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Name:
Branch:
Years Served:
Conflicts:
Date of Interview:
Melvin Mullis, 3rd class Petty Officer
U.S. Navy
1944-1946
World War II
October 14, 2012
Matthew Price: My name is Matthew Price and I’m interviewing Melvin Mullis on
October 14, 2012. We are at Melvin’s house. What branch of the military did you serve
in?
Mullis: I was in the Navy
Price: What years did you serve?
Mullis: I served from 1944 through 1946
Price: What was your rank?
Mullis: I was a third class petty officer in the Navy
Price: What where you doing before you got drafted?
Mullis: I was in high school and I was drafted out of the senior class of high school and
reported for duty
Price: Where you expecting to be drafted?
Mullis: Well yea, everyone, every eligible person, a young man was subject to be drafted
and I was one of them. So I answered the call and was put into the Navy and then I took
my boot training at Bainbridge, Maryland. And after that I was assigned to a ship and we
went aboard a ship in New Orleans, Louisiana and we went down to the Panama cannel
and through the Pacific.
Price: What ship were you on?
Mullis: I was on the USS Yaupon and we went through the Panama Canal and went up to
San Diego to take on supplies and fuel and went to Pearl Harbor and from there we went
into the Pacific. The furtherest I got was Okinawa
Price: Where you only in WW2?
Mullis: Yes, the War ended a few weeks before we got to Okinawa and so I was not in
any combat but we were headed to it. But Mr. Truman stopped the war for us and we
didn’t have to get into combat.
1
�Price: So no major combat or battles for you?
Mullis: No, no battles
Price: What was your main job on the boat
Mullis: Damage control
Price: What did you do with that?
Mullis: In the event we were hit we would try to keep the ship from sinking, if there was
any way at all, long enough at least for the men to get off. So I would be one of the last
ones of the ship because I would be trying to get everybody else off the boat
Price: Trying to keep the ship up as long as possible?
Mullis: Yea and if it was not sinking then we would have to do repairs to what we could
to keep it moving
Price: Did your ship ever get any damage?
Mullis: No
Price: Never had the opportunity to?
Mullis: No, we were lucky we didn’t get there in time to go into combat
Price: What was your most memorable moment while you were in the Navy?
Mullis: I don’t know if I have just one particular memory. We were just being at sea, at
one time I was out for 67 days without stepping my foot on land
Price: That’s a long time
Mullis: And it was quite a while but anyway I think the best moment was when we
returned to the states. We got back on Christmas Eve.
Price: That’s when you got back, was on Christmas Eve? That’s a good Christmas
Mullis: We returned from the Pacific on and we were coming into Portland, Oregon and
started up the Columbia River and it got foggy and we had to anchor in the river. And the
next day we ate Christmas dinner on the way up to Portland, Oregon.
Price: Yea that’s a good Christmas gift to come back home
Mullis: Yea that was a memorable moment
2
�Price: That was after the 67 days out at sea?
Mullis: Yes that ended the 67 days when we did that. It was an experience that I would
have never gotten had I not been drafted. But anyway I was fortune more so then a lot of
them that never returned and that happened to the thousands of young men. We all went
with the intent on doing what is necessary. And that what the name of the game was, to
put a stop to the enemy and do what ever it took we were going to do it.
Price: You were ready to do your part
Mullis: We sure was
Price: How did you stay in touch with your family while you were away and gone so
long?
Mullis: While we were at sea like that there was no contact with the family
Price: Couldn’t send off letters or nothing like that?
Mullis: No, no way of sending it letters
Price: Yea mail doesn’t run in the center of the ocean
Mullis: Cell phones were not invented at that time so we just had to wait until we got
back to port and so our families didn’t know where we were or what we were doing or if
we were.
Price: Just left wondering
Mullis: That happened for many men no just me. But that happened to a lot of people,
but it was an experience. I was 18 years old when I went in and when I was discharged I
had already turned 20 so I was in there roughly two years. During that time I had to grow
up, I had to grow up in hurry. I was assigned to things on the ship that I can look back
now and say I cant believe that an 18 year old young boy as assigned to something like
that. But somebody had to do it, everybody was assigned to something but at one time I
had 6 men under me and if I had made one mistake it would have killed every one of
them. And I thought at 18 years old with that kind of responsibility you cant stay young
forever, you have to grow up and do what you have to do.. But there will never be
another war like WW2.
Price: I hope not
Mullis: All the stuff they have now to work with, it would be a lot different. They have
all this unmanned drones that they send over and no body we be at risk. But During
WW2 everybody just did what they had to
3
�Price: How was the conditions on the boat, like your room and food?
Mullis: We had good food, the work on the ship was fine and everybody did there part
and we would cruise right along and do what we had to
Price: What your most interested place you stopped at while you were in the military
Mullis: I enjoyed going through the Panama Cannel
Price: Yea I bet that was pretty cool
Mullis: But that was a beautiful place that we passed through the locks and went on out
to the Pacific side. That’s some beautiful country through there. It was something I
would never have gotten to do had I not been in the military and so there were some good
points that went along with the bad
Price: Did you have a girlfriend when you went into the military
Mullis: No I was not dating anyone regular so I didn’t worry about that. I hadn’t met my
wife yet, that came afterwards.
Price: What did you do to entertain yourselves on the boat while you had to work?
Mullis: Well most time we was having to work, and stand watch and all that kind of stuff
and out there at sea we were on 4 hours off 4 hours. That was the norm on the ship
Price: All day long?
Mullis: Yea all day on 4 off 4
Price: So you had to get your sleep in those 4 hours off?
Mullis: Yea and part of the time when we were off during the day we had to work.
Doing cleaning and repairs and that kind of stuff. Then you got back on another 4 then
hopefully you had time to sleep on that next 4 off at night. That gets kind of old after a
while. On 4 off 4. But you can accustomed to it and go with it. That’s about all you can
do at that point
Price: Yea you can t get out and leave
Mullis: No you can’t walk off and say im going home, that wouldn’t work
Price: Do you recall the day your service ended?
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�Mullis: Oh yea I got my discharge at Little Creek Virginia and was ready to come home.
It was kind of let down when you got home. You done with all that you had been doing
for two years and then all the sudden you were out with nothing to do. So after being
drafted out of high school I went back and finished my senior year in high school
Price: So you weren’t even graduated when you were drafted?
Mullis: No I was just 3 months into my senior year when I got drafted so when I got my
discharge two years later I went back to finish high school. Because if I was going to go
any further I was going to have to have it, the 12th grade education
Price: Was the weird going back to high school after being out for 2 years?
Mullis: No I enjoyed it
Price: A lot better than being on a boat
Mullis: Well yea I was 2 years older than the other boys there and I had a pretty good
time
Price: I bet, counting your blessing being back home
Mullis: Oh yea very true.
Price: What did you do after you finished school?
Mullis: I got me and job and went to work
Price: What kind of work were you doing?
Mullis: I was working in a cabinet shop, worked there a while then went on to
construction building buildings of various kinds.
Price: Were you able to use many of your experiences from the military for work
Mullis: Not really, only to just do you job and do it well
Price: Do you still keep up with anybody you were in the war with?
Mullis: Yes, well I did. Two or three men and they all died now. One man he and I were
in Miami at the same time in the same barracks and he was from Elkin, NC and I got so
tired of being there at Miami that one day I told him I'm going to navel headquarters and
volunteering for sea duty and he said your not and I said watch me. So I went in and told
them what I wanted, they gave me a card that said be a pier 8 tomorrow morning at
9:00am for muster and I went back out and he said what you get and I showed him. He
said wait right here and went in and came back out with the same thing. We were
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�together the rest of the time on the ship and he died about 5 years ago from cancer. We
would visit each other and call back and forth on the phone and keep up close until, I
hated to lose him but after spending 2 years with him he was like a brother to me. So it
changed my life but I hope for the better
Price: If there is anything else you would like to share then
Mullis: Nothing important, just one of those services we had to do and we did it.
Price: Are you in any veteran’s organization or anything like that?
Mullis: No, the only thing now is that I'm old enough for V.A. I get my medication from
them. I’m 86 now so that puts me on up there. I plan on being around for a while
Price: I know you have always been around since I’ve been here( He is my neighbor)
Price: If that’s all you have to say then
Mullis: That pretty well covers it, nothing dramatic but I just went and served
Price: Yea went and did what you had to do
Mullis: And I don’t regret having to go
Price: Yea that’s good. Got some good experiences about of it
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https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/files/original/93ee69776efa2582c2bc77a93e718d56.mp3
42a9587a5dc9ebb15e1d7906c7dc9d82
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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.
File size
26.2 KB
14.4 MB
Format, digital
MP3
Military Branch
military branch (U.S. Army, etc)
U.S. Navy
Officer Rank
Officer rank (major, private, etc)
3rd Class Petty Officer
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Price; Matthew
Mullis; Melvin
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview.
Price, Matthew
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed.
Mullis, Melvin
Interview Date
10/14/2012
Number of pages
6
Duration
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0:15:44
Date digitized
2/6/2015
Checksum
alphanumeric code
362b90f27f2c5fb32154bb4388711f09
42a9587a5dc9ebb15e1d7906c7dc9d82
Scanned by
Leah McManus
Equipment
Adobe Acrobat XI Pro
Resolution
300
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Source
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UA.5018. American Military History Course Records
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48000kzh x 16 bit
Format, original
Electronic File
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Identifier
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5018_Mullis_Melvin_20121014_transcript_M
5018_Mullis_Melvin_20121014_audio_A
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Melvin Mullis [October 14, 2012
Type
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Oral History
Language
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English
English
Creator
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Price, Matthew
Mullis, Melvin
Source
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<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>
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Description
An account of the resource
Melvin Mullis served as a 3rd class petty officer in the Navy during WWII. He served aboard the USS Yaupon where he worked on damage control for the ship. He did not see any combat and returned to the States on Christmas Eve after two months aboard the ship. He said he couldn't communicate with his family at all because "mail doesn't run in the center of the ocean."
Subject
The topic of the resource
Mullis, Melvin
Veterans
World War, 1939-1945
Personal narratives, American
United States
Interviews
1944-46
3rd class petty officer
Bainbridge
damage control
draft
Navy
USS Yaupon
WWII
-
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680fa470135551dfd46942395954531e
PDF Text
Text
Name:
Branch:
Years Served:
Conflicts:
Date of Interview:
Larry Richardson
U.S. Navy
1968-1974
Vietnam War
October 11, 2012
Trey Pitts: This is Trey Pitts in Lincolnton, North Carolina the date is October 11, 2012 and I
am interviewing Larry Richardson. Okay first question is: Where were you born?
Larry Richardson: Charlotte, North Carolina
Pitts: In what year?
Richardson: 1949
Me: When you got into the services were you drafted? Or did you volunteer?
Richardson: My dad was in the Navy, during WWII, in the Pacific, my older brother was in the
Navy on riverboats in ‘Nam, and had nowhere to go, I graduated High School, my plan was to
join the Navy, so that is what I did, in 1968.
Me: What was your rank?
Richardson: When I got out?
Me: yea
Richardson: I was E 5, second class, when I got out in 1974.
Me: You served in Vietnam, where exactly did you serve?
Richardson: I was on board a destroyer, what I call a tin can, If you ever see it up beside a battle
ship or a aircraft carrier, you will know why they call it a tin can, because that’s what it looks
like, out there on the water, it goes everywhere. I went to boot camp in Orlando, Florida in 1968.
I joined my ship which was stationed in Newport, Rhode Island at the time in 1969.
Pitts: What was the name of it?
Richardson: The USS. Keppler, DD 765, the keel for it was laid in 1946.
Pitts: While in Vietnam, were you in any battles?
Richardson: When I got on board the ship in Newport, Rhode Island in 1969, we were there for
about 3 months, we were suppose to go to the Mediterranean, had no intentions of going to
Vietnam at the time. They cancelled the cruse to the Mediterranean; they told us our home port
was now changed to Pearl Harbor. From there we made our first cruse to ‘Nam. We went
through the Panama Canal, which was awesome, even though we went through in the middle of
the night.
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�We were a support ship, the Vietnamese had no Navy. They had land armaments, canons, and
they would shoot at us. They had a bunch of sanfrans, you think they were fishing boats, but they
were the enemy
Pitts: They actually disguised them as fishing vessels?
Richardson: Yea that’s what they were; they would have Viet Cong, North Vietnamese on
them. In fact three years before I got on board in 1966, one of those fishing vessels was acting
suspicious, and our ship followed it, up the North China Sea, right off the coast of Vietnam. And
our ship followed it, they got bombarded, our ship was the first U.S Navy ship to suffer
casualties. And it is not recorded anywhere, I have looked. What we did was support the land
movements, Army, Marines, whoever they were. They would call in support and we would blow
up everything.
Pitts: Ok, so you were land support, uh sea support for land movements, so what was, right
before you got out of the Navy in 1974 what was your assignment at that point?
Richardson: I was a boiler technician, back then the boilers made the steam that turned the
turbines in the engine room that drove the ship. They do not use them anymore. After I got out
they did away with boiler technicians, they are no more, the only thing boilers are used for is to
make hot water for showers or whatever, now everything is nuclear even destroyers are nuclear.
Pitts: Was the ship coal fired?
Richardson: no it was oil, number 6 oil;
Pitts: oil, ok
Richardson: It was thick and nasty, where I was always hot, probably over 110 degrees
constantly, you were dirty, stinky. They called us snipes and bilge rats and all this stuff, cause
that what we were.
Pitts: Yea, it was a messy messy job huh….
Richardson: Yes It was, defiantly was…
Pitts: What port were you at when your ship docketed when it was not on assignmen, where did
it dock?
Richardson: Pearl Harbor
Pitts: At Pearl Harbor? So you went to and from Pearl Harbor to Vietnam and back. Ok.
Richardson: yea, we were in the 20th corps, been to several places in the western Pacific,
Southeast Asia.
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�Pitts: So, did you go anywhere else besides ‘Nam, during the war? Was you assigned…..
Richardson: Yes, we went, you talking about other ports?
Pitts: yea
Richardson: Spent a lot of time in the Philippines’, went to Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan,
Thailand, Bannock, Thailand, Taiwan, I already said that. Singapore, we were heading for
Australia, talking about did we taking fire, we were heading for Australia for R and R, we were
gone, we had already crossed the equator. That what this shirt is, my shellback shirt, I will tell
you about shellbacks in a minute. We were heading there when our sister ship, the Lloyd Thomas
DD 764, was hit in Vietnam, we would trade places. We had to turn around and go back to
relieve them; they had to come off line, so we never made it to Australia, and I always wanted to
go there.
Pitts: would have been a bit of a vacation
Richardson: oh yea that would have been cool.
Pitts: so you mentioned what was it?
Richardson: shellbacks
Pitts: yea shellbacks
Richardson: shellbacks are for when you cross the equator, you become a shellback, normal
people, and navy guys are little people, pollywogs. When you cross the equator it is a big
ceremony for your ship. Everybody that have crossed the equator before, they dress up, one of
them is going to be King Neptune, they put grease all over his belly. The pollywogs on board,
they have to go through a ritual, I doubt they do it anymore, because there are women on
board….
Pitts: oh
Richardson: you wear nothing but your underwear, and that is it, and you crawl around the
whole deck.
Pitts: around the perimeter of the ship?
Richardson: yes, around the whole deck of the ship, on your hands and knees, and they squirt
you with sea water and hit you and slap you and all this stuff. They had what they call, I don’t
know how to spell this Trey, but what they call shilalies.
Pitts: shilalies?
Richardson: It was a piece of fire hose; you know how rough fire hose is?
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�Pitts: yes, yes I do
Richardson: It was pieces of fire hose about three feet long, and rap one end of it and bind it, so
they could get a handle on it. And for weeks at a time shellbacks, the ones suppose to whoop
your rear, would soak it in sea water, and dry it, soak it and dry it.
Pitts: so that just made it harder.
Richardson: hard as a rock, as your crawling around there, they would hit you, it hurts, there not
permanently damage you, they do all this, they put a life raft on the fan tail, that’s the rear of the
ship, and fill it full of garbage from the kitchen, fill it , and water, and they collapse it, it’s got a
roof on, and you got to go in one end and come up the other, with something in your mouth, it
was terrible.
Pitts: didn’t matter what it was, just something.
Richardson: just something, didn’t matter if it was a carrot, sardine, something, it was terrible.
Remember you are on the equator, so what’s the temperature like?
Pitts: up in the 100s probably?
Richardson: pretty ripe, all this stuff was pretty ripe.
Pitts: so when you said they were on the equator, they would actually anchor right on the
equator?
Richardson: No you couldn’t anchor, there ain’t no way!
Pitts: oh yea!
Richardson: Your there around it.
Pitts: they would just stay on it, pretty much orbit it
Richardson: yea
Pitts: I don’t know why I said anchor
Richardson: but anyway, everyone squirts you and hits you, and all this stuff, then the fat belly
dude, with all the grease on his belly, you got to come you to him, state your case as to why you
should be a shellback, then they grab your head and rub it in his ol greasy belly, and then you
become a shell back. Then you’ve got king Neptune, usually the oldest shellback, that stands
there with his what do you call it..
Pitts: trident?
Richardson: trident, whatever, it was cool, every ship goes through it, I have seen it on the
military channel, an aircraft carrier, it was cool, it was December 7th, 1971, I will never forget it.
4
�But you got a big certificate, I got it hanging on my wall.
Pitts: so when you went through the trash, what did you come up with?
Richardson: I don’t remember, I believe it was a sardine, dead fish or something
Pitts: more or less It just smelled bad so you wanted to get out huh?
Richardson: oh yea you wanted out of there! Anyway we had to cut short from that instead of
going on to Australia, and head for the South China Sea.
Pitts: To relieve your sister ship?
Richardson: Yea
Pitts: so when was your last tour of duty?
Richardson: My last trip to Vietnam I would say in 1972.
Pitts: two years before you got out, and that was when you was a boiler technician?
Richardson: yea I was boiler technician at that point.
Pitts: Well I guess, so when you got out, did you retire?
Richardson: No I got married while I was in the Navy; I met a gal over there in Pearl Harbor,
she was, not Hawaiian, she was a Navy brat, she was raised there, so that was why I got out, I got
out in 1974, to start another life.
Pitts: ok
Richardson: I wish I would have brought my uniform with me.
Pitts: yea, what medals did you receive?
Richardson: I got my service medal, everyone gets those, then I have a Vietnam service medal,
a good conduct medal, basically that is it. Since we were not involved in hand to hand, we did
not get any of those, we were support, we did our job, the ship got awards, so, no medal of
honor.
Pitts: You mentioned the shellbacks, so what else sticks in your memory?
Richardson: things I will never forget, going through the Panama Canal, after we had went
through, the Panama Canal, we were going to go to stop for a little R and R in Arco Poco, we
didn’t, our ship broke down, we were dead in the water, If you look out at the ocean there in the
south Pacific, it looks like glass, it looks calm, but it wasn’t real slow moves, our ships rolled
side to side and you thought it would tip over, the moves were so drastic.
Pitts: did anyone get sick?
Richardson: oh yea people got sick all the time, I never did, a fuel pump went out in our fire
5
�room, You got two fire rooms one boiler each in them, I was in the aft fire room, we busted our
rears, it took ours, literally hours, took about twenty hours or so, that stopped our R and R into
Arco Poco, we went in to San Diego, were talking about 1969, beautiful city. When your out on
the open sea, you just think this place is vast, one of our duties was escorting aircraft carriers,
and planes would take off 24/7, at night it was an awesome sight, they would come back in at
night.
Pitts: One thing I meant to ask you was, I know during WWII, ships were limited on how much
light they could give off, did they do the same thing during nahm?
Richardson: oh yes, we were in reach of land, I guess you could say, we could not open any
hatch leading to the outside, no smoking on deck, none of that, you could go forward to aft
inside and never go outside, you had to be secure. And you always training, when you were not
on duty, they did a lot of training, lot of damage control.
Pitts: so they basically ran scenarios.
Richardson: yea, over and over, so you could be automatic if anything happened.
Pitts: did they do any weapons training?
Richardson: Yea oh yea, when we were out in the middle of the pacific, when you are out there
doing nothing, your are training, damage control safety or you were weapons training small
arms, 45 automatic, M 16, we did not get to do a lot of that, and I loved that.
Pitts: so all other training was basically, everyone was a fireman.
Richardson: yea, got a lot of gunpowder on board, armament, and that was what happed when
we did get hit, it blew up the front gun torrent, pretty major. Another thing when you go to
foreign countries, at least then, I don’t know how it is now I haven’t been to a foreign country
since 1974 or so, for instance we would go into Sewage Bay, in the Philippines, and there was a
bridge there we had to cross from the base to town, we would cross this bridge, but You thank
God for America, when you are in these foreign countries, we had a name for this river, but I’m
not going to repeat it, these little kids were swimming in this river, and they would holler up at
you to throw in a dime or something, and they would dive down and get it, and all the sewage in
the world ran into this river, it was terrible. Went to Hong Kong, made several trips to Hong
Kong, the city itself, it was like New York, beautiful. We toured this city and you would see
signs that let you know that it was Red China and not to got there, at the time England controlled
Hong Kong, There was a grave yard, and what they would do is they would bury someone, and
6
�in a few years dig theme up an bury someone else in that hole. There was no room you were on
an island, big apartments, looked like outside of Washington D.C, thousands of people living
there. Every country I went to had its good and bad side.
Pitts: I guess this was during R and R?
Richardson: oh yea, we were not there for very long, reloaded with food, supplies and stuff like
that, and another thing I remember was refueling at sea, it was an amazing thing to see, cause
again everyone had a job, you job may be no more than to stay out of the way.
Pitts: that was your job.
Richardson: that was your job, and you better do, don’t want to get in the way, very dangerous,
because you were side by side with a ship, nothing ever happened, I never say anything bad
happen, planes taking off at night was just one of the most awesome things. Pearl Harbor itself,
beautiful, where we docked, when we were home, was right across from the Arizona memorial,
the whole island was full of memorials, would I do it again, in a heartbeat!
7
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ee77a7ce4aa75037f25189bb029303f7
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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.
File size
49 KB
30.3 MB
Format, digital
MP3
Military Branch
military branch (U.S. Army, etc)
U.S. Navy
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Pitts; Trey
Richardson; Larry
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview.
Pitts, Trey
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed.
Richardson, Larry
Interview Date
10/11/2012
Number of pages
7
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
0:26:33
Date digitized
2/9/2015
Checksum
alphanumeric code
43375089912d4c8d3e89b74dbdafcf65
ee77a7ce4aa75037f25189bb029303f7
Scanned by
Leah McManus
Equipment
Adobe Acrobat XI Pro
Resolution
300
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
UA.5018. American Military History Course Records
Recording rate
A/V rate (48,000kzh x 16 bit)
48000kzh x 16 bit
Format, original
Electronic File
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/.
Identifier
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5018_Richardson_Larry_20121011_transcript_M
5018_Richardson_Larry_20121011_audio_A
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Larry Richardson [October 11, 2012]
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Oral History
Language
A language of the resource
English
English
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Pitts, Trey
Richardson, Larry
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>
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
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.
Description
An account of the resource
Larry Richardson served in the Navy 1968-74 aboard the USS Keppler. He was an E5 2nd class when he left the army and was a working as a boiler technician, making the steam that would allow the engine to run. His ship came and left out of Pearl Harbor.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Richardson, Larry
Veterans
Vietnam War, 1961-1975
Personal narratives, American
United States
Interviews
1968-74
boiler technician
E5
Larry Richardson
Navy
Pearl Harbor
USS Keppler
Viet Cong
Vietnam
-
https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/files/original/cbe095589e70bd7817ffb2341b9bd264.mp3
9520760d90a555484409061865186709
https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/files/original/b4f77b05533202a32151c4de02d37fba.pdf
bcb3ed0bd7751f3ae1a6ea655f7663bd
PDF Text
Text
Oral History Transcript
Derek Huss
Derek: It is September 23rd 2012, we are in Lewisville NC, I am interviewing my father, Petty Officer
Allen Huss, born on December 30, 1950. I am Derek Huss, from Appalachian State University, and we
will begin the oral history now. First off, were you drafted or were you enlisted?
Allen: I enlisted.
Derek: Where were you living at the time?
Allen: With my parents in Lincolnton, NC.
Derek: What made you decided to join, and what branch of service did you go into?
Allen: I decided to join because the draft was taking men age 19 because of the Vietnam War, I was
going to school at Gaston College at the time, but really didn’t have any direction, as to what I wanted to
do with my life, sooner or later I figured the draft was gonna get me anyway, and I did not want to go
into the army. That's why I decided to join the Navy.
D: How much college had you gone through when that happened?
A: A year and a half. Plus the first draft lottery since WWII had started a month earlier in the December
of 1969 and my birthday was chosen 3rd.
D: So you joined...?
A: I joined a month later, on Jan. 26, 1970.
D: Okay. Tell me about training.
A: I was sent with several other men from around the Charlotte area to Great Lakes training center
between Chicago and Milwaukee on Lake Michigan. Training, boot camp, back then, was 13 weeks.
They turned ordinary citizens into military men in a matter of weeks. Training is hard, you go to school
during the day, you stand watches at night, participate in athletics, and we had a good basketball team.
It was company against company. We had a swimming team, and we competed against each other in
the classroom, on the athletic fields, so we didn't get to play a lot of sports, that was usually a Saturday
morning thing. The rest of the time you were marching, eating or sleeping, or going to class.
D: Do you remember your instructors, or have any stories from training?
A: Our commanding officer was a chief. A little short, mean guy. Chief Lorreat was his name. IT was his
first experience in boot camp, like us, but he was a chief, of course he had been in the navy for 20
something years. And by the time boot camp was over we were all pretty good friends. We learned to
respect him, and I think he learned to respect us.
D: So it was a learning experience for both of you.
�A: Plus we won a bunch of flags. We won the I flag, we were the smartest comp in boot camp at the
time. We won the A flag, which meant we were the most athletic, and those were the two he wanted
so...
D: So those competitions, were they based on just where you were, or a broader area?
A: The whole boot camp.
D: Oh Okay.
A: For every company in boot camp, we competed against. Like I said we had a good basketball team,
which I played on, we had a good swimming team, which I swam on, and we had some very smart,
intelligent guys in our company so we won the I flag. A company in boot camp is around 60 men, 60 to
70 men, each company sleeps in its own barracks, don’t really mix with another company unless you’re
playing in sports against them or eating in the mess hall. But you usually separated and just with your
friends in the company that you make while you’re in boot camp, and you become good friends very
quickly cause it’s all you do. In the 13 weeks I was there we had two days of leave, and they were
toward the end of the 13 weeks where you[‘re] getting near that graduation date. One day we took the
train to Chicago and the next Saturday we got a leave to Milwaukee. Saw my first Major League
Baseball game in Chicago in April of 1970. Free tickets from the USO and froze to death in White Sox
Stadium.
D: Alright. Moving on. Which war or wars did you serve in?
A: I was in service during the Vietnam War
D: And where exactly did you go?
A: Well after boot camp I was sent to Bambridge Maryland, I was very lucky I had scored high on the test
and they wanted to make me a radioman, so I was sent to Bambridge, Maryland, one of the Navy’s best
A schools. They had A schools, B schools, and C schools. A School’s were the top Navy schools, and
several of my friends from boot camp went to Bambridge, Maryland with me to radio school. There
were four of us from that company that went to radio school. The first night we were there we met a
guy that was from charlotte and the bowling alley. He was graduating and leaving his apt that he
rented, we immediately took over the next week and I didn’t have to spend 5 days in the barracks the
whole time I was there
D: Alright. So what was your assignment?
A: On the ship?
D: Right, yeah.
A: I was radioman. And I had a top secret clearance by the end of 1972. Which cleared the way for me
to become petty officer and watch supervisor.
�D: So you got on the ship, did you ever see combat?
A: Uh, no. Thank goodness. We were in the Mediterranean during the Yom Kippur war, which is the
second time the U.S. military went to DEFCONN 2, other than the Cuban missile crisis. Ship I was on was
the FDR, there was another carrier in our group in the Mediterranean, the USS Independence, and we
were all in main comm., the ship went on general quarters and stayed that way for the entire war, lasted
about 10 days.
D: You said no combat, were there any casualties in your unit?
A: We lost, we lost several guys just from accidents, being washed overboard, one guy died one day
shaving, and he had a brain aneurysm. When you have 4500 men on one ship, things are gonna happen.
We lost several pilots; we lost two jets in 30 seconds. Off the coast of Puerto Rico our steam catapults
failed and two jets crashed within 30 seconds of each other, all the pilots were lost. There were deaths.
Whenever we took on fuel or supplies, any cargo or water tankers would pull up beside us and we
would be moving, we wouldn’t stop like the Russian navy, we were always moving to refuel or to
resupply. they would let the elevators down that takes the planes up to the flight deck from the hangar
bay, and if it’s rough seas big waves, it can, they can wash a man overboard, and that happened one
night while we were refueling, and no one saw him go over. The next morning during roll call they
discovered he had disappeared. Of course they never found the man. We did have one that was lucky.
He was washed over during the day time and the Russian destroyer that was following us picked him up
and one of our helicopters went over and retrieved him off the Russian ship.
D: Geez. Well you mentioned a few but uh, can you give us a couple of your most memorable
experiences?
A: Well, radiomen, you’re either on a 8 hour watch or port and starboard, which means 12 hours on, 12
hours off, and during heavy NATO exercises or during, like the Yom Kippur war, of course there’s a lot of
messages coming in. As the battle groups aircraft carrier, we had 8 or 9 ships surrounding us; they did
not have the radio rooms we did. We had 3 radio rooms on the ACC, we would take their radio traffic,
which is called traffic, and have to send it to them on another teletype machine, cause they didn’t have
the room for all of the equipment that would be necessary to go back and forth between a land base or
other ships. So in fact, we were taking traffic for 8 ships, not just our one ship.
D: And if you don’t mind me cutting in here, can you describe what kind of equipment you had in the
radio room?
A: Well our printers were old teletype machines, they don’t use those anymore, but they were big loud
and bulky. We had different rooms, we had a broadcast room, which usually had 8 to 10 teletypes
running full 24 hrs a day, one broadcast operator who had to check every message coming over. We
had a TGO room, which is a task group room that we would receive and send messages to our task
group. we had an office, that did the printing other messages that would go to the offices that the diff
messages were addressed to, runners would come from these different departments, all over the ship
to get their messages once every hour or two. In case of a flash message or top secret message, a
�runner or messenger would have to go find the Capt. or the executive officer to deliver those messages
by hand.
D: And then to steer us back on track, can you give us the story about the few days leading up to the
Yom Kippur, when you were heading to Vietnam, and had to come back?
A: Well, we were in 1972; Nixon tried to bomb Hanoi into the peace table in Paris where the peace talks
were going on. Nobody ever understood what President Nixon was trying to do; I don’t think his close
assistants knew what he was trying to do. What he was trying to do in ‘71 was get re-elected in ‘72. So
he didn’t want to cause any more trouble to the American public, of course it was ... the 60’s, the late
60’s were a wild time with the assassinations, schools, just, a lot of demonstrations against the Vietnam
war, and the president, don’t know if he really wanted to get out of Vietnam in the early 70s, I think he
found it to be to his advantage to have a war. But in 1973 he ordered 22 carriers off the coast of
Vietnam, North Vietnam, and that when we started bombing Hanoi. We were on our way out of the
med, to head for Vietnam and that when the Yom Kippur war started that night. We had no idea it was
starting, and neither did the Israeli’s, they were attack from three sides by Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. And
it was on the first night of the Yom Kippur, which is a very religious holiday, so a lot of their military was
off, on leave, and that was their plan. They attacked them at a weak time, where their military was not
ready. So the first two days they were really defeating Israel on two fronts, and it looked bad. Of course
the U.S. was trying to stay out of it; Soviet Union was trying to stay out of it. But if it had gone any
farther or if either side had started to use an atomic weapon on the other, then that would’ve led to the
Soviet Union coming in and the United States answering.
D: So how far did the Roosevelt make it?
A: We were off the coast of Egypt in less than a day. We were at the eastern end of the Mediterranean
when we got the call. Compared to the Pacific and the Atlantic Ocean’s, the med is like a pond. But the
Russians kept a navy of 90 ships in that pond. And we had two carrier groups. It was uh,
D: Stacked against you.
A: Our mission was to launch our jets, and then we were expendable. So when they started loading the
nukes that night... everybody knew we were in for it.
D: Well luckily nothing ever happened from it.
A: Nope, we never got the call to launch. Of course we were launching our jets, but not with nuclear
weapons. But there were a lot of jets loaded with nuclear weapons. They were ready to go. We had a
Russian tattle tale we called 'em. It was either a destroyer or a guided missile cruiser come up beside us
that night, pointed every missile and gun at us, I was in main comm., so I couldn’t go out and look at,
and I was told I didn’t want to look at it, it was just about 100 ft beside us, we had a submarine surface
near us, Russian submarine. During that time they said it was right under us following us around. You
can’t hide an aircraft carrier in the pond.
D: Now you mentioned you have a report saying that sub had been following you for awhile right?
�A: They claimed that they were under us the whole time we were in the Mediterranean. We would
disguise our lights at night if we weren’t having air ops, try to make the ship look like another type of
ship, especially sailing around some of the Greek isles, we would try to lose ‘em at night, but nothing
worked. They knew where we were all the time. It was probably from that submarine. We also had fly
over’s from Bears, which is a huge bomber. It had six propellers and four jets, and we called those fly
over’s, we would usually launch two to four F4 Phantoms to try to head ‘em off, like 200 miles away.
They would still fly over us, just to basically tell us they could kill us anytime they wanted to. Two of our
Phantoms were flying on either side of a bear one night and uh the pilot of the Russian Bear dropped his
wing and damaged the F4 wing, almost made him crash but he made it back to the ship. They would
send ships in front of us during air ops and during air ops you have to hold a steady course. One day
while we were refueling a destroyer came up between and we had to have an emergency breakaway
spilling jet fuel and all kinds of fuel into the ocean. Russian navy was, they were pretty wild. Anything
they could do to disrupt our mission, they did it.
D: Okay, thank you. We’re gonna move on. Were you awarded any medals or citations during your
service?
A: Several citations for NATO exercises, which included all the NATO navy's, especially Great Britain,
France, Italy, Germany. Sometimes turkey, Greece, and I of course was awarded the national defense
medal for being in the military.
D: Alright now I’m gonna ask you a few questions about life in the service. First off, how did you stay in
touch with your family?
A: Well, mainly it was letters. Writing letters. It took 30 days for a letter to get from our ship when we
were overseas back to home. So, it wasn’t instant communication, of course there were no cell phones,
no telephones, no computers, no webcams. For the most it was good ole, writing a letter, and mailing it
from the ship. we had several, what we called COD's, which were propeller driven airplanes, they would
bring in mail, and take the mail off, but that didn’t happen every day, it was more like twice a week.
D: What was the food like on the Roosevelt?
A: Food was terrible. The ship was 25 years old when I got on it in 1970, it had been built and
commissioned in 1945, and the mess decks were exactly the same as they were when they built the
ship. So, the food was awful. it was 4500 men on the ship and serving 4 meals a day, had a meal at
midnight for people who were working all night, and us being in the radio room we worked 24 hours a
day, so you go down and before you went on watch at 11 or 11:30 and they called midrats, midnight
rations, and it was usually the leftovers from dinner, and dinner was usually the leftovers from lunch.
We had a meal that we called red death, nobody knew exactly what it was, but 30 minutes after you ate
it, you had to find a commode.
D: Now you mentioned you got care packages every once in awhile...
�A: Care packages from mom. Alot of guys got care packages; mom’s specialty of course was sending me
brownies which were a big hit with my friends. Good friend of mine was from Brooklyn NY, and he use
to get these care packages from his parents which included Italian and Sicilian meats of all kinds...
pepperonis and ... so I remember one meal, of pepperoni and brownies. And peaches, go down and get
a can of peaches. Being in the radio room, it had its advantages. We knew football scores before the
rest of the ship did. So we would go bet with the bakers on the NFL scores and we already knew who
won, so we won a lot of bread. And that was the only good thing they made on that ship, was good
baked bread.
D: So supplies were never an issue on the ship, were they?
A: Fresh things were. We would run out of milk after about 3 or 4 days, and switch to bug juice or
powdered milk. Fresh milk was great. Sometimes we had chocolate milk, then we would go to bug
juice, which was weak kool-aid. Of course there was always coffee in the radio room, and sometimes
we had tea bags, we could make tea. There were several coke machines on the ship. They usually ran
out of syrup abut a day or two after we left port. And I believe it was a dime for a little cup of 8 oz drink
of some kind. But they weren’t too good.
D: So did you ever feel pressure, or any stress?
A: In the radio room we had pressure all the time. The Capt. would come down; the night the Yom
Kippur war broke out I was in charge of broadcasts, he came into the radio room, he pointed at me and
said 'whatever you do, do not let the broadcasts go down tonight, of course I was in traffic, not in the
radio dept. As soon as he left main comm., all of my machines went down, the Russians were jamming
us. And we could not receive any messages. So just seconds after he pointed his finger at me and said
'whatever you don’t let the broadcasts go down tonight', it did. So without communications, a ship or a
battle group is virtually blind. So it was a scary night. it took us several hours to get our broadcasts
back, communications with uh... we had several land bases, one outside Athens Greece, one in
Morocco, and one in Rota, Spain, so depending on where you were in the med, that’s where you got
your traffic, your radio traffic from, were these land bases.
D: So you travelled all around the Mediterranean, did you visit any places in particular on leave?
A: One time a friend of mine, we took off; we took leave to Paris and London England, travelling by train
from Barcelona. and actually we were headed into Neis, France, which is on the French Riviera, right
below Monte Carlo, we had already purchased our train tickets, the ship was going to be late, by about
an hour after our train left the station, so our division officer secured two spots on a helicopter that was
leaving, so we were about 50 miles off shore and he got us on the helicopter and the helicopter took us
to an airport, we caught a cab to the train station just as the train was leaving, we hopped on it.
D: Wow.
A; And didn’t miss our train. And we spent a great week and a half in Paris and London. the rest of the
time we would get over night leave, because there were 100 radiomen on board, and when we went
�into a port, most of the time we would have overnight leave, we would get a night on shore, whereas
most of the other men on the ship did not get that, they had to be back at 10 o’clock, by ten o’clock that
night. So we were very lucky, we got to spend two days at work, two days off, especially at big ports like
Barcelona, Naples, Athens. We would get overnight livery, and that was great.
D: So how did people entertain themselves on the ship?
A: We did get magazines, of course we did have the armed forces radio, and being in main comm., we
listened to that a lot. We had our own TV station, that operated from 4 o’clock to 10 o’clock every day,
showing real bad movies. Sometimes we had a good movie. Sometimes they would show playboy after
dark. There was always a prayer by the chaplain; we had church services every Sunday, and Saturday for
the Catholics. most of the time you were either working or sleeping, there wasn’t much time for, uh,
when you were at sea you ... it’s all you did. If you weren’t working you were getting ready to work, or
you were resting after being at work, it was very loud, and very busy in radio.
D: Are there any pranks or humorous events that you can remember?
A: On slow nights if all the officers were gone we would have little contests or try to remember like, how
many rock groups can you name in 5 minutes. Things like that. But uh, usually when we were off we
were eating or getting rest. We didn’t have any type of recreation whatsoever. Some of the guys did
purchase some weight lifting equipment, in the Void, which is an empty room where we kept all of our
sea bags and uniform or what we didn’t need, they made a little workout area. Where you could go lift
weights and whatever. But that was about it.
D: So very, very serious on the ship?
A: It was always serious. 24 hours a day serious. Sometimes if the admiral wasn’t aboard we would
have access to the admiral’s bridge, which was right under the captain’s bridge, and we could sit up
there on the admiral’s chair and watch flight ups sometimes at night, it was kinda cool. I remember one
night I just fell asleep in the admirals chair and stayed up there all night, sleeping.
D: Okay, thank you. We’re gonna move on, after service, couple of questions, do you recall the day your
service ended?
A: Mhmm. Yes. Well we were in Athens when I was given the ticket home. They woke me up at about
2 in the morning and told me my flight was leaving Athens airport at 6, to pack my bags, which they
already were, I had applied for a school cut. I got out of the navy a month early so I could attend
Western Carolina Univ. It was about ten days before Christmas, about the 15th of December, I said
goodbye to several friends that were in their bunks, I couldn’t wait to get off the ship and fly home. So
at 6 the next morning, I was on a C130, flying out of Athens international airport, and we flew right over
the Roosevelt, and flew all the way across the Mediterranean to Rota, Spain, spent one night there,
caught a flight to Frankfurt, Germany, spent just several hours there before I caught a back flight home,
which is the military air command, and it was a regular Boeing 707, a lot of military people, a lot of
families, heading home for Christmas. Flew into Philadelphia airport where I was taken by a military car,
�several of us were heading for Philadelphia navy base, where I was to be given my top secret talk where
I had to sign papers saying I wouldn’t divulge information that I had seen for 25 years. Unfortunately,
the officer that was going to give me my briefing left to go on Christmas leave, and I never got the talk.
So he never signed my release, and I walked in to the office one morning to check to see how I was
being discharged, how that was going, and everyone was gone. it was two days before Christmas, it was
Jan-- December 23rd, I looked at the watch officer and I said 'where's everybody at?' and he said 'well
they've all gone home for Christmas.', and I said I need one more signature and I’m out of here. And he
said 'I can’t help you'... he said 'let me uh, let me go find the commanding officer, see what we can do
for you, you might be here for two weeks till everybody gets back'. Fortunately, he felt sorry for me, he
said 'do you promise not to say anything for 25 years?' I said 'Yes sir.' and he said 'get out of here. Go
get your plane'. So I took a cab or a bus out to the airport and I was home in about 12 hours. At
Charlotte airport I took a Trailways bus and surprised the heck out of my parents the next morning,
which was Christmas Eve.
D: Must've been a good day
A: It was great day. A great day.
D: So you got back home, did you go back to work or school?
A: Ten days later I was in enrolled in Western Carolina Univ. Started January 3rd. A good friend of mine
had already found me an apartment, living with him, so we went up for New Years Eve thinking we were
going to some great party, well we got up there and the campus was empty, everyone else was home.
So we hopped in the car and drove to Asheville to a bar, had a pretty good time that night.
D: So was your education supported by the G.I. Bill?
A: Yes. Yeah, I got 160 dollars a month, and that was enough to pay for school and tuition and groceries.
And gas. Gas wasn't expensive back then. So uh, later on I found a house up above the school on the
Tuskegee River, three bedroom house for 90 dollars a month, and I had it to myself. It later became a
party house. I enjoyed it, being on the river, right where the Caney Fork came into the Tuskegee. We
could walk across the highway and it was about 9 miles to the campus, and during the summer we
would actually get in tubes and tube to school. I was also running cross country at Western Carolina,
and sometimes I ran to school.
D: Alright, did you have any long lasting relationships from service?
A: Well, thank goodness for computers and email, I stay in touch with several of my shipmates; we
found each other on the ship's website, which is kinda nice.
D: That's good.
A: I have several old friends... we email each other, once or twice a week. All across the country, from
California to Florida, Nebraska, and New York. So, every once in awhile I'll get an email from an old
�shipmate, who has found my email address. So yeah, I keep in touch with several guys I was in the Navy
with.
D: And you joined a veteran's organization a few years back, correct?
A: I joined the American Legion several years ago here in Lewisville; we were the fastest growing
American Legion in the state at that time.
D: What year was that?
A: Uhhh... joined back in 2006, I believe.
D: Just a few more questions. Does your experience influence your thinking about war or the military in
general?
A: You have to live it to realize what’s going on out there. I don’t think many Americans realize that we
have a fleet in every ocean now, we have a fleet that's, of course, off the Arabian Peninsula. Back when
I was in the Navy, that wasn't, there was no fleet. We had the 6th fleet, which I was in, in the med. The
7th fleet, let's see if I can count 'em right. The 5th fleet in the Atlantic. At any given moment you
probably have 5 to 600 ships at sea, I don't think the American people even realize what's going on with
the military, and why should they? They see it on the news and I'm just talking about the Navy, not
about the Army or Air Force or Marine Corps. and the Coast Guard.
D; Yeah I guess the Navy doesn't get as much screen time as the front line Marines do.
A: Well, we don't have civilians. At the time I was in, we didn't have women on board. Now you see
Navy fliers who are women, radiomen who are women, on board ships. We didn't have females on
board back in the 70's. Course there were no civilians. Once in awhile we would have a show day if we
went into a port. Maybe the king of a country or a mayor of a city would come out and visit, tour by the
captain. Just to let him come on board and look around on the air craft carrier. No civilians were not
allowed on board unless invited. Whereas if you're in the Army you are on land, Air Force, you're on
land, you probably work 9-5 and go home to your wife every night. That's not possible if you're on a
cruise 6-10 months out of every year. It was pretty tough on married people, they didn't see their
families for a long time, and our longest cruise was 10 months, 301 days. Usually a cruise was 6 months;
we had a lot of stuff going on in the Mediterranean that year. We were in Athens, Greece when King
Papadopoulos was being overthrown; we were off the coast of Morocco when that government was
being toppled. In fact, there was a couple of us in downtown Athens, and students were rioting at the
University of Athens, and tanks were rolling by us to go stop the revolution. A car came by us at about
60 mph, threw a smoke bomb at us, we then found out from shore patrol that we were ordered back to
the ship, and we didn't mind going back to the ship that day. We could hear the gunshots at the
university, they were mowing down students. First cruise I had to make, you had to wear your uniform,
that changed after Admiral Zumwaldt became CO, he let us wear civilian clothes when we left the ship
overseas, which was nice.
D: Blend in a little better.
�A: Blend in a little better, they could still pick out American sailors, most guys had long hair in Europe at
that time. And here we were in our Levi's and Wrangler's, short hair. We looked very military, and you
can't hide that.
D: How did your service experiences affect your life?
A: Oh wow. Well I grew up. My father told me, 'If nothing else, they made a man out of you'. You see
things different, you see the world differently, it just changes you. Sometimes not in a good way, I know
several men who were in combat in Vietnam, and they still can't talk about what they saw, of course
they probably saw some of their friends slaughtered, or they were slaughtering the enemy. It makes
you grateful for what you have.
D: I should have asked this in the beginning, to go back to your father, was his military, he was in the
military, did his involvement have anything to do with your decision to go in?
A: Probably. My dad joined, like most men did back in WWII, he lied about his age, he joined the
Merchant Marines when he was 17.
D: Right.
A: And uh, in fact, he was on a livery ship going back and forth from New York or Philadelphia and when
he was discharged he was in Athens, no Naples, Italy. He immediately joined the U.S. Army, and stayed
in the Army for two years, and he was discharged from the Army, and he was back in Lincolnton working
for my grandfather, he joined the Air Force Reserve. So he was in three branches of the service, in like,
8 years. So between me and him we were in every branch of the service except the Marine Corps. The
Merchant Marines were part of the Coast Guard back then.
D: Right. So do you still attend any reunions?
A: Several years ago the ship had a reunion in Jacksonville Florida, where we were stationed, in
Mayport, which is just north of Jacksonville. And there were like, uh, it was open to anyone who had
ever served on the Roosevelt. We had one man who had served on the first cruise, and they had gone
to Rio de Jainero, Brazil on that first cruise. There were over 400 of us, and that's the only reunion I
have been to.
D: Okay. Well, is there anything else you would like to add, closing remarks?
A: No, I am glad I did it. I don't know if I'd do it again. I just got an email from one of my Navy friends
the other day, 'why don't they draft 60 year olds instead of 19 year olds?' And it made a lot of sense.
We don't sleep anyway, so it won't bother us getting up at 6. We're grumpy, so give us a gun, we'll mow
down any enemy the country has!
D: That's good.
A: Quit sending the kids over, we know what to do anyway. I remember in '91 when the first Iraqi War
started, a good friend of mine who was in Vietnam in the Air Force, we looked at each other, and he said
�'Boy I'd love to go help. I could drive a truck, do something, love to be over there helping' but of course
you can't join the military after you're 45 years old.
D: Right. Anything else?
A: It was a good experience, it did change my life. I don't know how I did it. It was very scary at times.
It was very hard, shipboard life was not very easy. If either one of my sons was gonna join the military I
would tell them to finish college and become an officer, that's the best way to do it. Don't be an
enlisted man. It's pretty tough. So, anytime I meet a fellow veteran, it's great. Cause we have a special
bond.
D: So okay, well I thank you very much for your time and your service,
A: Thank you
D: Thank you for interviewing me, or interviewing you... alright.
�
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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.
Huss, Clifton Allen
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview.
Huss, Derek
Interview Date
9/23/12
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
0:48:14
File name
2013_063_Huss_CliftonAllen_interview
2013_063_Huss_CliftonAllen_transcript
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Title
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Interview with Allen Huss, 23 September 2012
Creator
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Huss, Derek
Huss, Clifton Allen
Source
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<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>
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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.
Extent
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11 pages
Language
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English
English
Type
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Sound
Subject
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United States
Veterans
Huss, Allen
Interviews
Navy
Radio men
Description
An account of the resource
Allen Huss enlisted in the US Navy in the 1970s and worked as a radioman. He traveled many places by sea, mostly along the Mediterranean Sea, and explains his experience of the Yom Kippur War.
1970
Allen Huss
American Legion
Hanoi
Mediterranean Sea
Navy
radioman
Vietnam
Yom Kippur War
-
https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/files/original/588754554253c74e33510b227d21d5d0.mp3
92ad5fa38a00a39349aee3bee24aa093
https://omeka.library.appstate.edu/files/original/ba719012fe4a284b59c610de3cf6aad5.pdf
5b95b64dc8bde9c76253b7b1848c46ca
PDF Text
Text
Military Oral History Interview Transcript
Walter Ray Hamilton
Charlotte, North Carolina
14 October 2011
CS: Chris Stouse
WH: Walt Hamilton
CS: This is Christopher Stouse for American Military History, October 14, 2011, Charlotte,
North Carolina. Please state your name.
WH: Walter Ray Hamilton.
CS: Date and place of birth.
WH: Sheller, Illinois in 1932.
CS: How and why would you say you started your military service?
WH: Well, I was raised on a farm through grade school and high school in a rural, very rural
area. I had graduated from high school and I was coming pretty close to the draft during the
Korean War and rather than go into the Army, I decided I would take my chances and go into the
Navy.
CS: How long was your service?
WH: I served four years.
CS: Are you happy with your service?
WH: It was a very good thing for me.
CS: Good, now please describe how you felt when you enlisted.
WH: I was homesick at first. Boot camp was in San Diego, California.
CS: How long did that last?
WH: I think it was 11 or 12 weeks, that’s when you get homesick. They say San Diego is
supposed to be warm but I started in February and I'll tell you, I got cold. Anyway, I got through
boot camp and then I went on...we had various tests and so forth. And the training, well the
physical training I wouldn't say was...we marched a lot. We did calisthenics and that type of
thing, it wasn’t Marine or SEAL training. We studied a lot about ship life, nautical terms.
CS: So you had a drill instructor?
1
�WH: We had a regular drill instructor; he was a chief petty officer, older fella.
CS: Do you remember his name?
WH: No I don't, no I don't, and it’s gone. I don't remember his name. He was a pretty good old
boy, pretty fair in his heart. He was trying to train us as good sailors, of course he had no idea
whether we would go aboard a ship or serve in a naval station someplace. It was just general
training but like I started to say a while ago, we did take aptitude tests, I guess mechanical. If I
remember correctly, I qualified pretty highly in mechanical aptitude, electrical physics and so
forth.
CS: So what did you do after boot camp?
WH: After boot camp, I was assigned I guess it was a prep school. It was more of a technical
education. The tech school was eight weeks in Norman, Oklahoma. It was more testing and I
qualified to go to, I guess it was 27 or 30 weeks, something like that, electronic training. That's
probably the best thing that ever happened to me. That was the start of the career which I ended
up, in civilian life, pursuing. That school was in a suburb of Nashville, Tennessee. Sorry,
Memphis, very close to Memphis. It was a very thorough school. They trained us a lot about
electronics, how to troubleshoot, and electronic equipment.
CS: What did you do after you graduated from there?
WH: When I graduated from there, I was assigned to what was called a FASRON, at Moffett
Field, California, outside of Mountain City. I don’t remember what the acronym stood for. It was
maintenance for airplanes and fighter jets. I did that for two and a half, three years. After I had
been there a few months, I had a little interest back at home, she was waiting for me. So I had
saved some money, and rather than spend that money on a bus ride back to Illinois, I hitchhiked
back, all the way from California to Southern Illinois. We got married and with my dad's help we
bought a new Chevrolet car, 1953 Chevrolet. After a few days at home after the wedding and
after a three day little honeymoon trip, we headed back for California.
CS: What did you do when you got back?
WH: When we got back, we found a little one-room apartment, one bed, couch, tiny little
kitchen and tiny little bathroom. It was all we could afford at the time. I went back to work at
FASRON, maintaining planes, working with radio equipment and things like that. Margie, my
wife's name, found a good job and we began to eat well.
CS: How long did you stay there?
WH: We stayed out there about two years, or something like that. Then I was reassigned to a
fighter group of airplanes and we flew F-2H3 Banshees, manufactured by McDonald Douglas. I
went to more schools based on the type of equipment that they had there. One of the schools that
I went to was a radar school. When I established myself within the fighter group, I maintained
2
�the radar that was in these jets. The radar didn't really guide the plane into a target, but the plane
followed a dot into something.
It was rather complicated piece of equipment. Every time that a plane would go out and come
back in, it would have to have some new vacuum tubes put in. One of the interesting things about
that, our executive officer was the first astronaut to go into a sub-orbital flight. As an enlisted
seaman, airmen I guess was my title, I got to talk to him a little bit because he was very
interested in the radar.
After a flight, he would come in with the radar and I would meet the plane and he would always
ask some questions about how it operated, why it wouldn’t do that, what was wrong with it. I
kind of got to know him a little bit. I'm not saying we were buddies but he was really a neat guy.
Anyway, with this flight group, we had VF-193 squadron that we practiced off the coast out
there. And we loaded and flew them over to a place in Nevada. We were scheduled to go out on
a carrier into the Pacific. We went over into Nevada to an Air Force base over there where the
planes practiced, they had carrier landings and so forth.
There was a lot of maintenance to do and I mainly worked at night. One of the interesting little
things that happened to me, we wanted to get one of the planes back into the barn. Normally they
had people go out and hook the tow-bar to them. I ended up taking it out and brought it back, and
being an old farm boy I could do that no problem. Anyway, I let one of the wheels get off of the
concrete as I brought it in and turned it and that wheel sunk. We spent all evening trying to get
that out. I didn’t get anything for it, they just replaced it.
CS: Where did you go after that?
WH: Well, then we completed our weeks out there, went back and we loaded on a carrier, the
USS Ariskone. It is right now off of the Mobile, Alabama bay. It's at the bottom of the ocean; it's
got fish swimming around it. They sunk it on purpose because it was old. You might have read
about it, there’s a fleet of ships all over the place that have been sunk. Scuba divers go down and
explore the ships, and that's where my old ship is right now. Anyway, we practiced off the coast
of California, and a lot of the guys got sick. They got seasick because the waves right off the
coast are very high and very rolling.
CS: So what year is it now?
WH: Right now we are in early 1955. So we practiced out there a couple weeks or so, came
back, took some time off. I took some leave and picked up Margie and brought her back to
Illinois while I went back. Then after a few weeks we loaded on the carrier and headed out
across the Pacific on what was called a six-month cruise. The destination was all
over...Japan...our first stop was Hawaii, which was kind of neat.
And we all took leave and saw the Arizona and numerous other memorials, quite moving to see
that. And then after that we loaded back on and headed back out. It wasn't every day that they
would fly the planes off, but they were practicing you know, and the next stop that I recall would
have been probably Japan. There were two or three times that we went into Japan for a few
3
�days. I got to see Tokyo, Yokahama, and I don't remember other names but there were about
three or four different places.
CS: Did you see any of the after effects of Hiroshima or Nagasaki? Were they off limits?
WH: No, no I didn't get to see any of that but Japan was very primitive. You know what honey
buckets were? That was the cart with a donkey pulling it, guy riding on it, cleaning out human
toilets. And we were warned not to eat vegetables because they had been grown with human
fertilizer. Anyway, we were there and enjoyed that, several different weekend "liberties", the
ships anchor in and they bring in "liberty" boats. Then our next stop was probably the
Philippines.
That was an interesting place. We anchored in Manila Bay and the liberty boats would come out
and get us. At that time, there was ship masts sticking up out of the water, they had been sunk
during ship battles. The water wasn’t deep enough to completely cover them. Korea was over by
then, when I went in in '52 right at the end of the conflict, I don't remember when the truce was
negotiated. Manila Bay, we went in there, one thing I remember, I was working on an airplane,
pulling out a piece of equipment, and it was hot and humid. We were pretty loose on the ship;
we didn’t have to stay in uniform.
I was working on a piece of equipment, trying to get a replacement back in. Prior to starting I
was working on the radar and I was supposed to push the radar button and I pushed the on button
and it burned me I'll tell you, and it shocked me pretty bad, I guess it was 600 volts; I was done
for the day. Then we left there and the next big stop was Hong Kong for a few days. All of us
went out and bought clothes. I went out and bought suits, tailor-made.
A lot of sailors wanted to buy china for their moms, wives. I brought home three sets of china.
My mother-in-law got some. We were in Hong Kong for a few days then we went back into
Japan, we were off the coast of Formosa and something had happened. We were on alert,
something had happened; I guess close to fighting, we never had a problem. We passed on by
that. And then here comes, a cyclone, what do they call them? A typhoon. We were right in the
middle of that thing and the carrier handled it pretty well and we had to tie the planes all down.
Everything was tied down tightly with cables and we went right into that.
We were called a fleet and we had destroyers and cruisers with them as backup. Escorts. I
remember being able to stand on the hangar deck and look out across and there would be a
destroyer and you would see him come off the tip of a big wave, tip over and then come back
into sight. On the carrier they would put up water breakers on the carrier to prevent the water
from coming up. That brings something else to mind. One of the things about the Banshee, they
were one of the first planes that were equipped for night flights. They could land on the carrier at
night. We were recovering planes that had gone out and there was always an evening night
crew.
We heard the alarm go off one night and we found out that one of our planes had crashed right
into the back of the carrier. Back there were two “big gun tubs.” He had come in and lost power
and settled into that and he hit and behind the fuselage, the plane broke in two right there. The
4
�cockpit and the nose slammed into the carrier and went right in between two pillars back there.
The pilot got out; he lived and wasn't hurt at all. We all rushed out where we could see and we
could see flames out there in the water. They drop their tail and release their tail hook and he hit
and it broke the back of the plane and complete loss of the plane. The belly hit first, it wasn’t
head on.
The cockpit and nose went in 30 feet and hit a wall and stopped and the pilot walked out, fine.
We knew who was flying that plane, young officer, and a lieutenant junior grade; just a really
nice swell guy. We didn't know what had happened, and then the phone rang and we heard that
he was ok. That was one of the exciting things that happened. After that, we went to Japan again
and then we headed back. Margie was going to come out and meet the ship, at Alameda Air
Station in San Francisco. I remember the ride back, we cruised right along, just kind of hanging
out playing cards.
We had rainstorms but that one typhoon was the worst one and that was pretty bad. I remember
getting close the morning prior, coming into the bay. A lot of us were up on the flight deck, I
remember seeing the Golden Gate Bridge coming in. Anyway, we came into Alameda and
unloaded and the squadron had already flown off and went back to Moffett Field. They flew off
before the ship had docked. They need about 40 knots of flight deck to get enough lift. I might
talk briefly about the experiences watching planes leave.
We always had to have a radioman when the planes were flying off the deck. You know what
catapults are? The planes are tied onto the catapults and they’re told to rev it up to 100%. These
were jets now. The earphones were on to save your eardrums. You look at one plane, he’s still
there and you look at another one and he's gone, flying. There were some prop planes; we didn't
have them that were on another squadron there. A single engine, but very powerful. They would
drop and go out of sight. They lost altitude, then picked up and were gone. All that happened,
Margie brought my mom and dad out to California.
They had hardly ever been out of Illinois. You could call them poor but they didn't know it. It
was a good living back then. She brought them with her. It was really something. They were all
at the dock when we came in. Margie, my wife, said my dad was watching that ship come in. It
was just creeping because you can't maneuver a ship that large and dad said that's bigger than
anything I've ever seen. I can just imagine his eyes. Anyway, then I went back to work, planes
started flying again off of Moffett Field, and then it came time for me to be discharged after four
years.
We loaded everything we had and headed back. Of course I had the GI bill. I had gained a real
good background in electronics, all the latest type of stuff. I went to school at DeVry Tech and
lived in Chicago a little over a year. I decided to make a career and went to work for a telephone
company, AT&T. Sometime by the time I was stationed at Moffett Field, they had three big
huge high hangars. The big airships, dirigibles had to be kept, huge. There was a time when the
doors were open and rain would drop on the inside. They were experimenting with vertical
takeoff. They had a prototype there and they had a harness there for it and was being protected
by cables but they could experiment with it. It was preliminary testing which later became the
5
�Harrier jet. They still use something similar to the harrier, a version of it. But I made a career
out of electronics. And here we are today, Chris! I'm done talking, ha-ha.
CS: Could you tell me about crew life?
WH: We were tight, pretty good buddies. We would play cards in the evening and games like
that. You kind of get tired of it when you’re at sea quite a while. The cooks weren't bad, food
was pretty good. It was pretty crowded but nothing like a submarine or destroyer or anything like
that. The design of the carrier is somewhat different from the one I was on. While I was still in
the service, they were building a deck on the left side and it went off and the planes launched at
about a 30-degree angle.
There were lots of supplies on there; it's so deep in the water, a lot of room down there. The
liberties were mostly 24 hours and we would generally go sightseeing and get a meal. One
evening some of us went out to eat and what did I order? Steak. I ordered the steak. I don’t
remember ever sampling Japanese food. We were kind of given warnings as to what to stay
away from. Now it’s much more civilized, I guess you'd say. Anyway, the service was good for
me. Otherwise I would have probably been a poor farmer.
CS: Okay, thank you very much for your time.
WH: Thank you.
6
�
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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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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.
Hamilton, Walter R.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview.
Strouse, Christopher
Interview Date
10/14/11
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
42:11 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
Illinois, Navy, Moffett Field, USS Ariskone, Tokyo, Japan, Manila, Philippines
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
A name given to the resource
Interview with Walter R. Hamilton, 14 October 2011
Description
An account of the resource
Walter R. Hamilton enlisted in the Navy and served four years. He was trained in maintenance for airplanes and fighter-jets. He served a six month tour of the pacific following the end of the Korean War.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Hamilton, Walter R.
Stouse, Christopher
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
The size or duration of the resource.
6 pages
Subject
The topic of the resource
Hamilton, Walter R.
Veterans
Korean War, 1950-1953
Personal narratives, American
United States
Interviews
Language
A language of the resource
English
electronic training
FASRON
Korean War
Navy
Walter Hamilton