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Oral history interview of Corbett Ward Clark

Collection:: Veterans History Project: Oral History Interviews
Title:: Oral history interview of Corbett Ward Clark
Creator:: Pace, Hayden
Clark, Corbett Ward, 1921-
Date of Original:: 2003-09-10
Subject:: Silver Star
V-mail
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Clark, Sarah Louise Morgan, 1927-2012
O'Day, John P.
Boyer, Eduardo
Whitcomb, Eugene, 1920-2012
Gallagher, Eugene
Crisp, Joseph
Brown, Charles Pershing, 1918-1998
Arnold, Luther D., 1915-2012
Stafford, Nicholas T., 1920-2010
Atlanta National Guard
United States. Army. Reserve Officers' Training Corps
United States. Army. Field Artillery Battery, 694th
United States. Army. Field Artillery Regiment, 179th
American Red Cross
United States. Army. Infantry Division, 33rd
Hope (Hospital ship)
Colonel John P. O'Day
Eduardo Boyer of the Filipino Army
Augusta Regional
Location:: Philippines, Luzon, 18.5530638, 121.1246109
United States, Florida, Clay County, Camp Blanding, 29.94686, -81.97324
United States, Georgia, 32.75042, -83.50018
United States, Georgia, Atlanta Metropolitan Area, 33.8498, 84.4383
United States, Georgia, Fulton County, Fort McPherson, 33.70733, -84.43354
United States, Georgia, Richmond County, Augusta Regional Airport, 33.36986, -81.96428
Medium:: video recordings (physical artifacts)
mini-dv
Type:: MovingImage
Format:: video/quicktime
Description:: In this interview, Corbett Clark recalls his Army career. In high school, he was a member of the school's ROTC and later joined the National Guard because he liked the experience and all his friends were joining as well. He became a section chief on a 155mm howitzer and was sent to the Pacific. He also functioned as a forward observer, placing smoke shells on target for supporting aircraft. He describes what it was like to be a forward observer, incidences of friendly fire, and Indians working with police dogs. He also worked with native Filipinos to negotiate a surrender with the Japanese. He sustained a non-combat injury and was sent back to the United States, recovering at Oliver General Hospital in Augusta, Georgia, and Welch Army Hospital in Daytona Beach, Florida. He learned Russian in the Army Language School, and later taught Russian at Gordon High School in DeKalb County, Georgia.
Corbett Clark was an Army officer for 20 years and fought in the Pacific during World War II.
CORBETT WARD CLARK WWII Oral Histories September 10, 2003 Atlanta History Center Interviewer: Hayden Pace Transcriber: Joyce Dumas [Tape 1, Side A] Interviewer: All right. This will be the recorded history of Corbett Ward Clark. It's taken by Hayden Pace on September tenth at approximately 12:10 in the afternoon. Mr. Clark, how are you doing today? Clark: Fine. Interviewer: Great. If I could get you to give me your full name. Clark: Corbett Ward Clark. Interviewer: And Mr. Clark, when were you born? Clark: August the sixth, nineteen twenty-one. Interviewer: Where were you born? Clark: In Atlanta. Interviewer: Have you lived in Atlanta your entire life? Clark: Well, I lived there before I went into the service in World War Two and then after the war I came back here to live. Interviewer: So the only time you've been out of Atlanta is for your service in the war. Clark: Twenty years in service. Interviewer: Twenty years. Are you married? Clark: Yes. Interviewer: What's your wife's name? Clark: Sara Louise Morgan Clark. Interviewer: And when did you get married to Sara? Clark: What was the date? Mrs. Clark: When we got married? Clark: Yes. Mrs. Clark: April the eleventh, nineteen forty-eight. Interviewer: And do you have any children? Clark: Yes, we have three. Interviewer: What are their names? Clark: It's Nancy Lee Cook, [inaudible] Clark. She's married to a Cook. And Margaret Ann Fitzgerald Clark and Susan Jane Meredith Clark. Mrs. Clark: It's Clark Meredith. Clark: Clark Meredith, I'm sorry. Mrs. Clark: Clark Fitzgerald. Clark: She married a Meredith. Interviewer: Well, let's go back to the point at which you started your service with the Army. What were your parents doing at the time? Were they employed? Clark: My father had passed away when I was thirteen and my mother was unemployed. Just a housewife. Interviewer: And how old were you when you entered into the service? Clark: Seventeen. Interviewer: What led you to do that? Clark: Well, I joined the Atlanta National Guard I guess for two reasons. I'd been in ROTC in high school and I kind of liked it. And it paid a little bit of money, which money was awfully scarce in those days. So, that's two reasons. And all of my friends were joining up, you know. The war in Europe was going. Everybody anticipated that we'd be getting into the Army [sic] and so…and those reasons. Everybody I knew my age was joining, either joining service or going into the National Guard, which I joined. Interviewer: Is this ROTC program in high school, was this in place even before the war had begun? Clark: Yes, it started at Fulton High School. I think Fulton High School in Atlanta was the only…the first high school in the country to have ROTC. We had a good ROTC unit and I was an officer in the ROTC. Interviewer: How many fellas were in the ROTC unit at your school? Clark: Oh, we must have had four or five hundred. Several companies. Interviewer: Wow. And out of those four or five hundred, how many of those ended up serving abroad? Clark: Oh, I would say a good part of them. I don't know what percent, but [inaudible]. A large number in my class were killed in the war. Interviewer: When did it become a guarantee that you were going to go abroad? Clark: Well, I guess…we mobilized…the government mobilized the National Guards before Pearl Harbor. We knew that the war was coming and we knew…everybody knew that the United States would be involved in it before it was over. And when…I was already on active duty when Pearl Harbor came and we knew, of course, then we'd probably all be going overseas. And most of us did before it was over with. Interviewer: What were you doing in your active duty prior to going overseas? Clark: I was in field artillery, Hundred and Seventy-ninth Field Artillery Regiment. And I was a section chief of a hundred and a fifty-five millimeter howitzer in the unit. Interviewer: Was that here in Georgia? Clark: Yes. Well, we were at Camp Blanding, Florida. See, we mobilized and we had gone to Camp Blanding, Florida. That's where we were when Pearl Harbor came. Interviewer: And a howitzer is a tank, right? Clark: No, no. It's artillery. Interviewer: Just an artillery. Clark: It's a…see, it's approximately six inch diameter artillery. Interviewer: How many men does it take to operate that? Clark: It took nine. It took seven cannoneers and a gunner and section chief, which I was sergeant section chief. Interviewer: How long were you on active duty prior to being sent abroad? Clark: I went on active duty in February, forty-one, and I didn't go overseas till forty-four. Interviewer: So almost three years [inaudible]? Clark: Yeah, about…forty-two, forty-three, forty…yeah. Interviewer: Did you have friends who were going abroad? Clark: Yeah. They would go to different things. They'd call in and say, “We need people who'd formerly worked for the railroad” and they'd form railroad battalions and they went to North Africa and then sometimes they formed military police units and they'd call for people who'd been policemen and all that type duty. And they'd break out from the unit. Then we'd keep getting replacements into the unit to make for them. And then finally, they split our battalion, the whole field artillery into two units. And I formed, my unit was the Six Ninety-fourth Field Artillery Battalion. That's when we went overseas in August, forty-four, I guess. Went to New Guinea. Interviewer: Maybe you can describe for me the general mood or feeling of the active service troops as they were preparing to go abroad and knowing that they were gonna go. Was it excitement or fear or…what was it? Clark: Well, we knew…everybody wanted to go and get it over with, but you didn't anticipate it as being something that was gonna be pleasure, you know. You'd say, “Well, we know we're gonna have a lot of risks and all, but until it's all over we can't go back home.” We had gone into active duty for one year. They mobilized the National Guard for one year. Then when Pearl Harbor came, they extended everybody's enlistment to the duration plus six months to stamp the service records. So, we knew we weren't going to get out until the war was over or six months after the war. So, we were ready to go, but nobody was anxious to go. I guess you might put it that way. Interviewer: And you heard stories of what was going on over there? Clark: Oh sure, you know. They had…Hitler was going all over Europe and England was about to…on the verge of surrender, really. We knew if you didn't stop them, we'd all be under dictatorship, probably. But in the Pacific when Japan hit Pearl Harbor, over in the Philippines and all the islands over there, they just about controlled the Pacific. So, we knew we had to go and get the thing over with. Interviewer: So you were in active duty was Pearl Harbor was bombed? Clark: Yes, I was. Interviewer: Do you remember when you first learned that it had been bombed? Clark: Yeah. I came back from…just finished lunch and the kitchen came back and said, “Japan bombed Pearl Harbor”. “Oh, good,” everybody says, “we'll whip them in three months.” [laughs] They were wrong there. Word came out that the Japanese had wooden bullets and that their ships were easy to sink and all that stuff, you know. That didn't turn out right either. Interviewer: Went you went abroad, where did you first go? Clark: We went to New Guinea. We went to Hollandia, New Guinea. That's where General MacArthur had his headquarters. Interviewer: What was it like arriving in New Guinea with these other troops? Clark: Well, it was hot and it was raining. They had just built a highway. The engineers and the Seabees had just built a highway seventeen miles from…it was Humboldt [phonetic] Bay in Hollandia, New Guinea, back to the old Japanese airport. And they said it was the envy of the world that they had built it through the jungle in just a few days. They had a hundred battalions working on that thing. And we landed and they took us by truck up through there. I remember the first night. We spent the night in the high grass and we had to put our helmets way up off the ground to keep the rats, they said, from biting you. Fleas on the rats, I guess, is what they're talking about. Then we would worry about the Japanese. They said…you're in that hammock and they come…bayonet you. They told all kind of stories. I was scared to death to sleep in the hammock up off the ground that way. But anyway, I remember that quite well. Interviewer: What was the average age of the troops that had just been sent up in New Guinea? Clark: I'd say about twenty-two, twenty-one or twenty-two, something like that. Interviewer: And how were you divided up? Ten of you in a group and those groups form larger groups or how was that done? Clark: Well, we were in sections. By then I was in charge of the survey section, so I had…and survey, wire and communication; radio, wire and instrument. We surveyed targets, you know. And I had about thirty to thirty-five men and we usually operated as a group. And then we were sub-groups of a survey section, which I usually stayed with. We would survey targets, locate the targets for the artillery to fire on the infantry. And that's where we stayed…stayed in groups. The battery would work together. We'd have one common kitchen for the whole battery of a hundred men. But then, we would also be sectioned off for specialized training and that's what…like I say, about forty men, thirty-five, forty men. And then little sections from that. The wire section would run the wire, the telephone wires and the radio operators with their other little section. But I had all three of these sections: wire, radio and survey. Interviewer: So your job, initially upon arriving in New Guinea, was to survey for potential targets? Clark: Yep, that's what we did. Interviewer: How long did you do that for? Clark: Well, I did that all till the war was over. And mainly though, in combat, we didn't do too much survey. We [inaudible] set me up with the infantry unit to convey fire commands to the battery for the targets and also for the airplanes when we had air support, to put these shells on the target so that the planes could come in and bomb and strafe the enemy. In my book, there is a chapter about when our planes strafed us, too. So they had plenty of ammunition for that. Interviewer: Now you've mentioned your book. I see you've got that on the desk. Can I get you to hold that up for the camera? From Hell to Surrender, Corbett Clark. When did you write that? Clark: I wrote it the last couple of years. I kept a diary during the war. During the combat [inaudible] the part of the book that's…my part in the combat is directly from the diary that I had during the war. The rest of it was just telling about from the time…the training that we went for overseas, before we went and then the combat and then in the end, when the Japanese surrendered. I've got it in here where I was, went down back behind the enemy lines to negotiate the surrender of the Philippines, of the Japanese soldiers in the Philippines. And that's kind of the story of this book here, From Hell to Surrender. Interviewer: We'll return [to] that book. You had mentioned that you were a forward observer. Did that place you on the front lines? Clark: I was right up with the infantry the whole…the whole during the war. Interviewer: What was that like? Clark: Well, that…right there where they were doing all the shooting and go out on patrols sometimes, you know. And some of the time, if the infantry is attacking, we'd put the…fired on the target that the infantry, the lieutenants or captains, company commander would tell us about what targets he wanted to fire on, what kind of ammunition to fire on ‘em. And I would do my best to get the right [inaudible] to hit the targets that they wanted. And sometimes on a counter attack, we'd have to bring the artillery in real close to the infantry. And luckily, we never did hit our own people. But sometimes the artillery would fall short and hit our own troops. But luckily, that didn't happen where I was at. You had a lot of things to take into consideration. Ammunition was short a lot of times. They'd [inaudible]…they'd say…they'd down the guns. They'd say, “The guns have no chow in them.” They didn't have any ammunition. [inaudible] [laughing] Instead of having high explosive shells to shoot, they'd give us armor-piercing, the solid shells that you use for tanks. And we'd try to hit the target with that one shell. And that's all the ammunition we had. We used what we had. But they were always short of ammunition because they were saving it for the invasion of Japan, which never happened. But they had all kinds of ammunition. Another thing, they had to bring it up a mountain trail. Took about sixty to a hundred miles to bring it up and they'd bring it up one way, one time, come up one day and go back the next. One-way streets. And when it rained sometimes the trucks loaded with ammunition would slip on the road and turn over down into the valley. One time a truck loaded with beer turned over and for months after that, every time a truck would go back they'd stop and go down and bring some of that beer up. Interviewer: As a forward observer, how far in front of the rest of the infantry were you? Clark: I was with the infantry. I didn't get in front of them. Nobody got in front of them. But we were right there with them where they could call in and sometimes they'd have a patrol of ten or fifteen men to go out and find out some information. And I'd go out with them so if they got pinned down we could call in artillery so they could go back. Interviewer: What was it like being a part of these patrols? Clark: Well, that's the worst part cause you get cut off you can't get back. There'd be a small number of people and you just…you're not out to [inaudible] run into combat, you're supposed to…you'd withdraw. But sometimes you'd be pinned down. You couldn't withdraw. And that was the worst part. But the easiest way to get yourself killed was going out on patrol. But I was lucky. I didn't get myself killed, so. Interviewer: How many patrols do you think you went on? Clark: Oh, fifteen maybe. Probably as many as fifteen different combat, at different times. Sometimes you'd go out two or three days. You wouldn't and then they'd say…you go out on maybe just a two-hour patrol, just try to find out where the enemy was located. And as soon as you figure out where they are, where the machine guns are, then you pull back and then the company can do whatever they want to, to bring in air support or artillery barrage. And we had…we really had a unique thing in our field artillery cause the United States had the best field artillery in the world. Excuse me. No country compared. We masked our fires. If I could fire on a battalion, on a target, then another battalion could use those same coordinates that we used and put their guns on it and we'd have guns all over the place firing at the same time at the same target. And we had that timed fire, which the fuse…the shell would burst about twenty feet off the ground, so it would just scatter the area with shrapnel. So, it saved the infantry. It saved many, many lives by destroying the targets before it even reached there. They never could kill them all, but they would weaken them so that they could do what they had to do. Interviewer: Do you remember any specific patrols more than others? Clark: Yeah, I remember all of them. Yeah, we ah…they ah…very few times you'd go out that you don't get some…get into some problem. But usually you can get back. We always made a rule that we'd never leave a wounded man out there. That was the number one thing we said when we always went up there. We'd never leave a wounded man. We never did leave a wounded man out. But some…a lot of times, one of the people were left out and the Japanese were very cruel to them sometimes, which I guess that's war. But it's hard to understand. Interviewer: How did they determine who went out on the patrols? Clark: Well, the infantry company commander would say, “I need…I'm going to send a patrol out. I need artillery support.” They'd come get me. I had four men in my section, but I was the only one who would convey the fire commands. They would carry the radios and do the other things. Help dig foxholes and things like that. There were three men. But the infantry company commander, the lieutenant…wherever… sometimes it'd be a lieutenant with about fifty men on a little hill or something. He'd say, “I gotta have some artillery support.” So, I'd go with them for that reason. I'd have a least a couple of men with me to carry the radio. We'd radio back our fire commands and that was the main things. Pretty heavy radio. It was a . . the batteries themselves were heavy. So, that's what…that's how they selected patrols. Interviewer: Now you've moved up the ranks. You're currently a major or a retired major.[inaudible] What steps along the way? Clark: Well, I went in the Army as already a sergeant by the time we mobilized. When we moved forward overseas I was promoted to Staff Sergeant, put in charge of this radio and survey and wire section. When we got into combat, it's supposed to be lieutenants up there doing this forward observing, but we ran out of lieutenants. So they called me one day and said, “We'll send you up with the Philippine Army.” Cause the Philippine Army…was responsible for artillery support. So, the rest of the war I was forward observer. I'd gone up one time. We had a lieutenant with us. After that they sent me up and I was [inaudible] the war. And that's when we went behind enemy lines to negotiate the surrender. I was the only American on the hill at the time. They said, “We want an American to go with the…go back there.” So after the war, I ran into the lieutenant colonel that had been an advisor, Lieutenant Colonel John P. Oday, and he'd been an advisor to the Philippine Army and he knew…he'd been up to the front lines and he knew what I'd been doing. He said, “I thought you were an officer.” He said, “I put in for lieutenant”. And I said, “Well.” I'd got in a wreck and broke my leg and they sent me back right after the war and I never heard anything. So, he wrote me a letter and about two weeks later I had a commission. And so after that, I worked on up to…stayed in the Army and I got promoted to first lieutenant and captain, then major. And then retired as a major. So I spent ten years enlisted man…enlisted service and ten years as an officer. That's the story of that. Interviewer: You said you were the only American working with this Philippine Army? Clark: I was the only one on the hill the day that…well, there was a couple of my [inaudible] party with me, but they wanted…what happened is the…it was the twentieth of August, nineteen forty-five and the Japanese had…they'd surrendered over in Japan, but they hadn't surrendered in the Philippines, I guarantee. And they were supposed to have ceased firing, but they were still shooting. The war was still going on, so this Philippine…I mean, this uh…well first, an American officer came up from Intelligence Service and was gonna go behind the enemy lines to negotiate and we had a flag of truce and he got about two hundred yards away and they…the Japanese shot through the legs. And he fell and we sent somebody out and brought him back. And then, the same day, they came back…the Japanese officer came back to our lines with a flag of truce, great big old…looked like a half of sheet on a long stick. And he said they wanted an American, wanted somebody to come to their headquarters. And so, they asked for volunteers so…I volunteered, I guess. And the Filipino major, Eduardo Bouy [phonetic] was his name. He went with us and a sergeant, a Philippine sergeant. And we went with that Japanese officer back across the line and we saw the guns and the men all over the place. And we got there, there was a big white horse and they had a big ditch dug out and he was in there. And the Japanese officer was there. And they said, “Take off your shoes”. And we went in that cave…went in that cave and there were railroad crossties all around to support it. And we sat down on the floor barefooted there and the Japanese officer was there. What would it take or how could we stop the fighting and all? And we said, “First, they've got to quit attacking.” They'd attack at night. “Cut out your attacks and cut out your mortars.” Mortars were the worst. “Any firing at us.” And then we would stop all fighting. We'd stop. And they said, “We're all hungry.” And they needed medical care. We promised them we'd get some food. They wanted some rice and medical care. And they were worried about walking back. Cause it's sixty miles down through a real mountainous dirt road to walk. They remembered the Bataan death march, the Japanese marched our men sixty miles or so and so many of them were killed and they were afraid we were gonna do the same. So we…we said that…the well would walk and the wounded would be sent on trucks. That's what we told them. Told them they'd have rice and medical care. So they said, “Well, we'll let you know.” Said that you'd get a message back from Japan. And sure enough, they accepted it and the war was over. I came right after that, they were leaving me and I went back from a that job back to the battery position. And I got involved in a truck…my truck turned over and broke my leg and they sent me on back to the States. There's a picture in my book about…where I broke my leg. Interviewer: When you went to negotiate with the Japanese, did you have authority to be making promises like escorting them down the mountain and providing trucks for their injured and things like that? Clark: I was told that the United States would do that, would do it and they were doing exactly that. When I left they were bringing big old long open-body trucks. The Japanese were standing up. Bet there was a hundred and fifty in there, standing up just packed solid and they were coming down that mountain trail in those trucks. Interviewer: Did you have any experience negotiating? Clark: No, I didn't have any. No, not that I know of. No. Interviewer: Were you nervous when you were there in the cave? Clark: Oh, God, yeah. Yeah. Because we didn't know what they were gonna do. They were nice. They offered us tea. We drank tea. Sat there drinking hot tea. Interviewer: Who did they have speaking with you? Was it a translator or was it? Clark: No, they had somebody in English…one of the officers spoke English. I think there were four of them there at a table. And they were sitting down. They stood up and…two or three of them…the one was speaking English, spoke English very fluently. And I think he said something about he had been to the States. Interviewer: And you mentioned that the decision to surrender was obviously straight from Japan. Clark: Yeah. Japan had to give the surrender…had to give the order. But the…they had…but Japan had instructed them to make contacts to try to surrender. Interviewer: The battle that you were involved in in New Guinea . . . Clark: No, in New Guinea we didn't do any fighting. We just…the Japanese had gone into the jungle and they tried to keep them in there. They didn't try to go in there and get them out. Interviewer: Oh, I'm sorry. Where was this that took place with the cave and the hill and the battle? Clark: At Luzon, North Luzon. Mountain province. They gave me the Silver Star for it. It's in this book here. There's a chapter in there. The order to give…Silver Star order is in here verbatim. Interviewer: While all this was going on, while you were a forward observer going on the patrols and during the negotiations, were you keeping in touch with family and friends back home. Clark: You always write letters, yeah. Interviewer: How often would you write a letter or receive one? Clark: Well, in combat you didn't write too much. There wasn't much time to do it, you know. Sometimes people…wonder, I guess, “How come I hadn't got a letter lately?” But you then get that back to the people that send it back. Then they had to…they photocopied it. You know how they did that? They photocopied them and send the photo back, then they reproduce it and they call it “V mail,” I think. But the process was long. Letters were kind of getting short. I mean, you don't get too many letters. And then sometimes you get everything at one time, you know. Interviewer: Were you continuously in combat or did you take breaks periodically? Clark: I was in continuous combat. The field artillery don't get breaks. The infantry gets the breaks. They say the artillery is always on line. Of course, they're not…the cannoneers and all the crews…they're not busy all the time. So it's kind of…and they are kind of away from the lines. They get mortars from artillery fire on them, but it's not like up at the infantry. But they don't give relieved like the infantry does. They pull back the infantry regiment to rest and bring another one up, because they can't stand it too long at one time. But, no. I was up there with them most all the time. Different units, whoever needed artillery support. The main combat that I did was when I went up with the Philippine Army, Hundred and Twenty-first Infantry Regiment of the Philippine Army. Interviewer: [inaudible] like that. Clark: Yeah, all that when we went behind enemy lines with the Hundred and Twenty-first Infantry Regiment of the Philippine Army. Interviewer: Did you witness sort of a psychological impact of the sustained combat? When the field artillery isn't getting breaks, did that affect the troops? Clark: Well, yeah. They get tired. They get tired. But that's the way it was. They couldn't afford to pull them back. They had to have it all up there. Interviewer: Did you interact much with foreign nationals that were involved in combat, like civilians when you were abroad? Clark: No. The Philippine Army was very good to work with. They were excellent. They had…their native carriers who brought up food and ammunition every night, mostly women. I never dealt with them because they had their own people in charge. But every night there'd be a hundred carriers, a long line bringing in everything from food, clothing and ammunition. Everything you needed. And you'd call in and…between those carriers and the Filipino troops, they kept…saved a lot of our own people from having to be in combat. Interviewer: So you didn't interact much with civilians? Clark: No, I didn't myself. Interviewer: When you did have this rare opportunity to take a break, was there any socializing or sports or anything that you guys would do? Clark: Well, the Red Cross was real good. They had these Red Cross stations different places. They'd be a few miles away. But any opportunity, we'd go down to the Red Cross. You could get a shower and you could get something to eat, to drink, letters, stationery, toilet articles, all that stuff. And everybody liked to go down there any time you'd get the chance. That was about the only recreation that there was. I played cards and all, things like that. Interviewer: I assume you made a number of friendships as a result of this action? Clark: Oh, yes. They still come see us. We have friends from Indiana and Florida. The colonel I had been a captain under, he's come down to see me. Comes down. Lives in New Jersey. Colonel Luther B. Arnold. I was a captain. [inaudible] made contact with one in Florida that I was…tells in my book about he and I were in the same foxhole during an attack one night. We talk about things sometimes. Interviewer: Like what? Clark: Well, about things that happened, you know. We got overrun that night. Talk about infantry, I'd talk about [inaudible] infantry more than them artillery. We got attacked. It's called the Battle of Twin Peaks. And the Japanese came in with the bayonets. And this infantryman shot a Jap that was coming about two feet from me with a bayonet. And I give the infantry a lot of credit for that. And this Eugene Whitcomb is the one in Florida I was talking about. He was in the same foxhole with me. And we talk about it. Interviewer: Do you know the infantryman who shot this Japanese soldier? Clark: No. He was a part of the Thirty-third Infantry Division that I was up with at the time. That's the first trip I went up on. First…Twin Peaks. It's…two mountains came up and they overlooked the objective. We went too far is what we did. The infantry company had advanced too far and they got in the middle of too many Japs. So they came in at night. So after that, we had enough artillery and all to get rid of them and they brought in the air support and the P-58s, P-38s and P-51s came in and bombed and strafed the Japanese. They took off and went on further up. When I left the hill it was all clear and all, I guess. Wasn't any fighting going on. Interviewer: So the Battle of Twin Peaks was successful? Clark: Oh, yeah. Very successful. And they had Indians up there with police dogs and boy, they could smell the Japs. They knew when they were coming. Two police dogs up there. Interviewer: What do you mean by Indians? Native Americans? Clark: Native American Indians. Had two attached to each company with police dogs. Interviewer: And their job was to [inaudible]? Clark: Oh, they could smell. They could smell those Japs. When they're coming in they could hear them, you know. In fact, one dog was killed up there, but I don't know how he got killed. One dog was killed on that hill. Interviewer: Did you know any of the native Americans? Clark: No, I didn't know them. Interviewer: Other than this situation in the foxhole, that one friend, are there any other stories of your involvement with particular friends of yours? Clark: Yeah. There's a corporal, Gallagher. Eugene Gallagher. G-A-L-L-A-G-H-E-R. He…we got… on a trail going up to the front lines and we got…mortar shells started coming in. He rolled down the bank. His arm was bleeding. His left arm, I think, was bleeding real bad. He rolled down the hill and they questioned whether or not he got hit by a mortar or whether he just…a rock or something. But anyway, they gave him a Purple Heart and I think a mortar shell fragment hit him cause they just go everywhere. The shell hit real close to us anyway. And that was the first casualty I saw in the war. And they shipped him on back to the States. I never heard from him until I saw in the paper where he had died. That's several years back. Interviewer: Now you received the Silver Star? Clark: Yes. I got a Bronze Star. I didn't know it till they surveyed my military records for a disability compensation and they found that in the records. It was supposed to have been destroyed by the fire back in some time and they found those records and they were real brown, scorched, looked like it'd been scorched by the fire. And the VA had a big stack about six inches high. Those records had it in there for conducting fire…artillery fire, under fire is what I got that for. But I never did get the official medal. I need to get the Army to get me that thing issued one of these days. Interviewer: Any other awards? Clark: Just simple things that everybody gets. All kinds of ribbons for being in theater of operation and American defense and Good Conduct medal that all enlisted men got if they didn't get in jail, I guess. They're nice to have, but there wasn't anything being heroic about it to get them, you know. You get a chest full of ribbons… [Tape 1, Side B] Clark: One man got the Silver Star for conducting…for radio…he climbed out on the end of the peak and under fire he transmitted some orders, fire commands that kept us from getting overrun, really, during the night. All night long…hand grenades, the Japanese had a little a hand grenade about as big as a snuff can and they you blow that thing a country mile. They'd just throw them off against the steel helmet to active it and you could hear them tap it and then they'd throw it. They were pretty accurate, you know. One of them came in the foxhole with a guy and he was, trying to get out of the way. And he jumped out of that thing, hole, and laid down and that thing exploded and threw dirt all over everybody. Yeah, let's see. We had a sergeant that brought his gun; he was a section chief. Sergeant Crisp was his name, Joseph Crisp. Brought it to the…into the…exposed the gun up and knocked up an enemy artillery unit. He was decorated, I think, with the Silver Star. He was an old-time regular Army sergeant. And that's the only ones who got any decorations that I know of in my unit. The three of us, I think. Might have been somebody I didn't know about. There were a good many Purple Hearts and we had some killed, several killed. Mostly when they went out on patrols with the infantry. That's where you get yourself killed is getting out there. We were strafed on by our own planes and we almost got killed one time. That was the P-38s. They mistook us for Japanese troops and we stopped them just in time cause they were just shooting those fifty caliber machine guns, just spraying. I was in a hole right next to a great big pine tree and they were knocking those limbs off. They were falling all over us, hitting the ground. But this Colonel Oday I told about, John P. Oday, lieutenant colonel; he was there and I was trying to get them to stop and they weren't listening to me. And he said, “Bring the radio to me.” So I got out of my foxhole and came over to him. He got on them and when he started talking they finally stopped strafing. Then they…they rolled them P-38s, you know, the twin-engine, they rolled over back to “victory road,” they called it. But we showed them the victory road that day. Just the opposite. But that's…things happen and nobody said anything about it. And they never did fix blame for anybody. I guess it's just an act of…couldn't be avoided. Communications. Interviewer: Were there any Americans injured in that? Clark: No, a lot of Filipinos. They all got out of a foxhole and the guy, Filipino, got a bullet right through his neck. And the first aid man came and got him and took him out. But he died. I don't know if I'd stayed in that hole whether they were hitting me or not. So, maybe the colonel calling me up there into his foxhole saved my life, I guess. Interviewer: You mentioned that a lot of the fighting was conducted during the night. Clark: Japanese…one night I did. We never did attack at night. The Japanese attacked at night. They were…that was their specialization, attack at night. Interviewer: Did you find that they were better trained for night fighting than the Filipinos? Clark: Oh, boy. There were, yeah. Oh, yeah. They were better trained than anybody in night fighting. Interviewer: What was it like to fight at nighttime? Clark: Well, you couldn't see, you know. You'd see something out there, looking. And you look like…maybe it's somebody around, maybe wandering, finding…maybe they show up. And when they come in, they come in like crazy. And one time, they…we had that Concertina wire, that barbed wire that stretched all around like round circles. And we had it all around the unit, the infantry did. The Japanese come in there and the Americans, the infantry just shot them up. In the morning, they said there were Japanese all over that barbed wire. They just didn't have any sense of safety or anything. When they were gonna come in, they decided to come, they were gonna come in there. See, they'd had amazing success when the war started, the Japanese had. Everywhere they went, they won. They overran the British and the Americans all over the place and they captured the Philippines, Singapore, all those islands over there. That's what their tactics were. Just go in there and just catch everybody by surprise. Interviewer: You left the service and returned to the United States as a result of an accident with a truck flipping over? Clark: Yes. My truck…the fact is I was going down to the Red Cross when it happened after the combat, gone back to the rear area where the artillery was. Several of us wanted to go down to the Red Cross, so I checked out a three-quarter-ton Dodge truck and we were going down to the Red Cross on a real narrow Filipino road. Went to cross a bridge and this big army, two and a half-ton truck rammed us in the rear. I was driving. Hit first and blew out our tire. Seemed like the left-rear tire. And I just about had it under control and he hit us again. When he hit me again, I couldn't…going across this narrow bridge and the truck tried to go around, is what happened. He was going too fast to stop and he hit me. And just as I left the bridge, he hit me again and we went over the bank and landed upside down in a rice paddy, water. And I thought I was all wounded or shot, there was blood and all. Water was coming all off my head and somebody was pulling me out of the truck. It was a major. He pulled me out of the truck and they had a…by then they had a whole line of people up there looking and they had an Army ambulance took me over to a big tent, field hospital. And that night, they didn't find anything wrong with my leg and it kept hurting and it was big, swelled up. So the next morning they X-rayed it and said I had a broken right knee. So had to put it in a cast and in a few days I was on the USS Hope, hospital ship, coming back to the States. Interviewer: What was it like to arrive back in the United States? Clark: Well, it was nice. The hospital ship was great. They treated us nice and we took a long time to get there because we went into San Francisco. They had a band…yeah, they had a band playing. And then they put on a plane and took about three days, I think, to fly me from the west coast to Amy hospital in Augusta. We stopped every time you turned around. Wasn't any through trips, I guess, back then. Stopped at air bases overnight, three or four nights. Took four nights to get there. And we got to the hospital, went into the main big hospital. It used to be a hotel, I think, there. And the nurse came back there and said, “Any enlisted men here?” I was the only enlisted man. She said, “This is an officer's hotel.” So they shipped me over to…Bush Field was the barracks, some kind of short…it was a one-story building, I think. They put us in there. And stayed there for a few days. And then I went on down to convalescent hospital in Daytona Beach, Florida. Stayed in that hospital till May, from November some time to May, with that leg. And finally got out. I don't know why I stayed in the Army, but I did. I stayed in. I'm glad I did. But everybody else was getting out. And people wondered why I was staying in. But the main thing, I stayed in because my leg was bothering me and I'd say, “Well, I'm gonna stay in and see if this leg straightens out before I get out.” So I stayed in another year and then I already had about six years in and I got a commission. So, I stayed in, which is…I'm glad I did. It works out good now cause I've good insurance in case…get good medical care and a lot of people don't have it, I know. So. Interviewer: Well, what was the transition like from combat to being over here? Clark: Well, I didn't sleep much at night for a long time, I tell you. That's about the worst part. Just anxiety, I guess. Just winding down, maybe. I don't know what. They call it something else now. They didn't use to recognize anything…combat being any problem, but I think they do now more, much more so than they used to. What do they call it? Stress…what is that they call it? I forgot. Interviewer: Post-traumatic stress? Clark: Yeah, that's what it is. Yeah, they recognize it now. But they didn't do…they didn't use to recognize it. Interviewer: How long did you have sleepless nights? Clark: Oh, for years. I don't know. For years. I don't know if I ever got to where I could just sleep all night without nightmares or something like that. Interviewer: You still find yourself suffering? Clark: Sometimes I do. Yeah, I do. Yeah. It's…sometimes. Well, you know I do. Interviewer: So you were with the Army for twenty years? Clark: Yes. Interviewer: Did you do anything after…after leaving the Army? Clark: Yes, I went to work. I taught school. While I was in the Army, I learned Russian. There's an Army language school in [inaudible], Germany. And I came back, after I got out, I taught Russian in Gordon High School at DeKalb County for a year. I had two classes of Russian language. And I enjoyed it. But it didn't make enough money, I guess. So I got a job with civil service and wound up being training officer for Fort McPherson for the civilians and for the military and for the reservists. And I retired from that. And after I retired from seventeen years civil service, kind of did some independent real estate work. Just as a hobby and to make a little extra money, too. So that's been about the story. Interviewer: Well, I'm through with my questions. I know we have only touched on, I'm sure, a fraction of the stories that you've got. Are there any stories that you feel are important for us to have recorded today or do you think we've got a good slice of it? Clark: I think, I'll tell you what. This battalion I was in, the Six Thirty-fourth Field Artillery Battalion, the commander was a major, Major Charles Pershing Brown, from Oklahoma. And he was probably the most outstanding officer that I ever served under. And he got promoted to lieutenant colonel while I was over there after a big fight we had, a big artillery barrage thing that he had been responsible for defeating the Japanese. And he became a major general and one of the very few field artillery officers to have reached that rank. So he was…I served under Captain Luther D. Arnold, he comes…he still comes to see me. He's a retired full colonel. He was [inaudible]. But he wasn't in combat. He was also an outstanding officer. He was a West Point officer. But this general was not a West Point officer. Interviewer: It was a pleasure to serve under these two men. Clark: A pleasure to serve. I don't know where another officer is. There's a Captain Nicholas D. Stafford, who's an outstanding officer. He's a fine commander in combat. Interviewer: I think we're done. I just have one last question. What is harder? Doing patrols or teaching Russian to kids in Georgia? Clark: Russian was easy. Patrols were the hardest, yeah. Interviewer: Thank you very much, Mr. Clark. And again, if there's anything else you'd like to say. Clark: I think I've enjoyed it. I hope that…I hope these young men now don't have to go through what we did. But, I am afraid they are. Interviewer: Thank you, sir. [end of tape]
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Extent:: 1:02:46
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
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