Curtis Ferrin

              Eric Walz History 300 Collection
Curtis Ferrin – Life during WWII
By Curtis Ferrin
March 5, 2003
Box 2 Folder 7
Oral Interview conducted by Kari Ferrin
Transcript copied by Maren Miyasaki September 2005
Brigham Young University – Idaho
KF: Today is March 5, and I am interviewing Curtis Ferrin. Okay, first can you tell me
where you were born?
CF: Well, I was born in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
KF: What year were you born?
CF: What year was I born? ’ 24, October the 28th, on a rainy morning.
KF: How old were you on December 7th, 1941 when Pearl Harbor was attacked?
CF: Seventeen I think, yeah, I was seventeen.
KF: What do you remember about that day?
CF: What do I remember [ about] that day? Well, I was out ice skating on a skating pond
in Cheyenne, Wyoming and some guy coming down the street hollering that “ The Japs
have attacked, the Japs have attacked,” so I ran home. That they had bombed Pearl
Harbor, and I ran home. And I carried newspapers in the mornings, so I went down to
the newspaper office where I got my papers in the mornings, and that night and went and
carried papers out on the street and give ‘ em away to people. They were giving the
papers away that night. That was the day of the Pearl Harbor attacked. And that’s about
all I remember of it except what we heard on the radio. It was kind of isolated.
KF: When did you join the army or the military?
CF: I thought you knew that, the Marine Corps.
KF: How were you trained in the Marine Corps?
CF: Well we had a great big old Marine D. I. that used to drive us to and from daylight ‘ til
dark, marching, and everything else. And then I went to San Diego, to a marine corps
training. What? ( Talking in the background) Grandma’s helping me here. I was in San
Diego, and I was in a platoon called 673, which was a training platoon. And I went
through that. And you want to know what we did when training? Well, all I remember is
there was a big bully there used to keep pinning me in the tent thing with the tent ropes
and trying to choke me to death. And so the Z. I. took me and him out in the middle of
the parade ground and let me beat the daylights out of him, and he left me alone after
that. In fact, we got to be pretty good friends. And, you want stories?
KF: Sure.
CF: Alright. I’ll think of some. One day we was going down to the bay and back at
marine corps depot there’s what they call a boondocks, its sand, just sand dunes all over.
It’s hard to even walk in it. They marched us out to the bay, and it was taboo to go in the
bay and swim. Nobody was supposed to go in the bay and swim, so going out I kind of
wondered why we was going clear out to the bay. And we got out there, why he fell us
all in and says, “ Who all would like to go swimming?” Well, nobody said much, he said,
“ Well, I won’t tell on any of ya, if you wanna go in swimming.” Well, I figured there
was something up, so I didn’t volunteer to go in swimming. About three fourths of the
rest of ‘ em did, and that old dry sand, they went in and got soaking wet. He just marched
them into the bay. Lined them up and marched ‘ em in and let them swim and then got
them out and then all the way back why he had them double timing about every 50 feet or
100 feet he had them hit the deck. They were raw red when they got back there from the
sand getting in their wet clothes and stuff, and boy they learned to follow orders from
then on. They didn’t go off on any excursions. We had a lot of things like that happen.
Then I went to Camp Matthews for rifle training, that’s where the rifle range was.
And I was there for quite a while. That’s when President Roosevelt come to the west
coast and went down from Los Angeles to San Diego, and Camp Matthews was about
half way between San Diego and Los Angeles, so they had all the marines go out and line
up along the highway. And when he came down he was in his open car and he waved to
all of us as he went by, going down to San Diego. And afterwards I found out we
weren’t out there to see the President; we were out there to protect him ( laughs). No, we
seen him. He seemed to be a pretty nice guy; he waved all the way. I bet he had sore
arms by the time he got to San Diego.
There’s so many things that I can’t even recall most of them. But then from
Camp Matthews I went to tank school up what they called Jock’s Tank School, Tank
Form. And we had an old captain up there, and he was a mean old guy, but he was a
good tanker. We learned to drive the tanks and everything. And then we went from
there, we moved from Camp Elliot there in San Diego, and then we went aboard the ship
in San Diego, and went down to Australia. And we sailed from San Diego on the 8th day
of January ’ 43 and disembarked in Melbourne, Australia. And we was there ‘ til the first
of February of ’ 43 in Melbourne, and disembarked, came across to New Britain 1st of
January ’ 44. These are all, these places are all battles, most of them. Then came across
to New Britain, and that was on the 1st of January ’ 44, that was before that. I was there
on Christmas Day, I know that. Some of these I don’t think they got right. But, then we
went back to, we was on a little island, we went out to a little island, Pavuvu, where you
recouped and got ready for your next battle. And then we went from there to Peleliu,
Palau Island. And we did that on the 26th of August of ’ 44, course we landed on the 1st
day of April, on April Fools Day, there. Wait a minute, no that wasn’t there, that was
wrong. That was the 26th of August ’ 44 that we disembarked at Peleliu, and Peleliu
Island, 15th of September ’ 44, from Peleliu back to Pavuvu Island where we trained some
more and got ready for the next battle. And then we went from Pavuvu on the 26th of
February, I guess it’s ’ 45. Disembarked in Okinawa, in the Japanese Islands up there,
Okinawa, on the 1st of April, it was April Fools day when we went in there. And then
from Okinawa why I went back to San Diego, California, and that’s where, from there I
went up to, I was sent to Clearfield, Utah where the Naval Supply Depot is and I did
guard duty on number one gate there on the Naval Base, Naval Supply Depot. And then I
was discharged from there and went home. And that was, let’s see, discharged 24th of
September 1945, with a letter of instruction and then they give a number and everything.
But here’s the battles I was in that they counted: Cape Gloucester New Britain, from the
3rd of December ’ 43 to the 5th of March ’ 44; and from Peleliu Palau Island, from 15th of
December ’ 44 to 22nd of October ’ 44; and Okinawa, [ le] Shema, from the 1st of April
1945, and I left there about the 6th or 7th of, I can’t think tonight.
Anyway, we got home on the, I think it was the 9th of August. The war was just
over a couple, three days after we got home, about 9 days after we got home it was over.
I was on a train between San Diego and L. A. when cars on the road were all honking
their horns and waving and waving flags and everything. We didn’t [ know] what had
happened. The engineer stopped the train to find out what was going on, they told him
that the Japanese had surrendered. He blew his whistle all the way into L. A. and when
we got into L. A. we couldn’t get off the train. They had guard there and they made us
stay on the train to where we were going because they said, if we got off we’d have to go
on guard duty, so we didn’t get off. Except, a lieutenant come down in the marine corps,
a lieutenant on guard came down and got me and took me up in the station because my
aunt and uncle and my cousin was up there waiting to see me. And they wouldn’t let
them come down [ on] the tracks, so he come and took me upstairs and I talked for about
15 to 20 minutes and then I was escorted again back down to the train. So I didn’t get to
see much, except to just go up to the station and back down.
And then I went home. Then I [ was] discharged, I went to the, I’m getting this all
mixed up. I don’t know. I went from there, when I went home I had my thirty day leave.
And all the time I was in the Marine Corp, the three years I was in there, I never had any
leave. I only got one leave that was right at the end, right when the war was over. And I
was discharged from Clearfield, Utah. And that’s about all about that. Now anything
else you want to add, why you go ahead.
Oh, do you want to know what I did. Well I was a field artillery crewman, I was a
carpenter, course I had a rating carpenter general. That means that I could do general
carpenter work. That don’t mean I was a general. And I was a number one man on a 105
Hollister. I drove tanks in Australia, and in Australia when we were there they got the
new medium tanks. I trained in the light and didn’t have any trouble, but when we got
the new medium tanks every time they fired the 75 millimeter Hollister in that tank it
give me a nose bleed. So I had to transfer out, and I went out to a new artillery outfit.
They were farming and that where I stayed for the rest of the war after that. And, what
else?
KF: What are some of your memories of your World War II experience that stand out?
CF: My memories that standed out? There was an awful lot of water out there. It seemed
like it could go forever and ever and ever and never see anything else except water, all
that water and not a drop to drink. No, there was water to drink, but boy that was a big
ocean. What was some of my memories? Well, I don’t. They were all good memories,
except while we were in combat. We had a lot of fun. We did things and played baseball
and all that kind of stuff when we were in camp, when we weren’t in combat. I imagine
the worst one of that whole bunch was Peleliu. That was suppose to of been one of the
worst battles ever fought by the Marine Corps, was at Peleliu.
And you wanted to know about Peleliu? Alright, we were sitting down one day
eating our dinner. We don’t sit down much, we just got out of our gun and we walked
back by this stump and sat down by a tree that [ had] been blown off about six to eight
feet up in the air. We thought it’d be a good place to sit, an’ there was kind of a hole at
the bottom of it. An’ so we was sitting against the stump and feet down in a hole, and all
of a sudden a shot went off an’ my buddy came forward an’ said, “ I’ve been hit.” And
they shot him down by the shoulder an’ it came out his chest. And he thought he was
going to die. I told him he wasn’t going to die. They, the crew, the guys that take care of
them, oh I can’t even remember what we used to call the medics in the Marine Corps.
It’s been so long I forget a lot of that stuff, but they were there taking care of him, and he
wanted me to take some letters so he told me what to tell his parents and his girlfriend
and all this stuff while they were taking care of him. And I told him, when he got
through I said, “ Well, this sure has been a waste.” I says, “ You’re not going to die.” Well
he didn’t. They came back to the division only about three or four months after that.
But, then, I don’t know. There was a lot of them.
We lost all our guns at Peleliu. The Japs got in with their mortars and knocked all
our guns out. And we had to have four new guns on Peleliu. You know what type of
guns I was on didn’t you? I was on 105 Hollister, combat field artillery. 105 Hollister’s
they could shoot seven miles, and you could take and put a shell in a pell box at seven
miles with one of them. You put one in, one mile you fire three shots, one long, one
short, and one right in the middle. That was the most accurate gun in the Marine Corps at
that time, it was the big artillery. The Japanese hated them. Whenever they could knock
them out, they’d knock them out. And they’d infiltrate at night and try to get in and
sabotage your guns and stuff and kill the things.
You wanted to know that one about the bayonet then at Peleliu, too? Oh, we was
just laying there asleep. You don’t sleep really, you’re about half awake. Got one eye
open anyway. And he hit me in the side with his elbow, my buddy did, and I rolled one
way and he rolled the other and when we rolled back the Japanese was in on top of us
with his bayonet in between us. And as the guy stood up, the guy come up, my buddy
come up with his Thompson sub machine gun and fired 15 shots in him while he was still
up above us. He fell in back in on top of us. It was kind of gruesome. But he didn’t get
us. He did stick his bayonet through my buddy’s shirt though, through his jacket. But I
don’t know. There’s so many of them it’s hard to even remember them all. I don’t
know. What else is there you want to know?
KF: What was your image of Hirohito and other leaders?
CF: What was my image of Hirohito? Well, my dad told me when I went in the Marine
Corps, he said, “ You’re going overseas, and you’ll be fighting the enemy, probably in the
Pacific. Anywhere you fight him, just remember one thing. They’re fighting just as hard
to stay alive as you are, and they’re doing what their country wants them to do, and
you’re doing what your country wants you to do. And you shoot first. As the leader of
the country, they were wrong. We knew that and I never once let that bother me. I didn’t
like Hirohito, no. I didn’t like his big old battle wagons or anything. His airplanes used
to fly over us at night and harass us all night long. But as far as leader of the country, my
dad had told me by then, he told us all about the war you know, he told us how wrong
they were and why we were right. I didn’t have any qualms about whether I was right or
wrong. I knew it was right. Hitler was a long way away. I didn’t agree with what he
was doing, but when you’re in the military, and you’re in the ocean half a world away,
why you don’t hear much of what is going on, on the other side, you know what I mean?
The news doesn’t get to you, it just dribbles in, and we had no newspaper, no nothing.
All the news we got was just what came in over the radio. Me and another guy had a
transoceanic zenith radio, famous that, and it was a short wave radio, and we used to pick
up the news once in awhile. And we listened to this Tokyo Rose all the time, and she
always told us how we was gonna get killed, and where we were at and we were going,
and what we were going to do, and all that kind of stuff, you know. She was
broadcasting for the Japanese. But there’s just, as far as other news of other battles, you
didn’t really know what was hardly going on in the next island, because you didn’t have
time. There wasn’t time to do that kind of stuff, we was fighting a war. When we’d get
back to the bases, why then they’d, all their little stories, they’d tell them about what was
going on, what battles had gone on. And there was lots of battles, naval battles that we
could see from the islands and didn’t even know who they were. We just knew that they
must have been Japs and, Japanese and Americans. We’re not supposed to call them Japs
anymore, I guess. But, then they were, and they had big gun battles out there with our
navy, and we seen a lot of those.
In Okinawa, we seen an awful lot of the kamikazes. Okinawa? Okay, we went
into Okinawa on April the first, and the first thing I remember we went in, there wasn’t
anybody killed on Okinawa the first day. One guy drowned, he run a tank into a canal
thing or a hole or something that was filled with water, and he drowned before he could
get out, before they could get him out. And he was the only guy that died that day. And
that next day there wasn’t too much, and we were in a position, and we heard an airplane
coming in and we looked up and a Japanese zero went right in over the top of us and
went in and nobody fired a shot at it all the way in, and went in and on, landed the airport
in Okinawa. And when he landed, why they had a whole bunch of marines around him
before he knew what was happening and they captured the airplane. He didn’t know the
airport had been captured I guess.
Then we used to watch the big ships, the destroyers and the battle wagons and
stuff, fight off of Okinawa. They watched a lot of them, when it would just start getting
dark, the Kamikaze pilots would come in. You know what kamikaze pilots is don’t you?
Well, they come in and dive into the ships and we’d sit there and watch these guys come
in and dive into these ships. Course, they’d miss a lot and a lot of them’d hit. And all
this time the navy would be shooting at them. And then it’d get dark and boy it’d be the
prettiest fireworks you ever seen in your life. There was search lights everywhere, going
up in the sky, pointing them out so they could shoot at them. And they would follow
them all the way to the ground. So sometimes those rounds would start coming in at us
and we’d have to get in our foxholes and stuff so we wouldn’t get hit. But it was
something to [ look] at night after night after night, they come in. And we watched big
battle wagons get sunk and a lot of cruisers. I seen an aircraft carrier right after it had
been hit and blown all to pieces, but it was still afloat. The Salt Lake City, the cruiser
Salt Lake City, was hit off Okinawa and sank. We seen it get hit. Three kamikaze flew
into it. And I don’t know.
Then I was up in the front lines on Okinawa, on the north end of the island, and a
guy come up there, a captain, came up and got me, and said, “ This guy wants you to go
with him.” I told him fine. And he said, “ Well, you’re going to the rear area,” and I said
well, see I’d been over 32 months. You’re not suppose to be over, that’s six years of
duty. And I hadn’t even been home, so they come up there and this guy got me and says,
“ You can’t stay here. You got to go back to the rear area, stay there.” So I tried to find
out from the captain what was going on and he says, “ I can’t tell you. I don’t really know
for sure.” But he said, “ Just go with this guy and he’ll take you down to our rear area and
you get to stay there in a tent ‘ til they come and get you.” He said, “ He’ll be back after
you or somebody. And he says, Just don’t go over three quarters of a mile, a mile away
from the tent along the road there anywhere so when he comes he can find you.” And I
told him I didn’t particularly just want to sit around, and he says, “ Well then take a rifle
and do guard duty up and down along the road there where the camp is, where our rear
area is.” He says, “ You see some guy coming up to the camp, why go back and see what
he wants.” Well, a couple to three days later here come a guy and he said, “ Are you
Ferrin,” and I said, “ Yes.” He said, “ Get in this jeep we’re leaving.” And I said, “ Are
we?” And he said “ Yep.” And I said, “ Well, I got stuff up in the front lines, you never
even let me get it.” Well, we went up there and they turned right around, and it wasn’t
very far to the front lines. And I said bye to a couple, three of the guys. And the guy
grabbed me and got me back in the jeep and we headed back out. His radio went off
wanting to know where we was at, and I asked him what’s that all about. He said, “ You
see that great big ship sitting out in the middle of the bay?” And I said, “ Yeah,” and he
said, “ You’re suppose to have been on that an hour ago.” And he says, “ If we don’t get
you out there it’s going without you ‘ cause that’s what they just told me.” So he took me
down and put me in a Higgins boat and took me out to the ship. By the time we got to it,
it was starting to move. I went up the ladder; I was the last guy aboard that day. And we
came back by way of Hawaii, we didn’t stop in Hawaii, but we could see the Hawaiian
Islands. Then we went in and went down into San Diego, and that’s where I came back
to the states. Then of course I’ve already told you about going to Clearfield and then
after that being discharged. What else do you need to know now?
KF: What kind of food did you have while you were in the army or the Marines?
CF: In the Marine Corps? Well, I’ll tell you, sometimes it was pretty good and
sometimes it was pretty lousy. In Peleliu we lost all our water and we had to drink water
out of the shell holes. I don’t think you want to hear any of them kind of stories, so we’ll
go on to the other. When I went in, why I was a battery carpenter, so I slept in the tent
with the first sergeant, and the gunny sergeant, and the supply sergeant, and all them
guys. There was six of us slept in the tent together there because I was directly attached
to the guys there, that’s what I was supposed to be doing.
My work in the 105 millimeter Hollister was a voluntary job. I didn’t have to do,
but I didn’t want to be on the tail end of the war, so I went on along with the guns when
they trained and everything. And when it was time to go the captain told me I couldn’t
go, and I said, “ Well, what do you think I’ve been training [ for]. I’ve been training on
that gun. Every time it went out I went out.” He said, “ Oh come on.” I said, “ Well I
have, ask Sergeant Gomez.” So he walked up the gun bed, took me, and went up the gun
bed while they were practicing, this was at Pavuvu, and he asked him. He said, “ What’s
Ferrin here?” And he says, “ He’s my number one man on the 105 Hollister.” And he
said, “ Well, he’s not supposed to go, he’s a battery carpenter. He’s not supposed to go
into combat, or go on the gun. He’s supposed to go with the unit, but not as a 105
Hollister man.” So he looked at me and he said, “ Well, Gomez says you’re number one
man for him, so I guess you go.” They weren’t going to let me go out of Australia and I
talked them into it. I had to talk my way into going because— guys they leave behind.
But I helped with the first sergeant an awful lot. I worked with him and when he was, he
got inebriated quite often. I don’t know where he got it, but he got it. So when he was in
trouble, why the captain would call me and tell me to help the first sergeant. So I spent a
lot of time doing that. But when we were in combat I was on the gun all the time.
Now what else, oh you asked about food? Well, I met a guy by the name of
Sergeant Chunk. He was an old southerner. He was our mess sergeant. And he slept in
the same tent we did. He was one of the guys in the tent. So we got to be pretty good
friends. I got to be his best thief, and he got to be my best cook. I appropriated food and
stuff, and we split it. But he cooked special little things, when we weren’t in combat I
went to the supply places all the time for lumber and stuff for decks and boxes and all
that kind of stuff I had to build. And we’d always appropriate a case of spammed ham, or
fruit, or beans, or something. We never went back empty, you know. It’s not called
stealing in the Marine Corps, it’s just called misappropriating. You know what that
means don’t ya. We weren’t stealing the stuff, they didn’t know we were taking it either.
But it was called misappropriation, if we got caught with it. But we never did. We’d eat
pretty good.
And then one time a great big old LST in a storm, we had a typhoon go through
there, and it took this big old LST and lifted it up over the barrier reef out beyond, and
pulled it across about 200 yards of water and run it ashore right up by our, oh it was only
about three or four blocks from where our guns were. And we went down there and
helped them unload it. They had to unload it at night. The Japanese wouldn’t leave it
alone in the daytime, but at night we’d slip in there and unload it. So, we had a road in
the back there that they didn’t know about and we backed our truck in there and we
loaded up a load of food out of that LST. I shouldn’t tell you about stealing, but it’s not
stealing really. It’s misappropriation of the funds I guess. But we eat pretty good.
Most of the time why we rationed, C- rations, K- rations, stuff like that. C- rations
would be beans and stuff like that and hard biscuits, and had a piece of chocolate in with
the hard biscuits, and chocolate was so hard you had to pound it with a hammer and break
it up before you could chew it. Stuff like that. There was always cigarettes; they had
cigarettes that come along with them. Course I didn’t uses the cigarettes. I traded them
for other things, candy and stuff, when I could get it. Course when we weren’t in combat
why we got beer rations and coke rations. Course I shouldn’t have been drinking coke,
but I didn’t know no better then. But I’d trade my beer for, one case of beer for two cases
of coke. So I always had some coke to drink. We didn’t have no way of cooling it, and
so I went out and got a barrel, an old 55 gallon barrel. See being a carpenter I could get
that kind of stuff. I got copper tubing and [ a] little welder, it wasn’t a welder it was a
braiser, braise copper and stuff together. And I made rack to go in the barrel, and I took
an’ run a hose hole through the bottom and hook up these little tubes that I run all over
underneath, and the rack where the beer and coke and stuff would set, and hook a hose
onto it. And then all of those big trucks had a tire pump on them, and we’d hook that
hose to the tire pump and then we’d fill that barrel up to the coke bottles and throw that
beer in there with them and the coke in there, and we’d start the truck up with the
pressure running. It’d pump air up through that gasoline, aviation gasoline, and that stuff
would be so cold when you took it up out of there you couldn’t hardly hold it. And we
had cold beer and cold coke anyway. I use to take and rebottle my water and put it down
in there sometimes, but gasoline got in it too easy so we had to quit that. But they caught
us and made us quit. You know how it is. You get a good thing going and something
happens.
So I found the refrigeration units down at the chow dumb and I went home and
told the captain that there was a refrigeration unit down at the supply that had our
numbers all on it. And he said, “ There is?” And I said, “ Yeah.” And he said, “ Take and
show it to me.” So we went down there, and every outfit had one and they hadn’t given
anybody any of them. Well, our captain, he bamboozled them, and he took ours and took
it back to camp and we sit it back up. We wasn’t in combat at that time. We took it back
to camp and set it up, and we had a walk in cooler after that. You know you had to keep
your eyes open. So, we did a lot of things, you had to, to survive. I don’t know.
We used to save the bacon and cook it. There wasn’t only about, they give you a
can of bacon and you might only get one can every two weeks. So sometimes you’d save
it and have two cans of bacon so you could put it with potatoes. We didn’t have the
potatoes like we have in this country. When we were on Okinawa why we had sweet
potatoes. And we’d cook sweet potatoes and bacon together. And we’d take sweet
potatoes and make potato chips with them, sweet potato chips, stuff like that. We had
ways of getting stuff we wanted. They didn’t always taste the best in the world. The K-rations
were the best we had at that time, and then they had 10 and 1 rations. We used a
lot of those. They’re the ones that had bacon in them. But, it’s been so long, I can’t
remember all the different things they had there we eat. We never had much, we never
got real milk or real meat, I mean fried meat and stuff like that. It was canned.
Everything was canned. And the milk was powdered milk and stuff like. But we
managed, and like I said we had a good cook. The thing is, at Peleliu, he got killed. So
we had to have a new cook, and I got with him and we did alright. We got a lot of stuff
for the outfit, you know. We didn’t do any stealing that would have been direct, you
know from personal. Like a guy’s socks, or his candy bars, or his candy, or his cookies,
or stuff like that or anything he had. Anytime we got, went and got something like that
we’d go and get it out of the supply depot, and stuff. We didn’t, if you got caught
stealing from your buddy, why it was a general court marshal. But it didn’t say anything
about anything else, but you couldn’t steal personal items from each other. But I don’t
know. It was an adventure that I would take a billion dollars for. But I wouldn’t do it
again for a trillion dollars.
KF: How was your life changed because of World War II?
CF: ‘ Cause of World War II? Well, I don’t know. Wound up me meeting your
Grandma. I probably would of never met her if it hadn’t been for World War II. She
says, whoa, I wished he’d a never fought World War II. No, she didn’t say that. But,
how’s it changed? I don’t know. I always like the Marine Corps. When I was in fifth
grade in Blackfoot, Idaho they had a sergeant major come to the school and showed all
the stuff he got out of China. This was before World War II. And he came when I was in
the fifth grade. And showed us all of his stuff and everything and talked about the
Marine Corps and all that stuff. Well, we knew he was coming and the teacher asked if
one of us would sing the Marine Corps hymn when he come in. And so I was big and
easy. I said I’d do it. So I got up when he come marching down from the back of the hall
to the stage, why I stood up there and sang the marine corps hymn for him. And of
course he had to tell me that I did a good job, which I don’t think I did, but I seen that old
marine corps sergeant major, I said, boy I’m going to be a marine. So when it came time
to have to be one that’s where I went. I liked it, I enjoyed it. It was a good experience,
learned lots of things. Lot of things I learned I didn’t want to know, I wanted to forget.
But, then you know how it goes. Other than that, I guess that about wraps it up, unless
you can think of something else.
KF: Well, I’ve heard you talk about the old breed and the new breed. Could you explain
that to me?
CF: The old breed? That was the guys after World War II, when they started. In World
War II they didn’t have a draft when I went into the Marine Corps. You had to join, you
had to join the reserves. You couldn’t join the regular Marine Corps. You joined the
reserves, then you had the option when you got through you could get out of the reserves
and go into the Marine Corps. Now I could have went on and went up in the ranks. They
told me if I wanted to stay, they’d make me a platoon sergeant in six weeks. I told the
major, I said, “ If you can make a platoon sergeant tomorrow I’ll stay. Otherwise I’m
going home.” Told him, I said, see when I was there I was a carpenter and I had to have
a lot of guys that I took on duty. They’d go out, and we’d dig toilet holes and latrines,
that’s a latrines place you know. And we had work details and picking up buts and all
that stuff. Well, I usually took those details and I was in charge of them because I was a
carpenter, and I had more time than the others to do those things. These guys usually
were in trouble, they done something where they got put on detail, so they’d send them to
me and I’d find something for them to do. Well, it got to be where I couldn’t— they
wouldn’t do what I told them. So I walked into the Captain’s office one day and he said,
“ I understand you’re having trouble with the guys that I send out on these duties and
stuff.” And he said, “ What’s going on.” And I said, “ They just don’t want to do what
I’m doing. They just think I’m a PSC.” He said, “ You’re not anymore. As far [ as] we’re
concerned you’re a first sergeant.” He says, “ Fold these strips up and put them in your
pocket. Nobody wore strips out there because the Japanese seen you, why the more strips
you had the deader you was going to be.
But I never, ever got it. When I came home they took them away from me. But,
32 years after I was out, why I come to find out that the Commandant in the Marine
Corps was my OP officer in the Second World War, and I didn’t even know that.
Lieutenant Gage wound up being Commandant of the Marine Corps, and he remembered
me. Ed Hoag called him to talk about me to him and read my discharge to him. He
asked Ed Hoag to ask me if I was a battery carpenter. And I told him, “ Yeah,” and he
said, “ He wants to know if you don’t remember him. He was your OP officer.” And
then it comes to me and I said, “ Yeah, I remember him.” And he said, “ Well that’s who
I’m talking to. He’s Commandant of the Marine Corps now.” But he told Ed Hoag that I
could have either master sergeant stripes or first sergeant stripes and I could wear them to
the meetings and stuff. But couldn’t be real active or anything like that. He just give me
back what he knew I’d have there. But, I never had anyway of proving it, that it was,
except Nora ( his daughter) found out, I think, that it was Gage. She served under General
Gage, and she knew him. That was 32 years after I’d got out. But they did straighten out
a lot of them, give to the guys that didn’t get them. See, all I had was the spot rating, that
meant when I left the outfit they, it was gone. What else was it you wanted to know?
KF: I can’t really think of any more questions, unless you have some experiences you’ve
remembered that you’d like to share?
CF: Well, all I know is it was a just war as far as I’m concerned. I was in San Diego
when they dropped the atomic bomb, and I was glad they did it. That meant I didn’t have
to go back over there. And I was glad for the country. We wasn’t going to have to lose
anymore lives. It caused the Japanese to surrender. And then two days after they
dropped, they dropped the second one why, I was on my way home. Of course I wasn’t
out of the Marine Corps yet, ‘ cause I had to go home for a furrow and then come back to
Clearfield, Utah and be discharged. But, all the guys there were glad that they had
dropped it ‘ cause it stopped the war. I don’t know what it done now ‘ cause it kind [ of]
seems like everybody’s got them. But that’s water under the bridge. That’s for the
government to take care of, so, I support my military and my government and my
President. He’s the commander in chief of our military and I support him. If he ever
does wrong, then it’s up to the Congress and the Senate to take care of it. We got those
kind of stops in the Government to take care of those things. They’re called elections.
You don’t like what one done, you vote against them, and if you like what they done you
vote for them. You understand that, don’t you? Okay, well I don’t know of anything
else. I’ll probably think of a million things afterwards.