Oral History Program Ray Hobbs Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 20 June 2017 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Ray Hobbs Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 20 June 2017 Copyright © 2018 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The World War II "All Out for Uncle Sam" oral history project contains interviews from veterans of the war, wives of soldiers, as well as individuals who were present during the war years. The interviews became the compelling background stories for the "All Out for Uncle Sam" exhibit. The project received funding from Utah Division of State History, Utah Humanities Council and Weber County RAMP. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Hobbs, Ray, an oral history by Lorrie Rands, 20 June 2017, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Ray Hobbs at his home 2016 Ray Hobbs 20 June 2017 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Ray Hobbs, conducted on June 20, 2017 in his home in Ogden, Utah, by Lorrie Rands. Hobbs discusses his life and his memories involving World War II. Sarah Kamppi, the video technician, is also present during this interview. LR: Okay. So it is June 20, 2017. We are in the home of Ray Hobbs in Ogden, Utah, talking about his life and his memories of World War Two for the World War Two in Northern Utah Project at Weber State University. My name is Lorrie Rands, and Sara Kamppi is with me as well. Again, thank you Ray, for your time and your willingness. I greatly appreciate it. So let’s just jump in with when and where you were born? RH: Well I was born on Monroe Boulevard, just south of 24th Street on the East side of the street. The house has been gone for many years, but it was a two-story house, and it was my grandmother’s house. She was a Malan, so you’ve heard of Malan’s Peak, well much of that mountain was my grandfather’s property. . LR: When were you born? RH: March 13, 1924. LR: Okay. You were born there on Monroe Avenue, did you grow up there? RH: No, I grew up at 1080 34th Street. LR: Okay. So, if I’m gathering this right, you were born at your grandmother’s home, and your parents? RH: My parents Charles James Hobbs and Teresa Una Malan Hobbs brought me home. My eldest sister, Lorel was ten years old, and her birthday was 2 the day before my birthday. Our neighbor had given her thirteen eggs. She got up the morning I was born, built a fire in the old stove, and cooked eggs for the younger children. She was only ten years old. There were the five of them, and I made number six. LR: So are you the baby? RH: I’m the baby. LR: So you grew up here in Ogden? RH: Yes. LR: What are some of your memories of growing up in Ogden? RH: My two friends and I ran and played all around the area from Jackson Ave. to the foothills and 32nd and 36th St. When I was seven we could not afford a Christmas tree. We children brought home pine boughs that people had trimmed off their trees and thrown out. My mother pieced them together somehow and made us a tree. Mom always made Santa Claus cookies decorated with colors frosting. She had a picture that was glued onto cardboard and then cut out. She layed that on the rolled out dough and cut each cookie by tracing around it with a paring knife. We always looked forward to the Christmas musical program at church (17th ward at 29th and Quincy Ave.) I loved to go downtown at Christmas! It was always decorated so pretty! Pioneer days was also one of my favorite. There was always a wonderful parade and the rodeo was 3 lots of fun to see. Before Ogden built the city county building, we’d go out to the old Carnegie library on 26th Street between Kiesel and Washington. Right out in front, on the side of the street, was a nice big trough for horses to drink. That trough was there until they tore down the Carnegie Library. There was also a trough where the LDS Temple sits, right in front on 22nd and Washington. It was in front of the old Tabernacle, (the original old Tabernacle was there.) So we had these two troughs that were there the whole time I was growing up. So it was one of those memorable things, because there were still horses around; Wagons and the street cars too! I remember the streetcars very well. One line went along from Washington, North to Five Points and South to just passed 37th Street. Then there was one line that went over and up 28th street to Jefferson, then along Jefferson to almost 33rd Street. Then there was one that went up 25th street, it went clear up to Harrison. Over at 21st street, there was one line that went up there, and then there was one line that many people don’t remember, but it went up Ogden Canyon on the North Side of the river. It went up before the dam was built, to where the South arm of the Pineview Reservoir is. There were old artesian wells, where the city got their drinking water. I guess they are still there underneath pineview reservoir. I think Ogden still gets some water out of them. It was quite a change in 1930 when they started building the dam. 4 As I grew up, I lived out here on 34th street, and Van Buren, and it was not until 1938 that Van Buren was extended down over to Sullivan Rd. So many of the roads weren’t here when I was young. When I went in the service in Oct. 1942, Quincy ended at 33rd. When I came home on leave, there was this road Quincy all the way to Grandview Acres, and what a thing it was to see this! When I went in the service, from Patterson to 36th Street, east of Van Buren, there were eighteen houses. That’s all the houses there were! Where Weber State University is, from just past 35th Street over to 37th Street, east of Harrison, was John Mill’s old dairy farm. There were springs and little streams running quite a few places over there, and I can still see the area up there in my mind. At the top of 36th street is a big water tank, but before they built the water tank, when I was a young kid, there was an old water box there, where the water came out of Strong Canyon; they would divert water from it to different ditches for irrigation. Water would come out quite a few blocks from my house, but I would go up there to play when I was young. So it was very different then, and when you told people where you lived, they would say, “Oh, you don’t even live in the city.” 34th street, was out in the farming area, so things have changed drastically. We have a lot of beautiful things now, but there were so many lovely old homes on Washington Blvd. that I wish could have been saved. LR: I agree with you. They should have stayed. Where did you go to school? 5 RH: I went to Quincy School, and Quincy school at that time is where Rancho Market is on 26th and Quincy. I walked there and back home every day. There’s still the old fence, a board fence back around there, and when I pull into that parking lot I think, “This is where I played kickball.” I went from first to sixth grade there. They tore it down right after I left. Then I went to Lewis Junior High. It was on 28th Street, just above Washington. Quite a number of years ago it burned down, and they rebuilt it, and I don’t know what kind of a school it is now, but it’s still in the same location. Then I went to Ogden High School, and I graduated from Ogden High School in 1942. It was and still is a beautiful million dollar school! LR: So you were like the third graduating class from there? RH: Yes. LR: Did you go all three years to Ogden, to the new school? RH: I went two years. Lewis was from seventh to tenth, and then eleventh and twelfth was Ogden High. LR: Okay. That’s what I was wondering. Let’s go back just a little bit, what are some of your memories of the Depression? RH: Oh gosh, people didn’t have anything. I was glad to have something to eat. My Dad was not working most of the time, and I remember my mother actually asking her brother for a bag of flour. I had an aunt who lived out in West Weber and she raised some popcorn, and she would give my mother a bag of popcorn, and many days I had popcorn for breakfast to go to school, and no butter, just some grease that people had given my 6 mother. It was very skimpy, and very tough going for my family and for many others. When I was a young pre-teen, I rode my bicycle out to the Bingham Orchard (by the Ogden airport) to pick cherries. The summer before I went into eighth grade, I caddied all summer long at the Ogden Golf and Country Club. I walked from my home on 34th and Van Buren out to 43rd and Washington! I would caddy for nine holes and would be paid twenty-five cents. If I got to caddy two rounds, I would get fifty cents. For that whole summer I made thirty-five dollars. That money paid for my school supplies plus a shirt, a pair of cord pants, and a winter coat-however, my dad thought the coat was pretty nice, so he took possession of it and I did without. A memory that is very special to me- at the end of the summer, George Schreider, the pro at the golf course, gave me my first golf club (a “2” iron) which I still have. My wife, Lois told me that they have people come by their house on 15th and Grant often. They were people that didn’t have anything, and they would ride on the trains looking for work. Her mother would have them sit out in the yard and she would fix them sandwiches so that they had something to eat. It was a tough time everywhere! The summer before ninth grade. I stacked cans at the American Can Co. (20th Lincoln Ave.) It took a lot of cans (like soup cans) to fill a box car, but that is what I did. When I was sixteen I got a job at Winn Ferrins service station on 30th and Washington Blvd. I pumped gas and greased cars. 7 During my Junior and Senior years at High School I worked for Exclusive Pharmacy from four pm to nine pm after school and then from nine am to nine pm on Saturdays. I delivered prescriptions and other items on a route that went from West Ogden to the mountain and from North Street to 40th Street. I was paid forty dollars a month. When I got a little older I got a job for Defense Depot. I was making $100 dollars a month. Boy, I thought that was really great! I was working as a warehouseman down at the old Colosseum, you wouldn’t know where that’s at, but that’s down across the 24th street viaduct, just west of the river where the old Swift packing house was. There was the old Colosseum there, and they warehoused goods for the Defense Depot and I worked there for about 6 months before I had the opportunity to go to Weber College for a welding class to prepare to work at Hill Field. As I said, I was paid a hundred dollars a month. I thought that was a lot of money! If you found a penny, that was a good find because you could buy nice piece of candy for a penny, not like it is today! LR: Right. Was there more of a sense of community, like everyone helped one another during that time? RH: Well people helped each other a lot, they had to. My mother would re-sole our shoes. She had some old pieces of leather, and I don’t know where she got them, but she would make soles for our shoes. You were just lucky to have a pair of shoes! We children slept on a screened porch. Three girls in one bed and three boys in the other bed. One winter night 8 our dog froze to death under the girls’ bed. Mom didn’t have much to raise her children with, I don’t know how she did it! LR: Continuing on, what are your memories of Pearl Harbor day? RH: Pearl Harbor Day was on Dec. 7, 1941. I had been to church at the old Seventeenth Ward on 29th and Quincy. My brother was married at that time, and he lived where the parking lot is for Macey’s on 36th and Grant. There was an apartment house there. He invited us to come for dinner. After church, we went out to his house, went upstairs, and he turned on the radio. Bam, there it was. “Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor.” We were stunned! Absolutely stunned! You couldn’t imagine. There was so little information about just how bad it was, and maybe it’s a good thing that people didn’t realize how terrible it was, because we were all in dire circumstances at home. But I’ll tell you, the people did come together when President Roosevelt told us that this was war and we had to work together. There was a change of heart across the whole nation. Everybody was willing to go to work, and get things going! I was a senior at High School, but the eighth of December, the day after Pearl Harbor, there was a girls choice dance planned at Mound Fort Junior High out on Twelfth and Washington, and I had a blind date. The dance had been planned weeks before, and my wife and I tried to figure this out for years! Why did they have a dance on a Monday night? They had school the next day. I don’t know the answer to that question. That blind date is where I met my sweetheart, Lois Crosbie. December Eighth, 9 1941. That day turned out to be the most important day of my life! I had her at my side for just shy of sixty-seven years. I was really blessed to have her that long. I lost her on July 24 2012, and this next July 24 2017, will be five years. Anyway, there was so much uncertainty at that time. It was all us high school seniors wanted to talk about it. “I wonder when they’re going to draft me,” this was the topic. Then there were some who were enlisting; most of them that were enlisting, were supposed to be eighteen, but they were lying about their age. I think the people at the recruiting service would bend a little and look the other way and take you. “If you’re warm, come on.” The services were growing very fast. From December till I graduated from High School, many young men were leaving. LR: I didn’t ask how many brothers and sisters? RH: There were six of us. LR: How many of them were brothers, how many were sisters? RH: I had two brothers James and Donald, and three sisters Lorel, Boris, and Melba. LR: So were any of your brothers drafted, or did any of them enlist? RH: Not my oldest brother James, but my next oldest brother Donald was drafted after I enlisted. He went into the Navy. My mother’s prayers were answered and he didn’t have to go into any battles. He was a radio operator and he got as far as Pearl Harbor, but he never saw anything bad. 10 LR: That’s impressive. RH: My oldest brother James went to work for Lockheed. He worked all through the war inspecting for Lockheed. LR: What did your older sisters do? RH: My oldest sister Lorel was a seamstress at the Intermountain Knitting Mill, that’s right at the bridge on Washington, on the south side of the bridge. She worked there for several years sewing at very minimal wages. My next sister, Doris worked at Kress’s in downtown Ogden. My sister, Melba worked at Walgreens. Ogden had a Walgreen’s where the bank is on 25th and Washington. LR: You said you enlisted, when did you enlist? RH: I enlisted October 30, 1942. LR: So you graduated from High School, and then? RH: I had my welding class at Weber College and went to work at Hill Field. A bunch of us, were talking, you know how young people think. “Well, I’m going to be drafted; if I could go to school and serve another way than being a foot soldier and carrying a gun, I think that’s what I want to do.” So I talked to recruiting people, and they promised, (you have to laugh at that,) they promised that I would get what I was asking for. I did end up going to the school; that I asked for, but almost not! I almost was an MP! I was very pleased that I didn’t have to do that! I enlisted. At seven o’clock the next morning, took the old Bamberger train down to Salt Lake, and a truck picked us up. I don’t know if you know where Social Hall Avenue is. 11 It’s between South Temple and Second South, east of State Street, it is a half street. They had a car dealerships up there, and the service was using this dealership as a place to check us over before we went up to Fort Douglas. So we were there all day long-physical tests, all kind of checking you over. Then finally, we put our hand to the square, and were sworn in. LR: Did you enlist in the Army Air Corps? RH: Yes, Army Air Corps. We went to Fort Douglas, got all of our bedding and clothing, and before you could go to bed, you had to learn how to make the bed. That bed! They’d take a quarter and flip it in the air and it’d bounce, and if it didn’t, you’d make it over again. So we practiced making beds. I think it was well after midnight before we got to bed. That had been a long day! At four thirty or quarter to five in the morning, they blew that silly bugle. Oh my goodness! You knew already that you were in the Army, because the Sergeant that swore you in was now swearing! I thought, “Oh gosh, what have I done?” We’d get up early in the morning, and there wasn’t anything to do but wait for word that they were going to ship you, so I think it was a week and a half before I was shipped, maybe it wasn’t quite that long. But I remember so vividly when I got my orders. I was shipped to Bowman Field, Kentucky. That’s in Louisville, and not knowing anything, I thought, “Man, I’m going south for the winter. That’s going to be great down where it’s nice and warm.” I got there and thought I was going to freeze to death! 12 When that fog rolls in down there in Louisville, and it starts to rain, and then it starts to snow, it is cold! We were there until the first of December. Then I was shipped to Chanute Field, Illinois, for welding school. I have to tell you that most of the fellows from Utah felt like I did. You get out where it’s so flat, and it hits you, you miss those mountains so bad! There at Chanute Field, it is flat as a dime. I mean, flat, just flat, and with cold wind blowing across there. We would walk to the flight line where we had our school, and you thought you were going to freeze before you got out there. It was four or five blocks that you had to go, and you didn’t just walk, you had to be in formation to go there, everything was that way. I felt real good to get in where it’s nice and warm. I spent December and January and a good part of February finishing welding school. Then I was shipped to Syracuse, New York. The old airport had been made into an air base, and I lived in an old farmhouse the whole time I was there. I had a canvas cot with two comforters because it was cold!! They were forming a service group to go to Italy, to service the planes. I was a member of this service group, and of course, we didn’t have anything to do. I have thought through the years, and I haven’t figured out how it happened, but I got a job at the PX as a soda jerk and flipping hamburgers. How much I made, I don’t know, but I do remember they showed me how to flip the hamburgers and how to make a malted milk shake, a banana split, and a soda. Boy was this living high on the hog! 13 I loved malts! When there wasn’t anybody there. I would take that old can, and it was a good sized can, take that ice cream, (and this was real ice cream), stuff that in there just as tight as I could and fill that can right up, and put some strawberry syrup in there, and some malt. I would put it on that old mixer, and shake it. I think about it now, I wasn’t there very many weeks before I was being shipped out to go to another school, but I’ve thought through the years, it was fortunate for the PX for me to be shipped out because I was ruining their doggone mixers! If you take a mixer and put a vice grip on it and turn it on, it’s about the same thing. It wasn’t very good on the machines, but boy were those strawberry malts good! When you were helping yourself to three or four a day, you were really living high on the hog! I was there only a few weeks, and a fellow came and told me, “You’re shipping out.” I said, “No, you’re kidding.” “No, your names on the bulletin board.” So I went, and sure enough, I was shipping out to Buckley Field, Colorado for Armament School, to learn to take care of twenty millimeter cannons, thirty-seven millimeter cannons, fifty caliber and thirty caliber machine guns. I had to learn how to disassemble, do all the repairs on them and put them back together. I was there for I think ten weeks, and just as I graduated from there, they came around with a slip of paper. “Is there anybody that’s interested in going into Cadets?” Up went my hand. I took the test, and I was accepted into the program. Cadets was actually officer Candidate School-only commissioned officers could be pilots. 14 I went to Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis, Missouri for basic training once more. That’s twice for basic training; marching back and forth, back and forth. I was only there a few weeks, but I did have a special opportunity. It was the only time I’ve been to a big league baseball game in my life. It was the St. Louis something or others at that time, and the other team was from Boston. That’s all I remember, but we went there on an old red street car. Jefferson Barracks faces east, looking down over the Mississippi river. It was quite a sight when you weren’t used to seeing anything like that. From there I went up to Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa for college training detachment for ten weeks. Then we were shipped out to Santa Anna Army Air Force Base at Santa Ana, California. They called it Basic Training again for cadets, and we were there for quite some time. One of the things that’s so memorable about my time there, was that we were confined to our barracks because when they ship a new bunch in, they didn’t want them intermixing and having flu and different things. So we were confined to our barracks for a couple of weeks, except for going to the mess hall and back. I had two pair of shoes, and one pair, I had never had on my feet; they were brand new, and they were high. The old brown army boots that came up to the ankle. I would write a letter to my sweetheart, and then I would sit and shine those shoes. I’d sit for a while and think, “I’ll shine them again.” I did this for two weeks, and they were the most gorgeous things! They should have been in a showroom or 15 in a showcase. They were a deep maroon, just absolutely beautiful. I put them on for inspection one morning, and here comes this little major. He was half a head shorter than me, looked me up and down, and he gave me two demerits, “Shoes too dark.” That was like a sword going right through the heart, it was a terrible, terrible blow. I remember feeling so bad! I went in to the latrine, took those shoes into the shower and scrubbed all that polish off with saddle soap and dried them good, and then shined them. I put them on for the next inspection. The little major comes along, “Shoes too light.” They did things like this to cadets. The inspections were absolutely ridiculous. They would put on white gloves and under the beds reach as far as they could, and if they could get any dust on their glove you had demerits, so you didn’t get to go to town on the weekends. They let us know when we got out of cadets that they did this on purpose, just to poke at you, to see if you would respond. If you responded, just that quick you were in the infantry. They tested you in every way. But those shoes I really thought to myself, “What in the world does he want?” But that was part of the way it was. Another very memorable thing happened at Santa Ana. They took us for a swimming test. This was in October, and Southern California in October, can be a little brisk. It was foggy this day, and we went to Balboa Bay, and there’s this yacht sitting there. We had to wade in the one end and swim around that yacht for our swimming test. The Sergeant said, “Once you start in, don’t come back out.” Oh, that was so true! I went in 16 there, and I thought I was never going to get around that silly yacht it was so cold. I said to myself, “It’s going to be a cold day in you know where when I go in the stupid ocean again,” and I never have been back in ocean water again since then! That was it for me! On weekends, I had the privilege of going up to Los Angeles. My older brother James lived there. He was single, and he was very glad to see me. He would take me out to dinner, and to a movie. It was quite nice during the time I was there, to have some family close to comfort me. On the first of January 1944, I was shipped to Ryan Field, Tucson, Arizona for Primary Flight School. Ryan Field is just over the hill from Tucson City. There’s the mountain right there, and it’s just over down there in the valley. If you go to the old Tucson area where they made Western films and you look down you would see the base. We flew little Boeing Ryan PP-22 open cockpit, two person planes. That’s the plane I learned to fly in. After five hours of flying the instructor landed the plane it on an old dirt landing strip west of the field. He got out and said, “Taxi down and take off, then land and come back and get me.” So that’s what I did. After that I was on my own, except for checking out with the instructors. You had to keep practicing. I think it was about a week and a half before I finished my training at Ryan, and one of the fellows in my group, (there were six of us that had the same instructor), named Heely from Chicago, went up to fly and to practice a spin, and spun clear in crash. It was quite a blow to all of us! 17 They hauled what remained of that plane, and put it right behind the hanger where we had to walk right by it to the ready room. He was the only one that we lost in all my time in training. It was a devastating thing to lose one of the guys, especially because his bunk was right next to mine. So it was kind of a blow. I started to think, “You had better keep your head on straight, and think about what you’re doing, because this is a real thing.” First of March 1944, we were transferred to War Eagle Field, just west of Lancaster California there. It was a base that had been built for the British Air Force. The Army Air Corps had taken it over for basic training for us. We flew BT-13As. There’s one hanging out at the Hill Air Museum. It’s a fixed wing, fixed strut plane, and closed canopy. I liked flying it very much. Of course you were with your instructor quite a bit. My instructor was from some little place right on the border of Canada and most of the way across Montana. He and his brother were both instructors there, and they were very, very good. In fact, they would play chicken with each other. One would slip clip their wing under the other planes wing and then flip the plane; and this was when they were teaching us to fly formation! I was flying there one day, off one of the brother’s wing, and my instructor said, “Keep your eye right on his plane. Keep right with him.” All of a sudden, I could see trees going like this past his plane, and he landed us on the field and took us off in formation. It was part of your training. Then we started to do some night flying, which we didn’t do down at primary 18 flying school. They were getting us used to a little bit more of the advanced flying. In May, we were transferred down to Marfa, Texas. That’s east of El Paso about eighty miles I guess. It is quite desolate down there, I don’t think there would be even a jackrabbit down there. We went down there to fly little twin engine planes, and that’s what we flew the rest of July. August 4, 1944 was our graduation. I got my wings and was commissioned a 2nd lieutenant. That’s seven months they had us in training to get our wings, and it’s quite a short span when you think of it. They told us, “When you’re flying any plane, if you have problems with the plane, bail out. We can replace the plane a lot easier than we can replace you. We’ve spent two hundred and fifty thousand dollars on you, so don’t put your life on the line.” They actually put a price tag on us! After graduation, some fellows and I drove back to Utah in an old car. I was home for about fifteen days, and it was very nice to see family and see my sweetheart, Lois again. We had been writing to each other all this time. From there, I was sent to go to Roswell, New Mexico, to check out in the B-17. I arrived at Roswell, New Mexico. They paired us up, (two fellows and an instructor) for ten weeks would fly the B-17. We practiced landings, and fly arounds. We did this I think in a ten-week course. We did have one experience. We went on a flight, and I guess every crew had this same experience. One day the instructor took off and he headed us west, and we flew over to California and up alongside and over the Bay Bridge. 19 We didn’t go over San Francisco, then we turned and came back to Roswell. That was quite a flight! They called it soloing. Another time Garth Hill and I went out to take the B-17 up by ourselves without an instructor. We got out to the plane and saw that it was an old, weary plane. It had been used and used and used and abused. There wasn’t any tread on the tires at all. They were bald all the way around. Of course you always had to inspect the plane before you took off, and we both looked at it and said, “If we get two landings each off of it without blowing these tires, we’re lucky.” We did, but boy, looking back it was a kind of a scary looking thing. I realized they needed all those tires overseas for planes, they needed them all, but still that was a scary thing. As I was finishing my course in Roswell, I got a letter from my sweetheart. “Send me thirty five dollars and I’ll come down, and we’ll get married.” So I sent her thirty five dollars, and she came down and we got married on October 19, 1944. At the time, we did not think anything about, “Is he going to come back or not?” We didn’t think anything about anything like that at all. Years later we looked back and we thought, “Gee whiz, we really didn’t know.” We were married and only three days later we got word that Lois’s father had passed away of a heart attack. I has finished my training. The commanding officer got me some leave, and I got my orders to report to Lincoln Nebraska after the funeral. So we came home for the funeral and then we went on to Lincoln Nebraska. How we found a little room to rent, I don’t know, but we did. 20 At the air base in Lincoln, Nebraska is where I got my crew assigned to me. Nine fellows were assigned to me, and we trained together two or three weeks. Then we went up to Rapid City, South Dakota for Phase Training. We got there the first of December, I remember that very vividly! I had not flown since we got married, and that first morning, one of the fellow came to get me to go out to the base to fly, and Lois sobbed, “Don’t go to fly, Ray. Don’t go to fly.” I said, “That’s what I do.” and she said “I don’t want you to fly!” I said, “Honey, I have to go out to fly. That’s what I do.” “Well, I don’t want you to fly. Please don’t fly.” I left her crying. We dressed all up, got in the ready room, and waited and waited. Three times the weathermen came in, and finally the sergeant came in and said, “Well, you can go. Too much snow, we can’t get off flying.” So back we go to town, back to the room, and she’s all relieved. The next morning, Lois is crying again. I tried to explain, “This is what I’m doing, and this is what I’m trained to do. I fly.” So I go out there. Snowed again. We came back. The next morning, it’s snowing like a son of a gun, she was not worried at all. We go out to fly, and it cleared up just enough. We took off, and after that everything was fine. I trained with my crew for formation flying, and altitude flying. It was cold up there! You would go up to twenty-thousand feet and it was forty to forty-five below zero! The plane was not insulated or heated. We didn’t have heated flight suits. You dressed as warm as you could. I would put on two pair of socks, a pair of shorts, a pair of long johns, a pair of 21 suntans, then a summer flying suit, and then a winter flying suit. You fly to altitude and after about two hours it feels like somebody poured ice water down your back. You sit there and you don’t move around, and then it just soaks in, and you get colder and colder and colder! There were times I would come down after flying, (we’d be up at 25,000 feet flying for five hours), and I couldn’t feel my legs, they were like stumps! I would go to the ready room, take off my heavy flying suit, go back into town to our apartment, get in bed, and it would take a couple of hours for my legs and stomach to warm up. It was really cold, but you had to learn to fly in that environment. The instructors were men that had gotten their flights in; their missions in Europe were over, and they were very fortunate to come home. I was thankful they were so experienced. They stressed how important it was to protect ourselves. The tighter you can have your plane to the other plane, the more secure you are. So we flew some pretty good formation there; our planes wingtip, maybe was three feet from the waist window of the next plane. They were just getting us used to it. Now I think how we were not very old! All of our young guys flying those planes. We didn’t have that much flying time really. We went back to Lincoln, Nebraska and that was the first part of March, and my birthday is March 13. Each day I’d go out to the base, and of course I couldn’t call. There was no communications after you got out the door. The understanding was, if I came back in the evening, fine. If I 22 didn’t, I was gone! This went on until the sixteenth of March and it was really hard on Lois!. I went out on that day and we caught the train back to New Jersey. I can’t remember when Lois got the first letter from me, because even when we were on the ship writing a letter, everything was censored. You couldn’t say where you were at, you couldn’t say anything. She was there alone to fend for herself and to get transportation back to Ogden. She was there about three weeks before she could get a train ticket to come to Ogden. Our group went to New Jersey, We went down to the wharf. Have you been to Long Beach? LR: No. RH: Well the old Queen Mary is sitting there; and it’s a big, big ship! As we were going to our ship, we looked at that son of a gun, “look how big it is!” We get to the gangplank, and they say, “Keep moving guys.” We go down, and there is what we’re sailing on, just beyond. To look at the two, our ship looked like a rowboat nest to the Queen Mary. The difference was immense. The Queen went over to Europe in three days, and we went over in fourteen days. We were zigzagging across the ocean. Whether there were subs there I don’t know, but I heard them many days dropping depth charges from our ship. We got there safe, landed at Le Havre, France first. We didn’t get off, but they took on fifteen-hundred German prisoners of war. They just put them up on the deck, and then we went over to Southampton, England where we disembarked. We caught the 23 train to go up to the base, but I can’t even remember the base. We went up there for a day until we were assigned to our group. I was assigned to the 334th Bomb Squadron in the 95th Bomb Group of the 8th Air Force, Horham, England. We got to Horham on April 5, 1945. We were fortunate, because when we got there we flew lots of orientation missions. You had to have some knowledge of the area around, so that you could find your base. This was over in East Anglia, and the many bases there were three and a half miles apart from each other. There were so many B-17s and B-24s over there! In fact yesterday, I was checking on a thing on the Facebook, and on December 24, 1944, the 8th Air Force had 2,000 planes in the air. They were B-24s and B-17s flying all over Germany. I think about those fellows that were flying there! It was sixty-five plus degrees below zero! It was brutal!, These were young kids. I just turned twenty-one when I got there. I didn’t fly any actual combat missions. I was blessed, and I know I was blessed! During my first week of May, 1945. I flew the six Mercy Missions to Holland, named Chowhound missions. We dropped food for the starving Dutch people. I didn’t realize at the time how critical this was, but it’s documented that if we hadn’t flown those six missions. The U.S. Air Force and the Royal Air Force, three million Dutch people would have perished within the next month and a half. So as I’ve gotten older and time has gone by, it’s really sunk in how important it really was. All that training! 24 You might think it was all for naught, but the six mercy missions I flew, were part of saving three million people. It was a very good thing! I’ve always been so thankful. My mother was very spiritual. I believed that she prayed me home. During my service, we had a couple of very iffy happenings. One was up at Rapid City, S.D. I came out of a cloud, I was flying on the radio range, by altitude, but there was another fellow, (who he was I have no clue), but he was flying opposite in the direction, and we almost collided! Missed by about forty feet. He almost killed twenty of us! Then, over in England we came in off the North Sea through clouds, we came out of the clouds and there was a mountainside right there! We were able to avoid it. So there were two times that I know that my mother’s prayers were answered in my behalf. So, the war ended and I came home to my sweetheart, and I’m very thankful! LR: Talking about the six mercy missions that you flew. When you started those missions, did you know what you were doing? RH: Nope. We went to the ready room and they said, “This is what your mission is for today. You’re going to be flying in formation to the Hague, Holland, and all your planes are already loaded with food. You’ll be dropping food for the starving Dutch.” That’s the first we knew. A book on the 95th Bomb Group, points out the feasibility on how this would work out and how it was practiced and put into operation on my base. We didn’t know anything about it, no communications like that. The base was five miles around, so it was a fairly good sized out there in the English 25 countryside. We flew that mission to the Hague, the next day we flew in formation to Amsterdam. They decided this was not working out as well as desired, because the food was being scattered out too far. There were reports that people would say we were dropping food at 500 feet. No we didn’t! We were flying at 150 feet, at 135 miles an hour, when dropping the food; the trajectory was just right, so when the food hit the ground it had no more forward velocity. When it landed it just hit. There were fifty pound bags of flour in a burlap bag, and most of them got down without breaking. Forty pound boxes of canned goods landed unharmed. The next four days we dropped food at Utrecht, in the Holland. Instead of flying we went in single file and dropped our load. They had a big circle with a white cross sheets in formation, in it. That was the target. You tried to get the food as close to that as possible. I think it was the next to last day I flew to Utrecht, we flew over the target area, pulled the cord, (they had plywood doors, over the bomb bay and they were makeshift). They had spring door latches that they pulled to let the food drop. My navigator said, “Oh no, only one side went.” So I decided, “Hold everything, I’ll make a circle around and we’ll come back and make sure the other side goes.” We got right over the city and the rest of the load went. My son in law says, “Well, that’s just like FedEx. Delivery right to the doorstop.” My tail gunner said, “I saw one of those boxes go right through the roof of a house, and come out through the front door.” So hopefully no one was hit with these thing! People were steering clear of the target area 26 where we dropped the food those six days, but we could see them cheering and waving. I didn’t realize it for an awful long time, but the last day we dropped food, one of the planes from my squadron didn’t come back. They went down into the English Channel. Some men with small arms had shot up one of the engines and they crashed into the Channel. There was thirteen aboard and eleven perished. Two lived out of it. They have a beautiful memorial in Dayton, Ohio. The museum is there, and just to the side of it they have a memorial spot. On the seventh of May at ten o’clock, they meet there in remembrance of this last plane down of the 8th Air Force. I was privileged to go there two years ago. My daughter and son in law and a whole bunch of the family back there in Kentucky, went to the memorial service. They only had eleven veterans there and I tell you I thought, “My golly, most of these guys probably won’t be here next year,” you’ve got to be realistic. On Facebook, they put a little notice in each time they lose another one of us from my group, and it’s every other day or so. When we were over in England, in April 2016 for a 95th Bomb Group Reunion, someone told my daughter that there were 182 of us left out of the 95th Bomb Group. That is out of 7,000 men. So we’re far and few between, getting to be fewer all the time. The last part of June, they announced that we were going home. So we got all of our luggage in the plane, the ten of us and ten others, and we took off from our base and flew to a RAF base in Valley Wales. The 27 next day we flew from there to Meeks Field, Iceland. From Iceland we flew to Goose Bay, Labrador, and from there to Bradley Field, Connecticut, where we left our plane. The plane were ferried out to Kingman, Arizona, and three months later most of them were all chopped up. If only I’d have known at the time I could have bought a B-17 fully fueled for 850 dollars! That’s quite a shock when you realize it. Once back in the states, we were loaded on a Boston-New Haven Rail commuter car. That’s one of those with the old straight back seats. You could flip the back of the seat to face either direction in the car. The restroom was a little tiny triangle in one corner, it had a little sink and a little toilet, and the door could hardly shut. We rode from Connecticut to Salt Lake City and up. Across from me was a full Colonel. He sat up all the way to Los Angele. As we came through Chicago we saw many Pullman cars sitting there in the railroad yards, and there we were sitting up! The Colonel was blessing the Pentagon every time the train stopped. He was separated from the service when he got out to California, he didn’t want to have any contention with them, because he was raising Cain the whole way, because we knew they were shipping prisoners of war in Pullman cars east. But that’s part of the war. We came home for a month, then I went back to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and we thought we were going to be trained in B-29s, and we were there for a couple of weeks, then we went to Sioux City, Iowa. At Sioux City, Iowa, I was in the officer’s club playing pool, and a guy brought a telegram in for me announcing I was a new daddy. My baby girl was 28 born at Hill Field, and that was the 9th of September. And she was an expensive child. Lois had to have something to eat. She was there at the hospital nine days, so Susan cost us nine dollars. But we were there not to many days after that, and they dropped the atomic bomb, and they separated us, shipped us out. I shipped out to Owen Field Boise and separated from the service there. LR: Okay. Your daughter was born in September of 1945? RH: Yep. She was. I was just a young man then, jiminy Christmas. When you think about it, my goodness, time goes by. I was active in the Reserve for thirteen years after I got out, and finally with the Reserve program, I was building my home, this house, and working as much as I could work on two different jobs, and I resigned my commission. I was a Captain at the time. It was a mistake, but that’s water under the bridge. You do what you do, and raised the family. That’s what I did. LR: Going back a little bit, I’m curious, those six missions that you flew. Not knowing what you’re going to be doing when you go sit in your ready room, thinking you’re going to go on a bombing mission, was there a sense of relief when you found out you were just dropping food? RH: That was a relief. They always said, when their having us fly combat, the first mission was really one of the worse, because the anxiety, not knowing, and actually through the first mission they realize this is not fun and games, this is dead serious. In a book on our group, it tells about a sad situation. I can’t remember the fellow’s name, this Lieutenant so and 29 so, he came in the evening, came to the Quonset Hut, and signed him a bunk. Put his stuff there, “Some of the guys will help you unpack.” “No, I’ll get it tomorrow.” Four o’clock in the morning they called him to act as a navigator. He went for breakfast, he never came back. So his brand new flight jacket laying on the bed. One of the guys grabbed it, it’s in the museum back there. It was never, never worn. First mission, gone just like that. I can’t remember how many they lost, but every time a plane would go down, if they didn’t get out, that’s ten. So there was many missions where six or seven didn’t come back, sometimes twelve, out of the eighteen or twenty or so, and that’s quite a load. The 100th Bomb Group was located just north of our base, and this is towards the later part of the war when it was really bad for the aircraft men; they were shooting them down like everything. Anyway, they had had kind of a rough go this one day, and they were called for a mission the next day. All of the planes that the 100th Bomb Group could get from four squadrons, they only had eighteen planes they could get up. So they sent those eighteen planes back, and the base commander is on the tower waiting. They wait and they wait and they wait. Nobody. You have to think how hard that was on the base commander. You go to the ready room, bring the cover back off the chart, show where their flying, “Here’s where you’re going today guys, good luck. Get up there and do your best,” and not one of your 180 men come back. That’d be pretty tough, but that’s what they faced, time after time after time, and it was a bad situation. 30 Our group was the only group in the 8th Air Force to get three Presidential Citations, that was for excellency. The commanders of the group stressed, tight, tight, tight formation. No wandering around, just stay right in there, and I think that was one of the things that helped them a lot. A lot of people said, “The 100th Bomb Group just had bad luck.” Well, you see, they flew with the 380th, and the 95th, so they were all right close together. Of course, the 95th are watching these others being shot down, and you’re looking out like this at the other plane right there, and all of a sudden, just gone. It was a tough situation for them. It felt good to fly over there, and when you’re flying over there’s only 300 feet, and you could see all the Dutch people down there in these little villages. They weren’t allowed to have a flag but every man woman and child had a flag. I tell you, that’s mighty humbling to see something like that. My daughter told one of the fellows from the Standard, when he asked about buzzing, “Well, what do you expect when you give a twenty-one year old a plane?” After dropping at Utrecht, I dropped right down, and I know I was no more than ten feet off the ground, fly along over the dike and back down, just looking around. This one day we were going along, and up here was where the Zuiderzee is and we’re flying towards it. There is a house and a barn, and out between the house and the barn was a farmer waving at me like this. I was flying at about ten feet, at 150 miles an hour, and all of a sudden he just spread-eagled on the ground. Of course us kids, we rolled in the aisle all the way back to England. This was 31 the funniest thing that ever was, “Did you see that farmer?” Well the next day, I’m flying along, not paying any attention when, “Oh my gosh, Tom, there’s the farmer, and we’re headed his way again.” He started to run this time. My kids and my wife have always said, “That was rude, that was really rude, can you imagine what was said at the dinner table about that American?” Six years ago I was out at Hinckley when Sentimental Journey was out there, and I was encouraging people to go through it and look and tell them about it. I’m standing there after they made a flight and it was taxing towards me, and I stood there and I looked, it’s just like a board hitting you in the head. “My gosh, I was ten feet higher than that, coming at him at 150 miles per hour. Oh my gosh, oh my gosh.” So at eighty-seven years old, old Ray finally wakes up. “Is this how it was?” I scared the living jeebies out of that poor farmer, and never soaked in for all those years. I buzzed along the ground, and I flew through Amsterdam lower than the church steeples, just over the top of the masts on the ships that were there on those canals. A buddy of mine, not in my group another group, flew down the Rhine River and flew under a bridge in the B-17. What you say is somebody ratted on him, somebody took his number down and turned him in. They fined him seventy-five dollars, and that was a slap back then. They grounded him for a week. All these years I thought, “How would you dare do that, because you’re sitting up there in the cockpit, and 32 the tails up like this in the back, and thinking how much space am I going to have for the tail to get underneath that.” Well, he made it. We flew what they called a Chow-Hong mission, in as far as Hamburg, looking at the damage. I’ll never forget Cologne. Cologne was a pretty good sized city, at that time I think it was about the same size as San Francisco. All the way through Cologne it was like roadways had been cleared, and we’d go along for a little ways, walkways like this, only one road had been cleared through the city, the rest was just rubble spilling into the streets. Down right by the Rhine River was the old Cathedral. It had holes in the roof but it still stood, and that was the only viable building standing in the town of Cologne that I saw. Went in as far as Hamburg, turned around and came back and we flew over Paris, and one of the guys wanted to see Paris, so I circled the Eiffel Tower like halfway up, looked around Paris, then we flew over the White Cliffs of Dover and back home. It was a sightseeing thing. I can’t remember how many ground crew on board for that one, just so that we can look around. That was a fun thing to see. As you flew over, especially east of Cologne, everywhere you looked there was another remains of a B-17s. They were all over. You thought, “That’s ten more, and ten more, and ten more.” We were thankful for all those that did so much for us and the ultimate sacrifice, they gave their all for us. I’ve always been so thankful for that, and I’m deeply hurt when somebody desecrates the flag, or do not show respect for our 33 anthem. That hurts me personally, because that’s a real special thing to me. We have lots of problems, but we live in the best country there is in the world. We have more to be thankful for than people can realize. It’s a great country. LR: So, I’m curious as to what you did after the war. RH: Well, I didn’t use very good judgment. I went to work for the Standard Examiner. I worked as a stereotype, that’s making hot lead cuts and the hot plates for the press. That’s what I did for thirty-three years and four months. After that I said, “I’m going to retire,” and they said, “You quit.” I said, “I guess I quit then.” Then I had some property, and I helped me son. He had an impound lot for impounded cars, and wrecked cars and that. Worked with the police department and I helped him for several years there. I built quite a few cars, rebuilt wrecked cars, and I did this also for several years with my younger son. The older son passed away at twenty-eight years old. Finally I stopped doing cars and made spoons. My kids must have thirty each, and I’ve given them away for wedding gifts and neighbors and things. I’ve made, I guess, over six hundred. Then my children said, “Leave your saw alone, don’t want you to saw off your hand.” So, four years ago I called Susan, my oldest girl, my wife had been gone about a year, and I said, “Susie, I think I’d like to make some bread, how about showing me how to make some bread?” Susie came out, helped me make some bread. I had about two or three, a little bit gooey in 34 the inside, but I finally got it down, and I haven’t done as good this year, but a year ago at Christmas time, from the seventh of December to the end of the month I made one hundred loaves of bread and I gave ninety-seven away. Neighbors and down at church, grandchildren, and I’ve always thought that will cost you a little tiny bit, but it doesn’t cost that much and it sure is a good feeling to do something for somebody else. LR: So, I’m going to go back a little again. What was your wife doing while you were over in England during the war? RH: She finally got out to her home on 15th and Grant, and she was pregnant. She knew the lady over at the old Paramount Dairy, it was on the East side of Washington right at the bridge, and she would go over there for ice cream about every day; walk from 15th and Grant over. She wasn’t fat, but she put on thirty-five pounds or something with Susan. She told me about how she would take a slice of bread, and I could see her, and she would take Karo syrup and put it on there, and she’d juggle this to get it to her mouth and eat slices of bread with Karo syrup on it. That’s living high on the hog I would think. She wrote to me about every day, and I mean about every day while I was there. It took quite a while to get the letters. I did send a letter home, and I said, “I almost think I want to buy some sheets.” What does a mother say to her daughter? “Hmm, what does he needs sheets for?” Some of those British girls? In fact, one day I woke up and I went to get up, oh crap, there’s this girl getting dressed in the bed right next to me. 35 This one guy had brought her from a dance or something, and when the Sergeant got home, he saw that bed, and he found out this guy had had a little gal in that bed, he went over to him like this. “You ever do that again, I’ll kill you,” and he was dead serious. I was, “Oh my gosh! What is there, six of us in this Quonset hut, and jiminy Christmas there’s a gal here!” She was gone pretty quick, so that’s when I got up, but that was a rude awakening though. Shouldn’t have shocked me so bad, I was married, but it did shock me. When you weren’t planning on seeing anything like that. LR: Do you have any other stories you would like to share before I ask my final question? RH: Yes. In April, we flew to England. I went with my daughter in Kentucky and her son and husband. We flew to London, and then we went up to Cambridge, the first stop for our group. Up at Cambridge is the American Military Cemetery, and it’s a very hallowed, sacred ground. There’s thousands of men there, and they have this wall, it has the name of 5,000 that they had no remains for. I don’t think I’ve seen anywhere a flagpole that will outdo this flagpole that they have there. A cement base around it about a foot, then brass all around and it comes up like this up and around and up and around and the pole goes up, just magnificent. I was privileged to lay a memorial wreath, and I never dreamt I would ever do something like that. I was the only veteran there for the reunion. They said, “You’re our rock star,” and they treated me so wonderful. 36 The superintendent showed us around the cemetery, and it got later in the afternoon, and time to retired the flag, the colors. This one gal from the United States, she said to Janet, “Do you think Ray would like the flag?” Janet said, “I know he’d be tickled pink.” So she went to the superintendent and said, “Why don’t you give the flag to Ray?” So I was presented with the flag that flew over that sacred ground. I have a picture on my Facebook of this gal that arranged for it. She’s got her arms around me, and you can see she’s crying like everything. I have tears coming down me, and I think I got that, and I don’t think there’s another person in the United States that owns a flag that’s flown over sacred ground like that. Yes, they have the ones that have gone like that for your Senators and Representatives, but there’s no meaning for that, really. But this has meaning, real meaning, and I’m really privileged. They treated me so wonderfully. I lay four more wreaths while I was over there at sacred places. One was where a plane crashed just after take-off and the ten men were blown to bits. They crashed not far from a house, and the farm house caught on fire, and blew all the windows and the doors off the house. There was a young mother in there with a little child, and she was pregnant, and blew her across against the table. They got her out of there, and the house burned down, but they got her to some relatives a little ways off. They have a memorial to those ten guys, and I laid a wreath there. Then by the church they have a memorial for the 95th Bomb Group 37 Association. The bells on the tower for this old, old church right here in Quorum, just a little tiny village, they were taken down during the war, but they were not in any shape to be put back up. They were replaced with these bells that are there now. The last bells that this company there in England had made. They got a memorial for the 95th Bomb Group there. Then, part of the old runway was still standing there. The farmer owns the land, and the government wanted to tear it up for a road base and he said, “Nope, it’s my property, stay away from my runway.” So that part stayed, and they have a gold service building, that was for the enlisted servicemen. The Red Feather club, it was just about depleted, but they rebuilt it all, and it’s really, really nice. There’s a museum all in there. I spent nine days there, and I’m overwhelmed with the way they treated me. So wonderful. So kind. This is the emblem for our 95th Bomb Group, and I got my name on the back of it. I never did put it on anything. I got it when I first got to the group and it’s still like that. First day we were in England we went over to London. We were going to take a bus in when they said, “No, there’s too many transfers.” From the field you can get a bus that goes right into London, so he had them call and get somebody to come and take us over to get transportation in. When the guy got there he said, “I have pretty good specials,” so we had him take us into London and he picked us up later. But we went into London, got on one of those two story buses for a tour for about four hours, and it was something to see all those different things. 38 We got there just too late for the changing of the guard, and there must have been 4,000 people milling around. I mean, no wonder these terrorist idiots are doing what they’re doing, but these people, I couldn’t believe how many people were there, just everywhere, masses of them. Towards afternoon we stopped, and we had dinner at the Hard Rock Café. It was very nice, and the old guy ate at the Hard Rock Café. I understand they are all over the world now. We went in where they have the t shirts and stuff and the music was horrible, I don’t call it music. This little gal here, Sophie Green, this is a twenty-two year old girl got interested in the association over there, the memorial group, when she was thirteen. She saw a B-17 and a P-51 flying around and got interested, and she lives some twenty miles away, but she has been helping on this restoration and all that they do there for all these years. This outfit she’s in is an old WAC uniform, and this cost those people when they do different things, this costs them money to get these things. In fact they have somebody there, has an old 1941 Dodge sedan, staff car, painted just like when I was there. I looked at that and I thought, “My golly, that’s a fortune.” There were eight or nine jeeps that are all individually owned, they have two for by fours, vintage, from way back. There is a lot of money tied up in those things, and they are devoted to the remembrance of our group. I was on the news. They had a little clip, talking to me out on the runway, and they had it on the news, about four times in one day, the same thing over and over. The President of the Association over there, 39 their very interested in getting any publicity that they can to keep people interested, it costs money for the museum and stuff, so they try to keep people interested. Then I was interviewed one day for about four hours, and this was for a documentary for the historical channel over there for this fall. So I was interviewed for that, and this day I was sitting out on this little marble thing out by the flagpole, I thought I was going to freeze to death out there. I had a jacket on, but the guy who was interviewing me was in shirt sleeves. We were out there for oh my gosh, seemed like a long time. Every time there was any noise, the gal would shut off the camera, “Well we’ll start over.” It was quite comical, it was quite a thing. But it was to help keep the interest up over there. I think they have three or four different small museums, and they have clothing and all different things to do with each bomb group. LR: Let me ask you a question I’ve been asking all individuals I’ve been interviewing lately. How do you think your experiences and your time in World War Two influenced and affected the rest of your life? RH: Well I know it influenced the rest of my life. My wife and kids all said they were so thankful that I didn’t have to kill anybody, because they’re sure that I wouldn’t have been the same person I am. I got to tell you, when you got in the service, and started standing there for retiring the flag, raising the flag, having our national anthem and all, it affected my life vastly. I have been very patriotic, I love my flag, I love this country, and I love our 40 anthem. Like I said, I’m pretty hurt when somebody does something that is not right, because they don’t realize how much was done for all of us. My President of my senior class, he didn’t come back. My senior classman when I was a junior, he didn’t come back. Nicer young men you would never know. There was so many that you knew that they gave their life for us. They were having a plane fly down, it takes us to get Old George Bush, the elder George. They said, “Oh, we won’t be able to take off the weather’s so bad.” I thought, “Who are you trying to kid? What weather?” I know for a fact that one of the sergeants that I became acquainted with had been there all the time, and right at the time of when they were bombing, really putting up a bunch of missions, they called for a mission this day, and it was sopped in. They couldn’t see from the tower to the runway. They were out there with fuses, lining each plane for the runway, they couldn’t see the sides of the runway, and they had to look at their instruments to take off. They got every one of the planes off the ground. The top plane was at 25,000 feet and had broke out of the top, so they unwound the whole thing. They were circling the base all the way up to 25,000 feet. They uncircled and landed every one and they didn’t lose a plane. You just could get lined up and find where the runways at and land and hope you hit the runway. These guys sitting down in Texas, “We can’t do it.” Well I thought, “What do you mean you can’t do it? All you got to do is set it right there. They take off right now from Hill Field, they just set it if 41 they’re going to San Francisco; all they got to do is follow the needle. There is no navigation to it anymore, they don’t have to worry where’s that mountain, where’s that lake. We’ve got it for cars now. Where do you want to go and you go. My goodness, back then you had to, if you heard the radio ranges, do you know what that is? LR: Radio ranges? RH: Radio range. They had a tower, and they had radio beams going out from this tower, and the signal would be dip-daw, and daw-dip. You had four quadrants, and as it comes together, the dip-daw and the daw-dip join. So that’s how you’d fly the radio range. You’d listen to that, and let me tell you, after about three hours, your heads going oh! It’s the funniest thing, you’d be going along that radio range and listening to that daaaaa, then all of a sudden, it would be going dip-daw, dip-daw, and you’d wake up and you’d think, “How did we get off the beam?” You had to find the beam back again, but that’s how you flew, and these quadrants went out, and they would have these towers out across the country, and you would fly to one and then you would switch to the other and you would fly the beam. That’s how they navigated back then. As well as sight. Down here, have you been down to Carlsbad Caverns? LR: I haven’t. RH: The mountain comes back here into New Mexico, and it climbs up like this, and then it goes down like this, clear down to the plain, then it drops down a couple of feet down here. This is where it came down like this, 42 they had a radio range out here away from it, so planes coming from West to East and going across Texas could go across. But they had quite a few military planes would come, biff, into the mountain. Be off the radio range just a little ways, and they would crash right into the side of the mountain, and that’s where all the caves are. I knew about that because I was down there, that was in our area down there, but that’s how they navigated back then, but it’s a breeze now my goodness. LR: I just wanted to thank you for your time and all the great stories you shared. It’s a pleasure to sit here and listen to your stories, I appreciate what you’ve done personally. It means a lot to me, thank you.