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Long Term Impacts

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Do you think that Hollywood correctly portrays World War II? Do you watch the movies?

All of them. Saving Private Ryan, and so forth. What they knew they did. Like Spielberg, when he got questioned on a movie that he made, and they told him the balloons for the aircraft—that was put up by a black company. And the attacking the mine fields, that was a black engineering company that went in to clean that out. And he didn't And the movie General Patton, we did all that fighting for him, that was a black tank battalion, and you never did see a one black man now except his orderly. So Spielberg, he apologized, he said he didn't know, that the people he had out there doing the research, that's what they brought back to him.

Has your experience in the Army and WWII given you a certain take on war?

You mean like Iraq and so forth?

Yeah. Or any other.

We've had Korea and Vietnam. I don't know about those—I wasn't interested in them. I just knew it was hell. And the reason that they did it—I don't get into politics. And the day I arrived, things that I could see from the beginning, that we were going to have problems. Remember when they were showing all this ammunition and all these bombs? And we wasn't destroying them? We just passed them by. And then somebody came and stole them. See, you destroy all that stuff as you go along. You don't leave none of that, because they will use it now against us. People come in and take anything to build a bomb and get ready. We didn't remove anything but the money.

I want to go back to the motivation question. Were you motivated out of hatred of the Germans? Were you motivated just to do a good job? Were you motivated to prove a point? When you got up each morning or when the fighting stopped and you had to gear up to go, what were you fighting for?

To keep from getting killed. No, that's a very good question. We didn't have equal rights. I couldn't vote. All odds—democracy was against us. I was just fighting for my country. That's the only thing I was motivated for. I didn't hate the Germans, I didn't like them either. He was just fighting for his country, and I was fighting for mine. And just stand up to him and let him know you just as much man as he is. And show the world that. I'm glad that we did a good job. You know, not only the 761st had to prove that. The Buffalo Soldiers, they had to prove it. Then World War I, there was a black—the 92nd, the Buffalo Soldiers, they stayed up one day longer than we did, straight, in the trenches in France. They gave us recognition. You know, they couldn't fight under the American flag, they had to fight under the French flag because they said that if they had fought under the American flag, they would come back and want equal rights. There was lot of junk out there. And they start bringing it in. So I didn't get involved in that, I just, did what we had to do, day by day.

In what ways do you think your experiences in the war helped shape who you became? How would you be different if you didn't go?

I probably would have had a different career. I still would have been in high school. I bet my civilian life would have been all together different. And I wouldn't have married my wife. So, everything—I'm happy what happened, the way it turned out.

What do you want readers and listeners of the website to get from your story?

To do further research on it where they can learn what the blacks—African Americans, they say now—contributed to World War II. Some of it, might have motivated Martin Luther King to do what he did. We wasn't getting any credit at all for anything.

How does it feel now to get some credit, you know there have been some books written recently?

As long as they do it correctly. There was a man who called me yesterday, there was a film that they had out, Liberators, and they said—a couple of the guys, and this Jewish lady—said that the 761st came to Dachau and Mauthausen and that she met these three guys. See that was a lie, we were no where near Dachau. The one that we went to was Gunskirchen and Mauthausen. So they discredited it by that reason because it was a lie. That way you tell one lie, you tell another one. They just get discredited for everything that you did. So, the wife had a copy—this fellow was in some kind of association they had and on the 23rd, he got that film and he thought he had something. "What do you think about this film," and all this. I said, "I'm sorry sir, but you've got to discredit it," because of the things against it, and about the lies in it. So the wife found the newspaper article where this lady had the lawsuit and discredited it. And we were going send him to stuff. He wants to know about the 761st. Just let him know that he shouldn't use that unless they explain to the people that it was a lie. It was a good film to look at. I mean it looked great, you know. But those couple of lies in it, they kill the whole thing. They might have gone to those places, but it was after the war, the sites.

Did you have any contact with any white soldiers? Did you ever had any conversations, and what were they like? What questions did you get asked, what questions did you ask?

Yeah I've talked to soldiers. It's integrated now.

There's no specific questions that they wanted to know, or you wanted to know?

No, just that we fought together to the end, and we still do it now. They're always, you know, able to do that.

We've interviewed several liberators or soldiers, and when we talk to the soldiers like yourself, the details are really important. The viewer sometimes has a hard time with the details. Can you explain why it's so important to you and other soldiers that fought in the war that all of the details are as accurate as possible? Why is that so important to get it all exactly right? We've never asked anyone this.

If you don't—say you have a lot of researchers, and people go out and look for flaws in anything. Say for instance, if I get mixed up, October the 8th we came to France, October the 10th was in our first battle. I don't know if it was the 8th or the 10th. I was going to start saying if I don't remember correctly—get it mixed up—I would say "early October" or "late October." And that way you can play with the date yourself. If you find it, trying to pinpoint a different date, some people just jump right on it and start an argument. That's kind of hard to remember because we got too many dates to remember and at the time, they didn't mean anything to you. "Hey, man, what's the date?" "Aw, man, the 8th." You know—so what? But, that's the way people are.

One of the reasons I ask you, has to do with, with doing oral history and interviewing elders, is that sometimes people criticize that process of interviewing the elders, as saying that they get things confused, and maybe that's a waste of time. What do you say about that?

You got to get them confused, and then un-confuse them. Because that's like sweeping history under the rug. You got to hear what they say. They are not that confused. And whatever they're telling you, there's some truth in it. It may not be what you want to hear. How do you know that he's not telling the truth. And you wasn't there. So listen to the elders. And what you youngsters got to do is always listen to him if he's senile because he's got a story he's trying to tell. Then a light might click on, and then he'll change it and come back and say, you know this is what happened, that's what happened. So you're doing a good job, hanging out with those elders and keep them talking. Because if we don't, these stories never would be told.

We really appreciate it.

I appreciate you guys coming. It's good to see you again you little rascal!

You too.