Oral History Program George Ford Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 10 & 17 September 2019 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah George Ford Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 10 & 17 September 2019 Copyright © 2025 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The World War II "All Out for Uncle Sam" oral history project contains interviews from veterans of the war, wives of soldiers, as well as individuals who were present during the war years. The interviews became the compelling background stories for the "All Out for Uncle Sam" exhibit. The project received funding from Utah Division of State History, Utah Humanities Council and Weber County RAMP. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Ford, George, an oral history by Lorrie Rands, 10 & 17 September 2019, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections and University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with George Ford conducted on September 10 and 17, 2019, in his home with Lorrie Rands. George describes some of his experiences growing up in the Great Depression and fighting in World War II as a radio operator on a B-17 Bomber, as well as his life after he got home. Also present is Michael Thompson, the videographer, and George’s son, Greg. LR: Today is September 10, 2019, and we are in the home of George Ford in Ogden, Utah. We are talking to him about his life and experiences for Weber State University Special Collections, specifically his memories of World War II. My name is Lorrie Rands conducting the interview, and Michael Thompson is with me. George's son Greg Ford is here as well. That being said, thank you again for your willingness to do this. I appreciate it. Let's start with when and where you were born? GF: I was born here in Ogden, Utah, the 3rd of November, 1917, in the southwest corner of Ogden. LR: Where were you born? At your home or—? GF: I was born at home, yes. LR: What were your parents’ names, and what did they do? GF: My father was James A. Ford, and he did a number of things. He started out in a decorative business, hanging wallpaper and painting and this type of a thing, and then he built 30 houses after that. Then he had some problems with health, and so he went into the floral business and built a greenhouse and we grew small plants, and he had some outer containers that he'd grow the larger plants in and sell them to the public. That was mainly what he was doing right up to the last. LR: Okay, and what about your mother? What was her name? GF: My mother was Ida May Burton, and she was born here in Ogden. LR: Was she a housewife, a stay-at-home mom, or did she work outside the home? 1 GF: No, she was a housewife and helped Dad in his various activities in his business, mostly in building the houses and in the floral business. We had a half-acre lot and grew peonies and gladiolus and vegetables and et cetera. LR: So, growing up here in Ogden, what are some of your memories of going to elementary school? Where did you go to elementary school? GF: To the Pingree School on the corner of 30th and Lincoln Avenue. All of us kids went there; even my mother went there. Then I went to junior high school, Washington Junior High School on 32nd and Washington, and then I graduated from Ogden High School in 1935, when Ogden High School was on the corner of 25th and Monroe, before they built— LR: Before they built the new one, right? GF: First year in this one was 1938, the new one. LR: Right. What are some of your memories of going to elementary school? Can you remember? GF: Elementary school? LR: Yeah. I'm asking you to go back. GF: Well, my main one there, I was quite active, even as a young fellow. When we'd go out for recess, we had a teacher there, Mrs. Highmarsh, and I used to like to go out there, and I was fairly good at the sports activity. So, that's what I kind of liked there, along with the schooling and one thing and another. That was the basic of elementary school, so far as I was concerned. Why, I do the best I can and got as far as I could. Washington Junior High School—I played baseball and football for Washington Junior High School and went out for basketball and that. Then I had a broken nose, so I didn't play on that one. But Washington, I can pretty well—Johnny Junk was the principal, and Mrs. Craven was the principal of the Pingree School. 2 After I got out of Washington Junior High School, the 10th grade, I went up to Ogden High School for 11th and 12th grade. I was in the ROTC up there for two years. So far as the schooling was concerned, I took a business course of bookkeeping and shorthand and business English, and my main objective was to do that. Some I’ve used, some of it I haven't, but I was able to use some of my schooling in my employment later on, the experiences that I had there. Johnny Junk was the principal of Washington. Mrs. Craven, as I mentioned, and A. M. Merrill, let's see. No, yeah, I was trying to think of the principal of Ogden High School at the time. I think it was A. M. Merrill, if I remember correctly. I can correct that by looking at my yearbook. LR: So, you were about 12 years old when the Depression hit. What are some of your memories of growing up during that time? GF: Well, the Depression was quite a period in my life because, of course, I was young at that time. The main Depression was 1929. The employment was very, very scarce. You couldn't hardly find a job. After I got out of high school, I went to work for the state of Utah surveying and surveyed a road from Hopper over to Sunset. One of the main roads now. Then it was so scarce you couldn't hardly get a job, but one of the things was the canning factories. There was a canning factory, The Royal Canning Factory, on the corner of 31st and Lincoln. Actually, I went up there to try to get on. That was after I got out of high school. I went up there for two weeks and sit every day waiting to try to get on, and I finally got on after two weeks and were dumping tomatoes on the belt. I only worked one day, and then I heard about a friend of ours, of the family and that, who worked at the Railway Express Agency. The Railway Express Agency, you probably aren’t aware of what that was, but all the stuff that was 3 shipped in—all the clothing, food, everything—was shipped in on trains. There was no airplanes that brought it in, there was none of these big trucks or anything like that. All of the clothing and stuff that was in the downtown stores came in by train, and the Railway Express Agency unloaded the trains, and then we put it on the wagons and take it and sort it into the various areas, and then we had routes throughout the city where the trucks would deliver it into the various aspects downtown. All of the clothing and everything was taken downtown and delivered into the back of the stores and then taken out and displayed and sold out of the front. But that was the main, then, of all of the gathering of materials that there was in the town. Even the people, if they wanted to ship something, why, we'd go to their house and pick it up, write it up one thing and another, take it in, take it down, put it on a train. It would go wherever they wanted it to go. I worked on the trains down there, unloading. We had wagons that hooked together, and then we would unload on those wagons, and then had a conveyance to pull the wagons. We’d pull eight and 10 wagons at a time, take it into the main warehouse there, and sort it out and put it into piles to be delivered by whatever truck was going in that area. I worked on that for a few years. It was a part-time job was what it was. The trains came in in the morning, and the materials would be mostly on passenger trains. Sometimes it would be on freight trains, we’d get a whole boxcar full and have to unload it and that kind of stuff. But I worked on unloading and all that kind of stuff, and then I finally got onto a route and delivered. Well before that, actually, the transportation between here in Salt Lake was the Bamberger. That's the way anything that we had to go went, on the Bamberger to Salt Lake, and the Utah-Idaho Central went up to Preston. They had a terminal on 24th and Grant Avenue, right behind the existing post office building that is still there on the corner of 24th and Grant. The post office building is still there on the 4 corner, and the terminal for the two railroad agencies, the Bamberger and the UIC, were over right behind there. Actually, there was—I don't know if you remember, Crichton and Paint Company is right next door, and it was right behind that, and our office was in that building. I was the depot agent over there for a couple of years, and would unload and load going to Salt Lake and going to Preston, Idaho. After I got from that, I got a route driving a little pound truck, and I had the East Bench. Whatever was there business-wise or personal-wise, why I would go, and that was my route to deliver on the East Bench. I had a nice little truck and one thing and another. Actually, that's where I was when I finished up working there. But one day I decided that I'd look for something when I come back from the service, which I'll go into a little bit later. When I came back from the service, why, I decided I would go someplace rather than back to the Express company I had worked there. So, I went out and found some other jobs, but they were no better than the one I had, so I worked there another five years after I came back from the service. At that time, I decided I better see if I can find something else that's a little bit better. So, one day—and the Korean War was on—I went up to Hill Field to see if there was any openings out there. I had experience in flying, as I will relate to you, in B-17 Flying Fortresses. I had experience, I was a radio operator on a B-17. So, I went out to Hill Field and inquired, and the guy said, “Yeah.” This was on a Friday. He says, “Come to work next Monday.” I said, “I can't do that. I got to go back to the Express company and give them two weeks’ notice that I'm quitting,” because that was according to the union rules. So, I went back to the Express that day, and I talked to the general agent there, Mr. 5 Claude Wade, and told him I was going to hire out at Hill Field, giving him two weeks’ notice. He says, "Hell, I don't care, you can quit now if you want." I said, "No, the rules say two weeks’ notice." So, I worked the two weeks, and then I quit on a Friday and went to work the next Monday at Hill Field. That was on a year's probation. You only made $1.48 an hour, but you had a years’ probation before you could get on permanently. So, I worked that time, and then from then on I can give you the story of working at Hill Field. I worked on the line for five years on the aircraft and radio and radar. Then I heard about a job. Well, friend of mine that I worked with had transferred out, and he went down into service engineering. He came back up on the line there one day and he said, "Would you be interested in you coming down and working down there?" I said, "Yes, I would." So, they put me on a loan to go down to service engineering, and I went in the office down there as a tech writer. I worked down there for 90 days, three months on a loan, and then my loan time came up and they wanted me to stay another 90 days. My supervisor up on the line said, “No way, we want you back on the line.” So, I went back up on the line. I had a few connections over in personnel. I knew the head of personnel, Leif Lawrence; he was the head of all personnel. He happened to live over here close to us, and we belonged to a dance club with him, my wife and I and his wife and him. So, I went through all the rigamarole and took some tests, so on and so forth, and I finally transferred from maintenance in working on the aircraft down into the office, 6 in service engineering. I went down there, and like I said I was a technical writer, and I went along in the various aspects. What that amounted to was we had a group of engineers, and when an aircraft would get damaged and they had some repairs on it up in the hangers and that, why, the engineer would go up there and figure out what he had to do to fix it. Then he'd come down there and tell. Sometimes we'd go with him and we'd write it all up. Then we’d write the step-by-step procedure that the mechanic would use, that the engineer told him how to do it. We'd write it up so he knew what he wanted. That's what I did for quite a long time. Then I worked my way up and I finally got to be a supervisor in the engineering standard section. So, I worked there as a supervisor, and I had about 12 people work for me. We had various aspects of responsibility in my particular group, so I would monitor what was going on in each one of these areas and supervise what was going on there. Then my supervisor took ill, and so he was off for six months, so I took his place two different times as a branch chief rather than a section chief. Well, I had them both, section chief and branch chief, and I worked it. There we had a bunch of guys that drew up the—can't think of what they were. They would draw up the pictures of the repair, and so on and so forth, so that the guy out there knew what it was and he'd have a picture of it, and a description, and all this kind of stuff. The engineer’d have various dimensions and all this, and that was put on paper in the drafting department. I worked at that as the section chief, and then, of course, I had a little health problem with a heart attack. I was off for quite a while there on that, and I finally went back after. Well, I spent the first 14 days at McKay-Dee Hospital in intensive care, this type of thing, and got out of that and went back to work and had a 7 gangrenous gallbladder. I had to go back in for nine days more in the hospital and had the problem there. So, when I went back, why, I worked for a while, and then I had a problem with this arm and lost the use of this arm, couldn't use a pencil, one thing and another. I was going over the dispensary on these various aspects, but when I was off, they did away with my job and my whole section in engineering. They did away with that and made some reorganization. When I went back, I was transferred over into the F-16 group in the office there, and I went over there and talked to the supervisor, which I knew, Bill Jacobsen, and he said, “We're just real happy to have you come over.” So, I talked to him for quite a while there, and he said, "Only problem is you'll be doing quite a bit of TDY." TDY is going out. LR: Yeah, I know what TDY is. I guess we should explain what TDY is. A temporary duty. GF: Temporary duty, going out on various projects, in other words. I had gone a lot while I was supervisor. I went back to Dayton, Ohio quite a few times in various places, California and other places, and he said, "You'll be doing quite a bit of TDY." I said, "Nuh-uh.” I had enough TDY. I’d been out, I went to Boeing for two months and they shot the first Minuteman missile while I was up there going to school. So, I went over and I talked to Doctor Jenkins over in the dispensary and told him what the situation was, and his response was “Get the hell out of here, I'll sign your paperwork.” So, I retired in 1976, it was. I went out actually on sick leave as a retirement. I was on sick leave for six months because I had built up sick leave, and I had 240 hours of annual leave also. So, I retired, officially, I think it was the 6th of January 1976. No, ‘77. Was ‘76 when I went to the dispensary, and it was ‘77, January, when I officially went out on that. 8 LR: So, how many years did you work at Hill Air Force Base? GF: I had 27 years at Hill Field, and I had worked 12 years before at the railroads, so I had 39 years total. I was 60 years of age at the time, so I figured, let's go. So, that's the reason I went out. My wife didn't even know until I told her I was retired. LR: Okay, so let's go back a little bit. I forgot to ask you, how many siblings did you have? GF: Just two, my son and a daughter. LR: Oh, no. How many brothers and sisters? GF: Oh, brothers and sisters. Excuse me. LR: You're fine. GF: I had two older brothers. Half-brothers. My father married his first wife and she died. The two boys were born. My oldest brother, half-brother—and they're not halfbrothers to me. They're brothers. We didn't never go with half-brothers; we went with brothers. But the first one was born in 1909, and the second one was born in 1910. They was a year and so many months apart. I had an older sister; she was born in 1916, and then I was the next one. Then I had a younger brother and a younger sister. The younger brother was born in 1923 and the sister was born in 1924. All of us was born right here in the south part of Ogden. LR: Okay. Alright, cool, thank you. So, were you drafted or did you sign up? GF: Well, let me give you a little story on that a little bit. As I say, I worked at the Railway Express. Well, at that time there was a lot of—the war started in 1941, as you're aware. I was working at the Express, and of course, it got to be so there was a lot of troop movement on the trains. That's the way all the transportation was, all trains, troop movement. They shipped a lot of military equipment, and supplies, and all this kind of stuff, along with all the other stuff to maintain—clothing, etcetera—that we would normally have. 9 I got married, and that's another story that is quite interesting. But they gave me a deferment from the service for six months due to the fact that I was handling war materials and that. We were home one day; we lived on 30th Street, just below Washington, my wife and I. By that time, I had this daughter, and we were out in front, and the mailman came along the other side of the street over there delivering mail. He went down to the next corner of Grant and 30th Street and crossed the street and come up. While we were standing there and the mailman was going down the other side of the street, my wife said, “The mailman’s got your induction papers.” He went down the other side of the street, crossed the street, and came up and handed me my induction papers. She had intuition or something, it just told her. But that was in—Well, actually, I can't tell you the exact date he handed me the paper, but I finally went in the service 23 of July 1945. LR: 1945? GF: Oh not ’45, ‘43. Excuse me. LR: Okay, that makes more sense. GF: Yeah, that makes a little more sense, ‘cause I got out in ‘45. LR: Okay, yeah. Well, July ‘45, the war was almost over, so go ahead. GF: So, to give you a little background there, I was drafted into the service, went to Fort Douglas, and went through the process of induction. In the process there, why, we took a lot of tests and all, etcetera, and got clothes and all that kind of good stuff. They inquired, said, “You can volunteer for the Army or the Navy or the Marines, but you can't the Air Force, because they're full.” So, I decided I didn't want to go to the Marines. They went right up the front end, out on the front line. I wasn't anxious to do that. I didn't want to go in the Navy because I didn't want to get into the submarine service. I figured I'd be on top of the water and I didn't want to go underneath. Anyway, I decided to let it take its course, so I went in the infantry. 10 It was 83 of us that left Fort Douglas and went down to Camp Wolters, Texas. That's where I went through all the basic infantry training. While I was going through the training there, I heard that now the Air Force had opened up and they wanted some pilots. So, I decided I would take a test to see if I could get in the Air Force. It was the Army Air Force, not USAF at that time. They didn't come until 1948, when USAF came. But it was Army Air Force, and I was already in the Army. I decided I would take the test, so I sent home—and I had to have three letters of recommendation, my school grades, and some other information. My birth certificate, and all that kind of good stuff. So, my wife gathered it all up, and she sent it down to me, and so I applied to take the test and that. Kind of the little background on that is we were lined up to take the test on a Thursday. I went out on the field maneuvers on Tuesday, and then Tuesday night I went to bed. Then Wednesday I got up and went back out on the field maneuvers, and then Wednesday night I went on to guard duty all night, and I was supposed to take the test the next morning, Thursday morning. So, I hadn't been to bed since Tuesday night. So, I went over to take the test. It was a test of 350 questions in three hours timed. There was a group of us that was taking the test in the room there, and I went through and did the test, one thing and another. Oh, and there was a Master Sergeant there. He did the timing and that, and when the three hours was up, he come out and says, "Sorry. Time's up." Well, I hadn't finished the last 20 questions; I hadn't even looked at them. What he would do was take your paper and take it back in. There was some officers back in there to correct them. He would come out; if you passed he'd say "Passed!" He called your name out and say “Pass.” If you didn't, he'd say, "Sorry, try again." Well, I took the thing and like I said, I didn't even do the last 20 questions. So, he came out and hollered my name, and I headed for 11 the door. I thought I flunked the thing. He said, “Passed.” So, the last 20 questions didn't matter, cause I had done enough to pass it. Anyway, then they had so many people there, the airplane hangar; they had filled it up completely with beds and all the barracks and everything was full of guys that was trying to do the same thing I was doing, trying to get back in the Air Force. They got so many of them that they just had to start washing them out alphabetically, whether you passed or whether you didn't. They had one guy that had flown 2000 hours on commercial airflight, and they said he was unqualified. They had another guy that flew over in China who was clear as Chanute with the fighters over there and they said he wasn't qualified, and he’d been over there flying in the war over China, over the hump. Anyway, they finally found out about them, and they let them go through of course. But then I had to go and take another group of tests. I took four hours of tests, and then they marched us over to get a bite to eat, and then we went back and had another four hours. We couldn't talk to one another; it was all in silence. Anyway, after I got through taking that test, why, I was interviewed by a Master Sergeant and he had all my tests there and everything. He said, “Well, you got four choices. You can go back in the infantry where you came from, or you can go to airplane mechanics school, armament school, or radio school.” So, we sit there and talk back and forth, and one thing and another, and I said, "I don't know nothing about none of them." I said, "I don't want to go back in the infantry and go back and crawl around on my stomach over there,” because I crawled around half of Texas on my stomach. So, I said, "Well, give me airplane mechanics. I'll go to airplane mechanic school." He looked at the paper there, and he said, “Well, that's okay. But you did better in the radio radar portion of it.” 12 I said, “Okay, send me to radio school.” So, then I went on a furlough and I went back to Sioux Falls, South Dakota to radio school. I went through radio and radar school there, and it was all kinds of schooling on aircraft, recognition. I took the Morse code and you had to pass 16 words a minute, I think it was, on Morse code, and I kept flunking it, and I couldn't pass. Got down to the next to the last day when I was going to take the last test that I could. I went and took that the next day, and I passed it. So, I was at Sioux Falls, South Dakota going to radio radar school. Then I went from there down to Yuma, Arizona to gunnery school and went through a complete gunnery school there. Stripping down 50-caliber machine guns; we’d strip them down blindfolded with gloves on and put them back together. Then I went out shooting pigeons out of the back of a truck and out on the stand. Then we went flying, and we had P-59's that would come in on attacks on a B-17 we were flying in, and we'd take pitchers. In other words, you shoot a machine gun which was shooting pitchers instead of shells as they attack you. We went through all that and we went out on—Well, let’s see. What was I doing there? Where am I at? LR: You're in Yuma, Arizona. GF: [Laughing] Oh, then not here, okay. Yuma, Arizona. I did go through all the trap shoots and all that kind of good stuff. After that, I went from Yuma, Arizona and got assigned to a crew and got a furlough and went back to Lincoln, Nebraska. That's where I got assigned to the crew. There was 10 of us in a bomber crew. After we got through that, why, we went to Pueblo, Colorado, and went through flight training. We'd go out on missions, training, you know, and all that kind of good stuff. While I was there, that was the best time I had in the service right there, because my wife came over and my daughter and she came over to stay with me for two months. We rented an apartment, and one thing and another, and I would 13 have to go out and do the flight training. When we weren’t flying, then I had to go to radio school, but that was a good time there. After we left there, why, we went to Topeka, Kansas. Well, actually, I probably told you. I had a furlough in between Yuma, Arizona and Lincoln, Nebraska, so I came home for 10 days. After we had finished our training at Pueblo, we went to Topeka, Kansas, and we were there for a while, and we took a train and went back to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey. LR: Camp, say that again? Camp… GF: Camp Kilmer. LR: Kilmer, okay, New Jersey. GF: New Jersey. We were back there a few days per week, and that was a boarded in complex that had an eight-foot fence around it. The guys who lived there went over the fence; the rest of us had to stay in. But, one night, about midnight, they come in and said, “We're moving.” So, we had to bail out of there right fast and got on some buses, and we went over to the port where the boats were, and we were the last group to go on the Queen Elizabeth. That was at midnight. So, we took the Queen Elizabeth out and went over. It took us five days on the boat, and they would change course every seven minutes too, because of submarines. We went up and we landed over in Scotland—Edinburgh, I think it was. Then we took the train down to Stone, England, and that was Christmas Eve of 1944, and we left the next day. That night it was so cold and so foggy. In fact, we had a little program there for Christmas Eve and all that. I went back to the room we was in; it was a couple of us who were assigned a room, and I took and dumped my whole duffel bag out on top of the bed, and I crawled underneath that because it was so cold. But the next morning, why, we got on a train and went over to Debach. That was our airfield, and that was 12 hours out of Ipswich. So, we were assigned there, 14 of course, to a barracks and one thing and another, and the office was in one barracks, and we were in another. There's 10 men on a crew. If you're not acquainted with that, there's 10 12millimeter machine guns on each airplane. Two in the nose, two in the top, two in the bottom, two on the side and two on the rear of .50 caliber machine guns. In going to gunnery school down in Yuma, Arizona, that's the reason I was going there, because I had the left .50 caliber machine gun back in the waist that I was to shoot in case we got hit by fighters—which we did once. So, after we gone over to Debach, why, then we had been flying B-24s, by the way, in Pueblo, Colorado. That’s the B-24. I used to call it the boxcar. That’s a four-engine bomber. We went through the training and that. When we got overseas, they put us into B-17s, so then we had to go out and train on that. The one thing of it was, every time the airplane would take off, I had to go with it. They could leave everybody except the pilot and the copilot at home, leave everybody else, but I had to go with it as a radio operator, because that was mandatory to have the radio up on there. So, we did a lot of training, one thing and another, and then we finally got so we was okay there, started on our missions. That's another story of about 25 different missions I probably won’t be able to go through with you two. It was a lot of experiences. We lost a navigator over Nuremberg at 25,000 feet. That's another story. We got hit real hard over Berlin, and there's quite a story on that. I don't know how much you want to go into detail on these type of things. That’s part of what you want on this World War II deal, I'm sure, because it's quite interesting. LR: Yeah. I have two questions before you really get into that. GF: Right, that's what I wondered. 15 LR: My first question is, we kind of glossed over it, but what do you remember about Pearl Harbor Day? GF: Well, Pearl Harbor Day, I was working at the Railway Express Agency at the time, and that morning I was going to work. I’d dropped off down at Ross and Jack's. You know where Ross and Jack's was on 25th Street? LR: Yes, I do. GF: Okay. I stopped there for some breakfast before I went to work, and that's where I heard about the bombing of Hawaii there. Then I went to work and, of course, there was a lot of conversation and an announcement on the radio and all this kind of stuff. So far as knowing the details, at that time I never knew anything about it until they published what had gone on and so on and so forth, because that's where I heard about the bombing on the 7th of December, 1941. So far as that was concerned, it was very much a concern, because you didn't know. I was married and I had one daughter and didn't know where I stood, and, of course, we were assigned draft numbers, one thing and another, to get drafted. I didn't know when I was going to go, or anything like that. But like I say, I kind of kept working and got a deferment. So, I went for two years there after that; I was working at the Express Academy. LR: You've talked about your wife. Let's talk about how you met and when you got married. GF: That's a story within itself. LR: Okay, let's hear it. GF: Okay. I don't know if you're LDS or not, if you belong to the LDS Church, the Mormon church or not—don't know what you do—but at any rate, my dad was baptized when he was eight years of age and my two older brothers were. The rest 16 of us kids, four of us, Mother and Dad just decided—well, and I didn't tell you, too, that his first wife died. LR: Right, you mentioned that. GF: Then he married my mother, who was a friend of his first wife. They decided they would let us, as I can understand it, “When you get old enough and you want to join the church, you can join and we'll leave it up to you what you want to do,” for us kids. So, we never joined. My two older brothers had been baptized. The other four of us, my sister and myself, my two younger ones, we were on our own, just whatever we want. I went to church all the time, even when I was a kid. I remember going to church when I was younger, and then I went through some scouting program and Explorer program and went into the—When I got to be 16 years of age, why, I started playing basketball. The church used to have a [league] just like the colleges have right now, only it was each one of the wards had a team. We would play in the various areas and then whoever won there would go to the next one, just like they do now, only it was church-oriented at that time. So, at 16 years old, I started playing basketball for the church, and you had to be 18 years old before you could be on what they call the M-Men program, Mutual Improvement Association. So, I played in a junior team when I was 16 because they had just started that league. When I got to be 18, I started playing basketball in MIA program for the ward that I belonged to. If you're acquainted with this area down on 30th Street and Wall Avenue, there's a church building right there on the corner. That's the 19th Ward. That's the ward I belonged to. When I was playing basketball, we were going to go out to Hooper to play. They were in our league here. We had four teams in Ogden: the 17 19th Ward, the Second Ward, First Ward, and the 11th Ward. Then we had Hooper, Riverdale, Clinton, for country wards. Anyways, we was going to go to Hooper to play. We were in the building down there in the cultural hall having a program. After the program I was standing out, talking to about six girls down on the floor there. A young lady was on the stand. We had announced that we were going to play in Hooper the next day, and she came down and she said—Oh, we announced we had a truck, a pound truck, and we had some benches in it, and “Anybody who wants to go, why, come on over to my house. We’ll at be such and such and we'll take you out.” Well, this young lady came down there and said, "Can I talk to you out in the hall?" I said, "Yeah," went out in the hall. She said, "I'm from Hooper," and she had moved in town. Her mother was a widow. She’d lost her father in 1925 up in north Idaho. He was a sheriff and he died of a heart attack. But anyway, she said, "I'm from Hooper and I'd like to go out to the ballgame." I said, "Meet us over there." So, we did, and we went out there to Hooper. We played the ballgame, one thing and another, came back. Then I took her on a few dates, one thing and another, start going, and she was going with three other guys. I was competition. Anyway, then she started to go to all the games with me, and we got to be quite close and, you know, friendly—one thing and another. I'd go to church, and I wasn't a member, but I'd go anyway. After we'd gone together for about a year and a half, little more than that, you got to start to talking about marriage one thing and another. She said, "Well, the only way I'll get married is in the temple." 18 Well, I said, “I guess you don't know, but I'm not a member of the church.” I couldn't go to the temple, but she thought I was because we were active, going to church all the time and everything. So, I decided, “Well, I better do something about it.” So, I went over to my bishop, if you're acquainted with the church, and I said, “How about me getting baptized?” They didn't even know I wasn't baptized. Because I was active, they thought I was one of the members. But anyway, I got baptized in September of 1939, and it was my wife’s birthday, the 31st of August. Oh, and before that, when we was on a date, we went to a swimming place, Hot Springs out in North Ogden. We were out there, and she was still going with four of us. So, I said, "Well, you got to make up your mind what you want. Who are you going to go with?" She said, "I want to go with you." So, that kind of nailed it in there. Anyway, it was her birthday, and she worked at the Continental Bakery Company on Grant Avenue. They just tore it down here the last couple of years. She iced cakes, one thing and another. So, she came home from work, and in the meantime, I had bought her a cedar chest [from] the South Washington Furniture Company between 29th and 30th on the east side of the street, and they had delivered it. I met her when she came home, and the cedar chest had been delivered. We discussed her birthday. I reached into my pocket; she thought I was reaching in for a ring. Well, I pulled out my baptismal certificate and gave it to her. That made me a member of the church. So, that made a big, big difference right there. Well, so we kept going together then, and we decided we wanted to get married. So, we went over and talked to our bishop, Bishop George King. At that time, we wanted to get married in the Salt Lake Temple, and at that—which is still a rule—you have to be a member of the church for a year before you can go through 19 the temple to be married in the temple. So, if you had less than a year, you had to have it approved by the First Presidency of the church. So, that's what happened. The bishop went through the stake president, they went up to the presidency of the church and got the approval. So, my wife and I got married six months after I was baptized. We decided we was going to get married in June of 1940. Then you get a little excited, and anticipate, and “Can I wait?” and all this good stuff, so we moved it up to the 15th of May. By the way, when I went to talk to the bishop, they didn't even know I wasn't a member. They thought I was a member, so it went through real smooth-like. So, on the 15th of May 1940, my wife and I went to Salt Lake to be sealed in the temple. We went through the session, and you're probably not aware of what's going on in there if you haven't been through. But we went up to the sealing room and when we got up there—we didn't make any arrangements for who to do it or anything. When we got up there, President David O. McKay, who was the second counselor in the First Presidency at that time, he came in to do the sealing, to marry us, which was a real great honor. You have the prophet and his two counselors. He was second counselor at that time, and we didn't have no idea that he was going to do it. What happened was my wife's grandfather went with us, and he didn't go through with this session of the temple. President McKay lived in the apartment right across the street where the Assembly Hall is now—that used to be apartments. So, he went over there to visit with President McKay because, well, my wife's grandmother, the grandfather's wife, was a first cousin to President McKay. So, it was a connection there, and that's the reason he went over to get him. President McKay said he'd be more than happy to do it, because family don't ask 20 him because he's too busy. Anyway, he's the one that sealed, married us, on the 15th of May, 1940. LR: You mentioned that she actually came to—was it Pueblo? She came to Pueblo, Colorado, with your daughter. Was that the only time she followed you to a station? GF: Yes, that's the only place that we could arrange that or anything. That worked out real good, because when I wasn't going to school, we went in and there was a—oh, the waist gunner. By the way, he's the only one left. He lives in Pennsylvania. Guy Amercado, and he's 95 now. But his wife came out and his dad owned an automobile agency in Pennsylvania, so she drove a car out, so we was able to travel up to Pikes Peak and go to—we did a lot of in-between with them. LR: Would you write letters a lot? How often were you able to write and receive letters? GF: You mean overseas? LR: Yeah. GF: I wrote every time I'd do a mission, which was every other day, and sometimes every day. Yes, I would write her a letter. Oh, the other thing is, I couldn't tell her where I was, what I did, anything. All I could say was I went on another mission. But when I first got over there and found that out, I said, “Each time I can tell you I went on another mission, so you count them.” LR: Okay. That's one way to keep track. GF: Yeah, because I can't tell you how many, they won't let us do that. Anyway, that's how we kept track of that. Every time I would go on a mission, and even in between every, but I would tell her and then she—but sometimes—she was working, by the way. She worked for the Union Pacific Railroad. In the office, down at the old Roundhouse at 29th and Pacific. She worked down there in the office. LR: Did she do that for the duration of the war, working there? 21 GF: No, not in that particular office. She transferred over to another part of it, and then she went to work for the Amalgamated Sugar Company up in the First Security building on the corner of 24th and Washington. She went in as a secretary to Mr. J.J. Dunbar, who was the president, or the head of the Amalgamated Sugar Company. LR: Okay. What was your wife's name? We haven't ever— GF: Lorraine. L-O-R-R-A-I-N-E. That's her picture right over there. GrF: This one here, too. LR: I kind of figured. She's right behind you, too, right? Alright, Lorraine. Then you have two children, correct? GF: Yes. Greg and my daughter. LR: Okay, and only your daughter was alive during World War II, is that right? GF: She was born before; he was born after. One in ‘42, one in ‘47. LR: Okay. Do you have any questions, Michael? MT: What was your wife's maiden name? GF: Barnes. Lorraine Barnes Ford. LR: Thank you. All right, so now I feel a little bit better. I have a little more context. So, did you fly all of your missions out of the Debach Airfield? GF: No. We were going to go on a mission and they were going to redo the runway. So, we had put all our clothes and everything we own in a duffel bag, and we put it on the airplane to go on a mission. Then we went to—I can't remember the exact mission that we went on, but we couldn't come back and fly back into Debach there into our airfield. We had to fly into another one. We went over to, now you got me, one of the main cities there in England. We landed in another field, it was a fighter field, while they finished our runway. We were over there for about a month and 22 flew missions out of there. Then we went on another mission the same way: put everything on the airplane, went on a mission, we come back to our own place. LR: Okay, well that makes sense. Just so you know, we've been talking for an hour and a half. I don't know if you've realized that. GF: No, I didn't. Time flies when you're having fun. LR: Oh, it does. So, I wonder, do you want to keep going or should we come back and finish up maybe next week? GF: I'm free. Free, white, and 21 right now. I mean, I got till midnight. That's up to you, I mean. LR: Yeah, I know. I’m tired. GF: I'll leave that up to you people. Whatever you want to do. MT: I'm good for a little bit longer, but I can come back next week, too. GrF: You might be halfway. LR: Yeah, and that's what I'm thinking, because I want to know everything that you have to say about your missions, and I think that's going to take some time. GF: Well, it is. LR: Why don't we, then— GF: That we've only hit the— LR: Right? I know. Which is one of the reasons that we do this is so that we can have everything. GF: I understand. Well, I've gone through a lot of mishmash here that— LR: Trust me, this is exactly what we're looking for. Everything that you're saying, this is what we want. GF: Okay. 23 Part Two: September 17, 2019 LR: Today is September 17, and we are back again with George, picking up where we left off. Well, we talked about Pearl Harbor, but what I'd like to do now is start with your missions. You're at the Debach Airfield in England. Let's start with your first mission. GF: Okay. You don't want to go into the process of getting into service and all that kind of—? LR: We already talked about that last time. GF: Okay, that's what I didn't remember. LR: Yeah, we talked everyplace you were stationed in the States and what you learned. So, let's pick up at Debach. GF: Okay, well, I don't know just exactly where we got even at Debach. Did we just get there? LR: You just got there. Yeah. GF: Oh, okay. Well, we set up camp there. Actually, we were assigned in what they call a Quonset hut. A Quonset hut, if you take a 50-gallon drum, cut it in half and lay it on its side, that's a Quonset hut. Of course, we weren't living in 50-gallon barrels. In fact, there was two crews that lived in each Quonset hut, and there were six in each crew of the enlisted people. Officers was in another crew, and we were in our own crew in our own quarters, I should say. It had a big potbellied stove in the middle of it and it burned coke. They had a big area with some coal in it out there, because coal was hard to get hold of, and this had a 10-foot length fence around it. Well, when we got there, it was cold and we hadn't built a fire or anything up to that time and it was time to go to bed. Consequently, our flight clothes was made up of a big sheepskin coat and sheepskin pants and sheepskin boots and big sheepskin gloves. Because we hadn't been issued—we didn't at that time, we had 24 our other suits, but we didn't… Anyway, for the first few nights there, why, England there’s this fog that is really penetrating, so we were building a fire in the stove, one thing and another. Of course, we didn't have any—we had a little coke there that burned one thing and another. So, the first night or two, why, we used their coke, and then we decided we want some of that coal out there. So, we went out on a midnight purchasing effort and we crawled over the top of that 10-foot fence out there and had barbed wire on the top of it and got in there and some of us throwed it out. Anyway, that's how we got our coal, and that helped to give us a lot more warmth and one thing and another. It was rationed. That was one of the first experiences we got there was the cold and how to keep warm. Of course, we was sleeping in those big flying suits. You go to bed and you go to turn over, you gotta reach down and turn your foot over because you can't move around with them big suits on. They were big, heavy leather sheepskin clothes. Anyway, as I mentioned, we went through flight training in B-24s and when we got overseas, why, we were assigned the B-17 Flying Fortresses. So, we had to break into those. We started out just doing flights, experimenting and getting used to them and so on and so forth. We was doing what they call touch-and-go flights for the pilot to get used to the airplane and so on and so forth. The one thing there was, like I mentioned before, there was the pilot, copilot, and the radio operator and the navigator that went and we did all our pre-flights, and the gunners, they were able to stay down. But we flew those flights for, oh, took us about two weeks or so of preparation that way. Then came about the first of February when we were trained enough to where we could—and in the meantime, not only were we flying separate by 25 ourselves on these touch-and-go’s and our four-hour flights to get used to everything and working together and everything like that. So, around the first of February, we were going to make our first mission. Of course, that's a preparatory. Usually they'll come and get you between midnight and four or five in the morning for a briefing as to where you're going and your bomb load and what the target's about, and then you go to a briefing of the whole squadron. They had big maps up there and everything on the weather and conditions of where you're going and what it's like and what the resistance is there in the way of artillery and whatever it takes to resist. Anyway, they would go through the whole rigmarole there of briefing us on everything that was going to happen. Then after we get through that, you're going to go out to the airplane. Of course, they had a ground crew that took care of the airplane. We didn't have anything to do with that. It was either go or no-go. That airplane had to be taken care of and ready to go. But what we had to do then is the engineer would go around and check the airplane to make sure that it was okay, even though the ground crew had gone through it and made sure it was all right. It was his responsibility to check it out before we left. It was my responsibility to check out the radios and that before we left. Then we had the 10 .50 caliber machine guns that had to be brought out. They put them in a cooler to keep them clean and everything like that. They have a guts to them, you got to put them in there, all the barrel and all that kind of good stuff. So, we had to go and we had them install 10, 12, .50 caliber machine gun, what they call the guts. So, that was our next deal. After we get through that, why then it was pretty just kind of wait and mill around and see when we're ready. Usually, the squadrons would go out by first, second and third squadron. We were parked on what they call a hardstand, and that was a place where each airplane had a place that they were parked. When you go, 26 why, you go off your hardstand out onto an approach runway out to the main runway. They would line up tail to tail all the way over from where you were parked out right out to the runway. Of course, when it was time to take off, the first airplane would take off and then we would take off at one-minute intervals. When you get in the air, you've got a whole gob of about 35 or so airplanes. There's nine in each squadron, and there's three squadrons. So, that's three times nine as is what's usually off that particular field, and there's a number of fields that are doing the same thing. The objective is to get in the air and form because you each taken off separate. So, you got to find out where you're at and whose squadron and all this kind of stuff. So, you go up, and then a lot of times it was so cloudy and that you couldn't tell who's where and where you was forming. So, what they did is the lead plane in the squadron would shoot flares, and you'd have red, yellow and green flares. Then you would know which one was which and the pilot would form on that area. Of course, the lead plane usually had a commander in it, from a colonel on down to a major usually. The squadron would form by Squadron 493rd, 491 and 492. We were the 493rd Squadron. No, the 862nd Squadron. We were in the 493rd Bomb Group is what it was. Anyway, it was quite a dangerous thing, you might say, and you got all them airplanes, all this various areas that were forming. So, there was lots of airplanes in the air, and a lot of times you couldn't see one another because of the fog. Then the contrails from the airplane, the contrails made it so everything was—you couldn't hardly see the end of your wing, the lights on the end of your wings sometimes. So, it was quite dangerous even in the formation. But after they would get all formed and one thing and another and each squadron will be flying around and trying to— then they would take off with the lead squadron. Like I say, it was usually colonel, lieutenant colonel, or major who was in charge of the operation there. 27 Throughout England, there was many airfields. Down at Debach, we were just one little airfield with 36 airplanes there. Well, there was more than airplanes, but that's how many would be involved in each mission that we were to perform. But at any rate, there was one time we were in formation and forming and one thing and another. It was so dense that two of our aircraft crashed and went down. We lost the two airplanes right there, right, just forming. But that really didn't matter, well, ‘cause that's their problem. I can't recall that it killed all of them, but as I remember correctly, there wasn’t many of them got out of that. But at any rate, why, then you would take off in formation. Usually it was your lead plane, and then they'd have two to the side of the lead plane, and then they'd have another one back here and two back there. So, they flew in threes and sixes till they had the whole squadron ready. Then you just kind of go in a group like that, each air field with their own group going at a certain time. They each was in line going over so that it was a kind of a progression type of a thing. It wasn't too bad until—when we got there, why, they had taken France back. That is, primarily; not all of it, but at least we didn't have a lot of anti-aircraft firing at us until we hit the German line and then, of course, you'd get a lot of anti-aircraft then. So, you could look anytime from then on for a lot of flak. Of course that's, if you know what flak is, it's—they're shooting off the ground, usually 88 millimeters, the Germans, and they're shooting at the aircraft. Flak is when it gets at a certain elevation, the shell will explode and then you get all the fragments that hits the airplanes and everything. A lot of times they don't get direct hits even, from the anti-aircraft and otherwise, but the flak would get so— there would be big black puffs of smoke, and that's where you'd go, and it was all over. Sometimes it gets so thick you could almost think you could get out and walk on it. 28 But anyway, that was usually when you got over the line and in prime targets, and wherever you happen to be going, you would run into flak going over there. Then when you get to the target, then it was an intense, a more amount of flak. In addition to, right around the targets, they had enemy fighter planes. The fighter planes, of course, would come in and try to knock down the bombers. It depended upon the type of target. The target could be most anything in the way of construction, putting air munitions together, rail yards—we hit lots of rail yards with troop concentrations—trains, everything, that was targets. It was very different depending upon what the need was and how they were progressing, the Germans were progressing. You wanted to knock it out. Those were all predetermined as to where the action needed to be when you were in your briefing. Consequently, when we would get a certain area over, why, we would pick up fighter support. They were P-40s and P-51s mostly was what we had. P-47s, I should say. The 47s didn't have the distance that they could fly. The P-51s did, and the P-51s were more maneuverable, so they would be the ones that would—the 47s would go along for escort and try to give you protection. The 51s would be the airplanes that would go after the German fighters. That's where they would have their fighting between them in the fighter aircraft. There was many of those sometimes. They’d usually fly right to the side of the bombers. Sometimes we could look out my window and see over there where the pilot was, and it was flying close enough so you could see what was going on. I might say, the squadron itself usually flew tight. The plane would be flying along and the other plane would almost tuck his wing right in between the other one, that's how close you—I could sit in my radio room and count the screws in the other plane. It was a very, very tight formation, in other words. 29 Except when you get over the targets, then you spread out and you go in and usually drop three at a time, three aircraft, depending upon a target. Sometimes it's going in single, sometimes it was going in in groups of three, usually as a squadron. Sometimes they'd have a whole squadron go in and drop at the same time, depending upon the target. In other words, where you have a rail yard and everything, you got a lot of ground to cover. Usually, the bomb load we were carrying was mostly 500-pound RDX, which is just a regular bomb that kind of blows up when it hits the ground. There are those types of bombs, and then there's incendiary bombs that are firebombs that sets everything afire when they hit. We had various things that took place as we went on various missions. I might give you a few examples of some of the things when we went to Nuremberg. I think that was the first mission at Nuremberg, and that was a big city with a lot of railroads, a terminal for railroad. So, we were going in to bomb the railroad trains and everything like that to try to keep the transportation part of it. We went in at 25,000 feet. Most of our missions, I mean prime missions, were at 25,000 feet. It depended. We went down and bombed as low as 12,000 feet, and we went up and bombed as high as 30,000 feet. It depended upon the target and what was they were trying to hit. Anyway, at Nuremberg, we were going in at Nuremberg, and we were just about to the target and we had the bomb bay doors opened ready to drop, and we were carrying 10 500-pound RDX bombs at that particular mission. Well, we got the bomb bay doors open, was right on the approach ready to drop, and the navigator was up in the nose with the togglier, the bombardier-type there in the nose. Then you got the pilot and the copilot up here and the engineer right behind them. He has a means of getting up in the nose. 30 The togglier up in the nose hollered, “Navigator's down.” So, what had happened there, the navigator was sitting at his desk up there and he keeled over. The togglier tried to help him, one thing and another, but what had happened was his oxygen mask had come off. He was laying on the floor. The engineer went down from his, right behind the part where he was. He went down to try to help. The oxygen mask had come off the navigator, and they tried to help him. He tried to put the mask back on him and couldn't get it on. They took the oxygen hose and put it in his mouth, even. In the meantime, we were right over target. So, the togglier had to drop the bombs, and he was busy up in the nose with the navigator. So, the pilot dropped the bombs at 25,000 feet. It turned out that they couldn't revive the navigator, and so the pilot, after they dropped the bombs, he dove from 25,000 feet down to 12,000 feet to try to get down where we could get some oxygen for him. But they determined he was dead, and so the pilot told me to radio back into headquarters to our field and ask for permission to land in France. So, my radio, I had a desk back in my radio room and my receiver was up on my desk. Wasn't a desk type, it was just a shelf, you know. I carried what they called a breast pack. The rest of them had backpacks. GrF: For parachutes. GF: Parachutes, yeah, and I had a breast pack. Mine was about yea long [holds up hands] and about yea big around. I clipped mine on the front. Of course, they were wearing theirs with a harness. Anyway, pilot told me to wire back to headquarters and get permission to land in France, that we had a dead navigator. I had five transmitters, big transmitters, and they were on a wall right behind me there, and I had certain frequencies in each transmitter. Anyway, I dialed in and got the tower back in the base and asked for permission. I was doing this by Morse 31 code. There was no communication verbally. You couldn't communicate, that was one of the rules. That's the reason they had a navigator with the Morse code. Dot dot, dee dee dee dot. So, I went in on the Morse code and told them what the situation was. We had a dead navigator and the pilot wanted to land in France, see if we could get some help. We wasn't really sure just what it was all; we could figure he was dead but we didn't know, so we wanted to get down to a field where they could get some help. So, they came back and gave us permission to land in France. The pilot dove from 25,000 feet down to 12,000 feet to get where we had gone to oxygen. But then we went back to France and we flew all round and down in France looking for an airfield. We were down at around 200 feet and we couldn't find an airfield or anything. So, he went back up and then the squadrons were coming back then, the others that had finished up and were heading back to their base. So, we joined onto one of those on the tail end and we went back to our field, back at Debach and landed. They come out and they pronounced him dead at that time. That was a traumatic—and by the way, I don't know if they ever had a funeral or whatever had happened. They took him away and that's the last we knew. But they buried him in Cambridge, which is over at another field, which we later went on after we had to leave our base. But we never knew. They didn't ever stop for viewing or funeral or anything else; whether they had one or not, I have no idea. All we did was we kept flying and we got a new navigator. In fact, we had two or three new navigators, and it would go who was ever available at that time until we got assigned another one. But that was one of the experiences that we had. I have all this written down as to exactly what happened and the bomb load and the death and everything. I have that all written down. 32 Another one that we had was very—well, there was two more. We were up at Hanover in Germany, and we got hit by German fighters. I was sitting in my radio room and we were going in on a bomb run up at Hanover and we got hit by a German—I can't remember, I think you were Focke-Wulf 190s, if I remember correctly, German fighters. I was sitting in my radio room. I seen him come right over the top coming in, and they were firing at us, our squadron, and everything. There was three of them came over and I almost looked that guy right in the eye there as he come over the top. Anyway, when we got hit by fighters it was my job, because I'd been through gunnery school and everything, so my job was to get back from my radio rooms, back in the back. There was a gunner on this side, on the right side. GrF: .50 caliber on each side of the plane on the waist. GF: Yeah, and I had the one on the other side, that was my .50. So, I dashed back there because we were getting hit by fighters. When I got there, I started getting extremely dizzy. Fortunately, this was a mission after the navigator had died, so I was aware of what could happen. Fortunately, I realized I had forgot to plug my mask in, oxygen mask. So, I was getting extremely dizzy. I was losing oxygen. So, fortunately, I woke up enough to plug my oxygen in and I was okay. But the fighters went out and then there was other fighters and they were coming. They went out and came back and started firing at us, and one thing and another. The waist gunner, Guy McCarr, the one on the other side, and he's the only one that's left now alive. He lives in Pennsylvania and all the rest have died but he and I. He's 95 and I'm putting 102. But at any rate, he was over on the other side and he was just unloading his .50. He was shooting at these air aircraft that was firing at us, attacking us. As a result, he got credit for knocking down a German fighter. I never fired my gun. I never did fire my gun. That's the only time I ever used 33 my radio. But that was part of the game and that's when I was needed, and I was used. Anyway, that was one of the things up at Hanover. We lost—oh, and it was up there, we had two crews of us, as I mentioned, that lived in a Quonset hut. Well, the other crew that lived with us, they got knocked down. I sit there and watched some of them bail out and one thing and another. Of course, after we come back, why, they didn't make it back. But we found out that they lost some of their crews. I got a letter from the waist gunner and he asked me if I'd see if I could find his baseball mitt and his guitar, one thing and another. But I went and looked and trying, and there was others that had more sticky fingers and they weren't available, I couldn't find them. I never heard any more from the guy, other than I had a letter from him to—and he did come back later on, but we didn't have anything. Anyway, that was Rizzo, that particular mission. One of the other really dangerous missions, you might say, is when we went to Berlin. I don't remember whether it was the second or third time. I think it was the second time to Berlin, but it could have been even the first. Anyway, we had quite a thrilling experience. Thrilling? I don't know if thrilling is the word or not. But there was 500 bombers and 900 fighters that went in that mission, and we were going straight into Berlin. This was kind of at a time when the Russians were pushing up towards Berlin, and we went in to support that effort there. We were in at 25,000 feet, and where we were going in, we had the bomb bay doors open and there was considerable flak over Berlin. All at once, the old airplane really shook, and we had to kind of survey and see what the world went on. Well, it so happened that there was a lot of flak, we had a lot of holes, and right in the right wing, just outside of my radio room, we had a direct hit in the wing. Of course, that was one of the things that I was real happy that we went from 24s to 34 17s because that hole in that wing would have blew the wing off a 24, whereas there's a wider wing on a 17 and it blew a hole back here in the back of it. Then I was in my radio room, and I had my job there at that time was to put out what they called— GrF: Chaff. GF: Chaff, yeah. Chaff was like Christmas tinsel, you know, that you put on a tree. It's about yea long, we had packages about yea big and I had boxes of it there, and I had a little chute. My job, I was bent over putting this stuff out the chute, and piece come right in this side and right over the top of my head and out the other side, of flak. Had I been sitting up instead of bent over, why, it probably would [have gone] ear to ear. GrF: Chaff in those days was to confuse the radar-guided guns. The bottom there were kind of radar guided, so got all this stuff floating around why it mixes up where the planes really are. GF: Yeah. It was to jam—so the artillery on the ground shooting at you can't zero in on you as much, because the chaff affects their guns. So, at any rate we had a big hole and there was another one, a shell went through the tail, right through the part of the tail where the tail gunner was. He was sitting back on his knees back there, and he was back there tracking aircraft. So, he had a one, an 88 that went right through the wing, left a hole about yea big and never exploded, fortunately, because it would have blown the tail off. Anyway, we didn't know what really to do or how bad or when we was going down. We had no idea but what we were going down ‘cause we had that big hole in the wing. Well, airplane kept going. There was three of us that went back to the side door. I reached and clipped my chute on. We went back to the door ready to bail out 35 over Berlin, but the airplane kept going. So, we all decided, “Okay,” and the pilot says, “Okay, we're okay. Seems to be going okay.” So, we all went back to our stations and finished the mission, came back, and of course, the right wing flap was shot out so the pilot couldn't use the flaps to come in on the landing and everything. Of course, he didn't know how fast to bring it in because we hadn't had that kind of a condition. We'd been trained in B-24s. Anyway, he brought it in and landed 150 miles an hour. We hit the runway and he hit the brakes and we went the full length of the runway and off into a gravel pit there. We were very happy to get out there and kiss Mother Earth, I'll tell you. We congregated just to look over things and everything. By the way, the oxygen from the pilot back was shot out, so we were using walk around bottles, just like he's got, to get our oxygen. The radios were shot out and so we had no communication back to the tower or anything. But I had, in addition to my radio, I had an emergency radio what they called a Crystal 522. It was under the floorboard in my radio room and I had a door that I could lift up. Anyway, that was gone, so I got back down and pulled the board up and everything, started working on the radio, and I got it to working. When the pilot came back, he was able to broadcast onto my 522 Crystal radio. Anyway, that was the mission. The next day, why, the newspaper Stars and Stripes that had the European newspaper, they come out and took our picture, which I have, wrote it all up as to the crew, and what had happened, and coming home on a wing and a prayer and all that kind of stuff. GrF: You didn't tell her about the gas line through the middle of it. GF: Well, I was gonna kind of get to that in a minute, because what we did when we started surveying the airplane to see what was wrong, I counted over 200 flak holes. 36 Then in the right wing, we were out there and 10 of us stood, we could all stood right in that hole in the wing. That's how big it was. What'd you say? GrF: That the gas line through. GF: Oh, right through this hole in the right wing, you got four gas tanks, two on each side, and the first one right next to the airplane where that hole was, there was a gas line that run from that right over where the—from tank to tank is what I'm trying to say. This gas line was about yea big around, the hose, and it went right through the middle of that hole right there and never had a scratch on it. So, all that had to do is go and we'd have blown, so we were very fortunate that way, where that didn't do it. But like I say, the pilot didn't know how fast to bring it in, so he brought it in at 150 miles an hour. Anyway, they had to reskin the plane, and they put in all new oxygen and all new radio and everything to rebuild the whole airplane, because it was only the second mission for that airplane. It was a brand new one. He had hit the brakes and we'd skidded the full length of the runway. So, we had those big airplane tires, 12 ply planes, and we were right down to where we were down to the last ply on them tires. So anyway, that was a quite an experience in that regard. There were many others. Well, there was one we went, the Germans were coming up from and coming up towards Berlin. They needed some air support, so the whole flight went down to Aussig, Czechoslovakia. That was down on the lower part of Berlin, between Berlin and Czechoslovakia and Russia down in there. We went down to support the Russian incoming ground troops and bomb in front of them. We had to wear an American flag, and the only Russian they taught us was "Ya Amerikanskiy, Amerikanskiy." If we got shot down, that's all we had to say. I wore a .45 pistol in case you shot down, you had some means of defense. I don't think I could have shot my way out of Russia, but that was one of the things. 37 Anyway, we went down there and we had a target and they got off course. They were two degrees off course going into the bomb run, so they couldn't bomb at that particular target. So, they took another secondary target, you always had a primary and a secondary, so they took the secondary target. We went over the first one, made a circle and come back around and bomb a second target. But that was a 10-hour flight, took us clear down and back again. That was quite an experience there too. There was other flights that we had problems with. There was another experience, I can't remember the target, tell you the honest truth, but when we got to the target there was something happened, we couldn't drop the bombs. Well no, I'll take it back. We had five RDX bombs on each side and what the bombs are—let me give you a little explanation if you're not acquainted with it. Through the airplane, you have the pilot and then you have a bomb bay back here, and you had a walk— GrF: You got the radio room after the pilot. GF: Pardon? GrF: Is it the bomb bay first or the radio room? GF: There's the pilot and then radio room and then the bomb bay. GrF: Yeah, that's what I thought. GF: I had to go walk through the bomb bay to get back to the waist. GrF: To the gun. GF: Yeah. We went on the target, I can't remember the target, but when we went over the target, the ones on the left side dropped out over the target. The ones on the right side hung up and they wouldn't drop. As we came back, we were at 25,000 at target, so we dropped down to 12,000 feet, and the togglier who's in charge—we don't have a bombardier. They got rid of the bombardiers. When we went we had a bombardier, and then what they did was they took the bombardier out of all of the 38 airplanes and just put him in the lead bomb in the lead plane. When they would go over a target, he had his Norden bombsight that he would zero in with the bombsight, and when he dropped, then we had it. We had a togglier then, because they took our bombardier and put him on a lead ship. So, the togglier, his responsibility was get rid of them five hung up bombs back there in the bomb bay, because we didn't want to go back and land with them. So, we went down to 12,000 feet and then the togglier came back, Harvard Niffin, from the nose. I was in my radio room, and I went to help him. Well, there's a catwalk right down the middle of the thing. You probably could be aware of that catwalk. They hang the bombs on their shackles. GrF: It's about that wide. GF: Yeah, there's three on the front and two on the outside. Well, we had five of them, three of them on shackles, two of them on the outside skin, and they were hung up. So, he came back and it was his job to go out there on that walkway, with the bomb bay doors open and everything, and manually release them bombs. He went out and I went with him. We were both out on that catwalk right out there in the middle of nowhere. He was going to drop—he dropped the first two that was on the inside. We had one then up here, two out here. Them bombs was like this [points to two positions vertically diagonal of each other]. So, his next deal was he didn't know what to do. He couldn't reach over there to release those two on the outside, ‘cause he figured that top one may drop out and take him with him. So, all at once the top one released on its own, and it come down and it just rattled that whole airplane like this. It was coming down and hitting these shackles and hitting these two 500pound RDX bombs out here. Fortunately, it dropped out, so then he was able to 39 reach over and release manually the other two, and he had to reach across to open bomb bay to do that. Anyway, I was out there, and what happened was he dropped his oxygen bottle. So, he's out there without any oxygen. Of course, we was only at 12,000 feet then. Anyway, I went and got him an oxygen bottle and got him all hooked up, one thing and another, before he got rid of them two. So, the two of us out there in that walkway looking down and open space, bomb bay doors open. Anyway, that was an experience there. GrF: They had a B-17 out to the Ogden Airport quite a few years ago for the Confederate Air Force, and I went out and went through it to understand. But the walkway that he talking about is about that wide GF: About that wide. Just enough to walk on. It's held by stringers, you know, metal stringers that they hang the bombs on. There's three on the inside on each side and then two on the outside, both sides. Well, let me tell you about another one. There was a pocket of Germans down on the English Channel down in France, lower France, down at Rouen, France. They were bombing or shelling ships coming up through the channel. We had to eliminate those dead German pockets down there. So, we went on a bombing mission down to Rouen, France. It was a milk run, really. Half of the planes had 100-pound, no 500-pound, and they had a full bomb bay full of 100-pound incendiary bombs. A good portion of the squadron had P-51 gas tanks in the bomb bays full of gas. So, the objective was to go down to France, drop the tanks out with the gas in there, they would disintegrate down on the ground, and all the gas would spread out. Then we would go in with the incendiary bombs, drop it in the gas and burn them out. And that's what happened. We went down and we didn't hit any fires or nothing. In fact, I sit 40 there and about went to sleep, on the way down there. Well, we went down, and so they went in first and dropped the gas tanks and got the gas all down on the ground. Then we went in with the incendiaries and dropped those. That is—what I received—let me put it this way, about three years ago, I got word that the French government was issuing Medals of Honor as a result of what we had done with the, liberating France, in other words. I heard about it, and I belong to an organization that is military people from that time. It was in their booklet that I get. I have a whole gobb of them. But it was in there what the French was doing and that. So, I applied for this Medal of Honor, and I had to go through the embassy and in San Francisco and fill out forms, a letter, one thing and another, and they went from there to France. I had to be approved by the French president. So, I applied and all at once I got a letter back that it was approved, so I was to receive the Medal of Honor, and they issued a number of those. Three of those that were also issued this Medal of Honor: President Eisenhower, General over in the Philippines— LR: MacArthur? GF: MacArthur, General MacArthur, Admiral Sherman, and West Point Military Academy. They had all received this and that's that medal right there [showing medal]. LR: That's the French Medal of Honor? GF: That's the Medal of Honor. LR: That's cool. GF: Anyway, I also got a brochure from the president of France. It was signed— GrF: Was that in here? GF: I think so. I think it's in there. LR: How many missions total did you fly? 41 GF: 25. LR: 25, okay. I've seen a few things that once you've flown your last mission, you get to go home. Was that what it was like for you? GF: Yeah. Well, let me clarify that just a little bit. This is another portion of this thing. Right at the end of the war, the Germans, during the war, had surrounded Holland, and the people, they were starving the people to death. They couldn't get any food, they ate sugar bulbs, and everything there was, even tulip bulbs, and anything they'd get their hands on. They burned all their door casings and steps and everything else; couldn't get the wood, they couldn't fire, keep warm or anything. Anyway, right at the end of the war, General Eisenhower got with a German general, and they come to an agreement that we could go in and drop food into Holland. They were still surrounded by the Germans and everything, and so the British went in; they usually went in at night and we went in in the daytime to drop food. Our Air Force, United States Air Force went in on seven missions, dropping food into Holland. Well, in 1985, I was sitting in the back room here. I got a telephone call and my wife answered and then a guy asked for me. So, I talk, he said, “Did you participate in dropping food on Holland?” Well, let me tell you two, we went in at 100 and 200 feet, and they had designated areas where you dropped. GrF: Like stadiums and so forth. GF: Yeah, well, we dropped in a racetrack. Anyway, they had seven missions, I went on four of them. LR: Wow. GF: In 1985, well, and that was in the last part of April and the first of May. I think it's right at the bottom there, was when it was. Fifth of May I think that is. The dates up there, the latter part of April, into the first part of May. 42 LR: 1945? GF: Yeah, right at the end of the war, and then the war ended after that. 'Course, at the end of the war, we started coming back, one thing and another, and you know, I don't know just exactly what’s to work into what. Anyway, let me go back to the end of the war there. When the war ended, it was, of course, a big celebration. London was just full of it. We stayed on base and got together and celebrated. Then they decided, fly the airplanes back. Well, they load, and they had all kinds of material they had to get back to states. So, they loaded all these airplanes up with all kinds of tents and all this kind of stuff. We took off from our base and went up to Scotland. No, we went up to Ireland. No, Scotland, and then we went over to Ireland. Anyway, we were on our way home and we stayed in Keflavik, and we couldn't get off because it was all, we was supposed to go to Greenland to land. We went over to Greenland and it was all socked in. So, we went back to Keflavik and we stayed there five days. Never did get dark, white as it is right there. Never did get dark there. Anyway, then after five days, why we took off again to come home and we flew by Greenland then and we didn't land. We went over to Newfoundland and we landed at Newfoundland and stayed there overnight. The next day we got on, we flew into Connecticut and that's where we disembarked from our airplane, and that's where I came home from after the war was over. That's another story. But then go back to the food drop, one thing and another. I had participated in those food drops, and in 1985 I was sitting in the back and this telephone call and the guy says, “This is Hans on the wire from the Defense Ministry from the Netherlands. Did you fly and participate in dropping food on Holland?” “Yes.” 43 “Well, we'd like to invite you and your wife to come over and celebrate our 40th anniversary. If you can get to New York, why, we'll fly you over from New York.” So, we applied for a passport, my wife and I. Finally, the passport didn't come until right at the last and I had to go through the congressman here. I can't remember which one it was. Anyway, to get my passport. We got it about two or three days, and we got on the airplane, we went back to New York, and we met with the people from the United States. Now, there’s the flags on there. There were six nations that were involved in this dropping food. England, Canada, United States, New Zealand, Australia and Poland. That's the sixth nation. They had invited 283 people, airmen that had participated in dropping food, to come and celebrate this week's celebration in 1985. So, my wife and I went back to New York and we met with the people and they flew us on a 747, I think it was, over to Heathrow. We got off the airplane and we were just waiting there and there was a guy come up to me and said, “Can I do anything for you?” I said, “Well, yeah, I guess you can. You've invited us over here for a week to celebrate, one thing and another. We'd like to stay a month to do some traveling and see England.” Well, he said, “I don't know if I can do that or not.” So, he left and about two hours later, he come back and said, “When you get through with your celebration and that, climb on an airplane and go back.” Anyway, then we went over to Amsterdam. We flew over Amsterdam. We went on to a, it was holding a horse race. We went out to a horse race place and the stands were completely full and everything. When we walked in, why, when we got off the airplane, they put leis on us and give the women flowers and all this kind of stuff. We walked into the stands where there was having the horse races, and the 44 whole stands all rose and clapped and the band and everything welcomed us. We were the focal point, so we had celebration there. Then we went up to, no, I'm getting a little confused. Then we went into celebration, one thing and another. In the celebration, there was four busses of us. By the way, in addition to the 283 people, you could bring your wives, see, and that's the reason we had more. There was some that was single, but my wife was with me. One of the celebrations was it was Queen Wilhelmina's birthday. So, they had a big celebration out on the beach there at a resort. We went, there were four busses of us, and we went out there and got off the bus and then it was a parade, and we were the parade. There were some bands and all this kind of good stuff and we were walking in the parade, my wife and I, along with all the rest of them. Some guy came over and said, “Is your name George Ford?” “Yep.” He said, “Come with me.” So, we dropped out of the parade, went over to a big building there, and we went in. We were greeted then by a bunch of generals and dignitaries, my wife and I, when we went up to the ballroom. There was a separate celebration up there. They had a band, food, and everything else. I had a five-page agenda, which I have, and I hadn't looked at it. Anyway, they was in the process of dignitaries talking and all this kind of stuff, and in the process they read my name and I received the Medal of Liberation for the United States, and I have that out there too. GrF: Everyone received the medal, but he was the one that they presented it to. GF: Yeah, they gave each one to each of those six nations. I was the representative for the United States. The rest of the people, after I had received it, received a like medal to go with it for their whatever. I have the medal out there, it's on the kitchen table. But that was an experience there. Anyway, the food dropping and everything, 45 we had all kinds of banquets and parades and all this kind of stuff. There was those that—I had a lady come up to me, a lady and her granddaughter, and she threw her arms around me and she said, “I'm so thankful for you.” She said, “My granddaughter wouldn't be here if it hadn't been for you dropping food,” and tears was running down her eyes and everything. They were so thankful for what we had done. The whole thing was like that. I have a whole booklet of all the things and pictures that was taken. There's a book right there that he just had right there. That's the history of it. GrF: Right near the Iwo Jima Memorial in Washington, D.C., is a carillon, one of those chiming structures, things that were presented by the Dutch Government— GF: It's what they call a bell tower. GrF: Yeah, Dutch government to the United States for that food drop thing. It's just on the other side of the road from the Iwo Jima Memorial in Washington. GF: Yeah. Have you ever been back to Washington? LR: Yes. MT: I have not. GF: Yeah. Well, you know, all the Lincoln Memorial, Washington memorial? Well, out to the Korean Memorial and that, why, just a short distance. We never knew about it and somebody mentioned it there. That's another story, when we went back there. I had to it was had to be pushed by my daughter, she went with me as the escort. She pushed me over all the place in a wheelchair. We had to be in a wheelchair, all vets in a wheelchair. That was World War II vets. Anyway, that's another story. Anyway, back to there, we found out about that, so we went over to the bell tower. It's a long, high bell tower somewhat like Weber State's got, you know? They have a big plaque there and all kinds of flowers all over and everything, but they 46 don't advertise, that wasn't in our tour. We just happened to run onto it on this honor guard trip that we had. GrF: Not very many people know about that food drop. GF: Yeah, that's the one thing—Oh and when we come back, why they were interviewing some of us. Doug Wright from KSL, he interviewed me, and I had talked to him about it, and then I went back and talked to him later about this bell tower and the food drop and one thing and another, because they didn't bring that out. Nobody knew about it and they didn't bring it out. So, I wanted him to know about that. LR: Interesting. Okay, you make it home and you said that's a whole other story. So, you're actually in Connecticut, and are you done with your crew or do you guys fly again? GF: We disintegrated there. That was the last of the crew, we just broke up there. A little background there was, then we're on furlough. We came home, so I didn't phone home at that time and I thought, “Well I'll go home.” So, I got a train ride and I got on the train and came home on the train. My wife, when I left, she went to work down for the Union Pacific Railroad. You’re probably not aware of the roundhouse that used to be down there. I read in the paper this morning where the Big Boy train is coming back again, like it was just here for the celebration, it's coming back again. At any rate, she worked in the office down there. Well, at first she started out as what they call a call girl, and she would go and when the train was going to go out, someone had to go out and notify the engineer and the fireman that they'd been called and had a route and they had to go up through Evanston and that. Then she'd gotten in the office and she worked in the office and that. 47 When I came home, why I hadn't ever—I sent a telegram, by the way. In the meantime, her brother had died just two months before I went in the service. So, we moved back in with her mother down, who had just moved in down from Hooper. Then my wife had left and got an apartment and one thing and another. So, when I got here, why, she was at work. So, I walked down 29th Street down and she was there and she's seen me over there and I was across the tracks. She dropped everything and run across the tracks to meet me there, and that's how I got back there. I came home then and then I was on a furlough, 30-day furlough. Then I had to go back to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, after my furlough was up. They found out that I could type because I took a singular business course in Ogden High School. I took bookkeeping, business English, and typing and shorthand, and there's all that, so they found out I could type. So, they put me in the orderly room discharging, filling out discharge papers. So, I was in there and working in there. I had a major that came in, and he plunked his feet up on the desk there and we talked and one thing and another. He said, “Why don't you stay in the service?” I was a tech sergeant, I had five stripes and it was one more stripe for a master sergeant. He said, “I'll see that you get your other stripe.” I said, “I wouldn't stay in this army if you made me a four-star general.” “Why? It's a good life.” “I got a wife and a daughter. I'm going home.” So, that's the way I left after a while. I had more points to get out then a lot of them I was typing papers for. So anyway, I got out the service that way. LR: So, when you finally get home, did you use the GI Bill to go back to school or for any reason? 48 GF: No, reason for that was, I was home and I went to live with my wife of course and my daughter. [Points to Greg] Then he was born after the war. She was born before, he was born after. I decided I—they had to let me go back to work at the Railway Express Agency. I think I told you about that. LR: Right, you did. GF: They had to let me come back to that. So, I thought, “Well, I'll go back to Express company and then see what I can find that’s better. So, I went back to Express company and I started looking for another job and I found three or four of them, but they were no better than what I had. Didn't pay any more of what I had. So, I worked another five years at the Railway Express. One day, I don't know if I told you, about this. LR: You I believe you did when you got on at Hill. GF: When I went to Hill. LR: Right. GF: So, I probably told you— LR: Yeah, you told us that. I was impressed because you just told us the whole thing. Yeah, you have. [To Michael] Right? I'm not making—‘cause I remember him saying all that. MT: Yeah. GF: Yeah, that's when I went to Hill Field. I went out and they told me to come to work. I said, “No, I gotta go back to Express, give them those two weeks.” I went back, and went into it. I went through then started on a line at a $1.48 an hour, and I was on probation for a year, this kind of thing. So, I've probably covered all that. LR: Yeah, you did. So, did you use the GI Bill at all to buy a home or anything? GF: No. Okay, let me tell you the reason I didn't. LR: Okay. 49 GF: The reason I didn't because I was home just six weeks. Like I was saying the other, I been very active, and it was a good experience for me to get baptized into the LDS Church. That's another story. LR: Right. You talked about that last time. GF: Did I? LR: Yeah, you did. GF: Okay. Anyway, the reason I didn't is because I was only home six weeks and a member of the stake presidency came, who was Russell Tanner, that owned Tanner Clothing Company on 24th Street. He came, and he was in the stake presidency, and he asked, he said they wanted me to be the elder's quorum president. I said, “Okay, that's fine. I'll do what I can.” He came back the next week and he said, “They've changed their mind, they want you in a bishopric.” Well, you know what a bishopric is? The bishop and his two counselors. “They want you as a second counselor in the bishopric.” So, that is the reason I went entirely, I was involved in that years, clear into my years in activity in the church. Reason I didn't do it. So, then when I went to Hill field, let me clarify this a little bit. I had gone, as I told you, I graduated from Ogden High School, but I didn't go on to college at that time because there was no money. It was Depression time and it was very few that could go on to college. So, I didn't go on to college or use—when I came back, I didn't use my military [bill] on schooling because of my activity in the church, plus my work at the Railway Express and at Hill Field. So, as I worked at Hill Field, I may have told you this also, but I got to be a supervisor, and in the process and that I went to a lot of schools. I took classes from Weber State, a lot of them. I took some from Utah State, some from the University of Utah, and some from BYU. I went TDY, back to Dayton, Ohio. I went to school 50 back there two or three times. I went up to Seattle for two and a half months. I was up there when they shot the first Minuteman missile and I went to school on the missile for two and a half months up there. Then I took, I think, five correspondence courses. No, I took three correspondence courses, management, missiles and something else. LR: So, would they be like, CDC’s? Sorry, I'm using my military jargon. How do you explain CDC? I guess they're correspondent, they're courses that enlisted men or military men take so they don't have to actually go on site, go to the actual schooling. GF: Well, I went to schoolings back at Dayton and so on. The correspondence school is you do it at home, it's a correspondence. LR: That's kind of what I mean. Are they like the—? GF: Yes. There were three of them like that, and it took me quite a few months on each one to go through and finish. LR: Okay, right, that's very similar. GF: And I was taking this through—I've all got all this written down and all that, it's through a military university. LR: Okay. Oh, see, I think they're very similar to what I'm referring to. GF: Yeah, so that's where I got some my latter schooling, was I took all those courses and went to, like I say, Seattle, and Dayton, Ohio; and San Bernardino, California; and quite a few different places. I went to school TDY. LR: Right. So, when you were in Seattle, and you said you were there when they launched the first Minuteman missile, were you actually at the site when they launched it? Did you actually see it? GF: No. This was on, we watched them launch it on the film, and it was a great big group. That was a real important thing because that was the first Minuteman 51 missile, and we watched it there. That's what we were taking schooling on, that along with other stuff. LR: So, I'm now I'm just going to ask some questions, just general history because [to Michael] you had some things you wanted to ask, go ahead. MT: Yeah. You mentioned that when you first started flying missions, most of France had been liberated at that time. So, D-Day already happened before you got to England, or did it happen while you were in England? GF: No, D-Day was before I got over there. D-Day was in, I can't remember the year, it was in the spring, and I didn't get there until December of ‘44. LR: Oh yeah, and D-Day was June. MT: Was there thought when you heard about D-Day that there was a possibility you might not actually make it over to Europe? Or did they still, like was there questions of people thinking, “Oh, the war is almost over” because of that, or was it still full force you're still gonna be over there? GrF: One thing you have to remember is that the Japanese surrendered after the Germans. A lot of the people were getting ready from Europe to go to the Japanese also. GF: Well, that's why we came home from Europe. We came home with the idea that we would transfer, we'd go into training and go over to the Japanese end of it. But while I was home that ended. LR: So, you were home in August of 1945 when VJ Day happened? GF: Right. GrF: Yeah. The atomic bombs were I think the fourth and seventh or eighth of August. GF: I had come home. In fact, my wife and I and some other friends was up swimming up at Como, up in Morgan, to the swimming hole up there when the war ended and they dropped the bomb. The first bomb. 52 MT: What were your feelings when you heard about the first bomb? GF: Oh, I thought it was terrific to end it, because it was, you know. Well and for one thing, I was slated to go over there in the South Pacific. So, that was a relief there for me right there. Then it was a big relief to know that the war was over. That was a grand, wonderful occasion that was celebrated worldwide. You know, the one thing about World War II, it's the only time that's ever been that there was the complete dedication of everybody to work towards that war. We saved tin foil, we saved string, tires on cars were limited. You had your extra tire, you had to turn it in. When I worked down at the Express company, that was another situation. When I was working down there, people would come in to turn their tires in, you know, and you'd give them a form and everything because they were allowed that. I was down there at the desk one time, and it was Gary Cooper came in to turn this tire in. He was a Hollywood you know, he's on the TV last night, on Old Western. He was on there last night. Anyway, there was a complete, absolute unified effort towards World War II. It's never happened in any other war. World War I was a bad one, but World War II, everybody. The women was Rosie the Riveter down here in California, they were riveting on boats and all this kind of thing. Well, there was three of us that was in the service, they put stars in the window for those in the service. So, there was three of us, my older brother Leonard and myself and my younger brother Albert. My older brother went to the Philippines, or to the Aleutian Islands. That's where he served. My younger brother was a medic and he went to Philippines. I went, of course, to Europe. Then we had my youngest sister's husband was a pilot, and he was over there with me in England, in London, and he had various assignments and that. But he turned out that he was a pilot for a general. 53 So, it was funny, one day I was there and he come to flew in to visit me, he had a Piper Cub. He flew in and visited with me one thing and another. Then I was to get with him later on, so we met over in London, and we was going over to where he stayed. Went over there where he was, and he was in with a whole bunch of pilots, but in a big, complex hotel type deal. He had a jeep to run back and forth to get his meals. If he didn't want to go, he had some G.I.'s down in the kitchen to prepare meals for him, and they had a tennis court, and he had a tough, tough time. I used to kid him about that. But he's a good guy, good pilot, and he would fly mail across the channel to troops in France, and one thing and another. So, he was the in-law, my youngest sister. My oldest sister's husband was in the train part of it in Germany. He went the latter part and worked at a railroad end of it over there to get transportation going. So, there was the five of us, actually three, well, it was three brothers. I have pictures of all three of us together in our uniforms. LR: Is there anything else you want to ask? MT: Regarding the war? No. LR: ‘Cause we've been here another hour and a half. GF: I know your time’s— LR: I'm trying to decide how much. [To Michael] Do you want to keep more history after the war, or are you okay? Or do you think we should just—? MT: I just have one more that's not war related LR: Then let's ask it. GF: What is it? MT: So, you've lived through a lot of major events in U.S. history. Is there any in particular that stand out to you as big moments? For me, September 11th was a big 54 moment in U.S. history that I lived through, but there's so many I would ask about each individual one. But is there one in particular that stands out? GF: Of course, the biggest thing in that regard was the end of the war. That, of course, put a whole different aspect to what was going on. It all come together this way and you started living again, you might say, and we went back to our normal type things, like I come back, went to work at the Express. So, we fought, it wasn't just wiped out, but it was something, it was over. So, now you start living again. LR: That's an interesting way of putting it. GF: That's one of the things that—and there's been so many different things you see that has affected my life. When I stop and think, the conditions, Ogden was about 20,000 people when I was born, now it's 85,000. I was born, I told you probably down here, across the street tracks from the post office. As it progressively went along, things changed. Ogden used to have the whole railway, or the streetcar type thing. It's gone from what it is to that to what it is now. The most outstanding thing I have in addition, of course, to the war situation, was my marriage. That was the most important thing and still is the most important thing I had in my life, along with my family, the birth of my children and my parents and everything like that. So, that's all a different story. You can get into that and you can cover a lot of territory there, too. GrF: My mother died in October of 1998, so he's lived alone here since then. LR: Wow. GF: Yeah, it'll be 21 years on the 16th of October since she died. LR: Okay. This photograph, I mean, this painting here, this is of you and your wife? GF: That's me and my wife. [Pointing to another one] That was done by my great granddaughter. She was taking photography and all that kind of stuff. Now, she got through the university down to Orem, and now she's going to University of Utah, 55 where her older sister graduated last year. She'd been on a scholarship and she graduated from University of Utah. She's twins, she graduated from University of Utah and her twin sister graduated from Weber State. Then the younger one that drew that, she's now going to University of Utah. Their mother graduated from the University of Utah with a doctorate degree in music. She now is one of the instructors at Weber State along with, let’s see, Henderson? He's the guy in charge of music up there, and she's right under him. LR: Different departments. [To Michael] You might know that. GF: You know Henderson? MT: The name sounds familiar. GF: I do, we went to lots of things up there because they were in the choir, the chorus up there. Now the youngest one of the four girls, she was going to Weber and now she's on a mission for the church in West Virginia. LR: Okay, let's go ahead and end with one final question. It's a question that I asked. Every— GF: Every Joe blow. LR: Every veteran that we've interviewed, I've asked this question. How do you think your experiences in World War II shaped the rest of your life? GF: Well, it had a big impact over the time on my life because of the fact that I was able to use that experience in my occupation for so many years. Without that, I probably wouldn't have been involved like I was at Hill Field, because that is the background that I used to get into there, to go into the radioer end of it. Then in order to be able to advance at Hill Field, my schooling at Ogden High School had a big bearing on that because I had taken the business course and went into the business end of it. Did first the military end of the aircraft of Hill Field, then I went for my schooling into supervisor. I don't know if that answers your question. 56 LR: It does, actually. It does. Well, I want to thank you for your time, George. You're amazing— GrF: Even if that is a B-24. LR: Just your amazing stories and the fact that you took the time to share them with us. I appreciate it. GF: Well, I'm happy to do what I can. I don't know just how much you want to go and do this type of thing here or anything like that. Like I showed you the other day, if you want more information on certain areas. 57