TAPE 1 - Side A -- 4,400 words

FLL: When did you cross the Atlantic?

CHL: I crossed the Atlantic about four months after D-Day. So that would have been October, 1944.

FLL: Tell us how that went.

CHL: We sailed from New York to Southampton and our group sailed on a large old former luxury liner, which could go 22 knots. So we were told that we would not be going in convoy because a convoy of course had to go at the speed of the slowest ship. Convoys usually go about 11 knots and we could go 22 knots therefore we were going to go by ourselves. And our protection would be depth charges and deck guns. The ship itself was manned by Merchant Marines but U.S. Navy personnel manned the deck guns and the depth charges.

FLL: Was it a U.S. ship?

CHL: Yes it was a U.S. ship.

FLL: Do you remember the name of it?

CHL: I do not remember the name of it.

FLL: One of those inter-war passenger liners.

CHL: Pre-war passenger liner. We were told it had been a luxury ship.

It was fairly old, I suppose about thirty years old. It had been
converted into a troop ship. And so instead of berths it had bunks,
five high.

FLL: How many decks do you remember?

CHL: Don't really remember. I'm going to guess perhaps six or seven.

FLL: How many people embarked, how many troops on board?

CHL: As I recall, somewhere around 1,500 to 2000, many more than had been the number of passengers when it was a luxury liner. For example our bunks were five high. Each bunk was a metal frame set down on chains -- not much space. I could not lie on my side; I had to lie either on my back or stomach. If I lay on my side my shoulder would touch the person above me.

OK the event most memorable to me was one noontime I happened to be in
a group of perhaps 15 to 20 soldiers who had KP duty and our group

happened to be in charge of cleaning up the mess hall. The mess hall was two levels below sea level, I remember that. And it wasn't exactly hard work; it was more fun than work. We were at the instructions of some of the Merchant Marine guys, tossing around buckets of water and then sweeping them up. There were perhaps 12 to 15 of us and a couple of Merchant Marine guys there. Of course none of us GIs had ever been to sea before. And here we are working away, playing and working, two levels below sea level. When all of a sudden there is a big "kaboom." We heard it and felt it. The ship shook. It was followed by a second "kaboom" and a third "kaboom."

A couple of the GIs broke for the stairway. We're well below sea level, the rest of us more or less grab the Merchant Marine guys and say, "what's happening? What's going on? Have we been torpedoed? Are we sinking? Have we been hit? What is this?"

And they said, "No, no, no, don't worry. Don't worry. That's just the depth charge guys up on deck shooting off depth charges and you heard three depth charges going off."

"Well, that's fine, but presumably if they set off depth charges they must have had a reason to do so."

"Nah, don't worry," they said, "they just picked up something on sonar. Usually it's a whale or it's a school of fish swimming very tightly

FLL: Your whole unit traveled together?

CHL: I was then going over in the 69th Division and this was probably one regiment in the division that would go on one ship and the seas were rough as I recall.

My particular job and I'm not sure how they picked me was to punch lunch cards. I had to punch breakfast lunch and dinner each day was marked on the card. I had to punch it out. That was to make sure that no one went through twice.

But it happened that the seas were rough almost the entire voyage and a number of guys were seasick. And if a guy was seasick, he didn't want to have a meal. I don't know how I did it but there were hundreds of guys going through and yet I got to the point after a few meals where I could recognize a guy going through a second time. He would borrow the meal card from the friend who was too sick to want to go. I don't know how I would recognize him. Guys would hand me a fresh card but I know they had gone through again, I always let them know that I understood that they were trying to pull something. So I would say something like "Oh extra hungry again today are you?" and punch the card and let them go through.

I knew that we wouldn't run out of food because a great many guys were sea sick and just couldn't stand the idea of eating a meal.

FLL: Did the officers have their own mess?

CHL: Oh, there were officers on the ship. They had their own mess. We didn't see them we were the GIs.

FLL: What did you do for the five or six days besides clean-up duty and checking mess passes?

CHL: Essentially there is nothing to do on a ship. The sailors are sailing the ship. Nothing to do but talk and walk around and look at the sea and get sick because it was pretty stormy -- it was a rough crossing -- and think about German submarines. A lot of attention being given to German submarines, but we never had a real event. We never had a real scare.

FLL: You had a lifeboat drill.

CHL: Yes, we had lifeboat drills. Yeah we did. There was a special lifeboat signal. And everyone was assigned to a lifeboat. You have to get in the position of your particular lifeboat. I don't really remember; I am sure we did not get in the lifeboats. And I think the lifeboats were let out from the davits and they were lowered partially just to make sure the sailors handling the ropes and lifeboats knew. They were lowered partially to the water but not in the water just to

see that the crews knew what to do.

FLL: Where in New York City did you leave from?

CHL: We left from a dock. I don't remember.

FLL: The city proper?

CHL: I think it was a dock on Manhattan but I'm really not sure about that.

I'd been in training in Mississippi and we went by train from the training area in Mississippi up to New York City and that took several days. I remember that and we went directly from the trains to the dockyards and the ship was ready for us to arrive, which we did by bus from the train station to the ship.

FLL: Was your commanding officer on the ship, your platoon commander.

CHL: Certainly officers and non-coms were in the ship. We would see company-level people. The usual officers and non-coms were there but there's really nothing to do, you read a book you talk to guys you play poker.

From October until December we were just in a camp in southern England.

FLL: What was the name of the camp?

CHL: Don't remember.

FLL: Do you know where you were in Southern England?

CHL: It wasn't far from Southampton.

FLL: Was it the entire division?

CHL: Yeah, the division was together.

FLL: Why would they keep this division while the war is waging?

CHL: The war is going on. The American forces are progressing rather rapidly, American and British progressing across France in the fall and had essentially gotten to the German border. We expected to be put into combat any day. And yet this went on for about two months.

FLL: Why – wouldn't you just put every troop you had into...

CHL: I would think so too and that's what we expected. We thought we would land in England and they quickly go across the channel, but it didn't happened. I don't know why. I presume Eisenhower thought I'm

going to have some back-up men in the reserve ready to throw in and I don't need to use them just yet.

The next thing that happened was the German offensive in the Ardennes which became known as the Battle of the Bulge. Which was an offensive trying to go all the way to Antwerp, cut off the northern part of the American and British forces, separate them and hopefully to annihilate them that was obviously the German thinking. That offensive started around December 10 as I recall. Which we knew about because we used to get the daily paper called the "Stars and Stripes," which was about as good as the average American paper. It was published in Britain so we were informed as to what was happening in a general way.

At any rate, about a week to ten days after the German offensive started we were having a Christmas banquet, a noontime Christmas banquet. In our outfit all the Jewish guys, including me, were KP.

And we were serving meals, called a Christmas banquet, to the rest of the guys. Which is OK with us, it was their holiday. I don't mind being the KP just as long as I didn't have extra turns of KP. Halfway into our serving this so-called banquet an announcement came over the loudspeaker system, "Everyone immediately report to barracks and be ready for special announcement in barracks. Go immediately to the barracks." Well that was a big surprise to us. We didn't know what that was all about. Certainly unusual to be stopped in the middle of a meal, but OK that was orders so we did, we all went to barracks. And

then we were told to immediately pack yourself up, pack up your clothes
in a duffle bag and you and your duffle bag are going to be immediately
be loaded on trucks in about 15 minutes. The trucks are going to drive
to Southampton where we are going to cross the channel and get in the
fighting. And that's what we did.

FLL: This was Christmas day?

CHL: It was Christmas day. The offensive started about a week before
Christmas day. I don't remember the exact date. We got ready quickly.
It was an hour to two hour drive to the port. Our particular group
got an LST, landing ship tank, which are in essence a huge open box.

FLL: A shoe box

CHL: A shoe box without a top, it was completely open.

FLL: You crossed the entire Channel in an LST?

CHL: We crossed the channel. Which was about 30 miles. It was probably
a two hour ride.

FLL: You departed from Southampton or where?

CHL: From Southampton, I'm pretty sure.

FLL: To what port in France?

CHL: To a very well known port. I can't think of the name of it right now.

FLL: Le Havre or Cherbourg?

CHL: I think it was Le Havre. It was Le Havre.

Anyway we pulled up to a dock. They're made to let the front fall down and let the tanks out on a beach, but we pulled up to a dock in Le Havre and got out there. We went immediately to a replacement depot, which is a temporary tent city, for a day or two where we were assigned to different units. I was assigned to the 84th Division, known as the "Rail-Splitters," originally an Illinois National Guard unit, referring to Abe Lincoln. They were taking troops by battalion or by regiments to be placed out of the front for rest and rehabilitation for a few days and that was the opportunity to bring in the replacements. So I joined the group when they were not on the line, but then within a few hours, during the night, we then went by foot, first by truck, then by foot up to the line.

FLL: You disembarked and you were in some kind of staging area for a few days. How many people were in your LST?

CHL: Good question, I'm going to guess 70 or 80. Something like that.
We were pretty well crowded together.

FLL: And at this point you were still in your original unit. Its only
when you get to the staging area that they reassign you.

CHL: I went overseas in the 69th Division. I was reassigned to be a
member of the 84th Division at the replacement depot.

FLL: Was everybody in the 69th Division then assigned to other units?

CHL: What they did was they took probably 80% of the personnel out of
the 69th Division, keeping all of the structure, the framework, so if
more men could be sent in it could become a full division again. Later
on the 69th Division did as a division cross the Channel and did get
into the fighting, much later in the war. But Eisenhower decided this
was an emergency situation. We lost a lot of men during the offensive
in the Ardennes and he wanted to get some immediate replacements. The
fastest way to get them was to empty 80% of the 69th Division out, and
perhaps other divisions as well I don't know. So we were brought up
very, very quickly. I remember going forward at night and walking at
night full field pack some distance and approaching the line and I
remember being told there was a certain area that the Germans had been
shelling and we could expect to be shelled. The group I was with was

80 to 90% experienced men and maybe 10 to 20% us replacements so we
understood that the thing to do was just to do what everyone else did.
We were shelled and everyone hit the ground. We tried to get into low
places and that was my first experience in being shelled, and believe
it or not I found it to be exhilarating.

FLL: Why was it exhilarating?

CHL: Exhilarating - Winston Churchill once famously said there is
nothing more joyous and more exhilarating than being shot at and
missed. That was the feeling. My first experience in combat. This
was exciting. We're being fired on.

FLL: This was about two days after you landing in France.

CHL: Yes it was about two days.

FLL: Who was the commanding general of the 84th division?

CHL: I don't remember.

FLL: Who did you deal with in 84th Division management, basically your
Lieutenant? Was that about as far up the chain as you went?

CHL: I was in a rifle company. I was a B.A.R. man, Browning Automatic

Rifle.

There was one B.A.R. man to a squad and three rifle squads to a platoon.

The B.A.R. shoots twenty round magazines and has the same rate of fire as a machine gun. A B.A.R. shoots this fast -- bop bop bop bop bop (about two rounds per second) -- and you can't tell by the sounds which one it is.

But the German machine guns have a much faster rate of fire, like a rrrrrrip, the sound of cloth tearing magnified a hundred times.

So you could tell a German machine gun, but you could not tell the sound of an American machine gun compared to a B.A.R.

FLL: How many men in a squad

CHL: 12 man squads, 40 men to a platoon, with 3 squads plus a few special guys, mortar men scouts, radiomen.

FLL: Is a squad led by a Sergeant?

CHL: Yeah a Sergeant is in charge of a squad and a Lieutenant is in charge of a platoon with a Master Sergeant as a chief NCO in charge of a platoon. Most of my time, instead of having three 12-men squads to

platoon we had two squads of eight or nine men each. We were less than
half of what the table of organization called for because we kept
taking casualties. Every week to ten days on the average we would get
another batch of replacements but never fast enough. We took
casualties faster than the replacements assigned to us.

After I had been with the company for 30 days I recognized that I had
been with the group longer than about half of the people in our
platoon.

FLL: You were in the top half within thirty days because of the casualty rate?

CHL: Because of rate of casualties, yeah.

FLL: Which means twenty out of forty people or so were somehow...?

CHL: Within 30 days.

In the total of five months of my experience in combat, there's a total
of something like only about 15% of those who were there when I started
with my company were still there at the end. The rest were casualties,
more wounded than killed.

But then if you count all of the people who came in you'd have to say

there was something like 150% casualty rate. Compared to the average
number of men we had. People kept coming and coming and so did the
casualties.

We had a saying in those days that if a new person as a replacement
could make it through the first 48 hours, his chances of surviving
increased. It was the inexperienced guys who weren't alert. You had to
take cover. You had to respond very quickly to four things: Rifle,
machine gun, mortar, and artillery

FLL: I could see artillery because there is a...

CHL: Artillery you get the sound before you get the explosion.

Believe it or not there is a slightly different sound to an artillery
shell that is going over your head behind you, compared to one that's
going to fall short, compared to one that is going to land near you.
Three different distinct sounds. You had to listen very very carefully
to which was which, and maybe it would be halfway between the sound of
going over and the sound of landing close to you.

I remember several different times a group of three, four, of five guys
all hearing the sound, each looking at each others' faces and having to
make a decision within half a second whether to hit the ground or not.
And each one quickly looking into the faces of the other to see...

FLL: Why wouldn't you just hit the ground with every shell

CHL: Because you're exhausted. And to throw yourself on the ground requires a certain amount of energy and shock And if it's not necessary you don't want to do it. So how do you read it? How do you read it?

Looking into each other's faces.

FLL: What was the German artillery

CHL: They were 88s. You hear it coming, but mortar shells go almost straight up and straight down; you do not hear it coming. Usually they come in a series, which is how our mortar men work. Throw shells up very quickly and move a few notches. You have a lull between shells.

You have a line of mortar shells you can see them going off maybe one a second, left to right or right to left. What's scary is if the line is coming right at you.

With rifle and machine guns, their bullets travel faster than sound.

But you have a general idea where the enemy is and where you are. What you do and what you don't do. Take cover. Always take cover

FLL: Wouldn't the response to the rifle be the same as the response to the machine gun?

CHL: Yeah, they both have a very flat trajectory, but the machine gun is little more scary because the sound is so distinctive. And the sound of a B.A.R. is like the sound of a machine gun, and that attracts German fire. I learned very quickly don't shoot your B.A.R. off casually -- only when it is serious

FLL: Did you have a rifle?

CHL: No strictly a B.A.R. It was a heavy weapon. The weapon itself was twenty pounds heavier than a rifle. Then we'd carry a dozen magazines, each one weighing two pounds – that's twenty-four pounds, about twenty pounds more of ammunition than a rifleman carried. There was a special canvas vest with special pockets to hold the magazines.

So altogether we carried about 100 pounds and the average infantryman carried about 60 pounds. We were very much aware of the difference.

And a little proud of it.

The trouble with that is I couldn't run. There was too much weight to allow me to run. If the situation called for running, the best I could ever do was kind of a fast shuffle. I was carrying too much weight.

FLL: What was the point of the B.A.R.? What were you supposed to do?

Why was it in the squad?

CHL: Oh to throw down a great amount of fire.

FLL: An automatic rate of fire

CHL: Yeah it's like a machine gun. Pop pop pop pop pop. It's like a water hose. You're spraying. You're spraying. You're spraying. If it was an occasion when they called for a spray, you could do it.

FLL: How did you end up with a B.A.R.? Did the Army pick you or did you select the weapon?

CHL: The Army picked me. It wasn't because I passed a special test or showed a particular aptitude or anything like that. It was because I was big (6'1") and could carry the thing. So the big kids were invariably assigned the B.A.R. (from an earlier conversation)

FLL: Everyone else had an M1?

CHL: The M1 was semiautomatic. One pull of the trigger sends out one shot, you do not have to manually cock the rifle. The German rifles had to be manually cocked after each shot. Being instantly alert to each key danger sound was the most important thing in the world. And I'm deep into it. That's what each of us learned in his first 48 hours of combat. Or did not.

FLL: Baptism by fire.

FLL: How soon after that were you told, by the way we need you in
Japan?

CHL: It was about two months later.

FLL: Why were you picked for that, having just done five months of
"work." Was it because you came in late to Europe?

CHL: No our whole division was going to be sent - everybody. Because
the generals wanted more manpower.

We were expecting to go fairly soon, when Hiroshima occurred. And we
understood immediately. We got the word, we got "The Stars and
Stripes," (on time with no war going on) and this was going to be the
end of the war. It was just a few days after Hiroshima that peace was
declared. I think maybe five or six days later. But I think we
understood as everyone else did the first day -- we understood what an
atom bomb was -- That this has to be the end of the war

My feeling and the feeling of those in my situation was, "Ohh so I'm
going to live after all." I expected to die. Oh I'm going to live.
So I'm going to live. That was my reaction.

FLL: So VJ Day was a happy moment. — Maybe more important than VE Day.

## CHL Tape 1 Side B – 3900 words

CHL: I was in three battles altogether. The first was what we call the
Battle of the Bulge.

That was the hardest one, the one we took the most losses. We finally
broke through up to the Ruhr River.

The second battle was the crossing of the Ruhr River and the battle
from the Ruhr to the Rhine - that was a battle of movement

And the third was the crossing of the Rhine. The Remagen Bridge had
been taken and the battle on until the end of the war which was a
battle mainly of movement. The Remagen Bridge was famous for being
only partially blown up by the German engineers. G.I.s could still
scramble across.

It kept changing, it kept changing after the crossing of the Rhine, it
seemed like almost on a daily basis the proportion of Germans who
wanted to surrender as opposed to those who wanted to fight kept being
a greater and greater proportion. The ratios kept changing rapidly.

The early part of that part of the war our Company had taken over a
small town.

Having crossed the Rhine River. We're advancing rapidly to the east

FLL: Did you cross at Remagen?

CHL: We crossed at Remagen. I remember Remagen was a big event. We crossed the Rhine in boats. Hand-powered. I was one of those wielding a canoe paddle.

But then as I mentioned it became a war of fluidity of movement. We took towns we took villages we took hamlets.

I remember one particular small town we had just taken

We did what we always did. We had to inspect every room in every building in the town. We'd go through houses, we'd go through office buildings we'd go through factories

We'd have to inspect each room. Looking for people, looking for ammunition, and looking for weapons

If it's a house usually two or three guys would go through houses together. You didn't want to go by yourself.

And there is always a little bit of a leery feeling as you go to open another door. Because if someone is there and wants to shoot you, he

is in a perfect position to do it if he wants to because as you come in
the door he's got you lined up.

So it is always a bit of a nervous thing going in.

What we always did if the door was locked we would kick in the door.
Kick it in so your foot would hit right by the door handle.

Anyway I think three of us had just finished going through a house in
the suburban part of town and just walked out the back door and I hear
fire.

There hadn't been any firing for a while. The Germans had pretty much
given up

I looked up to see what was the firing.

There were two of our men just ten yards from me and they were shooting
away from town.

I looked to see what they were shooting at.

They were shooting at a group of about four German soldiers who were
perhaps a quarter of a mile away running across an open field into
woods.

I look up higher.

And from the house next to the one I had just inspected, there is a
window with horizontal and vertical bars in it and an arm sticking
through the bars waving wildly.

I couldn't see through the bars, but I assumed it's my Sergeant,
Sergeant Johnson, calling me. Wow. He's trying to tell me to come
back up there.

"Come here. You get a good shot from here."

"I'm saying to him, hollering back, "The Germans are getting away."

He says, "I know. You got a perfect shot from here. Get up here. Get
up to this window. Hurry up. Bring your B.A.R. Get up here quick"

He's yelling at me. I knew this is a stupid, stupid command because of
the amount of time it will take me to run all the way back to the house,
find the door. The house was next door to the house I had just come
out of.

I didn't know the house. I'd have to find the hallway find the stairs
go up the stairs and I could see in the amount of time that took the
Germans would be in the woods.

Compared to in two seconds I could've moved up to where our riflemen
were and taken a shot

It was a dumb order and dumb of him to give it to me.

But the only way an army works is if every command is immediately
obeyed – stupid or not my duty is to obey my Sergeant.

So as fast as I could I started running back to the house with my
B.A.R. and I find the house I find the door and I find the stairs and
I'm going up the steps and I hear shooting up above.

I figure that must be Johnson firing out the window. I just assumed
that. I get up the steps there's a hall. I look for the room that he's
in and I see him. It is a bathroom and I see the barred windows. He's
at the barred window. And I just step in.

He was shooting his rifle out through the bars as I surmised and just
as I step in the door he gets a bullet in the elbow and staggers back.
He's half falling backwards toward me and I sort of half catch him and
ease him to the floor. And now my job is to get him safe so I drag him
backwards. He's in a half-sitting position and I'm dragging him
backwards out into the hall get him back down the hall. Get him out of
that room when the firing is coming in.

I Start to look at his wounds and I see the blood is pumping out of his
elbow. An artery had been hit. It was pumping.

He says to me, "Never mind me. Get those Jerries."

Get those Jerries. His immediate reaction- ignore him. Well, OK, my
job is to obey.

The bullets are coming in through this barred window, the same barred
window, horizontal and vertical bars that his arm had been sticking
through. Well, OK, I'm going to try to get them

The bottom of the window is about three feet high so I'm crouching
under the window. Sticking my head up Looking up and down very
quickly, lifting my head up for a second, bringing it down, trying to
change rhythms, while they are shooting at me, hoping I don't get a
bullet to the forehead. Trying to do my duty and see and I get a view
that startled me and turned my blood cold.

What I see, I think, is two of our men shooting in the window. Our men
are shooting at us. How could that be? And then checking myself again
I get up and look again while the bullets are zooming in, and say to
myself, "Yes." I verified it and I recognized who those two are. One
is kneeling and one is standing in position and both shooting at me

through that window.

And then the whole thing suddenly strikes me. That Johnson had been
shooting with his rifle between the bars at the Germans a quarter of a
mile away running across the field into the woods. He was trying to
fire over the heads of our guys but they don't know that. All they
know is that there is a rifle sticking out of a barred window shooting
and they assume it must be a German shooting at them and they're trying
to fire back at the German.

That's what they think. Of course I'm not going to shoot our men. I'm
not going to shoot back at our men. I rush back to where Johnson is
and tell him, "Hey those are our guys. They aren't Germans. They are
our guys. They thought you were Jerry."

Meanwhile, with maybe one more minute to think about it he said, "Get
Smitty. Get Smitty." He's changed his priorities.

Smitty is our squad medic. Smitty always said to us, "never yell
'medic', always yell 'Smitty.'" Cause if we yell "medic," it could be
someone from the next platoon or the next company who got hit. He
wants to take care of our guys first. "Make sure you yell 'Smitty' and
I'll run as fast as I can to come help. I don't want to get diverted
helping someone else."

I go rushing downstairs to get Smitty and I get to the door and I stop.

Wait a minute. Our guys think Jerry's inside this house. As soon as I darken this door they'll start putting holes through me.

The only thing I could think of to do was to take off my helmet and full field pack. Put down the B.A.R. Put down the ammunition. Make myself light as I can and go running out as fast as I can and take them by surprise so they recognize me before they shoot.

So I take a running start and go zooming off the porch and stop in the middle of the back yard in about two seconds.

And it worked.

No one shot. They recognized me. My helmet was off and they were all hiding in bushes around the edge of the yard.

And they started yelling, "Lavin, Lavin, get down. Get down, Jerry's in there."

I'm yelling back, "No, there are no Jerries. That was Johnson and me inside."

And they're yelling, "What - are you crazy? Are you telling us that you and Johnson were shooting at us?"

"No, no, that was Johnson shooting over your head. Johnson's hurt.
Get Smitty. Johnson's hurt. Get Smitty." I'm yelling as loud as I
can.

They finally get it and they start yelling for Smitty, and Smitty comes
running around.

Smitty comes running and tries to jump a fence, but his foot catches on
the fence and he goes sailing. His Red Cross stuff gets thrown all
over the ground. Were picking him up, we are picking up the Red Cross
stuff.

"Come on Johnson's hurt. Stop fooling around. C'mon."

We race in and race upstairs.

He sees the blood is still pumping out with each heartbeat. All this
takes place in very little time, not faster than it takes to tell it

Smitty does the right thing. He immediately pulls out a tourniquet and
puts it on the arm and stops the loss of blood.

FLL: And Johnson made it.

CHL: As far as I know. That was another big thing. You never knew if a guy lived or not. All you knew was how bad he was hit, sometimes, and that you had to get him back to medical treatment. We surmised that he lived. He probably lived. You almost never really heard.

Unless the guy was slightly hurt and would come back and you'd see him again.

FLL: Was this the time where a bullet aimed at you hit the metal bars of a window?

CHL: It was that time. I remember getting like bee stings all over my face. I had my classes on so I didn't get any in my eyes.

FLL: shards of metal?

CHL: I thought about it later. The bars were rusty. I think it was rust on the bars because it didn't do any damage. The bullet must have hit dead center of one of the bars in front of my face. So the spray hit me in the face and neck like dozens of bee stings. But no blood.

So I'm just guessing it was rust.

FLL: glass window?

CHL: the window was open.

FLL: That was in Germany proper.

CHL: Oh yeah that was past the Rhine.

FLL: Go back to December 7, 1941. You were down in Oxford, Ohio?

CHL: Oh Pearl Harbor day. I was in high school. I graduated in the spring of '42 just after my 18th birthday. We were expecting be called up any minute and while waiting to be called I went off to Miami University.

I got called into the army immediately after my 19th birthday but I was 18 at Pearl Harbor.

FLL: You were a senior in high school. You were in Canton.

CHL: Yes I was a senior in high school, Lehman High School. All of us guys in my class knew we were going to be in the army.

FLL: Did you hear about Pearl Harbor on the radio or did you hear about it when you came home at night?

CHL: I do remember I was driving downtown and I was stopped at a red light and my uncle happened to pull up next to me and he said, "Is your radio on?" He said Pearl Harbor had been bombed, turn on your radio.

And I listened to the emergency news broadcast.

FLL: It happened at 7 am in Hawaii so it must have been 1 or 2 pm here.

CHL: I might have been downtown for lunch, just a guess. I was near the town square, about 2nd or 3rd and Market Street.

FLL: And FDR spoke to Congress the next day, right?

CHL: I believe he spoke the next day. And Germany declared war on the U.S., the day after Pearl Harbor, I think it was.

What I remember distinctly about that is right about at the conclusion of the war we were somewhere in Germany and there was a temporary barbed wire enclosure set up for German prisoners of war. Several of our company guys who happened to be a block or so away decided just out of curiosity to go down to see just to look at them. I did too.

And one German said to me in English, "Why are you Americans here anyways? This should be a European affair. Why are Americans here?"

I was able to say to him, "We are here because Germany declared war on America."

He didn't believe me. And he spoke in German to another German soldier.

The other German soldier explained and you could hear the first German
say, "Ya, Ya. The American is right." He had been unaware that his
country had started the war with the America.

FLL: What war activities took place in Canton? What happened the remainder of your senior year? Were there recruitment drives?

CHL: What I mainly remember was the attitude, who cares about school.
The attitude of two-thirds of our school -- were all going into the
military. There had been recruitment offices.

FLL: Registration happened before Pearl Harbor, but the draft started
afterwards

CHL: I registered. I was still waiting to be called up, then
September came and I was off to Miami

I didn't take school too seriously. I was still waiting to be called up
and at Miami I was advised to join the reserves. This was going on at
colleges all over the country, I guess. The best thing to do was to
join the reserves. I remember talking with my parents they had mixed
feelings. I joined the reserves so I was officially in the army. I
had to go to Columbus and sign up. They told me to go back to Miami
until I was called up into active service. Waiting to be called up, I
was at Miami for about six months, until spring. Just around the time

of my 19th birthday I was called up into active service.

FLL: What were your parents thinking about? Was there any discussion
about not even going to Miami and just signing up after high school?

CHL: No they wanted me to stay out as long as I could. The draft was
there and you're going to be grabbed. There's no point at going in any
sooner. Take your time. Everyone seemed to have the same attitude.
We were not thinking - I cannot wait to be drafted I'm going to go
volunteer.

At Miami the view was its going to happen any day, any day. That was
the attitude toward classes. Who cares about classes? Everything is
going to change.

FLL: You were in a reserve unit attached to the university like an ROTC
unit?

CHL: Yeah but we didn't do anything. We just waited.

FLL: Were there monthly drills?

CHL: No

FLL: You were just sworn in and given some sort of uniform.

I would explain it was from school. It seems crazy. The draftees all started with a "three" and volunteers started with a "one."

FLL: How were you a volunteer if you were actually called up, because you were a volunteer for the reserves?

Yeah I was given a number when I joined the reserved. I was given a number that had no meaning, in terms of activity. It was my serial number.

They finally called me up and I was sent to Camp Hood - now called Fort Hood, in Texas. Sent there for basic training. Near Waco.

FLL: How long were you in Columbus, was that just paperwork?

CHL: I was there maybe overnight, strictly paperwork.

FLL: That's where you took the train for Texas. Did you go home first? Did they give you two weeks before you had to report?

CHL: I don't remember. I probably did. I had my clothing, my things from college. I probably did go home.

I'm sure I traveled by train to get to Texas. I think I got a uniform back then at Fort Hayes.

FLL: You might have had to report to Fort Hayes, and then transferred to Fort Hood.

CHL: I might have gone directly from Fort Hayes to Fort Hood.

FLL: Does that mean that everybody in your class in Miami was called up then? Or were you just picked out?

CHL: People were disappearing; the classes were constantly dwindling in size. In those days more boys than girls went to college and so the numbers were shrinking very quickly.

I went to basic training in Texas for three months. And at the end of three months basic training my Lieutenant suggested I join the Army Specialized Training Program (A.S.T.P.).

FLL: Three months at Camp Hood - that was May, June, July.

CHL: Yeah May, June, July. The hot summer weather, taking basic training in the Texas desert, I remember that.

FLL: I remember even decades later in the 1960s and 1970s you would refuse to drink Dr. Pepper, because that was the soda available at Camp Hood - it had been invented in Waco - and you associated its taste with

the runs in the desert.

CHL: I didn't care for it. Still don't. (From an earlier
conversation with FLL)

FLL: And basic training included...

CHL: Physical conditioning, close order drill, parades. The first
reaction is, what's the point of this? Why do we have to march in
parade - we're going to be in combat? And yet it sank in. I think it
was a parade every Saturday or something like that. At first it was
ridiculous. But then the more I did it, the more it sank in, the more
I got the feeling of being part of the group.

The whole group is doing...Left flank march. Right flank march. You
learn what one hundred people are doing. I started to get the
emotional understanding of what the point was.

FLL: How many recruits were there?

CHL: Well, in 13 weeks, my guess is maybe every week we saw a new
batch.

After about two months you'd start spending a lot of time on the rifle
range. So everyone would've had their turn on the rifle range. We

must have been on the rifle range seven or eight different times for
either one or two hours each. Getting used to the rifle, proper use of
the rifle, making sure everyone had an understanding and a feeling and
experience.

FLL: Did you go to advanced training or did you go to B.A.R. class?

CHL: After Basic Training, I went to college in the Army. Queen's
College in New York City. Army Specialized Training Program - ASTP.
If you got in the ASTP program you were assured of becoming an officer.

That was all a political situation. Because almost all students were
boys the colleges were all devastated, so they brought political
pressure to bear - hey use the colleges we can help the training - so
the army started the ASTP program

Anyone with more than a 115 IQ got in. Mine was 141.

It didn't have much to do with training. It was taking basic classes
extra fast.

That was about four or five months then what happened was we had the
Army in the African fight against Rommel, and we had quite a few
killed. Then the hue and cry went up -- Why are some of our guys
getting killed in the deserts of Africa while others are going to

college?

What kind of service is that, going to college?

So they abandoned the entire program. Very suddenly. We're ending the
whole ASTP Program. And everyone is back in the regular army. You're
an infantryman now. We need infantrymen.

How long was it supposed to last?

All we knew was that the first year was to be the school year, from
fall to spring.

END OF TAPE