Oral history interview of James Glover McGhee, Jr.

Collection:: Veterans History Project: Oral History Interviews
Title:: Oral history interview of James Glover McGhee, Jr.
Creator:: Bruckner, William Joseph
McGhee, James Glover, Jr., 1924-2013
Date of Original:: 2004-10-12
Subject:: World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Stewart, Cathleen
Hanna, Captain
Williams, Frank
McGhee, Joanne Bray
Darlington School (Rome, Ga.)
Citadel Academy (Charleston, S.C.)
United States. Army. Infantry Division, 34th
United States. Army. Engineer Combat Battalion, 109th
United States. Army. Cavalry Division, 2nd
Emory University. Lamar School of Law
Bouncing Betty (mine)
40 and 8 (railroad car)
Stewart, Cookie
Location:: Algeria, Oran, 35.69906, -0.63588
Italy, Cividale del Friuli, 46.0936233, 13.4303277
Italy, Marina di Pisa, 43.6724218, 10.2727668
Italy, Naples, 40.8359336, 14.2487826
Strait of Gibraltar, 35.95, -5.6
Tunisia, 33.886917, 9.537499
United States, Georgia, 32.75042, -83.50018
United States, Georgia, Atlanta Metropolitan Area, 33.8498, 84.4383
United States, Georgia, Floyd County, Rome, 34.25704, -85.16467
United States, Massachusetts, Barnstable County, Camp Edwards, 41.65705, -70.54392
United States, Texas, Kinney County, Fort Clark, 29.3068921, -100.4181504
United States, Virginia, Fairfax County, Fort Belvoir, 38.7119, -77.14589
Medium:: video recordings (physical artifacts)
mini-dv
Type:: Moving Image
Format:: video/quicktime
Description:: In this interview, Glover McGhee relates his experiences in the Army Corps of Engineers in Africa and Europe during World War II. He recalls the unusual circumstances of his birth and his upbringing. He recalls the circumstances of his entry and training in the military and his voyage to Africa. He recalls experiences in Africa and Italy, including repair of roads, exploding mines, German pillboxes and dating Italian women. After the war, he was attached to a unit observing Greek elections.
Glover McGhee was in the Army Corps of Engineers during World War II.
JAMES MCGHEE VETERANS HISTORY PROJECT ATLANTA HISTORY CENTER Interview Date: October 12, 2004 Interviewer: Joe Bruckner Transcribed by: Stephanie McKinnell JOE BRUCKNER: This is October 12, 2004. We're at the Atlanta History Center. I'm Joe Bruckner, and I'm with Mr. Glover McGhee, James Glover McGhee, Jr., and Mr. McGhee has kindly agreed to tell us about his experiences in World War II as part of the Veteran's History Project. Mr. McGhee, we certainly appreciate you taking your time and coming in here today. JAMES MCGHEE: Well, my time is not worth much anymore. JB: I think it's worth a lot, its worth a lot to us. Mr. McGhee would you state your full name, when and where you were born. JM: James Glover McGhee, Jr. I was born October 30, 1924, in Rome, Georgia. And you'll appreciate this, I had two older sisters, and my mother decided that when she was going to go to the hospital and have me delivered, that she ought to take a bath so she would be clean when she went into the doctor. So she got into the tub and lo and behold I popped out. I was born in a bathtub on East 3rd Street in Rome, Georgia. JB: That's a unique experience. For your mother too. JM: Been swimming ever since. JB: Speaking of that, why don't you tell us a little bit about your upbringing. Sounds like you had an interesting start. JM: Well it was an interesting start. I'm glad that I could hold my breath. Well I went through the Rome public schools through middle school, primary school rather. Then I went to Darlington in Rome, which is a private school. I graduated from Darlington in 1941. Well, and you'll like this too, I was dating a girl named Cookie Stewart, and her real name was Cathleen Stewart. But she was good looking, very personable, very articulate, was really a very, very attractive girl. But my mother did not approve of Cookie because Cookie's father owned the laundry and dry cleaning establishment on East 2nd Avenue in Rome, and Mama did not think that they were our social equal, so she did not approve of Cookie. One night I had been at Cookies for an hour, I guess, several hours, and it was maybe 10 o'clock, ten-thirty, and then walked home. We lived on West 8th avenue, so it was a _ time to get home. When I walked in, Mama was waiting for me. My father had died in 1934, and this was 1941. Mama had to raise my two older sisters and me, and she worked selling life insurance and also working as a stock broker, and she was very successful in that incident, fortunately. But anyhow, she was waiting up for me. She said, hello Bubba. I said hello, Mama. She didn't fuss at me or say anything. She said good night, I'll see you tomorrow. I said good night Mama. So both my sisters were grown then; they were off at school. Jane had not married yet, but she was off at school. Nancy was off at school, so it was just Mama and me. We had an apartment on West 8th Avenue because the house had burned several years before. So about two or three days later, she called me out, and she said Bubba, and I said yes ma'am. She said I've decided you need some discipline. I said yes ma'am. She said I have enrolled you in the Citadel, and I said yes ma'am. And that was the end of it. JB: Did you go to the Citadel. JM: Oh I did, you always did what Mama told you to. So I went to the Citadel. They then were on a semester system, I don't know whether they are still or not, but not a quarterly system but a semester system. The head of the draft board in Rome was a friend of Mama's. So he called Mama one day and said Martha, I just want you to know that Bubba's going to get drafted next month. And mama told me, and I said well hell, there's no point in wasting tuition at the Citadel; I'll just volunteer. So instead of being drafted in February, I volunteered in January and went in the service of course. JB: So when did you go in then, January of …? JM: January of 1943. And I went to Camp Edwards, Massachusetts. And Camp Edwards, Massachusetts, it was of course February, and it was cold as a bear's ass in the Klondike, I mean really cold up there. they, the cadre had been in Panama for three years and then with the infinite wisdom _, but the cadre had been in Panama for three years, and then the army with its infinite wisdom, transferred them up to Camp Edwards, Massachusetts, which is out on the peninsula there and just cold, really cold, and didn't give them so much as a three-day pass. Well they started going AWOL right and left as you can imagine. Well since I had been to the Citadel, I knew how to do right face and left face and all that sort of stuff, about face, salute, and all that sort of foolishness. So before long I was a squad leader even though I was still just a private. So before long I got promoted to PFC, and I was still a squad leader. Well one Sunday, our first sergeant, Sgt. Steadman, was as drunk as a goat in his, they had little private rooms, and Sgt. Steadman had his room, and he would go to the NCO club as often as he could, but every Saturday night. But he and his drinking buddies would get just boozed up on, they called it 3.2 beer, but it was regular beer. It was not 3.2 beer, it was just regular beer. And he was just drunk as a goat this Sunday morning. The telephone rang, and I answered it. And it was the office down front, and he said the general is on his way to inspect, and I said oh Jesus Christ Almighty!. So I grabbed six men, and we hauled Steadman out to the furnace room and bound and gagged him, and I left those six men sitting on him because he was raving and hollering and yelling, and we bound and gagged him. And I had put three men to cleaning up Steadman's room. Well Steadman, the general showed up, and I went for the door and saluted him. I said, sir, private McGhee, I'm in charge in Sgt. Steadman's absence. He's across the base at AAAT-6, aircraft training corps. And the general returned my salute, and he was gone in 30 seconds. He didn't want to be doing this anymore that we wanted him there. But anyhow, Steadman never said a word to me, never thanked me, never mentioned it. Then about three weeks later, he called me in. He said McGhee, I said yes sir. He said you want to go to OCS? I said yes sir. He says its engineer OCS, alright. I said yes, sir. He said alright, there'll be an OCS examining board, and there'll be all sorts of candidates who want to go. There'll be master sergeants, _ officers, staff sergeants, all sorts of men who want to go. But there will be one candidate for OCS from Fort Belvoir this month, and it will be you. I said well thank you, sir. Well it turns out that his drinking buddy was a sergeant in charge of the OCS examining board, and sure enough, I went to engineering _, and none of these other people did. They were all much better qualified, but they didn't go. JB: _. JM: That's right. So then when I got out of there, and that's where I met Frank _, and he had been to VMI, but because of the war, they did not have a summer camp. So you had to go to OCS to get his commission. So when we graduated from there, we went by train… JB: Now where was this when you went to… JM: Fort Belvoir. JB: Fort Belvoir, Virginia, OK. JM: Fort Belvoir. Then we got on a train, and because we had been assigned to the 2nd cavalry division, and we went on the train and rode the train, and we had to sit on, it was absolutely packed, jam packed with soldiers, and of course no beds or bunks or anything like that. It had seats, but when all the seats were filled, you had to sit on your baggage in the aisle. So we got down there, and it was right on the Mexican border, right across from _, and _, whatever the hell it is, I forget. And that's when I reported in, and the colonel said it was a horse cavalry, 2nd cavalry division. And the colonel said lieutenant do you ride? I said no, sir, I've never been on a horse. He said well we'll cure that. So he got me a stable sergeant, and I rode horses eight hours a day. I bled down the inside of both legs. I did the saber drill, the slash, the thrust, the whole thing. And then when the stable sergeant certified to the colonel that I could ride, the colonel said thank you lieutenant, welcome to the 2nd cavalry division. Then I didn't ride another horse. Of course being in the engineers, I didn't normally ride horses. The infantry _ horses. I didn't ride another horse until we took the surrender of the German 75th army group east of Milano in 1945. JB: Later on, when we get to that, I want you to tell that story; that sounds like a good story. So after you finished cavalry training, where did you go? JM: Well, I didn't actually get cavalry training, I was just assigned. Because I was then already commissioned in the corps of engineers; I was just assigned to the 2nd cavalry. JB: So you were attached to them? JM: Part of it. I forget the name of the engineer battalion, but it was part of the 2nd cavalry division. JB: What was your unit; what engineering unit were you? JM: The one in Camp Edwards, I don't remember the unit in Camp Edwards where I went as an enlisted man, I don't remember the number, the name of that. But then, I'm having trouble, I can't remember the name. JB: At some point, I think you, was it the 109th engineer battalion? JM: That's what I ended up in. JB: Ended up in. JM: That's with the 34th infantry. But I can't remember the number, and I can't find my footlocker. Coming back from Europe, it got lost. When I had these pictures that I brought, I still can't find all of my pictures. My 201 file of course was in the footlocker, and it's gone. A lot of stuff that I just can't recall, can't prod my memory by looking at it. JB: Well where did you go from there? JM: Well, we, that unit, 2nd cavalry division was sent over to Europe. We went by train again, of course, to Virginia. Then in Virginia, we got on a troop ship, and we went on the troop ship over to around Algeria. And the reason we landed there was because the German U-boats had completed covered the straits of Gibraltar, so none of the allied ships could go through the straits of Gibraltar because the German U-boats would get them. So we landed around Algeria and then went across in what they called the Forty & Eight railroad. They were freight cars and on the side it was painted 48 chevaux, 40 men or 8 horses, so we called them the Forty & Eight railroad. But then we went into Tunisia, and then we went across by ship inside the sea, Mediterranean Sea of course, but we were OK. U-boats were not there. Then we went across the Naples, Italy. Then we camped just outside of Naples. I forget the name of the town, but that's where we stayed. Of course we left the horses in Texas. JB: What was your assignment in Naples? JM: Largely working on roads. Because being in the engineers, we had to, as they used to say, we tried to get the water off the road and get the rock on the road, and keep things open so the troops and other equipment could get through. JB: About when was this, this was still in 1943? JM: No, because this would have been, I guess it was '43 because, yeah, it would have been in '43. Then of course I didn't come back until '45. We went a lot of different places. Then we worked on the boot. When my wife and I went back to Italy for our 50th anniversary trip, I told her that I wanted to see if I could find any of my old girlfriends, which of course was a big joke because in 2 ½ years, I had five dates, and every time, they brought their mothers with them, and we ended up at the opera. I saw the Barber of Seville four times. I got to where I knew all the lines. [quoting, singing]. But anyhow, we had a good trip and we came back, went to a lot of places. Went to, there was one place, where it was Marina de Pisa where the Arn_ River comes into the ocean. We went there because I did a lot of work there, and there had been a pillbox for a German seacoast artillery gun that had been left. And it was a monstrous thing, six foot thick concrete walls, reinforcement, iron rods. Then they had the slit where the gun could be brought in from the back and put in the slit. Because the Germans though the Anzio invasion was going to be at Marina de Pisa. So when I went there, they said they wanted us to tear down this pillbox. So we had been lifting German Teller mines, the anti-tank mine that was I guess about 12 or 14 inches across, and it had a fuse in the center. We had lifted a lot of those, and we had to dispose of the damn things, can't just leave them around. So what we did, we took all of these Teller mines that we had lifted, and some S-mines, too, the Bouncing Betty, and we took the fuses out and then put them in this pillbox. The pillbox was tremendous, it was maybe four times the size of this room or three times the size of this room. And we put all these mines in there, then we got a stick of TNT and a long fuse. We put the TNT, trinitrotoluene, put it up underneath the mines, and lit the fuse and walked out to a half track very carefully, got in the half track and drove down the beach about a half mile and got out and waited. It was the damnest explosion that you could imagine. Flames, smoke, earth shook, just like that, a half a mile away. When the dust settled, the pillbox was still there. JB: Really? JM: Absolutely. It was dented in a couple of places, but the pillbox was still there. so I told Joann, when we went back, I wanted to see if that pillbox was still there. we went out there, and it was gone. So there was a restaurant right close by, and we went in and had lunch. Then I got to talking to the owner, in Italian, my Italian had come back by then, I could still speak it. I, we got to talking, and I told him we were hunting for that pillbox but we couldn't find the damn thing. He said the pillbox was right here where you're having lunch. I said well how'd you get it down? He said it took about 15 men with jackhammers and acetylene torches to cut the iron rods. And it took them, oh, nearly four weeks, but they got it down, and we built this restaurant. I said well, thank God at some point. That was a hoot. JB: How'd you feel sitting there where than pillbox had been? JM: I was glad that I hadn't been in the pillbox when it exploded. JB: When you were there, you were still building roads and repairing roads? JM: Before I got in the 34th division. We were the engineer, heavy construction battalion. JB: Did you ever come under fire when you were doing that? JM: Not when we were doing it, because the Germans had been gone a long time. And we did get under fire a couple of times, but this was before I got in the 34th division. We worked in, let's see, I forget the name of the town, but anyhow, there's a road that goes across north middle Italy, and it comes to the river. The Germans had blown all of the bridges to try to prevent us from getting across and getting behind them. Except this one, they had left this one bridge so that they could get out themselves and get across the Arn_ River. The captain, captain Hannah and I, and I was in the 34th division then, that's correct, because captain Hannah and I were standing on, by each side of the road, kind of checking and looking over on the side, and the German 88 cannon was shot down the road, and it went down the road between captain Hannah and me, and we balled off into the ditch on either side. He said lieutenant, I think it's time for us to get out of here, and I said you're damn right it is. So we got in the Jeep and took off and left. Then the, that was I guess the closest I came to getting tended to. That and I also tripped a Bouncing Betty down on Anzio. We were not in on the Anzio invasion, but we were down there lifting mines. And the S-mine, or the Bouncing Betty had a three-pronged wire. They would bury it in the ground, and then the three-pronged wire would come up maybe an inch above the ground. Then if you stepped on that, it detonated the propellant and the S-mine would go up about five or six feet and then explode. It had ball bearings, lead, round shot all around the side, and it went up. So I tripped an S-mine, and it flew in the air but it did not explode. And I said… JB: What was your feeling after that? JM: I was wore out. But then when Joann and I went back to Italy, we went back to Anzio and said a little prayer for my not getting killed when the S-mine blew. That was close. But other than that, I didn't really come under fire. JB: Why don't you just take us on your journey from Italy on up. Tell us your experiences, where you were and what you did. JM: Well, still being in the engineers, we were just doing engineer work. Then we went, oh, you know, just do whatever work needed to be done. Then there was a lot of the time we really weren't doing any work. It was not all that much work to do. We went up to _ up on the Yugoslav border. JB: You were going north through Italy? JM: North through Italy. Then the war was over when we got to _. I took a horse with me to _. JB: Tell us about the horses. JM: Well, I had not ridden a horse after I left Texas until we took the surrender of the German 75th army group east of Milan. And the German colonel had the most magnificent horse that you can imagine. And she was so big, I don't remember whether it was a she or a he, but it was so big that I could not get on it without being lifted up. I could not get my foot in the stirrups; I had to be lifted up and then get on in the saddle. I took, I signed for four German prisoners of war, the war was over then, and I signed for four German POWs who were stable hands and signed for the horse. Then I rode that horse every day in the northern _ up above _. I rode it every day. Then when I was transferred back to the states, I had my successor sign for the POWs and the horse. That's the end of my horse riding. JB: What was your assignment then, and what were your responsibilities when you were up in that area? JM: Well, just the same, we were engineers, and we were doing whatever needed to be done. JB: You had mentioned something earlier about Marshall Tito? JM: Yeah, Marshall Tito, he was the dictator of Yugoslavia, and he had threatened to invade Italy. The war was over, and he had threatened to invade Italy because he could use that land and all that stuff. So they transferred our division; I was 134th infantry division, 109th engineer combat battalion, and they transferred us up over and we were assigned to _. I've got some pictures of us outside the barracks, an hold hotel in _ that they converted to barracks. I took the horse with me of course, and rode in the northern _. Then when I was transferred out, I left the horse behind. Then we went to, they had a point system, and you would get five points for being in the service, five points for being overseas, and then you would get one point for every month in the service, one point for every month overseas, five points for every decoration, five points if you got a Purple Heart or Bronze star or Silver star, any of those, and of course I did not ever get decorated. I did not have enough points to come home. So I was getting bored because we didn't have all that much work to do. There really wasn't a whole lot for us to do. So I signed up to go on the Allied mission to observe the Greek elections. We went by ship over to Athens and then we went, we got a Jeep driver, a Jeep, and an interpreter, because Greek is Greek to me. I know how to say _, but that's about it. but then we would go and interview the Greek civilians as to whether they were being pressured to vote for one political candidate or another and whether they felt secure, you know all the questions you can ask potential voters. JB: What was the general reaction of the people when you would go out and talk to them? JM: They were very open and very frank. They all said no, we don't feel like we're being pressured, and its going to be a free election as far as we know. It should be alright. We ended up after going to all these various and sundry little places, we went through some of the Greek isles. But we ended up in Athens, Greece, and we stayed in the Grand Battan Hotel, which was the finest hotel in all of Athens, all of Greece for that matter. We went into the bar one night and, I was from Rome, Georgia. There in the bar was a man from Rome, Georgia. He had the most gorgeous damn Greek woman on his arm that you can imagine. I mean she was just spectacularly beautiful. He saw me, and he just paled, face turned as white as your shirt because he had a fat, rich wife in Rome. And he was the assistant ambassador, whatever you call it, deputy ambassador, assistant ambassador to Greece. I said don't you worry, Mr., I won't mention his name, I said I will die and fry in hell before I ever tell anybody I saw you. He said oh Bubba McGee, you're a good boy. So I never told anybody until after he had died. But that was quite an experience in Greece. JB: Did you find the Greek people pro-American? JM: Oh yeah, they were. They were, well they had, just like the partisans in Italy, you had volunteers who were fighting the Germans and the Italians because of course the Italians were with the Germans, they were fighting them in Greece, just like the _ in Italy. JB: Did you stay there throughout the elections? JM: Until the election was over, but we were only over there two or three weeks. Then the elections were already winding down, and then we came home. JB: How did the elections come out? JM: They, well I don't remember who won, but as I remember there were no protests. It was apparently considered a fair election. JB: Did you have any exposure to the civilians in Italy? Do you remember talking to them and hearing what they thought about things? JM: Oh yeah, of course, like I say, I had five dates. JB: What was their reaction, were they glad Mussolini was gone? JM: Oh, yeah, they were, because he was not popular. Of course, he was a dictator, and consequently, they had no voice in what was going on. As a result, they were delighted to be liberated, and were glad that we were there. JB: Where we you on D-Day, when we invaded? JM: I did not go into Normandy. JB: Right, but where you, you were still…? JM: I was still in Italy. JB: What was your reaction, or the reaction of the other soldiers when that happened? Did you feel like that was at the time a big event? JM: Oh sure. My buddy, Frank Williams, who was there, he was, both he and I had been in the engineer heavy construction battalion in the 2nd cavalry division. Then he had transferred to the 3rd division, 3rd infantry division, and he was not in on the Normandy invasion. He joined them after the invasion had taken place. I was still in Italy on D-Day. But like I say, I was in the 34th infantry division. Then back to Rapid City, South Dakota with reunions with the division, 109th engineer company and battalion. They were the national guard, I think I've said, national guard unit from north and south Dakota and Iowa. But we'd been back out there for a couple of reunions. JB: How long were you in Greece, was that your last assignment? JM: No, I came back to Italy because I didn't have enough points to come home, and still didn't have enough points to come home. Finally, I did have enough points and could come home. JB: Talk about your experiences when you came back to Italy, what you were doing. JM: Just the same stuff. We were up there at _ where I rode the horse. Then when the time came to come home, when I finally had enough points to come home, went to Naples, and of course the German U-boats _ so we could go back out through the Straits of Gibraltar. I took some pictures of the Straits of Gibraltar, I don't know if I brought those or not. I don't know if I've even got them. JB: Where were you when the bomb was dropped on Japan, or the two bombs? In Italy? What was your feeling then, did you feel like that was going to be the beginning of the end of the war? JM: We figured that it would be the beginning of the end because an H-bomb is a helluva weapon. Even the Japanese would not be able to put up with that. Don't print this, but I still don't like Germans and Japanese, sorry. JB: Did you realize when you were there, in Italy and Greece and all the different places you were, that you were part of one of the biggest events in the history of the world basically? JM: Well, I don't know whether I realized that, but we knew that we had a job to do, and we were going to do it, it was as simple as that. And of course you had Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and he was very charismatic as you remember. But he and Churchill sort of getting things straight. I figured that there wasn't much doubt, but that things were going to get straightened out. JB: _ were you ever wounded in the war? JM: Not in the real true sense of the word wound. But I did get a little sliver in my right wrist, there is a teenitsie little scar there that's just maybe a quarter of an inch long. I had, German's had a shell that a fuse that was sensitive like a radar sensitivity. It would explode maybe 30 or 40 feet, 20, 30, 40 feet above the ground. Then it would send out the fragments of the shell. Because that way they could kill a helluva lot of people with just one shell. So they started shelling, and I got down underneath the Jeep because that was all the protection you could get. Then I remember that I had left the telephone in the Jeep, so I reached up to get the telephone, and about the time I grabbed the telephone, I felt a little twick on my wrist, and I looked back down, and I had a little sliver of metal in my wrist. And I pulled it out, and of course it bled, but after I got back to the camp, I put a band-aid on it, and that was all that was ever done. So that was not truly a wound, it was just a nick, and I did not put in for the Purple Heart because I was ashamed to, all these other people were getting really wounded, and I couldn't. and it's just as well that I didn't because I would have gotten five points for the Purple Heart, then I would have had more points than, I would have had enough points to come home. I would not have been to Greece to the allied mission for the Greek elections; I would already have come back. I would have been in an earlier class at Emory law school, and I had decided to go to law school while I was in the service because we did court martials, and I enjoyed helping them. So I would not have been in that class at law school, I would not have met my wife because my college roommate and I built a cabin at Lake Burton. And we would provide the food and the beer, and we would take fraternity brothers up with us and we would all work on the cabin. So all of this of course, is maybe six months later than I would have been if I had put in for the Purple Heart. So we were having a house party at Lake Burton, and one of my fraternity brothers, Bill B_ did not have a date. So I called my best friend, Ann Betts who lived across the street from us on West 8th avenue in Rome, and I called Ann, and I said Ann, we need another woman for the house party, can you come. She said, no, I've just got back from New York, and I've got something to do, but why don't you call Joann Ray, because she was up there with me, and she probably hasn't got anything to do. So I called Joann, and I said this is Glover McGhee, and Ann Betts suggested that I call you. I said we're having a house party and Bill B_ needs a date and so forth and so on. She said sure, I'll do it. So we did not have a dock, and all we had was a rental boat from Fred's fishing camp that was a flat bottomed open boat with a 5 hp motor, believe it or not, 5 hp on the back. So you were chartered across to the cabin; we had no road into the cabin; you had to go by boat. When the boat pulled up on the shore, and Joann was getting out, I reached up and grabbed a hand to help her out, and it was electric. We agreed to get married in three weeks, just like that. JB: Great story. JM: So we didn't get married actually until the next March. It was all set, we just knew right from the start we were going to get married. JB: How long have you been married? JM: We were married in '51, we just had our 53rd anniversary. We've got, our girl Martha went to Emory Law School, and she's a clerk for Judge JD Smith on the Georgia Court of Appeals. Then we have two grandchildren. JB: I know you're proud of them. JM: Oh yes, I am. Joann Catherine, as I mentioned before _, these pictures were taken out because she did a paper at Westminster called Roaming from Rome to Rome, and these pictures were from that. JB: Will you show us those pictures, just if you would hold the big ones up and tell us what they are, and I'll hone in on them? JM: These, this picture, this was my Jeep driver with some _ partisans. They are ladies of course, and then in the background you can see some of our troops. Then this is my squad, and it's a shot up in the Northern A_. you can see this man is holding a mine detector, the man that's sitting on the front bumper. That is the shaft of a mine detector, basically what we would do to lift mines. This is a shot of one of our troops dancing with a nurse, and its Neal _, and it was about March of 1945. there's another shot of the squad, as you can see they've got engineers on the front of the Jeep. Then these are four of us, a picture taken outside of the barracks which was a converted hotel at _, and you see on the shirt, shoulder of the shirt, is the insignia of the 34th infantry division and it looks like a skull on the top. So the Italians referred to us as [vaca morta] or dead cow division. JB: You told me a story, and I don't think we got to this on tape, about the bouncing betty that you tripped. JM: Oh yeah, that was in Anzio. We were not in on the Anzio invasion because we were not, I was not in any of the units that went in, but the engineers, their job was to lift mines. We went back to Anzio to clear up the mines and lift the mines. Of course, while I was lifting the mines with a mine detector, I missed one. And it was an S-mine, which was referred to as a bouncing betty. A bouncing Betsy I guess it was. It had a three-pronged wire that would sit up and attach to the detonator, and you would put a maybe an inch of the wire above the ground. Of course the German S-mine. And when it was tripped, you tripped the mine, it would set off a propellant charge that would blow a mine up about five or six feet, and then it would explode. It had a ball bearings or shot gun type lead pellets around the outside of the cylinder. Then when the charge inside of the cylinder exploded, it would blow all these shells, all of this shot out, and it could really do a helluva lot of personal damage. It wouldn't hurt vehicles, except it would _, but it would kill people. So while I was lifting a mine, and I missed one, I stepped on it, and it blew up and did not explode after it blew out. So when Joann and I went back for our 50th anniversary trip, we went down to Anzio and said a little prayer of thanksgiving for my not being killed. JB: Where did you come back to states? JM: It was in '45, I think '45, the latter part of '45. Yeah, I guess it must have been '45. Then I went into Emory. I did not want to go back to the Citadel because I had had enough of the military; I didn't care for any more. But then I went back to Emory, and I only had three semesters at the Citadel, and you were supposed to have two years of college before they would let you into the law school in those days. So I was of course one semester short, but I talked to the dean of the law school, Bull Agnow, and I told him that I wanted to go to law school and I had the GI Bill, but I didn't have but three semesters of college. He said well I'll tell you what, if you'll go to college for one quarter, and they were then on the quarter system, we'll let you in. And the reason of course, because he knew that I had the GI Bill and the tuition was going to be paid. The Emory law school was taking in anybody that they could get, and they would take so many, they took so many veterans, that in the classes, would fill the classroom completely. They would set up chairs outside in the hall, and you would try to listen to what the professor was saying. But Emory got the tuition, which of course was necessary. JB: Did you practice law? JM: I did, neither Warner Curry nor I could get a job. He was working for Dudley Stone insurance adjustors, and his wife Inelle was working for Rich's. I had worked for Grover Middlebrooks who was a lawyer, and then Mr. Middlebrooks died, so I stayed with his firm, then Middlebrooks, Byrd, and Howell, Buster Byrd and Arthur Howell and Grover Middlebrooks. I stayed with them for, oh, a couple of months until we got all our fires tended to that Mr. Middlebrooks was handling. And I found somebody else to handle them and so forth. Then Warner Curry and I borrowed the money from our mothers and opened up as Curry and McGhee. We had one client, which was the [Landlocked Tree Roads and Company], and whenever Mr. Herbert Kaiser sold a lot, my duty was to sign the deed as secretary. And for that we were paid a $25 a month retainer. JB: That was big money then? JM: Well it was enough to keep us going. Miss Pearson was the secretary. She had been Grover Middlebrooks' secretary. So she came with us. Warner continued to work, and Inelle continued to work, and of course I wasn't married then. Miss Pearson and I would sort of watch the door and hope somebody would come in. I would go to all sorts of civic events, Salvation Army, and everything to meet people and hopefully get some funds. JB: Didn't your firm become one of the top firms in Atlanta? JM: Uh, yeah, they've got about a hundred lawyers now. JB: Is there anything else you would like to share with us about you wartime experiences? JM: Not really, just that, like this issue of the Darien News that I brought in has my picture and a little story about it, story about me and also Frank Williams who is there. Frank and I had met at OCS at Fort Belvoir. We've been good friends ever since. He was in our wedding, and I was in Frank's first wedding. His first wife died; he remarried, and she has now died, so he's a widower two times over. Frank lives in Meridian, Georgia, which is just north of Darien. We have a house on Black Island which is off the coast of Georgia. We also have a condominium up here in Smyrna. Frank and I have been good buddies ever since, and we see each other once a week, actually twice a week because he's got a group that meets every Wednesday for lunch. And they are friends and relatives of his first wife's family. JB: Could you hold a picture of Frank up and then show us your picture? JM: I'll try not to shake too much. JB: I got it. JM: My picture… JB: Well Mr. McGhee, we want to thank you not just for your time today but for everything you did for us and for the country during World War II. You were _ heroes to us, and we sure appreciate everything you did. JM: Well, it's not a question of being a hero at all, it's just a question that everybody was doing it, and we're not going let that son of a bitch Adolph Hitler get away with it. JB: That's a great way to stop, super.
Metadata URL:: http://album.atlantahistorycenter.com/cdm/ref/collection/VHPohr/id/259
Additional Rights Information:: This material is protected by copyright law. (Title 17, U.S. Code) Permission for use must be cleared through the Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center. Licensing agreement may be required.
Extent:: 54:10
Original Collection:: Veterans History Project oral history recordings
Veterans History Project collection, MSS 1010, Kenan Research Center, Atlanta History Center
Holding Institution:: Atlanta History Center
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