Oral history interview of Alan James Kinder

In this interview, Alan Kinder recalls his experiences serving as a forward artillery observer in Europe during World War II. He describes growing up in Taylor, Washington, and describes the coal and clay mines in which his father worked. He remembers his family was one of only two native English-speaking families in town and how much he enjoyed the variety of cultures represented by the townspeople. He was drafted in 1943, but declared "4-F" due to his poor eyesight. He was very keen to serve, however, and was told to "go home and eat carrots" to improve his eyesight. He remembers eating so many carrots that his skin seemed to change color. His eyesight did not improve, but when he tried later to enlist, the Army needed soldiers so badly they took him anyway. He describes his unit's training as forward observers, positioning microphones in order to plot the locations of enemy artillery. His unit arrived in Normandy about two months after the D-Day invasion and he remembers as a 19 year old boy witnessing the sometimes brutal retaliation inflicted by the French on their neighbors who collaborated with the Germans. He describes the tactics used to successfully plot the exact location of a German "Slender Bertha" artillery gun so that the Army Air Forces could destroy it. He recalls several harrowing incidents including narrowly escaping injury when the Belgian house in which they were staying was shelled, killing several men; the massacre of men from a fellow artillery observer unit at Malmedy; and seeing the frozen bodies of American soldiers stacked up against a building after the Battle of the Bulge. He describes returning to Normandy and to Bastogne in recent trips to commemorate the end of World War II and his interactions with the French, Belgian, and German people there. He comments on his children, children-in-law, and grandchildren and expresses his feelings about honoring those who never returned from the war. 14th Field Artillery Observation Battalion; forward observer; Instrument and Survey Group; Tech Corporal; "Slender Bertha"; Calvados (Apple Brandy); "Geodetic Computer"; Mark Felton (YouTube historian) Alan Kinder served in the United States Army in Europe during World War II.