- Collection:
- Veterans History Project: Oral History Interviews
- Title:
- Oral history interview of Buell Wallace Gifford
- Creator:
- Gantsoudes, Lillian
Gifford, Buell Wallace, 1924-2006 - Date of Original:
- 2003-10-22
- Subject:
- Browning automatic rifle
Silver Star
World War, 1939-1945--Campaigns--Japan--Okinawa Island
Segregation--United States
Baseball
Typhoons
Lightning (Fighter plane)
World War, 1939-1945--personal narratives, American
Gifford, Vonda, 1940-
Gifford, Jesse O., 1886-
Gifford, Amlia, 1897-
Skelton, Red, 1913-1997
Hale, LaVoight Frasier, 1924-2008
DeVito, Unknown, Sergeant
Easley, Claudius Miller, 1891-1945
MacArthur, Douglas, 1880-1964
United States. Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944
Japan. Kaigun. Kamikaze Tokubetsu Kogekitai
United States. Army. Infantry Division, 96th
United States. Army. Infantry Regiment, 382nd. Battalion, 3rd. Company I
Deere & Company
United States. Army. Army, 8th. Headquarters
Reynolds Metals Company
Kamikaze
Lockheed P-38 Lightning (fighter)
John Deere - Location:
- Japan, Kadena Air Base, 26.3555999, 127.7675
Micronesia, Yap, 7.556, 146.12854124
Papua New Guinea, Manus Province, Admiralty Islands, -2.2235542, 147.0182858
Philippines, 13.40882, 122.56155
Philippines, Mindoro, 12.8692137, 121.134575750245
United States, Arkansas, Faulkner County, Conway, 35.0887, -92.4421
United States, California, Contra Costa County, Camp Stoneman, 38.00742, -121.92107
United States, Colorado, Denver County, Lowry Air Force Base (historical), 39.72306, -104.89194
United States, Georgia, 32.75042, -83.50018
United States, Georgia, Atlanta Metropolitan Area, 33.8498, 84.4383
United States, Hawaii, Maui, 20.8029568, -156.310683316022
United States, Missouri, Dunklin County, Clarkton, 36.45173, -89.96704
United States, Missouri, Dunklin County, Malden Army Air Field (historical), 36.60056, -89.99111
United States, Missouri, Saint Louis County, Jefferson Barracks, 38.50283, -90.28039
United States, Texas, Smith County, Camp Fannin, 32.42367925, -95.2112318132556 - Medium:
- video recordings (physical artifacts)
mini-dv - Type:
- MovingImage
- Format:
- video/quicktime
- Description:
- In this interview, Buell Gifford recalls his service in the U.S. Army in the Pacific during World War II. At the outbreak of war, he had been working on a degree in agriculture. His father owned land in Missouri that the government took to build an airfield; his uncle had to help his father with the tractor payments before the government paid for the land. He was drafted, but deferred a few months because his father was ill, and was eventually called up in spite of it. In Hawaii, he completed six weeks of jungle training in preparation for invasions in the Pacific. He recalls the hardships of battle, including a lack of provisions. At one point, they were reduced to eating raw field corn. He also describes war atrocities on both sides. He remembers their entertainment and receiving packages from home. He describes segregation in the Army and recalls an incident while returning home in which a black sergeant was robbed by two policemen. He describes his work and pastimes after the war and shares his feelings about the United States Marine Corps.
Buell Gifford was an infantryman in the Pacific during World War II.
BUELL GIFFORD VETERANS HISTORY INTERVIEW Atlanta History Center October 22, 2003 Interviewer: Lillian Gantsoudes Transcriber: Stephanie McKinnell Lillian Gantsoudes: This is a veteran's oral history interview on October 22, 2003. My name is Lillian Gantsoudes. I will be doing the interview. Our veteran today is Buell Wallace Gifford, and his daughter is also with us today, Sandra Gifford. Mr. Gifford, thank you very much for being with us. To start off the interview, if you would give us your full name and date and place of birth. Buell Gifford: Buell Wallace Gifford. And I was born in Conrad, Arkansas, June 19, 1924. LG: Was your family from Arkansas? What was that like, was that where you grew up? BG: No, I left when I was about three years old. I moved to Missouri, my dad and mother were school teachers. And my dad farmed then, on a farm. LG: And so what was it like growing up on a farm? BG: It was hard work, but I liked to farm. LG: Did you have any siblings? BG: Yeah. LG: Brothers or sisters? BG: I had a sister. LG: A sister, what's her name? BG: Rhonda Gifford. LG: Tell me your parents' names. BG: Jessie Gifford and Andy Gifford. LG: Is there anything significant growing up on the farm, going to school, any stories that you'd like to tell us about that? BG: No, not really. My sister was a real smart person, and she's unique because I can prove it because I have her report card. She graduated from grade school and high school and college as valedictorian of her class and made all straight A's. She was in Who's Who in American Colleges and Universities, and I can truthfully say that she is as intelligent and wise as anybody I've ever known. And I can say that, and my daughter can tell you the same thing. LG: Well, tell me something about you going to school, what kind of grades did you get? BG: I did make three grades the first year I went to school. LG: When did you graduate from high school? BG: I graduated when I was 16 years old. LG: What high school did you graduate from? BG: Clarkton High School, Clarkton, Missouri. LG: And did you go on to college? BG: No, I took, after I got out of service, I went to college and got a degree in agriculture though. Sandra Gifford: Dad, it might be interesting to tell the story of who you were named after. BG: Named after Buell Gifford, my dad is an orphan boy, and he raised him, and I was named after him, Buell. SG: And tell that story about how he came to live with your father and mother. BG: My father's first wife died when he was young, oh, not very young, 37 years old, and my mother was a school teacher. She was only 24, 25 years old, and he was going to get married, and the guy I'd been talking about, this nephew, Buell, he lived with uncle, he just hated him, and he wanted to come and live with my dad. And my dad said, well, I referred it to my wife, and he said I can't take you in, he went home and cried all the way home. He rode a horse they said through snow about a foot deep for twelve miles ____ and back and my mother told him if he wants to live with us, you go get him and we'll raise him. And he went to Conway, Arkansas, and he became a teacher. LG: How old was Buell when he was adopted? BG: Twelve. Twelve years old. Twelve years old. LG: That's wonderful. BG: And he also, he raised an ____ who was an orphan, his dad got bit by a dog and rabies took over and killed him. LG: So at the time of the war, were you married? BG: No, I went in the service when I was 19 years old. LG: So from the time you graduated from high school, then it was three years before you went in service. Were you working on your dad's farm? BG: Yeah. And I'll tell you about the government took my dad out of two farms, they took it for landing strips for the airplanes to fly around there. LG: Well, tell us about that. BG: Well, they took our farms and they didn't take a cent in, give us any money or anything. Cut down the trees and cut down the crops, we didn't have no money or nothing. And they, we helped move, my dad had bought a tractor and he was supposed to pay for it, a John Deere tractor, and he wrote and told them he didn't have any money and they forced him to, he was going to have to pay for it. And my uncle, at that time, not many years later, he was a millionaire, and he paid that thing off for him. And my dad, my dad bought little outbuildings and farm, I mean outbuildings and a house and a farm for $150. And we moved the thing about four miles away on down the road, three bedroom house. LG: And so the government just came in and said . . . BG: They paid off later. LG: Oh, they did pay off later. BG: Yeah, but we didn't have any money then. LG: And how long did they use it for a landing strip? BG: It's still there. LG: A landing strip? BG: No, it's an emergency landing strip. LG: Did they have a name for this landing strip? BG: No, its just Marlin, Missouri. The field was in Marlin, about ten miles away. LG: Tell me, were you drafted or did you enlist? BG: Well, I was drafted. LG: Tell me the story about getting drafted. BG: Well my dad was real bad off at that time because he worked off the farm and you know he didn't have anybody to help him, and I got deferred for a few months and then they just said they had to have somebody, had no options, had to take everybody almost. And I was drafted then. LG: When was that? BG: That was like I said, in October, no, not '46, '43 or '42, I'm not positive. LG: 1942. BG: Yeah. LG: So what happened, so you were deferred for a couple of months and then did you go to basic? BG: Yeah, I took basic training, went to Camp Fannin, Texas. LG: Tell me about basic training. BG: Well, it was seventeen weeks of infantry training, firing machine guns, mortars, and all like that. LG: What was the, where did you stay, what were the barracks like? BG: They were good barracks. LG: Do you remember anything specific about them? BG: Just a lot of beds in there. LG: What was the food like? BG: Food was good. They always, they served 20,000 people in one mess hall in four sections, and it was real good. I mean you could, you'd, everything was washed and cleaned everyday, I mean after they eat, and mopped the floors and all like that. LG: What were these days like? I mean you could come from a farm and now you're in the army, you're in the service, what was that like? BG: Well, it was pretty good. I met a lot of guys there. I slept with a guy one time, I said, it was an older guy, I said, “what did you do before you went in?” he said, “Hi, my name's Tom. You ever see Tom's Peanuts, that's me.” [Tom Huston Peanut Company, based in Columbus, Georgia] He owned that place. And I made friends with a guy that was in Texas, he was older than me quite a bit, he owned a big herd of cattle there and I made friends pretty well. LG: What were the instructors like? BG: They were pretty good. LG: Do you remember any instructors? BG: Well, I remember one of them, he was a little old sergeant, not a sergeant, a corporal. He said I was doing something bad, infraction, I didn't do it right, _________. I didn't like that, but I learned to overlook that, you know. LG: After Camp Fannin, Texas, where did you go? BG: I went to Camp Stoneman near Richmond, California. LG: And what were you doing there? BG: I was getting ready to go overseas. I got a ship, a brand new ship, we went to the Hawaiian islands unescorted. LG: Well, now tell me, you are in the army, what group were you with? BG: The 96th Infantry Division. LG: And what was your infantry training, what were they teaching you? BG: How to shoot and how to bayonet and karate and how to fire machine guns and how to survive and anything you can think of. LG: Was there anything in your training that particularly stood out? BG: Well, I'll tell you, everything they did was good. You had to learn a lot of things yourself. If you, the way they taught me, I thought just lying the beach and you'd be dead in one hour, but if you use your head, you can survive, but if you don't you aren't going to last. I went through the war, never got a scratch, never got wounded or nothing. LG: Well, that's just wonderful. You left California, you said you went on an unescorted boat to Hawaii. BG: Took six weeks of jungle training. LG: In Hawaii. BG: Yeah. LG: What was that like? BG: Well, it was a jungle there. We had a mock landing on Maui, it's a big island there. And you, of course, did not give anybody any information. If they asked what outfit, a lot of people giving, they get lost, don't give them any information. There was one guy, he asked me one time, he got lost and he was an officer, said “what outfit is this?” I said “It's company X, what the devil do you care.” He didn't like that and he went and talked to the company commander and said, “ ___ that guy over there, you been telling him to keep quiet?” _____. He didn't like it though. LG: After Hawaii where did you go? BG: We went to ____ island on Yap Island and sent some spies in there and the Japanese had left. We waited and fought there, went island hopping to get to Japan so we didn't know what to do, and they went to the Altamonte islands, just right below the equator, 2 degrees below the, closest place on earth near the sun and stayed there for two weeks and planned to land in Leyte in the Philippines and MacArthur . . . LG: So you were supporting General MacArthur? BG: Yeah. LG: Did you see combat? BG: Oh, yeah. LG: Tell me about combat. COUNTER 136 BG: Well, when we went in, there was quite an experience. They told us to drop your full packs and we'll bring them on up to you tonight. Well, they didn't know there was this jungle and it rained all night and they couldn't do it, and we didn't have any food. Well, we didn't have any for five days really. Five days, that's the only time I ever didn't have any food, and they dropped it, parachuted it in and they'd just give you a big spoonful and that was it. I know one time, when I was getting there, I was traveling for the five days, we ate some field corn, just raw, you know, you're hungry, you can… and we had just a canteen of water. And when it was gone, we had to dip it out of the mud and that stuff _____ had ____ on top of it, you'd pull it unpurified with the worms and everything. But it was pure you know. LG: What was your job, what was your assignment? BG: Well, when I went in, I was a Browning automatic rifleman in combat. And that's kind of like a machine gun that fires twenty clips, just pull the trigger and had a ____ full of stuff like that. And that's where I got this silver star here, right here. LG: It shows in that picture? BG: Yeah. LG: When did you get this silver star? BG: It don't tell on there, I don't know. It's in '43. LG: 1943? BG: They've got this wrong, got 383rd Infantry, it was 382nd. LG: We have a copy of this? BG: Yes. I got that for, I, two Jap machine guns trapped a battalion and they couldn't move and I was the only one had something to stop them all and I killed those Jap machine gunners and we, one of the guys in the pictures right here was my, right here, was my weapon carrier. ____ ammunition and there was bullets going all around and they couldn't get him up there, he was scared to death,, he finally got over it though. COUNTER 170 LG: I see five people in the picture, are you in that picture? BG: I'm that tallest one in the middle. LG: And then, so who are the other guys? BG: A guy beside of me, he was the one that weapon carrier, and this one on the end was a sergeant too, and he's the one I named my son after. LG: What's his name? BG: Deville, Sergeant Deville. And this one on the left is ____, hunted for me for fifty-eight years, he had nightmares about the war. We fought together and dug in the foxholes. LG: Would this be a good time to tell us that story, tell us the story about the fellow searching for you? BG: Well, that was the end of that. LG: You've talked about him, just go on and tell us the story. BG: You don't want to talk about it but I'll go back… LG: We'll get back to it. [All talking at once.] BG: He had been searching for me for fifty-eight years and he couldn't find me and he… LG: He, say his name again. BG: Lavoyt Hale. LG: Lavoyt Hale. BG: Tuscaloosa, Alabama. LG: So Mr. Hale was looking for you. BG: And the funny part about it is, my best friend, one of my best friends, went out to eat that day and we was talking about him. He liked to drown in the water, he was a little guy. I told him “____.” I was kidding, you know. And he remembered that, and two hours later he called me, he says he bought his wife a computer, he didn't know nothing about it. And one of his friends said you can find anybody you want to on the computer. In fifteen minutes he found it. And he called me up and said “Did you,” said, “did you fight in World War II in the 96th Division?” I said “yeah” and he told me 382nd Regiment and all that bit. He told me his name and I knew that was him. And he was tickled to death, he had all them nightmares. LG: What kind of nightmares? BG: Well, about the war. But one thing about me that's unique I've never dreamed about anything, I could watch a movie or anything, never dream about it, never, never. LG: Well, you have a newspaper in front of you, what's that, why have you got the newspaper? BG: Well, it was an article was in here. SG: About your reunion. BG: Yeah, fifty-eight years, where is that? LG: With Mr. Hale? BG: Yeah, right down here. And this part, about fifty-eight years. Open it up. SG: The article came out on the anniversary of the invasion of Normandy, and this is my father's piece. BG: Show it down inside there. SG: Also inside… BG: Fifty-eight years. SG: Reunion after 58 years. Veteran… BG: This is me right here. SG: That's in front of his house. LG: What is the date of the paper, and what paper are we looking at? SG: This is the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Friday, June sixth, 2003. BG: And this is a picture there in Tuscaloosa. SG: At his house. LG: So who's in the picture, is that you in the middle? BG: Yeah. LG: And Mr. Hale… BG: Yeah, and that's my daughter over there. LG: That's a wonderful story, a wonderful story. And the wonders of computers. That was a great story, let's go back to the war. BG: OK. LG: You're in combat in the Philippines? BG: Yes. I got that picture you made right there, I got that, a big parade and there was a bunch of people that was given awards, and before we went to Okinawa. We went to… LG: Did you see any casualties? BG: What's that? LG: Did you see any casualties? BG: Man, have I seen casualties, there were thousands of them, thousands of them. LG: What was that like? BG: Horrible. The one thing that I found out, and I want to emphasize it, but a lot of volunteers, some people don't need to be in service, they haven't got the smarts up here. And again, some of them as officers. One of them, when I first went in, he was a sergeant, I'll never forget it. We hadn't went in very far ___ a little hut, and there was three people there, a man and a woman and a young girl, and this guy, friend of mine, said “What do you want to do with this little man?” And this sergeant told him, said, “Get rid of him. Don't you know better, use a bayonet.” He just took a bayonet and run it through him like that. I'll never forget it, the blood just gushed like that. And that guy, he never forgot that, he never did. And then another time, and it was a sergeant that did that, ___ it was an older woman carrying some clothes on her head, and she, he killed that, just shot her because his buddy got killed. He had nothing to do with it. And another time, a different story about this guy was a colonel, I know I was right by a foxhole when he was calling back behind the lines telling them to take that hill up there. He sent three squads out, one squad killed everyone of the, second killed everyone, and third one killed every one of them. And he said, “This general back behind the line said you've got to take that hill at all costs.” He said, “I'm not taking this hill at all costs, it's a suicide, and you can court martial if you want to but I'm not taking it,” and he didn't. They didn't do nothing with him either. But there was a lot of people that's just not fit to be in service. SG: Tell about the man you knew who was supposed to stand guard. BG: Oh, it was a friend of mine that was supposed to stand guard, he was a designer for Ford Motor Company, he was a very brilliant person. LG: Do you remember his name? BG: No, I don't. But he was supposed to be guarding the 8th Army headquarters. We'd been back in a rest area for a while. And he was, it had an outdoor theater, and he went over to look at that and they called him over there. The guards, I mean somebody checked on him and they gave him a court martial, gave him 99 years in the stockade. Nice guy. But I'm sure he didn't serve it all, they do that as an example. When the war is over, it's all over, you know. But they can, there was three, I know there was one four-star general and two three-star generals that he was guarding there. LG: Are there any other memorable experiences? BG: Well, on Okinawa, one time we was digging in on a hill on this, ____ he wanted to dig in holes with me when three of us would dig in, stand guard, and he wanted to dig up on a hill there, and I said “No, the artillery will get us.” And I finally talked him into down below a little bit. And that night, when we was digging, the artillery settled it, right in there, covered us up with dirt. If we'd have been there, it'd have killed all three of us. In fact, we got out of there and I was talking to them on the way back. I said “What happened to the third guy?” He said, “He's probably still covered up. I don't remember what happened to him.” _______. And also they, we got up to the end of the island and they started firing these rockets, flying boxcars called the screaming ____, its like a siren, it's honestly as big as a boxcar coming in the air projected like that. And you could outrun them because they'd just come over and you could run off to the side. But I've got a picture of that, where's that at? SG: This explosion maybe? BG: No, no, no. SG: I'm not sure what you're describing. BG: There's a hole, it's a horrible hole. Well, it don't make any difference. SG: The picture with the hole… LG: Are any of these pictures that you want to show us? SG: You can just go through it and you might just see the one picture. BG: Well, here's one. The Philippines were some casualties, some of them blowed right up in two. LG: That photo that you're showing us, the Philippines. BG: Yeah, that's the Philippines. Here's ___ on Okinawa, we lost about 13,000 people there in our division. We had a general that was killed. LG: Do you remember the general's name? BG: Easley, a one star general. We got a picture of that ____ right here, they had a ceremony there, right on Okinawa. LG: And that's when he had died, this is the ceremony. BG: Yeah. And here's one of MacArthur signing the peace treaty on the battleship Missouri with the Japanese. LG: Were you on the… a picture you took. BG: No, I got this from a war correspondent. This right here is a Filipino, and that's a Jap ____ right there. The Jap had him to climb a coconut tree and when he was drinking the coconut, he took a machete and cut his head off. LG: And is that a picture you took? BG: No. Here's, I don't know whether you want to show that or not. Here's one right here that I, I don't know do we want to do it detailed. I was, this is an uncle I never seen, he was a real intelligent person, he had a Ph.D. in history I think. And I wrote this on April 18, 1945, and I never mailed it. I didn't know it that I had a box that I kept my papers in, and _____ I looked in there, and I never, I hadn't mailed it. And what I figured out, there was an artillery ___ in back and I said “call it a day” and I never mailed it. And that was wrote on April 18, 1945. SG: Why don't you read that last paragraph, or do you want me to read it. BG: Yeah, you read it. SG: It says… LG: I want to ____ show you while you read it. SG: I'll read the last portion of it. “The soil is pretty rich here. They grow a lot of cabbage, sweet potatoes, sugar cane, carrots, and all sorts of vegetables. We've been getting a lot better food here than we did in the Philippines. They have different kinds of foods in the rations that we get than we used to have. The boys all like the new type of rations. We have had donuts several times here also. I sure don't see how Germany can hold out over two more weeks. They sure are getting close to Berlin. There is some Japanese mortar shells landing pretty close now so I guess I'd better get in my foxhole and call it a day. As ever was.” BG: Just recently, about two or three months ago, I opened that box up and seen that. LG: Thank you for that. Did you stay in touch with your family? Did you write many letters home? BG: Oh, yeah, that's one of my most important things for soldiers. People who don't even know anybody, if they want to do something for somebody, I've never seen anybody who was so depressed when they have mail call because it would be a month before you'd get any mail and you wouldn't have any. You know, somebody'd get a bunch of mail and they didn't get any. I wrote everybody I knew, my uncles and aunts and they kept all the letters I wrote. That's really important, though. LG: You mentioned at one point that there was five days you went without any food. Otherwise, did you have plenty of supplies? BG: The supplies, ____ they couldn't get it up to us but they finally parachuted it in. LG: What about the rest of the… BG: I did alright. And you know, tin cans, but I didn't get sick or nothing. SG: Tell about the time a friend got chocolates in the mail. BG: Oh, one guy got some chocolates on Okinawa and they had worms in it and he was going to throw it away. I told ____, I says, “Don't throw it away.” Said I'll eat it. And he did too. LG: Worms and all. What did you all do to sort of entertain yourselves? BG: Well, when we'd get back in a rest area, they had put up outdoor screens, thousands of them, would be setting out watching. And one time, Yokohama back in the rest area, they had that ____ down below and sitting up on the hillside seeing it. And it was pretty good, but entertainment had a lot of people come through, a lot of celebrities even. LG: Any celebrities that you remember seeing? BG: Yeah, I seen, well I took basic training with Red Skelton. LG: Oh, okay. BG: And I seen, I can't recall, but I seen some of them in California. But I know one thing I found out later that they'd been ___ planning on after we went… another thing, now, this is kind of interesting. The black and whites were separated in World War II, and we, when the war was over, we got on, I got the ship to come back on Christmas Eve Day in 1945 and they put all the sergeants in one place and all the privates in another. Because they had a lot of animosity, they'd kill them, you know. LG: And you were a sergeant? BG: Yeah. And they had the blacks with us, but I made friends with a black guy. He was a tech, I mean he was a 1st sergeant. And I never will forget when I was discharged in Jefferson's Barracks, Missouri, I was left there one night and he was taking me, I was riding in a cab, and two policemen stopped us and grabbed him and slammed him up against the, he had a uniform on too, and searched him, and I didn't know what was going on. Found out, I guess we got a lot of mustering out pay, cash about $400 around him, but they didn't bother me, but I thought that was a bad thing to do, to treat him like that you know. But I know one thing about the, what happened was going to happen, we was getting ready to go away to Japan when they dropped the atomic bomb, and they had three hundred of these big shells that would knock a hole, man, that's one hundred foot deep.aAnd they were going to use them on the Americans, and they had _____. They claimed the first day we'd lose a million people, gosh, a million people. ____ everybody that could ____ Japanese did, so that bomb saved a lot of lives, it killed a lot of people, but it saved a lot of lives. LG: What, when you heard that the bomb had been dropped, where were you? BG: I was on a boat going to M___ Island. LG: And what was the reaction of people on the boat? BG: Nothing. The reason why was the guy from Louisiana, he was a big windbag and he's telling how powerful that, bulletin board, he told how much powerful it was and TNT and all that, went yeah, yeah, yeah. The next day when we landed, well, they had found out, you know, they took all the guns away from us and _____, I was telling about the sergeants in danger, they had a, when we was there, a regiment, and they had a guy, I don't know who it was, he ____ strung up four guys while I was there, I called him the ____. LG: Do you remember anything else about Okinawa, or have you got some pictures? BG: Well, this is, yeah, here's… One thing about the Japanese, they really did not try to infiltrate through our lines, and they'd take the civilians and women, put their babies on the back and you couldn't tell who was coming through. And you'd shoot and then the babies would still be there and cry. That really got on your nerves. SG: Dad, would you like me to read what's on the back of this photograph? BG: No, it's too much. SG: On the back, it's April 15, 1945. Japanese civilians on Okinawa waiting to be taken behind the lines to a civilian stockade. Notice how many of them are wounded and have been bandaged up. A lot of the Japanese civilians were killed and wounded from our artillery barrages and the strafing from our planes. BG: One thing about the Americans, regardless of when they ____, they had superior weapons over the Japanese and ___ any of the countries. They had those P-38's, had those five machine guns right in the ____, the Japanese Zero, just flies like that, gone. SG: Tell about how the Japanese tried to trick… BG: They'd yell American names, John, John, help me, help me, help me, help me, I'm bleeding to death. You didn't dare get up, get out. LG: Where were they hiding? BG: Well, they were out in front. SG: And up in trees, would they hide up in the trees? BG: They did in the Philippines, they would, sharpshooters sat there. This is a flamethrower right here, they burned people up getting in the stockade now. LG: This is a picture from where. BG: That's on the Philippines. LG: And what's this picture of? BG: A flamethrower getting in behind a stockade. LG: Are there any other stories that you want to tell about your service before we bring you back home? SG: Dad, tell about the, was it during the battle of Leyte that the sky just lit up like in the… BG: Oh, yeah. No, not Leyte, on Okinawa, when they ____, there was the biggest storm on our ships that ever was settled in the beginning of time, there was five thousand of them. But on the way there something happened and I couldn't hardly believe that we would come in there in the dark. It wasn't very far before we got into a typhoon. It capsized some of the destroyers, you know, that's real slick. But we had a guy that jumped over, I mean fell over the ship and they turned the searchlights on trying to find him and ____ ships the Japanese around, they'd have got us, but that night the Japanese suicide planes got in there. They were strapped in the airplane and they were trying to sink ships with suicide, they didn't intend to ever come back. But they had tracer bullets, and I mean it looked like the sky was just full of red bullets you know, shoot them down. LG: Where were you, were you on a boat during this, or were you on shore that you were watching this? BG: It was on the shore, yeah, landed there. ____ airstrip. LG: So you're looking out at the attack happening on these ships that are out there. Now you mentioned the typhoon, was that before or after this? BG: No, that was before. LG: On a ship? BG: Yeah. LG: What was it like to be on a boat in the middle of a typhoon? BG: I was right in the boat bow, _____, on the top of the ship, and you couldn't eat, you were seasick. Couldn't eat. LG: Was that as scary as battle? Were you scared when that was happening? BG: Well, I'll tell you what, after the war, I'll tell you something worse than that though. And the war was over. No, I don't know anything else to tell you, but, about the war, I can't remember right now. SG: Have you described why you received both the bronze star and the silver star? BG: Well I told them about the… SG: The silver but did you? BG: The bronze star, I carried a guy back that had his insides stuck out like that, and I didn't even remember it, and this guy I see in Tuscaloosa told me I did. There's things I didn't even remember, you know. We got in hand to hand combat, they stabbed him. Another thing in Okinawa there, was it on Okinawa?, yeah, on Okinawa. We were, they were real cruel, they'd sneak up on, they'd put stuff ____, uniform, and I know one time, we was in the foxhole and a guy was standing guard and a Jap come in there, and this guy fired an ammunition, a couple ammunition, he still kept coming, hit him in the head line that, and his insides just felt out like that, right. That's what reflexes, you know, you just keep on going. LG: The rescue, that you did, was that Okinawa or the Philippines? BG: That was Okinawa. LG: Okinawa? BG: Yeah. LG: So you saw an awful lot of battle in Okinawa. BG: Lot of fighting on there. LG: Do you recall that the day your service ended, that they said that you were ____ back home? BG: Yeah. I didn't know, they had this magic, what they call magic carpet ships you go back on those. And you go by your service and your rank and your medals that you won, and that helps you get back faster, you know. They had a priority. I remember that. LG: Do you remember the day you heard that you were headed back, what did that feel like? BG: Yep, I sure did. And I, I never forget when I came back home, I, my Dad still lived on a farm and I came in about 4:00 in the morning, and I told a story. In high school you know, _____. Alright I come to the gate, ____ cause my dad heard it _____ woke up, I just couldn't take it _____ all the teachers, well you're doing really good. ______ what I was doing in the room, that's the dumbest thing. The teacher told us ______, he said, “Mr. Gifford, what did you do when you had to go to the bathroom.” I said, “you dig a hole, get behind the woods somewhere or down behind the hill.” ______. LG: Want to take a sip of your water? BG: Yeah. LG: So when you got back home, did your dad expect you to start working on the farm? Did you work the next day or did you get… BG: No, I don't remember when it was. He ____ medals, and you can't put them things on. I said, “That's just for my parade purposes, you know.” I forgot what I did, but he, I got to agricultural school, four years. LG: On the G.I. Bill? BG: Yeah. LG: What school? BG: Clark in Missouri. LG: And you went for four years. BG: Yeah. And I at one time farmed 400 acres alone. And I got older and had to move, but there's ____. What was I going to say now? My best friend, he farmed about the same amount as I did, but I sold out, I didn't get very much out of it, I didn't own the land, I rented it. But my dad had two farms, my dad and uncle had two farms. But this guy, best friend of mine, went back two years to see him, and he was a millionaire then. He had three machines that cost half a million dollars apiece. He was always lucky though by doing things. You talk about… TAPE 1 SIDE B COUNTER 000 …somebody that has stories, believe it or not, he was a cook in the army, he was a real good cook. He wouldn't, you know him, didn't you see him, you would never think he's a good cook, but he could make the best cake ever was. He got discharged and he was in St. Louis, Missouri, and he bought a suit of clothes and he cooked in a restaurant, and he paid for the suit fifty cents a week. And he came down to see his uncle, lived right close by where I did, and he made a, he got on a blind date, he had a date with the county judge's daughter. She had never been on a date, she was 18 years old. LG: Not allowed to go on dates? BG: Not allowed to go on dates. He married the girl, the first night. And they had the highway patrol and everybody else out there. That's the guy, I told you a millionaire, turned out to be a millionaire. And he raised two daughters, too, they got along real good. LG: Tell me how you met your wife. BG: Oh, let's see, how did I do that? Somebody… SG: Probably from church. Do you think it was from church? BG: No, that's… your mother, my cousin introduced me to her. I'm not… SG: He divorced my mother and now since he's remarried. BG: Twelve years ago. Eleven or twelve years. And my, somebody at church introduced me to my wife now. ____ got a picture, I never showed you a picture of her when she was young since she looked like _______. LG: Beautiful woman. Tell me your first wife's name. BG: Charlene. LG: Charlene. Tell me your current wife's name. BG: Ellen, Ellen. LG: Ellen. BG: And we, she had two, a boy and a girl, and I had a girl, and they graduated from grade school and went to college. I've got a son that works at Emory, he's a ____ university boy, got a Ph.D. LG: Has he got your brains? BG: Yeah, he's smart. But my sister's boy's smarter than that. I had an aunt that taught school for 48 years. My mother did 18, my dad, I don't know how many years he did. My dad was very intelligent too. LG: Let's talk about after the war. BG: After the war. LG: What did you do as a career? You said you had a farm for a while, but then you went to Arizona. What did you do in Arizona? BG: I worked at _____, one of the largest aluminum plants in the world, for 32 years. LG: What did you do for them? BG: You name it, I did it. I worked in a department where I could do any part of it. Well paying job and good benefits and I could have been a, I was offered jobs as a foreman but I didn't want it because you had no protection and you could, you know, you get in and ____ and lay you off. And I worked there 32. I worked, it was the largest aluminum plant in the world. I worked there until the last piece of metal come out of there, I worked there. LG: When did they shut the plant down? BG: In 1958, no ‘70's, '78. But I worked where if you worked 20 years they had a guaranteed ____ if they close it down, I got seventy percent of my wages for half and I've got an insurance policy and I've got insurance for that and if anything happens to my wife, she gets it as long as she lives. I _____ and it's in, they sold out to Alcoa, they're the largest in the world, but they've got a trust fund and I don't have to worry about jobs or anything. LG: Prior to starting the interview, you and I were talking about baseball. Tell me about your baseball. BG: I managed a team in Arizona for thirteen years. LG: What was the name of the team? BG: Well, we had different names. I had one that was the Red Sox and one of them the Cardinals. It was mostly a Jewish community and there was seventeen teams there and won the first place every year that I managed, and I got a second place in the state in a tournament in 1950… 1960… what was it, '63. '63. I went to Denver, Colorado. Flew us up there to play ____ Airforce Base. We played ____ Colorado, we beat them and played San Jose and they beat us 3-2. LG: What level baseball was that? BG: That was senior little league, I had a pitcher that was 6'3” weighed 220 pounds. Boy, he could throw that ball in a bullet, had my first baseman, and this boy I'm talking about, he played for me, Cary, ____ that's the one that works at Emory, he struck out in a tournament one time, we played seven innings and he struck out, let's see, he faced 21 people and he struck out 17. And I knew a guy when I was living on a farm that played baseball, played for the Cardinals, and my son was a pitcher and he was just as good as Gary Murdoch. But I enjoyed that more than anything, I liked baseball, my hobby, ____ she can tell you about that. LG: Well, all of this story has been taking place in Arizona, yet you're in Atlanta now, how did you…? BG: Well, because she had little girl and a boy, and I have a son who's here. And she's got a little girl that's 15 years old, smart as a whip, pretty as a doll, five feet nine and a half. She sang ____ opera, she sang in Norway, and _____ was a thousand years old that summer. SG: Church… BG: Church, yeah. My daughter, one thing about her, I can't think of anything bad to say about her, and I can truthfully say that, and she taught at church and school ever since she was old enough to do it. LG: So being closer to your daughter's family brought you to Atlanta? BG: And my son, too. LG: So they're both here. BG: Yeah. LG: When did you move to Atlanta? BG: I've been here twelve years, isn't it. I was talking about my hobbies, rocks and minerals. LG: Tell me about your hobbies. SG: He had to sell furniture when he moved out here in order to hold up all the rocks… BG: They weigh too much. _____, Sandra knows her. My wife didn't like the rocks for a long time, boy, she likes them now. I used trading and buying all I got, she don't want to get rid of any of them now. But she said, “I dreamed about that you had a, you died and they dug a hole, and outside the hole, _____ all your rocks.” I got twelve ____ full of rocks in my basement. Some that's old as thousands, millions of years old, rocks, and I got a that big around, red ____, not red but rainbow colored, those are ____ from Arizona. I've got some green, _____ anybody got anymore like them. SG: And you've shared your collections on many occasions with elementary schools in the area. LG: I would think Fernbank natural history museum might like to know about this collection. SG: Yes, would love to probably. I mean it really ____ pieces in a museum. BG: I know one time the first that showed you, you said something about choosing kindergarten teaching, and she said, “Dad, you might bring your rocks on, and ______ if they don't like them, they'll just walk away,” but they did and they all ranted and raved about it. How many teachers there, seventeen? SG: Well, I know all the kindergarten teachers were, six or seven classes. BG: The whole school, all them teachers wanting to see them. SG: Well, yes, that was ____. BG: Set it up later and I _____ showed, I put them out along the, when they got ____ about seventeen buses leave and they all _____ looking for rocks. I couldn't even talk. SG: Not for so long. BG: She's talking about the little girl who's fifteen now, about that tall, she kept pushing, pulling on my daughter's dress, said “I got something to say.” This teacher's in there now, she says, “I got a very important message to say. I _____ red socks. I got these red socks at Target on sale.” SG: Christina will never live that one down. LG: We've got about five minutes left on the hour of the tape. Did your military experience influence your thinking about the war? BG: Yep, it sure did. Yeah, I tell you what, the one thing about it, I do _____, the marines kill a lot of people because they are glory happy, and I know what I'm talking about because I fought right along beside of them. If they see a machine gun up ahead, they don't call in artillery, they just send the troops in and they got a picture showing them what they got. And they get out of the army, I mean the marines, that all _____ soldier, I'm a soldier. And they got a guy that's in the marines now, he's related to her, he's just a kid, and I tried to tell him when he was enlisted, that's all you talked about, and he's always asking me war stories. I said, “Boy, you sure got a memory,” I said, “____ you never forget.” SG: Do you think it's made you a stronger person? BG: Yeah. And I feel sorry for the marines, ____ they don't, they're just glory happy. I mean they don't care about people, that's not my opinion, that's a fact. I've seen it. I wouldn't advise nobody to get in that, they glorify it. Every marine that's been in a war know that you know. They're mean, they get a lot of things done but their casualties are triple and that's not necessary. LG: Is there anything that you want to add that we haven't covered in the interview? BG: Well, not, maybe you can answer a little bit. I still keep in touch with this guy that I met in Alabama. I never knew he thought that much of me, you know, when, I tell you what, he called me when I got out of service, his mother and dad called me. I lived in Missouri and he's way down there. I never lost touch and I didn't know he thought that much. One thing he told of me, he _____ says, “Well, who is ____.” He says, “Well, he's a big guy but he didn't cuss.” I've got a lot of bad habits, ask my wife, she's got a list. SG: And that's why she looked him up on the Internet, she said I wanted to meet a man who'd never cursed or anything like that. LG: Alright, well Mr. Gifford is there anything else, is that about it you think? BG: You've got it all, didn't you. LG: It's still running, we're right at an hour. BG: Well, I'll tell you a little about his wife though, it's something. He met this girl, she was 19 and he was 25, she was a little old girl I guess, and she wasn't dumb or anything, she's very intelligent, but he met her and he decided he was going to marry her. And they bought a house, and he gave her some money to pay the mortgage and she went and bought a big frame, a picture frame. And he said, “come back here. Did you pay the house payment?” She said, “No, I didn't.” “Why didn't you?” Said “I didn't have the money left.” He said that ____ down here. He had to go borrow money from his dad to go pay it off. But she's real smart, she's just dedicated. He said one month that she called over 700 people that's lonely in a church all over the country and she's cleaned up in Tuscaloosa, cleaned up the _____ get a bunch of women to get together and renovate the… SG: Yeah, they passed a city ordinance. BG: Yeah, city ordinance to clean up things. She's real nice person, real dedicated. LG: Sounds wonderful. Well is that it? BG: Good enough. LG: Thank you very much. BG: I don't know how I turned out to sound, I had a stroke about two years ago and I kind of slur my speech some times, it seems that way to me. LG: We didn't notice it at all. Thank you very much. - Metadata URL:
- http://album.atlantahistorycenter.com/cdm/ref/collection/VHPohr/id/174
- 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:
- 1:02:09
- Original Collection:
- Veterans History Project oral history recordings
Veterans History Project collection, MSS 1010, Kenan Research Center, Atlanta History Center - Contributing Institution:
- Atlanta History Center
- Rights:
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