Lowder, Lyle J.

              Eric Walz History 300 Collection
Lyle J. Lowder– Life during WWII
By Lyle J. Lowder
October 9, 2002
Box 1 Folder 13
Oral Interview conducted by Kelli Williams
Transcript copied by Maren Miyasaki June 2005
Brigham Young University – Idaho
KW: The date is October 9, 2002, and I am interviewing Brother Lowder, Lyle Lowder.
Brother Lowder, where were you born?
LL: I was born out here in Lewisville, Idaho. Do you know where that is? It is about
thirteen miles out here.
KW: How old were you on December 7, 1941?
LL: Let’s see . . . fifteen years old. I was a freshman in high school.
KW: Freshman in high school? Okay. What do you remember about that day?
LL: Well, I was . . . my mother and I were out visiting my uncle and it came on the radio
that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. And I was young and kind of foolish, and I
got really excited about it, and I remember my Aunt Ila scolded the dickens out of me for
being excited about a war. I wasn’t too bright, I guess. But I remember it was a Sunday,
and we came from church or something. I don’t remember a lot about the time, you
know, but I remember it came on that afternoon, and I think it was Sunday.
KW: What did you think when you heard about the attack . . . on Pearl Harbor and about
the Japanese attacking Pearl Harbor?
LL: Well, it’s like I said, I really at that age didn’t understand the magnitude of what had
happened. And then when they started explaining it. . . I played football in high school
and some of the seniors on the football team after they told me they would be drafted and
probably have to go to war, if the war lasted long enough I would have to go, why and
that some of them might be killed and the reality of it set in. And I don’t remember being
very concerned about it, being fifteen you know. I was an idiot like most fifteen year
olds.
KW: Did you serve in the armed forces in the war then?
LL: I did.
KW: Okay.
LL: The draft was instigated and when you got eighteen years of age you had to register
to the draft. And then you were classified. And you were 1A or . . . if you were
physically fit and able to go to war, you were classified as 1A and then you were . . .
when the government called for so many men, when your turn come up you went. And I
graduated from high school in 1944 and I… and in June 19... May 1944 and in August I
turned eighteen. So then I had to register to the draft. And on December 27, I was
drafted.
KW: How did you feel when you got drafted? What were your emotions?
LL: Well, I was still kind of stupid. I . . . Let me go back a little ways, during the
summer, during those years, when they attacked on Pearl Harbor, when I finished high
school and was drafted, there were lots of things that were rationed. Sugar was rationed.
Gasoline was rationed. The county commission had control of the rationing. For
example, for gasoline, everybody got one A stamp a week and with that A stamp you
could buy three gallons of gas. And that’s all you got for the week. If you had to have
your car for . . . to go to work, then they calculated how much gas you needed to get to
work and back. Then they issued B stamps that were worth five gallons a piece, and if
you needed more you would get more than one B stamp. See our supply of sugar from
the Hawaiian Islands, those kind of places for sugar cane, why sugar was in short supply,
so that was rationed. I was trying to think of what else was there was something else that
was rationed that you couldn’t get during the war. And the speed limit was 35 miles an
hour. That was the national speed limit because you use less gas . . . at 35. I don’t
remember what the fine was, but it was a pretty stiff fine if you were picked up going
faster. It took a long time to get anywhere. And then in December 27, I was drafted and
they sent me to Fort Douglas, Utah. There was a Navy program, it was called the V6
program. If you were a junior in high school, you could go into that program, and it was
to train aviators, and you could graduate and get your high school graduation ( diploma)
while you were in the service training to be an aviator. And I signed up for that and— I
hated high school pretty much. The only reason I went was to play football.
KW: How did your parents feel about that . . . you signing up?
LL: Oh, my dad didn’t care, I don’t think. I don’t remember how they felt. In fact, I
don’t even know if they even told me. Anyway, they put me on the Portland Rose. That
was a steam engine train, and it was the fastest one in the country. I got on it at Pocatello
and went to Portland for a physical and I went. The first test they give was for color
blind, and I was color blind. So they turned around and shipped me back home. So then
I waited and went back again. I was drafted in December 1944 and went down to Fort
Douglas. And I remember you asked me how I felt, I was still pretty stupid about it. I—
You know when you are young you don’t think anything could hurt you… and I thought I
was pretty tough and ah, I remember we went up to Rigby to catch the bus to go to Fort
Douglas. And I remembered my mother and dad both cried, and I couldn’t figure out
what in the heck was the matter with them. My mother and dad were both crying and I
couldn’t figure out what in the heck they were crying about. To me it was kind of
country kin, born and raised on a farm; it was kind of an exciting thing for me. When we
got down to Fort Douglas, why, they put us in some barracks and then they were going to
give us a physical the next day. And ah, then they lined us all up and they counted us off
and then, I don’t remember how the numbers went but all the ones. . . I think all the ones
were assigned to the Navy and the twos to the air force and the rest of us to the army.
And I was one that was put in the army. I remember I was really disgusted because I
wanted to be in the Navy and see the world. And they shipped us, all of us army, put us
on a train and shipped us down to Passa Robles, California and there was an Army base
there called Camp Roberts and that was for our basic training. We… I think we had an
eight week basic training.
KW: Was that pretty intense or. . .
LL: Well, I thought it was when I was there, you know. I really wasn’t used to taken
orders much. But they put you in platoons and I think there was . . . I don’t know how
many men . . . 28, 24, or 48 in a platoon and a platoon sergeant. He thought he was
pretty smart. I wasn’t really excited about a snot nose giving me orders. But they had
their ways.
KW: So what was your rank and your assignments?
LL: I was a PFC at the time.
KW: PFC?
LL: Yea, private first class. That was about as low as you can get.
KW: Then did you go higher than that or. . .
LL: Yea later on but that was quite a while later.
KW: So how long did you stay in the army?
LL: Well, I was in the army… well… I was there… I think I was there eight weeks. I
thought it was pretty tough training but it became apparent to me if you were going to
survive in a war that the guys that were along the side of you was important to help save
your live as you are. Vice versa for them, see. And there were a lot of whiny guys in
there. After I [ was] smart enough to know that I might not survive, I decided I wanted to
survive, and so I joined the paratroopers. That would be like the Green Beret, now. It
was the elite group. They couldn’t draft you in there. You had to volunteer, that’s how.
I thought I was in pretty good shape and so they put us on a train and shipped us down to
Fort Benning in Georgia for paratrooper training. Like I said, I thought I was in pretty
good shape. It didn’t take me long to figure out that I wasn’t. When we got there, we
looked around for the trucks; there wasn’t any trucks to haul us out to the base. We were
informed that we were going to run, and they ran the tail off of us. In the paratroopers
you didn’t ever walk. Everyplace you went you ran. Even if you were going to lunch or
dinner you ran to the dining hall. The first week was eight hours calisthenics, all day
long. They would get you down doing push- ups and it wasn’t how many you could do.
They would get you down about that far off the ground and then they would tell you a
story about their grandpa and make you hold that. Then you would come up and then
they would tell you about their grandma. When I came home, I could do 100 push- ups
and do the last ten, five on each arm. Second week you were there, why, 27 foot towers
and they would put a parachute harness on ya, get 27 feet off the ground and the
parachute harness was hooked to a cable with a pulley on it, and you jump out of there
and you go shoot down on the cable and then they dump ya into a sawdust pit.
KW: Did you really enjoy that?
LL: Ah, no. I hated that. And then the third week you had the 250 feet towers, and they
had great big rings on them, and they open the chute up out in those rings, and then we
would go up the. . . haul you up 250 feet. . . and that was fun. And then the fourth week
you jump out of airplanes and they would . . . you just didn’t go down there and jump.
They would let you sit in what is called the swear shack and let you think about it for a
while, for a couple hours. And then they would take you up there and in the airplane,
jump from about 1300, 1500 feet somewhere around there. You had a reserve chute just
in case it didn’t open. That was really scary. There was 12 men in a stick and you have
to— first man stands in the door and then when you get over the drop zone, why they tap
the first man and out he’d go and everybody runs. You couldn’t stop if you wanted to
after that because you are on a dead run when you hit the door. You have to get out of
there really fast ‘ cause, you don’t want to . . . you spread on the ground too far. You
have to be able to get together. And they want to drop you as low as they can so you
don’t get shot at. Well, after that training was over, we made 13 jumps there, then they
shipped me to Fort Ord California. And then they put us on a ship, and we were on it
about a week, on a tube ship. And then we went out on the Golden Gate Bridge out in the
Pacific Ocean and boy, I’ll tell ya I got sea sick. The Pacific might be very quiet, just
outside of San Francisco that is a rough darn thing. Then we sailed. . . we had to go down
south of the Hawaiian Islands to get out of the Japanese submarine range so we ended up
at the Marshal Islands. A little tiny island called Eniwetok and that was in the news
because that is where we tested some of the bombs, the atomic bombs at Eniwetok after
we were there, of course, hopefully. It’s just a little snot island, I could run across it in
five minutes. The little native kids come out, we would throw money in the water, and
they would dive for it. And we left there and went on up, ended up at the Philippines.
And we were at a place called Angelo Replacement Depot. And we were. . . that was a
staging area for the invasion of Japan. And then the war started to get pretty real to me.
It started before that because two of my friends were killed on Iwo Jima.
KW: They were killed on the what?
LL: On Iwo Jima. That is a little tiny dot of sand in the Ocean that we fought with the
Japanese over. Haven’t you ever seen them raise the flag on Iwo Jima.
KW: Yeah.
LL: And two of my good friends that I played football with were killed there. There was
thousands of men on both sides killed on that little snot piece of land. What we were
trying to do is get close enough to get a bomber based upon Japan, see. And we were
there in the Philippines at this Angelo Replacement Depot, the staging area for the
invasion of Japan, and they dropped the atomic bomb, and the Japanese surrendered.
That saved my life. If we had to invade Japan, that would have been a blood bath on both
sides. That would have been a slaughter. I will always be grateful to President Truman
for dropping the bomb. These idiots that were throwing a protest, I would like to get
them over there and let them get ready to invade Japan and then tell me that they
shouldn’t drop the bomb. There is a lot of screw balls in this country. Then Japan had
conquered Korea in 1945, so then Japan surrendered to us and we had occupied Korea.
This was a long time before the Korean War. And the paratroopers, I had been trained in
booby trap dismantling and so they detached me to the sixth army, and I went into Korea.
Never found any booby traps or anything. The Japanese had cleared out. And I’ll tell
you what I don’t think you’d can even imagine what happens to a country when it is
conquered by another country, especially vicious people like the Japanese were. They
had stripped Korea of everything all over to Japan. The pretty girls were put in brothels
for the pleasure of the Japanese men. And I would just pray that they would never get
conquered. They didn’t have anything. Then the Korean War started and they were
blowing up all those bridges. I couldn’t figure out where they were finding bridges to
blow because I never saw any. We forded the rivers. And they didn’t have any gasoline
and they had these trucks and they are the most interesting trucks. They had a lot of shell
that had oil in it. And those farmers would build a little furnace right behind the cab. Put
the shell in there and pipe the gas in there into their truck. It wouldn’t go very fast
because they couldn’t get enough gas to go in there. It was interesting. And then at that
time, I was a technical sergeant because I was sent to radio school. I had a pretty high IQ
so every time there was a school they would send me. And then, that made me a
technical sergeant. And then I was there in Korea for maybe oh, four or five months and
then they sent me to Yokahama, Japan to power man school. . . to power man school
where I learned diesel engines and generators because wherever we went there was no
power so we had to pretty much make our own. And then they sent me up to Sendi to
chemical weapon school. And I ended up Sapporo Hokkaido. And I didn’t do anything,
just housed in University barracks, and I met the man who was a professor there who
translated the Book of Mormon into Japanese. That was interesting. I was there about
six months and then I got on a ship and came home.
KW: Do you remember the professor’s name at all?
LL: I don’t remember, I am sorry about that. But he was an interesting little guy. I
remember when I first went into Japan. . . you know, people wonder why other countries
hate us and I tell you, our GIs, most of our GIs are great guys, but there are a few idiots
that they raped the girls. We are having trouble with that now in Okinawa. And then
when we go into a country, we destroy their culture and impose ours on it, you know.
That is one of the reasons why they hate us. They are starting to shoot at us in
Afghanistan, you see. That doesn’t surprise me at all. Well, do you have any other
questions?
KW: Sure, did you make any new friends during the war? Any good friendships?
LL: Yeah, I. . . am telling you too much.
KW: No, plenty of time.
LL: When I was in power man’s school in Yokahama I was walking along the railroad
tracks, and I went across the river, there was a kid rowing a boat down the river. He was
a pretty good sized kid. We didn’t like the Japanese very much. I was never rude like
that, but I just thought I would harass him a little. I hollered down, said, “ What the hell
do you think you are doing?” In perfect English he hollered, “ What the hell is it to ya?”
It got my curiosity up so I went on the bank and he rolled over. His father was a
Japanese to England before the war and his mother was English. There name was
Uherra. I made friends with that guy. He was about fourteen and he had a brother about
twelve. And they invited me to their home, and we became really good friends. When I
would have my weekends, why, I would go get those two kids. We climbed Mount Fuji
with those two kids, and they invited me over for dinner. They set this bowl of rice in
front of me, and it had fish heads in it. And it’s eye were still on the fish heads and to
this day, I can’t eat rice. Hillary and Jeffrey Uherra were their names. Then a young
fellow up in Ashton, his name was Wayne Johnson. He was in the paratroopers with me.
We got separated there at the Philippines. But we are really close friends.
KW: Do you know what happened to him?
LL: Yea, he’s, he has a ranch up on Henry’s Lake, and he’s living in Idaho Falls now
with one of his children. Wanted to get married, wife not very old so we had to elope,
and I didn’t have a car so I called Wayne, and he drove us up to Delmont to get married.
There was another boy from out at Mud Lake with the last name of Lindquist. There
were always a few bullies in the services. I spent a lot of time protecting him. I was
pretty good with my dukes. Him and I became good friends ‘ cause some of those
Spanish guys were kind of vociferous so I would just step in- between them and protect
him. We became really good friends, and you know when I came home I never could
find him. Any other questions.
KW: Sure, what were your images of Hitler and Mussolini at that time?
LL: Well, Hitler was the guy that cause all this problem in the beginning. ‘ Cause I hated
him with a passion. I think he was insane, really, what he did to his people. Then of
course treatment of the Jews was a disgrace. We visited not too long ago, my wife and I,
one of those concentration camps. They actually skinned those Jews and made coats out
them. Leather coats out of their hides. I could never understand how anyone could do
that to another person. Can’t understand that kind of hate. Doesn’t make sense to me.
He was insane. I’d fixed him good if I could. At least I would’ve tried.
KW: Did you know any family back at home that never returned from the army, maybe
in your hometown or your community, friends and family, and how did their family cope
with that situation?
LL: Well, it was always hard, you know. What they. . . if a family lost a boy in the war,
they were given a gold star to hang in their window. Quite a few homes had those. And
what would happen is one day they would receive a telegram, and they’d say your son
has been killed in action or lost in action or whatever the situation was. ‘ Course, those
things are always difficult to loose someone. But, I think what happens during a war is
you always know that’s a possibility, and you kind of prepare for it I think. When my
friends were killed, their parents received the telegrams. Those are pretty hard things.
Especially when you know it isn’t really necessary, [ if] you didn’t have an idiot like
Hitler. Mussolini wasn’t any problem. He was an idiot. He didn’t. . . those Italians
couldn’t fight. He was a dude for Hitler.
KW: Did you have any brothers or anything like that serve?
LL: No, I was the oldest one.
KW: The oldest one?
LL: You know, there is another thing about the war… that there was another aspect that
as the war grew o; some men were married or just married or something and got drafted
and had to leave their wives. And I had a cousin, his name was Blair. He was married
and he happened to be at Fort Banning. She was allowed to come there when he shipped
out to go over seas. And I went to see my cousin, and I was on the base and I went to see
him off. Those are tearful things when a husband and wife are separated. You don’t
know if he is coming back. I watched him say goodbye. That really touched me. I. . . all
I had was a silly girlfriend. She wasn’t there when I got back. . . I really didn’t care.
KW: Did you cousin make it back?
LL: Oh, yes. He got back. But those things were hard when... I believe it was harder for
a married man to leave his wife, [ harder] then it was for as parent to let go of their son.
But it was hard for everybody. Those were hard times. And if we go into Iraq and if that
war lasts very long, why, you’ll see that. Those were hard times. And, you see, when
you are a president of United States, and you make the decision to go to war, those are
hard decisions because you’re condemning people to death, you see. Sons and fathers...
so that is why President Bush is struggling so much right now with what to do. He really
don’t want to go, but there doesn’t seem to be an alternative if we want to protect
ourselves.
KW: I know you were a young boy when it first started, but looking back now do you
remember when Hitler first started taking over small countries such as Austria and things
like that? Do you think maybe perhaps the British should of stopped them then or
America even?
LL: Well, it would of cost a lot less lives if they would have, but see you just keep... you
don’t want to commit people to give their lives to fight, and you keep hoping... just like
we are doing now see. Hoping that the idiot will come to his senses and back off.
There’s something wrong with those people, they’re crazy. I can’t believe that right now
I saw with Sadam Hussein, what an idiot. Why don’t he back off. We are going to kill
the pot- licker if we go in. There is something wrong with them. Power... power, people
get power hungry. Joseph Smith talks about that in the Doctrine Covenants. And you see
it all through the Book of Mormon. There is just something wrong with those guys.
They have no regard for life.
KW: How was it like to have all the… I know you were probably gone with the war but,
like having all the men gone off to war? When you were a kid in high school, how was
that? All the boys leave to war, the majority gone.
LL: It was kind of interesting, this Frank Thorndron went into the marines, was drafted
into the marines and when he came home— on furrow coming from over seas. He got a
furrow before he went over. He came home and he’s... and those marine uniforms are
pretty snappy. I just wasn’t too bright about what was going on and what the
consequences were.
KW: Do you remember listening to the radio about things that were going on during the
war.
LL: Oh, yes. Everybody followed it. The radio would say, “ Hello Mr. and Mrs.
American, all the ships [ are] at sea,” and they would tell you what the situations were.
I’ll tell you what, that invasion at Normandy on the beach that was a blood bath.
KW: Do you remember hearing that battle on the radio?
LL: Well we didn’t hear over there. But we did know that when the war ended . . . the
war ended in Europe before in Europe before it did on the South Pacific. Okay? We
knew it was over and those troops would be coming over to help us. But before I went
my mom and dad, we would listen to the radio every night to find out what was
happening. Those darn U- boats, those submarines really caused us a lot of trouble,
especially in the Atlantic. In the Pacific, like I told you, we could go south of Hawaii and
get out of their range, you see. There was a lot of people lost— troop ships being some.
All those being reported on the news, you know? And then they would get a report on
how many were lost, over in Germany. And then Hitler started bombing Great Britain.
There are some interesting songs, “ When lights go on again all the world… there will be
blue birds over the White Cliffs. Sentimental Journey.” The stars and singers wrote
music to fit the occasion. So on the home front— and they used to have to finance the
war, they would sell war bonds. When I was home before I was drafted at the basketball
games, why, they would sell war bonds and people would bid on the bonds, and we
would cash them in after the war, but until she could provide the money— the money to
fight the war, [ they] sold war bonds. That was interesting. On the home front, everybody
was pitching in and then we had to build ships like crazy, and women went to work in the
ship yard.
KW: Did any of you moms or aunts or sisters. . ?
LL: Some of my aunts did, but my mother didn’t. We were farmers. So we was… I
remember I sure worked awfully hard. There was a CP factory in town. Most able
bodied men were gone so I worked in the CP factory.
KW: So how old were you?
LL: I was 15, 16, 17 but during the summer [ I] went there and those pea bags weighed a
hundred and sixty five pounds. It was almost as tall as I.
KW: And what did you do in the factory?
LL: Oh, well we would harvest peas and then we ran them over vibrators to clean the
seed up, bag them, and shipped them off to the planters. Everybody worked, but it took
so much labor to build the ships and that, that there wasn’t much labor left in the areas.
So all of us young kids had to put in the extra effort to take up the slack, especially in the
summers when the harvest was going on. We were out of school. Oh, I was trying to
think of some other things I could tell you about.
KW: Now when they bombed Hiroshima, do you remember that day at all? The feelings
you had?
LL: Well, I was in that replacement depot.
KW: Do you remember how old you were?
LL: I would be about 19. Of course, you know, we didn’t know how powerful that bomb
was. We’d been bombing Japan before that, but conventional bombs because we
conquered Okinawa so we had to get there base together. But the first bombing was
Nolagay— was a bomber and we went… we didn’t have enough gas to go in and back out
so we went in and over to China and landed. That was interesting. But we had this
vision of Japan being a bunch of paper houses, that if we dropped one it would burn the
whole island, but that wasn’t really true. But it was just a bunch of nonsense ( laughs).
Anything else?
KW: I know we have probably covered this, but what are some of your most vivid
memories you have of World War II experiences that really stand out in your mind? I
know you probably already shared, but specifically vivid memories of World War II,
maybe being there in the Philippines or in Korea.
LL: Well, I think some of the most vivid memories was like I told you about the country
being conquered. Those little kids… we had a bunch of… outside of our army base in
Korea we had a bunch of little orphans. They’d get around and beg for food, and there
wasn’t orphanages. We rectified that when we got orphanages— but we would get a
refrigerator or something had a big box around it. We would throw it over the fence, and
those kids would make a shelter… it would get cold in the winter in the middle of the
night. And I remember I felt sorry for a couple of them. One of them was called
Ishimbea. The other one I didn’t know his name, but so I called him Charley. And I
snuck them onto the base. I had a radio shack, and snuck them onto the base, kept them
in the radio shack. I’d steal some extra food out of the mess hall and take it to Ishimbea
and Charley. And when I got transferred to Japan they had to go back out the fence [ and
they] started begging again. When I left they cried and so did I and I saw some real
poverty. That probably stands out in my mind more than anything. And then the way
those GIs treated those Japanese girls. Then… other than that I think I told ya everything,
but I think those two things… I was born and raised in poverty, I thought. I never seen
anything like that. Well, I will have to tell you one story I used to tell to my students.
When I get homesick if it would rain or something, I would go for a walk in the rain, and
[ it would] kind of soothe the homesickness. One day the garbage truck came by. And it
was raining, so they hollered and asked if I wanted to ride in the truck. They used to take
a bulldozer, dig a hole and then they would cover the garbage up. It had been raining,
and there was water in the hole. The garbage was floating around in there. When we got
the garbage dumped I looked back and the hills were moving. People were coming from
all over. Korean natives used to carry their babies strapped around their backs. And I
saw mothers with babies on their backs digging around like animals for scraps [ of]
garbage. Little kids didn’t have any shoes on just a cloth around their loins. That didn’t
last very long either because we took care of that because we started feeding them. I
don’t know… people would question if I was telling the truth. I’ll tell you that’s the
honest truth. That was the worst part of the war. Those little orphan kids. That was
mostly in Korea. Japan wasn’t that bad. But here again you see it conquered, had been
conquered. I used to hear them say, “ Better red then dead.” I used to think you dumb
pot- licker you, you don’t have the slightest idea what you’re saying. I’d rather be dead
then red because I have seen what’s happened to them.
KW: Red?
LL: Oh, communist. Russian, I would rather be red then dead, you dumb pot- licker, you
don’t have any idea. You’d rather be dead then red if you weren’t smart enough. Stalin
killed millions of his own people. What do you think he would of done to us? What do
you think he would of really done to us? You see a conquered nation, and it’s pitiful.
Don’t ever want to see that. I’m sorry.
KW: No, you’re fine.
LL: I shouldn’t of gotten on that. I had a hard time with that.
KW: Was there something else you wanted to share?
LL: No, any questions I hadn’t lied about? ( Laughs) No, I told you the honest truth.
KW: Did you ever feel in danger when you volunteered for the paratroopers. Maybe you
were… well I guess you felt danger, I guess.
LL: Every time I jumped I was scared to death.
KW: What were your feelings when you volunteered for the paratroopers?
LL: I just felt I had a better chance [ of] surviving the war if I had well trained men along
the side of me. And then, if I was well trained, if I could hit what I shot at, you know, we
had the best weapons, so I was a… You know I never doubted in my mind that we would
win that war. I had a lot of faith in our country. I never doubted that we wouldn’t win
that war. I’ll tell you what, even if they invaded us they’d… with all the guns we got, all
the hills we got, I don’t think anybody could of conquered us, but I am not sure about that
right now. I just don’t… I don’t know if we got the will anymore. I don’t think [ it has]
the kind of fibers it once was. Maybe it is… maybe I set up short. But we… it’s kind of
like the Book of Mormon, too much affluence. We had so much… I think there’s
not… In those years of World War II and World War I we had the family farms. We
didn’t have all the machinery to do all the work in the cities. People worked hard. Now
we mostly work our brain. We don’t work ourselves physically. We’ve had too much. I
remember we were so poor that… this has nothing to do with the war, but I remember
some of the kids would get a nickel on Sunday for candy; the rest of us would have to
watch them eat their candy. And my mother and dad wanted to go to Rigby to the show
they would have to catch a ride with somebody, didn’t have a car. Now there is a brand
new Cadillac sitting there in that driveway, a new Chevrolet truck, and my wife got a
Buick, and my folks have to catch a ride. Cost a quarter to go to the show, and they
would have a hard time finding a quarter. You see, we are just not… it’s different. The
affluence has made us soft. Boy, I think we would be alright, but I don’t think we could
do it as easily as we did it before. Now we got smart bombs, we do it with technology I
guess. They don’t have to do it with their backs anymore. What do you think about that?
We sure got a lot of good equipment to fight a war with. I don’t know we probably… but
I never doubted we’d win that war at anytime. It never even crossed my mind that we
wouldn’t win. Well, I guess you listened to me long enough.