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Military Oral History Interview Transcript
Conley Call
North Wilkesboro, North Carolina
14 October 2011
MC: Matt Call
CC: Conley Call
MC: Today is October 14, 2011. I am at the home of Conley Call in North Wilkesboro, North
Carolina. Conley Call is my grandfather and I will be interviewing him today. What is your date
of birth?
CC: August 29th, 1931
MC: What war or branch of service were you in?
CC: I was in the Army National Guard during the Korean War.
MC: What was your rank?
CC: I enlisted as a recruit and later after four years got a commission and retired as a colonel.
MC: Okay, where were you living at the time you enlisted?
CC: I was living here on Fair Plains Road.
MC: Right where we are now, pretty much. What made you want to join?
CC: Well I was just finishing up my sophomore in high school, I was 17 years old and several of
us were talking about it and I had to get my parents to sign because I wasn't 18 until later that
year. And there were things appearing in the newspaper and the Russians had up the iron curtain
or the wall and you could just see that maybe war was going to come.
So quite a few of my high school, I'd say half a dozen, we enlisted in the National Guard, some
of them went on and as soon as they graduated high school went into the Air Force or the U.S
Army. But I was in the guard, there wasn't any draft, and they had just started a few months after
I enlisted but I knew at 17, I was going to have to go and just in the prime status, and good
health, so I went ahead and joined and started training.
MC: Why did you decide to join the National Guard rather than any other service?
CC: Well, I didn't like the army or the military as a career. I wanted to get married later and I
liked the citizen soldier concept the best, where we spend most of our time in our civilian lives
doing whatever and go to war, and that's the way America has always fought their wars.
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�MC: We've learned a lot about citizen soldier warfare. Do you recall your first when you joined?
CC: Yes, I can. I had a sergeant named Looney White, who had been in World War One, and
was still in the guard. We were assigned to him immediately to learn to wear our uniform, and
we had to have our uniform altered to make it fit us, for a small person. I weighed about 110
pounds. We also started to do dismounted drill as our first thing. They started teaching and went
to recruit later that year but it was different but you knew some of the guys in the unit. Quite a
few of them had been in World War Two and a few of them had been in World War One and we
had some good NCOs (non-commissioned officers) and officers who had experience so that was
my philosophy in doing that. I could go on to school or get married or whatever and still stay in
the guard and pull my military.
MC: How old were you when you joined?
CC: Seventeen.
MC: Seventeen.
CC: I would have been 18. I joined in May. 2 May, '49. And I was 18 years old on 29 of August
that year. So I had to get my parents to sign my papers to allow me to join.
MC: Were you excited?
CC: Well kind of, it was different and we always drilled one night a week and then we had
weekend drills and campouts and so forth, but you met some new people, some different people
and I took it very serious that some of these veterans of World War One and World War Two
could tell you about what it was like and so it was a learning experience and I went there to learn
and do the very best I could. They started up the draft shortly there after, I don’t remember
exactly. I was classified 1D, that means I was 1A physically, but I was in the reserve or National
Guard.
By the way you had to be in both. You had to be trained in that day or time as if you were on
active duty so you had to go on and fulfill your MOS, Military Occupation Specialty. The unit
was an artillery unit and I learned the enlisted side of the artillery the 105 Howitzer Toad, and
they shoot about 13,000 meters and that's a pretty good distance but you had to be very accurate
and so they amend, but that was later for me, I didn’t start out doing. I started doing menial
things like TP and guard duty and you know, things like that. They don’t start training you on
your specialty.
MC: Did you ever go overseas?
CC: No
MC: You didn't?
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�CC: I went overseas later to visit Guard units. I went once to Ecuador and I went once to
Germany and Czechoslovakia to visit Guard units but that was way later when I was in another
capacity but I didn’t fight in any war.
MC: Can you tell me some of your most memorable experiences in the National Guard?
CC: Well, in 1951, we were having a summer camp in Fort Braxton, North Carolina. Summer
camps were about two or three weeks and I was selected the most outstanding soldier of the year
for the battalion. It was the fact that I was on a howitzer, the number two man. When the
howitzer fired you immediately looked in the tube of the howitzer to see if that shell had gone
out and you would say, "Number two has fired, sir!” and I had on aphesis type gloves because
the brass that come out of there had a...that didn't go out, and they were hot and just the way I
carried out my job, I was singled out and got accommodations. Then later that year, I want to
say, probably June of 1952, this was in May, I went to Fort Jackson, South Carolina on active
duty with regular soldier and went to infantry leadership school and they were basically training
us to be MCOs and to go to Korea. They were short of a lot of leadership and of course I
graduated number fourth or fifth, I think fourth.
And that was to teach us how to be…they taught us dismounted drills, methods of instruction,
how to teach classes, and how to lead people, and I really enjoyed that and much of the active
duty while I was there. My uncle, Jay Call, Gracie's first husband was drafted in service, and
several people I knew, and I sort of helped them out a little bit because I was already there and
showed them the ropes a little bit. Then I took a extension course from Fort Riley, Kansas, called
a ten series, and it was sort of basic military, and I took it by mail, and when I finished and
finished the leadership school and then finished local training that they put us through, the
officers interviewed me and recommended me for commission.
I had been in the guard almost four years at that time and that was October of 1953, and I was
commissioned as second lieutenant by an act of Congress. Federally you had to be qualified to be
a second lieutenant in the active military, not just in the National Guard and that meant I had to
go to prepare myself for an officer's MOS, Military Occupational Specialty. So I went to Fort
Sill, Oklahoma, and probably January of 1954 and returned to my home station after about seven
months after about seven months in July of 1954 and I really enjoyed that.
It’s a lot of trigonometry and you had to work at every position in the military and the artillery.
Fort Sill, Oklahoma was the artillery guided missile school of the world, and there were 28
nations represented there. I met a lot of Korean officers that we had sent from Korea to school,
and I was elected class leader of '88. Lieutenant and one captain, and for the whole six months,
and I moved my wife and two children out after about a month and they came and lived with us
in Oklahoma. Oklahoma was kind of different, geographically and all and it dust storms out
there, but I enjoyed it very much, and thoroughly enjoyed the education I got. I worked a little as
a boy in survey with an engineer here in the community named Sam Mitchell. And so in the
artillery you did a lot of survey. You had to know where your piece is and then you had to know
how far it can shoot and control a lot of that or you will get friendly fire. You are always behind
the infantry.
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�And I thoroughly enjoyed that. As soon as I came home I was made safety officer for our entire
battalion, now we had other officers that had trained in World War Two and some had been
distilled before me but they always used the latest graduate, the one that up to date in the latest
rules and everything and I stayed safety officer for a year or two, and then as would happen, the
army goes through reorganization and you had two to three times the Army.
You have the regular army, so many standing soldiers, and then you have the Army Reserve, and
then you have the National Guard. And altogether that makes your defense force and in this
particular war we're having in war and over in there we use more National Guard by far then we
have regular troops that's called up unit after unit. The unit here that I used to command has been
over there three or four times. I mean the army was cut back and was so small it has to use its
reserves.
MC: Did you spend your time when you were enlisted as just National Guard or did you have
another career also the same time?
CC: Yes, I had started in 1946 working part time at a local furniture company.
MC: American Drew?
CC: It was just American Furniture at that time, there wasn't any Drew. And then later it became
American Drew. We bought a burnt down furniture factory and started Drew furniture and then
they later merged together. And I was in a management training program there and in fact, the
National Guard and ready men helped me to advance and improve myself in my civilian job. I
also had a part time job as a fireman that I started in 1946, which I rose to chief, and that helped
me and anytime you can learn and learn how to manage people, but I really had a wonderful time
at the furniture, in the furniture business, and I rose and retired as, after 53 years, with a lot of
experience and I was senior vice president of distribution and purchasing and at times as we were
buying companies. I was even head of the company for a while.
MC: Did you meet any long time friends while you were in?
CC: Yes, I met friends in the National Guard that I know until this day. I'm 80 years old and
they just become someone you can trust and someone that can trust you and you started out
sleeping in a puck tent and living close together and you learn to make friends pretty quick who
you can trust and then that goes right along in the commission officer's rank. You're doing a little
bit different but I had a retired SCI, retired highway patrol men, which had been in World War
Two and a lot of friends that I still know today. I still like to know and in fact, one of those men
that I sent to Fort Benton and commissioned during that time later joined Special Forces and
went to Vietnam. He came back to visit a year or so ago he was traveling across the United
States on a motorcycle. In fact, he sent us an email to your home, where he was traveling; he
always travelled across the United States and Canada just visiting friends he had met in the
military.
He sent me a travel log of that, and I enjoyed that. But while he was in Vietnam he sent me a
postcard and this happened to be 1969, he was in Vietnam and I was of course in the Guard as a
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�civilian but doing my duty as required and he sent me a postcard or Christmas card and it showed
his hut and his Vietnam counterpart. He told me on this card, he had taken over 1000 rounds over
the last 24 hours, but he had saw my name in the Army Times, I had just been promoted to major
and all military promotions go to the Army Times, or did.
I'm not sure they do today or not. But he'd read where I was promoted to major, and at the time
he was a lieutenant and he said, "Congratulations, I wish you were here to give me some advice."
I had been his commanding officer for two or three years and it's someone you just don’t forget.
In the ‘60s when I commanded the local guard unit and then in the late ‘60s commanded the
battalion for a short time, headquartered in Hickory. You meet a lot of younger people, just out
of college or in college, just out of high school, and the type of training give them or don’t give
them has a lot of difference whether or not they survive, if they go into battle and how to take
care of themselves. During the ‘60s I also taught at Fort Bragg two summers and one winter in
OCS. They had OCS at Fort Bragg, officer candidate school. I was taught weapons down there
and then in the earlier days I was a drill instructor at Fort McClellan, Alabama for a about a
couple of summers down there. And I enjoyed that. Don't know that you ever knew a local man
in the school system here, named Jack Brame, coach Brame.
MC: I don't think I did.
CC: Well, he spent many years at Wilkes Central. And he just in the last few years, he lost a leg
to diabetes. But he's a retired schoolteacher. Well, when I was training on active duty he was my
instructor. But Jack Brame had gone to Davidson on a football scholarship at Davidson College
and then went on in the army and he was my instructor. He left after he pulled his two years, he
went to Appalachian and was assistant coach up there working on his masters. And of course, I
moved up, got a commission and the next time I meet him he is one of my lieutenants and we
have been best friends throughout the years and I had several school teachers or former school
teachers that I was involved in and one of them was assistant postmaster who's living today, he's
90, Bill Thomas. He's been a pilot over the years in World War Two. I was ten years old when
World War Two broke out and of course I was 18 years old when the Korean War broke out,
June 25, 1950.
I was not old enough until they I was almost too old because they didn't start drafting until
almost that time. Quite an experience later after I got out of the guard after 23 years and went to
the Army Reserve and I was with a unit called the 87th Mover Command and it was a reserve
unit. At that time they had pulled now in Alabama, where they conduct all the war games
between the active and the reserve and I got to go up to Germany and all over South America, I
went to nearly every country in South America. And then the last thing I did of any consequence,
I can't tell you the year, but we had this general down in Panama called General Noriega and he
was really big in drugs and all the things and leading Panama the wrong way and we were
interested in invading Panama and we did.
But they got a group of us reserve officers and a few active officers and we went to South
America, Central America, and visited every country and it was a secret mission at the time, but
our main object was to find out what the people would think when America invaded Panama to
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�check for Noriega. You know countries don't like you to be in their country regardless of
whether you're helping or not and we get criticized for that as America but if we hadn't done it
there'd be a tremendous amount of countries who wouldn't be free today.
MC: So you could say your overall experience with the National Guard was a good one?
CC: Absolutely, I recommended it to quite a few people and the opportunity to go to a school,
the opportunity to grow managing people, leading people, whether it enhances, I said my ability
to run a fire department or to run departments in a furniture company, all that training that you
received to work one place or work another. It was just an outstanding and I look back on it with
great anticipation and particularly the friends you made, all the way up to the governor or this
sort of thing. The governor of the state commissioned you in the National Guard, but Congress
commissioned you into the reserves. You had to have a double commission. You had to have the
specs and qualification as if you were in the regular army by a certain time they give you to earn
your training, but it enriched my life and I contributed something to the communities in which
we live. We did a lot of things in service in the community.
During the ‘60s there was a lot of unrest in Winston-Salem and Greensboro. Riots, they had riots
and my battalion was called on active duty to go for two or three weeks at a time and go help
quell those riots and quell the unrest, where the shootings and breaking in stores and what have
you. Particularly one of those times was when Dr. King was killed. Seemed like that was around
1968 but I'm not sure exactly the day of his death.
There was a lot of unrest because of that and we went to Greensboro and stayed about a week in
the coliseum there while the GGO (Greater Greensboro Open) was going on and called out by
the governor. The governor can call the National Guard and use them any way he sees or she
sees. We have a lady governor now, she sees to protect the citizens and help out in hurricanes
and all of that. So the guard does a lot of work. Now they also can be called by the president to
go and fight a war, and they are, I feel like a little more serviceable by helping the state and the
nation by being in the Army Reserve or National Guard that way then you would be if you were
just in the regular army.
MC: Did your military experience influence your thinking about war or the military in general?
CC: Yes, first, war is hell. It’s terrible. And I don't know anybody that wants war. Now the
citizen soldier concept is what America has always had until this period of time we have the
largest standing order army we've had in a long time. But I don't like doing away with the draft
and I learned this in the National Guard by getting filler troops in that had been drafted and some
had not. Here's what you have in the army today. You have people who in most cases are in the
lower bracket in the ability and training because the well to do trained person that's going
graduate from college and go on to better themselves, they're not going to take four years out to
serve in the army and they're not going to volunteer.
So when you did away with the draft, the draft supposedly called all of us to go serve for a
certain length of time and when you did away with the draft it lowered. We've got a very high
quality army today but some of that is because we've had recessions and that's where people can
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�get a job. There's a lot of political sides too it, I kind of like the concept that Switzerland has
always had, and they've never been in a war. In Switzerland they used to go into the military and
stay about a year and then you go home and take your military equipment home with you, your
weapon and so forth and then you're on call until you age out.
MC: Okay
CC: And they've stayed neutral all of these years that I've been involved in a war. If I had lost a
leg or the other, and I was using a wooden leg or something, I think I’d still go in the military.
Because we have the concept of womanhood today, I think they ought to serve to. And the more
you learn about, as I know it, in World War Two, the United States had to go to war. We had any
choice. Somebody jumped on us. In World War Two, we know about Pearl Harbor and we know
we had to go to war. I mean it wasn't any question. We'd be taken over by the Japanese and the
Germans and so forth. Now other than that, we should’ve not have been in Vietnam, and
probably, I'm not going say this as emphatically, we shouldn't have been in Korea but definitely
not in Vietnam and we shouldn't be in Iraq or any of these places now.
MC: We spend so much money.
CC: Well, it’s the money and the young lives you're wasting and all. And, only by having some
experience of your own can you really know what you're talking about to say no.
MC: Yes.
CC: During the Korean war and the Vietnam War, people went to Canada and got away from the
war and didn't go and I'd rather they stay here and fight the system then run away from the
system
MC: Yes.
CC: Definitely, you take anybody who's had any experience in the military knows that most of
the time it's been industrial complex or the political context is why we go to war, its because they
jumped on us. And the French fought in Vietnam for 40-50 years, never won, and other nations
before them. Wars have been going on there since the countries were born. And we didn't win
and they're now fairly merged together again as a country. But we're buying allot of cars and a
lot of military stuff from Korea and Vietnam that we used to blow up.
MC: Yes.
CC: War is Hell. And I don't know of anybody that really, that knows what they're talking about
that really believes in war. Now if somebody jumps on us like Pearl Harbor or something you've
got of protect yourself and that sort of thing, but we hadn't had that since I was ten years old.
Most of these things are political.
MC: Well I think that's all the questions I have for you. Is there anything you'd like to add for
this interview?
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�CC: I appreciate you asking me to make a few comments. I have thoroughly enjoyed the service
in the community and in the nation, and years that I've done. I've made a lot of friends and I've
learned enough to be a good citizen, about war, I think. And know by having had some training
you can read the newspaper or watch television and you know a little bit about what’s going on
and can make a decision in voting.
Its very important that we spend some time studying our government and war is a big part of
what we're spending our dollars, and so we sure ought to. The eight years that President Bush
was in there, and the two years that President Obama has been in, they don’t put any of that war
expenses in the budget. They're using millions on adhoc things and it’s bigger than the budget.
Our civilians haven't managed it well in most cases, so wasteful. Wasteful, even if you need so
much, so many men and so much service, they still waste an awful lot because so much is thrown
at it. Of course we waste some everywhere else too, but I appreciate you asking me to make
some comments.
MC: Thank you very much for speaking with me today.
CC: Yes, glad to do it.
MC: Like I said at the beginning of the interview, this is October 14 2011 and this is Conley Call
of North Wilkesboro. My name is Matthew Call and this interview is for American Military
History at Appalachian State University.
CC: Thank you.
8
�
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
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.
Call, Conley
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview.
Call, Matt
Interview Date
10/14/11
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
41:12 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
North Wilkesboro, Wilkes County, Army National Guard, Korean War, Ecuador, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Fort Braxton, Fort Jackson, Fort Sill, American Furniture Company, Army Times, Fort Bragg
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 Conley Call, 14 October 2011
Subject
The topic of the resource
Korean War, 1950-1953
Call, Conley
Veterans
Personal narratives, American
United States
Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Korean War Conley Call, Army National Guard, was born August 29, 1931. He discusses his reasons for joining the military as well as several personal anecdotes during training. He also discusses how his military experience influenced his thoughts on war.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Call, Conley
Call, Matt
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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8 pages
Language
A language of the resource
English
Army National Guard
citizen soldier warfare
colonel
Conley Call
Fort Braxton
iron curtain
Korean War