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Drafted
Were you drafted?
Yes.
How old were you?
Eighteen.
What grade were you in?
Twelfth.
What was your reaction when you found out you were
being drafted?
Reaction?
I didn't like it because I wanted to finish high school. And my dad,
he tried to ease my pain a little bit by saying, "Well, World
War I, you won't have to go any place because when I was drafted in
World War I, I thought I had to leave, but the war was over before
I got there." That was the only thing that I had to try and console
me a little bit until I got the final notice to bring enough clothes
for three days. I knew that was it.
You were drafted while you were still in school. Did you have any grudge against that? Did you want to continue your education at the time?
Yes, I wanted to continue my education. My father tried to get me out of it until I finished my high school education. But they wouldn't do it because they said too many of the older generation—the men—wasn't passing the physical exams. They had to come and get us kids.
Were you scared?
Well,
I was just curious to find out and see what it was like in the Army.
Matter of fact, I didn't want miss my mother's cooking. The only thing
I worried about most when I got in was where I was going to sleep and
eat. That was the main thing that I worried about. When I went in,
the first thing I found outwas where was the mess hall and where I
was going to sleep, and that was it.
Did you have prior knowledge about the war in Europe
before you were drafted?
No.
The only knowledge I had about the war when I was drafted, we got a
magazine that every week during our history class—current events, I
would say—we would read about it, and we'd get this magazine, and we'd
discuss it. The only thing I knew about was General Patton and Rommel
fighting in South Africa, those tanks and all of that, that was the
only knowledge I had and I'd just sit there and put my hand under
my chin and just daydream, you know, just wondering what it was like.
In the desert fighting, it was kind of rough. We’d run out of
water and our engines were water-cooled. But the German tanks, they
were air-cooled, so they didn't have to worry about water as we did
in our vehicles. That was the only knowledge that I had about the Army.
How do you think your experience and feelings of being drafted would have changed if you did have that knowledge?
I don't remember saying that but, I did have knowledge of what was going on overseas. That was with the Germans and the Russians fighting, and the Germans bombing England and Poland. They were fighting the Germans and also the Russians. Out of our history books and current events, we were up to par with what was happening overseas.
Were many of your friends drafted with you?
One.
No, three. Two other guys in my class and one had graduated the year
before.
Was that a comforting feeling?
Yes
it was. We had one kid, Fulton Walker, he lost his appetite. I sat
next to him, so every morning I had extra milk and eggs and toast.
What the kids said about me was all around the hill, "Well, Floyd,
I don't know if you lost your appetite or not, but one thing, you didn't
lose your appetite, but it sure didn't affect you." The third
day he told us—he called me Big Dade then—"I got
to eat." I
said, "OK." So I had to go back for seconds.
Was there a reason why only four of you were drafted?
Well,
that was the ones that I knew. There were one hundred and fifty of
us in that group that left from Texarkana. When we were drafted, we
went to the courthouse...
Excuse me, when you say "we," are you
referring to African Americans?
We
are all African American when I say "we." Because the whites,
they drafted them in a separate group. When we came, they had a group
for whites, and I was in with the blacks. So the whites over here, and
the blacks over here.
I
heard him call my name. I was, "What the heck did I do?" He
said, "Floyd Dade, Jr." I said, "Yeah." He
says, "Come up here." I went up there and he said," You're
in charge of these men, you're going to Camp Robertson, Arkansas. He
said, "You take this envelope, and you take it to the post commander
when you get there." He gave me the meal tickets. He said, "Make
sure that give them lunch when you get to Little Rock. And then you
report to camp." So I did, and I guess they put that in my jacket,
that I was in charge of the guys. When I went to Fort Knox I had to
do the same thing. I was in charge of that group all the way through
until we got to the 761st Tank Battalion in Camp Hood.
What did you do in Camp Hood?
That’s
where the 761st Tank battalion was. That's where we joined them to
get combat training.
Tell us more about what training was like.
I'm
glad you asked that question. When we came to Camp Hood, we had our
own tanks. At Fort Knox, we had tanks that everybody on the post would
use. Like the whites that were training in the tanks, they would use
them first thing in the morning while we would be doing other training,
like policing up the area, picking up cigarette butts, and cleaning
up the post, and cutting the grass and the weeds. Sometimes we'd have
classes, what they'd call "skull practice," simulating war
in the simulators. Then, when the white troops got through with the
tanks, they would bring them in back to the post. Then they would
do what we did except policing of the area. We had to service the tanks,
repair the one that was broken, and clean then every night and take
care of them when the whites were finished with them.
So
we learned, and that was extra learning that we did, because in combat,
when you had to do these things to your tanks, we knew how to do it
in the dark, we got that good. We learned how to assemble
and disassemble our guns and cannons in the dark also. They put us
in the back camps down in Louisiana where it was swampy, and that
was the combat conditions that which we fought in, was in that mud
and muck and snow and everything, the conditions.
That
was one thing that helped us so much in our combat experience, because
we knew what to do when we were bogged down in the mud and rain and
in those situations. When the terrain wasn't fit for you to fight in
or travel in, we knew how to do it, maneuver in it.
Can you think of another example of the different
jobs and treatment of the black soldiers in the Army before gong to Europe?
The
only job that blacks had, they were menial jobs. Now my father, he,
as I told you, he was what they call an engine watchman, they had
oil burners, and coal burners. He was making good money. His supervisor
told him—I'd say his boss when we call him, his name was Buster Johnson—he
went and got drafted and went into the Army also. He was in the railroad
battalion. I was hoping I could have gotten in touch with him and got
into his battalion, but I wasn't all that fortunate enough to do
that.
He
told my dad, he said, "If you were white, you would be what they
would call a master mechanic, and you would make ten times the money
that you were making." He said, "But I'm going to put you
in the union." The AFL-CIO; it was the firemen and oilers' union
that the railroads had. No blacks could get in that. But he said, "I'm
going to get you in it. They don't know who you are, don't show it
to anybody but here's your card, so if anything ever happens, you'd
be covered, but don't let them know you're black." He worked with
another black man, Charlie King, he would always put it under Charlie's
nose like he had something he didn't have. They kidded a lot.
You stated that your dad was told that if he was white he would have been called a master and had a better job. Were you angry at that?
No, I wasn't angry about segregation at all because I didn't know any better. I didn't face it, but the older generation, the older people, they were facing it every day. That was just the way of life. The job that my father had—during the war he did get the job of being master mechanic, he got the title of master mechanic and he got a raise in pay. That was during the war because the foreman that was his supervisor, he got drafted, so he put my dad in charge of the Kansas City Southern Railroad Company. He was what they called an engine watchman, he serviced the steam engine and all that, to make sure they are ready for the rails the next morning.
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