- Collection:
- Veterans History Project: Oral History Interviews
- Title:
- Oral history interview of James M. Barnwell
- Creator:
- Wallace, Fredrick C.
Barnwell, James M., 1922- - Date of Original:
- 2004-07-08
- Subject:
- World War, 1939-1945--personal narratives, American
Mitchell (Bomber)
Barnwell, Charles M., 1919-2003
Georgia Institute of Technology
North Carolina State University
United States. Army. Airborne Division, 13th
United States. Army. Quartermaster Corps
United States. Army. Reserve - Location:
- Northern Africa, 32.95337, 9.97559
Philippines, Luzon, 18.5530638, 121.1246109
Philippines, Manila, 14.5906216, 120.9799696
United States, California, City and County of San Francisco, San Francisco, 37.77493, -122.41942
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, Chattahoochee County, Fort Benning, 32.35237, -84.96882
United States, Georgia, Fulton County, Fort McPherson, 33.70733, -84.43354
United States, North Carolina, Richmond County, Mackall Army Airfield, 35.03097, -79.50276
United States, Texas, Bexar County, San Antonio, Fort Sam Houston, 29.46235365, -98.4320524252692 - Medium:
- video recordings (physical artifacts)
hi-8 - Type:
- MovingImage
- Format:
- video/quicktime
- Description:
- In this interview, James Barnwell describes his experiences as an officer in the Quartermaster Corps of the Army during World War II. He first became a member of the Army Reserves at Fort McPherson through the Army Specialized Training Program. Later, he graduated from Fort Benning's Officer Candidate School. Mr. Barnwell supervised a quartermaster depot in the Philippines at the end of the war. His brother was a bomber pilot with the Army Air Corps, was shot down over North Africa and became a POW in Germany. James Barnwell remained in the Army Reserves for over 20 years after his retirement from active duty.
James Barnwell was a U.S. Army officer in the Pacific during World War II.
JAMES M. BARNWELL VETERANS HISTORY PROJECT ATLANTA HISTORY CENTER July 8, 2004 Interviewer: Frederick Wallace Q: Today is Thursday, July 8, 2004. This is the beginning of an interview with Mr. James M. Barnwell. Mr. Barnwell is a veteran of World War II, where he served from December 1942 to 1946. This interview is being conducted at the Atlanta History Center in Atlanta, Georgia. My name is Frederick Wallace, and I am the interviewer. Mr. Barnwell, as I explained to you earlier, this is your story and we want you to tell it in your own words and in your own way. I would like for you to begin by telling us where you were born, when you entered the service, why you entered the service, and where you were at the time that you entered. So, this is your opportunity to share your experiences with your family and with the American people because this, sir, will go into the archives. So, this is your story, Mr. Barnwell; would you begin please. A: Well, I was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on March the 9th, 1922. I had a usual childhood of, of the normal kids of that day. I attended all of the schools—grammar school, junior high and high school, and then I went off to prep school for about three years to Darlington Boys School in Rome, Georgia, and when I graduated from that school, I came back and attended Georgia Tech for four years. But in the meantime, during that time, I was called into the service because I had volunteered in December of ‘42 to be in the Reserves of the military, the Army, and in 1943, in March of '43 they elected to call me into service. Q: Let's go back from the date that you signed up to join the service. A: Okay. Q: When you signed up, can you explain that. What were the circumstances? A: Well, the circumstances of signing up was to actually remain in school. The idea was that we could sign up and, and we would remain in school, and then when we finished school, we could pick our branch of service, and then we, would go from there into active duty. But that wasn't the name of the game. Q: Where were you? A: I was at Georgia Tech. I was at Georgia Tech. And, about six weeks after we had signed up, they sent us a notice to come to Fort McPherson (laughs) and be inducted into the military. So, that, that was the name of that, and, and after we had been inducted, then we went into active duty. So, that was, that was the end of that kind of Reserves thing that they had said that they would, but that was part of the usual “promise, no promise” of military at that time. So . . . Q: So that was in 1943 when they . . . A: Yes, it was '43, I was . . . Q: [They] told you to report to Fort McPherson? A: '43 to McPherson, McPherson, yeah, in March of '43. So, from there I, I was sent to Camp McCall, uh, no. Oh, went to school, didn't I first; yeah, went, oh yeah. They put us—I'm sorry, missed a part. We were put back in school because, and they called it, Army Specialized Training, and they, and that was a way, they said at the time, they were trying to put reserves in the schools and not have ‘em all close. So they put the military, the ones that had been inducted, back into school, and we went back and, and, and, and did not necessarily follow what we had been following. (Laugh) Q: Did you go back to Georgia Tech? A: No, I did not. They, I did not go back to Georgia Tech. And I had been an Industrial Management major at Georgia Tech, but they proceeded . . . at the time I had taken tests, I don't know why, as an Industrial Management major, I qualified for Advanced Engineering, but I did, and so they sent me to North Carolina State Engineering College, and I attended that for I guess about a year, whatever. I've, I've forgotten the exact time but anyhow, for that length of time, and since I had not taken, taken engineering at Georgia Tech nor had I intended to; I did not intend to take engineering, but so, I chose Civil Engineering as my course (laugh) when I went to North Carolina State, and did that until the time that [unclear] they said, we need people in active duty. So, they pulled groups of us out. I was one of maybe seven or eight, and we were put into the Thirteenth Airborne Division, and I stayed in the Thirteenth Airborne Division. Q: Where was this located? A: Thirteenth Airborne Division was at, at Camp McCall, which was a satellite camp of Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The big base that's in North Carolina. And then, in all this time since I had not been in officer training at any time because my eyes were too bad for me to get into OCS or get in at that time, I was never in officer training, but always was applying. Everywhere I went I was applying for OCS, applying for OCS. So finally, when I was in the Thirteenth Airborne, I kept applying, and it just so happened that I was, that I went before a board for about the third or fourth time, and, as the Thirteenth Airborne went oversees, I went to Fort Benning to OCS. So, (laughs) and that was, and that was my stint there. And that was, that was very good luck ‘cause I never even had to go overseas at all. So, I went to, went to OCS for the usual three months—“ninety day wonders” they called us—and came out a second lieutenant in Infantry. And I was, I was sent to Camp—where was that, where did I go after Benning? Yeah, I went, I was sent to Camp Blanding, Florida, to train with troops at that base, which I did, for about, three or four months, I guess. And then, from Camp Blanding, now, now I'm losing it. Q: Was this infantry . . . A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. This . . . Q: . . . training at Camp Blanding? A: Camp Blanding was, was infantry, was infantry. (Sigh) Now I'm losing it. Q: And then from Camp Blanding? A: Where did I go from Camp Blanding? . Q: Well, let's not go in chronological order. What is the next thing that you remember? A: I'm trying, I'm trying to remember. (Pause) From Blanding to . . . Q: Well, let's say this—What was your first impression when you got to Camp Blanding? What was your impression of that camp; what did you expect to do there? A: Well, , Blanding was, was in Florida, course a different geographical area than I'd, I had been, although it was still in the South, and it was, it was, training troops. I mean, as a platoon leader, you know, got raw, raw recruits to bring into the service, and that's basically what we were doing. I, I can remember Blanding, in fact, most of the bases I was on, I can remember, that the geography was not like I had thought the South was, although I was born and raised in the South. But all these places the military had picked, of course it was cheap land, so it was all sand, (laugh) deep sand. So, my impression and remembrance of, of the areas that I trained troops in was walking, marching and whatever, living in deep sand. That's like sand from the seashore type kind of sand, and camping and everything else, so . . . Q: So, you were a second lieutenant at this time? A: Yes. Q: Did you actually train the troops or did you have sergeants who were . . . A: Well, well, in the, in the way the military is broken down you—I'm not sure whether you're familiar with it, but you, you have, you have a division, then you have regiments, then you have battalions, and then you have companies, then you have platoons. This is the, the echelons. And, as a platoon leader, you are of course at the last level of group training, and then, the platoons were all . . . . And you had three platoons in a company and three companies in a battalion and three battalions in a regiment, and three regiment in a division. That's the elements of the way the military's set up. So . . . Q: So, you were actually a platoon leader? A: I was a platoon leader, which, which has, has approximately at that time, platoons varied a lot of times in Army strength sometimes. And in the combat areas there, there are different strengths than there are in the, in just the regular, what would you say, stateside standards. But our, our platoons were usually made up of about 20 or 30 guys in a platoon, and then the company had three, three platoons generally in, in a company. And, and sometimes you, you had two platoons in a company, just depended on the makeup of the companies and, and the battalions. And at the head of a platoon, was, was, was a lieutenant, and it may be a first or second lieutenant. First lieutenant was in between, and the captain was the Company commander. And, a first lieutenant was, was that step above the second lieutenant. Generally, he might, he might sometimes serve as a Company commander, or the first lieutenant might serve as a platoon leader of two platoons or whatever. And then, the captain served—he had several platoons, and then, then, a major had a battalion. The battalion was made up usually of three, three . . . Q: What kind of training was this? What . . . A: Well, it was basically—all this that I'm talking about was infantry training. That's mud-sloggers. Q: Okay. A: You know, the, the, the sloggers, the mud, the mud-chuggers. You know, we, we, that was basically what it was; this was infantry. Later I got out of, of infantry, and went back to, went back to school, and did that for some time, but the school thing was, was more, learning. I wasn't, I wasn't teaching; we were just, we were just learning, learning military strategy. Q: Where, where did you go to school? A: Well, I went to, went to school at Fort Benning. It was when I—cause at Fort Benning is where I, I went to—well, first of all, I went, went to school at, in, where was it, North Carolina? Yeah, I went to, I'm trying, trying to think where . . . Q: You said you got out of the infantry by going to school? A: Yeah, I got in—I changed, let's see. I didn't get out of the infantry at that time because this was when I was in, in—see, see sometimes I get confused in my (laugh), my history because when I was in the Reserves, I was doing different things, then the thing that I was in the Reserves for so many years and I did other things than what I did in the, in the active duty. But active, I went, I was, actually, I got into the, Airborne, and, and served in the Airborne for about, for about a year. But I was trying all this time to go to OCS, and, finally got, I got accepted when I was in the Airborne. And when that Airborne Division, which was the Thirteenth, went overseas, I went to Benning to OCS, Officer Training School. And, came out of that as a second, second lieutenant, and then I was sent to, sent to train troops. And went, that's when I went to Florida and was training troops down there for that length of time until I was sent, a whole group of second lieutenants was sent overseas. They were actually, we were actually replacements. The war, the war ended, and we were, a whole bunch of us were, going as, as replacements. You know, they had, they had turnovers to replace on line officers, and troops too, but mainly officers, and, and they would replace them. And, and so, we were a group that were going over as replacements. Well, the war was over, but that didn't stop, you know, the, the turn was turning and the wheel was wheeling, and so, we wound up going, going to, you know, shipload (laugh) of second and first lieutenants. It truly was about, almost over a 1,000 of us, you know, aboard ship going, going as replacements. But the war was over, but they, they didn't stop it. I mean, they just went over and replaced the guys who were over there, which is fine, they had been serving over there so they got to leave. Q: Which port did you leave from? A: We left from San Francisco, and, and going west. And we went to the Philippines, and we landed in Manila, and then we went up to—finally, and then they broke us all into Divisions ________. I went up, and, and they said, “What branch of service do you want to be in? We don't have any infantry anymore.” So, I says, “Well, the best service I can think of is Quartermaster.” (laugh) That's a good service to be in; it's a supply thing. I, I like that. That's where the food is, the clothing, so I went up to Luzon, which is up in upper San Fernando on the west, west coast of, of Luzon. Luzon is a main, Philippine island, I guess you would call it; the country. And, I arrived up there and was assigned a depot up there. Q: How did you get to that location? A: How did I get to that location? Oh, we went by train, and I was . . . Q: From Manila? A: From Manila. Q: To northern Luzon? A: Northern Luzon, which was, it was probably 70 to 100 miles, I guess. Not too, too far, ‘cause Luzon, it's not very, probably only 100 to 150 long for the whole island. Then, of course, the Philippines have, a lot of people think about the Philippine Islands are, are islands scattered all over the place. Luzon is the major chunk. And so, I was posted, posted up there, and had a job. Let's see, I had several depot responsibilities over a period that, you know, you do this and then they'd say do you want to do that and try and transfer you around. But I had, I had a supply depot at, at one time which was Quartermaster, so it was clothing and Quartermaster equipment that I was Depot Chief. And, and with that you had responsibility for probably 20 or 30 or 50 workers. We had Japanese prisoners working for us. That was an interesting adventure, too, because they didn't speak very much English and we didn't speak very much Japanese, and I said at the time, says, “I'm not going to learn Japanese.” I guess I was lazy; (laugh) I didn't figure I could learn Japanese anyhow. So I said, “You will have to speak English; you will have to learn to speak English,” and, and they did. The Japanese were very interesting people, and they, they picked up on it quick. And we had some very interesting Japanese characters; I did. One of ‘em, one of ‘em always stood out in my mind. I called him “Butch” because he was a northern Japanese and not as small as most people encounter. Japanese are very short. This, this was, the northern Japanese were big, and this, this guy was like about 6 feet tall, weighed about 200 pounds, so he was big. And, but a neat guy, and, and those guys, I am tellin' ya, they could, they were so hearty, and, and always wanted, Japanese were tough. And, and these fellas, and of course they were in our camp, and they were laborers. Q: Were they prisoners? A: Huh? Q: Were they prisoners of war? A: Yeah, they, they were prisoners. They, they weren't the, I mean, they had, they lived in compound, but they weren't chained or anything; they were in an, an enclosure and everything. And they were in, and we had guards around the various camps, but we had guards around all of our enclosures anyhow. We were depot, so we had guards, our guards, , , were generally troops of, of, you know, the United States, you know, American troops. Q: I want to, to hold this place for _____. A: Yeah; all right. Q: I want to back up. A: All right. Q: At the time you left Camp Blanding or Fort Blanding, and when you were preparing to go overseas, were you married at the time? When did you get married at some point? A: When did we get married? In ‘47, 1947, so that was . . . Q: Okay, that was after you came back. A: Yeah, after I came back; I was not married when with the Army. Not married. Q: All right, but you had family back in the Atlanta area? A: Oh, yeah, yeah. My family's made up of three children. My father's a dentist, and both of ‘em, mother and father, lived quite a long time. And my sister's the oldest, six years older than I am; brother three years older; and I was the youngest out of the group of the three of us. Q: Did you maintain contact with your family . . . A: Oh, yeah. Q: . . . once you left the States? A: Yeah, contact with them. ‘Course my, my brother was in service, and he had wound up in a, he wound up in a German prison camp, years before I was even called into the service. He had been, he had been Air Force, and was shot down in North Africa, and captured by the Germans, and shipped back to Germany, and served in German prison camp for about a year or more, two years. And, till, till they were liberated by the Americans when the Americans and the Russians were both approaching Germany at that time.In the history of World War II, that's what took place. I think they, I'm not sure, I think that particular German prison camp was interesting, and he had, he would be the one to tell stories. (Laugh) But, they, they were liberated by the Americans, because the Russians were coming from one side to liberate ‘em, and they wanted to be liberated by the Americans, so they kind of fixed it up so— I'm not sure who fixed it up—so they could be liberated by the Americans. And, and so he . . . Q: So your brother had the wartime experiences or combat experience. A: Oh, yeah. He had combat. He was, as I say, he was a pilot in the Air Corps. It was not the Air Force then; people think, talk about, it was the Air Corps. Yeah, he, he was, he was a bomber pilot of a B-25. You know that was the medium, they called it a medium bomber at that time. Actually, they flew them as three crew, four crew fighters. Because at the time he flew, his flights in North Africa, they had, you know bombers always were, had cover by a, a fighter planes, but they never flew with cover because they were, they flew their own, because the B-25 was almost like a fighter plane. It was a small bomber. And, and it wasn't fast but for that time it was, they were fairly fast, and that's where this plane, they flew flights not as bombers but more, more as fighters because they were, when they were battling the Germans and the Germans were in Italy, and they were flying into Italy. And they did some rather interesting fighting tactics. (Laugh) Q: Did you feel that you were going to have any type of adventure such as than when you left to go overseas? A: Not really, because when, by time what happened to me was that, I was training troops over here, in basic training, and, and nothing, actually nothing was doing, and finally at the end of the war, when the war had ended, and they, they pulled a whole bunch of us out, I guess, who had not served overseas in to replace the ones overseas, so they . . . Q: Where were you at the time the war ended? A: The war ended, I was at Camp, where was I? Fort . . . . (sigh) I'd finished I guess, yeah, I was at Blanding, Blanding ________, training troops when the, the war ended. And, and, and that's when they, as I say, as replacement things, they sent a whole bunch of us overseas after the war. So we took our . . . Q: Okay. Let's go, let's go back again to your base in northern Luzon. You said that you traveled there by train. A: Went up to . . . Q: Can you describe your feelings when you first saw your base where you were going to be living? What did you think of, of the location? A: Well, I don't, I don't really have any clear thing except that, that it was, of course, being a new, you might say, a new land and a new experience, it was just like any other new, new experience of a, of a different, of a different location, a different, different land. It was interesting because it was very different from the United States. You know, the . . . Q: What kind of quarters did you have? A: Hah, the quarters, the quarters that we had were rather primitive because they, they were, they, they were built of bamboo. We had bamboo, bamboo shacks, I guess you would call them, in which we, the officer's quarters, we had a, the officer's quarters were plush. We had a big layout in which we had about four, four rooms in this thing, if you can imagine or picture, made of, made of bamboo, the whole, the whole hut. Just as, and you've seen pictures; I'm sure people have seen pictures of that type of structures. And the floors are bamboo and, and, and they were nice, slatted so when they washed the floors, everything just kind of went through, through the floors. You know, you didn't have any problems with them sweeping and anything, and, and chickens and things running around under the floors (laugh), what have you. But it, and we also, I remember one instance we had, we adopted a baby goat. It was a kid, small goat. The Philippines, Filipinos eat goats and they had raised them for food, and as well as sheep, goats. But we rescued this; we called this goat “Newsbaum”, “Newsbaum”, and it was a baby kid. And so it became the pet of (laugh) our little group, and wandered around. I'm not sure whether we had, had it tied or whether it just followed us around. But anyhow, it was, it was a little animal; it wasn't a full grown thing. So I just recall that particular incident; it was rather amusing—this, this goat, because we had, we'd, we would feed it various and sundry things. But, we found it, it was so small and it had lost its mother or wandered away, whatever, so we, we fed it by taking. . . what did we do, we got, I don't know whether we used a rubber glove. I guess that's what we used, and made a nipple of the rubber, rubber glove and tied it around a bottle, you know, and let him (laugh), let him feed, suck on the, on the, on the rubber glove as a means of feeding, feeding. Q: So everybody in the camp sort of took care of it? A: Well, yeah. Just the, not necessarily the whole camp, just our, our, our particular small group that, we did that. But anyhow, that was . . . The area of our expertise, as I would say, is just we were in charge of security of the total thing, and so we had, we had troops who acted as guards, and then we were, we were the officers who checked on what they were doing. And, and we had, we had responsibility for a whole village, and which we had various depots around the village, where we had a clothing depot, a food depot, other materials depots. Q: When you say “village”, you mean a village of Filipino people? A: Yes. Yeah, it would be a little town. And, and we just happened to be stationed there, and we had our, our base. Q: Americans had bases there, in this town? A: Yeah, this was kind of all, all, allover the place. ‘Cause the Philippines had been occupied by the Spanish and by the Americans and by others at various times, depending on who had won what and where the wars had been fought. So these, actually Filipinos were a mixture of many races; there were Chinese, Japanese, there were Americans, Indians, and true Filipinos. _____ were hardly seen true Filipinos. The Indians didn't even look like what most people visualize. Usually, they got, visualize Filipinos with the Spanish look because they'd say, “Oh, that's a Filipino.” But, but the true Filipinos were very dark, almost like Africans, and, and, especially the ones out of the hills, out of the mountains, and, and, you may have read about this enough that they were headhunters. And, and these characters were tough. The Indians I've seen, and, and I have some pictures of them somewhere that bring ‘em with their heads. Picture of them where they, when they called them headhunters, what they did, they, when they got into the battles, whoever won decapitated their enemies, you know, and hung those head on strings (laugh). And they'd go around, I mean they had, and the heads would shrink. Q: You never really encountered of _______. A: Oh, yeah; yeah, yeah, we saw ‘em all the time. Yeah, coming out of the hills and they were very interesting people. They didn't speak English. And they weren't, they, they weren't huntin' us; they weren't aggressive warriors. They were, this, this fighting would be amongst themselves. The interesting thing, too, was that they were, they, they didn't have a lot of food. When the Americans came, we had, we were in the Quartermaster, so we had TONS of food. We had shipped food over there by, by the train, no, by the shiploads for the invasion of Japan, which never took place. So, in the Quartermaster, we had stockpiles of things you would not believe. I mean, we had stockpiles of, for instance, canned Planters Peanuts. Have you ever thought of 40,000 bags of canned Planters; now a bag of canned peanuts had about 50 or 60. It was like a case of peanuts. But they had, the cases had deteriorated in shipping and everything, so they wound up in _____sack or bags. So we had those things mounded 20 and 30 feet high in depots; just tons of ‘em. So what do you do with them? (Laugh) Well, you give them away if you can, you know, and we'd have ‘em, we would have the Filipinos and the Chinese—the Chinese were in the Philippines, too. The Chinese had always been into the Philippines, and they were, the Chinese, as you know, have been always a, a race who has traveled all over the place, and, and been a, a society that's moved all over the world. And, so they were, the Chinese would come in, and, and of course, with—if I'm taking too much time? Q: No. A: Then the Chinese would, would come in, and they, and a lot of times they had, they had a lot of money, so they'd buy up things. They'd buy up, and in fact, they'd buy up shiploads of things that the Americans had shipped over there. You know, they'd, they'd put ‘em up for sale. Maybe they'd pay $1,000 for the ship and everything in it, you know, and, and take it and they'd sell it. (Laugh) Like, like an auction. Q: Did you have Filipinos working . . . A: Yes.We had Filipinos, Filipinos were, were very much working for us; some Chinese, but mostly Filipinos, and there were black work battalions that were labor battalions. So, it was, it was a big mix; it really was a big mix. Q: How did the Filipinos and Japanese get along? A: Ah…. Q: … when they came into contact with each other? A: They, I never, I never found there was any, any, any uproarious things. Every once in a while, and you know, and I don't think there was a racial thing between them, we'd, we'd have, something would happen. Somebody, there, there would, there would be a killing or something which I'd do the investigative thing, _______. Didn't have a lot it. You know, there, there were, and we, because we had, we had courts set up for all various infractions of the rules and things; we had court-martials of things. We, what was it, we court-martialed one guy for what was that he did, something he did on duty, but the biggest thing was with the guard. We, we had, we had guards primarily in what we were doing, and we were in charge of the guards. And so in making the rounds, I can remember one time I (laugh), I'd go around, and my sport was, it was a terrible sport, but it was, it had its effect and it didn't injure anybody, but sleeping on guard duty is not a very good thing, you know; that's, that's a major offense, sleeping on guard duty. And a couple of times, not often, maybe once or I think it was at least twice, I found a guard, you know, in making my rounds, guys sleeping on guard duty. So, to wake him up (laugh), I'd take my .45 (laugh) and get pretty close to him (laugh) and cock it (laugh). Q: _____________. A: (Laugh) If you can imagine a guy asleep on guard duty and a .45 go off, you know, not right in his ear but, you know, within two or three feet away, and quite a noise, ‘cause .45's a loud gun. But that was a good way of waking, waking up the guard. (Laugh) Q: That'd definitely wake me up. A: (Laugh) Yeah. Q: When you came back, on your tour of duty in the Philippines, what is the most memorable thing that stands out in your mind? A: Oh, God. Most memorable thing. (Pause) Q: So there was nothing particularly exciting. A: Well, I don't . . . Q: . . . particularly emotionally . . . A: I, I can't, you know, my, my brain just . . . [doesn't] work, work good now. I, I'm sure there were things that I will, would recall at some other time than right this moment about things that happened, but I, I can't really pull into, into mind anything that, that, of—now this was over there, you're talking about over there? Q: No, I am just asking you . . . A: Just, just anything? Q: . . . just while you were there, yeah. How long were you based in the Philippines? A: About, um, nine or ten months, nine or ten months; I think that's about, about, wasn't, wasn't quite, it was just about a year. I remember I, I went over there in the spring; I think I came back in the late fall, I guess. This is about _________. Q: During the fall of '46? A: Yeah, yeah. That year I came back. Q: And where, when you left the Philippines, where did you come back to? What port? A: I came back to San Francisco, to the very same port. And, and then, and then went from there, you know, I'm trying to think, that's where . . . Q: Texas. A: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, they, yeah, they, they shipped us to Fort, to, Fort Sam Houston, Texas, to get out. That was the next step. Q: So you came back to be separated? A: To be separated, yeah. I didn't, didn't, I didn't do any more duty with, with the troops. Q: You went back to school. A: Oh, I did. Went back . . . Voice: ____________________ A: Oh, yeah. She said, reminds me I went back to school because I hadn't finished school. Q: What, after you got out of the service . . . A: Yeah, I went back to school. O: . . . you went back to school? A: Yeah, I had, had, see I had about— I was determined at that time to finish school. Q: But you were separated from the service at this time? A: Yeah, yeah, when I went back to school, I was separated at Fort Sam Houston. I said good-bye, and, and, and then I got out and took about 10 days or two weeks off. And then I, whenever the, my classes started up at school ‘cause I could get back in, back into school ‘cause I had just about a year, a year more to go to, to get my degree from Georgia Tech. Q: Now, what school was this, Georgia Tech? A: Yeah, Georgia Tech. Q: Okay. A: Yeah. Q: So that's when you came back to Atlanta, to Georgia Tech? A: Yeah, yeah. Q: That's, that's when you met your wife, is that true? A: No, I'd known her, I didn't want (laugh), I'd known her for six years before we . . . Q: Oh, even before you left to go overseas? A: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We'd been, we'd been going on a long, long time. Q: Okay. So you were _________. A: I met her when she was 12. (Laugh) Met her then (laugh); yeah. Q: So, not only were you communicating with your family, but you were also communicating with your fiancé. A: Oh yes; yeah. Q: . . . with her? A: With her much more than I was with the family. (Laugh) __________ Q: Were you engaged to be married at the time you went over? A: No. We weren't engaged; we were dating. [To wife:] What time did we officially get engaged? Do you remember? About . . . Wife: Easter. A: About Easter? In 194—. Q: '47? A: '46, '47. Q: '47. A: '47; yeah. You'll have to pardon my poor memory. Q: No, that's okay. A: (Laugh) Just has blanks in it. Q: Well, this has been interesting. I'd love to bring that out because she had said she had been writing to you. A: Yes. Q: I was trying to bring it in, you know. A: Yeah. She, she wrote—I got a lot of—at least one a week; sometimes, sometimes two a week. And, we, she kept me up with everything that was going on (laugh), and I didn't have much to tell her about what was going on where I was. (Laugh) It was pretty much, pretty much the same military . . . (laugh) Q: So you came back and you were separated. You went right to Georgia Tech. A: Went back to Georgia Tech, to finish, to finish up. I had, I had a year, a year to go to, to graduate, which I, which I did. And I got in '47, I guess it was, 1947. Q: But you remained in the Reserves? A: Yes. I, you know, that's an interesting thing because I said heck to all this, I don't want any more part of the mili-,no more part of the military. And so when we came to that part of, of getting out, I was reminded by a sergeant who was, maybe it was an officer, anyhow, he said, “Lt. Barnwell, you don't really want to get out of the Reserves and get completely out because we may have another war.” (Laugh) We were _____ before we had two more wars. (Laugh) And he says, “Now, you can get out and then you'll be drafted, you know, go back in as a . . . You'd rather fight it as, as an officer.” (Laugh) I says, “Well, maybe that's, maybe that's true.” So, I signed up, I signed up for the Reserves. And, and with that, I started my Reserves training and did that for, in various types of Reserves things, I did everything from, from Reserves file, correspondence at times, and, and, and then in active Reserves sometimes. You had to put in some active part during the year, like two weeks at summer camp was generally what you had, you had to have, you had to have, have points. And you had to make 50 points as the minimum number of points; one point for each time you attended a meeting. Q: Fifty points per year? A: Yeah, 50 points per year. So, if you went to every two weeks or whatever it was, normally every two weeks, you would fill that much, but then you had to have others, so you go to two weeks active duty or whatever to make, you always made sure you had that 50 points ‘cause that's what built your time. Q: So you did successfully… A: Yeah, I made, when, when I got to 21 years and something, I says, “This is it.” (Laugh) So I retired, I retired from the Reserves. (Laugh) Q: What grade were you when you got out? A: I was a major. Q: You were a major? A: Yeah. So I finally got out (laugh), but it's been good, you know. In fact, if I'd stayed, I think if I'd stayed one more year, I'd have made like colonel. If you were in at that time, you didn't really have to do anything; it was a time thing, you know, you had time for this. If I'd stayed, I think it was like nine months more, I would have made lieutenant colonel. I says, “I don't want any more. I'm through, I'm through.” You know, you get to a point where you're saturated, so I decided I wasn't going to—and at this point, I say, you know, I really should have stayed that nine months because the difference in the pay, you know, for—because pay goes on. See, I, I draw pay now. I wouldn't draw as much as a major as I would as a colonel. (Laugh) So, yeah, that's, that's hindsight. Q: (Laugh) Well, this has been very interesting. Is there anything else you would like to add? A: I don't know. I can't, I can't think of anything. But I've already told you I feel like I've run my mouth more than I should. Q: Oh, not at all. A: But it was, it was interesting to recall some of those things, and it's . . . Q: So that's what this is all about. A: Yeah, yeah. I . . . Q: How do you compare the feeling in the country at that time, during World War II, compared to today, the degree of patriotism and the degree of commitment? A: Well, it's hard, you know, that's always kind of, I think, subjective question because, you know, it's how you feel about it. I mean, you can say, “Well, I feel so and so.” I'm, I'm not in the Reserves any more; got completely out, so I don't have that contact anymore, but I, I don't know, I feel that probably they're not now as, as gung-ho in it because we're not really, you know, as much as committed to that kind of thing. We have a, we have a, well, you know, we've still got combat troops all over (laugh), all over the world. And, and probably will. Maybe it's because I'm, I'm not close to it. I'm, as I say, I'm away from the Reserves so I don't feel it. Q: You _______ 30 years ________ service organizations like the American Legion or? A: No; no American Legion. Q: _____________ or anything like that? A: No. I never continued to stay in any of that stuff. I guess I just drifted away because my business I was in really didn't lend itself to that kind of thing while I was doing that. Then when I completely retired, I just said, “Well, forget it all,” you know. Some of my friends probably still, I don't know who my age are still involved in any kind of thing that I know of. They're, they're all, you know, when you get into your 80s, you say, “Well, that's enough.” [To wife:] Huh? Oh yeah. (Laugh) Yeah, I take that back. I have a friend, a friend, he's a, he's a, we call him our, what do we call him, our “co-inlaws”. His, his son is married to our daughter, so that's the relationship. Great guy, but he's a, well, he's a Bird Colonel, you know, who came out, he didn't go to West Point but he might as well have. He went to, went to one of the military schools, wasn't West Point, so he's always, he's kind of stayed. Q: So he stays closer to the military? A: Yeah, yeah. Q: So he stayed in until retirement, active duty? A: Huh? Q: Was he ______ of active duty? A: Well, he's, he's in, I guess he did, yeah, yeah. He stayed in 30-some years. He was, he went the whole way. And, now, because he's, he's like I am, retired Reserves, I guess is what you'd call it. Q: Well, this has been very interesting. A: (Laugh) I'll bet. (Laugh) Q: I thank you; thank you very much. A: A lot of stuff. Q: Yeah. And the information that we have talked about that you have shared with us will be in the archives here at the Atlanta Historical Society. A: If I ever get back. (Laugh) Well, you have been nice to put up with all this. - Metadata URL:
- http://album.atlantahistorycenter.com/cdm/ref/collection/VHPohr/id/396
- 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:
- 49:00
- 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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