Oral history interview of Merriell Autrey, Jr.

Collection:: Veterans History Project: Oral History Interviews
Title:: Oral history interview of Merriell Autrey, Jr.
Creator:: Lowance, David
Autrey, Merriell, Jr., 1925-
Date of Original:: 2004-11-22
Subject:: World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Ardennes, Battle of the, 1944-1945
Snipers--United States
Depressions--1929
Strikes and lockouts
World War, 1939-1945--Artillery operations
Korean War, 1950-1953
Military pensions--United States
Patton, George S. (George Smith), 1885-1945
United States. Army. Armored Division 5th
Dachau (Concentration camp)
United States. Army. Infantry Division, 5th
United States. Army. Infantry Regiment, 10th. Battalion, 2nd. Co. H.
United States. Army. Armored Division, 4th
United States. Works Progress Administration
Location:: Belgium, Wallonia, Luxembourg Province, Arrondissement de Bastogne, Bastogne, 50.00347, 5.71844
France, Marseille, 43.2961743, 5.3699525
France, Reims, 49.2577886, 4.031926
France, Verdun, 49.159876, 5.384423
Germany, Siegfried Line, 50.9113244, 14.2503823
Iceland, 65.0, -18.0
Luxembourg, Luxembourg, 49.8158683, 6.1296751
Netherlands, Rhine River, 51.97198, 5.91545
United States, Arkansas, Sebastian County, Fort Chaffee, 35.31231, -94.30605
United States, Florida, Clay County, Camp Blanding, 29.94686, -81.97324
United States, Georgia, 32.75042, -83.50018
United States, Georgia, Atlanta Metropolitan Area, 33.8498, 84.4383
United States, Georgia, Chattahoochee County, Fort Benning, 32.35237, -84.96882
United States, Georgia, Fulton County, Fort McPherson, 33.70733, -84.43354
United States, Georgia, Spalding County, Griffin, 33.24678, -84.26409
United States, Illinois, Cook County, Chicago, 41.85003, -87.65005
United States, Kentucky, Fort Campbell, 36.6411584, -87.4344543
United States, Maryland, Anne Arundel County, Fort Meade, 39.10815, -76.74323
United States, North Carolina, Guilford County, High Point, 35.95569, -80.00532
United States, Tennessee, Montgomery County, Fort Campbell, 36.59341, -87.61394
Medium:: video recordings (physical artifacts)
mini-dv
Type:: Moving Image
Format:: video/quicktime
Description:: In this interview, Merriell Autrey recalls his career in the United States Army during World War II and Korea. He enlisted at the end of high school and was aboard ship heading for the China-Burma-India theatre when the Battle of the Bulge erupted. His ship was diverted to Marseilles and he arrived at the battle on his 19th birthday. He describes stealing sheets from homes for warmth, frostbite, capturing Germans and what his first shower in a month was like. He recounts marching in the 1947 Army Day Parade in front of President Truman and General Eisenhower. He spent the Korean War working at Ft. Benning because of his frostbitten feet. He describes what patriotism means to him, and tells the story of a man who refused his Silver Star because it would mean he would have to go home; he also describes what it was like to take his family back to Europe to see the places in which he fought.
Merriell Autrey was in infantryman in Europe during World War II.
MERRIELL AUTRY JR VETERANS HISTORY PROJECT ATLANTA HISTORY CENTER Interview Date: November 22, 2004 Interviewer: David Lowance Transcribed by: Stephanie McKinnell TAPE 1 SIDE A DAVID LOWANCE: I'm David Lowance. We're at the Atlanta History center at Atlanta, Georgia. This is November the 22nd, 2004. We're interviewing today Mr. Merriell Autry from Griffin, Georgia and Atlanta, Georgia. He was born in 1925 in Griffin, Georgia. Reared there, entered the service around 1944 and fought across Europe. He has been a banker in the Atlanta area since that time. He's been married for 57 years with 3 children, 5 grand children and one great grandchild. We're delighted to have you with us today. We'd like you talk about where you grew up, what it was like during the depression time, where you were Pearl Harbor day, just kind of ad lib if you don't mind. MERRIELL AUTRY: Alrighty. I grew up in Griffin, Georgia, and it was in the early days of the depression. Well, the depression had not hit until the late ‘20's, but I can remember that uh, in about 1930, my daddy took the family. We went to Highpoint, North Carolina. And I started school there. It's ironic that on one of my days going to school, I passed one of the companies there that was having a strike. And I didn't know what a strike was; I was in the first grade. But I do remember that there was a .30 caliber heavy machine gun, two of them sitting there in the front door to this company. That in itself is something because that .30 caliber machine gun came back to me in World War II. But we left there and moved back to Griffin. And of course through the ‘30's it was tough. We didn't know how tough it was because it was tough on everybody. I remember my mother worked. My daddy didn't have a job. I remember he raised rabbits. He had five or six pens of rabbits. He sold rabbits, and we ate a lot of rabbit. But I guess the thing that helped more than anything was Roosevelt's WPA, which began to put a little money in the pockets of people. We had people with doctorate degrees and college degrees that were working in the WPA restoring the infrastructure of our country. I went to Griffin High School, and again, we all enjoyed it because no one had anything. We didn't know when we were poor. We enjoyed the company of each other and the friendship. In 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, I was a 16-year-old kid, shortly to be 17. But war was not in my vocabulary then. The thing that I was interested in was football, girls and big band music, and I don't know in which order, because they all had meaning. I never dreamed that the war would affect me. Well, the next year in school, they put 12 grades in, and I was able to go back for the 11th and 12th grades. They began to come around giving tests for B12, the Army AST program, and so forth and so on, the Air Force. And I took the test, but somehow I never did want to do that. I wanted, I said, I'm going to wait. I had so many friends, and I had lost some friends already, boys I played ball with, that had left after the 11th grade and had joined the Marines or Army. I know one was in the tank corps, and one was in the Marines. Both had been killed, one in Europe and one in the Pacific. So I said, you know, they were drafted so I'm going to be drafted, too. So I waited. On December 29, 1943, I turned 18. I went to the register, to register, and I did. They called me in March to come to Fort McPherson for pre-induction. And I went there, and while there, they told me that I only had two months to graduate from high school. If I could get three letters from somebody saying I was a good boy that they'd let me graduate. So I sent the three letters in and they answered by sending me my orders. So I graduated from high school on Monday night, May the 29th, and went in the army at Fort Mac on June the 5th, 1944. Waked up the next morning and the biggest news was the invasion of Europe. I still thought, well, you know, I've got to go through basic training so I'm not really concerned. Wasn't that I wasn't worried, just that I wasn't concerned. Went to Blanding, Florida, and took 17 weeks basic training. Got out of that in October, and they told us that they couldn't send 18-year-olds overseas. So they sent us to Chaffee, Arkansas, for a week. We picked up 500 Mexicans there and went on to Shanks, New York, and stayed two days, got processed, drew overseas equipment and went to Shanks, New York, excuse me, went to Fort George Meade, Maryland, picked up our equipment and then went to Shanks, New York. On about December 10th, we sailed out of Shanks, New York. We were supposed to be headed for China, Burma, India. We picked up a convoy coming out of North Carolina and on the 16th we were about three-fourths of the way across the Atlantic, going through the Mediterranean. The Bulge struck. So they just shipped us into Marseilles, France and put us on airplanes and flew us to the front. We flew to Verdun. We processed out of Verdun on the Red Ball Express, and I joined my company as an 18-year-old. The next day we moved up to the Bulge and that great turn that Patton pulled with the 5th and the 4th Armored divisions. Three days later we were in combat in the battle of the Bulge, and I celebrated my 19th birthday. From there, we went on, riding the spearhead with Patton. Basically wherever he went. We crossed the Rhine and down below Frankfurt. About 990 feet where they strung Patton's bridge. You may have seen the Life picture of Patton urinating in the Rhine River off of that bridge. It was in Life magazine. We went on after taking Frankfurt, and they shot us up to the Ruhr Pocket. We took 120,000 prisoners out of Ruhr Pocket. Took them back to the PW camp at Frankfurt and then jumped off into, down through Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Germany. My division was split with three regiments. Three regiments was in three countries at one time. We fought through there and cleaned out Saar Pocket, down through Saarlautern, Regensburg, and into Austria, into Wittenberg [?], and Czechoslovakia. Stayed there until the war ended. We moved back, we stayed in occupation for about a month. We guarded 300 German SS troops who were fanatics and about 1000 of the regular People's Army. Then we left out of there and went back to Rheims, France. They gave us an opportunity of getting out and staying there or coming back. They told us then that we were scheduled to invade Japan. Well, my division, the 5th Infantry Division was the first organized outfit overseas in World War II. The 1st Cav, which was formed in the Philippines, had never been on American soil. It was the only American division that was overseas in World War II. My division went to Iceland and did dock work up there until they took Patton in as a decoy on the invasion of Europe. Then when they formed his 3rd Army and set him into the, over to the continent, the 5th Infantry was one of the infantry divisions that joined him along with the 4th Armored. The 5th fought down through, broke through at Avranches and went on around, all the way up with him until the war was over. A great general, in my opinion. I was, I said earlier that that machine gun would come back. It did when I joined my outfit. I joined H Company of the 10th Regiment of the 5th Infantry Division, and that was a heavy weapons company. The first attack, I became the number 1 machine gunner. My uncle had been in World War II [probably means WWI] and he had been a machine gunner, so I felt like I was bringing back something from the Autrey household. But we fought all the way with the 3rd. I'm happy to say that I had some time with them. I came back, and they didn't know if they were going to give us a day or a week or a month. They gave us a month furlough, and I went home. About August, this was in July, July the 20th roughly, about August the 6th or the 8th, whenever it was that the war in Japan ended with the dropping of the A-bomb, the two A-bombs, we went back to Campbell, Kentucky, assured that we would not be on the invasion but told that we would go as occupation force. We hung around there and hung around there. Finally in April '46 we went to Chicago, made the Army Day Parade in front of Truman and Eisenhower down Michigan Boulevard. It was kind of tough then because the old guys had gotten out, and they were not promoting too much. I was a staff sergeant. The only line non-com, first three[?] grader in the company. I did all of the reveille and retreat. I took the company to the field. I led it down Michigan Boulevard. We had one first lieutenant in the company, and it was short-handed all the way around. So I was happy to get out then. I got out, went to the University of Georgia. When I went through discharge, they asked me if I wanted, a friend of mine had told me, said, “Since you froze your feet, they're going to ask you if you want to apply for a pension. You tell them yes.” I said why. He said, “You'll get a pension and you can go to school on a PL-16.” So I did, and sure enough, I had frozen my feet. I went from a size 11 boot to a size 14 boot when I went back to the front. My feet were still giving me problems. I got a pension, 10%, gave me $13.80 a month; I was wealthy. A guy asked me if I wanted to stay in the reserves. I said I don't think so. He said, well, sergeant, you ought to, everything's peaceful now, and you don't have to worry about anything. I said, well, I've put in for a pension. He said that doesn't matter, not going to hurt you a bit. So I stayed in the reserves. Stupid me. I got married in '47 and in 1949, in April of 1949; they sent me a re-up card for the reserves. And it said in there do not sign this card if you're drawing a pension. I went up to the reserve office and told them I was drawing a pension. They said, oh, that doesn't matter, just erase it out and say “I am” and sign your name and you'll be alright. Said, you'll be honorary reserve. And in 1950, I was honored. I was called back to the Korean deal. They kept sending me the pension. When I got out a year later, they wrote me a letter and said I owed them $13.80 x 12. So I wrote them back and said just don't send me any more pensions until it's paid up, and they've never sent me another one. But then I got called back in the Korean deal and spent a year and a day. I did not go overseas because when I went through medics, the colonel that looked at my feet said if I went to Korea I'd lose them, and he couldn't send me to Europe and he didn't want me to go to another part of the United States. So I stayed a year and a day down at Fort Benning and got out. They sent me a little card and wanted to know what I felt like my MOS should be. Knowing that I was free, I wrote them back and said I'd like to have a MOS of a nightclub singer at a port of embarkation or I'd like to be assigned to an underground mess kit repair battalion. And I've never heard another word from the Army. DL: You were 19 years old, you'd gotten to the Battle of the Bulge a couple of days before your 19th birthday. How cold was it, what were the conditions like on the front line? MA: Most of the time I was over there, it was cold as a mother-in-law's love. You had snow every bit of everywhere from two to three feet, some drifts up to six and eight feet. It was a while before we got snow packs. It was a long time before we got snow suits. I remember we went in one house and stole sheets and wrapped them around us. The weather was so bad and so cold that I have actually had my water-cooled gun to freeze on its mount. Take it into a house or wherever you could to thaw it out. Within 15 to 20 minutes after you put it back on the cradle, it was frozen again. I never knew what the temperature was except that it was cold. And I've had all the snow I want. DL: How long did you go without taking a bath. MA: I went for 32 days from the time we hit the Bulge in late December to late January without taking a bath, brushing my teeth, washing my face, combing my hair. And I remember when we got back to Luxembourg City for a break, they set up field showers. I went down to take a shower, and taking my GI underwear off, which were the long kind, they were absolutely stuck to my skin. It, a sorry sight. 32 days without brushing your teeth is enough. DL: Did you, how long did it take you to get frostbite, a couple of days or did it take weeks? MA: It took about a week. We were going in, crossed a little river, I say a river, I call it a creek. But there were a bunch of stones in it. We were jumping from one stone to the other. The guy in front of me _ wonder, jumped on one stone, and the guy in front of him didn't move. So I moved too fast and I hit him and he hit me and we both fell in the creek. We went on up on top of the hill and set up defensive positions. And that night his feet swelled so bad that he took his shoes off and couldn't get them back on. So we evacuated him the next day. And I went for about five more days and we pulled off of that position and went into another position upon the Ahr River. I remember coming in off of guard duty. We were on two and off four. I remember coming off of guard duty and going in and laying down, trying to go to sleep. When I waked up, I couldn't get up. I didn't know what was wrong with me. My squad leader helped me up. I had not taken off my boots so I didn't know. They sent me back. I went back to a battalion aid center. They looked at me and sent me on back. I ended up back in the 225th General Hospital. My feet was black as that microphone cover there, and peeled off from my ankles all the way down and swelled up to wearing a size 14 boot. DL: During that time were you seeing combat or was it mostly patrolling? MA: No, this was combat. DL: So you're shooting the machine gun. MA: Yeah. We were in direct attack from about the 28th, 27th, 28th December. My birthday we were taking point blank firing right into our foxholes in opposition from tanks. Sitting about 300 yards down off of the river. We were in combat all through there. DL: Did you see the enemy you were shooting at or were you just shooting in the direction they were? MA: Most of the time you was trying to shoot the way you thought they were. Now sometimes they'd give their position away. They had a lot of German Shepherd dogs and they'd turn loose. You'd see where the dogs came from and they'd come up to our position. Of course, we were ordered to shoot any dog in no man's land. We killed a lot of good German dogs. I remember one time we looked up, and coming down, we didn't know they were in a house, but coming down a hill was a guy on a motorcycle. He goes wheeling into this house, gets out and goes inside, so we opened up on it. Knocked his motorcycle out. Last time we saw him, he was running back up over the hill. I remember one time on the Ahr River, that was where we first hit the Siegfried Line. They were coming out of those pillboxes going into this house to eat chow. So we had some 4.2 mortar platoon [?] with us. This lieutenant said, let's have some fun. So they went in there for lunch. He didn't pull the pin on the mortar, but he gave them the range, and he was lucky. You could see the mortar going down the chimney. They were coming out of the upstairs of the house, out the windows and everywhere. So you know, you have fun sometimes. I mean you get to laugh sometimes. None of it's fun, but you get to laugh sometimes. But it was combat, it wasn't just patrols. DL: You indicated you went into active duty rather rapidly. There wasn't a breaking-in phase for you as you were thrust to the front lines almost as soon as you hit Europe. Were you scared, were your friends scared? MA: Well, you know, when I went in service, I always had a fear of shooting somebody. I never knew whether I could do that or not. My first attack I got pinned down by a sniper for two hours on a slope. I couldn't move. They kept hollering for me to bring the gun up, bring the gun up. And I couldn't move. He put two bullets right by my head. Finally a rifleman over on my right heard me and saw what I was in. He could see the guy in the tree and I couldn't. But I knew where he was. So he raised up and got him and I was able to get up. But from then on I didn't have any fear of shooting. I lost a lot of good friends over there. I get mad sometimes when I look on television and see these guys running around on streets over there with AK-47's or whatever they got, bandana over their head, and they've got to be terrorists. And we let them run around in the streets. We would have shot those guys. And how they can even consider questioning that Marine recently that shot that guy is beyond me. I had a dear friend that I went through basic with, hell of a nice guy, we went up over a hill one day. Just as we got over the hill, there was an 88 gun down there, which they used for everything. There were three Germans around it. A couple of guys started firing at them, and this lieutenant said, hold your fire, they're going to give up. They gave up but not before they pulled the pin. That 88 hit my buddy right in the gut. The only thing left of him was two buckets of ammo. I don't understand things like that. I don't understand why this country today cannot realize that they are where they are today because somebody gave something for them in World War I, World War II, Korea, even Desert Storm, for people to live like we're living today in this country. This doesn't just come about. These people have put signs up and bumper stickers up that say war is not the answer. Tell me what the answer is. We had nine years of negotiations with those people. Sometimes you have to be willing to stand up and say I'll die protecting what I love. And if you love this country, you'll be willing to die for it. And if I could, I'd go back today. I'll be 79 years old next month. I've got back problems, I have a bunch of other problems, heart problems, so forth. But if I knew that one thing that I could do over there and they would take me, though my wife is an invalid, I would go back over there to show that I'll fight for what I believe in. And I won't pussy foot about it. DL: What would you say to future generations about what is going on today? MA: I guess the thing that bothers me the most, and I have five beautiful grandchildren ranging in age from 7 to 25, and I've got one great grandbaby, and I would say to kids today that, learn all you can about the history of this country, because it's real. The price of what you are enjoying today has been paid for by somebody else. And if you can't do anything in your life, please leave this country better than you found it. Put something back for those coming after you so that they too might have a little something. I'm concerned that we're not teaching history, we're not teaching geography. It's amazing when you ask a teenager today the capitol of one of our states, and first of all, they'll be lucky if they know what the capitol is. Our kids are not being educated, that's the thing that bothers me the most. And those that are being, are getting good education, recognize that somebody stood up for them somewhere in the past. DL: You took your children back some years ago to see some of the places you had been. What was that like, reminiscing with them and revisiting some of the places? MA: We went back over, and after visiting England, went down and pretty much joined down into France and came back up through Luxembourg through the areas that I fought through. Went to Bastogne and went through the museum at the Battle of the Bulge. It gave them an understanding that, you know, what we had then was nothing like what we have today to compete with, to fight with, to fire with, to die with, to kill with. So they were able to see that. Then we went from there down to Munich. I wanted them to see Dauchau. Dauchau was the oldest concentration camp that the Germans had. By 1937, Hitler had killed 15,000 of Germans who were opposed to him and had burned them to death in Dauchau. 15,000 of his own people. And I took my kids through there and they saw the ovens and they read all about it. They saw the barracks where they slept three or four deep and three or four high. They saw what they got to eat in pictures. I told them that, you know, just because you're looking at this doesn't mean it's over. We've got Hitlers in the world today. We've got, had Moamar Khadafi in Libya. We had that idiot in North Korea. We had Osama bin Ladin. We've got Saadam Hussein. We've got the Khomeini in Iran. The world is not free by any stretch of the imagination of what we saw in the ‘30s. The bad thing is, people today don't know about it. They don't know anything of the past to relate it to what we see today. That's scary to me. We've still got Nazis in this country; they've got them all over Germany. Skin heads they call them. Our nation has really taken this thing called “free” and pretty much just said “free is free.” You look at the illegal import in this country today, not just from Mexico, from everywhere. We don't check too much today. We say, come on in and join us and be one of us. They tell me that the biggest influx that we're going to get from terrorists going forward is going to come out of Mexico, that Mexico is letting all kinds of terrorists into their country. And they know how to cross the border. They've already found prayer shawls and prayer rugs on the border down there where they've come across. I'm not an alarmist and I'm not afraid to fight for what I believe in, but I do think that we could be more, what's the word I'm looking for, we could be more . . . DL: Selective, diligent? MA: More diligent than what we are today in this country. And that's not only on the Mexican border, that's on the Canadian border. DL: How do you feel about the opportunity you had to get an education after the war was over in the United States? MA: It meant a lot to me. I did have several football scholarship offers. You know when you go away for two years, when you went right out of school as an 18 year old and you were put in basic training, the first thing they start to teach you is how to kill people. That's a hell of an impact on your life as an 18 year old. Then they tell you you've got to kill them before they kill you. Then you come back and you say, well, do I want to, I said, do I want to spend the rest of my life, or the next four years anyway, enjoying football and getting by, or do I want to pick up my life and pay for those two years by getting down and start studying and getting on. I decided that, Clemson decided for me. I went up there and he told me I was burnt out as far as he was concerned. He had right guards standing six deep, and I said, thank you. So I went on to Georgia, got my degree and got married while I was up there, enjoyed life. DL: And your wife, you've been married 57 years? MA: 57 years. DL: And she had a stroke? MA: 18 years ago. DL: 18 years ago. And she's been paralyzed since then. MA: On her left side. DL: You've taken care of her. MA: Tried to. I don't know if I do a good job but I try to. We have a lot of fun. She taught me how to do her hair, how to tease her hair, how to hold her hand while she cuts her fingernails. Nobody else can do it but her. We have a lot of fun together. She can get around. We go down to the beach as often as we can, and we enjoy that. DL: When I met your friend, Ike Struensee, he was being very attentive to his wife in the hospital when she had her knee replaced. That's one of the things that made such a striking impression on me, is how attentive he was to his wife, and it seems like you've been the same way to your wife. But somehow or another, what we do for our spouse seems to be one of the tenets that came out of your generation and the Depression, being thankful for what you had and what you went through in World War II. You fought in World War II in part to take care of the buddies on each side of you and you do that in your marriage also. MA: Well, you know, when we came home, when I came home, when you came home for that matter, a man's word was his honor. A handshake was good as a contract. My daddy taught me that. My daddy didn't leave me too much, but he left me one thing and that was try to have a little bit better life than he had and try to leave a little bit more to my children than he left to me. I'll never forget when I told him I was getting married, only thing he said was, don't ever let me hear about you being mean to her. That's something that stuck with me all our life. I remember our vows very well. Through sickness and through health. I've just felt that was my obligation, that was my duty, that was my responsibility. Because I know she would have done the same for me. DL: When you went back to Germany with your family, did you feel any animosity towards the people you had fought against? MA: I felt more love for the Germans that I did for the French. And still do today. And still do today. Now I'm a little bit concerned with what Chirac is trying to do. I think France and Germany have been a little bit two-faced in both their relationship with both Iran and with Iraq and probably with Syria. I think it's greed, I think it's jealousy. Chirac wants to be the number one country in the European organization. He'll never get there, if you go back and look at history. France has never been able to fight itself out of a paper bag. If it hadn't been for the French foreign legion in Africa, the French would have been wiped out. So I have a lot more respect for the Germans than I do for the French. And another reason is that the Germans are dedicated, responsible people. They work hard, they are very, very smart with what they try to do and what they try to build. Look what they built in the ‘30s. They had the first rockets, first jet propulsion. They had some of the greatest weapons that were ever used. The French were over there, built the Maginot Line and placed it one way and realized somebody could bypass it, come back and attack it, and they couldn't rely on it. Stupid. Don't get me started. DL: I'm loving every minute of this. You saw peace brought to the world in your era at the end of World War II by the dropping of two nuclear weapons on Japan. It kept you from the invasion of the mainland of Japan. What are your feelings about the use of nuclear weapons today and how we can control it? MA: I think I told you earlier that we were told coming back from overseas that we were allowed to get out of our division and stay over there. Didn't know when they'd bring us home, or we could come back with the promise that we would be on the assault wave in Japan. You know, everybody said, you know, we've been through this, we might as well go through that. And we came back. I don't think there was a soul got out of my outfit. I saw a sergeant who got the Silver Star, and he refused it, and they wouldn't let him. He said, I don't want it. They made him take it. It gave him 85 points, which meant he had to leave the division. He couldn't come back with us if you had 85 points. He cried like a baby. We came home, and I didn't say anything to my family, I just told them home on furlough. But I think all of us sweated out the fact that we were going to be on the assault wave. We had seen projections that 100,000 troops would be killed on the beaches of Japan. A lot of people think Mr. Truman made a mistake because we killed quite a few people in those two towns, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But I say this, I'm thankful for Mr. Truman because he saved a lot of American lives and a lot of Japanese lives because we wouldn't have been firing dummy rounds if we had hit those beaches. So ending that war saved a lot of lives. It killed a lot of lives, but it saved a lot of lives. So I thank Mr. Truman. And I was happy to parade before him on the Army Day Parade in Chicago in 1946. DL: I think the numbers over there, we lost more people in the Battle of the Bulge than we lost in the Pacific theater during the four years we were over there in the island hopping we did. MA: I did know, in fact, I saw the other day how many people we had lost in the Bulge, but I can't recall the figure. I don't know how many we lost in the Pacific. But China was a rough theater, real rough. DL: What was it like when you came back and went to college? Did you feel there was a discrepancy between y'all who had been overseas fighting and the younger people who were your classmates in college that had not been overseas? What kind of adjustment did you have to make? MA: Well, I think what you saw was the veteran came back and he was much more interested in getting his education than a lot of the young boys that came up, and young girls that came up to go to college in their freshman year and all. I think that you didn't see as much hoopla, the wearing of the rat cap, and the wearing of the red and black, and the wearing of the sweaters that had a ‘G' on them or whatever as you did, would have otherwise. People had a little bit more reserve about them I guess you would say. They still went to the ballgames, and they cheered for the team, but it wasn't all the hoopla. I didn't see it in my group. I know that they tried to force the freshman veterans to wear the rat cap. Freshman veterans told them to go to hell, wasn't wearing a rat cap unless they wanted to. So they didn't, a lot of them didn't. DL: Did Georgia beat Georgia Tech the first year you came back? MA: '46? Yes. That was when Trippe was playing, and that was when Hardeman was playing, I believe. Duke, Paul Duke was playing. DL: George Matthews? MA: I think George, he may have been playing, he may have been playing. I believe Burrells was quarterback. DL: I can't remember. MA: I think it was the last year, I believe. DL: Any other thoughts or words of wisdom you'd like to leave us? MA: Well, I would say this. I would like to see you, I would like to see more people in this community partake of what you have here. You know, I sit on the Board of Visitors of Emory University, and I learned that Emory had something called Yerkes Primate Center. I was fortunate enough as a member of that board to have gone through that each year. People in Dekalb County, much less the state of Georgia, don't even know what Yerkes Primate Center is all about. That's the most fascinating thing, what they're doing out there. They're teaching chimpanzees to play the piano, to ask for an orange, and if you give them an apple, they'll throw it back to you. They want an orange. I told Dr. Lancy [Emory president] that I felt like the biggest problem is that people don't realize what they got in Georgia. I would venture to say that 50 percent of the people in Atlanta don't know that this museum is here. And I would be willing to say that 80 percent of Georgia doesn't know it's here. TAPE 1 SIDE B MA: How many times do you get school buses bringing school children here? Not many I would bet. DL: I don't know what the visitation schedule is. They do have field trips of students coming here, but I can't tell you the frequency. MA: I'm glad to hear that. You know a lot of people don't even know we got an IMAX in this town. I traveled for five years out of Chicago for the bank, and I remember so many times hoping _ would ask me what kind of education do they have here. But people don't know that we've got about five or six universities here. Georgia has failed to sell what it's got, and it's got a lot to sell. DL: Well, I want to thank you on behalf of my generation to your generation for your making it possible for me to go to nursery school, kindergarten, while you were in the Battle of the Bulge, I was having a good time taking advantage of the sacrifices you were making overseas. MA: Well, you were doing what I was doing: girls, football, and . . . You couldn't get them in the right order. DL: Couldn't get them in the right order. Your generation left us a great heritage, and we're forever in your debt. We'll be looking at this tape 50 years from now and look back and be proud that you were one of their forebears just like you looked back at the people in World War I, the War Between the States, War of 1812, the Revolution, and you were appreciative of what they did for you. Many future generations will be appreciative of what you've done for us. MA: I thank you. And I think if you would ask any veteran, he would tell you that he's not, he's not unappreciative of your thanks, but he's not necessarily begging for thanks. He would say he did a job because he felt like it was his responsibility, if he believed in this country he should be willing to put his life on the line. And I believe that.
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Extent:: 47:18
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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