waiting to go over to China I said why don't we call Paris and ask to use that division to run Lucky Strike they had a major-general and they're good at organization so we asked Paris for the use of that division until we could get our own guys together and he gave it to us and the Red Cross girls about these ramps gave him coffee and doughnuts and one man one ramp died of eating Donuts see he had had such bad stomach was not in shape so we had to say no more darkness no it's no more coffee so we really did that well now the 10th now the 10th the bank was the Battle of the Bulge thanks to the 101st airborne 82nd airborne and the Third Army we we won the Battle of the Bulge and we had the best of the 10th factor was we had the best medical services in Normandy base section Colonel Phillips my roommate managed 40,000 hospital beds worth of hospitals and they had an average daily population of 30,000 patients now that's a lot of people to get well and send back into the into the fight and the Levin factor was we are the best intelligence we could read the German male because we had decoded their Enigma machines and the 12th was that the Germans are getting their eggs beat off by the Russians for instance at the Battle of Moscow there were 7 million men fighting each other about half Russians half Germans and the Battle of Stalingrad it was even bigger they probably ten million all told and and they beat up on each other and that continued and if if the Russians hadn't been on our side and were beating up on the Germans they have been beating out on us so that there were more Germans committed to the Russian front then to the Allied front so those are my 12 reasons do they sound reasonable deal you should be writing a book with that information Frank that's awesome there's one other thing that I think would be interesting is that in the fall in them Normandy it rained every day all day long and all night long and our men had no recreation and they were sleeping in pup tents it was terrible and since they had no recreation they'd go out and get in trouble we had a crime wave in Normandy where there was a major crime a day punishable by death every day we hung nine American soldiers at Ford to rule this is this is definite no buddy knows about okay but we hung nine soldiers up at Ford to rule the the British a man would come over on Friday afternoon and get a list of the people to hang be hung the next morning and we asked that a man from the soldiers unit would be there a man from the family of the victim and a man from the fringe on Dimes and we wanted all of these people to realize that we were doing the best we can to stop this but it was all because of Calvados Calvados was the liquor that was made from apples these these Germans or these bootleggers would take their little distilleries into the Apple orders and make Calvados right there on the spot and sell it right off the the trailer and it would make some reason or other it would make ordinarily solid citizens go mad and they would commit murder and rape and things like that and at one time we had 200 in our prison at LeMans it was very serious so one Saturday night Colonel Wyman got us all together and he said this crime wave could very well jeopardize our ability to perform our mission I don't know the answers to it but I would ask that each one of you think about nothing else in the next 24 hours but how to stop this crime wave and we will meet back here Sunday night at 8 o'clock and we will solve this problem so Sunday night at 12 o'clock we were all there and I was a major at the time and the rest of these guys were all full Colonels so he said now what's the answer so he called on Donald McGowan Colonel Donald Don he was the Provo marshal and that's his responsibility and he says what's the answer McGowan had three good answers first of all close all restaurants and bars and make him off-limits to us personnel second is drive the bootleggers out of the apple orchards and second third in our MP jeeps let's add a navy shore Patrol and the friend Jean dime so they come upon a crime scene that one of the three would be able to help because remember these are all French most of these were French civilians that we were killing and so Wyman says thank you very much those were good so then he turned to Colonel herb the chief engineer says what ideas you have well herb was clever he says I think McGowan has covered it very well so he had no ideas and it goes to judge digging chief quartermaster what your ideas he says I agree with herb that McGowan has covered that pretty well and he really had thought it through pretty well and so he went around the room to the full Colonels and he was discouraged he says well we didn't get a pair of wine and so we didn't get much out of that so then I said currently if you still have some more time I have some ideas he said okay let's have him I says well I live in a building I lived in the same house with Colonel Wyman I said I sleep under three blankets and I'm not too hot but I said these poor guys are sleeping under two blankets that's all they're authorized I said I think we oughta we've got soldiers marching around mountains of blankets I said I think we ought to issue him a third blanket so they'd be at least sleep a little warmer and so he turned to judge the chief quartermaster he says judge do we have mountains of blankets just as yes we do but you have no authority to issue them see everybody was bound by the by the book and he says Wyman system oh yes I do under the prerogative of command I say issue the third blanket to lad League so I had blankets then I said these guys are swimming in pup tents in there in the water you can't insulate a pup tent I said these guys aren't dumb they know what we have I said we have 10,000 Hospital tents in our German Dipple a matter German in our in our engineering depo and we're issuing to German prisoners I said I think we should put our guys in these Hospital tents rather than pup tents now so he turned to her and he says do we have ten thousand big tents he said yes sir but I don't think you have a thirty initial he says given the language I said we have a letter from General Eisenhower giving us those beautiful prefabricated buildings down in Valon because they had moved from Valon to pass and gave us these buildings and we had a platoon of soldiers marching around them so they weren't cannibalized so I said Colonel Kemp and I have been arguing about this all day long you know it's not smart to go over your boss's head but I said we've been arguing about this all day and I think we ought to dismantle those prefabricated buildings and give one to any unit wants it they don't have a place that's dry to eat they don't have a place to write a letter they don't have a place to play ping-pong or play cards or or just talk I think we ought to give one of those buildings to each unit that needs it so he turned to company says Kemp do I have a letter that says I own those buildings he said yes you do but you never know when Eisenhower will ask for him back he said I didn't ask you that do I own him now well yes you do he says given the language then I said now over in England we have a warehouse full of stoves what I recommend is that we take a ship and go over there and get a shipload of stoves to put in these tents that we're setting up so that they can dry their clothes out and so they can get dry at least once a day yeah so he turned to judge me says do we have a warehouse full of stoves he says yes but again you don't have the authority issue he said oh yes give him the library so I had blankets tents Stowe's and prefer gambit prefabricated buildings so for a few days I was a hero but it worked out very well you know these soldiers then they're not dumb they know when when we have facilities that they aren't able to use but but this was taking place when Frank this was taking place what date was this sort of thing this was the last of September and the 1st of October 40 a 44 ok 44 so things were still the battle was going you know the battle was going on and we were we were just that far from not being able to perform our mission because they had this crime I was ok but yeah it worked out pretty good excellent but I'm like I'd like to close with a neat quote from general Eisner we had millions of people millions of people coming to the beaches to see the cemeteries pay respects to their kin and so forth and on the 20th anniversary of d-day General Eisenhower came and to Omaha Beach and sitting on a rock wall in the cemetery he could look out over the beach and he spoke eloquently for the dead when he said these men came here British allies and Americans to storm these beaches for one purpose only not to gain anything for ourselves not to not to fulfill any ambition the Americans had for conquest but just to preserve freedom just to preserve freedom many thousands of men have died for such ideals as these but these young boys they were cut off in their prime he was really really felt it he says i devoutly hope that we will never again see such sights as these and i think and hope and pray that humanity will have learned we must find some way to gain eternal peace for this world that was our supreme commander thanks Jim for giving me this opportunity to tell you all about my thoughts Frank thank you very much thank you my god I feel like we could go on here for four more let's uh let's take a break okay Frank I don't know what to say I I came here to ask you questions for the veterans history project and you've given a magnificent presentation so tell me about that your presentation and what you've done with it well I gave this to 13 veterans at the watch hill nursing home and it was a two and a half hour presentation and they liked it I gave it to the president of the fifth Infantry Division reunion last Labor Day all the veterans of the fifth division that were still alive met here in Mystic and the president of the the association was a veteran of the Vietnam War so he really didn't know much about the war in Europe and our family doctor was a friend of his and he asked me would I come and bring him up to speed on he knows now doesn't he does now and I sat at the head table of the Oh wonderful of the fifth injured division reunion at and I warmed up on a friend yesterday we had lunch together and I gave him some of these ideas but you know I was very much impressed with our leadership I should have gone more in detail I started off in the office the quartermaster general in Washington or General Henry money caisson and then I had Colonel Wyman colonel Kathy Colonel Talley Kaffee commanded at Utah Talley commanded at Omaha and then we got general Lucius clay who is a very famous general lieutenant general and then we got general ran and then we got general Koenig these men were outstanding you know if he would tell you something any of these men would tell you something you could take it to the bank he wouldn't say why did you do that well you told me no I didn't these men were very high grade and I asked Colonel Wyman one time he lived out in California and we lived in in California - so where dinner one night and I asked him I said how were you able to get so much work out of me and he says well first of all you had to be able to and they said I said well how do you find that out he says study the the background he says I studied everything I can find out about you the main thing you want to find out is what did they how did they finish off what they started did did the man finish what he what he began but he's the you know Lucius clay and I ran and Gretel women were all free in World War one and they were all graduates of the West Point and we used to kid it there was a West Point Protective Association so if you were a West Point Man and there was a job opening usually the West Point guy would get it but I ran even though he was the class of 1915 he gave the best job to me and when he was coming to this 65th reunion of the class of 50 in 1980 I talked to him on the phone he invited me and my wife to come up too to see him well all these high-ranking men were staying at the fair hotel right inside the entrance to West Point so Mary and I went there and we went up to the the desk at the fair hotel and I asked if General Eisenhower were a general or and was registered the lady said yes he is but I think he's resting right now I said when do you think he might get up she says a little later in the day I said okay we wait so I suggested that my wife sit down and I'd go case the joint see if I could see anybody well I saw this sign class of 1915 and there were two men sitting outside the the door so I went up to him I said would either of you men know general or and this one young man he says yes I do he's my father so I said well I was his G for I'm Frank gladly he says I've heard about you so he excused himself the other guy was the secretary of the class of 1915 he was a colonel but I ran had a history of all of the class of 1915 and he came to the conclusion that there were more stars on the shoulders of men from the class of 15 than they were men five stars for general Eisner four stars for Bradley three stars for Iran three stars for Lucius clay so you can see how that could build up but a lot of them got to be generals but I need used that the main reason that I was able to do very well is that I knew that these men expected me to do well or yesterday wouldn't have appointed me but for instance d-day was supposed to be June 5th rather than 6th but the weather was so bad that they postponed it a day well I had all these trucks waiting around - not knowing whether we're going to take them all all these guys back home and try again in a month or two so I called Wyman I said should I send yeah I borrowed these 15-under trucks I said should I send those trucks back or should I keep him he thought four men he says Hold'em because he didn't know whether we were going to postpone or not and but I was amazed at how objective our leaders were no they were very objective and like I start when I asked that general to give us full headlights Eisenhower didn't bat his eyelash no I said I don't think you'd get a hundred thousand tons down there and the roads were terrible and we had severe Ettore superiority in the air and ice not responded just like that he could have been criticized like everything by a lot of his own generals for letting us have full headlights huh but I just admired them so much I gave him the best I had yeah yeah how about that story of the flashlights Oh one-day story and there's another story I wanted to tell you too Thanks I'm one day a young fella came in from Rouen one was not too far from Deauville where our headquarters was at that time and he said that he was the commanding officer the air force temple everyone and I I don't remember his name but he said they're stealing Us blind and we need some flashlights and he says I can't get any flashlights out of the Air Force so he says can you can you give us some flashlights I said let me see so I called our chief signal officer and I said do we have some flashlights a lot of them he says oh we have tons him I said well I'm gonna send a young man down to you would you please give him 80 flashlights he said no problem so the young fella thanked me and as he was about to go out the door he turned around he says would you have a use for a small airplane I said I don't know why he says I have an airplane in our Depot there that's not on anyone's books you're the only man who would listen to me about the flashlights so he says if you send one of your pot we had we had five airplanes in our headquarters if you'd send one of your pilot's over I'll give him the airplane said okay we'll send him over I had his name in and so we got this little elf for airplane another story that I think you'd like is well is this story now I'm Oh jeeps that's right Jesus had the the commanding officer of our quartermaster Devlin Charleroi Belgium came up to Brussels where our headquarters was then and he said now you've always told me no on all questionable supplies he says so I brought our administrative officer here so he could he could tell you just how badly we need 45 jeeps and this young fella got up and he said we have been using a couple thousand German prisoners and these German prisoners have German officers naturally and he says we went see dams to all these people around and the Belgian and Belgians have now gotten up on their high horse and they say we will no longer drive German officers around in sedans because there'd be a German officer and an American officer in the sedan and and the American officer would tell his guys what to do and the German Oz would tell the German prisoners what to do so I thought about it so I said yeah yes you can have him so I called the chief ordnance officer they said I'm sending a man down to you would you please give him 45 Jeeps he says glad to him we've got jeeps coming out of our ears so then this Colonel said I don't understand you say we can have 40 I said that's what you asked for and he said but you've always said no I said well I went attorney this major that I said do you remember me he said I don't believe so I said well I remember you when I came from Washington to Camp Lee Virginia you were the chief administrative officer and he says that's right I said they came down there to learn how to be a truck company commander he says we had a great school I said I had screwed up the ad in the newspaper to sell my furniture in Washington and I came to you to ask if I could have a three-day pass to go back to Washington and you said well there's no leaves this is but I'll tell you what I will fill out a pass for you and put it in my desk drawer now if anything gets in your way so you can't be back here at 8:00 a.m. Monday morning you call me on the phone and here's my number and then I'll give you the pass so you're not a WOL I said so I said now major you and I are even but we were just a bunch of guys you know well talking about being a bunch of guys wait why don't you tell me a little bit about the your feelings about the war your feelings after the war yeah I mean did we do the right thing yeah where were you when the atomic bomb went off how did you feel about that and and Harry Truman and and that sort of thing well the funny thing was on the atomic bomb I thought it was a very wise decision a college made a mind wrote the letter to President Truman and he personally delivered it from Washington to what was the name of the conference right at that time after the war Potsdam yeah okay he delivered to President Truman so Truman could tell Stalin and Churchill of what we were going to do and I thought it saved a lot of lives but since then I kind of changed my mind because I studied the military writer for the New York Times and a number of army officers that have written in these books they said Japan was already defeated we didn't have to drop the atomic bomb on him because it has it destroyed the American picture to the world that we were inhumane you know to drop the bomb twice and killed all those Japanese and I kind of sympathized with him I don't know if we really knew that the Japanese were beaten but after we drop the bomb the Russians came in they wanted to get on the in on the act because they wanted some spoils from Japan and so I don't think we would have had to kill all those Japanese as far as the war was concerned I I went along was what President Roosevelt did and said I had my own arguments over why we didn't prepare our army and air force people in Hawaii I always felt that in Washington we knew or we had strong suspicions so their defense see Colonel Wyman came to us from Hawaii and he was he was interviewed by the congressional investigating committee of Hawaii and when he left us in shurberg to go he would be gone for a month as he was going out the door he lifted up his briefcase and he said I will bet you all the tea in China then I will not be permitted to open my briefcase and when he came back I said Colonel did you open your briefcase he said no he says the only thing that would have happened if I had over my briefcase is that the American public would have lost an awful lot of confidence in their leaders so I didn't think that it was necessary to lose all of those men you know Eisner said something about Berlin C Montgomery and Churchill wanted to be the first ones into Berlin so they could march down under den linden and Eisner said no what's to be gained by taking Berlin we have reduced it to rubble Montgomery and Churchill Montgomery wanted to lead to all the troops down under Dan linman and Churchill wanted to be in the stands get his picture worldwide but Eisenhower said there's nothing to be gained in my opinion by taking Berlin at that point and I will not lose one single soldier for a public relations campaign and and we we didn't we never did take Berlin and the Russians did they got nothing special out of it because the the dividing up of Germany was accomplished months before and one of the big Stalin Churchill Roosevelt meetings they divided up who was going to get what and so I had a tough time holding Patton back this patent wanted to go sailing in over the Elbe River and and iced I said no sir don't you dare do that and it made that mad but Eisenhower was not a bloodthirsty leader some of those guys I think were but as far as my general views of World War two I was too young I think to have real solid views on that but I sure do hope that general Eisenhower's thoughts that we must find some way to gain an eternal peace for this world enormity based section alone we had a hundred and ten thousand graves it's an awful lot of young men stopped in their prime cut off in their prime but at the time I just did what I was asked to do no I just did my job and I didn't second-guess anyone except I to be honest with you I second-guessed Marshall for not telling the the Pearl Harbor people more forcefully you know they defended themselves by saying we told them to be alert but that's like saying when someone goes out to drive the car be careful now where were you when when you heard about Pearl Harbor and how did that affect you I was in Washington you were and they asked the quartermaster general and I roomed with Larry Campbell who was a an ensign in the Navy and we heard it on the radio together we couldn't believe it no but we were so excited you know we get the word on the radio that everyone report to work in military uniforms and I can still see Larry Campbell shining his shoes oh my god we were I tell you when we went to work on Monday morning the awesome quartermaster general was a very exciting place things were different than right yes yes I don't think that's a good answer to you but we pretty much did what we were told and but I I always wished that the people in Pearl Harbor and got more specific instructions that's my that's my thought okay you mentioned before that you went over on the Queen Mary oh yes would you tell me a little bit about that well that was very easy it was very exciting ride we were at Camp shanks and in New York and we got the word to load our battalion and our regiment I was a battalion commander by that time to load on to the Queen Mary and we were told that there were 15,000 of us on the Queen Mary and that we left at about ten o'clock in the morning sailed by the Statue of Liberty and it was a kind of a heart-wrenching thing we were leaving America and we were going out through the German submarines now this was very early in September of 1943 and we started out all by ourselves and every so often not on so many hours and seconds but a Rayleigh we would we would make a zigzag zigzag pattern and the Queen Mary would shudder and sometimes the dishes in the dining room would go sailing across the dining room we would one time I was told that we had a 39 degree list you take the Queen Mary out of 39 degrees list it could have tipped over and every morning at 11 o'clock the people that were above decks would go down the back stairway of the Queen Mary and the people that had been below decks would come up the front stairway so that they were they had fresh air for 24 hours and the people that had been there went down the back stairway and they'd start serving meals about 5:00 a.m. and they would serve two meals a day and and that was a logistics nightmare together the man fifteen thousand people and and feed them only about twenty minutes per person but since I was a major I had a stateroom and I shared that with three others and we had the the right to go into the big lounges and so forth and play cards and but you go out and stand on the rail all you could see was ocean you know and I never will forget coming into the Firth of Clyde in Scotland see we zoomed all the way clear down to forget the islands Channel Islands channel yeah down there and then we came up north and went into the Firth of Clyde the to unload and we unloaded all by lighters and that was a trick to most people lost their luggage one young fella came up to Colonel Wyman he says could I take your bags or alliances are you gonna walk beside me he said no gonna take it to the truck and they'll take it up to your train Wyman says thank you no I'll carry it he was the only one out of 398 the engineers that ended up in in England with his his luggage it took him two or three months to sort out all the luggage yeah you know you hear about airplane passengers that's two or three hundred people we had 15,000 everybody had to bay a tube in a barracks bag B and a barracks bag a and so that if you lost it hopefully one of the and your name was stenciled on the barracks bag when we got to Salisbury we took the train from Glasgow to London and then we took the train to Salisbury when we got there a records had been sent to Bristol as well a regimental commander asked me to go up there to Bristol and get those records and bring him back to Salisbury I drew a limousine from the motor pool and they had British women drivers so it was alright going up coming back that it was dark this lady was very nervous so she said major would you be good enough to drive I just seem too nervous to drive everything was black out sure and they drove on the British side of the road so I got in okay I was nervous too just driving on the wrong side of the road but we got back home - okay thanks how about that be a minute mention your British driver yeah what was it like with the the English people that they accept Americans that you guys got along well very well you know I was assigned a a room with them one of the officers of our regiment to a house called the Harnam house in in Salisbury on the on the Bournemouth Road and the lady who owned the house her husband was in a Japanese prison camera and her son was in the British Army and I kept my stuff there for almost a year and when I was ready to go over to France I went back normally I'll just go up to the house open the door and go up to my room but this time something told me don't be too fresh so I rang the doorbell and she came to the door forget what her name was now but she started to cry and I said what's the matter I forget the young man's name but she said her son had been killed in in France in a tank and so I told her how sorry and I took all my stuff and and we went over to France on an LST and and one time I was going up to to London on a conference and my landlady said I'll make you a good breakfast because it was very difficult to get real eggs yeah we get ersatz eggs and then somehow she got two eggs and made me a wonderful breakfast and I went up to London to this meeting and it was over about noontime so I thought you know I'd like to see their Parliament so I went to down to the House of Lords in the House of Commons there was a British body standing at the door and I thought confident manner we'll get you in almost anywhere so I started to go right in and he stuck his arm out and he says who are you calling to see I said how would I know anybody to see I was in my uniform he says well because the war is on you have to have an appointment so I thought we go fast and I said who would be a good man to see and then I had him and he says well sir J Lucas is a great friend of the Americans I said that's why I'm going to see Sir J Lucas he says ok go in I went up to the the desk and filled out three or four cards and the man at the desk gave me one card he says take this into the Rotunda and give it to the policeman and he will page sergej so I did pretty soon a very handsome guy came on he says I saw who's called in his see Sir J Lucas I said me and he came over and he I said now you can have me thrown out if you like I got in here on a ruse but the man at the door said you were a good friend of the Americans so I said that's one calling to see this is jolly good let me see if there's if I can get your ticket because Winston Churchill had addressed the House of Commons that morning and there everybody was there so he came out a couple of minutes and he says do you mind sitting in the best seat in the house I said not at all so the way the House of Commons was laid out is that the speaker was sitting here those friends of the prime minister who sit here and the opposition was sit over here and then there were two boxes behind the speaker and there were three chairs in each box and there was one chair unoccupied in this box so he took me in and sat me there and then he sat on the railing and as members of the opposition would come by he'd say I'd like to have you meet my friend from America Frank lad wait so I met a number there the big congressman and then I stayed there for an hour and a half or so and he he gave me the envelope he had gotten a note back from the prime minister that morning and I said didn't thank you to borrow that envelope so I could know how to spell your name at all he said sure you're gonna have it and so I wrote to him and thanked him for things and told him if he ever came to America Oh call me in and I'll treat you like you fit me yeah and it's good then I went to the what's the big Church in England st. Paul's yeah we're all they're very yeah take kings and queens and so forth a loss could be married I went there and there was no one around so I unhooked the velvet rope you know and I went stood on this spot or all the kings and queens had stood where they were when they were married and I had a terrific afternoon so to answer your question yes the British treated us very well so see we had almost twice as many soldiers in Europe as the British did see a nice nurse staff except for this general Beetle Smith who was his chief of staff most of his key guys were British and he got credit for being amazingly successful and melding the British and the Americans secrets the I guess was just natural the British had their ideas of how the war should be run and the Americans had their ideas and they had some very serious battles and in this book Ike the author there Michael Korda told how Ike was able to manage them all the worst one was Montgomery he was a prize pain in the neck or lower than that even but near the end of the war Isner went around them all and wrote a letter to Stalin and everybody was down on him for that because they said you should have gone through the the chief of all operations and had him contacted I start new Stalin and was friendly with him and so he just went directly to him I see I was able to control Churchill and and and forget that man's name look I think his Lord was his last name but then Alan brook beaver and they had low opinions of each other you know and it was very hard to be friendly and nice to them when you thought so poorly of them but Montgomery thought he was the hero of El Alamein and was the smartest strategist and tactician in the field and our armed generals thought the same of themselves and it was very difficult to manage them but Eisner made him his objectivity for the most part and so he was able to get them to do what he wanted but I wish we didn't I think there were twenty to thirty million human beings killed in World War two now especially in Russia and and when you think that that in an enormity base alone we had these hundred and ten graves we lost an awful lot of people in that war and so it was necessary and some of it wasn't for instance we bombed saint-lo and we dropped leaflets before we bombed them but the wind blew the leaflets out of town so they never got the word and we killed 10,000 people in saint-lo and we did the same in behalf 11 o'clock in the morning we dropped the leaflets and they never got him and we bombed Lahav right in the heights of the shopping time and we killed 10,000 in love so they would look through us where we had killed a lot of people and you couldn't much blame them you know but we killed an awful lot of people and this deed a book says it was 30 million people in six of the seven continents of the world see we had the war in the South Pacific we had the war and in the Asia we had the whole world was fighting in World War two seeing World War one it was just a European war in World War two we were worldwide and we killed an awful lot of human beings and as egg says that he think tanned he thought and hoped and prayed that humanity will have learned we must find some way to gain an eternal peace for this world I don't think we did but we we sure tried I gave them all my heart and everybody in our family was involved in some way in World War two Oh Frank I am honored I'm I moved and I made a very special friend today I have to thanking you for for the information for sharing your year the high points the low points the honesty of war the the tragedy and and your involvement so with that I thank you the victory veteran veterans history project thank you and thank you for making it possible ok my friend thank you very much Frank gladly thank you Jim and let's hold these gimme copies is absolutely let's hold that up for the camera let's see you go up a little higher Frank a little more perfect and with that I thank you very much
