The following text was automatically extracted from the image on this page using optical character recognition software:
Interviewer:
Veteran:
Interviewer:
Veteran:
Interviewer:
Veteran:
Interviewer:
Veteran:
What was it like being 22 years old, and you're in the service, and you're
overseas, and you're going through all this training? How was in mentally and
physically?
I started training for this actually in 1937. I had gone to some military camps and
had actually earned an officer's rank by the time I went to A&M as a freshman in
1939. So, I went to school and graduated with a degree in chemical engineering,
and all through that time at A&M we knew that we were going to go war as soon
as we graduated. Pearl Harbor happened when I was a junior in college, so we
knew the handwriting was on the wall. I guess you'd have to say that we were all
just living a rather fatalistic kind of life knowing that if we graduated, we might
not come back. We lived with that possibility. My main hope was that I could
get an education and become an officer and not have to go into the trenches and
look at the other end of an enemy gun barrel, and so I worked very hard to get an
education so that I could make a contribution and perhaps avoid, like I say, being
in the trenches fighting in the infantry.
Did you just join the military on your own, or were you drafted?
Actually, I went to A&M, and I enrolled in the Reserve Officer Training
program-volunteered for that. In order to complete that, you signed a contract
saying that 'if I complete this, I agree to go into the service.' In effect, they were
paying for my education by doing that. That was voluntary, but there was this
contract that had to be signed.
Did your family support you when you enlisted?
Yeah. My mother was supportive. Actually, back earlier in my camp training
work, I had been offered a scholarship to West Point, and that, of course, was a
military school and all of that, but my mother said, "No, I don't want you to do
that. That's going too far, but going to A&M is OK."
It's good that you had family support. Where did you train at?
Let's just start out saying I training at A&M, and I became a student captain at
A&M and had my own field artillery battery there. We trained hard at A&M.
-2-