Oral History Program Deloss Eggleston Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 30 November 2016 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Deloss Eggleston Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 30 November 2016 Copyright © 2018 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii 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: Eggleston, Deloss, an oral history by Lorrie Rands, 30 November 2016, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Deloss and a police Jeep circa 1940s Boxcar to bring soldiers across Europe during WWII circa 1940s Deloss Eggleston in Germany 1945 Eggleston’s regiment Germany 1945 Deloss Eggleston 30 November 2016 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history with Deloss Eggleston, conducted on November 30, 2016 in his home in Ogden, Utah, by Lorrie Rands. Deloss discusses his life and his memories involving World War II. Michael Ballif, the video technician, is also present during this interview. LR: It is November 30, 2016, we are in the home of Deloss Eggleston in Ogden, Utah, and we are talking about his World War Two experiences. So just quick thank you again for letting us come back and do this, Deloss, I appreciate it. I am Lorrie Rands, and Michael Ballif is with me as well. So Deloss, I know we’ve already kind of talked a little bit about your life, but why don’t we start with when and where were you born? DE: Well I was born here in Ogden in the old Dee Hospital up on 24th and Harrison, which doesn’t exist anymore. In fact, I went up there when they were tearing it down, and I took the door off from the room where my mother was when I was born, and I cut two round tables. Used those for a while, and one of them even ended up back in New Hampshire with my daughter when she moved back there. Now my first reaction in World War II, on December 7, 1941, I came in from outside doing chores and the radio was on and they were talking about the bombing on Pearl Harbor. My first reaction when I listened to that was “Is this another War of the Worlds?” It took I guess, a day before I realized that it was serious. I made 2 a comment to my cousin of, “Well I’ll get involved in this.” “Oh, no, no it’s not going to last that long, this is going to be a short war.” Okay. I had a little problem with my father and I lost my mother when I was thirteen, so I decided that I would go down to California and live with my sister and graduate from high school down there. When I got down to El Monte California, they had just built a new high school, very similar to how they built the Ogden High School; the WPA, they had built a new high school in El Monte. Douglas Aircraft contracted with the high schools in the area of the San Gabriel Valley to build parts of the C-47 airplane. Now, what they did was they contracted with the school, if you worked at the factory, you could work four hours, and you got two hours of credit towards graduation from high school, industrial arts and PE. We were paid a total of twenty-five cents an hour for our work. Because we had the old gym, we assembled the tail sections of the C-47 airplane. Now, in World War II that was referred to as the Gooney Bird. Now, I learned real fast. You’d listen to Rosie the Riveter, well I became Doc the Riveter. I found out that I wanted to be out on the outside when you took a rivet, put it in the hole that was drilled for it, then you had the gun and to shoot it you had to have someone inside abut that rivet. Got it? What’s going to happen if they don’t get in there abutting it and I pull the trigger? LR: It’s going to go right through the aircraft. 3 DE: There’s gonna be a hole. If I punched a hole in there, I would have to put a little bandage around it. Just out of fancy, I made a little heart bandage once, I’ll come back to that one later. Anyway, we were assembling that tail section of the C-47. I tried to enlist in the navy, and for some reason they turned me down. I’m not quite sure why, I have a little bit of color vision problems, and that may be part of it, but I also had a tumor on my arm. When the navy turned me down, then I decided, well, I’m 4F so I won’t go in the service. Then the army drafted me! When I was drafted, they thought Germany was going to use gas, and as a result, I was put in chemical warfare training. I shouldn’t tell you this but I’ll tell you anyway, we had to identify twenty-five different kinds of gas. What they did was that we had the big field, and they would put the gas out there, and we would have to go identify them. Some of those gases were really very poisonous. I cheated. I volunteered to help set the cans out, so I knew what’s in there. I didn’t have to rely on identifying by color and such, which I had a little difficulty with, but anyway I passed the test! In our firing range, there were three hills, on here, here, and here, with a valley down between them. We went out there on a holiday, and our captain says “Oh, the air force won’t be out today,” so we went out without gas masks. It was cold, so we did have our overcoats. And we went out to fire, and just peculiar, because every time I got down in the bottom of the 4 valley, going up to the other hill for the firing, the planes would come in and spray us with tear gas. They weren’t supposed to be there, according to our captain. I found fast that the best thing to do, because we didn’t have gas masks, was to take my overcoat and throw it over me so that I’d have a little pocket of air. Then as soon as they got through spraying, I just flipped the coat and run up the hill where you get out of the gas. We got gassed I guess, four or five times, and it got to the point where we couldn’t even see the target, so we couldn’t do any of the firing. A lot of the others used their overcoats the same way I did, and we’d throw our overcoats into the truck, and he took them back to the barracks, and the idiot dumped those overcoats inside of our barracks, with all that tear gas. So we slept outside for two days! When the invasion took place in Europe, they decided they needed infantry. So they cut short on our training, and we were transferred to Camp Gordon, Georgia, for advanced infantry training. We’re just a bunch of eighteen, nineteen year old kids. We went through their program fast. They needed troops over in Europe, they let us go a couple of weeks early. That fouled me up because I was waiting for that paycheck so I could pay for my way home. I was stationed in Camp Gordon, Georgia, and I had enough money to get me to El Paso, Texas, and I figured, “Well I’ll thumb a ride from there.” But I did a dirty one. I walked through the train 5 station and I found a place where they had a crap game going. So I ended up with enough money to pay for my way home! After the month furlough, actually you had to be back by the month, so I had to come a little early, and that’s when I did the deal with the bus. I rode the bus from Los Angeles to Baltimore. We traded buses several times. They rationed gas, and cars were kind of worn out, so buses were the main way of traveling. So, the ladies found out that, well President Roosevelt told the bus companies, the first people to get on the bus are soldiers. Well, then we found out that also meant for soldier’s families. So as we would stop at a bus station, there would be a bunch of ladies there, and they would walk up to the soldiers and say, “Can I be your wife?” Because wives could get on the bus. So between Los Angeles and Baltimore, I had five wives! During the war, various things happened that are just kind of hard to explain. Give you one example. There was a fellow that I was working with at one time who had been in Pearl Harbor on a ship, and his captain had a little bit of an argument with the administration there, and they said, “You’re going to leave on the 8th of December.” The captain, “Ah, we don’t want to wait around here, let’s get out.” So, on the 6th of December, they pulled out of Pearl Harbor. As they were going out away from Pearl Harbor, they saw the planes going over, bombing Pearl Harbor. There 6 were several bombs that were dropped exactly where that ship should have been. Another example, when I get to Fort Meade, Maryland, ready to go overseas, there was a ship all ready for us, the orders were there. Then, a General had lost a son and he accused the Army of sending him over without enough training. They checked our training and found out we were three weeks short of training, because of our transfers and everything. They pulled us off of those orders, and it took six weeks to give us three weeks training! We actually put on a mock battle for Congress. We had the artillery coming in, and shelling, and then we were supposed to go out. Here we are waiting, all ready to go out when they drop two shells right behind us. So we took off before we were supposed to, but Congress was impressed with our demonstration. Then I went up to Camp Miles Standish in Boston, at a port of debarkation. Nothing to do, you gotta wait for everything. They told us not to bring any money, don’t bring anything valuable, because you’re going over to the battle zone. So we got to playing penny ante poker and such. I laid down on the bunk, just getting ready to relax, go to sleep, and wham. I got a pain in my back, I got a nasty pain. I went to the infirmary, and now this is at night. They x-rayed me and came to me and said, quote, unquote, “You have a stone in your left kidney and your right kidney is plugged up.” Early in the morning, they took me in to surgery. That 7 afternoon I waited for somebody to come and tell me what they had done. Nobody came. Next morning my outfit comes with my bag packed and says, “We’re getting on the boat.” I says, “Well I can’t get out of bed.” “We’re going, so they literally picked me up and put my on the boat heading over to Europe. Luckily, it took ten days to get across the ocean. I went up on the deck one night and I was looking out at the ocean there, and there was this periscope sticking up out. I grabbed a sailor and says, “There’s a submarine out there.” He says, “Oh yeah, he picked us up a couple of days ago. He’s escorting us.” Now when I got to Marseilles, there was a fleet of ships in the harbor. Not one ship, a fleet of ships, loaded with railroad rolling stock, all kinds of engines, and all kinds of cars, in fact they had a special car for Eisenhower, sitting in the harbor. When we got off the boat, they put us up in a camp on a little hill and the wind was blowing and it was cold, but anyway, they put us in a 40 and 8 boxcar. Now if you go down to the Union Station here in Ogden, France has donated a 40 and 8 box car there and it's just North of the station. It’s still there. But they put us in that 40 and 8 box. LR: Is it that little tiny one. DE: Yeah, that little bitty thing. LR: Are you serious? That things tiny. 8 DE: It’s called 40 and 8, because in World War One, they build that, and they had to have mules to pull the cannon around. Mules were used because horses are too flighty, and they would put 8 mules and 40 men in that car! LR: I think I’m thinking of a different car then. DE: Yeah you gotta see the car. Anyway, there is a picture of me in that box car. The officers always wanted to sit in the doorway, obviously. Up at the upper end of that box car, a shell had hit the front of it and had broken a board out, so there was a hole there. I put my sleeping back right up there next to it, so I could lay right where that hole was, and I could see out, and I got fresh air! It took three days for us to get up there, because all those engines were old, and they’d go for ten or fifteen miles, and it would break down and we would have to wait for them to repair it. When I finally got up to Worms in Germany, they sent me over to Heidelberg, where they had marched prisoners of war out into a field, given them posts and wire, and told them to build their stockade. So they built their own stockade. In Germany they raise trees. They would plant a bunch of trees, and when they got so big, they would take trees out so the others would have room to grow. And this stockade was right alongside of this forest. I was up on the stockade, they had the post thirty feet high, and I was up on there, and I had the two posts, and then we had soldiers walking down between. So there were two soldiers down here, they would meet and then go back, and then they would meet the others. There were two kids 9 came out of that forest, and we had our little books on how to speak German and such. I’m up on the tower so I can’t do anything, so I yelled down at them and said, “Watch out,” but they didn’t’ pay any attention to me. Those two little boys came over, and I could hear the soldiers starting to try to talk to them. When they got right together, one little boy pulled a grenade out, pulled the pin, and blew all four of them up. I couldn’t understand why, but kids get indoctrinated, and they’ll do that. Okay. Okay, a week later, I was up on that guard tower, wham. I got another kidney stone attack! If you don’t think that was fun, climbing off that tower, then they put me in a jeep. We went over bombed out roads, heading to Heidelberg, where there was a field hospital. I apparently passed the stone on the way there. But when I got to the hospital in Heidelberg, they said we can’t do anything for you, your going to have to go to Paris. So, they had a C-47 airplane. Now this is a cargo plane. They had just put benches in there, bolted them down, and were using the plane to transport troops around. That’s why they called them the Gooney Birds. My first reaction was “Ooh, me on that. Is it gonna make it?” So I inspected it, and found two little hearts! LR: It was your plane! The odds of that happening, oh my gosh! DE: But, no air pressure in there. By the time I got to Paris, I couldn’t hear a thing for two hours. The hospital there just basically ignored me. I waited for a week and then they sent me back up to my outfit, but it took me 10 almost a month to get to my outfit. It was kind of an interesting trip, because I went to a lot of different towns. When I got back to my outfit, they were dismantling that prisoner of war camp. The war was almost over. In fact, I was there for a week and a half before the armistice was signed. I ran into this one fellow in my neighborhood here, and I looked at his plaques where he had all his military, and I saw the 106th infantry division. That’s where we were stationed, the 106th infantry division, and he said whatever happened to that? My answer was very simple. After we got rid of the prisoner of war camp, the 106th was dissolved. But, checking the record of the 106th, it got the name “Hungry and Sick,” because in the Battle of the Bulge it was wiped out. This fellow that I was talking to was captured at the Battle of the Bulge, and he spent the rest of the war time in a prisoner of war camp, and he was not treated very well. When I came back to Reims I met this Frenchman who was captured at the beginning of the war, and spent the war years in a prisoner of war camp in Germany. He did not know that his wife was pregnant with the fourth child. As a mother, she wanted to feed her children, and consequently didn’t eat what she should have been eating, and consequently that child was born with difficulties. He not only hated the Germans, but this is something you need to understand. We thought the French should be grateful that we are there, but twice, France was totally 11 defeated before we came to help them. Some of those French people didn’t feel so great having us there, because we let them get beat. Now that is something you won’t hear in any textbook, but when I went back to France later, and talked to people, I found this was a problem. Okay, it took me about a month to get back to the outfit. I hadn’t had any mail for three months, and the first letter I opened was from my sister in California, telling me that her husband had died of a heart attack. I wanted to get out of the Army and come back and help her, but I had two brothers who were there. Up in Eden, this one Eagle Scout for his Eagle Scout badge, wanted to honor his grandfather. So he made a little monument that’s sitting in the park in Eden, of all of the World War Two soldiers from Eden. In there are my two brothers, and three step brothers. But anyway, I had to stay there. The next question. The war ended, peace treaty was signed, what are they going to do with all the soldiers in Europe? I went to a camp in Namur, Belgium. There were, I guess, five to six hundred of us in that camp. I learned early in the military that soldiers don’t volunteer for anything. I found that if I knew what I was volunteering for, I could get a good deal. They gave us boxes of ammunition to shoot up, because there was a lot of ammunition there, then I volunteered to operate a boiler, so that they would have hot water to have a shower when they got back. That’s all I had to do during the day, was heat water for them and I had it 12 made. But anyway, every day we would get a new rumor. There were three things: we’re going home, we’re going to stay in Europe, occupation, or we’re going to the Pacific. The one that bothered us most was going to the Pacific. We had a fellow there who had been in the Pacific, and had been wounded, not badly enough to be discharged, but then he came back over to France into Europe with the Army there. He dreaded going back to the Pacific. One day we got the word, we were going to the Pacific. We had bunks, four bunks high. Can you picture that? LR: Yes, but it’s hard to imagine. DE: About two o’clock in the morning, a guy flipped, and he flipped three of those bunks over, looking for his barracks bag. It took several of us to calm him down, physically control him, because I had a vacant time early in the morning, the captain came over to me and says, “I have a special job for you. Will you stay with him? We can’t get him into the infirmary until noon, so can you stay with him till noon?” Oh that was the worst morning I ever had. He wanted to shave with a straight razor. You know what a straight razor is? And every time he would pick something up, his mind would wander. It took me two hours to get him shaved, and every time I’m thinking you know, is he going to cut his throat? They finally got him to the infirmary. After that I was sent to Reims, France. Now Reims is where the armistice was signed, in the little red schoolhouse there. Among other 13 jobs, I directed traffic out on the main highway intersection there in Reims. At Reims there was the old army camp, and we had around three hundred Czech teenagers, from twelve to twenty-one in that camp. They had no idea where their parents were. Their parents had no idea where they were. They weren’t prisoners of war, because the war was over, really. One of our big problems was trying to control them, and I learned a lesson right fast. When they start fighting with the French or even with themselves, wait till they’re tired before you try to break them up. Because the first thing I did was try to break up one that was just starting, and I got the worst of it. Yeah. Okay, after Reims I was sent to Berlin. Now, you gotta remember, that Berlin was isolated in the Russian zone. Also, Berlin was divided into four sections. Ours happened to be the best of the bunch. We, the US zone was basically a residential area, but we were surrounded by the Russian zone, okay? We were supposed to get to Berlin for Thanksgiving Dinner. The Russians would stop us as we were going through their section, they would stop us about every ten miles. Now they made a mistake, because they would stop us in towns, and they found that we would trade with the people in there including Russian soldiers. As soon as they found out we were trading with the Russian soldiers, they stopped that, and they would stop the trains out where there were no towns. So 14 when I came back for leave, that’s the way it was. They stopped us out in the countryside rather than in the towns. In Berlin all there were were signs, just a sign here, saying you’re entering the French Zone, British Zone, Russian Zone, and United States Zone. So we could travel easily through Berlin, without any trouble at that time. I made a major mistake, which caused me a lot of problems. The Autobahn came into Berlin, to the Brandenburg Gate, then stopped. Then, a ways out, it went on out into Germany. I thought that it came through, but it didn’t. I had a problem, in that I was told that I was going to be sent home, and I wanted to get some pictures of Berlin. I was with the military police, and our company was just all by itself. There was a battalion of military police, but we were just a company, to guard the AMGUS headquarters, the military headquarters. So we didn’t have radios, but we could go anyplace we wanted. I volunteered to go on patrol, and I would go out and take pictures, come back and report in, go out and take pictures, come back. So I went to the American sector, than the French, the British, and I decided I wanted to go into the Russian zone and get some pictures. We had a German policeman riding with us in the jeep. I figured he knew Berlin. Major mistake. I got over into the Russian Zone, taking pictures, then I decided it was time for us to head home. I asked him where to go, but we couldn’t communicate with him and I got the impression he didn’t know 15 where we were. So I made the mistake of thinking, if I got on the Autobahn, in the Russian Zone, I could come over to the American Zone off the Autobahn. Major mistake, because I didn’t realize it didn’t come through. I pulled up to the Autobahn to get there, and the Russians stopped me. So I backed out, went over another way, they stopped me again. Okay, backed out, went over to another. A Russian soldier jumped in my jeep with his Tommy gun on me, and communicated where he wanted me to go. I couldn’t understand what he was saying, but anyway he wanted me to go to his headquarters, which were out in the boondocks of Berlin. The Russian sector was the industrial area and it was awfully bombed out, hardly a building there. When I got to his headquarters we were going to walk into his headquarters. As soon as I got to where I couldn’t see my jeep, I backed out and saw the whole outfit was heading for my jeep. I told my companion to go with him, and I stayed out there with me jeep, so I could protect it, because I didn’t want them to find my camera. The soldier decided that we should got to their main headquarters in Berlin, and as soon as we got there, there was the Battalion MP Company on Patrol, the jeep was coming out, and I just cut him off. He got a message to watch out for us, because we may have taken off our whites, and escaped with a jeep. When I finally got to my headquarters, my CO was so mad at me that I got orders to come home. 16 LR: That’s one way to get home. DE: Yeah. One story in Berlin. You’re going to realize that they simply went to a residential area, and carved this out. They told the people there, “Move out,” and that’s where we were living. Two things. One, and I shouldn’t have done this but I did anyway. There was a man who kept walking back and forth over on the other side of the street. He acted like he would like to get back into the house that I was staying in. So I went over, and somehow got the communication that he wanted something out of that basement. I wondered what, then it dawned on me that he wanted his photo albums. I went down and I found his photo albums, and I took them over, and boy was he excited to see those. Another thing that bothered me was that there were these kids, who would come over and scrape our garbage cans for food. I’m going to diverse and tell you something else first. When I went down to California to visit with my son, we went for a picnic, they had a picnic for the award up in Merced Lake, and my sons says, “Oh this lady’s from Germany.” I went over and introduced myself and said, “Where you from.” She said, “Germany.” “Well where in Germany.” She said, “Berlin.” I said, “Oh I was in Berlin,” and I told her where I was. She said, “Oh I lived just down the street from there.” I said it bothered me to have these kids come and scrape our garbage cans for food, and I got to the point where I would leave a little extra there so maybe they would have something good to eat. 17 She says, “Thanks.” I said, “Well, there was this little blond girl with her brother, who was a little older.” She said, “That was probably me.” Ironically, I never got her name. I should have done that. Then we had the beautiful trip of coming home. Let me show you the monument up in Eden. LR: Oh, yes, that’s nice. DE: Yeah, and that’s my brother. He came up for my birthday party, and then he went home and passed away. Well, I haven’t got it I guess. But anyway, I’m looking for the picture of our boat, I guess I haven’t got it here. This was our honor flight. There’s the picture of the boat. LR: This one here? DE: Yeah. LR: It’s nice. DE: That’s my military police car there in Berlin. When I came back to the United States, I went to Fort Cambial in California, and was discharged. Then, I hitched a ride down to Southern California where my sister was living at the time, and that’s where I ended. LR: Let me just ask you a couple of follow up questions quick fast. How long did you work on those planes when you were in high school? Was it about six months? DE: Well it was about, it would have been the latter part of January 1944. Then I graduated in June, and that’s the period that I worked there. 18 LR: So about six months, okay. When you were doing your initial training with the gas, what camp were you at? DE: Camp Siebert in Alabama, which doesn’t exist anymore. LR: You were drafted in 1944? DE: Yeah. LR: Was that right after you graduated? DE: Yeah. LR: It was that quick? That was kind of them. DE: Right before I graduated was when I tried to enlist in the navy. By the time they got through drafting me it was August when I went into the service. LR: Okay. Were you in the 106th Infantry Division when you were in the POW camp? DE: Yeah. LR: So were you transferred to a different division, a different unit, the rest of the time? DE: Yes, yes. LR: What unit was that? Do you remember? DE: In Berlin, I was in the 822nd military police company, but it was an artillery outfit I was in while I was in Reims. I have a picture frame downstairs with all of my military in it. I don’t know whether you want to try to take that or not. 19 LR: We can definitely look at that in minute when we’re done. Let me ask you one final question. How do you think your war time experience, and world war two overall, how did you think that changed or shaped your life? DE: Well, I did a lot of things while I was in the army that I shouldn’t have done, but it changed my life. Probably the most important thing was the GI Bill, cause that paid for my education. When I graduated with my bachelor’s degree from the Y, I had one month left of GI Bill. I went to France on a mission for the LDS Church, and after I finished my mission, I stayed in Paris, and went to the Sorbonne for a course on the Civilization de Français, a French civilization course, and the GI Bill Paid for that. So it financed my education. I wouldn’t have been able to get an education like that without it. The GI Bill, I think, paid for itself. I’ve paid more in taxes than I received from them. LR: Do you have any questions? MB: I just have one. So you said you served an LDS mission in France? What year did you go over for that? DE: I was over there from 1947 to 1950. MB: So pretty soon after the war had ended, relatively. What was it like going back there? DE: When I was interviewed for my mission the individual, Thomas C. McKay, asked me where I would like to go. I hesitated a little bit, and I said there is one place I wouldn’t want to go, and that’s France! But it was an education 20 to go over there. The first place I went was Grenoble, and there were three old ladies, to me they were old ladies. One was really quite friendly to us, she was hard of hearing, and also read lips. I found that to talk to her, I had to annunciate very clearly, and that probably was why I had a real nice French accent. I had people say, “If you spoke English as well as you do French, you’d be better off!” When I came home, I talked to my brother, and I realized where I had gotten my language, and my English wasn’t very good. I don’t know whether to tell you this one or not, but I was going to Weber State. My English professor called me in and said, “If you want to graduate, you’ve got to learn to speak English like it’s supposed to be spoke.” “I am, it’s my native language!” “You outta listen to yourself.” I started to try, and I realized I was making some major mistakes! I settled down and I could even get to the point where I could understand what he was saying. LR: When you were in France on your mission, had they started to rebuild? DE: Oh yeah, they were doing a lot of rebuilding. Course, I was over in Grenoble, and that was not affected by the war. I also spent time in Geneva, which was a French speaking, and they weren’t affected by the war. Tell you a story. I had a fellow who taught auto mechanics at Ben Lomond High School, Don Campbell. His son was in my history class, and I gave an assignment to my history class, “Go find out what your parents were doing during World War Two.” He said, “Oh my Dad didn’t do 21 anything.” I said, “Your dad has one of the most interesting stories, find out what it is.” It turns out he was a bombardier. I don’t know whether you realize what a bombardier was, but he would actually take over the plane to drop bombs. They bombed Southern Germany, and got hit, shrapnel. Obviously, they could not make it back to England. So, the question the captain had was, “What do we do? If we go down in France, we’re prisoners. If we go to the British canal, we might not make it through, and we can’t swim. We can go to Switzerland, where they will accept us, but if we go to Switzerland, we have to sign a statement that we will not try to escape. If we don’t sign that, then we are put in a prisoner of war camp.” So they voted, and decided to go to Switzerland. He spent his time in a prisoner of war camp, with Germans, Russians, French, Italians and he learned to play chess with the Russians! But, see, if he hadn’t had signed the statement, he would have been freed, but then he would lose his pension. So that was his story, and I wanted his son to find out what he done. LR: Did he find out? DE: He did. LR: Makes me happy. Well, Deloss, thank you. I have enjoyed listening to you and I really appreciate your time, thank you very much.