# Oral History Interview with

# 

# EGBERT BECK

Saturday, Sept. 25, 1999

At Skyland Conference Hall

66^th^ Annual Reunion of the Shenandoah Chapter

of the

Civilian Conservation Corps

Interviewer: John Amberson

> Park volunteer

Transcribed by: Gloria Updyke

Shenandoah National Park

Luray, VA

Original manuscript on deposit at

Shenandoah National Park Archives

# INDEX

[page]{.underline}

Army 3

Camp 10 -- Pinnacles 1

Carnegie, PA 1

CCC, finding out about 1

Training 1

Charleroi 3

Forest fires, fighting, ditch digging 2

Fort Washington, MD 1

Great Depression 5

Guam, Okinawa, Phillipines 5

Hawaii 5

Louisiana 5

Luray, VA 2

Mississippi 5

Mohave Desert, CA 4

Moonshine 5

New York 5

Pittsburgh, PA 2

Printing press job 1

Recreation 2

Tennessee 5

Tionesta, PA 1

Washington, D.C. 1

#  {#section-1 .unnumbered}

# Transcription

JA: Mr. Beck would you state your name and address please?

EB: I'm Bert Beck from Carnegie, Pennsylvania.

JA: And where do you live, where's your address?

EB: Well, right now I live in Tionesta PA, which is 118 miles north of
Pittsburgh.

JA: Mr. Beck, have you read the oral history release?

EB: Yes, I have.

JA: And have you signed it?

EB: Yes.

JA: Thank you so much. Now when did you enlist in the Civilian
Conservation Corps?

EB: I was a latecomer, I enlisted in April of 1941.

JA: Where were you at the time.

EB: First I went to Fort Washington, Maryland. From there I came up here
on the Skyline Drive. I believe it was Camp Pinnacles.

JA: Camp 10?

EB: 10.

JA: Yes, and that first place you went to, what did you go there for?

EB: Well, it uh, we just congregated there and they shipped us off to
different camps.

JA: It was a meeting place?

EB: A meeting place, yeah. We didn't do any work there.

JA: Mm hmm. Did you have physical training and so forth and learn
something about skills and so on?

EB: Well, they took us in, we went in to Washington D.C. into a wood
shop and did woodwork at that time.

JA: At that time. So you learned a little bit about skills about doing
woodwork?

EB: Yes.

JA: Well, that was 1941 you said.

EB: Right.

JA: The Depression was almost over with? Was it still hard times?

EB: Oh yes.

JA: And uh, what was your family doing at the time.

EB: Well, my sisters were working, and my people were, well separated,
they weren't divorced, they were separated. Well I was working for a
printing shop and I wanted to get away from that there. I made ten
dollars a, a week and we worked more, probably 60 hours a week, we
didn't care when we went home. We used to sleep in the printing, waste
underneath the printin' press. And I signed up kind of to get away from
him.

JA: How old were you at the time?

EB: 18.

JA: Mm hmm. And so you went, you heard of course about the Civilian
Conservation Corps. You knew about that?

EB: Oh yes.

JA: Did you have any idea what it was about?

EB: Well I knew, in Pennsylvania they did a lot of tree planting. And
all us folks from Pennsylvania that signed up to go to the CC camp, they
said, "Where do you want to go," and all of us that said they wanted to
go out west, they sent us south. And all the ones that wanted to go
south they sent out west. So I ended up in Virginia.

JA: And how did you get here? Did they send you by truck or bus or train
or what?

EB: I, its 58 years ago, and I believe it was by train.

JA: Mm hmm, ok.

EB: I'm not positive.

JA: And uh, so you enlisted to get away from the print shop, and what
did you do when you got here?

EB: We uh, course uh, we, forest fires, we did a lot of forest fires, a
lot of ditch digging.

JA: Is that right?

EB: Yeah.

JA: What was your primary job then? Initially, was ditch digging?

EB: Ditch digging. And when the fires got started, the mountain people
burnt the fires, and...

JA: They burnt the, they set the thing on fire? Why'd they do that?

EB: Well, they claimed it made the berries and everything come back.
That was a ritual that they did in the mountains.

JA: And you had to put the fires out?

EB: We had to fight the fires.

JA: Yeah, so. What else did you do beside digging ditches and fighting
fires?

EB: KP once in awhile. And recreation trips down to, I believe it was
Luray. And we'd go to a skating rink, but the Virginia girls, they
wouldn't have anything to do with us CC boys.

JA: Is that right? So, uh in camps did they have a lot of recreation
things for you to do in camp?

EB: Yes, it's uh, like I say, in leaving here and going to the army, I
have more memories of the army, uh, World War II than I have of the CC.

JA: Right.

EB: I know a little Italian boy from Pittsburgh. Him and I, we
hitchhiked home from the Drive here, all the way to Pittsburgh and back
in a weekend.

JA: Is that right? That's quite a hitchhiking journey.

EB: Yeah, everybody would pick you up though. And the last part of the
trip was on an in a urban streetcar from Charleroi to Pittsburgh.

JA: Mm hmm.

EB: The conductor, he didn't charge us anything. He thought we didn't
have any money. It was a great experience.

JA: It was a good experience then?

EB: And my birthday was coming up. I think I got out on October 23. I
still have my discharge certificate.

JA: Do you?

EB: I have my army, I mean uh, my CC mackinaw on now, I can still wear
it.

JA: Hey great that's right.

EB: It's the same one. I can wear it just the same as I...

JA: Just the same weight and size as you were in those days?

EB: In fact I'm lighter than I was when I was when I, I never weighed
more than 135 and I'm 120 right now.

JA: Uh, did you have any experiences then that you can relate to us
about your work or uh, time off duty and so forth. Something that stands
out in your mind.

EB: Well, I, I learned to work in the woods, and today I heat with wood
with a fireplace and a woodstove and uh, I did a lot of tree removals
for uh, side jobs. I worked in a boatyard building riverboats for 38
years in Pittsburgh. That uh. Like I say, they were starting to draft
the older fellows out of our camps, and I realized that war was coming.
That October 5^th^ was my birthday, that huntin' season was coming. So
I, I signed up. Well 1942 they dis-, the war started and they
discontinued the camps. I would have been out anyway. So I only had
maybe a few more months left, uh I could have been in.

JA: In the camp, the CCC's, yes. And you went in the army then?

EB: Yep.

JA: And you went into uh, the infantry?

EB: I had basic, uh training in artillery. I raced pigeons as a boy. I
tried to get in the pigeon outfit when I signed up or was drafted. They
wouldn't put me in it. So when we went to the Mohave Desert in
California for maneuvers, there was a pigeon outfit there. And so I put
in a transfer and I got it. My artillery outfit went to Europe. And I
went to Louisiana, went to Mississippi, Tennessee maneuvers. Then I went
to Hawaii. I ended up in the 77^th^ New York State Infantry Division.

JA: Is that right?

EB: And I, went to the Philippines, well I went to Guam and from Guam I
went to the, fought in the invasion of Okinawa. And after that was
finished, they sent us down to the Philippines to get ready for the
invasion of Japan. And they dropped the A-bomb, and saved uh -- well
probably why I'm here today.

JA: That's quite an experience in the military. It is. You had good
experience in the CCC too. I guess that they, uh taught you something
that made it easier to work in the army? Gave you some of the ideas of
what military life was like, when you were here in the camp?

EB: Well today I think they, everybody turns 18, ought to be put in the
service. I think it'd be a lot better off for the youth today. I mean
uh...

JA: Sounds like a reasonable thing to do. Listen Mr. Beck \[I\] really
appreciate you stopping by to talk to me today and telling me about your
experiences here in the Shenandoah National Park. It sounded like a good
time for you.

EB: Yeah, but one thing I can remember, how we got to know about it,
that we put a couple dollars under a rock by a stump, the next morning
there'd be a bottle of moonshine there.

JA: Is that right? Was there a lot of moonshine available in those
years?

EB: I imagine, yeah.

JA: Real good stuff?

EB: It was good stuff.

JA: Is that right?

EB: And it's hard to come by today.

JA: I wonder if that rock is still there?

EB: That's one thing I remember vividly. I mean uh, we drank, we passed
it around. The gentleman out there that built the camps for the
government, he was telling me about some of them that got really bombed,
got drunk on it. I don't remember getting drunk. We just, we only got a
pint. It wasn't really much. I mean if you drank it all it would be
effective, but we'd pass it around and everybody had a little nip,
and...

JA: It was very nice, good times then wasn't it?

EB: Right, good times. And I remember the food, I mean uh. We had good
food, plenty of it. Well I was fortunate during the Depression. My
grandmother owned a little one family grocery store, butcher shop, and
uh, I had enough to eat during the Depression.

JA: Right, right. Well uh, that was a, good years remembered. All your
thoughts about the past. And your jacket looks real nice on you. I'll
have to take a picture of you. Thank you.