Oral History Program Bob Ramos Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 15 November 2016 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Bob Ramos Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 15 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: Ramos, Bob, an oral history by Lorrie Rands, 15 November 2016, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Bob Ramos circa 1980s Bob Ramos 9 December 2016 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Bob Ramos. The interview was conducted on three different days. The first interview was conducted on November 15, 2016, and the second interview was conducted on November 18, 2016 by Lorrie Rands. Michael Ballif, the video technician, and Melissa Francis were also present during these interviews. The third interview was conducted on December 9, 2016 by Michael Ballif with Lorrie Rands as the video technician. In these interviews, Ramos discusses his life, his experiences while serving in the United States Air Force, and other memories of World War II. Day I LR: It is November 15, 2016. We are at the George Wahlen home, visiting with Bob Ramos, talking with him about his life and world war two experiences for the world war two in Northern Utah project at Weber State University. My name is Lorrie Rands, conducting the interview, and Melissa Francis is with me also. BR: Lorrie, and… LR: Melissa. So Bob, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us, I appreciate it. We’re just going to jump right in, and if you could just start talking about when and where you were born. BR: Okay. I was born in Georgetown, Texas. June 6, 1925. My birthday falls on a very important date in history. What is it? 2 LR: The D-Day invasion. BR: The D-Day invasion of Europe. So when I celebrate my birthday, I celebrate it on June 5th, because it was a tough day for our military forces. LR: Is that kind of a fun thing for you, to have them both on the same day? BR: I was not in the invasion of Western Europe, I’d see it in documentaries on the war. After the invasion, when the troops would come through, all of the guys coming back, I got to see them on top of vehicles coming back from France. So, I regard it as a kind of memory day, because it was such a big day, there was a lot of casualties on both sides, and so forth. Yeah, I have a lot of respect for that date. LR: Okay. You were born in Georgetown, Texas. Is that where you grew up? BR: Yes. My mother married when she was eighteen and she had five children, four boys, one girl. I was the oldest of the five. My father worked on the railroad, and he worked on what they call a section, which was a group of workers that repaired tracks, bridges, and things. They worked hard. This is in 1925, things were not the best, and we’re going in to the Depression, and according to my mother, in years after the fact there was just no work. My father was lucky that he had that job. As to what he made in salary, I don’t have any idea. He developed stomach cancer at age thirty-seven, and at that time, when you heard the word cancer, it was just another term in the medical profession. I was ten years old when we heard the word cancer at the 3 hospital. The railroad that he worked with had a hospital in a town called Palestine, Texas. My mom and I were furnished with transportation on the train to go visit him. He had a room on the corner of the hospital, and we saw him with all kinds of tubes and so forth into his mouth and nose. We later learned that he was very, very sick. When they did surgery in the stomach, where the cancer was, they discovered, what I later learned, it was as big as a grapefruit. So when they found that supposedly, they closed it back up, because it had spread throughout his body. He then had not too many days left. At this time I was ten years old, and most of the time I was just following my mom. She had limited English, so a lot of it had to be interpreted when she went to talk with doctors. To make a long story short, my mother was advised that he didn’t have long to live, and to just return home, and they would take care of my father. We returned home, to what we called home. It was an old Pullman car. Some of the workers were furnished with these old Pullman cars to live in, so that’s what we lived in. The wheels were taken off and the car was on the ground. When I say ground, I’m talking about pure soil, dirt. Winter- cold. Summer- hot. We had what they called an end door-plumbing that the company put in, so that Mom could have water to cook and wash and so forth. Bathroom was a privy outside, twenty yards at best from the Pullman car. I remember this; winter time to go to that privy was frightening. 4 Just a few yards from the privy, because of the railroad, we had tramps that would stop to rest and take off again for wherever they could. So the tramps just built kind of a little, well I refer to it as a camp. They put their bedding down and sleep and so forth. We never had any problems with tramps. They kind of stayed at their own camp, cook, drink, and smoke things and so forth. So we wasn’t bothered, we were never threatened or anything. School for me and my brother next to me, who was nine, we had to go from where we lived clear across town, because at that time segregation was in full power. They KKK was very active in Georgetown. The school was across the tracks. We had tracks where people lived, they walked and drived in town, because there were a lot of workhouses that the trains brought cargo to unload or load. There in Georgetown across the tracks, the Mexicans and the Blacks, that’s where we lived. So the school that we had, it had two sections. I wish I had pictures, but I don’t, because at that time all we had to take pictures was a Kodak camera, a little box camera. We couldn’t afford one, so we took very few pictures, but I hope to describe this building. A building probably about half the size of this wing. For first, second, third, and fourth grades, I do remember that. There were no rooms in the building, so the school officials and the teachers and so forth put waddling, they put water and clay into the ceiling, where they put 5 towels, cloth, anything to separate the rooms. But you could hear everything that was said in that room. We didn’t have desks. We had empty apple carts or orange carts, any bin that was empty that we could put on the floor, and put another box on top of that box. Apple boxes had a little partition, so we could put our books, what books we had, writing paper, crayons and so forth, in these two empty spaces. On top we could write and so forth. When it rained, we had to put buckets and empty cans to catch the water. We didn’t have any indoor plumbing, no restrooms. We had a privy, again, yards from the school, and if the wind blew, we could smell it in our classrooms. But you know what? We thought, we have to make do with what we have. So, we studied and we had great teachers. But growing up in something like that was rough. It was hard to concentrate on what the teachers were trying to teach us, because when it rained, we had the noise of raindrops into the pails. We struggled. When my father passed away, my mother received a three-hundred dollar death insurance. With the three-hundred dollars, she told us this afterwards, she bought a home across the tracks, about two blocks from the school. Now we were closer to school, and we didn’t have to walk from the west side of town, through town, to the east side of town to go to school. Wow, this was getting better and better. So the blacks had their school about two blocks from where the Mexicans had their school. Let me give you a description of this house. The length of the house was like, 6 about seventy five feet. The width, about fifteen feet. So we had a living room here, with a fifteen amp light bulb hanging in the center of the room. The middle room was for a dining room, kitchen, and so forth, with a wood burning stove and an ice box, did you see the stand back here? About twice the size of that, a little higher than that, where we put our food, what food we had. We didn’t drink too much coffee, we didn’t have it, even if we did, but my Mom liked her coffee. Every day I went to the ice house, which was about a mile from where we lived, before school to pick up a ten pound block of ice that cost a nickel. He would put a string around it, so I could carry it home, and that’s what we used to keep the food. The table where six of us ate, three at a time sort of, it was just a little writing table. The youngest kids would eat first, and then the older kids, and every month we’d switch. We ate Mexican food staples mainly, beans, rice, tortillas, hamburger meat when we could get it, wieners, milk when we could afford it, and a loaf of bread-that was big time. The tortillas were good. Mom, once a month, had to go to the courthouse to get what is called “relief”, which now, I think its called food stamps. At that time in Georgetown, it was called “relief”. So people that were authorized to go there to pick up food at that store, had to have permission from authorities and so forth. So anyway, we went once a month, borrowed a wagon from a kid in the neighborhood so we could 7 bring our stuff back in this wagon. We picked up rice, beans, coffee grounds, cheese, fruit, and things of that nature, food that we could eat. When we got home, we had to put the rice through a strainer to take the boll weevil out. Beans, we threw many a pound on the table, we picked up the little pebbles from the beans, so we could just have the bean itself. Coffee grounds the same thing, take the bugs out. After we had done all of that, Mom had empty cans, like old coffee cans, where coffee came in, and she put beans in one, rice in one, coffee in another and so forth. That was survival, but Mom, bless her heart, she provided for us the best way she could. She never remarried because, I once heard her say, “I don’t want another strange man to be a part of this family. I’ll take care of you.” Johnny and I were the oldest, so we slept on the floor, in the one bedroom we had. The two youngest boys, they would sleep on the bed. Mom and our sister slept on the floor in the living room. At times, to conserve electricity with this little light bulb we had, we used candles, or we’d use kerosene lamps. Someone gave us a little radio that we could listen to music and programs and so forth. That was our entertainment. Christmas, we were lucky that Mom could find a little tree. She’d put it on the table, and we’d decorate it. That was Christmas. Christmas gifts consisted of candy, gum, maybe a Coca-Cola, a 7-Up, or something like that, socks, pants with the suspenders and maybe a little sweater. My 8 sister got dresses, socks, shoes, that Mom could afford. Mom, she’d make a cake or a pie, that was it. Then, the day came that changed my life, when she told me that she had to take me out of school to go to work at age ten. I think I was just in the third or fourth grade. I said, “Why?” because I liked school. My favorite subject was math and English. She said, “We have to put food on the table,” we have to pay the light bill, the water bill, and pay taxes.” I thought, “Well, okay.” I was getting old enough and seeing things that I knew that I had to help. So I got myself a little shoeshine box. This town, at that time, had about three thousand inhabitants, small town. So, I made a little shoeshine box, and I got me a bottle of black, brown, and white polish. That was the popular color of shoe. So, Saturday and Sunday for ten cents, I would shine shoes. Sometimes I would get fifty cents, seventy five cents, a dollar. A dollar, whoopee, that’s big time. When I wasn’t shining shoes, I would sell Mexican newspapers. La Pressa, which meant “The Press”. The Mexican people that could read could not afford, not even a nickel, to buy the Mexican paper. So I didn’t sell too many newspapers, but I ran into the gentleman that was selling the American newspapers. I says, “Can I sell a few of your papers?” “Certainly.” So he would give me five or ten of these newspapers, at the time they cost a dime. So if I sold so many he would give me a nickel, maybe, for each newspaper. All of that came home. 9 Then one day, Mom sent me to town to buy potatoes or something. There was this little kind of neighborhood store in town, owned by John Edgar Glenn. The Glenn with two n’s. So when I went in to pick up these potatoes and so forth, and Mr. Glenn was there six days a week, running his little store. He had a few customers who were poor people. Poor people. So when I went in, I asked him, “Mr. Glenn, do you think I can come to your store and sweep your store and dust and clean your windows and stock your shelves? I could do that, and I could do it very cheap. It wouldn’t cost you too much.” He said, “Are you serious, you want to work, how old are you?” I said, “I’m ten.” At the time, they didn’t have the laws they have now. He says “You think you could do that?” I said “Yep, I can sweep, I can dust, I can restock your shelves. I can take groceries out to the cars and so forth.” “You know that does sound pretty good. I don’t have anybody, I have to do that all by myself. I’ll tell you what; I will give you a dollar a day to come and do that.” He was open for eight or ten hours a day. That meant one dollar I could take Mom every day. So I started this adventure, work in the grocery store that a lot of people frequented. It was my job, he hired me, and it was just pride. So he told me to come to work, and I started sweeping, dusting, and taking the rotten potatoes out of the bin, taking the rotten apples out, oranges, anything like that. I would pick everything up. I would come to work early, early. He would come in a little before eight, and he would say 10 “Go to work, sweep the store, and keep it clean.” I said “Yes sir.” I enjoyed it. It wasn’t work for me. It was like a plaything. At noon, I could eat anything in the store, he says, “Just go back there and help yourself. Get yourself an orange, strawberry, whatever.” He had these wieners in cans, fresh sausage, I would slice them up and so forth. I had a blast. I enjoyed that. Before I knew it, the day came to close, I thought “why do we… why do we have to close. Why can’t we keep open?” He says “I have to go home, I have a family. So we’re locking up, go home. Take this and take that to your Mom. And here’s your dollar.” Wow, a dollar. Or four quarters, or two fifty cent pieces, wow. “Hey Mom, here.” I put the money in the little can up on the shelf, “And here’s some food.” This went on for weeks. Six days a week, I had a job. Somehow or another, he noticed that I used pencil and paper to do certain things in the store. This can hold eight cans, tin cans, and I can put this bread here, big cans maybe just six cans. I put this down on paper. When he asked, “What are you doing?” I told him. He says “You know what, I noticed my shelves were a little more organized. I can tell when things are here, and when I get low I notice you’re going back and bringing some over. I like that. I like that, keep it up. I’m going to give you ten cents more a day.” Then one day he says, “Let me try you out on this register. I’m going to teach you to wait on customers.” I heard this, and I thought, “This is really something.” He had a, what do you call it, a mechanical 11 cash register? It wasn’t electric. It had the numerals on each button, five, ten, fifteen, twenty, so on and so forth, dollar, two dollars, and so forth, and that’s what you’d have then. There were no adding machines, nothing electric, it was all pencil and paper. So, one day he says, “Let’s wait on Mrs. Nit here. She’s got a few items. Get your pencil and paper.” We’re at the counter. “Here’s the cash register and here’s room to do all of that. Okay, how much is this?” I think I saw twelve cents. “Okay, put twelve cents. Here’s the cheese and so forth.” He had a scoop looking thing on a pulley, “Let’s see how much this weighs. Okay, it weighs a pound and two ounces. How much is that per pound and per ounce?” That helped out, my math came right from school. And that cash register, no bill yet, you just got the number. So we add this up, and it came to five dollars and thirty-six cents. She would give you six dollars, how much change? Bing, bing, bing. The little box comes out with the change. Ladies, that’s how some of my experience started by keeping math in mind, and not going to school, this helped. But what about English? I listened a lot, I had a lot of help, what I call LLL. Listen, learn, listen, and learn. So I listened to a lot of people talking, then Mr. Darby, the gentleman who had the paper routes, asked me sometimes- do you think you could help me with the morning route? Sure. The morning route started at three o’clock in the morning, so I started getting up early every morning, help him with the newspapers, 12 then he brought in a bicycle, put two bags on the back and the front, and we put so many newspapers in there, and I had a route of maybe thirty homes that I would deliver to. He’d pay me so much for each newspapers. Then I started reading the newspapers when I got a chance, like on weekends, Saturday, Sunday newspaper. Read, read, read, and then I found comic books. Comic books at that time were ten cents each, and I loved comics. Lot of comics were Flash Gordon, Doctor Alter, things like that. I would read and read and read. Every month, new comic books came out, every day newspapers came out with different news, different countries. Japan, Germany, and this is happening, that’s happening, and so on and so forth. I grew up in this environment, and then one day Mr. Glenn says, “You know what, you’re doing great. You’ve surprised me. You’ve amazed me. Seeing you’re only, what?” I says, “Well I’m eleven now, I’ve been here a year.” He says, “Wow, you’re my only employee… I tell you what I’m going to do. In addition to what I’m paying you, tell Lola,” my mother, “Tell your mother to come here once a week. Every Saturday, after we close. Tell her to come in here and get food to feed the six of you. Free of charge.” Ladies, wow. Bob is like the young Donald Trump at that time. I’m a millionaire! I’m making so much money, and I’m helping my Mom to pay the light bill, to pay the water bill. What, what drove me at that time was pride. That was the thing at that age that drove me. Pride in that I was 13 helping Mom and my brothers and sister. As payment, Mom would give me a quarter every Saturday. I had a two kids I grew up with. We went to a movie every Saturday. We had two movie houses. We went in the rich theater, because it showed the cowboy movies. Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, all that. Ten cents for a movie, ten cents for a hamburger, five cents for a coke. That was it. After the movie, if it was early, because Mom would say, “Your home by nine o’clock every night, nine o’clock, that’s it. I want you here, nine o’clock.” “Okay Mom.” After the movie which only lasted, maybe an hour and twenty minutes, we went to this little hamburger stand. Got the hamburger and the coke, we went somewhere in the park or somewhere close to a public building and sit on the grass. Kids talking about the movies and things like that, enjoying our hamburger and our coke. This went on for maybe three or four years with Mr. Glenn, then I got to the age of fifteen, sixteen. There was a gentleman who lived in the neighborhood that was bringing crews, I’m talking boys of fifteen, sixteen, or seventeen to guess where? Utah. From Texas, he would bring this truck with twelve, fifteen young people, to work in the beet fields. MF: The sugar beet fields? BR: Sugar beets. 1935, 1936, 1938, he went up every year, first to thin beets. Because the whole row, you could see em, just a field full, little tiny plants about that big. Thousands of them on this row a mile long. It looked long. 14 You were given a hoe about that wide, with a little short handle. Bend over, you hit that line of plants, and you’d leave one plant. You worked this whole row all day long, hot sun on your back. But work, get paid, send the money home. That would last maybe a month, six weeks. Go home and you pick cotton, and you cut trees, you work in construction hauling cement for new bridges, new streets. Any kind of work to bring that money home. Then you come back to Utah, this time to, what did they call it? You try to dig them up, they’d be big beets. They’d give you a long handled pick, kind of a knife thing with a big pick here, and you pick up that beet, so big, you put it on your lap and you cut the leaves off and leave the beet there. That would last another four to six weeks. We’d go out to several farms, then we’d go home. Sometimes, if the gentleman had time and money to buy gas, we would pay him so much of what we earned in the beet fields, and we’d go up to Washington State for the apple harvest. Delicious apples, that’s what their famous for. We’d pick apples there and so forth for so many weeks, and then we’d go home. That was good money. Mom is buying new shirts, buying pants, shoes, going to parties and so forth. There was a program so many years ago, the Jeffersons, on TV, a black family, and they were doing some kind of things like this. Ladies, this was how I grew up. Working hard. Knowing what fifty cents was worth, knowing what a dollar was worth, what a dollar could 15 buy, and things like that. Then you could buy ten pounds of potatoes for fifteen cents, a bag of them. You’d take them home, and you’d take the rotten ones out. There wasn’t too much rotten, but you take the rotten ones out and keep the rest. But that’s how we grew up. Keep a family together, feed em, clothe em, keep em in school. At the time we had Kool- Aid packages, strawberry, grape, orange, so forth. I think you could buy them for a penny. A penny a pack. That was our beverage. Dinner time, lunch, even breakfast, we had Kool-Aid. Then the war came, and it was all over the paper, I could read it. I explained to mom about the draft laws, as they came, as they were approved by Congress and so forth, I explained all this to Mom. She asked me, “Do you think that they could take you?” I says, “Mom, they’re taking everybody of eighteen years of age that can pass that exam. There’s nothing wrong with me, that I know of.” We would get sick with common colds and so forth and stuff like that, but mom would take care of it. When I received the letter from the President of the United States, selective service, “Greetings. Your neighbors selected you to report to such and such place for an exam.” Mom kept asking me why, because I was the only one helping her at that time. If I left, the poor lady, she’s going to have all of this to pay for. She’s not going to have me there to help. I says Mom, “I’m fairly certain I’m going to pass.” She told me one time, “No they won’t. They’re going to find out something that’s wrong with 16 you.” I says, “What.” She says, “There’s something wrong with your head, they’re going to find something wrong with your brain and so forth and you’re going to fail it.” I says, “Mom, are you serious?” Because at that time, when I was growing up, I wasn’t the perfect son, I was getting in trouble, not real trouble, just little pranks and something, and that’s what she meant with them finding something up there. So I went and took the exam and passed it. I came home, and I says, “Guess what Ma?” She says, “You failed it.” I said, “No, I passed it.” She went back to the backroom and started crying. I felt bad, that I had passed it, but pride, pride was constant because kids in my neighborhood were already left and were drafted and in the service. I wanted to be a part of that. I wanted to be a part of that pride in me, as a citizen, to serve for this great country. So they gave me ten days, to take care of my business. I didn’t have any business. I wasn’t going to school, I didn’t own anything except that bike I delivered papers with, and I gave it to my brother. So that was the only business I could take care of. Then Mom has a big going away party for me, all the kids in the neighborhood were invited. We celebrated, I left home and reported for active duty, reporting to the army. My first station was in Rockford, Illinois, to be trained as a combat medic at Camp Grate, Illinois. So here I am, you two, no education, and they’re going to teach me how to give aid to a wounded soldier in the battlefield. I had to learn all those medical terms. I thought, “Oh my God! 17 What are they talking about?” It was eighteen weeks of basic. They just started to ram and ram in classrooms. Pressure points, so many bones in the body, how do you treat this wound in the upper arm. How do you treat this wound in the stomach? In the back? In the lower extremes? I thought, “There is no way, I’m going to fail this.” They’re going to put me probably picking up garbage in the mess hall. I picked up books, and then I picked what I thought was the smartest kid in the platoon, I would stick close to him, because he could help me, and he did. The kids from Racing, Wisconsin. He and I became good buddies, and we would burn the midnight oil in learning some of the techniques and so forth. I picked up my first dictionary. His name was Todd. Todd and I, if we run into a medical term or word that we didn’t know, we would hit that dictionary. This is not the dictionary that we had at that time, but this is my Bible. You can see the tape keeping it together. I still refer to this as my Bible. This has been my savior for many years, and I still use it. When I read my books, magazines, or newspapers, as soon as I see a foreign word that is written in a sentence, I got to check this out, what does this mean? I go here, and this tells me what that means. So, this thing has traveled for a while. I passed basic thanks to Todd and others. I became a medic, I was going to get shipped overseas as medic, but before that happened, the Battle of the Bulge, I’m sure you’ve heard of the Battle of the Bulge, it was 18 a big battle after the invasion and so forth, and during the Battle of the Bulge with Germany, it was brutal, winter and so forth. So, because of the Battle of the Bulge, the troops that were getting ready to be shipped over to Europe, including yours truly, the Army was taking troops out of supply, a lot of rear echelon companies, and retrained as infantrymen. So, they took so many medics, I guess they had more than they thought they could use, so I was one of those medics that was retrained as an infantryman. Then we were shipped out overseas, I got to France, and I was processed there, and sent to an active duty front line infantry division, the 86th Infantry Division. We went through Germany, all the way to Austria. The war in Europe was over. May 8th, 1945. So we thought, “Oh good, we’re going home, we’ve won this battle in Europe and we’re going home.” They put us in trucks, and I mean hundreds of trucks, with all of our equipment, from Austria back to France. We boarded ships in France, we came back over the Atlantic to New York City, we boarded troop trains and we came across the United States in troop trains to Muskogee, Oklahoma. This is in May 1945. We were told, “You’re going to be given fifteen day leaves, you can go home, visit your loved ones. Report in back to Camp Gruber, Muskogee Oklahoma, where you will be given jungle trainings, and shipped to the Pacific, to fight Japan.” We thought, “What, we just got 19 through here, you got guys over there fighting and so forth.” They says, “Yes, but this is going to be big.” At the time, I’m only twenty years old. Most of us in this whole Division are in their early twenties. Shortly after we came back from leave, we were given what the war department at that time called jungle training, to fight in Japan. We were sent to San Francisco to board troop ships again, to head to Japan. They dropped the bombs, again, we thought, “Oh God, we can turn around and go home.” No, the 86th is being shipped to the Philippines, to relieve the 37th Infantry Division who has been on the front for months. So we relieved them, and it took Japan, I don’t know how many days, to formally surrender. But they sent us to the Philippines to secure radio station, water works, and development, so on and so forth, so that they could start rebuilding, because they had been in Japanese occupation for years. So we secured their government and their utilities, and gave them time to organize and so forth. Then the War Department came up to discharge thousands of American soldiers, and to be fair, they came up with what they called the eighty-five point system. Everybody was explained what the eighty-five point system consisted of. Everybody said it’s fair, so they started sending home troops with eighty-five points or more. How they came up with that was, so many points for stateside duty, so many points for overseas duty, so many points for service awards, so many for combat awards, special 20 awards, and so forth. Then they started reducing, say from eighty-five to eighty-two, from eighty-two to seventy-six, and so forth. April 19, 1946, I came up with sixty-four or sixty-five points. So, as soon as that was recorded and signed, prepare yourself to come home. So I came home back on a ship to a processing installation to be paid whatever you were owed up to that point. You were paid in cash, you were given a ticket to go home. I came home, back to Georgetown. Hallelujah. I was now a twenty-one year old, and on my own. My other brothers had been drafted and so forth, and they were all in the service, but Mom was okay. She had remarried and she married a gentleman. She was lucky. So, I left home to go back to school, and then I married, but Korea came up, and I got drafted again, so I was told your back in again, back into the Army. At that time the Air Force had just been created. I asked for a transfer to the Air Force and was accepted. So that’s how I ended up in the Air Force. So I spent the next twenty years in the Air Force. First I got into status as a loadmaster, but my eyes became a problem, so I couldn’t stay there, so I looked around and talked to counselors, and they said, “Well, since you’re pretty good at writing and that kind of thing, they’re putting you in a security squadron. I became base security planner, making plans for special weapons, chemical, nuclear, and so forth. I retired in 1970, in the military. At that time we had five girls and that’s the reason that you see silver, grey. Five girls, loved 21 em, but all different. This is where I’m at now. This has taken more than an hour or so, and I’m sure that you guys probably have some questions. MF: Well, what I’m thinking is that we might need to come back. Because we have some follow up questions, and somethings that we might like to get into a little more detail, but I don’t know if we have the time to do that today. LR: Well I love everything… MF: I know, I know, I’ve just been enthralled! LR: I have too! But I agree, I have some follow up questions I’d love to ask. So are you open to us maybe coming back next week? BR: Ladies, I have so much time, maybe I’ll be busy cause of the holidays, they ask me to do this and do that, but most of the time I’ll be here. I want you to know one thing, and this is about as true as the true word that you can look up in the dictionary. Everything I have told you is true. This is not a Hollywood script or a TV script. This is about as honest as I can get about my life. It’s been a struggle at times, I mean big struggle, but got through it with the help of family and friends. Purely through trying to better yourself, nobody’s going to give you anything. Work for it. I joined toastmasters long ago, they taught you how to speak and so forth. If you ever want to be appreciated, sit down and shut up. Did you see the back of my jacket? LR: I did, I can’t remember what it says. 22 BR: Okay. It reads I’m a proud member… LR: Yes, of the greatest generation. I knew I read it. BR: I’m a member of that. I feel good in that I’ve told you ladies this. I feel sober, because I’m a survivor. I think God has kept me here still for some reason. So while I’m still here, I’ll going to do my best to help others, because that’s what I enjoy. In fact, when we get through and eat lunch, I’ll ask a lady here, employee, to take me to Costco, and I’ll go and get some turkeys and take it to the church for our brothers and sisters who probably won’t have thanksgiving, unless we help. That’s how I spend most of my time, is help others. So, Friday morning, ten o’clock. LR: Right. Day 2 LR: I’m just going to jump right in. Can you tell me a little bit about your parents? Where they’re from and what they’re names are? BR: Okay, my father’s name was Fidencio. He went by Frank. LR: Okay, Fidencio, like Fin… BR: Fi…Fidencio. LR: Okay. BR: I wish I could give you a translation to English, but not sure. Anyway. He was born in Texas, close to Austin, Texas, which is pretty central in Texas, 23 that’s the capital of Texas. So, he was born in the vicinity. My mother, now let’s see, her given name like Frank, was Lola. LR: Lola? BR: Yes, her real name was Theodora, and her maiden name was Taoya. She was born, also, in Texas, in the vicinity where my father lived and so forth. I think that’s where they met. How they met, I couldn’t tell ya. But, my mother didn’t have any formal education, no schooling. She married at the age of eighteen, and started a family. I was the first born, and we settled down in Georgetown, Texas, where my father worked on the railroad. There were five siblings. Johnny, Lucy, Emilio, Demetrio. That’s about it on the marriage thing. LR: So, you said last time that your mother didn’t speak English very well? BR: No, but she was able to converse with the Anglo-Saxon, because she done a lot of housework, washing, cleaning house, type thing. She was able to very basic English. So she made it, just like the rest of us. My father worked the railroad, he worked with the crew, I think there were six in a crew. He was the only Mexican on the crew. All the rest of them were Anglo-Saxon, so he learned from them. LR: Your parent’s parents, were they the immigrants from Mexico? BR: Let’s see, my Mother’s mother, Mexico. Her father, Spain. Someway or the other, he migrated, how, I have no idea. My father’s father and mother came from Mexico. 24 LR: Okay. That’s what I was curious about, where your roots lie. I got the impression last time we spoke, the, you have an awful lot of respect and pride for your mother, for what she accomplished. How do you think that helped shape you as you grew up? BR: I saw the presence of what she had to do to keep us in school, pay the bills, like the light bill, water bill, taxes and so forth. But I also saw how she was keeping the house clean, keeping food on the table, washing clothes. We didn’t have a washing machine or dryer. She used the, what do you call it? LR: Like the washboard? BR: Well that, plus the washtub, a big round thing with the washboard. She mixed the cold water and the hot water by putting buckets on the stove, there was soap, and I think at that time they used a lot of lye. So, I got to see all of this because it was right in front of us. I learned from that, and for bathing, we used a tub again in the house, taking turns like a Monday through Friday thing. We didn’t bathe every day, but Monday may be me, Tuesday Johnny, and so on and so forth. But, we used a lot of sponges, and she taught us how to clean ourselves and to try to keep clean, how to keep clean. Of course we’d wade through mud and if you get a turn to play, you would get dirty. We didn’t have too many clothes to change, so we came home late afternoon, just brush ourselves off. Most of the time she had had clean 25 shirts for us, and clean pants and socks. Lots of times, we didn’t wear shoes, so she didn’t have to worry too much about socks, or undershirts, underwear and so forth. Wintertime would come, light sweaters, light coats; She would try to wash those, but some of them she couldn’t because they were so thick. But that’s what we wore in the wintertime. She always managed to clothe us and buy us what we needed with the few dollars that she made. I learned from that, how to get clean, and how to preserve. By preserve I mean if the tub wasn’t too dirty, she could use it for other means, to clean whatever she needed to clean, like clothes and so forth. She was a great teacher we learned from. She would say, “Pay attention to what I am doing, because I want you to know this,” or “It’s important to know this, and to tell your siblings why we’re doing this or how to do this.” So it was a survival kind of thing, because we just didn’t have anything. So we had to make do and somehow or other, all those years, we learned. LR: When war broke out in 1941, did that change anything within your household, or did things just keep moving on for you guys? BR: They kept on going on, Lorrie, because we knew, we read about the war; why it happened, so on so forth. Mom knew, and I knew, that things were going to change in our household in a couple of years, because I was sixteen years old when Pearl Harbor happened. We were coming to Utah, 26 Montana, and Washington to work. I was still coming, and we talked among the men about the war. Because at that let me see, what’s the term, I didn’t have much schooling so I was determined to become aware of what was happening; by reading the paper, reading magazines and so forth, and talking to seniors who knew more about what was happening. The priority at that time was to work, and to make money, and to continue as before. That continued regardless of the war and we could see changes in rationing, and, we were told why rationing. We didn’t have a car, so we didn’t have to worry about gasoline. But we had to worry about certain items of food, beverage and things like that. But, somehow or the other we continued, because we wasn’t the only ones that had to do this. Everybody had to. So, it was sudden that we were told that you had to become accustomed to what’s happening. Those two years came by real fast, and I knew that I would probably have to go. I think I told you that Mom was beginning to think, “What am I going to do?” Because, by then I was bringing a certain amount of money to the household, and then if I left for the Army she would have that loss. So, we didn’t think too much about it during those two years that I was looking forward to eighteen and the draft, because it was present. You could see it. Kids in the neighborhood older than me were leaving and going or volunteering for the various armed forces that they could get in to. Mom kept saying, “You will fail the exam, because 27 they’ll find something wrong with your head.” I said, “Mom, I know you’ve been hurt,” I don’t think I used the term you better start thinking of my brothers, because I knew that things were going to be hard for her. At that time, Johnny my brother, was getting to the age where he was doing everything I was doing. So he was earning some pocket change, but he was the only one. Lucy, Emilio, and Demetrio were still in school. So, Johnny was going to take my place. I felt good about it, because I talked to Johnny about the change that was coming, and Mom talked to Johnny also. Johnny had to take my place and keep the lights on, water, and so forth. LR: Do you remember when you got your draft notice? BR: Okay, I became eighteen June, 1943. A week, two weeks, it wasn’t long. LR: Oh, so it was very quickly? BR: As soon as the system, and at that time I never heard of the government having what they would have now, everything’s automated. At that time they had pencil and paper, and I’m sure they used that in the Selective Service system. It was like two weeks or maybe a month after my birthday. It wasn’t long, because I was learning from the kids, all over the neighborhood, as they turned eighteen saying, “Guess what, I got it already.” So it was fast. LR: So you went to… 28 BR: I went to San Antonio from Georgetown on a Greyhound Bus, that’s about the only fast transportation we had. The train wasn’t that active at the time, so Greyhound Bus was really front and center as far as getting people around and wherever they were traveling to. With the draft notice I received a ticket to San Antonio and back. LR: Okay. So, after you passed the exam, did they tell you right then you’re going in? BR: Yes, you’re going home for two weeks, so the two weeks are to give you time to take care of any private business, anything that you have to do to curtail this, to stop this, but I didn’t have anything. So the two weeks I used just to go home and prepare. That was it, prepare to leave home for, and I was told in San Antonio to tell your parents indefinite period, and explain the indefinite period, and that you’re here for, what’s the other term they used, “You’re here for duration.” So look that up in the dictionary and you can get a pretty good idea what it meant. It was just a prepare thing, plan a big party and so forth. That was about it. I reported to San Antonio after two weeks, and then there was just hundreds of guys going in all directions, going through the process of getting uniforms, shoes, socks, all sorts of things I never dreamt that I would have for my own. It was just a line in this huge warehouse, throw an overcoat at you, coat, pants, and underwear, everything that they wanted to issue to you. We were told, “You’re going to Place A,” next was B, next was C, or “You’re going to Red 29 Section, or you go to the Blue Section, to get ready to board a bus,” another huge Greyhound Bus, to the place that you’re going to go and start basic training. Mine was Rockford, Illinois, my very first time other than leaving home to go to San Antonio, that was the first time that I traveled that far away from home. Now, Illinois was hundreds of miles away from home, so I reported to Camp Grant, Illinois for basic training, and my training would consist of a combat medic, to give aid to the wounded on the battlefield. Eighteen weeks of learning how to treat wounds on the arms, the legs, the neck, lower extremities, upper extremities, learning pressure points, every bone in the body. Here I am, with no education whatever, those medical terms were coming to me so fast and furious in classes that at first, it was just, “How am I going to do this?” First, I’m facing eighteen weeks of basic, and this was going to be hours and hours of basic besides other things that we had to learn to survive in the cold, heat, and so forth. I just didn’t know what I was going to do, so I had to start looking around, to ask somebody in my section to try to get him to teach or to help me, in what was going, and it worked. We had to keep a dictionary real close, and this was eighteen weeks. We had Saturday and Sunday off to go to town, to the USO, to relax and party and dance. That helped too, mostly. We were told to kind of burn the midnight oil. The Sergeant gave us things to learn in the evenings, but, you hit the sack at ten o’clock. He made sure of this, 30 because he would come and check. You were in bed at ten, and get up at five o’clock, it’d start. Jump in the shower, shave, put your uniform on and be ready to fall out for, what was it called… LR: Was it revelry? BR: Well that too, but we fell out outside, and you fell into formation, roll call. Make sure everybody that lived in that barracks in that platoon, that you were there and that you were okay. Because some went sick call and so forth. So, this was all part of the learning process. Roll call, revelry, and chow. March to the dining hall for breakfast. Then after breakfast, the drill started. Drilling thirty minutes to an hour, classroom, and then back for chow. Then the march started. Five mile march, ten, fifteen mile; in the fifteen weeks, we went up to twenty miles that we had to march. Just take so much food, to keep going, the chow trucks came, but that was a luxury we didn’t have every day. We had C-Rations to eat, and that became a real learning experience or part of the training, because we had dog biscuits, we called them dog biscuits. Real round crackers, hard. Hard! They were the dog biscuits. We had beans, or rice, some kind of meat, we called it roadkill. It said on the can what it was. We got sardines, and for dessert, maybe a piece of candy or a couple of cookies. We ate more C-Rations than we did the fancy truck coming to feed us. But that was part of it, if you got into the 31 battlefield and so forth, you had to learn to survive and take care of yourself. After basic training, the sergeant kept me one training period to help him with the new coming in. He done it so I could learn more of the combat medic basic that I was to learn. So that was an additional eighteen weeks. Then after that, I was released to get ready to be shipped overseas. But the war in Europe got very intense, to where they started training more infantrymen than anything else. I was selected to receive infantry training, which consisted of firing on the range, then carbine, the hand grenade thing, the pistol, gas masks, that sort of thing, that part of training. I never understood why it took two army posts to do this. First, I was sent to Camp Maxey, Paris, Texas for some rifle training and gas mask sort of thing. I think it was only ten days. Then from there they sent me to Fort Lewis in Washington. Trying to think of the town where Fort Louis is at, but I was sent for additional days for other infantry basic and so forth, then I was shipped overseas. I got on a troop train, Washington State, to go across the United States to New York. Pier 86, I remember, Pier 86. They had barracks and so forth, and Pier 86 is huge, because the troop ship is huge. They started loading equipment first, and then they started loading the troops. So that night I boarded the ship, and when I walked the top deck, I had to go four…I forgot the terminology the navy used, from the top deck down to 32 the fourth level, where there were hundreds, hundreds of troops, trying to get assigned to a bunk. Eight bunks high in the ship hold! Hold, the fourth hold that was what the navy called it, the fourth hold. Ladders here and there and so forth, to get down to your bunk, with your duffel bag, and your rifle. The army called it your piece, not your rifle, your piece. I got assigned to the fourth bunk, and they had ladders on either side to climb up and hit the sack. You put your duffel bag hanging on the end on all sorts of harnesses they had, with your name on it, don’t lose the name or the bag, and your piece alongside it. Dirty, filthy, because hundreds of troops, fifteen-thousand all over the ship. That’s a Division. That’s a normal sized Division, fifteen thousand noncom, your lower ranked, and officers. Everybody on that ship. So, my platoon was here and the first sergeant, and the company first sergeant, and oh my God, he just rant and rant and threaten. Anyway, I went in and laid down on my bunk with my uniform, because I was just so tired, and I was just feeling sick like most of the guys around us. We’d brush our teeth if we get a chance, shower, I just hit the sack because I knew that morning was coming. Guys I got seasick, this is my first time on a ship, even while the ship is getting loaded and boarded, it’s moving because of the water and I felt it. The first three days of eleven days on the Atlantic, I got sick. The first sergeant, first thing every morning, get out of the sack, go for 33 breakfast, if you could find it. There was a galley on one of the floors, and you had to go either up or down ladders to get to the galley to eat if you could eat, with your mess kit in your hand. I stayed in the sack. The first sergeant didn’t have roll call every morning at first, I think he was trying to get organized and stuff. So I took the chance to stay in my sack, because I was sick, and I felt better just laying down. So, bout the second or third morning, we had roll call, and he called my name, and I wasn’t there. “Has anyone seen Ramos?” “Hey Sarge, I’ve seen him.” “Where is he?” “He’s in the sack, he’s sick.” “Go get him. Get him out of the sack, tell him I want him here, now!” So the guy went, “Hey, wake up wake up.” I had so many hours of drool all over my hair and face. I don’t know how I got to the formation, because he was still talking to the troops about various things. I got up there and he says, “Who are you?” I told him. He says, “What’s wrong with you?” I said, “I’m sick, I’m just sick, I don’t feel good, I feel weak. I haven’t eaten.” “Okay, Rogers,” you know, a troop that looked good and fed and so forth, “Take him to the galley. Get him something to eat.” So here we go, up and down, up and down, down and up to the galley. I wish I could describe what they put on our mess gear, I couldn’t describe what it was, but it was food, slop. We couldn’t sit down, everybody stood up to eat at the tables so high. You had to hold on to the mess kit, because if you didn’t it would slide and so forth. So hold on, eat. 34 I was hungry. I think I took about four or five giant spoons of food into my stomach, and then I felt it coming up. I knew I was going to vomit so I headed for the latrine, where they had about twenty, twenty five commodes in a horseshoe type affair. Every commode was full, so I had to run like crazy with Rogers to the top so that I could do my thing. By the time I got to the top deck to get to a rail, there were guys everywhere. It was a nice day, sun was out, it wasn’t rough seas, it was smooth sailing. I had a mouthful, so I couldn’t say get out the way, I’m going to do this. All that I could do was separate a couple of guys, and I leaned over the rail and I let it go. There was enough wind at the time that when I let go of my mouthful, he got it on the face, on the helmet, on the uniform. He just briefly looked over, and I thought, “Oh God!” I’m just wasted on the rail. I didn’t have anything, I was just dry heaving, and so forth. This guy was wiping off what I had, I heard him call me all kinds of names. I could have cared less. I was sick. The only thought on my mind, “What am I doing here? I want my mother, I want my mommy!” I started crying. Anyway, this went on for three days. I thought, “I have to find some way to conquer this seasickness,” because most of the time for the first three days, I was in my bunk. Lot of guys came out when it was nice, and I spent the day in bed. This took eleven days instead of four. I told people in my experience that I crossed the Atlantic by rail. When you hear this you think, “What’s he talking about 35 rail, there’s no rail across the ocean.” I says, “The rail of the ship, because I got so sick.” I got a hold of this sailor, “I need your help. I’m seasick. I gotta get better, I got to conquer this, you got some advice?” He looked at me and laughed. “You poor guy, go to the ship store, get you a box of crackers. See if they got a little can of milk or something, bring that on deck. Hum, whistle, sing, do anything to keep your mind off of getting seasick.” “Okay, that sounds good.” I found the ship store, got me a box of crackers, they had no milk, but they had chocolate milk, little cans at that time. He says, “Come back on deck, sit down, slowly eat your crackers, and drink your chocolate drink.” I done this, came on deck, starting eating my crackers. I took about five crackers, here it comes. Chocolate milk and crackers mixed, I’m getting sick again. So, long story short, the only way that I could have conquered this was just time. Each day, each night, I got busy cleaning my rifle, cleaning whatever equipment I had, clean, clean, clean. That keeps your mind off of getting sick. I conquered that, but things were filthy. My clothes, filthy, but I had an extra set, and so I asked a sailor again, “How do you wash these,” because the ship wash, they were busy. He says, “Oh, nothing to it. Get you a rope, put the rope through the sleeves of your jacket, same thing with the pants, and throw them to the back of the ship. Make sure the rope is long enough for the waves to hit. Leave it out there for about an hour, then bring it in and hang them up. Nothing to it.” So I did, but I put a simple 36 knot. Guys, I’m faced with nothing but, pardon the word, shit! Everything turned to shit! Everything that they taught me turned to shit! I pulled the rope up and there’s no pants! So the guy says, “Man, there’s a shark out there wearing your pants!” I had to tell this to my first sergeant. I knew he was going to be upset, but I’m learning the hard way. Everything I’m doing is not working, and I’m thinking how long is this going to take? How big is this ocean? It’s big. How long is it going to take to get there? We have no idea. The ship is zig-zagging because German submarines. We finally get to the Le Havre, France. Oh! The most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. We started unloading all the equipment, personnel going here, going there. I was told to report, me and others, to Camp Old Gold. At that time, there were cigarettes, all kinds of cigarettes. Old Gold was the name for a cigarette. Old Gold, Chesterfield, Lucky Strike, Ten Mile, Prince Albert, I can still remember all of it. I smoke Lucky Strikes, that sort of thing. Anyway. Camp Old Gold was one of four camps set up to process you before they sent you to the front lines, and this was assistant to make sure that everything was set up in case you got wounded or you got killed. They checked and checked and checked and checked. At first they made sure that your dog tags were correct, full name and your serial number. I still remember my serial number. 38557459. That was besides other numbers and names that we had to remember. So, they checked your dog 37 tags, next of kin, paperwork, blood type. I had O positive, so I think I was okay to give blood to anybody in case they needed it. All of that they checked. Check, check, check. Then they put you on a truck and they sent you up to the front line. Most of this takes place at night, to me anyway. There were very few times in the day time that we passed the scenery, because of strafing and stuff that the Germans still did, the Army used this system. Anyway, I was put on a truck with others, hundreds of us, in a convoy, from Le Havre France to just over the border into Germany. Right now I can’t think of the name. Anyway, all of this happened at night. It’s raining, weather’s miserable. We had ponchos, boots, and so forth, but we’re getting wet. When I get further in I hear howitzers going off, I could hear tanks, I could hear small arms fire, far away but you hear. I says, “Okay, this is it. This is the front.” They always talked about how now is the time to really, really start taking care of yourself. The sergeant that I was to report to was in a tent, and I guess he was told you’re getting replacements, and this is who you’re receiving. So, I reported to Tech-Sergeant Grady, he was the platoon sergeant. So I reported to him. He assigned me to a squad, and to a staff sergeant who was the squad leader. Go to bed, because we’ll get the call to do whatever. So I got assigned to, not a bunk, but a chair type thing, to sit and try to get some rest inside of a tent because it was raining. My first 38 action, so to speak, came early the next morning. This had been in the evening, about ten eleven o’clock, what I just told you. Then rest, then about four o’clock the next morning, the squad that I was in was dispatched to, we were close to a river and Germans were across, and we were on this side, and we had our fox holes, because we knew that the Germans were coming across on patrols to check on us, and we were doing the same thing. We were having patrols over there. So that took place all the night, with me being assigned to another troop to go into a foxhole to do our thing. But, he and I, all we done was to use our helmet liner or mess kit, taking water out of the foxhole continuously, because if we didn’t the water would continue to rise, because the water was seeping into our foxhole. So we learned real quick that the only way to keep the water from rising in a foxhole was to dig it out. So I got to learn that real quick, then we heard overhead rifle firing. The Germans had learned where we were and where our foxholes were. They called it harassment. It wasn’t, we wasn’t getting wounded or killed. It was nightfall, it was still raining, but harassing was a part of combat. If you knew where they were, you fired there just to keep us on our toes. That was my first experience in combat. The troop they assigned me to had been in battle a couple of times, so he had gotten a little experience. “Keep your head down, don’t light up your flashlight, and don’t light up your cigarette, because that exposes you to enemy fire.” 39 The next day we crossed the river because the Germans had moved, they moved back to set up ambushes and whatever. We found ourselves assigned to the Third Army, General Patton’s army. This guy, we never met him, and I never saw him, but you could almost tell his army from others because he had tanks on the move. Constant moving. I remember the first time, this was like eleven o’clock in the morning, clear blue skies, we were firing, they were firing, and then they moved, retreated. We were given orders to climb on tanks. Get on the tanks, because the tanks are going to take off after them. They told us get a hold of a rope, anything that you can get your hands on to secure yourself to anything that’s stationary on that tank. Be it a ring or a turret, because these things are going to take off like a bat out of Hell, and you want to make sure that you don’t get bounced off the tanks. To make a long story short, because Germany is just huge, we went across Germany in retreat of the Germans. We faced what air force they had left, maybe just one plane that would show up and strafe, but he didn’t do too much damage to our Division. We were alerted, we took cover and this kind of thing. My squad, my platoon, ended up in Salzburg, Austria. When we got to Salzburg Austria, we didn’t face too much of opposition there, and on the 8th of May, 1945, the war ended in Europe. Hitler disappeared, his appointed commanders made a formal surrender, and we were advised the war is over in Europe. The 8th of May, that night 40 at midnight, every howitzer, American, Allied, any howitzer in friendly hands, would fire one salvo. Throughout Europe, wherever they were, one salvo at midnight. We all synchronized our watches. You should have seen that demonstration. The whole sky just lit up, because there was just a lot of boom, just for seconds and that was it. That was the Allied or Eisenhower’s way of telling American troops and the Allies, war’s over. We won. Next morning, the Ninth, prepare to load trucks back to Le Havre, France. This time we’re getting, not a C-Rations, but a truck, they put a kitchen on a truck with warm foods coming to feed you. We had fresh coffee, fresh chocolate, milk, orange juice, eggs, we had a breakfast. They would start boarding trucks for the long trip from Austria back to France, to board a ship, to come back to the states. All of this took maybe a week. We didn’t have to worry about submarines and so forth. So we got back to Pier 86 to unload the ship, and to board a troop train. Oh my God, those things were so rough, because there was nothing fancy about it. Just wood benches in some of what they called Pullman cars. Cots with a firm mattress on the cot secured to the walls of the Pullman cars, and, if there were, say, fourteen, fifteen, Pullman cars to a train, in the middle they had a kitchen. Then the Pullman’s had a form of commode and so forth. From New York to Oklahoma the railroad had what they called a spur. If another train is coming with priority, the railroad knew exactly where this train is 41 going to pull to a side track and wait for this car with priority to go by and then we could take off. That happened, maybe, a couple of times coming across the United States. We came back to Camp Gruber, Muskogee, Oklahoma, after so many hours on the troop train. We got assigned barracks, and we were given fifteen day furlough to go home. “Report back in exactly fifteen days to this installation, Camp Gruber for,” and I’ll never forget this. They said, “Report back here because you are going to get jungle training for the invasion of Japan.” There were no trees in Muskogee, at least outside of town where the trees should be. They had trees downtown, beautiful, small town. But we looked around and says, “I wonder where the jungle is at?” We found out later, this is the way the Army done things then. “Okay, the war’s over in Europe. We got to bring troops back and get them prepared for the invasion of Japan. Where in the world are we going to put all those troops on the West Coast to get ready for the shipment to Japan?” I guess they looked at papers and so forth, “Here’s the 86th, where are we going to send the 86th? Well, there’s a camp in Muskogee, see if they got room for 15,000 troops.” Then they get pencil and paper, telephone calls. “Yeah, they got room.” “Okay, send the 86th there and tell them that their going to receive jungle training.” We came back from leave, and there was no jungle training. Every single day they took us to pick up papers out there, policing, that’s what 42 we done, to keep it fancy. Rifle range, throwing grenades, pistol, gas mask, every day. Keep them busy, keep them busy, keep them busy. We had orientation about the invasion of Japan. We felt, if we survived the war in Europe, surely Japan will be worse, because in the orientation they told us, Japan is going to be prepared. I wish I could show you the facts that are out now, unclassified, you could not believe what Japan had prepared for our invasion. It was going to be a bloodbath. We boarded ship in San Francisco, a whole other convoy of Navy, Marines, Army, everybody going to Japan, and we take off. Maybe three or four days at sea, the PA system came on aboard the ship where I was on. The first Atomic bomb has been dropped. What the hell is an atomic bomb? They described it, this things huge, it can kill a lot of people, it can do a lot of damage, and we thought, “Oh my God! The world is coming to an end if we’re going to use these things, the way they described it.” Then the PA system came on, Japan has declined to surrender after the first bomb was dropped. Two days later, “The second bomb has been dropped on Japan, and now they’re considering an unconditional surrender.” The ships we were stopped and dropped anchor, waiting to hear what is going to happen. They surrendered, we thought “Well, good, we’re going to turn around and go home.” No, again the Army had all these plans, this Division’s gonna go there, so there’s no home. There’s others that are going home who have been fighting for months, but the 86th was ordered 43 to go to the Philippines and relieve the 37th Infantry Division who had been online for months and they deserved to go home. We relieved the 37th, and the mission of the 86th was to go land in Luzon, the biggest island of the Philippines where the capital’s at, Manilla. Our mission was to secure the capital, their government that they had hurriedly formed as soon as the war was over. Secure their government, secure radio station, secure waterworks, secure anything to get the people back to normal living; food, water, light, hospitals, policing, that sort of thing, plus, build a POW camp big enough to put the Japanese soldiers that are coming out of the mountain in a stockade, to start processing them back to their home in Japan. That was a big assignment that lasted nine months. At the end of that, Philippines were secured, the Filipino army had taken over, and we were relieved. The 86th became nothing, what I mean is, they dissolved it. The only thing we got assigned to was a unit to prepare us to be processed to go home. I think I mentioned the eighty-five point system. That to us was the most fairest way of who got to go home first. So, I came up with sixty-seven points, and I came home April 1946. Boarded ship with thousands of others, with the same amount of points I had, back to San Francisco, back to San Antonio, and home. Phew. LR: I have two quick questions. When you were on leave the first time, between going from Europe to the Pacific, were you able to go home? 44 BR: Oh yeah, everything was furnished to us; a bus ticket to go home and return. LR: Was it hard to go home for that short amount of time knowing you’re going to leave again? BR: Knowing about the invasion, it was not happy times, because we survived in Europe, but we know that this huge thing is in Japan. It’s like, we know that a bomb is going to go off, but we don’t know when or how. I went home, because I hadn’t seen the folks for months. They told us, “Have a good time, don’t think about this.” Yeah, sure. But you go home, you want to enjoy your visit with your siblings, your friends, your Mom, or your parents. I felt good while I was there, and they felt happy. The fifteen days was kinda short. Instead of feeling happy to travel to go to see others, you just kept at home, close, because you didn’t know if you were coming back from this one or not. By the time I was twenty years old I had witnessed a lot of things. I became a man, so to speak, overnight. I had learned so much from so many. My life transferred, I felt good about the process I went through, and I felt good about myself. I survived Europe, I think I can survive this one, not knowing what I was facing. But they taught me how to fight, they trained me to survive, to take care of myself, and most important, to be a team member. To take care of each other, to look after each other, because war was Hell. That’s how we survived Europe, 45 by taking care of each other, looking after each other. It was teamwork, it was a family thing. I hope that I answered that. LR: Oh you did. Lastly, when you finally came home, the war is over, you’re done, you don’t have to go back. How did that feel, to just be home? BR: Okay, the feeling was just overpowering. I come home, no guns, no explosives, no witnessing dirty, filthy, war. Seeing some of your own troops wounded, killed you go home, trying to keep that out of your mind. You’re home, enjoy Mom, your siblings, your friends, knowing that the very next minute, you’re not facing your life probably being taken. I didn’t think that much about war. What I wanted to do was, "Okay from now on, I’m responsible for myself. I can leave home now, and do a lot of things for myself." First thing- school. I wanted to go back to school, because I didn’t have the formal education. I wanted to go back to school, learn more besides killing. I wanted to learn what it is like not to think about that, and to think about good things. Life. What are you going to do with your life? Are you going to plan a family? School? Go to work? What kind of work are you going to do? All I’ve been taught is killing, shooting. Now, I have to stop thinking that, and start thinking the good things that are ahead of me, that are out there for you, if you take advantage. I’ve always been told, if you want something nice, you have to work for it. If they’re there to give you things, it’s probably not the things you want. They’re the things that are going to make your belly burst. I was 46 trying to get away from the negative thoughts and things. But it took planning. It wasn’t easy, it took months to get back to being, to work, to do good things, and continue to help others. And that’s what I’ve been doing for sixty years now. Helping others. Lorrie, have a good life, get married, have family, and be a good citizen. I never got picked up by police or got jailed in my life. Never. That’s because of Mom, she taught me how to stay out of trouble. LR: Do you have any questions? MB: I just have one question. While you were over in Europe, and while you were in the field, how much communication did you have with your family or with your mother, with letters or anything like that? BR: Good question. At the time we had what we called V-Mail. It was free, and it had a V on it. If the post office people saw this, it was free mail, get it in the system to be delivered. But Michael, I was lucky at the time to spell my name, because I didn’t have an education to sit down and write a letter that would make sense and not upset Mom, because she knew where I was at. I’m sorry to say that I knew if something happened to me, the government would notify Mom, I knew that. I didn’t have to sit there and say, "Mom I’ve been wounded, Mom, I’ve been killed." I just never thought about writing Mom. LR: Did you ever receive letters from home? 47 BR: Lorrie, because I knew, and I really felt that my sergeants and my officers would take care of me. The team, the friends that you made, we would take care of each other. So, the thought of keeping in touch with Mom, because she couldn’t write. She didn’t know how to write. She had addresses, 8060 Benchen, Camp Brewer kind of thing, but she didn’t know how to write. So, in answer to your question, we had to the best system, it was there for you to use, but I didn’t write. LR: So Bob, we’ve been doing this for almost two hours, and I still have more questions I’d like to ask. BR: I’m here. You know where I live. Day 3 MB: It is December 9, 2016. We are here with Bob Ramos. I am Michael Ballif, I am doing this interview, and Lorrie Rands is on the camera. So Bob, like we said earlier, we would just like to talk to you a little bit today about your time with the Air Force. So, just to start off, when did you first come to be in the Air Force? BR: This took place early in the 1950s, like 1951 is when I got recalled to get back into the military, because Korea had just started, is when the Chinese invaded Korea and so forth. I got recalled and I had to report to, well I was still in the Army Reserves after World War Two, so the unit I was in got recalled. I reported to Houston, Texas to get orders to report 48 back, and of course they took whoever they had use for. Ellington Air Force Base. I asked if I could transfer from the Army to the Air Force, because I loved airplanes and the new jets and so forth coming into the Air Force inventory. I was accepted without question. I had a good record in the Army, so I was accepted and I was told to report to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio for training, basic training. I think I was given, maybe six weeks of basic training, and then I was sent to a career counselor to talk and see what I could possibly do in the Air Force. The counselor asked me what I would like to do, and I said I would like to be able to fly, but I didn’t know what I could possibly qualify for. I said, "The C-130 cargo," the newer planes that had just come into the Air Force, "I’ve been thinking about possibly flight crew in a C-130 and maybe train into log master." When they brought me back in, they looked at my two stripes, which is one step above private. So they started the paperwork needed for log master training at Chinook Air Force Base in Illinois. I enjoyed it, but before long they tell me my eyesight was getting bad. So I flunked out of that school. I went back to Lackland, to get another counseling. The counselor told me, "How would you like law enforcement?" That’s like military police kind of duty and so forth. At the time, I couldn’t get my head thinking as to what I really wanted, and I said, "Well, it's worth a try." He says, "If something else comes to being, you 49 can also talk about possibly training into that." I says, "Okay." So I took the law enforcement training, and after training I got stationed at Lackland. I got assigned to flight duty, fifteen-twenty guys to a flight, to do patrolling, security, all that stuff. Because I had done pretty good on the test, during the law enforcement training, I was the given special training as an investigator. Just two to three weeks to investigate criminal, or anything that happened on Lackland that required intensive investigation other than being on patrol, that type thing. I graduated from the course, assigned to Lackland and to a squadron. I enjoyed that because it didn’t bore. I was there about a year, year and a half. I got orders to go to Newfoundland. That was a small base, part of the Air Force Northeast command. I got to Newfoundland, and got assigned to a flight as a Staff Sergeant. I made two stripes going into the period between coming back and shipping to Newfoundland. Like I said, the Northeast Air Command, and they had just brought in, let’s see if I can remember. During this time, 1953-1955, we was in what they called the Cold War. That’s when the Soviets started acting stupid and so forth, and putting up the wall, East Germany and West Germany coming into being. The Cold War between these two elements kept on going because they was trying to keep as many Germans in their sector, because some were trying to come into the American sector. Well, that’s started this Cold War, and while I was at Pepperrell Air Force Base, we had to secure what they 50 called the Dew Line. D E W. I forgot what the D stood for, but the other was Early Warning. This had to do with missiles and so forth. So, we had to guard this new equipment that they put all throughout Newfoundland, Iceland, and Greenland. Most of these bases were part of the Northeast Air Command. It was so cold, with Greenland being the coldest, but they had a base there, closer to Russia. Labrador, and Iceland were all part of this kind of a chain of the North Atlantic Ocean. During this period of the DEW Line, the United States, Europe, and Britain, all pitched in for a telephonic system underneath the Atlantic Ocean. From the United States to Europe, for communication and all that stuff. So, that was part of the mission. I was in Newfoundland for, eighteen months. I got reassigned to Laughlin Air Force Base in Del Rio, Texas. Del Rio, at one time, and might still be, I don’t listen to that kind of radio, but, evidently one of our radio companies put up, across the river in Mexico, a huge antenna to blare out all kinds of, medication remedies, what did they call it? We used to have that name for the guys that made some kind of medication for mosquito bites, tonics, silly things. But this station, an American station in Mexico, blared out this stuff twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. They played some music, but most of it was selling snake oil. We called it snake oil. So I got to the base, and I reported in, and because I was single then I got assigned to a barracks 51 room still a staff-sergeant. Because I spoke Spanish and looked Spanish, the first thing the commander did was assign me to town patrol, Me, and one other guy, two staff sergeants. We go out like every night for a period of time, we would take two-three days off then the cycle would start over. At the time Del Rio was probably, trying to think of the size of the town, probably eight, ten thousand. Ten miles from Ciudad Acuna, Mexico across the Rio Grande. A big sized downtown, which didn’t have any problems. Everyone there was pretty well behaved at the base. The base had like four-thousand military personnel. The rest were a training batch, to train our pilots, just a number, not many. As part of that town patrol, because they thought that I could speak fluent Spanish, we had to go to Mexico every night to check to see if they picked up any American military. You can’t believe what they had in Mexico, good restaurants were in Ciudad Acuna, which was a little bigger in that area than Del Rio, population town and so forth. The very first night I heard of Boy’s Town. Have you ever heard of Boy’s Town? You probably haven’t been close to the Mexican border. Boy’s Town consisted, consisted of an area separate from town, the Mexican town. Fifteen-hundred prostitutes. The girls, some as young as fourteen, fifteen, up to thirty-seven, forty, if they were attractive and so forth, they put them in this place, controlled and governed by the Mexican town council like. They had doctors to examine these girls for venereal 52 disease. The girls had to check with them once a week I think and so forth. Me, and some guy, Ed, would go there every night around midnight. Our deal was to make sure the GI’s behaved, because most of them would get drunk, and hit Boy’s Town. Most of them were from other bases, Ruby, Sailor, Coast Guardsmen, whatever. Very few from the base in Del Rio, because they already knew what it consisted of. We patrolled Boy’s Town. The streets were awful, horrible- they were not paved or anything. They had deep ruts from storms and so forth. So, getting through Boy’s Town was quite a struggle, because you basically could get stranded in some high spot. On the way back to the base, we had to make one more stop, and that was at their city hall, where they had city council, mayor’s office, that sort of thing. As you step to the back of the building, there was a huge, about as big from here to that next building, open court. The place was secured with twelve-foot concrete walls, with jagged pieces of glass in cement on the top of the wall. They had ten cells, I would say about a quarter of the size of this room, supposedly, to safely hold prisoners. The Mexican police, if they picked up an American, and he or she didn’t behave, you got thrown in the Mexican jail. I’ve seen it so many times, if they didn’t have a lot of the cells full, they would jam ten, twelve, fourteen into one cell, just as punishment. So I learned that, and I learned they kept the women separate. They didn’t have too many, just a few. My 53 duty was to go in the back with the information of the Mexican authorities, go back and see if there were any GI’s, and if there are, talk to them about the way to get rid of these charges, and to get them back to their station. Almost every night, they were guys in there. Drunk and disorderly, urinating in public, just complete asses, pardon. If you didn’t behave, if you continued to give them problems, they would put you separate and they wouldn’t tell me about him or her. Only the ones that they wanted me to talk to, the ones that behaved. So I would help them, get full names, serial numbers, the base that they come from and so forth, and tell them how much of the fine they have to pay. That’s the information we got every night, and we would come back to the base, and we had an office set up where we could call those installations and say, “Have you got Tom Williams AWOL? He’s over in a Mexican jail, and his fine is going to be eighty-five dollars, thirty-five dollars. Mail us some money, so we can take it to the authorities across the river and get him released and send him back to your installation.” That was our duties, and I liked it, because every night it was something different. Me and Ed, we learned from these experiences, until one night after I had been there, maybe two weeks, one of the Mexican judges noticed my name, and it’s Spanish. So he looked at me, and he says, “Senor Ramos, que es tu racia?” I didn’t understand it. I’m not very fluent in Spanish, cause I don’t speak it. I should have said, “No, forgive me, I 54 don’t understand,” but I answered him negatively. I don’t know why, the words just came out. I think I said, “No, no, esta bien.” When I looked at him, I knew that I was in trouble. He made like this, “Eh” sound, and he turned around. I stood there like a stupid ass. I knew I had messed up to a judge in Mexico. We came back to the base that night. The very next morning, bout seven o’clock, between seven and eight, I was called to the base commander’s office, to his aide, not the commander, his aide the captain. I walked to the office, I had a feeling it had to do with Mexico. Well, sure enough, that judge called base commander, and they go through a few, “How are you?” “Fine,” “You're invited to come and see us”, and then the Judge told him, “You assigned a staff-sergeant, NCO, Spanish-speaking person, to come and help your persons out that get in trouble. I talked to this gentlemen, and he doesn’t understand his own language.” That didn’t sit well with the commander. Here he was trying to make good relations and so forth, and he put a guy in charge that doesn’t even know how to speak Spanish. Like the judge probably was saying, “I don’t think you know what I told you, do you?” Well anyway, the colonel found a major and told him about this, and he called me into another meeting. He says, "What happened?" So I told him. He says, "Okay, I got to think of something for punishment." Two or three days later he says, “There’s a school in town that teaches English 55 versus Spanish. I can only send you there for four weeks, three nights a week, two hours a night. There's a Mexican professor who’s going to teach you." Well, it started off alright. The lessons he was providing were kind of basic Spanish, and I thought, “This is going to be okay. I’ll graduate from this and back to work.” Until, he got a hold of the flashcards. There was twenty-one students in that class. I was the only Spanish looking person in the class, all the rest were Caucasian. The professor flashed a card of a hen, and he’d point to me and say, “Sergeant Ramos, what is this? Describe this?” I looked at it, and the stupid word came out. “Eh essun galleno” That’s wrong. Supposed to be gallena. A galleno is not a rooster; in fact between gallo and gallena, there is no such thing as galleno. The professor looks at me and he says, "Repeat that." I says, "Gelleno?" So he points to this girl and says, “Sarah, get up and tell the class and the Sergeant here what that is.” “A gallena.” Another embarrassment, but I learned from all of this and so forth. Back to my stationing. We had a stockade at the base, so when we got guys released by Mexican authorities we brought them back to Laughlin and put them in a stockade. Then their base would send down and so forth. The base was well-equipped, especially that close to the border. I made six, E-6 there, and because I made E6, I was to be the stockade sergeant. At that time, we only had twelve guys, so duty was pretty easy. I had to be responsible for them, set up, upkeep, and the well-being and so forth. I done all that, 56 and then in 1958, the base went from a training base to a SAC base. Strategic Air Command base. They brought the U2 spy plane into the base. This was a brand new aircraft, strange looking bird, with one wing in the front, two double wheels about so big, each tip of the wing with what they called pogo wheels, so when you took off you would do this because it had eighty foot wings, and a tail wheel. We were told in orientation, "We got this new aircraft," they didn’t mention spy plane or anything, it was going to be a weather reconnaissance aircraft. According to the newspaper, when Lockheed released this plane, they mentioned something about another kind of reconnaissance or spy plane. We thought, "Well, maybe it's another type of airplane that’s pretty close to this one." We started the mission of going up every day, flying all over the world, getting weather information, until I think it was 1961 or 1962, when Gary Powers got shot down over Russia. That’s when stuff hit the fan and so forth, but to me that was another beautiful experience in my life, because I got to see the very first spy plane go out of station. The plane was built without bigger wheels and all this, because they wanted to make it as light as possible. One Major Anderson flew one U2 at ninety-thousand feet. They could take a picture of a golf-ball on the ground. That’s amazing! Can you imagine a camera that powerful? That made me proud, to be at a station with this spy plane. 57 In 1961 they sent me to Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas. That’s a training base, but because of the Cold War, SAC had started building satellite bases and spreading B52s, and KC135s all across the United States. So they built one at Sheppard Air Force Base. That was my assignment, instead of Shepherd as a whole base. So I was there for little over a year, and then from there, they sent me to Kadena Air Base, Okinawa. That was early 1962 I think. I got there as an E6, got assigned to a flight of a hundred and twenty five men. The most I ever supervised as an E6 was at the stockade where I had ten personnel. I report to Kadena, and I had a flight of a hundred and twenty five. All because of the Cuban crisis, when Russia brought missiles into Cuba, and all of that during Kennedy’s administration. So, I had to learn quick and remember my school, how to supervise that many men, take care of them, make sure they got good beds in the barracks, good food at the mess-hall, all this stuff to make their life pleasant in the Air Force. I knew I couldn’t do it alone, so I picked four staff sergeants out of that flight to help me. We had four squads in a flight, so I assigned so many to each of them. We got together as to how to take care of them, how to train them, and so forth. Bingo, it worked. The first year I was there we had the first typhoon that I witnessed. October, 1961. Typhoon called Tilda. T-I-L-D-A. The wing had to evacuate planes from the base, because the eye was going to go directly over the base. We had to evacuate a 58 whole bunch of aircraft, fly them to different spots in the Southeast. I flew in one to Da Nang Air Base in Vietnam. We was only there two days, and the typhoon went over the island. There was some damage to Kadina and to some of the Japanese housing. Then, I made E7. That’s my present grade here. They had eight, what they call it, long timers, that all became Security Planners. They called it senior Noncom row, there were eight of us in one hallway in the headquarters building. Each of us had to write security plans for different weapons, and at the time, because this is unclassified now, we had nukes, we had chemicals, we had all kinds of new bombs, we had a U2 on the base, we had plenty of work to do. In 1963, my wife and I had our fourth child while we was stationed in Okinawa, and we was there until 1965. We came back to Lackland, because they were looking for recruiters, and I was told by counselors that I would be a good recruiter, because I dressed well, because I wore my uniform well. I said I would try it, so they stationed me at Lackland. I was there for a year, I became an operations sergeant there. That was the invested portion of the commander of the squadron. In 1967, March, I got assigned to Hill. I got the news I was coming to Hill, they called me from personnel. They said, “We got orders for you.” I said, “Where am I going.” They said, “You’re going to Hill Air Force Base.” “Where is Hill Air Force Base?” “Utah.” 59 “Where is Utah?” I couldn’t place Utah anywhere on the map. We get in our car with five girls, a dog, and Mom and Dad, driving to Utah. We got here March 15, it was just getting dark, snow all over the place and cold, cold, cold. It was on a Sunday night when we came down the 89. We looked around and Peggy, my wife, looked at me and she says, “What happened?” I said, “What do you mean what happened?” “What did you do to get stationed here?” I says, “Honey, it’s going to be okay.” “No, it’s cold here.” The kids say, “Dad, it’s going to be cold here.” I says, “Come on, we’ll make it like other bases we’ve been to,” and we did. After a couple of months here, they went to school, made friends, and my wife went to work at America First. We just settled here, and it was okay, until I retired from the Air Force in August 1970. Questions from the audience, I’ll take some questions. LR: Quick fast, when did you get married? BR: Married to Peggy 1958. LR: So while you were stationed at Lackland before you went to Kadena? BR: Yes, Okinawa. LR: Okay. How did you meet here? BR: I met here while we was stationed at Laughlin, at the U2 plane base. She had a small business there, a government contract with the base to move and transfer and store. We met at the NCO club on the base. She had 60 been married before, and had two girls. So I adopted the two girls, and then we had three girls. LR: My last question is this, when we first met, you talked about having your picture in the Pentagon. Why is your picture in the Pentagon? BR: Okay. The Air Force started what they called Pioneers in Blue, and that was the old codgers still doing something for mankind. I’d been volunteering while I was still on active duty. PTA, anything to help the young airmen, Lion’s Club, Father’s Club, church groups, JCs, Junior JCs, anything. I joined it just to stay busy, to listen and learn from others. I learned from church groups, I learned from PTA, VFW, American Legion, DOD and so forth. Every organization that I joined I learned from. So I did all of that, including in Japan, when I went overseas. I would find church groups or organizations that I could help. Somebody, I think it was Terry, he hasn’t confessed, Terry Schow, I think he’s the one that submitted my name to the Air Force. Sharlene Wells Hawkes, she’s the one that discovered my photo at the Pentagon, and the reasons it’s up there is for distinguished service, helping your own, being a good father, being a good person. Not perfect, I have a dark side. One of these days I’ll show you those pictures. It’s a Halloween, and people have said, "That’s your dark side, the way you're dressed." So that’s the reason. 61 LR: Let me ask you one closing question for the entire interview that we’ve done. I’ve been asking this question for the project, how do you think your experiences during World War Two changed and influence your life? BR: Okay, first time I went from home, scared to death because in orientation is where we’re told, war. This is what war means. You’re going to be in situations where you have to kill, if not they’ll kill you kind of thing. I’m thinking oh! Because I grew up, nothing near even thinking of that. But in orientations you’re told and told and told, what situations like this would take place overseas, wherever you may be. My very first night in Europe, and the weather conditions, rain, cold, miserable, the only thing I could think about was surviving. The training that they gave us came into a picture perfect junction where it all appeared, how to keep from getting killed, how to kill. Of course after basic training you don’t think of war, you think about how it’ll be over by the time you get there. It’ll be over. We’ll defeat the Germans, and we won’t have to worry. But all of a sudden, I’m into it. Lorrie, Michael. I think that very first night, I grew like you can’t believe. The change just within yourself, get that feeling, "This is now or never kind of thing." Thank God, that the training that we got from individual professionals, to teach how to take care of yourself, take care of others. They drill this teamwork into our heads. Teamwork, teamwork, teamwork, and it works. You take care of your buddy next to you. He sees 62 something in front of you and he helps, you learn all of this over a period of just a short span. When you confront it, this situation that you do something quick, like lightning, because if you don’t, you're caught. So it seems like everything I got into, when I joined the project to raise for funds or to help someone, first thing I do is to study the project. What’s it for? What’s it going to take? Who’s in it? Who are the people at the head, in charge. Is this in good faith, or is this for them to make money kind of thing. So I kind of explore, ask questions, listen, learn. I’ve been lucky, I’ve had good advisors, I’ve had a lot of people that’s helped, and I helped a lot. So, that’s been my main goal in life is to help. MB: Thank you.