Oral history interview of John W. Boyes

Collection:: Veterans History Project: Oral History Interviews
Title:: Oral history interview of John W. Boyes
Creator:: Gantsoudes, Lillian
Boyes, John W., 1927-
Date of Original:: 2003-12-19
Subject:: Quonset huts
B-29 (Bomber)
B-47 bomber
Hercules (Turboprop transports)
Starlifter (Jet transport)
Galaxy (Jet transport)
Orion (Patrol aircraft)
F-22 (Jet fighter plane)
Boyes, Betty Jo Hammock, 1926-2011
Boyes, Alexander H.
Boyes, Josephine, 1887-1959
Boyes, Robert A., 1925-2006
Betlejewski, Ralph
Bookie, Jack
Virginia Military Institute
Princeton University
American Red Cross
Lockheed Corporation
Transocean Air Lines
Eastern Air Lines
Friendly fire
Boeing B-29 Superfortress (heavy bomber)
Boeing B-47 Stratojet (bomber)
Lockheed C-130 Hercules (transport)
Lockheed C-141 (transport)
Lockheed C-5 Galaxy (transport)
Lockheed P-3 Orion (patrol aircraft)
Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor (fighter)
Location:: Iceland, 65.0, -18.0
United States, Georgia, 32.75042, -83.50018
United States, Georgia, Atlanta Metropolitan Area, 33.8498, 84.4383
United States, Georgia, Richmond County, Fort Gordon, 33.42097, -82.16206
United States, New Jersey, Burlington County, Fort Dix, 40.02984, -74.61849
United States, New Jersey, Neptune City, 40.2001133, -74.0279152
United States, New York, New York, Queens, Fort Totten
United States, New York, Nyack, 41.091121, -73.9196794
United States, Virginia, City of Richmond, 37.55376, -77.46026
Medium:: video recordings (physical artifacts)
mini-dv
Type:: Moving Image
Format:: video/quicktime
Description:: In this interview, John Boyes describes his experiences in the U.S. Army during and after World War II. He enlisted in the Army right after high school in 1944. An Army placement test helped him go to Princeton to study engineering. He worked with the Quartermaster Corps helping to out-process soldiers.
John Boyes was in the U.S. Army in World War II.
VETERANS HISTORY INTERVIEW JOHN BOYES December 19, 2003 Interviewer: Lillian Gantsoudes Transcriber: Stephanie McKinnell Lillian Gantsoudes: My name is Lillian Gantsoudes. We are at the Atlanta History Center. Today is December the 19th, 2003. I have here with me John W. Boyes who will tell us about his military service. John, would you repeat your name, spell your last name for me, and give us your date of birth. John Boyes: OK. John W. Boyes. Born in Neptune City, New Jersey on January 8, 1927. LG: John thank you. Tell me something about Neptune City. JB: I don't remember it because I didn't grow up there. I grew up in Nyak, New York. And that's a little town on the Hudson River. It used to be 25 miles up from New York City but they built a bridge over there so its only 19 miles now. LG: What else is Nyak near up the Hudson River? JB: It's between New York City and West Point. In fact we used to swim against the West Point team when I was in high school. Its in Rockland County, and Rockland County is full of rocks, that's why they named it that. Can't think of over things other than up the river from where we lived is a big granite mountain that New York City has been cutting down for years and years to build New York City. LG: Tell me something about growing up in the area. Reminiscence from grammar school going into high school. JB: Well first I want to tell you, my father died when I was four years old so my mother raised two boys. LG: Tell me your father's name. JB: Alexander H Boyes born in Scotland. LG: Tell me your mother's name. JB: Josephine _____ Boyes, she was born in New Rochelle, NY. LG: And you said you had one brother. JB: One brother. LG: And tell me his name. JB: His name is Robert Boyes. He lives in Littletown, NY. LG: Is he an older or younger. JB: 17 months older. LG: So alright tell me about, you said your father died when you were 4. JB: Right, and my mother, and that was sort of in the early days of the depression. And she worked as cleaning houses wherever she could. She was on welfare. Then finally she got a job as a waitress in the hospital dining room. Then when the war started, she got a job in the paper box factory to relieve men to go to war. LG: Tell me what she did in the paper box factory. JB: She went… LG: What was the name of the factory, do you know? JB: ______, and she worked in the egg safety department. That's where they put the egg boxes together that you put your eggs in. In the old days, there were, not like today's boxes. They had little sections in them, but that's what she did until she retired. LG: I remember the way those egg boxes looked. They were a piece that sort of slipped in at a 90 degree angle. JB: Correct, yeah. And I worked down there too during high school. LG: Tell me something else about your high school days. JB: OK. LG: You must have been a swimmer, you said you swam. JB: Yeah, we swam. West Point guys. I was also military minded in those days. And I was captain of the school drill team, also a member of the rifle team. And in those days you could carry a gun to school. You had to have the bolt out of the rifle. And you kept it until after school and you went to the shooting range and you fired your rifle. We didn't have any problems with people trying to kill each other in those days, not like today. LG: And you were a good shot. JB: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. When I got in the military, I got my marksmanship medal. And, OK, now when I was 17 years old, I went down to, and that was January '44, I went down to New York City and tried to enlist in the marine corps. And they told me oh yeah, we'd love to have you but you've got to get a note from your mother. I said well write that out cause that's not going to happen. So I went back home and went back to school and stayed there until graduation. Well before graduation the army came in and they gave a special test for anybody that wanted to take it. I had a teacher that says whenever you get a chance to take a test, take it. And I could care less about this test so I took it, and I passed it I guess. Because then they wanted me to enlist in the army and go to army specialized training reserve program. LG: So you enlisted rather than being drafted. JB: That's right. So I enlisted went down to New York City, passed all the tests. Then I graduated in June 22. LG: And how did your mom feel about you enlisting, if she wasn't going to let you go when you were 17. JB: Well she knew I wouldn't go until after I got out of high school. So there was no problem. LG: Just checking on mama. JB: Right. And the military was sending me to Princeton University. So I graduated on June 22. July 5 I was in uniform at Princeton University. And naturally they gave me pants that were too long because I didn't know anything about sizes of trousers. And I've got a picture at home there that showed a lot of baggy pants. But I finally got that fixed with the supply sergeant. Well anyway, there I was at Princeton University taking engineering, basic engineering courses. And I became a section leader. I had to section, we had to march to classes. And along with our army specialized training reserve programs, there were army specialized training programs, they were above the reserve level. Then there was all these captains, colonels and brigadier generals studying to be government leaders over in occupied Germany or France, wherever it might be. I guess they call them military government leaders. And then we had the normal kids that went to Princeton without the military. And so I was staying there for three quarters. LG: And was the military paying your tuition. JB: No they paid tuition and took care of food and board. And we had to take care of all other incidental expenses. And I stayed there for three quarters, which in those days were accelerated courses, a year and a half basically. When we turned 18 years old, you finished out that quarter and then you were entered into the army. So at that point, I went into the army. And I passed all my ______ at Princeton. I still got my transcript at my box at home. LG: Alright, so, you're birthdate is January. JB: Right. LG: So you turned 18 in January and you leave Princeton? JB: Not until March, April. LG: April you left Princeton. JB: Right. LG: And where did you go next? JB: April 15, well they sent me into Fort Dix for induction into the army, the regular army. LG: Where is Fort Dix? JB: In New Jersey. And from there they put us on a train going to training camp. And we didn't know where we were going but we were going. LG: What was the train ride like? JB: The train ride was in April, the windows were open. All the smoke from the engine came in. And we were crowded into seats. Four guys to a seat, plus your duffle bag and everything else. On the trip down there, the engine broke away from the main train. And left us rolling there. The MPs quick got off the train to make sure nobody got off the train. And then the engine backed up and picked us up. And I forgot what town we were in, somewhere probably North Carolina or South Carolina. We were talking to people outside there. They said well if you go on the right side you're going to Georgia. If you go on the left side you're going to Fort Blanding, Florida. Well we were on the right side. And we went to Camp Gordon, Ga. And that was getting close to summertime. LG: And where was Camp Gordon. JB: Over in Augusta, GA. And they had everything at that camp. They had desert, they had swamps, they had woods, they had anything, and we went through all of them. But we went in there and again, I got a job as a squad leader, acting squad leader. _______, and we did all the training. And we were told it was going to be 10% of training casualties during our training period. Well one time… LG: What is training casualties? JB: Somebody's going to get killed or hurt. Anyway in a training area we just had stacked our rifles and went to sit down in the bleachers and the sergeant says take your arms. We had to go back and in an orderly fashion we took our arms. And suddenly some bazooka rounds come sailing in and it hit one guy in the side of the head, took half his head away, and went over and hit another guy in the shoulder, and I think they got one other guy with a bazooka round. But the sergeant says take arms and take cover and boy did we tear out of there. And we all found cover. But they had ____ an impact area, but they failed to coordinate with the company that was using it, which was our company. So somebody got in trouble, and there is another shooting, and these bazooka rounds was to demonstrate to a bunch of civilians who had bought war bonds come and see what the army was doing. So they said, used to say buy a war bond, see a GI killed. And then another incident—we were in bayonet training and I stick the bayonet at my buddy _____ and he LG: I'm sorry, tell me your buddy's name. JB: Ralph _______. And he'd come back after me and I'd take it away from him. Well I was ready to lunge at him and the sergeant says something and Ralph eyeballs went to look at the sergeant and I tried to pull back but I went up and I got him in the eyelid. So he got out of the company, he went to the hospital instead. LG: Were you injured in any of these? JB: No, no. And then going through where you go through rifle training and the sergeant's with you and a dummy comes up and you fire at him. And if you see a pillbox, you've got to throw a hand grenade at it. Well the dummy came up and I fired from the hip and broke it at the board _______ iand we came to the pillbox, and its up a hill and I'm down here, I said boy if I throw this grenade up there and I don't make it, its going to roll back down on me. So I decided to throw over it. So I threw all I could to get over it, it went right in it. Anyway those are things that happened during training. LG: This buddy, did you know him from home or…? JB: From Princeton. I had a couple… Jack Bookie was another one who was at Princeton and came down there with me too. And so let's see anything else interesting that happened. Everytime we went out in the woods or swamps, somebody'd come back with a snake on his bayonet. Snakes were all over the place. Our sergeant told us, one Mexican was in training, that there was no snakes in the area. This Mexican laid down on top of a snake, and he was mad as the devil and told the sergeant you told me there was no snakes. The sergeant said can I help if it one comes in. And we had a guy from the American museum of natural history there, knew all about snakes. And he took that snake, it was a coral snake a poisonous one, but he put him on a branch and he told me on a branch they can't strike you. And he told us all this stuff. LG: You need that sort of information in south Georgia. JB: ___________ night maneuvers and take your squad. I took my squad through, and we were the first squad. So we went out and followed the trail that we were supposed to go to by compass, came back up to the air field where airplanes would land, and I told the guy says we're not going back to that sergeant, he'll give us something else to do. So we formed a perimeter of defense and just stayed there for about a half an hour then we got up and went in. The sergeant says where have you guys been? I said well we got a little lost but we finally found our way. And another time we went out to the mortar range to fire mortars and my squad carried all the mortars our there. We got the mortars out of the weapons crew, they didn't have them. And we took them on out there, we fired on the range. Time to go back in and the lieutenant says ok first squad, carry the mortars back in. I said wait a minute lieutenant, I protest, we carried them out. I think another squad ought to carry them back. He said I said first squad carry them. I said OK but its under protest. And then that night at formation, we go through and inspect the rifles and whatnot. I open my rifle up and a little piece of cedar or something _____ into it, and the lieutenant saw it, and says OK, you're a gig. You report to the first sergeant tonight. And there was other guys that got gigged too and had to report to the first sergeant. LG: They got gigged? JB: Yeah, a gig, that's so you got to go and report and do extra duty. And after that they said the rest of the company fall in, we're going down to the motor pool because the machine guns we turned in from the other day are so dirty that the sergeant down there wants you guys down there cleaning these machine guns. So the rest of the company went down to clean machine guns. I went to the first sergeant with these other guys. He had us cut grass with bayonets and just you know, and half an hour he comes out and says OK you guys can go, and we went off to the PX and the rest of the guys were down there cleaning machine guns until midnight. And I told the lieutenant the next morning, thank you lieutenant. And he just laughed. LG: So how long were you at Fort Gordon? JB: Ten weeks. LG: OK. JB: OK LG: So its, and you went in April did you say? JB: Went in April. LG: So its what June? Summertime I guess. JB: Yeah, it was about June, July. LG: So where are you headed to next? JB: Went down to personnel. And they said you can go to OCS school or you can go to army specialized training program. If you go to the army specialized training program, you'll get an education but we can't guarantee you'll become an officer. I says oh OK, I'll take the education. So they sent me off to VMI.. LG: Virginia Military Institute? JB: Right. LG: Which is where? JB: Lexington, VA. And we were taking electrical engineering. And I went up there and I was a platoon leader. The next two weeks I was a company commander then the battalion commander. Now we had the army specialized training reserve companies, two platoons of those, army specialized training reserve which we were, two platoons, yeah, two platoons of us. Then VMI cadets, so we had what they called a regiment and if you were the battalion commander, which I finally got to be, you rotated for regimental commander. And all the troops would pass in review every Friday. And we'd select which ones were the straightest, the best looking ones and all that, and we had swords. We carried swords, all the officers did, ______. So I took electrical engineering up until a point, and this was lets see, August was the end of the war, August 4. And they terminated the program after that, but we finished out. So that was lets see, August, September, that was about October I guess it was. LG: Do you remember the end of the war, where were you, how did you hear about it? JB: OK, I was at Princeton, I mean I was at VMI. LG: How did you hear about the end of the war? JB: Through the news media. We all got the night off, and we went out drinking, naturally. And some civilian picked us up and took us around in his car and he got drunk, so one of our guys had to drive the car. And we left him sleeping outside of VMI dormitories and we were over there. But we all celebrated. LG: _____ celebration. Did you keep up with your mother and your brother during this time? JB: My mother, yeah. LG: Did she come and visit? Did you get to go home? JB: Oh no. Didn't get to go home until after I left VMI. And they sent me to, what was the name of, quartermaster corps. Anyway, it was in Richmond, VA, I'll think of it in a minute. And they sent me to typing school. Why, I did engineering, now I'm a typist. So I went to typing school and got put in a termination center, which is the guys are coming back from overseas and being discharged. And we'd type up all the papers and all this stuff. That was Fort… LG: Tell me what the procedure would be when you were typing these termination papers up, were you sitting at a desk with a GI there? JB: Yeah with a GI there and the service record. And we'd copy the stuff out of the service record and he could see it and he had to sign for it and that included his discharge papers and all the other papers that go with it. LG: Was this something that was interesting to you or was it just tedious? JB: It was just routine. It was interesting to see some of these guys with the history behind it. LG: Was there anybody in particular that had an interesting story coming back? JB: No, not really. LG: Not really, just routine. JB: Just routine. And I forgot how this happened, but they wanted me to stay there in the quartermaster corps and I said no, I want to go overseas. So they decided I'd go overseas. So they sent me to the air force up at Fort Totten, Long Island. LG: Fort what? JB: Totten, t-o-t-t-e-n. It was a nice little fort. And going in there, I, after a couple of times at reveille, I found out they didn't know who the heck was at reveille formation. So me and this other, I can't remember his name now but he was born in Argentina, he was an American. So we all went off to the Red Cross and had coffee and donuts while everybody was at reveille. What they did was they'd say you, you, and you go to your officer's barracks, fix their beds, clean up the place. You, you, you go do this. You, you, you go and get paid. So we'd just stay away from all that stuff. We went over to the Red Cross. And I got a pass to go see an aunt who lived in Jackson Heights, Long Island, and I also got a pass to go home and see my mother. When I was going, my mother, all my buddies who were with me shipped out. So I came back, they were all gone. But I left the next couple of days, went up to Iceland. LG: To Iceland is what your place… JB: OK. We flew out of Laguardia Airport and went to Nova Scotia, course you couldn't fly direct, so we stopped at Nova Scotia. And this was in January. The cold went… LG: Of '46? JB: '46 right, January '46. And we had a prop feathering failure so we had to stay overnight. LG: What kind of failure. JB: Prop feathering failure. LG: Prop feather. JB: In other words, it takes the propeller and turns it into the airstream so you don't have any drag in case you lose an engine. So we stayed overnight in that cold place too, and then off to Iceland the next day. That takes 16 hours to get there in an old prop. And we come into Iceland and I don't know why, but I was the only guy that got off there, I don't know where the plane was going after that. And they put me in a transit barracks, a cold Quonset hut. I'm the only guy there, got an oil stove, I knew nothing about coal. I spent the night there, that's what happened. The next day went through personnel and I got assigned to the base adjutants office, the command adjutant's office. I was going to take over after a master sergeant who was going to get discharged in two weeks. So I had two weeks of training. He took me through the files, said if anything comes up here's what you do. Now the command adjutant's office, everything that comes in, all correspondence that comes in had to come into my hands or my group's hands, opened up, and then we'd run our first endorsement for some engineering situation, we'd send it to the engineers. MPs, send it to the MPs, and all that stuff came back to us with the answers and if anything was going out of the base, it went into the adjutant's office for signature. So we controlled the whole base, engineers, MPs, personnel, legal. Oh legal was a lot of fun. They had the sheriff come down from one of the Iceland counties to pull a man off an airplane that was going back home and he had fathered a baby and he had to pay, he had to sign up to pay for care. So we had all kinds of things like that. Then the MPs, an MP doc would come through us and we'd endorse it to the company commander to take further action. They would come back to us telling us what happened and it was just reported in a file. I had one buddy, Scotty, came out of Tennessee, he was in the motor pool, we had a staff car, he could drive anyplace in town. And he got picked up by the MPs. He called me and says hey I got picked up by the MPs, can you take care of it. I says yeah I'll take care of it. So when the docket came through it disappeared, I don't know where it went, but anyway, nothing happened. And then one time I was coming back to work from the mess hall, and the wind was blowing and I had my head down like that and this captain stopped me. He said didn't you see me, how come you didn't salute. I said I'm sorry sir I didn't see you. The wind was blowing I had my head down. So he read the riot act to me about saluting an officer. I says OK. What he didn't know was I put out the duty roster for all the officers. I put him on weekend coverage on convoy duty, officer of the day and whatever else came up. He was on weekend after weekend after weekend and I was in the adjutant's office one day, and he comes in to the adjutant's office and was complaining about being on weekend duty. So I snuck out, went to my office. And I heard the lieutenant, the adjutant tell him well go see Sgt. Boyes, he'll explain it to you why you're on duty like that. So he came out and he think he recognized me but I wasn't sure. He says how come I'm on weekend duty all this time. I says well you know we're short on officers, your name comes up, your name comes up. I said but I'll try to keep you off weekend duty this week. And I did. I didn't put him on weekend duty for another four weeks. But uh, that's the kind of power the command adjutant offers because we control everything that happened around the base. And another time, I had a weather officer, lieutenant, 1st Lt, who wanted to get orders cut so he can go to Greenland because he had something to do up there. So I kept putting him off because we cut the orders but we ______, and this was in the summertime, it's summer there all the time, and we went to town, we had the command car. And some of us went to town and we spent a little time down at the Red Cross, then we were coming back and these are all dirt roads up there in Iceland. And coming around, we met a JEEP and we kind of contacted each other, we cut his tire a little bit. So we were out looking at it, all it was was a cut tire. And here comes a staff car, it pulls off and here comes these officers and say what's going on here. Oh we had an accident, I guess we'd better fill out an accident report. He says, and I recognized him. I says Lt, I forgot his name, he was the guy who was trying to get his orders cut. I said I'm Sgt Boyes, I was going to back to the base and tomorrow I was going to cut your orders and get you off to Greenland, and he said oh, you were. And he talked to his corporal who was driving the JEEP. He says corporal do you think you can tell the motor pool that you cut the tire on a rock and the corporal says oh yeah, no problem, we can take care of that, he says no sense filling out an accident report. So we cleared that one up and I went in on Sunday and got this guy's order and got him out on Monday off to Greenland. LG: You were one powerful man there. JB: Oh yeah. Well I was the chief, I was a private in January and a staff sergeant by June. I was going to get to be the adjutant general, he was on the promotion board. He says as long as you're doing the job, I'm going to get you the rank. But when I got to become staff sergeant, the military froze tech and master ratings because all these officers were bounced back into sergeants positions. So that happened in June, I said gee, there goes my future in military, I can't go no where. And my time was going to be up in October. And I told the lieutenant I was going to take discharge so they brought in a 2nd Lt who was a fighter pilot to replace me. So I gave him a couple of weeks how to run it. He was a feisty guy, _____, anyway, he replaced me. And American overseas airlines was a contract operator, did contract flying for the military. And they had a place there at the base where they handled their planes coming through Iceland. Most of those planes were contract carriers. And they offered me a job, and so I took the job. I got discharged up there. LG: Before we talk about being discharged, tell me, you told me something about the events of… JB: The funny stuff… LG: The funny stuff, tell me what did you wear, I'm guessing it's pretty cold. Was there, you said that your first night up there you had a bunk with an oil furnace or something. Tell me about the living conditions. JB: Oh, they weren't… LG: The eating and did you get packages from home. Tell me some of that fun stuff. JB: Well, we ate in the mess hall. They had pretty good food. And what we'd do, when we were on KP or something, they'd bring you these big canned hams. They'd steal it and bring it home to the hut, there was about, oh, six of us in a Quonset hut. We had these big oil stove, and the oil was piped in from outside. And that was supposed to keep us warm but it didn't do too good. And one time, one of the guys decided to disconnect the carburetor and the, while we were sleeping, the next thing we know, the oil came up to where it was almost going to overflow and the flames were up there, and we had to cut that son of a gun off. Man, I was a little worried about that thing. But it was a little chilly. Now technically, the average temperature for Iceland in January was 48 degrees. It gets cold, it warms. We have the gulf stream. And in July, its 70, that's the average temperature. TAPE 1 SIDE B Counter 000 I went swimming one time in the summer time in the ocean and boy it was cold. I started feeling… LG: A tingling? JB: Yeah, like I was going to quit and so I got the heck out quick and never went there again. But uh, and then for entertaining, we draw out .45's at guano, hit a dump and shoot rats, that'd give us something to do. Then we'd go to town and go to the Red Cross to the dances. But the food was pretty good, I can't complain about that. But see, when I got discharged I had to take over the, one month yeah 30 days ______ leave and I couldn't eat in the enlisted man's mess hall, I had to eat in the officer's and I couldn't get out of my uniform, I had to go in my uniform. So I was the only sergeant eating in the officer's mess hall and they were supposed to bill me for what, when I ate there, but I never got a bill so I got the food for free until finally my _________ leave was up and then I could go and sit in uniform and then I could legally eat in the mess hall there. But… LG: What about back home, correspondence with your mom? JB: Oh yeah. LG: Your brothers. Did you send them… JB: Letters back home. LG: She sent you care packages? JB: No but she sent my civilian clothes. LG: So when you were discharged did you come straight back? JB: No I stayed right up there. LG: You stayed in Iceland. That's right, to work for the… JB: American Overseas Airlines. LG: In Iceland. JB: Right. And that was in ground operations, which was all messages coming in and out to the airplanes. LG: How long did you work for them. JB: A year. Because then the military left and American Overseas Airlines, Iceland Airport Corporation took over, military got out. So then American was running the whole base, taking care of it. They had all these civilians come in and take over. And I was still down there in ground operations. But then a year later, I guess it was in October '49, I got discharged in '46, October '46. I stayed in the reserve for three years, I'm digressing. I got out of the reserve six months before Korea started. But anyway, back to American, American and then Lockheed competed for that operation up there to take over what they were doing, so Lockheed won the contract and took over operating the base. It was Keflabik airport. LG: Spell that. JB: Kefbik, Keflabik, I forgot, anyway. Then the field was Meeks Field. The airforce always names fields after the first guy to get killed out there, so Capt. Meeks was the first guy that crashed up there, got killed. But Lockheed took over, and I stayed. LG: So you kept doing the same thing. JB: Uh huh, I transferred over to Lockheed. And I forget when all this happened, but eventually I wound up being a mechanic and I got into maintenance, got out of ground operation got into maintenance. I started off with clerical work there, I knew all the books and all the stuff. Then I got the opportunity to be a junior mechanic and worked as a junior mechanic working on Constellations, DC-4's, DC-3's, de Havilland's, yes Constellation, and Boeing 737 and Lancaster bombers. But we worked any airplane that came in that had a problem, we'd fix it. And, lets see, we had some fun times, we had some fun time. We had a C-54 come taxiing in and he was riding his brakes, so his brakes were smoking, and we were at the terminal waiting for him. The brakes were smoking, fire in the prop. He comes in, oh we got a fire, and we stood _______ said don't you dare ________, we'll take care of that problem. We took the shields off and cooled it off. They tracked all the wheel, they put some of their CO2 on them, so we had to fight those guys. And then we had a wing of F-86's flying through, coming out of Greenland, Iceland, and then England, and it was on New Years. The colonel came down and said now you go ahead and have a good time, so we all had a good time. And come 8 o'clock in the morning, they said everybody down to the hangar, those airplanes are coming in. He said he wouldn't bring them in, so I put two beers in my pocket and went down to the hangar. They gave me the _____ track, which is a tractor, said any of the airplanes block the runway, you go push them off. Just get them off the runway because these airplanes keep coming in. They lost one in flight coming down and the pilot bailed out and it was in about when he landed in the ocean and he didn't have a survival suit on. He only got three minutes and you've had it. And the rubber ship got to him, it was too late, he was gone, so they lost one. Anyway, all these airplanes are sitting around and the next day they take off going to England. Then the English come over with Vampire jets and they all landed and they all went to America. But that was a good operation. I stayed there, every time the clerk in the maintenance department quit, I had to go there and do all the administrative stuff. And I'd always lose connection with what was going on the flight line, _____ the planes, _______. Then finally the military came back in at the Korean war period. So that was around I believe it was March of '51, yeah, no, '51? Ok, but the military came back in. And I decided to go home. The major in the maintenance group wanted me to sign on with him and be a civilian and take care of all his aircraft maintenance stuff. I said I'm sorry Major, I saw the military leave, you guys are coming back, I got to get out. So Lockheed offered us jobs wherever we wanted to go. They offered Georgia, but I swore I'd never come back to Georgia as long as I lived because it was so hot over there at Camp Gordon, Ga. So I took Long Island in those days _______ airport and was a flight line mechanic over there. We took care of military airplanes too. Then they were lacking work, it was getting kind of boring. We had a union, I didn't want to join a union because they wouldn't give us any seniority at all for working for Lockheed, so we told them nah. It was Jim Fox, myself, Freddy Gruder, I forgot the other guys. But we eventually got an idea to go to Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia with Transocean Airlines, so we all signed up with that operation. LG: And is this through Lockheed? JB: No. LG: No, this is something else? JB: Yeah, we quit Lockheed we went up to Hartford, Connecticut and went to work for them up there. And we wanted to go overseas. But __________ was creating problems in Iran and he swore they had cholera over there so they didn't want any Americans in, so that didn't follow up. So there I was up there trying to fix airplanes for Transocean Airlines. They had pretty _____ maintenance, so my boss from Iceland, he went down to Georgia, he kept calling me wanting me to come down there. So finally I gave in and I left in January again when I was on Long Island with four inches of snow on the top of my car, went straight on down, didn't notice the snow until I got to Virginia and drove on into Atlanta. When I was there I signed up with Lockheed again, this time as a production analyst. We were working airplane modifying B-29 airplanes to go into the Korean war, so I was on that line taking care of those. I was on the swing shift, which was nice. LG: Tell me something about, alright, I'm sorry, let me back up, are you in Marietta working at Lockheed now on these planes for Korea. JB: Right. LG: Tell me something about the airplanes, what made them different, was this something new, was there anything new about these airplanes. JB: They were all sitting in the desert down there in New Mexico, they had all been mothballed and put away. So all the systems needed to be checked out, updated, new parts put in. lSo the pilots would fly the airplanes, they'd fix the airplanes just good enough one time flight to come into Marietta, they'd bring them in there and we'd take care of the maintenance on them. Well eventually I got transferred into material, the same program, and I had the bomb room where all the rejected materials come into me. So we had that program. Then when the B-29's finished, we had building B-47's and I was still in material on that. Then we started the C-130A and I had material for that too. Then I went to the Jetstar, that was a new airplane, that was my favorite. We started all the way up from engineering, development, everything. And I went into program coordination. That's where you take the engineering and schedule the engineering, you schedule the planners to make the plans for the tools and the plans for the parts, you schedule material to get the materials into support a certain area of the airplane. And you go through the engineering flight test with them and finally start delivery of them. And that was a nice program, I liked that. LG: Our apologies, we had some audio difficulties, so we are re-recording the end of John's interview. John, you were talking about how you met your wife, BJ, so would you tell us again the story about you moved to Atlanta, moved into a boarding house and how you met your wife. JB: OK, I came into Atlanta January of '52 and I found a boarding house 1293 Peachtree Street, across the way from the Fine Arts now, it was finally torn down, and the Strickland Building, medical building is there. Well anyway, the lady ran the house, she had about 20 or 25 people there. LG: What was the lady's name? JB: Oh, gee, I'll think about it. LG: Alright. JB: But she had an annex in the back where all the men stayed and she had the main house where all the women stayed. And she served breakfast and dinner during the work week and on Saturday she served breakfast only. And we would go out and eat or do whatever we do. She also had a front room where we had a big TV console and we'd sit there, watch TV. Then on Saturday nights she would let us move the tables out of the way and have dances in the dining room or we had spaghetti and meatball dinners and she let us keep our beer in her refrigerator, and we had a lot of fun. In fact, she had a big waiting room to get into her place because everybody heard how much fun we were having there. And we had a good group. Well BJ came in around I believe it was November, December of '52. I was laying on the couch there in the front room watching TV and this girl comes in carrying her bags and she goes over to the first front, second front room, and goes in there. And somebody says that a new girl moving in. And I said to these two young marines that were sitting there watching TV with me, I said why don't you two guys go help that girl move in, and sure enough they got up and they went out and they helped this girl move into her room. And I didn't pay too much attention to her for a while there. She had a convertible, a mercury convertible, a '49 mercury convertible I believe. And that was parked out on Peachtree one time, somebody slashed the top of her convertible, we were all pretty upset about that. But she got it fixed and she went to work for Eastern airlines. That's how I _______ because I had been in the aviation business, airline business, and knew all the codes for the different cities, and somehow she found out about that so she asked me to help her with the codes. So I helped her work the codes out and then eventually we got a little closer and I took her to a drive in theater one time in my car, and I believe it was something like October maybe. LG: And what kind of car did you have. JB: I had a '49 Chevrolet coupe, blue, and we went to the movie. And as you're supposed to do at drive in movies, we started doing a little necking. Then eventually we kept going with each other and in February '54 I gave her an engagement ring. LG: So how long did she live in the house before you all… JB: About a year. LG: About a year before you took a fancy to her. JB: Right. LG: And then you dated for six months. JB: Probably about that. Yeah. And then she went home to Hazelhurst to get ready for the wedding. And that happened in September. So from February from September. I think she didn't go home until around June, she quit her job. LG: And you said that you had one son. JB: I have one son, John Ethan Boyes, and he's married to ___________ Boyes, have a grandson named John Edgar Winslow Boyes. LG: And how old is he now? JB: He's 8 years old and in the third grade. And we get to see him every Friday night just about. In fact we had him last night and we won't have him tonight but we'll have him tomorrow night. And then my… go ahead. LG: Well do know the next question. JB: The view of the world. LG: The view of the world. That's, yes. JB: I had a good view of the world. I had a good education too. The good view of the world was when I was up in Iceland. That was world war II and then eventually into _______. And what happened in 1951 there were Russian ships off the coast of Iceland and between Iceland and England is the avenue that all the submarines from Russia go through to get to the Atlantic ocean to do whatever they wanted to do. So that became a good place for the military to observe what was going on, so they came back in July of '51. And the head of the maintenance guy, he wanted me to stay there as I mentioned before as part of his administrative guy in the hangar. But I decided I had to leave. I said I saw the military come, I saw the military leave, I'm going home. So I left. Anyway the Vietnam war started in I believe it was March of '52, no '51, March of '51, and that's why these Russian ships were off the coastline. But the military came in. Now my view of the world was like this in the Bay of Pigs, I was working for Lockheed, and we had B-47's we were modifying for the military. And they exercise us to get them out and support the Bay of Pigs. So I was called by the material director, I was in program control, and he asked me to become the material representative on the swing shift to make sure everything worked fine as far as material was concerned and I said I would. So they sent me home and I tried to get a nap but I couldn't go to sleep. Then comes 4 o'clock, time to go in, and they told me OK, the programs all over, we don't need to do that, so I went home again. But we had a good view of the military. In Vietnam, they had some 600 C-130's. The original C-130 was a transporter, go up, take your cargo and land, but the military was making it an attack airplane. They'd come in and down like that and bounce. In fact they tried to do that down in a base in Mississippi and the airplane hit and the wing went down that way, came back up and kept going off the airplane. So we had to modify 600 military airplanes and we placed the wing so they would stand an attack landing and maximum take off, so that's what we did for that one. All our airplanes are military support airplanes for cargo. Forty eight countries operate the C-130 and that's the A model to the H model. And the J model is the last one I worked on and we just finished that one up ______ retirement. And when we were developing it, we didn't have too many customers but today they have delivered over 101 of those airplanes and they've got 60 more on the order, so they're doing pretty good. But the C-130 was a small cargo airplane. The C-141 was the next cargo airplane, it was two times the size of the C-130. Then came the C-5 cargo aircraft. It was four times the size of the C-141. The C-141 and the C-130, they're still operating today. I think the last C-141 I read was going to retire in 2005, so we'll if that happens. But that airplane has been in service since February of, it must have been February of '64. So its been in there 40 years just about and the C-5 has been, when did it go out, something like, that's when my son was born, but it's still operating. All these airplanes are still operating. And Lockheed builds the P3 naval aircraft, and they have a lot of those airplanes in the navy up at Iceland to keep an eye on that passage way for submarines get through. They also build the SA3, which is a small airplane, in fact it's the airplane President Bush landed on the carrier when he came back from Iraq, so that airplane is still in operation. So Lockheed has a good history building military airplanes. LG: And you told me that you received some awards from Lockheed. JB: Yeah, true. LG: Tell me about the award. JB: Well I received one award for C-131 man of the month and that meant I was the best ______ on the C-130 and they gave me a C-130 model which is about, oh I'd say 18 inches long. I've got that at home. And the company honored me and several other people for the best of the people at Lockheed for, I forgot what year that was, and they made a speech about it. The emcee was a friend of mine, very well, knew him a long time, and he says well we're going to give an award to a man who happened to be with the Wright Brothers when they made their first flight and he rambled on about some more things I did in the master scheduling world and program controller. And then announced my name and I had to go up there and the president of Lockheed presented this award and he said its about time you got this. LG: Which is an interesting comment considering it's the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers a couple of days ago. If you had been there, I think it would have worked. Was there anything else? JB: Towards the end there, I was no longer manager master scheduler, I became a specialist _________ and from then on, all the guys that became my boss, I had raised up. They had worked for me at one time or another. And I wound up in proposal work on the F-22 and won that proposal, those airplanes that are being built now out at Lockheed. I also worked in research and development where you look at materials, you look at processes and you looked at things down the road that's going to come about. LG: You worked in the black hole room? JB: Then I worked in the black hole _____ but you're not supposed to mention that part. Its really the secret crew and I was on several secret programs, but one of the best ones I was on, we went out to Burbank and it was over the holiday season. The military always likes to contract to work over the holidays while they take time off. Anyway we were… LG: What holiday, this is thanksgiving? JB: Yeah, on thanksgiving, Lockheed had all the people working out there bring their wives and children out and have thanksgiving with their husbands and with Lockheed and Lockheed footed the bill. And my son was out there and he had his own private room, he was 17, I rented a car for him so he could take his mother around while I worked. But that was a good trip too and while we were out there, you know they built a F-117, the secret airplane, in those days. And they would tell us you guys got to get out of here by 8 o'clock tonight because the whole place is going to be blacked out and we got home, we were over at the Hilton across the way at the Burbank airport. And we could hear the C-5 coming in, heard the C-5 landing, because the C-5 has a special like, and we figured they were rolling one of these airplanes up in there and taking it out to Nevada for testing. So that was interesting. LG: How long were you out in Burbank? JB: We spent about 10 weeks out there, proposal. And usually after four weeks you can bring your wife out there. Usually you didn't go home, you just brought your wife out there and you stay at work and she sat around the hotel waiting on you. But my son had a good, well they went to the movie places out there. My son became an astronaut, put on the uniform and got to fly. LG: I think that's about all, can you think of anything else. JB: No I think that's about it. LG: And again, I want to say John, thank you very much for coming in, taking the time to talk to us.
Metadata URL:: http://album.atlantahistorycenter.com/cdm/ref/collection/VHPohr/id/411
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:: 58:15
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
Rights: