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Military Oral History Interview Transcript
Barry Craig Forrest
Robbins, North Carolina
16 October 2011
WF: William C. Forrest
BF: Barry C. Forrest
JC: James Wesley Cain, another veteran.
WF: My name is William Cameron Forrest, I am interviewing Barry Craig Forrest, the date is
October 16th, 2011, the place is Robbins, North Carolina and this is part of an oral history
project for History 3823. Okay to begin, how did you join the military?
BF: I joined the military while I was in college. I enlisted in the North Carolina State University
Army ROTC program, and a month later I also enlisted in the North Carolina National Guard.
WF: Why did you choose to do ROTC rather than just enlist?
BF: Well, I had always wanted to be an officer, I wanted to be a tank and armor officer, and that
was the reason.
WF: Why did you choose the National Guard over the active duty Army?
BF: I chose the Guard over the active duty Army because the active duty Army would have had
to do a lot of traveling, and it made sense to me at the time so that I could help the people of the
state North Carolina better if I were in the National Guard as opposed to in in the active duty.
Plus, I was in college at the time.
WF: So you were living on the campus at NC State?
BF: No, I was living in an apartment in Raleigh about two miles off campus.
WF: Why did you pick the service branch you joined?
BF: I had always been a student of history; I had studied the tank battles of World War Two, and
was interested in armor warfare, so I enlisted as an armor officer.
WF: Do you recall your first days after enlisting?
BF: Somewhat…it was kind of confusing. I didn't course I didn't know anything about the
military not having come from a military family. I was just doing what they told me to do I and
then try to figure out what to do next.
WF: When did you join?
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�BF: I joined in September 1980.
WF: What did it feel like?
BF: It felt good. I didn't have any qualms like some people do about joining the military, it was
always an exciting life for me I was happy.
WF: Was it something you had always wanted to do?
BF: Yes, I had always wanted to join. I always wanted to be of service to people to try to help
people, and through the military I thought I could be of the best service to the people that I grew
up with the people of my state and the people of my country.
WF: What about your training experiences, do you remember any of those?
BF: I had a number of training experiences over the 28 years I was in the Army. Initial training
experiences I had were while I was with the National Guard I would go to drills, and this was
before I had any formal military schooling other than just some classes through the ROTC
program. I remember being on the tanks out in the woods in at Fort Bragg doing our weekend
training and then doing our two week annual training periods being very exciting times, a lot of
interesting things happening.
Of course this is typical military stuff you know you go out there and it's a lot of hurry up and
wait an you hurry to get somewhere and then you might wait around a couple hours before you
do anything and then you might only do something for just a brief period and then you're back to
waiting again. But all in all I enjoyed it, I felt like I learned a lot…like it was something I was
good at.
WF: What did you have to do to become an armor officer?
BF: To become an armor officer I had to be of course enlisted in the army, and then when I
completed my school at NC State University. I finished the ROTC program I went to the armor
officer basic course was what it was called in 1983 at Fort Knox, Kentucky. I was there that was
a four month course for second lieutenants and I was there from July of 1983 until the end of
October 1983.
WF: Do you remember any of your training instructors, ROTC, or otherwise?
BF: Let's see I had a Major Van Horn he was a ROTC instructor. The trainers at Fort Knox, I
don't remember any specific names of people for; well I take that back we had a Marine
instructor that was our small group instructor when I went to the advance course in 1989…his
name was Marty. He was a captain at the time he was he was a pretty good guy. He was a
Marine armor officer. He was a unique individual (laughs). I don't know how you'd say it kind of
a hard charging guy.
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�His nickname was “Thumper.” He got that nickname because when he was a tank company
commander in the Marine Corps. He had a particular private who was always giving him
problems. So finally this private had just given him enough problems that it was the straw that
broke the camel's back. He called the private over to his tank and got him behind the tank and he
said, "Private this bolt is loose tighten it." His first sergeant went to the private and said, "No sir,
it's not it's not loose." Then said, "Get a little closer and look at it."
So the private gets a little closer and said, "No, I sir I can't see a loose bolt anywhere." The
lieutenant said, "Get a little closer." By this time the private got fairly close to the back end of the
tank. The lieutenant reached over and grabbed the guy’s hand and his head…and thumped his
head up against the side of the tank. And (laughs) lesson learned for the private and from that
point on he was called “Thumper.”
WF: Interesting, so you mentioned you had 20 plus years in the military…how did you get
through it?
BF: A lot of patience, a lot of patience. All kinds of people with all kinds of ideas about the way
things should be done or about the way they should be run, and you can issue an order to a
hundred people and you will have a hundred different…versions of how the order should be
executed.
WF: In regards to your experiences in the military did you ever serve during a time of war?
BF: I was in the military from 1980 until 2008…no correction 2009. I served through the little
conflict they had in Grenada, the incursion into Panama and the First Gulf War and the Second
Gulf War.
WF: What was your job or assignment during these wars?
BF: Initially I was an armor officer. I did platoon time as a tank company platoon leader, I was
tank company commander, was the intelligence S-2 officer for the tank battalion. I worked as the
S-1, I did some work in the operation side that was during the First Gulf War by the time the
Second Gulf War rolled around the Army had decided to put me into an engineer. So I was a
combat engineer during the Second Gulf War. I was never mobilized or deployed to either of the
war fronts.
WF: So how did you become an engineer?
BF: I was what they would call a “yellow book engineer,” basically that means that I had been
school trained to be an armor officer. They decided that I needed that they had too many armor
officers they needed engineers. So I had to take correspondence courses to learn how to be a
combat engineer officer. Those correspondence courses are they come in in books that have a
yellow cover on them. So if you do the correspondence courses and you become qualified in
whatever course they are offering you you're a yellow book engineer or yellow book whatever.
And that's the way I got it.
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�WF: Did you ever have a lot of memorable experiences as an armor officer or an engineer?
BF: Yes, there were a number of different (laughs)…you can't do this kind of job and not have
memories of different things. I remember driving down the interstate, or the autobahn in
Germany in an M-1 Tank at 60-miles an hour passing cars on the side of the road. That was a
unique experience. I remember driving through farmers’ fields in Germany in 1984. The tank
next to me we was driving across a beet field. The tank next to me was throwing what they called
a “rooster tail” behind the tracks of beets and soil. The farmers weren't too happy about that one
either. I remember driving into a German village one night in a column. A company column and
stopping in the village by the British. The British were our opposing forces, by a British patrol.
They had a roadblock set-up and we couldn't go forward and we really didn't have room to back
up the whole company out of the village. I looked off to the left and there was a vacant lot where
I was at and it opened onto open fields out behind just outside the village. So I called the
commander on the radio and told him what I had and he said go with it so we I took my platoon,
we turned left we went into the vacant lot then the whole company followed us out.
We drove through and across this farm field and drove around the village. Next morning we had
to come back through there and the area we had driven through there were foxholes dug all over
the place. We had driven through a British infantry position in the dark (laughs) and had
managed not to run over anybody with 14 M-1 Tanks. I remember getting a M-1 Tank stuck one
time so deep in the ground it took us four hours to pull it out. We had to use three tank retriever
M-88s to do the job. It was just a mess. The tank sank into the dirt so deep that I could step off
the top of the off the hull of the tank right onto the surface of ground it was just level.
WF: I stuck one up like that (laughing).
BF: Oh?
WF: Broke the track on it.
BF: Yes.
WF: In the mud and it took us to about midnight to get it out and get it back home.
BF: Yes, I remember going being at Fort Hood and doing some of the lanes. Some of the lanes
training and some of the gunnery training down there. I remember sleeping in the camp area by
my tank and hearing something rattling around in our garbage and looking up and there was a
cow walking through the area getting into the garbage ah bags over there trying to look for
something eat. I remember a guy getting bit by a bat while he was riding in his tank. He was
riding with the hatch open they drove under a tree and dislodged the bat it fell in the vehicle with
him and bit him on the arm. He had to have rabies treatments.
WF: So where have you gone overseas in the military?
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�BF: During my time in the military I have been to Germany twice. I was there for different
things, different reasons in Germany. I went to a conference. I was in Korea for just a real short
span I was just over there for a conference. The rest of the time most of the rest of my travels
have all been inside the continental US.
WF: So what kind of a conference was it that you attended in Korea?
BF: It was a conference to plan two exercises that were coming up we went to this conference. I
went to the conference in February and the exercise was going to take place in August. The time
change between North Carolina and Korea was horrendous. I was always ready to go. I went to
bed every day at five o'clock and woke up every morning at three o'clock. While I was there the
climate was nice it must have been, must have been March cause it was not really cold march or
April that I was there not February.
Because it wasn't really cold when I was there, it was cold enough that they had the heat on in
the hotel we stayed in Seoul (clock chimes) Lord they had the heat turned up to probably a
hundred degree I slept on top of the covers. I remember the riot police being around all of the
gates to the base that we were or the post we were working off of. They are at least a squad at
every entrance to the base because they had protestors that would come and protest in front of
the bases.
I got to see I got an understanding for if you study history when they invaded Korea, when
McArthur came into Korea and he did the amphibious invasion they talked about the tides were a
big factor well I didn't understand that until you go out and you look at the when you leave Seoul
and go to airport you have to go by the ocean or by the across the bay.
Well, depending on what time of day there if you are there at one time in the day there is just
miles and miles of water if you come by at another time of the day it's just miles and miles of
mudflat so and I'm you know it's like knee deep mud you ain't nobody's going to get across that
in a boat or a vehicle or walking anytime soon so that gave me an appreciation for why they ha
why the tides were so important in that particular operation.
WF: While you were overseas did you receive any medals or citations for your actions?
BF: I did not receive any medals or citations for actions done while I was overseas. My highest
awards have been a Meritorious Service Medal. I have three of these; mostly for just service at
whatever job I happened to be doing at the time. I got a Meritorious Service Medal for service in
an infantry brigade, another for service in an engineer brigade, and for service working in the
National Guard headquarters in Raleigh.
WF: While overseas how did you stay in touch with your family?
BF: When I was in Korea you could just buy a pre-paid phone card and you could dial home
with that that was pretty neat. When I was in Germany I wrote letters. That was pretty much
before they had all these new cell phones and that was in 1984 there were you had to go to a
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�hardened phone facility to do to call home an everything we I didn't really have time to do that I
mostly was by letter.
WF: Did you like the food overseas?
BF: Yes I did. I liked I liked the German food was all right. I'm not a particular fan of spaetzle
but European foods are good. I liked jaeger schnitzel and things like that. The schnitzel was
pretty good. What's that Hungarian soup? Anyhow there was some soups I liked really liked over
there the Korean food was ok. It was pretty good, I like I like Asian foods anyway.
WF: They didn't have a dog in it?
BF: No, I ate at a Korean restaurant just a little ways down the street from my hotel. At least the
menus were in English so I could read what I was getting. Because I had been warned that you
had to be careful because there's bologna and bologna or something like that and one of the other
of them was dog. And I didn't want to eat any dog. But I found the food pretty good I could eat
just about anywhere in the world I think.
WF: Did you feel any pressure or stress while overseas?
BF: No real stress while I was overseas. Like I said they were short assignments and I was pretty
well prepared for both assignments. At the time in Germany I probably had the most fun. Driving
tanks across the countryside that was (laughs) I enjoyed that.
WF: What did you do to entertain yourself while overseas?
BF: There wasn't a lot to do in Korea. They had a street called Taiwan Street there in Seoul. It
was like a little small shopping district. That you could go up there and I could walk up there and
walk around and look at the shops and so some stuff like that and they had a they had a history
museum not far from the just outside the gate of the post I was at.
I went there and then I walked around on the post some and looked around there that was about it
for German, for Korea. In Germany, just the looking at the countryside moving around a lot
talking to the people. Because I, a number of the Germans speak English pretty well. It was
pretty interesting plus I spoke a little German at the time. That helped some.
WF: Did you take any photographs of your experiences overseas?
BF: I have photographs of I have a number of photographs of the German trips. But I don't really
have any pictures of the Korean trip, some not a lot though. I just didn't I didn't take a camera
with me for that one it was just a short trip so I wasn't going to get the tourist do any tourist time
so.
WF: Why did you take pictures while you were overseas, if you did?
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�BF: Well, most of the things I took pictures of when I was on the trip to with Germany because I
was new to the Army at the time I was just a lieutenant. There was a great opportunity to see
foreign military equipment up close. I took my camera with that, that was my intent when I took
my camera was to take pictures of foreign military equipment, and I wound up taking pictures of
other things like I think I took a picture of every church bell tower in every village we went
through, almost.
And then just pictures of the countryside I thought it was really pretty we were up in the north on
the North German Plain on the Reforger. We were doing up near a place called Wolfe, I think
was the name of it. There is another town there I can't remember the other town. We were
probably 20 kilometers from the East German border at the time at that time the border was still
guarded and they had minefields on the East German side of the border. I we drove right up to
the fence that divided East Germany from West Germany and looked across into East Germany
which we later found out that U.S. Army personnel were not supposed to be within one kilometer
of the fence. So technically we were kind of violating the rules but nobody explained it to us.
WF: What did you think of your officers and fellow soldiers?
BF: I served with some good officers I served with some sorry officers, I've served with some
good enlisted soldiers and some bad enlisted soldiers the good enlisted soldiers you try to hang
onto and you try to promote them up and make sure they have a make sure they have good job
security and a good career progression then the poor ones you try to help them to be better
soldiers and if they refuse to do that you try to limit the damage they can do to your unit, or the
their responsibilities. Until you can get rid of them.
WF: So what positions have you held in the military. What jobs have you progressed through as
you have spent your time in the military?
BF: My career progression was a as a tank platoon leader, tank company executive officer, tank
company commander, a tank armor battalion intelligence officer S-2, was a engineer battalion S1, worked at the engineer at the infantry brigade as a in the operations section 5-3 section, was
the brigade S-1 in the infantry brigade, was the brigade S-1 in the engineer brigade, worked
outside of the S-1, outside the S-11 and was mobilization officer for the state of North Carolina. I
was the person that mobilized probably 90 percent of the units that went to the Second Gulf War.
WF: What was your favorite position in the military?
BF: Tank company commander.
WF: Why did you prefer that position above all the other ones?
BF: Because I was still working on the tanks I still got to be down with the soldiers and work
with the soldiers. I was trained from the beginning and that was the job that I aspired to be was to
be a leader in a tank unit an armor unit. And (clears throat) it was just a challenge to develop the
training and work the tactics and lead the company in tactical situations.
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�WF: Do you recall the day your service ended?
BF: My service ended 30 September 2008. Not really a big day, it's just when it was the day I
was officially retired. By that time I really didn't like the office jobs. I wanted to be around the
soldiers and be out with the line units. The fighting units, the sharp end of the spear but (cough)
this unit… this job I was doing the year of my retirement was just a desk job and I got to go out
and visit the units, but I didn't get to go with training. I really didn't like that as much but by that
time I was ready to go.
WF: What rank were you when your service ended?
BF: I retired as a lieutenant colonel, 0-5.
WF: Did you ever want to go any higher than that or was that as far as you wanted to go?
BF: I always wanted to go higher. I did not get to be a tank company or a tank battalion
commander. But there was only one battalion in the state and there were just so many people that
wanted to be in command. So many better connections than I did there was no way I was going
to get it so I just had to live with it.
WF: So you mentioned you were in the National Guard, did you have another job while you
were in the military?
BF: Well, when I was for the last 20 years I was in the military service I was on active duty with
the guard. I was what they call an active duty Guard Reserve, an AGR soldier. The first eight
years I was a traditional Guardsman. That means I had a two-day drill every month and a
fourteen-day annual training period in a year. During that time I worked as a land surveyor,
doing survey work.
WF: What did you do after your military service ended?
BF: The first year after it ended I just kind of lived the retired life. I took the children to school.
WF: And then had to get two jobs?
BF: Lay around the house, and then I managed to find me another job. As a military contractor
working with the Robin Sage exercise in the Special Forces qualification course.
WF: Why did you choose to go to work as a military contractor after retirement?
BF: Because it gave me a chance to be back with at the soldier level of the military training.
And it was an opportunity to be able to just be back near combat level type assignment. Plus it
was working with Special Forces those guys are always cool.
WF: You know he sent some Special Forces to Africa?
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�BF: Yes.
WF: So would you say the military has become a lasting effect on your life?
BF: Yes, it has.
WF: Why do you think it has?
BF: I have been places and seen things and talked to people that I would never have done if I had
not been in the military. I mean it's a job with benefits. These trying times with jobs and all there
are not many people that I can say they've got a job that has full medical benefits and full
housing benefits and a death gratuity if you die.
WF: Did you make any really close friends while you were in the service?
BF: Yes, I made a number of them.
WF: Do you still continue these relationships?
BF: Yes, I do. Don't get to see all of them as much as I used to, but I talk to them infrequently.
Some more than others.
WF: Have you made a lot of relationships as a military contractor as well?
BF: Yes, I have. Lots of different people mostly retired people that work as contractors doing
this job and some of the active duty soldiers that work as cadre for the lane. They're all good
folks I liked working with them.
WF: Did you join a veteran's organization?
BF: I joined the American Legion.
WF: In the veteran’s organization what kinds of activities does your post or association have?
BF: Oh they have a number of different activities. They meet a lot of times when they are having
meetings so I don't get to go to the meetings. But they do fish fries. I participate in the fish fries,
and they sponsor baseball teams stuff like that. I've not done much work with a ball team but I've
helped them with a fish fry some.
WF: Is there anything else you would like to add to this interview?
BF: No, I would say that probably my one regret from military service was that I never ever
served in any of the conflicts ever. That was not my desired path when I entered the military. If
there was a conflict I was going to serve in it. I wanted to be part of history (clock chimes) and
because when they occurred and the assignments I was in at the time, I did not get to serve in
those conflicts.
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�WF: Thank you for your time.
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�
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Title
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Appalachian State University American Military History Course Veterans Oral History Project
Description
An account of the resource
Each semester, the students of the American Military History Course at Appalachian State University conduct interviews with military veterans and record their military experiences in order to create an archive of oral history interviews that are publicly accessible to researchers. The oral histories are permanently available in the Appalachian State University Special Collections. The project is supervised by Dr. Judkin Browning, Associate Professor of History at Appalachian State University and all interviews are transcribed by the student interviewers.
Copyright Notice:
Copyright for the Veterans Oral History Project’s audio and transcripts is held by Appalachian State University. These materials are available for free personal, non-commercial, and educational use, provided that proper citation is used (e.g. Veterans Oral History Project, University Archives and Records, Special Collections, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC).
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed.
Forrest, Barry Craig
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview.
Forrest, William
Interview Date
10/11/16
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
29:22 min
Copyright
Copyright for the Veterans Oral History Project's audio and transcripts is held by Appalachian State University. These materials are available for free personal, non-commercial, and educational use, provided that proper citation is used.
Tag
Robbins, NC State University, ROTC, National Guard, armor, officer, Fort Knox, Germany, Fort Hood, Korea
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Barry Craig Forrest, 16 October 2011
Subject
The topic of the resource
National Guard
Gulf War, 1980-1988
Iraq War, 2003-2011
Forrest, Barry Craig
Veterans
Personal narratives, American
United States
Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Barry Craig Forrest, interviewed by William C. Forrest, enlisted in the NC State University ROTC and the NC National Guard in 1980. He served 28 years in the Army as an armor officer and combat engineer. Although he served in the First and Second Gulf War, in this interview he mainly discusses his service in Germany.
Creator
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Forrest, Barry Craig
Forrest, William C.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a title="UA.5018. American Military History Course Records" href="https://appstate-speccoll.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/167" target="_blank">UA.5018. American Military History Course Records</a>
Extent
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10 Pages
Language
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English
armor officer
Fort Bragg
Gulf War
NC National Guard
platoon
Raleigh
yellow book engineer