Interviewer ---
Okay Uncle Bob, first question, there are a few questions that I ask everybody so and there's only a couple. The first one would be, where were you on December 7, 1941?
Bob ---
I had to think about that. I was, I was in Metaline Falls, I was workin at Pend Oreille Mine and we stayed in Pend Oreille Mine building up on the hill. Margaret and Ernie were in another cabin up near us.
Interviewer ---
Now when you talk about us, it would be you and Aunt Helen?
Bob ---
Yeah
Interviewer ---
Okay, and how did you hear about the attack on Pearl Harbor?
Bob ---
I guess the next day down at work.
Interviewer ---
Okay, was it all the buzz in the mine, what were they talkin'?
Bob ---
Oh yeah, they were really talking about it
Interviewer ---
Okay, how do you feel about, we're going to skip all the way to the end of the war. How do you feel about the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, should we have done it, should we have not?
Bob ---
Yeah we should have done it
Interviewer ---
Why?
Bob ---
We saved a lot of American boys
Interviewer ---
You said you worked at Pend Oreille Mines...
Bob ---
Yeah about oh musta been there about five months.
Interviewer ---
What was that like?
Bob ---
Oh it was just a job workin underground
Interviewer ---
Tell me about it. There's, there's very little I've been able to research about the mines. There's not much written about it, tell me what was being mined for.
Bob ---
Well they were mining for lead and zinc and uh our job was to mine the ore to go to the concentrator and the concentrates were then shipped off and refined to smelter, but that was not done with the mine until it was shipped away someplace.
Interviewer ---
And specifically, what was your job?
Bob ---
Uh well I had two or three different jobs. I was chuck tender with a miner, stoke mining and raise mining, drifting and then I ran a muckin machine for awhile.
Interviewer ---
Now this is going to show how little I know about mining, explain to me all of those. I don't know much about mining, you know like I said, there's very little written about the mine.
Bob ---
Well the muckin machine was nothing but a scraper that scraped the, the uh blasted rock into a chute where it was lowered down to the lower level and, and uh trains come by and picked the picked the rock up outta the chutes and took it up and it was hoisted up to the concentrator at the surface.
Helen Beaubier ---
And our brother-in-law ran the hoist, Ernie, Uncle Ernie.
Interviewer ---
Uncle Ernie ran the hoist. I'm going to do yours separately Aunt Helen, but if there's stuff you want to throw in, please do.
Helen ---
Okay
Interviewer ---
I may have to have you move over a chair though, so we can get you on the microphone
Helen ---
Oh no
Interviewer ---
I have to have a microphone because when I transcribe them I listen to the tape, and write down everything we say and the best way to hear it is off the microphone. Okay, what were your, remember what your wage was up at the mine Uncle Bob?
Bob ---
Oh it was in the neighborhood of $1.90 an hour.
Interviewer ---
Pretty good wage.
Bob ---
Yeah it was in those days.
Interviewer ---
Real good wage. Now you said you worked there for five months, what did you do at the end of the five months, where did you go? You were in an essential industry, that's why I'm asking.
Bob ---
I went to work for the Forest Service, my summer job.
Interviewer ---
Doing what, fighting fires?
Bob ---
Well I was uh an alternate ranger at Chatau
Helen ---
You know where that is?
Interviewer ---
No I don't
Helen ---
Out of Bonners Ferry
Interviewer ---
Out of Bonners Ferry?
Bob ---
Yeah, between Sandpoint and Bonners Ferry
Interviewer ---
Okay, okay, now did you serve in the service? I know you did, but I have to ask it anyway.
Bob ---
Yeah, I, I...
Interviewer ---
And how did that come about? I mean, you were working for the Forest Service
Bob ---
Well, I, I worked for the Forest Service and I had to of course my job uh was given, oh I didn't have to go, I uh...
Interviewer ---
You were deferred?
Bob ---
...deferred, yeah and uh in the Fall of 1943, uh 'nother fella and Hank Diener and I decided that we were gonna enlist. We went to Spokane and enlisted in the Seabees.
Interviewer ---
Okay, what, um Grandpa Rednour told me kind of about what it was like to go to Spokane and go through all the rigamorole I didn't get it all on tape though, so could you describe for me what it was like to go into Spokane, where did you have to go, what sort of things did you have to do?
Bob ---
Well all we did was go to the recruiter and he asked us about our experience and told us what rating we would have going into the service and I enlisted for two years.
Interviewer ---
Or did you have to stay for the duration of the war?
Bob ---
Well actually I was a little longer but I was beyond the two years that I signed up for, but there a little longer.
Interviewer ---
What did you do in the Seabees?
Bob ---
Well we went through boot camp at Camp Perry, Virginia. Incidently that was Captain Ware's ranch and Walter Winchell the columnist was eventually kicked out of the Navy because he referred to it as Captain Ware's hog ranch. Captain Ware raised hogs, sold 'em back to the Navy.
Interviewer ---
Okay, I did not know that, that's interesting
Helen ---
I didn't know that either
Interviewer ---
All right, I'm writing notes, but I may just go to the transcripts 'cause I want to listen
Bob ---
Yeah we were in, we took boot camp and then uh I didn't get a leave after boot camp, but we formed a battalion and took some advanced training, Camp Perry and then they sent us home on leave and we come back from leave and we found the battalion had been broken up, so we were put into a they called a Suspense Draft and we did work details and received additional training, formed another battalion for about two weeks and that dissolved [laughs] back in Suspense finally oh let's see it was along in the spring they shipped us to Davisville, Rhode Island camp...I can't even think of the name of the camp anymore.
Interviewer ---
This must be the standard place they sent the Seabees then, was Davisville, because Uncle Ted [Schwab] mentioned Davisville as well.
Bob ---
Well there was Davisville and Port Hueneme in California and uh one in Florida and we went to Davisville, and we were as a battalion and we took additional training in Davisville, we loaded all of our supplies for the 30th Special Battalion into a Victory Ship, they put a warrant officer aboard and it left, and uh about a week after that happened they go and split the battalion in half they took half of headquarters company and two companies, and sent us to Leto[?] Beach, Long Island and the other half of the battalion went to California, Port Hueneme. We went to Leto[?] Beach and was there and took amphibious landing training with a bunch of the regular navy. We were there oh let's see, about I'd guess maybe a month and a half, month, month and a half and we shipped out of Davisville, Rhode Island down at one of the piers in New York aboard a German ship that had been captured in South America and had been turned into a troop ship.
Interviewer ---
How interesting
Bob ---
It was, oh there was six or eight thousand of us on the ship, all different services. We joined a convoy of over a hundred ships; we shipped out on New York. We spent twenty-three days getting across the North Atlantic. We were from the Azores to Iceland and all over for we had to had a lot of cargo ships, freighters with us and uh there was a, let's see, there was a uh not a battleship, the next one down...
Interviewer ---
Cruiser?
Bob ---
...cruiser. And there was a destroyer or two and several destroyer escorts and, and the weather was rough. We travel about ten knots an hour because that was as fast as the freighters could go and there was depth charges goin off quite frequently.
Interviewer ---
Scary!
Bob ---
And it was rough that old ship would go up and the nose would come outta the water and then go down and the bow would come out and you'd see the screw and...
Interviewer ---
Oh man!
Bob ---
...and the little destroyer escorts, those guys had to have a cast iron constitution because they went this way also this way at the same time. [moving his hands in an front to back motion and a side to side motion] We landed in uh because of submarine raids we were supposed to land in Southern England but we landed in uh at uh on the Clyde River in Scotland. And they sent us from there to Camp Ivy Bridge out of Plymouth, England.
Interviewer ---
Okay, now I've got a question, what, I'm gonna kind of guess at what year this was, it musta been 1944?
Bob ---
'43
Interviewer ---
'43
Bob ---
No it woulda been '44, yeah
Interviewer ---
So you went over with the contingent that the big buildup for D-Day then?
Bob ---
Well we were supposed to follow, uh D-Day actually well see I guess D-Day musta happened while we was at sea because when we got we got to Ivy Bridge we had to leave two of our men who had gotten severely poisoned with poison ivy at Davisville. [laugh] When they came to the gate and uh they joined us there while, shortly after we arrived at Ivy Bridge and they asked the, the first thing they asked the guard at the gate was who was left in the outfit because our equipment had went ashore on the beach and our battalion name was stenciled on the equipment and uh they'd gotten a hold of the pieces and as far we don't even know if the, we never saw the warrant officer that went with that equipment we never did know what happened to him, but none of our people were there and so D-Day had taken place.
Interviewer ---
What did you do while you were in England? You hear about the Seabees in the Pacific about the buildings of runaways and doing all that different things, what did you do?
Bob ---
Well we had two companies of colored stevedores and we were a transportation outfit with headquarters, half a headquarters company so'd uh several of us were assigned as truck drivers. I went in as a gunners mate.
Interviewer ---
I was gonna ask that, what your rank was
Bob ---
2nd class gunners mate
Helen ---
I have a question, how come Hank went in as a 1st class petty officer and you weren't? You went in as a...
Bob ---
Because he had been at a work camp
Helen ---
a ha
Interviewer ---
He had had leadership training basically, they considered as leadership
Helen ---
I don't remember why he went in with a higher rank than you because I didn't think he'd even gone to college
Bob ---
It had nothing to do with it. It was your work experience.
Helen ---
Oh, okay
Interviewer ---
If he had gone to college he probably would have gone in as an officer because they were taking anybody that had college experience.
Helen ---
Bob had college
Interviewer ---
Really? See that's interesting then that they didn't consider...
Bob ---
No I hadn't graduated
Helen ---
Well you hadn't graduated but you had almost
Interviewer ---
Well you had to have a degree to be an officer. Okay, good question I was going to ask that and I missed it. Okay, so you, you drove truck, all over England.
Bob ---
England, Scotland
Helen ---
He brought me some beautiful fabric from Scotland, centerpieces, wool, Irish wool. Boy it was beautiful, Scotch wool I mean.
Interviewer ---
What was England like during the war? I mean you have obviously firsthand experience with, with wartime England, what was it like?
Bob ---
Well I didn't have a very good impression of it.
Interviewer ---
Did you, how come?
Bob ---
Well it was a very backward, a beat down society, if you were born to a poor class that was your lot in life. I mean as an example, we were loadin cargo ships, this is after Paris had been taken, loadin cargo ships, coastal ships to go take uh, well we took over, relieved a oil battalion, pipeline battalion, and we had a whole big field of oil pipe and they needed that in Paris to repair the water mains and sewers, and we were loading this aboard ship and the stevedores went on strike, the British stevedores.
Interviewer ---
British stevedores, okay
Bob ---
They went on strike, the crane operators, so our warrant officer went down and this one guy was still down there with a crane way up on the end of the dock. [He] Had a big bucket, and he'd dip it in the water, bring it up, set it on the dock, pick it up, and empty the water out back in the ocean. And uh warrant officer went up and asked him to come down and operate a crane. He said, "I can't." Warrant officer's "why not?" "I'm only an apprentice." "How long have you been an apprentice?" "Eleven years."
Interviewer ---
Oh my gosh!
Bob ---
And see the warrant officer he and his dad owned a stevedoring company in Florida and so these pretty neatly their stuff the warrant officer came back up to base and got all the guys that had ever run a crane together and they picked out four or five crane operators and took 'em down and he worked with 'em about two days and we were loadin ships again.
Interviewer ---
Man, that's amazing
Bob ---
And that was, see the English people tallied all the cargo that went aboard the ship, and they got paid by the ton and whenever they made 'til there was a certain amount half of their wages automatically went to the government for taxes, so they quit work for not havin it was in the middle of the day, they just walked off the job, and that was some of the things that happened over there. And uh people uh, the city of Plymouth quite a large city, five boroughs and I would say that probably ninety percent of the people in any one of the five boroughs had never been out of that borough in their lifetime.
Interviewer ---
That, that wow!
Helen ---
Really backwards
Interviewer ---
Very backwards
Bob ---
And there was absolutely no refrigeration of any kind. The market was uh, if they had meat it hung block-n-tackle in the open air out and the butcher would lower it down and cut some meat off and roll it back up. You know and the bread wasn't wrapped, it came in a little cart, uh brown bread and hard, crusty stuff. The guy'd just lift it up like wood on his arm and carry it in the restaurant you know, no wrapper on it and his jacket woulda stood up anyplace he left it.
Interviewer ---
Oh, I'm sure
Bob ---
Fish and chips, if you got 'em, why they were wrapped in newspaper, old newspaper and it was just, it was just a very backward country and...
Helen ---
Didn't think of it as being that way?
Interviewer ---
No I didn't, not at all
Bob ---
And uh well I don't know some of the people were glad that we were there and a lot of weren't, "you were ruinin our country," they didn't want us there, you know, "you bloody Yanks," and all this stuff.
Interviewer ---
Did you, how often, you know you've heard stories about the liberty in London or other places, how often were you allowed liberties?
Bob ---
Well...
Interviewer ---
Did you go anywhere interesting?
Bob ---
We went back and forth to well with haulin a semi-truck you know I hauled to Falmouth that was Land's End and I'd go to Southhampton, I go to Rosenees, Scotland and Birmingham and all over but I had one, one leave I think we had a three-day pass when we went to London. We were there while the Germans were shootin the Screamin Mimis in there.
Interviewer ---
What was that like?
Bob ---
Well, [chuckle] it was weird. Uh you didn't know where they were gonna land and they didn't either.
Interviewer ---
I have heard that, yes
Bob ---
And they'd come over makin a lot of racket they'd that's why they called 'em Screamin' Mimi's, they made a lot of racket. And we were watching the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace and one of 'em hit a supermarket not too far from there and killed a bunch of people, but that was one thing about the British people you know, the air raid siren would go off and they didn't pay any attention to it and I asked 'em why and they said, "Well if you paid any attention to it, you'd never get anything done," so they just ignored it, they didn't...
Interviewer ---
Okay, I guess I'm going to just quit taking notes because I can't listen and take notes at the same time. Why you were in England I asked Uncle Ted this, and he said that he got to see some, did you ever get treated to USO shows or you know, any entertainment?
Bob ---
We didn't no.
Interviewer ---
You didn't?
Helen ---
Bob Hope never got over to England, huh?
Interviewer ---
What?
Helen ---
Bob Hope never got to England
Interviewer ---
You never got to see Bob Hope, or...
Bob ---
Well he never come near where we were, no the only entertainment we got was listening to Glenn Miller on the radio. That was probably one of the saddest days in England was when he was reported missing. [December 1944]
Interviewer ---
Let me see, I need to get, I don't know if you mentioned it or not, what was the name of, what was your unit, company?
Bob ---
30th Special Battalion
Interviewer ---
Okay, I think you already said that , but...Okay I'm going to kind of bring you back to the U.S. for a minute, a few minutes because you were here for a couple years. What was the hardest thing to live without during rationing? That question[laughing] is coming Aunt Helen, that question's comin', that one's on here too.
Bob ---
Well I don't know we were there wasn't, well I suppose the thing that bothered us the most was we didn't have any gas to go anyplace. [laugh]
Interviewer ---
Okay, now I'll go back to the question I have kinda raised, 'cause actually I do have it on there I just didn't ask it yet. Um I have to think of a way to put it, what was it like being away from your wife and son, right 'cause, 'cause Ricky was born somewhere during the war, I don't know exactly when, but what was it like not being home?
Bob ---
Wasn't too good you know, what could you do about it?
Interviewer ---
Did you have any trouble with the censor writing letters back and forth?
Bob ---
Well you couldn't tell 'em anything so yeah, you couldn't tell 'em where you were or anything else.
Helen ---
He one time wrote a letter and said something that we'd, we had had a Plymouth car and he said something about I think was glad that we had sold the Plymouth and that was all done before he ever went, so he was trying to tell us that he was in Plymouth.
Interviewer ---
Tried to get a way around it. Okay, what, oops I just asked that, this happens, um...
Bob ---
You're too young for that
Interviewer ---
Yeah I know I'm not, but it does, um back to the U.S. again, one more question about the U.S. I think, well maybe two. Um, what was this area like during the war when you were still here, what was it like, what makes now different than then?
Bob ---
Well there are too many people here now
Interviewer ---
Okay, that's fair. Especially describe the north country, you know north end of the county. I've talked to hardly anybody that used to live up there, so describe the north end to me during the war when you were here.
Bob ---
Well I wasn't, I was uh up there after I got out of the service.
Interviewer ---
Okay
Bob ---
I was over around Naples and Bonners Ferry while before I went in the service
Interviewer ---
Okay, so Newport
Bob ---
Yeah, uh
Helen ---
Sandpoint, no you weren't in Sandpoint then
Bob ---
No uh uh
Helen ---
Priest Lake
Bob ---
Well I wasn't at Priest Lake
Helen ---
No, no not during the wartime
Bob ---
But it uh, just like the country around here only it wasn't, not as much people most of it was uninhabited, it was national forest land, most of it.
Interviewer ---
Being that you were actually in the Forest Service, you're one of the one's that could really answer this question for me, what do you remember of the prisoner of war camps, or well detainee, internee camps? I get different, conflicting what they were called.
Bob ---
Well all I know about 'em was that uh once or twice we had some of 'em on the fire as fire fighters and that my only connection with 'em and that wasn't, I really didn't have any direct contact with 'em, 'cause any contact you had was always through a liaison officer.
Interviewer ---
What do you remember most about the war years? You laugh now [Helen] you're going to get every single one of, not all of 'em but most of 'em.
Bob ---
[silence] Nothing stands out particularly except that I was where I really didn't want to be and I couldn't do anything about it.
Interviewer ---
What was, these are really thought provoking questions here. What was your best moment?
Bob ---
When I got my discharge
Interviewer ---
And when was that?
Bob ---
December 7, 1945
Interviewer ---
Really? That's interesting
Norma Rednour ---
Dick was out in September 1945
Bob ---
Well my enlistment was up in November but I didn't get because of foul up over in Bremerton I didn't get out.
Interviewer ---
Along that lines when did you leave England to get back to the United States then, was it before, how long, before you got discharged did you get back to the States?
Bob ---
Oh about, about six weeks 'cause I had to, we landed in Davisville, and I came home on a thirty-day leave and I went to, I had to report to Pier 99 in Seattle, and I was there oh about ten days or two weeks before I got sent to Bremerton with my discharge.
Interviewer ---
What was your longest day?
Bob ---
Well they was all long so [laugh]
Interviewer ---
Does any one long one stick out in your mind?
Bob ---
No, not really
Interviewer ---
Okay, that's a good answer, that's the best one yet for that one. Who were your best friends, do you have any that you know that you would consider that you were really close to?
Bob ---
Where?
Interviewer ---
When you were in England, or when you were in your Seabee training?
Bob ---
Oh I had, there were two or three fellows that I was pretty good friends with, that's about it. We were all together, so you know we were all in the same boat. I was, I was probably one of the, I wasn't the youngest but I was close to the youngest one in the outfit in headquarters company. Lots of 'em were in their late forties.
Helen ---
One of the guys wanted him to go in the logging business in Alaska, but his mother and I both objected.
Interviewer ---
You were in England then on what they called V-E Day, correct?
Bob ---
I was in, I was in Glascow, Scotland on V-E Day
Interviewer ---
What was that like?
Bob ---
Well it was kinda hectic. They'd had the riot the civilians and sailors had had the riots in Glasgow and they called about twenty of us into Glasgow to go on Shore Patrol duty with the MPs [Military Police] and when V-E Day was declared for about four or five days there was practically no automobile traffic on the streets a bonfire at every intersection and thousands of people goin' up and down, some guy with a bagpipe and he'd have thirty or forty people behind him goin' up and down the street you'd a go along and of course they closed all the pubs and everything and you'd walk by and somebody try to grab part of your uniform and anything. I just happened the outfit that we got teamed up with was a bunch of GIs that had been in France and they'd had the hell shot out of 'em and make a noise like a burp gun and they could be under that davenport before I knew you never seen such a jittery bunch of guys.
Interviewer ---
What, well I guess that already answered my question of what do you remember most about when the war was over.
Bob ---
Well V-J Day we were in Exler, England and there was about, there musta been close to 50,000 sailors and Seabees at Exler and when it came over the radio a short time later, there was nobody left in camp [laugh] the guards didn't even, they, they couldn't stop everybody just piled out.
Helen ---
That musta been kind of a special day
Bob ---
And yeah that was
Helen ---
Just to know that it was all over.
Bob ---
We, we spent a, we spent a lot of time after V-E Day loadin' LSTs [Landing Ship, Tank] with supplies to go to the Pacific. Pull them up, they'd pull 'em up onto a hardstand and drop the door and we were loadin' torpedoes in crates on the crossways on the semi and you'd have to back down this hardstand that always the tide was always out when you did it and them hardstands was just concrete blocks cabled together, you know it'd was just as slick as if it was greased. Well you walked back down the hardstand and they had a little floating kind of a dock there that you backed onto and onto the door of the LST. Well about half of the LSTs they'd welded rails into 'em so they could uh send those Limey goods wagons they're freight cars you know, their freight cars were about oh only about twenty feet long and they put four rows of 'em inside the uh hull of the LST where you'd start backing through that door and of course with those torpedoes you'd have that much room on each side [holding hands about six inches apart] and you'd just get started nicely through the door and tire would hit that fog [?] and the rail and sideways [laughing] you'd go so and you backed out and back in again. They'd turnbuckled a bunch of them after you'd get them loaded, you know you'd turnbuckled the, those LCMs [Landing Craft, Medium] up on the deck of the LSTs, put cribbing in there and uh took, chained 'em to the deck. You know welded eyebolts and chained 'em down and they got caught in a storm off of the Azores and lost a bunch of them because they buckled in two.
Helen ---
What are LSTs?
Interviewer ---
LST is Landing Ship, Tank
Bob ---
Yeah they were the ones that could carry the tanks and the LCMs they did the, they took both men and machines
Interviewer ---
Right, what do you miss about that time? Just two more questions. What do you miss about that time?
Bob ---
Don't miss any of it
Interviewer ---
Don't miss any of it? Okay, that's fair enough. And the last one is, what did you do after the war? I know, like I said, I already know the answers to these questions but I still have to answer them for posterity sake.
Bob ---
Well came home, I went back to school, graduated with a degree
Interviewer ---
In what?
Bob ---
I graduated in general with a major in forestry at WSC [now Washington State University]
Interviewer ---
And then what did you do with your degree?
Bob ---
I went to work for the Forest Service
Interviewer ---
All right, is there anything that I missed Uncle Bob...?
Bob ---
Nope
Interviewer ---
...that you want to share? Okay, that's fair enough.
| Copyright © 2004 by Kristen Cornelis |