Oral History Program Lee Foster Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 21 August 2017 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Lee Foster Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 21 August 2017 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: Foster, Lee, an oral history by Lorrie Rands, 21 August, 2017 WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Lee Foster in Europe circa 1940s Lee Foster in Europe circa 1940s Lee Foster in Europe circa 1940s Lee Foster circa 1940s Lee Foster circa 1940s Lee Foster 21 August 2017 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Lee Foster, conducted on August 21, 2017 and September 6, 2017 in his home in South Ogden, Utah, by Lorrie Rands. Lee discusses his life and his memories involving World War II. Alyssa Chaffee, the video technician, is also present during this interview. LR: So it is August 21, 2017 the day of the full eclipse of the sun. We are in the home of Lee Foster in South Ogden, Utah. We are talking with him about his life and his World War II experiences for the World War II and Northern Utah Project at Weber State University. My name is Lorrie Rands, conducting the interview, and Alyssa Chaffee is with us as well. Alright, so Lee, thank you again for your willingness and let’s start with when and where you were born. LF: I was born in Provo, Utah. In those days, I was born at home. My dad worked for Utah Power and Light. The company furnished the homes for the employees so that was where I was born. LR: When was that? LF: It was July 10, 1924. LR: Your dad worked for the Utah Power and Light. What did your mother do? LF: She was normally just a housewife and mother. LR: What were their names? LF: My father’s name was Franklin Dewey. They called him Dude. My mother was Maude Chugg. LR: So, your dad was Franklin Dewey Foster? LF: Yes. 2 LR: How many siblings did you have? LF: I had two brothers. LR: Were they older or younger? LF: One was older and one was younger. LR: What would you do for fun growing up? LF: After I got just a little older, we moved to another substation out west in Salt Lake City, about seven miles west of Salt Lake. This was with Utah Power and Light. My father was what they call an operator. LR: When you say operator, what exactly did that entail? LF: Everybody had to be there continually so if anything happens why then they was to help correct the situation, power outages or different things that happened. They would operate the machinery and the transformers and the circuit breakers and things of that sort. Out there, the company owned quite a bit of ground. They had a barn and a chicken coop. They raised quite a bit of hay, alfalfa. The company would water it. We would put up the hay in the barn. Dad had two or three cows and we always had chickens. In a sense, I was on a farm. LR: When you were in Salt Lake, what would you do for fun? LF: Well, mostly we had bicycles. In those days, we’d ride everywhere. I used to ride into town and there was nothing to it. Later on, my folks bought a little horse for us. We used to use the horse and ride it. LR: When you said you lived about 7 miles west of Salt Lake, where was it? LF: Well, it was on about seventh south in Salt Lake. It was farther west and south of the airport. 3 LR: Where did you go to school? LF: The first two years, I went to school in Salt Lake City. The power company used to take us in a little pick up. That was in the city school because we was in the county. Then the city didn’t want the people from the county to come in the city schools, so I went to the little school about three miles from where we lived. Terminal, it was called. It was a fairly new building. It had four rooms and there was three teachers. One teacher taught the first and second and the third and the fourth and the fifth and the sixth. The one that taught fifth and sixth, he was also the principal, which was I think a good thing. When I was in the third grade, there was three. There was another boy and a girl and myself, which is unusual nowadays. The teacher had two grades to teach, but that was good. You had a lot of one on one. The county used to own a Model A school bus. They used to run us back and forth. In fact, I even used my bike a lot of times. I’d go to school on my bike, about three miles. LR: What about junior high? LF: After I was thirteen, my dad was promoted to superintendent of the power plant up upper Provo River, below Kamus. That’s where the Jordanelle Reservoir is now. There used to be a power plant up there and I went through junior high and high school in Heber. LR: What are some of your memories of living through the Depression? LF: We always got along pretty good as far as the Depression was concerned because my dad had a good steady job. They did cut the days that they worked some so more could be employed. At that time, we had the cows and the 4 chickens. We even sold milk in a camp there, thirteen houses in the camp there in Salt Lake. It really didn’t affect much. We had the chickens. We used to take eggs in and trade for groceries. We raised a pig and always had beef. It was more like a farm, and yet it was not like a farm. LR: You went to high school in Heber. What high school was that? LF: Wasatch high school. The bus used to pick us up. It was about eight miles from the power plant to the school. At that time, the seventh grade on to the twelfth grade was all in the same building. It worked out good. There was a lot of people up in Heber that never even been to Salt Lake. I had a car later when I was in high school. There was only two of us that owned a car. That was a good place. I had a lot of friends there. Most of them are gone now. My senior year, I had enough credits and there was the opportunity to bus us down to Provo to the Central Utah vocational school where they taught trade. I chose the machinist. I think that made a difference in my career, especially in the service. After I graduated, last of May and the first part of June, I was drafted into the Army. At least I had the choice of what service to go in. I don’t know why I chose Army other than my older brother had already been drafted in the Army. Of course, they interviewed you and asked you which you could do. I said, “I’m a machinist.” I had a year’s training as a machinist and I could answer the questions, so they put me down as a machinist. That put me in the Engineer Corps, Corps of Engineers. After I was drafted in, I was shipped up to Bend, Oregon, to a camp up there. There was supposed to be twelve weeks of basic training. I had six weeks of basic training, and then they looked over my records. 5 They had a mechanic school there and because of my machinist training, they sent me to mechanic school. The rest of them that didn’t go to school, they had another six weeks of basic. I did have a leave and was able to go home for a few days. At that time, I was writing my brother. He was back in the eastern part of the United States. He was able to arrange and get furlough the same time as me, so we got home together. In the mean time, the power plant by Heber was shut down because the flow line was too much to maintain and my father was moved again down where I was born, the power plant there, as assistant superintendant. When my furlough come, that’s where they were. I got my furlough, got my bus ticket and a bus wasn’t going to leave for six hours. I thought, man I can’t wait for six hours, so I started to thumb. Here comes a GI truck and they picked me up and they took me out about twenty-five to thirty miles. They was doing some training and stuff there, so he let me out and they took off on a dirt road. At that time there wasn’t much travelling because of gas rationing, and I waited and walked and waited. Finally, a pick-up come along, a guy from California, and he picked me up. He was really nice. He was going to Montana and he took me into Idaho and bought me a dinner that night. Then, he had to go out of his way and took me down to the town where I caught the bus that I would have got on if I’d stayed there. I think I’ve always been impatient. Anyway, it worked out real well. I talked to the bus driver and he actually went a different route into Provo and dropped me off right near the plant. I didn’t know what house they lived in so I had to kind of look around until I found it. That was good because I did get to see my brother 6 again. My younger brother was quite a bit younger than I was so he was there too. Then, of course, I had to go back into the service. After that, they shipped us down to Pittsburgh, California, which is close to San Francisco, to what they call a replacement center. There, they would transfer the different GIs into different parts of the war effort, wherever it was. In fact, I was in on a shipment as an alternant to the Pacific. In other words, if somebody got sick or something, then I would have had to go. It was not long after that, they shipped a trainload of us back east into Camp Myles Standish. I believe it was back near Boston, Massachusetts. We was there for maybe three or four weeks and then we was put on a ship. It was a converted ship. It was Uruguay, I believe, was the name of it. It used to be a passenger ship, an English passenger ship. I can’t imagine the amount of organization that had to be at that time. That convoy with the merchant ships and your troop ships was as far as you could see in every direction. Out on the outside, the Navy would be patrolling for subs because the German subs was sinking a lot of the ships. I think it was maybe three thousand. It was a lot of ships. I think they decoded the subs and then from there on they was able to control it pretty good. Anyway, it was fourteen days to get to Liverpool Harbor. We was there for a while, but then something got into the water and everybody got the trots. It hit me fairly soon. On those ships at that time, it was a pipe that run through and they put the toilets on the pipe. Anyway, after I got relieved, I went back out and there was a medic out there with a bottle of stuff. Everybody come out they give you a spoonful of whatever and this guy all at once he says, 7 “Here hold this,” and he took off. There I was holding stuff. Of course, when that happens, it’s not just one time; so, they give orders to go out on deck if you had to because there just wasn’t facilities. The wind was blowing a little, and they give you toilet paper. When you went out, the toilet paper was floating around. I guess that’s the reason they call it a poop deck. LR: I want to back up just a little bit. What year did you graduate from high school? LF: It was 1943. LR: What were some of your feelings about Pearl Harbor day? What do you remember about that day? LF: I remember it distinctly. That happened December seventh in 1941. Naturally, you worry about these things. I know there was some Japanese that was transferred and went to school up to Wasatch. They put them up in some houses close to the mine. Anyway, getting back to England at that time, then I was shipped up near Chester, England. It’s up in the northern part, a little town I think they called it Little Budworth. It was like you imagine England was when you seen pictures of the countryside, winding roads and a little pub here and a house here. When we got there, there was no officers there and so the noncoms had to kind of run it. They’d run us on forced marches and stuff, trying to keep us in shape. We was there for quite a number of months. The cot was just made out of two by fours and there was a lower deck and then they had one a little higher. It was about five feet long. They give you your mattress cover and you put straw in it. That was your bed at that time. Later on, they did send some officers in. They was 8 graduates and they kind of pushed their authority a little bit. We went out on a forced march and they really got on us. We was in pretty good shape and we knew the roads. You’d get lost pretty easy. Anyway, we was going pretty fast and we could see the officers kind of dropping back a little bit; so a couple of guys turned it on and we finally left them. From the time I got out of basic training, we was called replacements. You never did make a friend for very long because you always somebody new. They sent a bunch of us down into southern part of England and we trained there for quite a little while. This one sergeant over our outfit, he found out I was from Utah and he was from Wyoming so he kind of favored me a little bit. If there was something to do, fix something or do this or do that, he would ask for volunteers. I’d always volunteer and he’d say, “OK Foster.” We’d go out on hikes and stuff. Actually, we wasn’t getting fed enough in that area, and we went out on this hike. There was some kind of rock that was more like chalk, and some of the guys wrote Starvation Battalion on their helmet. When we come back, on a road there happened to be a high ranking officer, a general, seen that and boy he cleaned that up good. We found out that the cooks was selling our food and they was feeding us on those feed rations. There was a little milk bar there. I was raised on a farm and I liked milk. We didn’t get that much; powdered milk was about all you got. So I used to go down and get some milk. Then they told us no because it’s not pasteurized. We used to go down there and get milk and some crumpets or cookies. One time I got caught down there. It was lucky I got out; the officer didn’t see me leave. I 9 don’t think they would have done much anyway. We was there for quite some time and then we was moved a little closer to the English Channel down near Plymouth. We noticed that all the airplanes was always flying and we knew what it was. It was for D-Day. I was still a casualty replacement. It was the morning of the third day of the invasion and we went in. We had to wade to shore this time because but you could see that there’d been a real battle there. The officers, they was just as green as we were. We pitched our tents right out in the open and that night just about dark here comes the German planes. It was lucky. We had a lot of artillery and a lot of submachine guns, fifty caliber machine guns. In each bullet was a tracer, so you can imagine how the sky was lit up. It wasn’t only just a few minutes and some of our fighters, B-47s, come in and the Germans took off. The next morning we went back to the staging area. On the way back we had all our equipment. You heard of the hedgerows? They piled all the dirt in the ditch on one side and trees and stuff would grow along these hedgerows so as you went in you had to go over these hedgerows. I slid down one side and I twisted my ankle. So I went in the rest of the way and there was a doctor there and he taped my ankle. I limped for a while but I got along pretty good. I was then assigned to, I can’t remember if it was 246 or 247 engineer battalion or company C. I was there for maybe a week or two and I was sent out a couple of times. We went out onto a railroad track with a mine detector and all at once there was a bullet went over some of us. Some German shot. We all got down low. After that, General Patton said we didn’t have to be a casualty and so I wasn’t replacing anybody. It was just what they thought would happen. I had 10 mechanics training, so I was transferred over to the 1104 engineer combat battalion. This group was about fifty officers and fifty men and the heavy equipment like your dozers and trucks and stuff like that, the maintenance outfit. At times, other things was attached to us like your hat tracks and stuff like that. I was lucky to get over there. At first, I just pulled guard for a little while. Because I was a mechanic and a driver, they put me on a what they called a wire truck. We used to have to string wire to the different outfits for communication. Then there was what they called the extra jeep, and I guess they needed a driver for that; so they asked me if I wouldn’t drive the jeep. Sometimes I’d go out on recon. If we needed a crossing of the river or stream, a lot of times we’d find a different spot for the bridge because the enemy always knock off the bridges. We wouldn’t want to go and rebuild where the old bridge was because it would be zeroed in with the artillery. We’d find another way to get to the river and then build a bridge. It depended on how wide the river was what type of bridge we would build. They had what they called a Bailey bridge. It was a bunch of steel girders and it’d take six men to carry one. They put those together with big pins. They locked together and you could go three wide and three high if you had to. You always had to build a bridge twice as long, or more than twice as long if you needed to because when you push the bridge over you had to have enough weight so it wouldn‘t fall in. Larger rivers, we had to use pontoons. It was easy to load up the rafts. They would anchor them, one right after another. The trucks, we used to call them treadway trucks, they had a bangle or channel iron about the width of a dual truck. This truck would back down and lay the hydraulic onto the rafts and they’d 11 fasten it onto the rafts. They’d pull out and then another truck would back on that and that’s how they got across these rivers. That was tough because it usually was under fire. They’d knock them out and then they had to replace them. I have a book here that the 19th Corps put out. A Corps is about a third of an army. There’s three corps in an army. Everything goes in threes. This 19th Corps wrote it, it’s a day by day, those that transpired during that day. When I wrote my book, I used some of this data that they had because I wouldn’t remember all the towns and things that did happen. I know I was there but you wouldn’t remember because from Normandy, France to the Elbe River in Germany was eight hundred miles. It tells us exactly what towns and what route was taken. I drove the jeep for quite a while. Later on, they would bring celebrities in. Of course, the celebrities, they’d be back a ways, and some of the GIs would go back and see the show that they put on. One time I picked up Dinah Shore and I brought her to our outfit. They put her up in the tent for the night and she performed. I never did see it. I must have been assigned to something else. Fred Astaire, the tap dancer, he had his show. We went back to a theatre in one of the towns. The day before the performance, there happened to be a German airplane fly over, and he just went to pieces. Fred Astaire said, “I didn’t come over here to fight a war.” It was over in minutes. They had the show. It was a good show. After the show I was waiting for this officer to take him back and I waited and I waited and I waited. Finally, I went up on stage. I guess they decided to stay there for the night, the actors. There happened to be a gal back 12 there. She was just getting her bed down and boy she really got on me. “What you doing up here?” I was a little bit aggravated and I told her, “Well it wasn’t to look for you.” I said, “I’m trying to get my officer and take him back.” I guess they loosed up a little bit and he was about three sheets to the wind when I took him back. Our outfit was about ten miles long with equipment. We would go ahead and mark the route that we had taken. Where there was a corner or something, we put a sign. Most of the time, we was the first GIs that the French people had even seen. They was so thrilled to see us. Little groups in these little towns, they’d come out and you had to stop. They just crowded over, flowers and wine. They didn’t try to touch the jeep, like it was something special. We’d have to get rid of that stuff, ready for the next little town, the same thing would happen. Every town we got there, we would ask them how long the Germans had left, or get what information you could. They called them the bush and we would ask them how long since the bush was here. One little town we went into, I noticed a guy up on the road a ways. He had one of these, what was they called a potato masher. They’re a grenade on a handle. That’s what the Germans used for a grenade. We run into quite a lot of that type of thing. One time, I was reconning into an area we wanted to build a bridge. We was trying to find another route to build a bridge and we had the windshield down on the jeep so you don’t have any reflection from the sun so they don’t know your coming as easy. We come into this little area, a little town, sitting on a little hill, and as we was approaching, we looked up the road a ways and you could see where the road had been blocked 13 off with all kinds of things. They just blocked across to slow you up, and a lot of times they’re covering with fire. Anyway, I pulled the jeep off quickly made up the way inside the road and the bar tip and we got up to the where the road block was. It was not armed or anything. There was nobody around. We moved some of the stuff that was on the roadblock. The town was vacant. Everybody had left. With the map we had, we was able to go up around the little town to a cemetery and back down on the other side. On the other side, you could see that the road was mined, so everybody got out. That was right after we got to the roadblock. There was another jeep from our outfit come too. We thought it was mined so we had to pick our ways so we didn’t run onto a mine. That wouldn’t do a jeep much good. Anyway, we moved farther and there was a cheese factory. It was quite a big area there, and a lot of the townspeople had run up there. We stayed with the jeep there. The people was really happy to see us. Some woman in Belfast didn’t believe that the Americans was there yet and they asked us if we wouldn’t go in and see her. Of course, there was a lot of tears. They was happy to get liberated. I guess it was about five years that they was under German rule. Evidently, the Germans was somewhere because we was out in the courtyard waiting and all at once they heard a bomb. We got out so nobody could see us and then the group come back and we went back to the outfit. Then they sent the other jeep back later. I went on another errand and I heard later that they got back to that roadblock. I think it was that day they went up to that roadblock and there was some, I don’t know if it was the Canadians or English, but that road block was 14 mined or booby trapped and we didn’t set it off; either that or they done it afterwards. I don’t know how lucky you could be. One of the motorcycle riders got hurt and so I took over the motorcycle. I used to run messages between my group headquarters and corps headquarters, which sometimes was twenty miles. You never know what you’re going to run into. I actually wore out one engine. We had a Harley 45. Even in the winter I had to go. A lot of times I had to push it up the hill. It’d spin and I’d go along side. The roads were slick and I used to put my legs out and catch me in case. I’m LDS and I know that I was prompted by the Holy Ghost. There’s so many times I was prompted. There was one time when I was still on the jeep and we was at Maastricht, Holland, one of the first cities in Holland that we took. I had an old noncom with me, a sergeant, and I had major with me. We went in there that morning. There wasn’t a lot of damage, but it seemed all the glass and stuff from the buildings was all out in the street. We was going up the street and as we turned and went across the group of railroad tracks, an 88 shell artillery went just over our head. There was a street parallel to the railroad tracks and I pulled up quick and stopped. We all jumped out and hit the ground because when the artillery goes over and it explodes, you’re a lot better if you’re down, the shrapnel probably wouldn’t get you. We’d no sooner got down, the major said, “Let’s get out of here.” He says, “They’re going to throw another one right here.” So we took off and a shell hit right where we was. It would have killed every one of us. If I’d said we had to move out nobody would have moved, but the major, he said 15 move. We went on up by some half-tracks and tanks and we kind of crawled under the tank for a while until the barrage was over. I had another officer with me and he wanted to go down this one area. I says, “I don’t think we’d better go down there.” I knew the country better than they did because I was driving the officers all the time. I heard later somebody got shot up going down that way. When we moved ahead, our convoy would be about ten miles long and it was just a two lane road. Your supply trucks was coming back so the road would be crowded both ways. I used to have to run messages from one end of our convoy to the other, and I had to go between the trucks going this way and that way. It was alright as long as somebody didn’t put something out or something as you’re going through. By the time the day got over and we got in, you had to go over to the medic and he used to put some salve in my eyes. I get a little something to eat and then they’d say well now go over and move here. They didn’t let us have a jeep at night. They’d take somebody with you with a submachine gun. They’d give you a map and say take this message to the corps. You’d never seen the roads before and its night, no lights. You have a raincoat and you’d throw them over your head and then use a flashlight to look at the map and try to find anything, a church or a railroad crossing or anything to help you know where you might go. There was always pockets of Germans that would be left behind. You never know when you’re going to run into something. I was lucky enough I never did. 16 One time, I could see a fire ahead and we moved up cautiously. Our tanks was there and it was a couple of houses on fire. So we had to turn around and find another route to get there. The tanker says, “This is the front line.” I was lucky all the way through I felt. One time we moved ahead real fast. Once you got broke through the lines of the Germans, you move ahead pretty fast. The farther you got back in, the harder it was to bring in supplies for the troops and also for your artillery. All the stuff has to be hauled. They had used the trucks to haul equipment and food and so forth, so the infantry had to walk. Our outfit, we had all vehicles and we was ahead of the whole army. We went into this little town and it was kind of on a little ridge. There was a couple of half-tracks with their quad fifties out in front of me and I was in the jeep behind. We come up to this little intersection and the road kind of went down on the other side and right there in front of us was a company of Germans, marching up the road. They didn’t even know we was that close. Of course, they was shocked as well, and the German officer yelled something and all of them went through the fences on both sides. Those quad fifties, they didn’t hit one. How they ever missed them, I don’t know. We was ahead and at that time the radio contact didn’t have the equipment you’ve got now, so our radio jeep went back to try to get in touch with the army and tell them, “Hey, we’re up here.” They finally got back to where the tanks had run out of gas and they was there and the tanker says, “Where’d you come from?” “Our outfit’s up there about ten miles.” Anyway, they we finally got a hold of the army headquarters and they was able to pool enough gas to get a 17 couple of tanks up there and then they dug them in and used them as artillery. We had a lot of Germans that was trying to find out how many there was, so at night we would capture a few of them that had come up. They would interrogate them and then they’d put them in an old schoolhouse that was there with some guards. They wanted us to take some of these German prisoners up to this schoolhouse. Of course, I knew the area pretty good because I was a jeep driver there. They asked me to go up with one of the trucks and so I was sitting on the front fender with a submachine gun and they take these prisoners up to this schoolhouse. I knew that we’d run into our block where they had to use the password. That was just after dark and the truck driver, he didn’t hear them yell, “Halt. Halt. Finally, I yelled “Halt.” I was just ready to jump off because I figured if you didn’t do something quick, we’d get shot up. Anyway, the guys that was that there on patrol, they kind of thought it was us but they wasn’t sure. Anyway, we got rid of the prisoner. If they’d known how few there was of us, they could have run over us. They was able to get some artillery up there and a few things. LR: How long were you there in France? LF: From right after D-Day until the war was over. That’s another thing that I think was a big mistake. That last push to the Elbe River was 220 miles and we took 172,000 prisoners. When we got to the Elbe River, which was about fifty miles from Berlin, there was a meeting between Churchill and Roosevelt and Stalin. They decided that we would hold up there and wait for the Russians to come in. Because of the Russians coming in, we had to wait a month. We could have walked another fifty miles. There was nothing to it. We would have been in Berlin 18 in two or three days. The Germans was all coming to our side because they didn’t want to be captured by the Russians. There wouldn’t have been any resistance. At that time, the Germans were through, essentially; so if we would have went in, there wouldn’t have been this Berlin wall and all that contention for all those years. Most people, I don’t think, really know that. Anyhow, after the war, the 1104 engineer group, which I was a part of, moved back to Bad Nauheim for a few weeks. We was in a chateau, arranged where it was real nice. The motor pool was on a little hill. One of the officers wanted me to take him somewhere and the only vehicle available was a weasel. The weasel is amphibious. It’s got tracks on it. That was the only one available, so the officer got in the back seat. Being on the hill, it was slanted and I think that one of the mechanics checked the oil and they thought it was low on oil. If it had been level, it would have been OK. I started to go and pretty soon the smoke, from too much oil in the engine, was rolling out the back. I felt sorry for the officer behind. Anyway, I took him to where he wanted to go. When we left, there was a convoy of the 1104 engineers and they filed out. I never noticed that when I was waiting for them to take up the rear. There was a couple of German gals that come out and they tried to stop us. They had to see us go. I understand it was some officers that had known the girls. We finally had to go to catch up with the convoy. We moved back some more, I can’t remember just where we ended up. At that time, I knew the colonel, our commanding officer, was from Vernal, Utah. I went to him and I says, “I think it’d be a good idea if you’d transfer me over into the Utoko outfit.” They was the ones 19 that made the books and stuff. They used to take photos from the planes and this is what we used as maps as we moved ahead. They was the one that printed the book since then. I told him I’d like to get transferred over there and get off the motorcycle. He says, “I was fortunate to get this far. I don’t want to have any more problems.” So, I give up the motorcycle and they transferred me over there. When I got there, they made me an electrician, which made me a P5, which is a corporal. There wasn’t really that much to do because it was after the war. We was there for quite a long time waiting for them to go home. The way it turned out, some of the soldiers had been in the war down in African Sicily in Italy. It was some of the older ones that had been in the service longer. They served down there and then come up and served on the invasion and on through France and all. They had more points than I did. How they figured the points - they figured so much for the time that you was overseas and for each battle that you was in and various things like that. I think I had seventy-five points and that made me so I was kind of in the middle. I’d been over there longer than a good many of them because there’s so many come in after the invasion. The ones that’d come in later than me, they sent them back to the United States because the war in Japan was still on. So they would have sent them home and then deployed them to the Pacific. It wasn’t long after that they dropped the atomic bomb and that ended the war over there, so they was discharged. The older ones, they would probably send them back and discharge them so they were able to stay in the states. 20 I don’t know why it took so much time to get my group home. Finally the time come and they sent us down to Marseilles, France. That’s down next to the Mediterranean. We went by train down there. It was just box cars and they’re cars that is much smaller than our box cars here. I think that maybe twenty guys could get in the box car. While we was in Paris, in this train yard, one of the GIs seen a flat car with a bunch of straw on it, bales of straw. He went over and grabbed one to put down in the bottom of the box cars to make it a little easier to sleep. Then the others thought that was a good idea, so pretty soon they emptied that car with the straw on it. Pretty soon, we heard the whistles and the French police come. As soon as they seen what the score was, they couldn’t do nothing about it. It wasn’t right, but then I don’t think it was that serious. On the train ride down to Marseilles, France, it was quite a little ways and it seems like we wasn’t priority. They put us off on a side track every so often. I don’t think it ever got over twenty miles an hour. It was really slow. Our box car, there was something wrong with it. It would go side to side, so you’d slide back and forth. You’d lay crossways and it was just maybe seven foot wide. I’d slide back and forth and hit my feet and then hit my head. We was on K-rations then, which was just the crackers and a little can of some type of stuff. They always had a little candy bar. It was bitter chocolate. There would be all these little package of cigarettes, which I didn’t ever have to worry about. In the morning, it would be a package for coffee. Most of the time, you couldn’t have any way to heat water. Noon, it would be a little bit of lemonade, the powder of the lemonade and I think a little can of eggs in the 21 morning. Then there’d be a hash and maybe something else at night. They’d be a little bit different, but they got so they was edible. Once we stopped near a little town and the French people come over and they wanted the things we didn’t care for like the chocolate and the cigarettes. They’d bring over this French bread and these women, they’d cut that French bread and give you a slice of bread and we thought that was good. We finally got down to Marseilles, France. It was what I called a tent city. There was all the GIs down there waiting for the ship to come in and it was kind of on a little slanted hill. I was right down into the bottom end of it. I don’t know how many tents. There must have been a hundred tents. Each tent held about sixteen soldiers and they had just these canvas cots. We was there for maybe a month or so waiting. There wasn’t much for anybody to do besides just kill time. There was a lot of hills around there, and there wasn’t any population or anything on it. We spent a lot of time walking around the hills. I didn’t smoke and the PX would give you a carton of cigarettes a week. This other friend of mine and I, he was from California, we used to go and buy these cartons from guys that didn’t smoke. We had a bag and we used to take them over to the hills. It was quite a walk over to a little town where we sold the cigarettes, made a little profit. Most of the guys used the money just to gamble. On the way home, we got on a ship and it was a converted ship. It was a victory ship and it was made to haul a few of them. They converted it to a troop ship, which they’d put bunks in. The canvas bunks would be about six high. I was lucky to get on the top bunk. It was great. We had breakfast that morning on the 22 ship and everything was beautiful. We was on the Mediterranean and it was just nice. There was porpoises that was running along the side of us. We went through the Straits of Gibraltar, which was Spain on one side and Africa on the other side. We got into the Atlantic Ocean and it was rough. It wasn’t long before I lost my breakfast. I went down to the bunk, and I think that everybody else was in the same boat; most of them anyway. That was so rough. That boat would go up over the wave in the ocean and then when it’d get down it was just like a sledge hammer hitting a big barrel. Crash. Then it’d go bang and then the motor would shake. That meant that the propellers in the back were out of the water. Then we was ready for the next one. It was that way for quite a while. This buddy of mine, he’s one that didn’t get sick, but most everybody got sick. They had your garbage cans fastened to the post down in on the floor and they was full and it was rushing over us. The boat went up and down. A few of the GIs, while we was there in tent city, they got attached to some dogs. So there was cute dogs that was smuggled onto the ship. I’m sure the army wouldn’t have let them. Anyway, even those dogs was sick. Even the sailors, they couldn’t do anything. It was a mess. Anyway, it took us ten days to get from there to New York. The last few days, it settled down. This buddy of mine got to the medics and got me some stuff that helped on the seasick. I went out on deck and the sun was shining and it was pretty nice. I laid close to the railing on one of those winches that was just about my length. There was a flat spot and I laid down there and I went to sleep. It’s funny that I didn’t roll off of there. 23 When we come into New York harbor, there was a boat that had come out to escort us in and they had a man there and some music that played for us as we was coming in. Because they was on the one side, all the GIs went over on the right side of the ship. The ship actually listed a little bit because all the weight was on one side. Then we went past the Statue of Liberty. This coming home and in the good old USA again, I was fighting back the tears with my head to the ground. I didn’t want anybody to see me cry. I looked around and I wasn’t the only one. It was really something. As we got into the harbor, there was a big ship from the English and we went alongside that. It dwarfed our ship. We docked and they took us to Camp Kilmer in New Jersey. I couldn’t believe how neat that was. They had hard cots. They had white sheets on them. I wasn’t used to that kind of treatment. I thought, wow this is neat. They had a PX there. You could actually buy something. Overseas you couldn’t buy anything. I thought, wow I could live here. I think it was the next morning we got on a Pullman train, which was real nice. We sit in the car there and we started out from New Jersey, started toward home. The train, as it goes by, they clickety-click. At that time, they was playing Sentimental Journey, and the rhythm with the click was just right. That’s always been my trigger song, Sentimental Journey, because I was headed home. When we got into Salt Lake and went up to Fort Douglas, I called my parents. At that time, they lived in Provo. So I got my discharge and I called them and told them to come and get me. It was one special time. At that time, I had a 24 little thirty-six Ford coup. They had been using my car, which was fine, and they come and got me. LR: When did you come home? LF: It was December 1945. LR: Was your brother in the army too? LF: Yeah. He was in the infantry. I didn’t see him over there, but he was there. I know that he was in the first invasion. I can’t imagine my parents what they went through when they knew both of us in that invasion. When I got there, I was scared to look at the dead. I was afraid it would be my brother. Later on I heard he was in the hospital in England and actually I felt better from there on. It just didn’t seem to bother me that much. I don’t know why. You kind of get calloused, I guess. LR: I have a question about the song, Sentimental Journey. Was it Doris Day who sang it? LF: I’m not sure. It could have been. That one really is my favorite because it had so much feeling. It really made an impression on me, and I’ll never forget it. Going home was so good after waiting so long. During the war, there was no way to wash your clothes. The only way you could even wash yourself, you had to use your helmet. I even built a fire under my helmet and warmed up the water. When you think about it, you had to wash your underclothes and your socks and stuff like that. I know you couldn’t wash your ODs. There wouldn’t be any room to put them in. Being wool, I guess they kind of were clean, but they was probably pretty stiff. You didn’t think much about 25 it. The food sometimes wasn’t just right and you couldn’t be picky because it just wouldn’t work. You ate what you could and be glad you got it. When they did stop for a while and we got the kitchen truck going why then they would dig the hole to put all the trash while we were there. They had the mess kits where you could put everything, all your spoons and everything together. They had these garbage cans and then they had heaters in these garbage cans. The first garbage you’d get rid of anything that was in the kit that you didn’t eat. Then there would be the boiling water with GI soap in it. That GI soap had a lot of lye in it. Anyway, they would clean it in the boiling water and then they had one with fresh water. Well, you was okay if you was the first few in the line, but pretty soon it gets a little bit thick. Everyone once in a while, there’d be places where my mess kit would be kind of gooey, so I used to get some sand and clean it up with sand and make it a little better. All you could do was swab yourself off in your helmet. You just got so you didn’t even think about it much. I didn’t think much of sleeping on the ground. We did after winter would come. Then we would usually get into a schoolhouse or something like that. That was a lot better, but then usually you had the mice to contend with. LR: Do you know what the differences were between a C-ration and a K-ration? LF: Yes. The K-ration come in a little box about like a cracker jack box size. It had a couple little cookies in it and a little can of either egg and bacon or egg and ham or something like that. Then they had another one that had vegetables and stuff like that. I don’t know if a certain one was for supper. It was a little bit different, not much. And then there was a little package of cigarettes. There was always a 26 little bar of chocolate, and it was bitter chocolate. I don’t know why the bitter chocolate, but that’s what it was. And then the breakfast one there was a little package for coffee and then there was another little package that had some powder in for lemonade. Your C-ration, it come in a can, a bigger can. It was more like a hash, just a bunch of potatoes and a little meat and then carrots. LR: When you finally got home, what did you decide to do? LF: I got home around the first of December, 1945 and I thought, well I’ll go to school. I went to BYU for a quarter and it was just kind of hard to settle down. I don’t know why. So I decided I’d go back to Central Utah vocational school and take more machinist training. I went back there for a period and then my brother and I decided to open up a service station, a garage, in Heber city. Dad had some property there, so we built a garage and had a service station. My brother had a pension because of his injuries and he got along pretty good but it just didn’t give us enough money to take care of both families, so I started working for the power company. LR: I was curious about your wife. When did you guys get married? LF: We got married in November of 19 46. LR: Do you know what she was doing during the war? LF: She was in high school most of the time. She was four years younger than I was. One of the guys that I went in the service with, we had a choice and I went into the army and he went into the Air Force. They shipped him right over. They made a tail gunner out of him in a B17. He got some shrapnel in his leg and was sent home. He married my wife’s older sister and they was married a year before I 27 even got home. They always went together. He was the one that said you ought to take my wife’s sister out. I was up at Heber at the time. They always had dances up there, every Friday and Saturday. That was just a custom in those days. Usually, when you went to a dance if you had took a date, you would have the first dance and the last dance with the one you took and the rest of the time why you’d dance with somebody else. That was just kind of a tradition. In the dance hall, the floor was actually mounted on screens so if you got out of step on that one, you knew it. I remember two of you used to go to the show for twenty five cents apiece. Then after the show we used to go to fast food somewhere and get a little something. Anyway, my wife and I was married sixty-nine years. I lost her a year ago last May. We got a great family too. We had a girl and three boys. They sure been great for me. They was good to both of us all the way along. I have a good family. I have 13 grandchildren and 29 great-grandchildren and I’ve got four great-great. I have one son and his family that’s in Texas but the rest of them are here. I always tried to keep busy in my life. At first, we went into business up to Heber city with my brother, the service station garage. I was up there a year or so and really we didn’t make that much money. My older brother had been injured in the service. He ended up in England. He was in Bushnell, the hospital in Brigham, and he was finally discharged alright. He was married before I got home. He had a disability pension from the government because of his problems. You would have had to be real careful to let him know you was coming up behind him or he’d go to pieces. Anyway, I decided that I would quit and let my brother 28 have the garage, and I started with Utah Power and Light. Because I had machinist training, they put me with the maintenance crew. I used to go around and work on different units in the hydro power plants. A lot of times I had to be out of town quite a while, and it wasn’t too convenient for my wife. By that time, we had a little girl. I bid on another job out west of Salt Lake in the internal substation as a second operator. That’s when we moved to Salt Lake. While I was there, I opened up a service station out on Redwood Road and 33rd South, just something on the side. My brother-in-law and his wife come down and they operated it off and on along with us. Actually, there was a house that went with it and of course, both families lived in the house. Then I bid on another job at the power plant up Big Cottonwood Canyon. There’s two power plants up there and I was in the upper one. For many of these plants the company had houses for us, so I moved up in a house up there in Big Cottonwood Canyon. It was called Stairs. Anyway, I was up there for about three years. I used to work shift work during the winter. I used to trade other operators. I’d take their night shift and that’s how I’d have the days off. Then I went to the Salt Lake area vocational school in Salt Lake. I was an electrician. I was there for quite a while and it was real good because I really learned lot. Then after I moved here in Riverdale, then I worked at that power plant for quite a while and I went to Weber for night school. I had twenty six credit hours there. In my spare time, I used to hang drapes for JC Penney’s. Then I got my real estate license, so I used to sell real estate on the side. The house that we bought, I remodeled that. It was there on Washington Boulevard, out north of Five Points. It’s still there. Then I moved 29 back to Riverdale in one of the company houses and was there for a little while. I had a chance to go to Salt Lake as a system dispatcher and so I got the job there and I moved to Bountiful. While I was in Bountiful, I was in real estate. I was kind of interested in that and so I thought a good place to put some money would be down in St. George. That area down there where the mall was, I could have bought up that whole spot down there, and I should have. Anyway, some other real estate guy talked me into buying a mountain lot up in Cedar City. I got so that I knew some of the people that sold me that lot. I told them I’d like to get in on the ground floor sometime. There was a property come up for sale in Panguitch Lake. So this broker and a few other guys from Las Vegas, we each put in some money. I actually had to borrow some money from my father-in-law. We purchased this property down in Panguitch Lake and we subdivided part of it. One other guy and I didn’t like the way things was going so we broke up, and we cut the subdivided part, which was 63 lots up there. We sold those lots and a lot of people were making payments on them so you had to keep track of the payments. Many of them quit paying. You’d try to say, “I’ll drop the interest if you go ahead and pick it up again.” A lot of them would pick it up again and then they’d default. Eventually, we sold all the lots except there was six lots left. I had a partner here in Ogden and he took three lots and I took three lots and we dissolved the corporation. It’d been quite a number of years. I had to put water on the lot. There was a spring; it was just across the road from our property. When I made out the deed, I made it so that we had a percentage of that spring. We put in a pump down there and run a line clear up to a tank up on top that supplied the 30 water for the lots. One time after I retired, I was in St. George and somebody found me and told me that they sold the property where the spring was on. I didn’t know that it hadn’t ever been filed on, the spring. That guy knew more than we did, and he filed on it. So they pulled our pump out. I really worried then cause I sold it with water, and all the months with no water. My partner wouldn’t do anything, so I says, “Well, I think I owe it to them. I’ll go down to a meeting and see what the score is.” Anyway, I went down. I knew a lot of them because all the people that bought lots. They was good about it, but I offered to give them my two lots. Eventually, they went ahead and went up on the lot where the tank was, which was next to the forest, and they dug a well and they got water. So it worked out real good. Through another guy, I bought 620 acres out in Duchesne. We was going to subdivide that but we was pretty busy at the time and it was a long ways out there. We decided how to divide it off. We was going to put a road down the middle and then put lots both directions on each side. Some guy come along and we told him what we had planned and he says, “Yeah, that’d be good.” So he purchased the property from us and we bought that property for $10 an acre. To make it so that it would be fair, we made a contract that we wouldn’t release the lots and they had to be sold consecutively. There’s one spot in the middle of both ways so they couldn’t sell the good lots and then back out. One time, I got a telephone call from some doctor and he’d bought a lot from him. He says, “How come your name’s on that?” I says, “Well, I don’t know. I guess because it hasn’t been released.” Then I told him what the setup was and he was furious. This guy had sold another lot that was not consecutive so he couldn’t 31 give him the deed. Maxwell, he didn’t make his payment, so every time I’d have to turn it to a lawyer to make him pay. He called me one day and says, “If I pay that off, will you give me a discount? I says, “Absolutely not, after you treated us the way you have.” In a way that was the end of that. He did pay us off and that was the end of that. I started to subdivide some property up at Bear Lake country. We purchased about seven hundred and fifty acres up there, just north of Camp Bartlett. They had two streams on it. It was a nice piece of property but it was so far up there. We did subdivide one little spot and we didn’t do much with it because with our jobs and all it was too far up there. Bear Lake West bought that piece of property. The guy that originally owned the property was in on it a part of it with us and he finally found a doctor that had money. They bought us out, so that was the end of that one. I built a few houses and built had a cabin up here in Sunridge up above upper Ogden. It seems like I always had something going. LR: How long have you been here? LF: Since last May. My wife was over here at Mountainridge. She had dementia and it was getting rough to take care of her. She fell and broke her hip and finally it was just too much for her. LR: As a final question, how do you think your experiences in and during World War II affected and shaped the rest of your life? LF: Well, it’s hard to know. I’m sure it affected me. I never did buy a motorcycle because I figured that I made it through and I didn’t want to jeopardize my family. I never did even though I enjoyed it, in a sense. All the time I was overseas and 32 on my motorcycle I never did have any accidents at all. There was one other time that I can’t understand why I did what I did. I had a run and I made this same run before to headquarters. It was about ten miles and it was an open road. It was a few houses and farms along the way and I’d been on the same route before with my motorcycle. One day I was on sitting on the same message to corps headquarters and I run across a parking area next to the road. There was a German car there. I don’t know why I pulled over. There was keys in the car. It was a German Opel, General Motors I think. Anyway I left my motorcycle there and got in that car and I put the message in the car. When I got there all the MPs and all the officers, nobody said a word about being in the car. I delivered my message and they give me something to take back. On the way back, I noticed there was a roadblock. They was putting wagons and stuff across the road. It was all open country and they could see me coming. All at once you could see them quickly moving the stuff off the road and so I just floor boarded it and went as fast I could. I don’t know why. The only thing I could ever figure out that they thought that this car was a German officer in it or something. They cleared the road and I went on right on through. If I’d been on a motorcycle, I don’t know. I can’t figure. I went back with the car and got on my motorcycle and went back to the outfit. Nobody had touched my motorcycle. When I try to figure out why I did it, I don’t know. Other than maybe it could have saved my life. It’s something I’ll never know. It’s just contrary to what I would usually do. Why that car had the key in it, why everything was that way, I don’t know. 33 AC: I see you have a couple of Nazi knives and a little Nazi flag. Were those from when you were over in France? LF: Yeah. I used to have a lot more of them than that. I had rifles and pistols. I had a German flag, a huge flag. I was on the motorcycle and there was a fort. It was actually in Belgium and there was a canal there between Belgium and Holland. It was right next to the borderline of Holland. I went into this fort and of course there was nobody in there. I went up the stairs and there was gun in placement up above. You could look down on the river in Holland. There was one room there, I went back in, and there was two or three flags, German flags and I picked one of those up. I used it as a cover over my pool table it was that big. I had a number of rifles. One day, a German boy come along and he had a pistol. It was an old flint lock pistol. It was wood and it had some brass on it. It had carved in and on the side of it 1914 or something. I sent all that stuff home. There was no problem sending it home. The army didn’t even charge you, just write free on it. I had a French car beam. I had a twenty-two single shot Mauser rifle and I had a pistol at one time. I think one of my buddies took that when I got home. I had quite a lot of stuff. I don’t know why I felt guilty having that big German flag with the swastika on it. I don’t think it would bother me now but it did then. It’s not like I’m not patriotic and stuff. A little at a time, people talked me out of it. Actually, that musket pistol probably be worth quite a bit. I put it on consignment and that was the last of it. I shouldn’t have done that but I thought at the time that I’d find out what it was worth. You make a lot of mistakes. Some of that stuff over there, it’s just a few things that I still have. That’s a bayonet off of a German Mauser 34 rifle and that knife is what they call a youth knife. They really pushed the young people, Hitler did. Those kids, you couldn’t scare them. They defied you. There wasn’t no fear in them. There’s my dog tags over there. I don’t know whether you noticed they’ve got a nick on one side. That’s what they do. They use the dog tags. You always have them around your neck and then they put them in your mouth between your teeth so they can identify you. I went into one of these places where they take care of the GIs and wow. I’ve seen truckloads of dead GIs. LR: Well, Lee I want to thank you for your time, for your willingness to talk to us. I appreciate it. LF: Well, maybe I rambled on too much. LR: No, it was great. These are stories that I’ve never heard. LF: I don’t know why I remember so much about it. It’s just part of me, I guess. LR: I’m glad you did. From my point of view, it was good to have.