The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Charles Scheffel. Scheffel grew up in Oklahoma and enlisted in the Army ROTC in 1940. He was called up in 1941 after Pearl Harbor. He was allowed to finish out his senior year of college and was married in March 1942. He embarked on the Queen Elizabeth from New Jersey in September 1942. As leader of 200 men, he landed in Scotland and drove with them to Whittington Barracks where they joined with the British 51st Highlanders. He lists the three main survival lessons he learned from the seasoned English soldiers: having a batman to back you up, digging a two-man foxhole, and waiting for the ""crack and thump."" Scheffel how the ""crack and thump"" lesson would later save his life when he was seriously wounded when attacking the Siegfried Line. From England he went to Algeria with the British troops on the Scythia. The ship is torpedoed off the coast limps into Algiers. Scheffel made the decision to leave the British Highlanders and join up with American 9th Division in February 1943. The division went into Tunisia. Then he was sent to spend another month with the British looking for mines. He then returned to the 9th Division and fought until the end of the campaign in Northern Tunisia. He describes taking 700 German POW's back to Algeria to ship to the United States after 175,000 Germans surrendered to the Americans. In Sidi-bel-Abbes, Algeria, he is ordered to set up a safer prositution house in order to minimize the spread of STD's among the soldiers. Next, he leads soldiers in the Sicilian campaign. He describes direct encounters with General Patton during this campaign. From there, the division went to England, then Normandy, France, Belgium, and Germany, before …