Interview
with Orville Bittle (back
to WWII Project)
CB: We'll
ask you to state your name and your birthday and birth place and
parents' name. |
OB: I'm Orville M. Bittle and my parents' name was George and
Gladys Bittle, and my birthday is
(DELETED CONTENT) |
CB: What was your mother's maiden name? |
OB: Fox. |
CB: And did you have brothers and sisters? |
OB: Yes, ma'am. |
CB: What were their names? |
OB: My oldest sister's name was Roxie Ann, my brother's name
was Harvey T., and my youngest sister was Katherine.
|
CB: Where were you born? |
OB: I was born between Barling and Jenny Lind on Fort Chaffee.
|
CB: Really? Your family have a farm there? |
OB: My great-grandfather. My father's name, Bittle, was German.
He brought an Irish lady to America and settled in upland
country at Fort Smith, Arkansas, in Sebastian County.
|
CB: When was that? |
OB: Story was that he could have had all of the bottomland he
wanted in Fort Smith but he chose to come out here, and he was
an upland farmer and he didn't like that bottomland. So that's
how we wound up out here, and we had that farm until I was born.
I was born in the same house my daddy was born in. So I'm a
native here, I guess you'd call me, right here. |
CB: What was your grandfather's name? |
OB: My grandfather's name was George, my great-grandfather's
name was Emanuel. |
CB: When you were growing up, where did you go to school?
|
OB: Well, my daddy was a railroad man. He was a section foreman
for the Missouri Pacific Railroad, and we lived in company
houses in Charleston, Fort Smith, Van Buren, all around,
Sallisaw, I don't know. So I went to school, mainly, I went to
Charleston. I went to Fort Smith schools a lot more than
anyplace, but I also went to school in Van Buren. I never did go
in Sallisaw. |
CB: Did you graduate from high school or did you join the Army
right away? |
OB: In the ninth, I finished the ninth grade and I got the
mumps from one of the girls in the class, that made me very
sick. Then I developed colitis, that's lower intestine. And I
was out of school for over a year because of that illness. I
liked to died, they said. When I got healed of that, then I
tried to go to work, do something, and actually, I joined the
CCC's. |
CB: Oh, really. Where were you stationed in the CCC?
|
OB: I was stationed in CCC's in Ontario, Oregon.
|
CB: What year was that? |
OB: Oh, Lord. In the Thirties, I don't know what year.
|
CB: Okay. What did you do in the CCC's? |
OB: I drove a bulldozer, RD-7. |
CB: RD? |
OB: Yeah, that's one of those that has to have a gasoline
engine to start it. It was a big, big cable lift. The bulldozer
lift was cable, so it was a slow thing. I transferred back to
Lock, Arkansas. |
CB: What was there? 2 |
OB: I drove a CAT there, it was a smaller Caterpillar. I can't
remember exactly. It was a gasoline Caterpillar, had a bulldozer
blade and it was hydraulic, so you learned to do those by the
seat of your pants, to keep those blades level. |
CB: What did you build there in the Lock Camp? |
OB: We built that lake up there, north of Mulberry, what's the
name of that. |
CB: I can't think of it. |
OB: I can't think, either, maybe Bette can. It's north of
Mulberry, probably the easiest way to get in there.
|
CB: I guess you made the same thing, about twenty dollars a
month? |
OB: Yeah. Well, they fed us, too, you know, clothed us, too.
That wasn't too bad, I guess. But out in Oregon, the Captain of
the camp, he asked me to stay there and I was trying to get
transferred back here. And he told me, said, "I'll tell you what
I'll do, I'll put you in the laundry. You'll be in charge of the
laundry." And I knew that was a money making thing. So I chose
to stay another six months out there in the laundry because I
could make extra money, quite a bit of it. I used to put those
bell-bottom in those OD's that we wore, we wore OD's in CCC's,
and I bell-bottomed the trousers for them, made a lot of money.
|
CB: How interesting. |
JW: What was there to do with your money out in Oregon?
|
OB: Well, they had a lot of things, dances and roller rinks and
all kind. We was right on the Snake River, across from Idaho,
and we'd go to Boise. I played a little basketball, I played
basketball for the team, and we'd play in Boise, Idaho, against
schools over there and stuff, and we'd do a lot of things like
that around that town. Ontario wasn't a very big town, but they
were a fruit growing area. What we did out there was build
irrigation ditches. We built irrigation for all that.
|
CB: Were you in the CCC for two years? |
OB: Well, no. I just stayed six months, come out and went to
work for the county. Worked out there in the county shop for
about a year. |
CB: What, Sebastian County? |
OB: Uh-huh. |
CB: What did you do there? |
OB: Well, I quit and went to work for the Solid Steel Scissors
Company. |
EO: Solid Steel? |
OB: Uh-huh. |
CB: Where was that? |
OB: Kelly Highway and 32nd, I guess, somewhere along there on
Kelly, just off of Midland Boulevard on the north side of town.
|
JW: Was that a door-to-door salesman job? |
OB: No, I worked in the plant. I got a foreman's job before I
left. |
CB: Actually making the scissors there? |
OB: Yeah, we made them, yeah. I ran a first class shop for them
after I come back from the war, actually, for a little while.
Then I went into sales because they'd promised me a sales job.
They had told me that I was going to sell to wholesales, go take
orders for all the cutlery that H. Boker and Company made. It
turned into H. Boker and Company. 3 |
CB: How do you spell that? |
OB: H B-o-k-e-r, and Company, Incorporated, is what it was when
I come back from the service and they moved down on Poteau
River. |
CB: Down on 1st Street? |
OB: Well, yeah, 3rd or something like that seemed like, right
on the bank of the Poteau, by Coke Hill there. |
CB: Oh, really. Still making scissors? |
OB: Still making scissors, yeah. And the first class shop made
surgical type shears for the military, for the Army, and they
put me over that plant. I run the whole thing through the
outside of forging. I was over all of the making of that shear.
|
CB: For the Army? |
OB: Yeah, for the Army. Well, for all military, federal grant
that we had. Then when they closed that plant, I went into what
they called the finishing department. They had promised me to
sell that wholesale, be the factory rep to wholesale companies.
And for cutlery, they had a cutlery plant, pocketknife factory
and several other types besides these, scissor manufacturing. So
I quit and went to work for Prudential Insurance Company, become
salesman of the month many, many times, for about two or three
years. Then I went with State Farm Insurance. |
JW: All this is after the war? |
OB: After the war, yeah. |
CB: Well, tell us about how you got into the service.
|
OB: Well, I think it's in that thing I gave you there,
something about it. When my cousin, some friends came, I guess
it was some time in February or March, they came to the plant
and tried to get me to leave with them to join the Navy.
|
CB: This was in '41? |
OB: Yeah, early '42. It was actually '42. And there was five,
five of them, of the boys, and I told them I couldn't leave. I
felt obligated to the plant to let them know and I had some
things that had bought that I needed to get squared away.
Several things like you just can't get up and leave, you got to
prepare it. I think that's what they did and then they had to
pay for it. But they went ahead and joined the Navy that day.
They took off and they'd already been down and talked to a
recruiter and all that. It was in June, I guess. I got things
where I felt like I could go. And so I was down on Garrison
Avenue one day, just kind of, well, I was really thinking about
finding an enlistment station. And there was a Sergeant walking
along and I saw him, and I started talking to him about this.
And he said, oh, yeah, he told me, and I said I'd like to get, I
think I want to go in the Army Air Corp. He said, oh, I know the
place, I can take you right there, and he did all this and I
found out then that he was a recruiter. |
JW: Just happened to be out walking around? |
OB: Happened to be walking around. And he got me and signed me
up for the Army and I wound up going in the Army then, wound up
with the field artillery. I was actually a medic, but I did so
many other things besides that, with the artillery, like driving
those vehicles and running up and down the line, carrying
messages. They had me doing all kinds of things.
|
CB: Where did they send you for your basic? 4 |
OB: Camp Bowie, Texas. I believe that's the name of that place.
|
CB: Out of Fort Worth? |
OB: Yeah, somewhere out that way. I know it was very sandy
terrain and all. |
CB: And then after your basic training, where did they ship
you? |
OB: They shipped me to Fort Bragg, North Carolina. I joined the
9th Infantry Division there, the 9th Infantry Division, 26th
Field Artillery, A Battery, or headquarters, I guess at that
time, I was in headquarters. |
CB: What kind of training did you get there? |
OB: Well, we got to walk a lot. We done them night marches and
all kinds of stuff. And at that point in time, 82nd Airborne was
there, also, and they gave us an opportunity to join the 82nd
Airborne. I had made Sergeant by that time and I guess I thought
maybe I wanted to do something a little more exciting than what
I was doing, and I volunteered to take some training under them.
So I went over to the 82nd Airborne for, oh, I guess a month or
so and worked with them. Jumped off those towers and learned a
little bit about parachutes and stuff like that, and I decided
that the extra pay wasn't quite worth. |
CB: The danger? |
OB: Yeah, so I come back to the outfit, I joined my outfit
back. And 82nd Airborne actually went over with us. They were
going overseas, too, at that same time. |
JW: Where did they teach you to be a medic, where does that
come in? |
OB: Well, from Bowie, we went down to Abilene, Abilene, Texas.
I believe they had a clinic or something down there and I was
trained in that thing. |
EO: So you had double training? |
OB: Yes, ma'am. |
CB: Did you like the medic duty? |
OB: Yes, ma'am. It wasn't anything that bad mostly in the
artillery. I mean most of the time we didn't have a lot, give
people aspirins and fix blisters and stuff like that. But yes,
we'd have a death or two, and it got bad someplaces, it wasn't
no fun. |
CB: Well, after you were in Fort Bragg with the 9th Infantry
Division, you shipped out and where did you go then?
|
OB: Well, we went to Fort Dix, New Jersey, Fort Dix. While
there, we weren't there too long; but while there, they did have
some civilian people that invited the troops to go into New York
and they'd take care of me. I was privileged to go as one of
them into New York City and I enjoyed that. Went to Macy's and
all kinds of places they took us, and to a show, and then we
wound up in a canteen, one of those USO places, the night before
they took us back to Fort Dix. |
CB: Got a chance to dance with some girls? |
OB: Oh, yeah, yeah, we got to dance. I was a pretty good dancer
in those days. |
CB: Were you? Did you have a ballroom? |
OB: Yeah. Yeah, I played a bass fiddle in a band for a little
while when I was a teenager. |
CB: Well, after you were there at Fort Dix for awhile, were you
then shipped overseas from Fort Dix? |
OB: Yes, ma'am. We went directly overseas then.
|
CB: How did you go? 5 |
OB: By ship. |
CB: What ship was it, do you remember? |
OB: USS SAMUEL CHASE I was on. How'd I remember that.
|
JW: It's all still there somewhere. |
OB: I tried to remember that for some time, USS SAMUEL CHASE.
|
CB: Where did you go on the CHASE, where did you land?
|
OB: All over the Atlantic Ocean. I think so. It seemed like
ages we were on the water. But where we wound up was in Belfast,
Ireland, the first landing we made. |
EO: Did you feel like you were home? |
OB: Well, in a way, being Irish and so much Irish, until we had
to reload our ship, combat-load it, they called it, and I was
privileged to be down there. And so I could go into Belfast
about every night if I wanted to while we was doing that. And
I'd go in, drink a little suds with them and that black beer,
whatever it was. |
CB: Did you all set up camp around Belfast or did you move on?
|
OB: While we were doing that to get most of the people off, we
stayed in Quonset huts there, the whole division actually. And
we'd move back on ship and then we went to Scotland and invaded
Scotland. We didn't take equipment naturally, it was just
practice run for us. We had to climb a bluff, believe it or not.
Now, it was almost straight up. And when we got up on top, you
know what we found? A marsh, a marsh on top of that mountain. We
couldn't believe it. It was night we were doing this and I waded
in water up to my neck sometimes. |
CB: Isn't that something. |
OB: We were going against the Scottish Black Watch, they were
guarding the airport there. We finally invaded. When we invaded
Africa, we went and took an airport, is what we did.
|
EO: So this was in preparation for the invasion in Africa?
|
OB: Yes, and they said we were successful. But we thought then,
boy, we're going to Iceland or someplace with that kind of
training. But it turned out we went all over the Pacific, I mean
Atlantic Ocean, and joined a convoy from there after that. We
immediately started out of there forming that convoy and heading
for, well, we were heading for Africa, really, is what we were
doing, but they went all over the place. We were probably
hundred and fifty miles -- no, it wasn't that close, but we were
pretty close to the United States a few times. |
CB: When would this have been? What would the date have been
approximately? |
OB: 1942. |
CB: Late 1942? |
OB: September, I guess, somewhere in that area, September,
October, September, I guess. |
JW: When you talk about going everywhere in the Atlantic, was
this because of a zig-zag maneuver? |
OB: Well, it was, yes. I don't know. It was probably to confuse
the enemy and it also was to maneuver them. We had escorts and
we didn't get attacked. I recognized the Azores as we went by.
And by the time we got into the Mediterranean Sea, through the
Gibraltar, they had announced that we had landings going on in
Morocco and Oran and all up that coast into Algiers, Algeria.
And we were headed for Algeria, actually, where we were going. 6
|
JW: So you didn't go to a lot of ports, you just did a lot of
moving out around in the middle of the water? |
OB: Yeah, yeah. And that's where I learned to smoke. They gave
us cigarettes, but I'd give mine away. I always thought that
it's better to save my money for good whiskey than to buy
cigarettes. But we had a band, and I loved music, and we had
some guitars and stuff. And we had a black-out deck on the main
deck and that was where they all could go smoke. And in that
area, why, there was always some singing and picking and
grinning going on, so I would go in there and sit. Well, it was
black in there, other than the cigarette that you had in your
hand. So one day, a guy fell over me and he come back and said,
"Bittle, take this cigarette and hold it in your hand so we know
where you are." So I held the cigarette and first thing I knew,
I was taking a drag on it, keep it lit, I guess, but I started
smoking. But I quit after I got back home. |
CB: Well, then you reached Algeria? |
OB: Yeah. We were the STONE, the ship called the STONE was part
of, well, it carried the 60th Infantry and Artillery and all of
that on it. And it was about two days out from, as I recall,
about two days out from where we were to land. Actually, the
60th was going into Algiers, their objective was to take the
Port of Algiers. They got the rudder blown off of their ship by
a German submarine. And our destroyers attacked that submarine
with all they had, ash cans and all that stuff, and blew it out
of the water finally. But we stopped all things while they were
doing that so we got to watch the battle. But then we moved on
and went on. We had to go, I don't know what the distance was,
it wasn't too far east of Algiers, in Algeria, that we made our
invasion; and that invasion was nothing like what we did, it's
almost laughable. That was like a picnic beach compared to what
we went up in Scotland to do. |
CB: In Algiers? |
OB: It was so level and easy, quick, we moved fast. We were
able to move real fast. |
CB: Now, were you encountering the Germans and the Italians,
both, or just the Germans? |
OB: We didn't encounter a thing until we got to the airport.
|
EO: Really? You mean on the shoreline there was nobody?
|
OB: Now, they were having a battle at the port in Algiers at
that time but we didn't encounter anything. And we went right in
and took that airport, they just surrendered, they didn't fire.
We didn't fire a shot to take that airport. |
CB: Who was this, the Germans? |
OB: No, it was Vichy French. |
CB: Is that right? |
OB: Yeah. |
JW: Did this airport have a name? |
OB: Maison Blache, Maison Blache Airport. |
JW: And y'all just walked in and took it over? |
OB: Yeah, we lost nothing; but their shore batteries were
firing on our ships. And about a day or two, I don't know what,
I think I said it in that note, but couple of days after we'd
taken that, we took half of a battery of guns, which is two
guns, and went up there and went into Algiers and zeroed in on
the shore batteries, and dropped 7 some 105s in there. And,
buddy, they quit right there, they quit, they surrendered then.
|
JW: So you went from the airport to join the battle going on in
Algiers? |
OB: Yeah, yes, I did, and that battle was over. Then they'd
begin to bring troops in. We went from there, we went to a
staging area, well, I guess it was an area to wait for orders,
actually, and we billeted on a farm outside of Algiers. I can't
think of the name of the village that we were close to. It might
have been Maison Blache, I'm not certain but somewhere in there.
This French man by the name of Bisbald owned this orchard, it
was an orange and tangerine orchard, and he had a big barn. He
housed all the officers in the barn, I mean in his house. We
stayed in the barn. We had to clean the barn up and then we made
us some stacked bunks out of wood we got and stuffed our
mattress covers with hay and made us a pretty nice bed in there,
cleaned that barn up. But we found in that barn, a steam motored
car, old car, it's in there so long. So we asked the owner if he
cared for us trying to get that thing going, and we did, we got
it going. |
CB: Run by steam? |
OB: Yeah. It had a big old tank on the back of it and you put
water in that and put wood under it to heat the water, and it
run, it would run on the steam. |
CB: Didn't go far, did it? |
OB: Well, we could go down to the village and run around in it
and get back. We had a lot of fun. We drew a lot of attention
with that old car. It was a lot of fun. Got a lot of girls to
ride, you know. |
JW: That's the most important part. |
OB: In those days, it was. |
CB: So you had girls and tangerines? |
OB: Girls and tangerines. |
CB: How long did you stay there? |
OB: Honestly, it seemed some time. The 39th Infantry, I found
out later, was not with us; but they called us up, I believe it
was in February, to Tunisia, the artillery. And we supported an
infantry, I think it was the 60th, possibly, along with some
English troops in Kasserine Pass. |
CB: Where was this? |
OB: Kasserine Pass. It's a pass that's near the city of
Bizerte, in Tunisia. The 60th actually stayed up there in that
area. That's why I think it was them that we were supporting,
along with the British. We had a British General at that time
over all that stuff, and he mixed our troops pretty much. I
don't think he thought the Americans could fight so he put the
British with us. |
CB: Do you remember what general it was? |
OB: I can't think of his name, no. But he got relieved by
Eisenhower probably after that, because Patton was over us in El
Guettar, we went to El Guettar. We got our butts kicked, if
that's a good word, in Kasserine. But we got against Rommel and
his tiger tanks, and we lost a battery of guns there. We were
firing point-blank at the tanks with 105 split tails. That's
shooting down low with a 105 and directly at them.
|
JW: And nothing happened? I mean it didn't stop them?
|
OB: Oh, yeah, it'd stop them. When we hit them, we stopped
them. 8 |
CB: Were you firing? What was your your duty there?
|
OB: My duty was to just help wherever I could. And I was, at
that point in time, I was at a gun, I was helping.
|
CB: Really? What kind of gun was it? |
OB: It was a 105 Howitzer, 105 split tail Howitzer. That's a
good piece, they're still using that gun. |
EO: That just shoots one shell? |
OB: At a time, you have to load it every time. And you put the
projectile in and then you cut your charges and put the casing
in and close the breech; and when you got your elevation and
everything set, deflection set, you fire it. And you get that
from an observer. I did some observation with my Lieutenant,
quite a bit to that. |
CB: What does that mean, what were you doing? |
OB: Directing the fire, directing on targets. |
JW: Did you do it using mathematical computations?
|
OB: Oh, yes. |
CB: Or did you just go, no, a little more to the east?
|
OB: Well, Lieutenant Sapp was one whale of a directer, boy. Two
shells, and he'd have that on target. And he didn't use the book
very much, I'll guarantee. It was all in his head and, buddy, he
could do it. I'd put him up against anybody directing fire. His
name was Sapp. |
CB: S-a-p? |
OB: S-a-p-p, Sapp. I'm a Christian today. I wasn't then, so
I'll tell you. He'd furnish us his rations that he got of his
drinks. And when we got cognac or anything like that, we
furnished it with him, we'd trade, we did that with him. So he
was a buddy, he was really a soldier's leader. |
EO: Did you stay with him through the war? |
OB: Yes, ma'am. |
CB: You had to pull back then from this position?
|
OB: Oh, yes, ma'am. We sent part of our unit back and dug in,
dug our placements in. And that was to be the line of the last
retreat when we dug those in, we did that. And we retreated back
to that point before we stopped. And I still don't know whether
we stopped them or they just run out of gas and couldn't come
on. But we did, we had trucks and everything burning on the
road. I saw a 1st Sergeant get his head blown off.
|
EO: How did it end? I mean did the fighting just stop?
|
OB: Yeah, they stopped. They just run us out of Kasserine and
then they turned back. I think they got orders to go because the
60th was putting so much pressure on them, on what would that
be, the north side of that pass, that they pulled those tanks
back to go up there, what they had left of them. Rommel had
split that tank division up. I don't know whether he did or the
commander over him, but they kept half of those tanks that we
fought later down in El Guettar. We knew they had a lot of
tanks, but there wasn't that many; but there was a lot of tanks
anyway, and they were powerful tanks. Our tanks didn't have a
chance against them face-to-face. There was no competition at
all. They could blow them out of the saddle; but if we could get
behind them, they were vulnerable behind. But the 105 would
knock the turret off of one, it really would, at point-blank, it
would really do it. We could knock the track off of one with
that bazooka gun; but we'd just got that bazooka in 9 Kasserine,
and funny story there. We were learning how to shoot that thing
and you had to wear a gas mask at that time to fire it, it was a
rocket propelled thing. You know Bob Burns bazooka? Have y'all
ever heard of that? Well, that's where it got its name, just an
old piece of pipe and they put that rocket in there and then you
fired the rocket and aimed it at whatever you were shooting at.
So we were standing up on this hill looking down and there was a
little old Arab shack down there in the valley, so we decided
that would be our target. There wasn't supposed to be any
civilians in there at all. And so we started, each one of us
would fire one, they were training us with it and we only had
that one. And we finally hit that shack after about three or
four rounds, we finally got right on the thing and laid it right
in there and hit very close anyway, right close to the shack,
did some damage to it. And an old Arab come running out of
there, screaming and hollering. He was running down the valley.
We didn't even know he was there, but he sure got out of there.
That's something I can remember, I guess. It's funny, I thought
it was funny. |
CB: It take two of you to fire the -- |
OB: Well, yes, it took two to fire it at that time. They really
improved that thing later. It got so it's a good gun now.
|
CB: Why did you have to wear a gas mask? |
OB: That thing when it went off, it'd burn your face.
|
EO: Burn your shoulder? |
OB: Oh, yeah. Oh, it did, it had a fire flame behind it.
|
EO: A real rocket? |
OB: It was a rocket. Y'all got me worked up here.
|
CB: Well, you learned how to shoot the bazooka and you could
knock the tracks of a tank with that. |
OB: Yes, you could. Yeah, it would do that. |
EO: Did you encounter Rommel anywhere else in Africa, or did
you leave and go? |
OB: When we pulled out of Kasserine, we went and regrouped. We
were really battered and we had to get guns issued and trucks
issued, we had to rebuild. And we did that, then we went to El
Guettar Valley, which was south of there. And that's where we
encountered Rommel again, but Patton was with us.
|
CB: Oh, he had taken over? |
OB: Uh-huh. And Patton was up there to watch that battle.
That's where I first saw him. |
CB: Did you ever talk with him? |
OB: No, never got chance to do that. |
CB: What was it like, to be under him? |
OB: He was a very strict man, he was not too pleasant. We
didn't have enough water to drink. We got orders to shave. We
got orders to wear a tie. |
CB: He ordered that? |
OB: When Patton took over. |
CB: Did you get some more water? |
OB: Yes, ma'am. We got water, but we had to go thirty miles to
get it. The evening that I was wounded in El Guettar Valley,
Wilke, a Tennessee boy, and I had gone back with a truck to an
oasis, little 10 village town, to get water. We loaded, we'd
take GI cans, water cans, and go back there and fill them all up
and bring that whole truckload back so we'd have a few days of
water, that's the way we got it, and so it wasn't no easy thing.
And I'd just gotten back. I think that was early in '43, I don't
remember the month or day. But I'd gotten back and we'd unloaded
the water and all, and I was headed for my tent. And these
planes, German planes, come in from the west. It was evening
sun, you know, in from the sun and attacked us. And they were
attacking us and I walked by a Jeep and they had a BAR laying on
that Jeep, that's an automatic rifle. And I picked that gun up,
and those planes were flying low enough and dropping those
personnel bombs on us. So I braced myself against that Jeep and
locked and loaded that gun and was aiming at that tail gunner in
one of those. That's the last thing I remember. I was aiming at
that guy, and his eyes were that big around, and he saw me down
on the ground there. I was expecting him to turn his machine gun
on me, but he didn't, I guess, I don't know. But I was blown up
by a personnel bomb at that time, was hit just a little ways
from it, they said. I didn't know. I come to in a hospital three
days later. |
EO: That's a personnel bomb? |
OB: Yes, ma'am. |
CB: What is that? |
OB: Well, they were small bombs and they were loaded with
shrapnel and all that, to kill people on the ground.
|
CB: It's a wonder it didn't kill you. |
OB: Yeah, that's true. But you know, the Lord had something for
me, because my back was all cut up, I had flesh wounds in my
legs and arms. My back's still got shrapnel in it from all that.
And the nurse told me when I first come to, I said, "Boy, I've
got a headache." And she said, "You sure have. You got a jolt,
brother." And said, "You been out for three days." I didn't even
know, I didn't know what was going on. But I said, "Man, I need
something for my head." That's all I could feel at the time, but
then I learned that I had all these other things. But they flew
me back, I guess, I was back in Oran at that time, at the
general hospital back there. |
CB: Iran? |
OB: In Oran, yeah. |
CB: Are you saying O-r-a-n? |
OB: Yeah, Oran, yeah. |
CB: How long did you stay in the hospital? |
OB: You know, I don't recall; but I stayed there until
everything healed. And I don't know then if I could have gone
home or not, I never tried. My thoughts were to get back with my
unit. And so therefore, I worked that in. And when I got able to
do some things, I helped them there in the hospital. And I was
put on with a whole bunch of other guys and shipped by train in
box cars, back to the front. |
CB: Oh, my goodness. |
EO: Box cars? |
OB: Box cars, yes, ma'am. |
CB: How long were you in a box car, how long was the trip?
|
OB: Oh, it was probably a week going back up there.
|
CB: Where did you stay? 11 |
OB: Slow train, slow train. |
CB: Where'd you stay at night? |
OB: Stayed in that box car. We only stopped for toiletries and
stuff, and they'd give us stuff to eat. |
CB: Was the box cars for camouflage purposes, or all that they
had? |
OB: I'm not sure why they did it, but we were in box cars. It
was probably, maybe that reason, that they were camouflage, to
be like supplies. But I found my unit, they weren't even
expecting me. I had to hitch rides from where I got off the
train and find out where my unit was through people,
connections, talking to various stations. And finally, I got
back to my unit. They were surprised to see me. |
CB: Where were they? |
OB: In Sedjenane Valley. That's in the valley, I think that
valley was north of Kasserine, in that valley where we had a big
battle there in Sedjenane. When we took that, when we took
Sedjenane, that was the end of the African War. We went into
Bizerte. |
CB: Now, at Sedjenane, you were still fighting Rommel?
|
OB: Yeah. Well, Rommel had disappeared by then. He had gone
somewhere, I don't know. They'd gotten him back to Germany or
something, I don't know. |
CB: Well, were his tanks there? |
OB: No, we'd pretty well annihilated his tanks by then in
Africa. We won that battle, finally, in El Guettar. And they had
some up on the coast there, I think there's another commander,
Rommel had gone, and he was commanding it. But when they
surrendered, we took Bizerte, and then Tunisia was taken by the
British and at Tunis, port city of Tunis. There wasn't hardly
anything left of Bizerte, it was demolished practically, just
very few useable buildings at all. We camped on and made on the
beach there, they took us out of town a ways and bivouacked.
That was in case of a counterattack or something, we were there
and waited. And then they moved us back to, oh, I guess we went
maybe two hundred miles back down in the desert area to an oasis
wooded area, nice water and all that. And stayed there for, I
don't know, several months, couple of months maybe. I don't know
how long we were there, but we didn't know what was going on,
naturally. Our commanders, no doubt, were meeting and
conferring. They were getting ready to invade Sicily, which we
didn't know that. We still thought we might go home. That was a
rumor around that we were going to go back and train troops.
|
CB: You were there for several months. Did you see any action
while you were there? |
OB: No, ma'am. The war in Africa was over. |
EO: So you were getting ready for the invasion of Sicily?
|
OB: Yes, ma'am. |
CB: How did that take place? Were you still with the 60th?
|
OB: No, I was with the 39th Combat Team. I never was with the
60th. I was with the 26th Field Artillery when we supported the
60th, but the 60th had its own units, but it was part of the 9th
Division. But I was with the 39th Combat Team, which was part of
the 9th Division. Trying to think how it goes. I hadn't thought
of this in years, but I think it was three battalions, I mean
three divisions. To make up a division, there was three
battalions, I believe. And the 60th, I can't remember the other
one, the 47th, I believe, Infantry, and the 12 39th Infantry.
|
EO: And that's when you got on the landing barges and traveled
that way? |
OB: We traveled, you know, Mediterranean not a long ways over
to Sicily from -- |
CB: Tunisia? |
OB: From Tunisia. |
EO: Tell us about the feeling when you're in these landing
barges when you're going for an invasion. Do you think about
anything? |
OB: Well, yeah, you do. You pray a little. Yes, ma'am, you do.
The worst thing in war is anticipation, waiting to do something.
I believe that drove more people crazy than anything, lost their
minds over it. I believe that. Another bad thing is when guys
don't have sense enough to not eat chocolate bars and get on one
of those things. That's bad, too. That don't add to any fun when
they start throwing up because they get sick on that thing. And
they always gave us chocolate bars to eat for breakfast,
whatever they called them, but they were chocolate bars.
|
EO: Do you like chocolate bars today? |
OB: Oh, yeah, I like them. I liked those things, but not to eat
them when I was going on a barge. |
CB: What was the length of that landing? How long did it take
you to get to Sicily? |
OB: Well, we left in the dark. Time wasn't one of the things I
kept up with at that time, but it was in the dark and we landed
in the morning, daylight. So that's how far, it wasn't that far,
and those barges moved pretty good in the water, but they
rolled, they rolled pretty bad. |
CB: How many barges would there have been in this invasion, how
many men? |
OB: Oh, my. Let me tell you, the British, Montgomery, General
Montgomery and the British, he had come up out of the east from
Africa. But he commanded the British on the southeast part of
Sicily, which would have been a direct route through those
mountains to Messina, which is a coast town on the boot of Italy
or in Sicily, off the boot of Italy. That was his objective. We
were in the center of the island and our objective was Palermo,
which was the capital of Sicily, largest town on Sicily, largest
city. To our left was, well, I think the Big Red One was on our
right, and then there was Montgomery and the British. We had the
82nd Airborne drop ten on us. They were to hit a target out,
they were supposed to drop behind the lines, but they dropped on
us, and these things are part of war. But then the ranger, Darby
Rangers, were on our left. |
CB: Oh, really? |
OB: And I don't know what other division was involved there.
But we covered the whole island from the south and come in, took
that thing in days. I mean we had Palermo secured. And then the
Big Red One and us, and I'm talking about the 39th Combat Team
of the 9th Division, went to the east, went east. And we had no
real opposition until we reached the mountains past Mt. Etna,
that's a volcano that made Sicily. And we passed Mt. Etna on the
north, and she was kind of spewing smoke and stuff. We thought,
boy, that'd be something else if that thing blew right there
while we were going by. 13 But anyway, our objective was Troina,
a little village town in those mountains. Actually, it was on
the border of the mountains, on the other side of the mountains
and near the Messina Plain, you've probably heard of that.
There's this Messina Plain, it was a flat plain area, not
mountainous, not too much. And it extended all the way to the
City of Messina, which was right on the coast of Italy. And so
we took that town seven times before we could hold it. The
Germans had the advantage on the hills and we couldn't knock
them out of that there. Finally, we did, and took the town,
secured it, took the mountains and secured them. Well, certainly
here come Patton and his tanks. And you know what he said, he
yelled at us? "Get out of the way and let some fighting men
through." |
EO: You really appreciated that. |
OB: Yeah, but he was a good General. He made men do more than
they could do. |
JW: Was there a lot of destruction on this pass towards Messina
when you got there, lot of buildings destroyed and things like
that? |
OB: Yes, there was, there was quite a bit destroyed. Not so
much in Messina, itself. But Troina was blasted, that was almost
like, well, it was, it was more like St. Lo than any other place
I'd been. |
JW: I don't guess you had much time to notice the beauty of
Sicily? |
OB: Well, I did notice. Those mountains were pretty, they were
pretty mountains; but, no, you didn't observe that too much
while you were in that battle. But I did, I made a mental note
of Mt. Etna and being able to see that. I thought that was
history for me, I guess, I don't know. But it impressed me, that
mountain did. When he went, when he got out his divisions and
all, he took that, he went right straight to Messina. If you
know the history of that, he wanted to beat Montgomery; the plan
wasn't for him to get there, it was for Montgomery to get there.
But because Mongtomery was so slow and wouldn't do things, he
couldn't get through those mountains and, boy, I mean Patton
went on. And the Germans had already left, they had gone, they
were already in Italy by that time. When we took Troina, they
abandoned Sicily, they got out of there. And we've got a
graveyard there at Troina, 9th Division graveyard, that one
combat team. |
EO: You lost that many men? |
OB: Yes, ma'am. And Troina, it was in the mountains of Troina
where I won my Bronze Star. I didn't win it, I just did what
they wanted me to do. The Captain asked me to go, we had a wire
broke by artillery fire on a mountain side there. He asked me to
go with these two other boys, they were younger, hadn't been
with the outfit very long. And he asked me to take the Jeep and
go as far as I could, and I did that. And we knew the terrain,
had been over it a lot of times, and so I knew about this
culvert. Well, I hid the Jeep and we went down and got on this
ravine, went down and went through the culvert to the side we
had to be on to fix the wire. So they were fixing the wire and I
was standing there watching them and I heard these shells coming
in, and I yelled, "Cover", and I run and jumped back into this
culvert, and one of the boys went down the hill away from it.
But this one come, and as he got to the mouth of that is what I
think happened because that shell hit there and just blew him
into that culvert. And he was 14 laying partially on top of me
and I had to get out from under him. And when I did, I saw his
whole back was all tore up and he was unconscious, he was in bad
shape. So the other boy come running then. We'd fixed the lines,
our job was done; but anyway, we took all the stuff we had with
us, and then got his sulfanilamide and bandages and everything
and we got him pretty well stopped bleeding, got him on the Jeep
and we got him back to an aid station and they tell me he lived.
|
EO: Did you ever hear from him? |
OB: No, ma'am. |
JW: Do you remember his name? |
OB: I don't remember his name. |
CB: What kind of lines were you repairing? |
OB: Communication lines with the front, back to the battery.
|
EO: So how long did you stay there after this battle?
|
OB: Oh, the invasion of Italy had started. And we were there,
we come back to Palermo and cleaned up. And Patton had made his
speech there in Palermo. You know the story about that, I'm
sure, about slapping the boy because he was shell-shocked. And
he was leaving for the United States and he was making a
farewell speech to us. And he had a bad reputation with us right
then. And stacking swivels on rifles, have you ever heard, I
know you haven't, but a whole several divisions of men at
attention or parade rest with rifles, all they have to do is
move that thing just a little bit, that rifle, and that stacking
swivel will start banging. And one, you can't hardly hear it;
but, boy, when they all start doing it, it'll drown you out. And
that's what happened to Patton, they drowned him out with those
stacking swivels and he quit talking and left. |
EO: He got the message? |
OB: Yeah. |
CB: You were there? |
OB: Yes, ma'am. |
CB: Were you there when he slapped the soldier?
|
OB: No, ma'am, I wasn't at that place. |
CB: He was in a hospital, wasn't he? |
OB: Yes, ma'am, yeah. You're wasting a lot of film there.
|
JW: You're doing just fine. |
OB: You do edit this thing, don't you? I'm sorry. I get
overcome with some of this stuff. |
JW: You're not alone in that, that's fairly normal.
|
CB: You left Palermo then? |
OB: Yes, ma'am. We were headed for England. We didn't know
that, again. |
JW: So you didn't go to Italy? |
OB: No, sir. I would have gone to Italy with the Ranger
Battalion if my good friend, James Kenny, from Fort Smith here,
he was in the Ranger Battalion, he wrote me a letter there in
Palermo. He was somewhere in that area, I don't know, that was
after we secured Palermo. And told me to meet him on a certain
street corner, that he had permission from Colonel, what's his
name? |
CB: Darby? |
OB: Darby, Colonel Darby, had given him permission to get me
and bring me to his major battalion and I had written him back
and told 15 him I'd accept. And I tried to meet them but I
missed them someway, and so I stayed with my outfit. And I
didn't get with the Rangers or I'd have been in Italy instead of
making the invasion at Normandy. |
EO: So you were headed, though, for the invasion of Normandy?
|
OB: Yes, ma'am. The ship we got on was named Hawaiian Shipper.
Does that do anything for y'all? |
JW: It's not very pretty. |
OB: That dude would roll in the water, in the harbor. They had
us stacked on that ship where we had to take turns sleeping
below deck on bunks that we had to share, share bunks eight
hours on, eight hours off, for five days on that. And my guy
that I was bunking, got sick in the harbor. I couldn't stand the
smell of that where he'd thrown up and all that, so I stayed up
on deck. I just took my stuff and went up on deck and found me a
place to sleep. And I lay there one night and --
|
JW: Did this ship roll because it was old or because it was
overloaded or because it was designed for it? |
OB: It was a banana ship, a banana boat is what it was made
for, and it was round-bottomed, and that thing just rolled. It
rolled all the way to England. |
EO: Hawaiian Shipper? |
OB: Hawaiian Shipper was the name of that ship. And so I slept
on that, but I did well, you know, things just happened.
|
EO: Did you have any idea where you were going?
|
OB: Not at that time, no, ma'am. When we pulled out of Palermo
Harbor, I'm sure top brass knew, but that was about all that
knew where we were going. But we thought, another time, they was
going to send us home, that's a big rumor going on. But on that
ship, the second night out, I slept in the sick bay on the ship,
which wasn't bad, between sheets and showered in the officer's
showers and ate the officer's food, and I had it pretty good. I
got acquainted with the Sergeant, well, he wasn't a Sergeant, he
was Navy. |
JW: That's how you got to slip in there and do that?
|
OB: Yeah, over the pharmacy. |
OB: Corpsman? |
OB: Yeah, he was a corpsman. So he invited me to come in and
sleep in the bed and eat with him and all. He ate officer's food
and all that so it was pretty good all the way to England.
|
EO: A friend worth making. |
CB: How long did it take to get to England, do you recall?
|
OB: I don't recall that, no, I'm sorry, I can't recall that, it
was some time. We didn't go direct there, directly. It was one
of those things where I'm sure it was a thing to try to deceive
the enemy, but we landed in Southampton. We went to Andover,
England, nice place. |
EO: Andover? |
OB: Andover, England. |
JW: Do you have any idea of what year this would have been?
|
OB: Well, '43. Still '43, I'm sure. |
CB: Was late in the Spring, wasn't it? |
OB: Yeah. We went to Andover and we were there, I don't know,
we began to prepare not too long after that for the invasion. My
buddy, Don Woods, and I, we took a leave and we went to back to
Southampton and stayed in a bed and breakfast and had a great
time, went to all 16 kind of shows and ate a lot of fish and
chips. |
JW: Now, this isn't Don Woods from Tulsa? |
OB: No, no. He was from Utah, Utah. |
EO: When you say you prepared, do you mean you gathered your
guns and equipment, or did you actually go through a physical
preparation for the landing? |
OB: Well, some of it was physical; but mainly, we got our
equipment ready for an amphibious invasion. You have to do a lot
of things to a vehicle to keep it going through that water and
all. If you don't, it's dead in the water. And we had to do all
that, had to get those things ready. |
CB: Is that the LST that you're talking about? |
OB: Yes, ma'am. We had huge LSTs for that invasion, they
carried a lot of people. And it was, like I say, small ones,
little ones, big ones and all the infantry. And the equipment
was on larger type vehicles than the infantry had to ride on,
and personnel. I was the only man in my truck going in that
beach. |
CB: Oh, you were in a truck? |
OB: Yes, ma'am. |
CB: On the LST, you drove it off on the beach? |
OB: Yes, ma'am, I was driving the Jeep when we started. And the
driver of the truck, he couldn't back that trailer. And the
Captain looked at me and said, "Bittle, can you back that
trailer?" I said, "I think I can." He said, "Well, get on there
and do it." And I did it, and that's what I -- |
CB: How large was the truck? |
OB: Two by four, what do they call them four by fours. And it
had a trailer on behind it. Most of those, that four by four
truck was four wheel drive and all that. It towed our guns, too,
and ammunition on the truck, and all the ammunition; but this
was carrying supplies, other supplies is what it was. And then
they'd had to put a trailer on it because we were taking more in
than what we had before and this boy just couldn't do it and so
I got the job because of that. He took him and put him on the
Jeep and he's the one that got hurt, the boy did. I felt sort of
responsible, I guess, at the time about that; but it was
something had to be done, I guess. Anyway, they lost that Jeep
and I got the truck in anyway. And that was bad, just the
elements were bad enough. But having fire, being fired upon
going in made it altogether a terrible, terrible thing. When we
landed, there were bodies all over the place. |
JW: You landed on the first day? |
OB: I landed on the second wave. |
JW: On the second wave. |
CB: How did you drive that truck? Had they had bulldozers in
there to clear a path for you? |
OB: Not at that point in time. No, we just hit the beach and
kept going until we got as far as to a staging area we called
it, to go on up the mountain and secure it, secure the beach. We
had to get up there. And then by that time, they'd got their
guns in place. Actually, we didn't have a bluff like some of
those boys had. Really, where the slaughter was, was right there
on that bluff; but there was plenty of people landing where we
were, too. It was not an easy thing, bad thing. 17
|
CB: Were you on Omaha Beach? |
OB: Yes, ma'am; right flank of Omaha Beach. We went up a
hillside and got around behind the enemy. And that's when we got
up there, we could turn our artillery on them. And they were in
bunkers and stuff, but they run, they got out of there and took
off, what wasn't dead. We started in trying to save as many
people as we could that were hurt and all after we finally got
little bit of control of things. Then from there, our next
objective was the battle wasn't over, see. We took Omaha Beach
and took Normandy, we had to take Cherbourg. Cherbourg was a
port city on the peninsula of Cherbourg. Our Division Commander
gave us this order that we were not to look back, that we were
to cut that peninsula in two and we were not to look back at
anything. We kept going forward, no stopping, no retreating,
you're going to the other side. We'll keep your supply lines
open with the 82nd Airborne so you won't have to worry about
your supplies, but you keep going. They wanted us to get that
peninsula cut off and capture all those people in Cherbourg and
not let them get out to fight us again another day, and so
that's what we did. We went right on across Cherbourg. Now, I
told you about, as best that I could, and I can't describe what
it was like on Normandy. |
EO: We wouldn't expect you to. |
OB: I'm sorry. |
CB: Let me change my tape here while we rest a minute. You need
to get a drink of water or something? (Took a brief pause at
this time.) |
CB: -- stop Hitler and the Japanese, we'd be speaking their
language instead of ours, and I believe that would have
happened. |
CB: I do, too. They had it already divided up, they had a plan.
|
OB: Yes. |
CB: The Italians, the Japanese and the Germans, had it all
divided up. Well, when you finished, you did take the peninsula?
|
OB: Yes, ma'am. |
CB: And the port of Cherbourg. What happened there? Did you
take a lot of German prisoners? |
OB: We turned our attention then -- I have one story, I guess,
it's a horror, not a horror story to us, to me, it wasn't. We
were in the hedgerow country going, moving, and we had been
stalled by a German force that was fighting World War I tactics.
They were behind hedgerows and they would come over the
hedgerows and attack us. Our artillery was on the road when this
started happening. So we had to use mortars as best we could and
we just sat up a line and just shot them people down when they
come over, those Germans. We piled them up in a field, huge
field there. I imagine we killed probably altogether, by the
time we got they started attacking and we got our guns on the
road, got zeroed in, started dropping those things in on them on
the other side so they couldn't attack, but I imagine we killed
five or six hundred in that field, one field there alone that I
saw, that was stacked up. You know what I said? "That pays you
for what you did to us on Omaha." So at that point in time, I
could step on a German uniform and not even think anything about
it, he was nothing to me. |
EO: Did you take any prisoners during that time?
|
OB: We took prisoners when we went into Cherbourg. But the Free
18 French were there and we didn't have anyplace to put them, so
we just turned them over to them, and you know what happened
there. |
CB: Well, they didn't live long, did they? |
OB: No. And the brass wanted to interrogate people in high
places they kept. But the whole average -- We got some Japanese
in there. |
CB: Oh, really? |
OB: Yeah. We got them out of a bunker down there and it
surprised us. |
JW: Surprises us. |
OB: So they must have been there for some reason, observing or
whatever, I don't know. |
CB: I've never heard that. |
OB: But we secured that place and then we moved to St. Lo, we
started to move to St. Lo. And that Battle of St. Lo was like I
told you before, the greatest armada of airplanes I ever saw and
bombers that bombed that place and yet we had to fight our way
in. It was crazy Germans, blown, disoriented because of running
and everything else. But there was those that still had their
mind and they got in the bomb craters and waited on us. That's
how bad it was, even had to fight our way in. But when that was
over, we took off north, headed for Paris. And we hardly got
stopped by anything, the Germans had gone. And all we ran into
mainly was some stragglers and French people all over. But when
we got to Paris, they sent us around Paris. But we saw the
reason, we saw the parade troops that they were sending into
Paris, cleaned up, shaven, clean uniform, marching; and we were
dirty, nasty people. |
EO: But you did the fighting? |
OB: Yeah. So, we said, "Well, we're not parade troops."
|
CB: Who led the parade troops? |
OB: I don't know who it was that was in charge of that, but
that's what they did to make an impression on Paris, all
planned. We went on from Paris and just kept going, rolling,
rolling, rolling north. And when we got close to Chateau
Thierry, you all have heard of that, I'm sure. We had to go over
where we were going, we were about five miles from there. And I
was very sick, I was driving a Jeep and me and the Captain went
over there, Captain and I, and we saw Chateau Thierry and we saw
Flanders Field. And I'm sick with malaria, malaria hit a lot of
us, and I was really having a battle with malaria, taking
quinine and all that stuff. But I did enjoy going over there and
seeing that. But by the time we got to Germany, you know how
malaria is, it'd come on in and leave you. And we went to
Brussels, Belgium, and we crossed the line of France into
Belgium. Have any of been there? |
CB: I've been to Belgium. |
OB: You know how clean Belgium is and you know how dirty France
is. That's the way it happened at the line. I mean it was that
way. The change of appearance was something else to us, we
noticed it. But we went around Brussels and went on, headed east
then into Aachen. We captured the first German town was Aachen,
Aachen, Germany. We had an interpreter, American/German, that
come to America in 1939 and we called him Pop. He was older than
us and he did lot of interpretation for us when we captured
somebody and he was from Aachen, so he got to see some of his
relatives when he was there. Then we went into the 19 Hurtgen
Forest of Germany. |
CB: Which forest? |
OB: Hurtgen Forest, we crossed the river went to Hurtgen. That
was terrible, we tore the Hurtgen Forest up. Before that time,
though, what really, I think, caused the Bulge, was that we had
the Germans trapped there in France and Belgium. And Montgomery
was to bring his troops and cut them off in a valley. We sat up
on this mountain and watched those Germans go through that
valley. And Montgomery, because of his tea drinking and
assembling of troops, he let them get out of there. We had
orders, we couldn't go. It was kind of a stupid war in a lot of
ways. Our orders were to go to there and stop, and Patton had a
lot of trouble with that, but we saw that all. They went to
Germany. And when they got there, they began to prepare for a
counterattack on us and that's what happened. |
EO: Just because of following protocol? |
OB: Yeah, yeah. I'm going to have my tea or else, whatever, you
know, that's what we think, our Americans think that.
|
CB: That's what I've always heard, that it was his fault.
|
OB: But anyway, when we went over the Hurtgens, blew that
territory up. I got to kill a deer in the Hurtgen Forest,
though, my first deer of my life. Got it and skinned that dude
out and we had it, ate it up, the whole Battery.
|
CB: Good fresh meat? |
OB: Yeah. But we crossed the river, we were on the Cologne
Road, I believe it was Cologne Road. And it was in September, I
believe September '43. |
CB: What river did you cross? |
OB: What is that? The Seine, one of those rivers there. I can't
remember what it was now. I knew then, but man, I don't know.
I'm eighty-five years old almost. |
EO: You'd never know it. |
OB: I'll be eighty-five in August. That's hard on my brain,
places and things or names of people. You're going to cut that
out, aren't you? |
JW: You never know what I'm going to cut. |
CB: You crossed the river and where'd you go? |
OB: We were headed for Cologne. And we got our first snow,
began to snow that afternoon. I'm telling you now I got hit
there. We were moving toward Cologne and we had moved up and our
Batteries weren't set up. They'd pulled into positions and we
were moving on up there to get a bead on stuff. And we had
stopped and I think it was about maybe four something in the
evening. And it was snowing and we were talking about how cold
it's going to be tonight and all that stuff and worrying about
how we were going to stay warm because it looked like it was
going to snow on us good. And an artillery round come from
somewhere, they started shelling us anyway, and a round hit
somewhere out in front of me as I was running for shelter. I was
trying to get to something to protect me. I'd bent over running,
and piece of shrapnel hit me in the knees, which I didn't know
about. But this thing went through my shoulder, I'm over like
this and it went through my shoulder without breaking a bone.
Can y'all believe that? |
EO: No. |
JW: Mighty lucky. |
OB: But it hit three ribs in my back and broke them, shattered
one and went into my lower lobe of my right lung and landed on
my diaphragm, that's what they told me later. I didn't know that
at that time. And so when I went down, they came and they didn't
think I was hit, Lieutenant Sapp and them didn't, and I didn't
think I was hit too bad. I said, boy, my shoulder burns. And
then all of a sudden, I'm spitting blood, and boy, that's when
they got scared. And well, I did, too. I didn't know what had
happened. And so they began to try to examine me, but they'd
called for the aide to get an ambulance. I don't know. I passed
out so I don't know really what happened, other than I'd picked
up a .22 rifle I found, was wanting to take that home with me.
But I didn't get it, I know I asked to save that for me, but
nothing ever caught up with me, not even my personal stuff. I
wound up in station hospital in Paris. They had told me there
that I'd be operated on the next day; but that next day, they
put me on a plane and flew me to England because the Battle of
the Bulge had started, they had casualties coming from every
direction. So I went to England and I was operated on there and
stayed, I don't know, whatever time until I got well enough.
They had operated on that and on my knee. Told me that they had
taken one rib out, that one that was shattered, they went in
there and got in there and told me that I'd have trouble with
that lower lobe the rest of my life. I couldn't ever swim again.
All this stuff which was probably normally true, I guess,
normally; but I don't think I'm too normal. When I got home and
got able, I built me a swimming pool to build that lung and
that's what it did. I got to where I could swim, stand that
pressure. But anyway, I got on a hospital ship, came back to a
hospital, I think I was at Fort Dix, New Jersey, I'm not sure
whether I was or not, but at a station hospital. The hospital
there, I don't know whether it was Bethesda, Maryland, or where
I come in at. But on the way, I know I was sitting on deck. And
I've been in battle, been in combat for two and a half years by
then. And you don't realize how you change, what happens to your
mind and all. But sitting on that deck and heard a radio playing
music and they stopped for a Pet Milk commercial. Could you
believe I could remember that? But that commercial made me
realize that I was an animal, that I had lost all concept of the
real life. And I said, you know, that's what it's all about. But
anyway, that's an indelible in my mind that brought me back to
reality. Said, hey, that's life. And I think that helped my
being able to overcome the torment that I was going to go
through. But I got there and then a little later, they shipped
me to Kennedy General Hospital in Memphis, Army Hospital there.
And I took a thirty day furlough there and went home for thirty
days. Had a good time, and then went back and then I was sent
down to San Antonio, Brook General Hospital, San Antonio, and I
was there a little while. This was in July or in June of '45.
|
CB: Well now, were you still a patient? |
OB: Oh, yes, I was a patient. |
EO: Imagine you had to have quite a bit of rehab, didn't you?
|
OB: Oh, yes, yes. I was going through all kinds of rehab then.
And the point system had been developed, so the Administrative
Officer of the hospital called me in and told me this: "You're
not ready yet. I want you to know we need to keep you here two
or three more months. 21 You need this rehabilitation. But I
have to tell you that you have points to get out of the service
today." That was the 3rd day of July, 1945. Well, that was the
2nd day of July, '45, and on the 3rd day of July, '45, I was put
on a train to Fort Chaffee. At eleven o'clock, the 4th of July,
1945, I was discharged. |
CB: Eleven a.m.? |
OB: At eleven a.m. |
EO: On July? |
OB: July the 4th, 1945. |
EO: You didn't want the rehab? |
OB: And I paid for that. I got home and I was having a ball,
and thought I was doing real good. And I hadn't gone back to
work, I was just playing, enjoying things, seeing people. And
all of a sudden, I'm so sick I can't hold my head up. I wind up
in St. Edwards Hospital, was there five weeks before I got well
enough to go to the Veterans Hospital in Fayetteville. And I was
eight months in the hospital in Fayetteville, and a lot of that
time on St. Peter's Row. I had, they called it foxhole-itis. I
don't know whether you've ever heard of that. But I had
pneumonia really, I think that started all of it, got in that
lung and all. And they put splints on my hands and legs to keep
my hands and all from drawing. But foxhole-itis, what the doctor
said, I'd been on the ground too long, and that this come from
that, made this drawing and all. And they put splints to hold my
legs and my arms and all. And for eight months, I was up there.
And then I got better and got able to go, and they dismissed me
after eight months. But I come out of there with a total
disability. And after I got well enough, I went back to work
there at H. Cobern Company, and that's about the end of my
story. |
EO: What did you think about Truman dropping the atomic bomb?
|
OB: Lady, I was for that. |
JW: What were you doing the day the war ended? |
OB: Well, when the European War ended, I was in a car, it was
at night when I got the message on the radio, and I had bought
me a new hat, and I don't know where that hat went. All of Fort
Smith, I was on 6th Street coming around there by the National
Cemetery when I got that word over the radio, over the radio.
And I just threw that hat and I never put a hat on for a long
time after that. |
JW: Imagine quite a party on Garrison broke out?
|
OB: Yeah, yeah. We went on up there and had a big time, yes.
|
EO: A little bit on the personal note, when did you meet your
wife? |
OB: When did I meet that gal. She was a little bitty girl, she
didn't attract me in any way. Her aunt attracted me more than
she did. That was before the war now. See, my uncle and her aunt
were husband and wife, and so we got cousins that are, what,
double cousins? But when I came back from the war and I come out
of the hospital, I was over at her uncle and aunt's and my uncle
and aunt's and she came. |
EO: She changed? |
OB: This is kind of joy, but she had really changed. She got my
eye real good and we got reacquainted and we went out and
partied, started dating. And first thing we knew, August the
6th, 1946, we got married. |
CB: Where were you living? 22 |
OB: We were living in Fort Smith. |
EO: So you've been married fifty-nine years? |
OB: Yeah, in August will be sixty. We're going to have a
celebration. |
CB: How many children do you have? |
OB: We have two boys. We have Larry, who lives in Fayetteville,
he has three children, all grown. Randy, who lives here in Fort
Smith and runs the agency that I started for State Farm. And he
has two children, one in dental school right now and the other
one getting ready to go to veterinarian school. She'll be
graduating from Arkansas, Saturday, Arkansas University,
Saturday. And so I'm very proud of my family, they're all very
successful people. They tell me my son in Fayetteville is one of
the elite. I don't know about that. But anyway, his son, my
grandson, he worked for Arvest Bank, and he's the only one that
graduated from another school besides Arkansas, he went to Ole
Miss because he wanted to get away from Fayetteville. And he's
with this new bank they've started up in Northwest Arkansas. I
know they started several, but this one is called Signature
Bank, he's a commercial loan officer with them. And I have a
granddaughter, Larry's, one of the daughters, teaches over here
at Howard Elementary. Randy's wife, my daughter, has been
nineteen years or twenty now at Ramsey Junior High. And Matt, my
grandson, Randy's boy, is in his last year of dental school,
graduated from the University of Arkansas. And Larry's baby
daughter, she's graduated from University of Arkansas and about
to get married. I think it's October when they've set their date
to marry, but she is a pharmaceutical salesman, she sells
pharmaceutical stuff. And Megan, she'll graduate from University
of Arkansas Saturday, she'll be in LSU, August, to become a
veterinarian. |
JW: That's a lot of busy people you started out there.
|
EO: I know they're all proud of you. |
OB: My son, Larry, my grandson, Matt, really is the one. Well,
I didn't want to talk, I couldn't talk about it like I've done
today at all. You wouldn't have got this out of me forty years
ago, thirty years ago. I couldn't have talked that way, I
couldn't have told you these things. But he started it, Matt
did. He came and asked me, he said, "Grandad, tell me about the
war." So I began to try to. And then Bo got interested, and
that's his nickname. His name is, gosh, I can't remember,
William Robert Bittle, but he's called Bo. He was hardly out of
the womb when his daddy called him Bo. But he began to want to
know, and so one day Larry said, "Dad, why didn't you ever tell
us about this?" Well, I thought I was pretty smart, you know. I
said, "Just because you didn't ask." 1 |
|