William Powell Jr. Veteran Interview

November the 3rd, 1926.

4625 Rose Valley Road, Portsmouth. Working it so I'll... I thought it was Rosemount, Rose-mouth. Yeah, okay.

Since 1950.

Several places. I was born in Portsmouth on Gallia Street, and we moved to Eden Park in Twin Valley. Then when we got married, we had an apartment on 17th Street, and from there we bought a place in Rosemount in 1950.

No, I was born at home.

Bill and Opal Powell.

Yes, I am a junior.

Her name was Dawson.

Scio County? From Wayne, West Virginia. She was born and raised there.

He was born and raised in Virginia. Somewhere in Virginia. You know where? Lurch.

Jim and Josephine Powell.

Lansdowne.

Yeah, we went back. My brother and both of my brothers traced it back. They went over and we originally came from Wales. They got to check, and when they went over there, they went down the street and there was nothing but Powells on both sides of the street. They told them what they were going to do, and they said, 'How far back have you gone?' They said, 'Back to 1600.' He said, 'If I was you, I'd stop.' My brother said, 'Why?' He said, 'You're going to be related to King Edward.' No, Edward who? Wasn't it chop their heads off? What king was that? King Edward the First, and he was pretty mean. They said, 'Don't go any further.' Because Powells were really... okay.

You know Co? It's an Indian name. That was her mother's name, and John was her dad's name.

She was named that. That's the Indian name.

They were from West Virginia.

I can't think of their name. I can see their house they lived in, Coleman, West Virginia, just about ten miles from Wayne. I've been through their home before when I was five or six years old. I remember that. But he was an old preacher, had his own church there, and they had a big swinging bridge to his home. But I can't right now. I do know the name if I can think of it.

Your grandmother... your mother's parents' names... your grandmother's name was Co. Her parents' names? You got me there. Now I tripped you up finally.

No, but we got a book. It's got pictures of one of my great-great-grandparents, taken all the 1800s. They got a big book about that thick. But I finally quit when they told him, 'Well, she said it wouldn't go any farther. I'll go back any further.'

I got one.

Her name was George. Her maiden name was Cokely.

No, she passed away in the year 2000.

Frank and Vivian Cokely. They were from Virginia's Shenandoah Valley.

Yes. My wife was the oldest, and then she had a sister Peg, and then she had a brother Frankie. He was named after his dad too.

My sister was two years younger than me. She's passed away. Her name was Rowena. And my brother Ronald, he passed away too. And I've got another brother living, Larry Powell. He lives in Washington Courthouse. And that's it, isn't it, Landon?

Oh yes. My oldest was Michael. Weymouth Linda's husband, he passed away when he was 62. I have a daughter, Linda Gail, and she married Marvin. Is she living? Yes, she's living out back on Wheelersburg.

No.

Clay High School. First year it was built. When was it built? 1939. That was the first year I went to seventh grade there, and I graduated in '44. I went all the way up to '44.

139. That's the one. We got a fire station in place now though.

Oh yeah.

Yeah, but there are a lot of memories there. That's where I met my wife. We were 14 years old and we were freshmen. I had been going there a couple years, she'd been going to grade school at Rosemont on the old trail. Then we both started our freshman year in 1941. We were both 14, and we hooked up just like that, didn't we, Landon? We went together from 14, and we got married when I was 19, when I came off of this trip I was going to tell about.

I got a job. I was going to school, and it got so bad that they said I could work as long as I kept my grades up 80 or above. I could work Sunday, Monday, Friday, and Saturday, four days a week, and go to school three days a week, as long as I kept my grades up.

The School Board. So I worked at the freight house. I was 16. There were several of us 16 years old doing that. We worked at the freight house, not freight, up and down the platforms, one of the different boxcars going to different destinations.

I was still working, but I knew I graduated at 17 because I'd be 18 in November. So I knew I was... that's part of my story.

You want the whole story now? Any time you want to interrupt me, I don't think... okay. You start it, and if I... okay, I'll jump in. Well, you already know my name, Bill Powell. That's right. The only reason I'm down here today is my daughter-in-law Linda right over there. She talked me into it. She twisted my arm. I said no one wants to hear that story, it's not that exciting. Anyway, I come down here to tell about the trip to Marseilles, France. But before I start the Marseilles story, I want to start at the beginning. I had just turned 15 months before, and it was December the 7th, 1941. You know what that is. I was in my front yard waiting on the man to come along in a car and throw the paper out to me, about four o'clock in the afternoon. He didn't throw it out, he motioned for me to come to the car. Said, 'Go turn your radio on.' I said, 'Why is that?' 'President Roosevelt speaking. We've been bombed.' I said, 'Where?' He said, 'Pearl Harbor.' I said, 'Where's Pearl Harbor?' He said, 'I don't know where it is, but go turn the radio on.' So I did that. After the speech was over, my parents and I got to talking. One good thing, I don't have to worry about going to war. It'll be three years before I'm 18, and they'll all be over with. Well, you know the end of that story, don't you? It lasted a lot longer than that. So we're now graduated. I continued working at the freight house, and when I got 18, I got my papers. I was going to be drafted. I didn't want to be drafted, so I wanted to enlist. I wanted to go in the Navy. I tried to get in the Navy or the Coast Guard. They wouldn't take anyone. They're not taking anybody right now, they said. Anyway, I decided... I was talking to a man. He said, 'If you want to go in the Navy that bad, why don't you try this Merchant Marine deal?' I said, 'I don't know anything about it.' He said, 'They're hearty.' I said, 'What do they do?' He said, 'We haul supplies to different countries.' I thought that sounds like a winner. I didn't know what I was getting into. Anyway, I went, had my mother go with me. We went to Cincinnati. We signed up. They said, 'We'll take you. We'll send you the papers and tell you where to go and what to do in a few days.' And they did that. So I got the papers to get on the train and head for New York. My train would be in New York at Sheepshead Bay. When I got on the train, I thought I recognized one of the guys sitting there. He was a railroad worker, he worked up in the yards doing something. Anyway, I got to talk, and he said, 'Yeah, I enlisted in the Merchant Marine.' So we were both headed for the same place. So we got to New York. They met us, and on the subway we went to Sheepshead Bay. That's just about a half a mile past the Coast Guard facilities where they got everything to train people with. Because when we got to Sheepshead Bay, all we had was just barracks and the mess hall. But we had to march every day down to the Coast Guard to get our training, like jumping into the water maybe 50 feet. They had to give us a suit to wear when we did that. It was all rubber. I wondered why the bottom of it was so heavy. That had lead that thick in the bottom of the shoe, a solid rubber suit zipped all the way up. I said, 'What's the lead for? It's so heavy.' He said, 'When you have to abandon ship, you got to jump. The lead in the bottom of your shoes is heavy enough so you don't have to lay on your back and float or your stomach. You can be vertical in the water.' I said, 'Well, that makes sense.' So we trained to do that. We trained guns, shooting 20s and 40s and all other kind of things. Then we go back to the barracks. One night I was standing guard. We had to take turns. I kept seeing this big orange ball, looked like a bomb went off out in the Atlantic about ten miles. I asked one of the officers, 'Is that out there? I see it now. I've seen it twice now.' He said, 'You don't know what that is?' I said, 'No.' He said, 'The German subs are getting us. We leave port. If they don't get you out there that quick, they'll follow you all the way where they're going. They'll finally get you.' Well, I knew I'd signed up in the wrong place. Anyway, I got to talk and said, 'Well, I don't want to be no oiler because I know they work down below the water service. Torpedoes hit. I want to be up higher than that.' I said, 'There's nothing else I can do?' He said, 'Well, you can train to be a deckhand.' I said, 'Nothing else?' He said, 'You like radio?' I said, 'No.' He said, 'Well, they haven't got one position you can study for. It's about a compass. If you want to be a... it's equivalent to a helmsman in the Navy. All you do is steer ships.' I said, 'That sounds like I'd be on the bridge. All right, I might be piling up where I wish I could jump if I got hit.' So I said, 'Let's do that.' So I took a test for a few weeks and I passed it, and I was qualified to steer tankers and Liberty ships. That's about the only two the Merchant Marines had. They had others, but those were their two main ships. So I got to do that. Then in the meantime, on the weekends, me and three others would get weekend passes. We'd go over to Times Square and get off at Pennsylvania Station. They had a balcony up on top, and so did Grand Central. On top of those balconies, they had ping-pong tables. None of us smoked or drank by then. We'd go there and play ping-pong all day and half the night. We'd walk up towards Circle Square around 67th Street and the YMCA up there. We could stay for 50 cents a night. We did that on the weekends. So we came back. I got there in January '45. About the 1st of April, in a period of 18 days, President Roosevelt died, Hitler committed suicide, and Mussolini died. All three in 18 days. Germany gave up. So I thought, 'Boy, I've really lucked out. Them subs ain't gonna be working no more. Now I want to head east instead of being sent west to fight the Japanese.' So I thought I had it made. I hoped they send me east. I got my papers to ship out in April after those three died. It wasn't east. It was San Francisco in the Pacific. I was assigned to a tanker. I was going to steer a tanker. Well, that's the worst kind because if anything dropped close to you, you'd just be a puff of smoke. So I dreaded that. It took us three days to get out there. They put us in boxcars, four men to a boxcar. It had four bunks in each car. They were clean bunks and everything. I remember going down through towns like Des Moines, Iowa, five or ten miles an hour right down through the middle of town. The Red Cross girls would come out with doughnuts and coffee and hand them up to us as we were going along. We were treated good going out. So I got to San Francisco. They took me aboard ship, and we had to wait until they got a full crew before we could move. We did that from April on up. All of us would run up and down the coast some, and then we would go out in the Pacific. Sometimes we'd be heading for the Marshall Islands first, up with supplies for planes and things like that. Anyway, we had got back off of a trip at sea. In the meantime, while we were out there, we only had one casualty. The sea gets so rough, and a tanker when it's loaded only has about three feet of freeboard out of the water. If you're running light, nothing, then alley water quite a bit. Anyway, we had about three feet of freeboard. When I got off the wheel for two hours, I went to have coffee for one hour. It was my turn to go to the bow lookout. It was rough. Tankers have a catwalk, which is what we called it, that goes from the bow to the bridge and then from the bridge to the stern. In case you're going from one end to the other, you hold on. They got ropes on each side. If it's rough, you better hold on with both hands. Well, it was my turn to go to the bow lookout. I went up there, and after one hour, I kept looking, my relief didn't show up. I waited another hour, no one showed up. Finally, someone did, but he wasn't the man supposed to relieve me. They said, 'Well, I'm glad you're here.' I said, 'Why?' He said, 'We can't find the other guy. It's been 73 years, I forget his name. Anyway, we can't find him, and we couldn't find you either. We were hoping he was still on your post.' I said, 'Y'all still here?' He said, 'He undoubtedly got washed overboard. Probably wasn't holding on too good. Some of those waves are so big. When we hit them, there is a metal cover on the tip of the bow that I can get under to get out of the way if I see a wave coming.' Anyway, that was the only casualty we had. We got back to San Francisco one day. I've seen a lot of celebrations in my life, but I've never seen nothing like I saw at San Francisco. They announced that the Japanese had given up. They call it VJ Day. You've probably read about that. I've never seen so many people in a street in my life. For two days solid, anybody in service, they'd bring out sandwiches or anything you wanted to eat. Buddy, give it to you. He was a service man. Anything you want to drink, they give it to you. That went on for two solid days. Finally, I got to checking. I had enough time in, I could go home for two weeks. So I jumped on a train, came on home. Didn't cost me nothing. I got home while I still think well then. The two weeks is up, and I told my girlfriend there, enjoy. I told her that I was going to have to ship out. I thought I'd go to Norfolk. She said, 'Whatever you want to do.' I said, 'If I don't ship out, they'll draft me.' As long as you stayed in the Merchant Marines, they couldn't draft you. But if you quit, you're eligible for the draft. So I took off and went to Norfolk. When you get to a port like that, they got a blackboard as long as this wall here, maybe 40 feet long but 12 feet high. They got names of ships, and underneath them, 'We need two deckhands, we need three oilers, we need one AB.' An AB in the Merchant Marines is equivalent to the helmsman in the Navy. So I saw this one ship. I kept looking at it. They had a lot of them going to South America in places. The war was over both places. So I saw this one ship, I forget the name of it. It was a Liberty ship, and it was headed to Marseilles, France. This is where my story begins. I needed an AB just to steer the ship. So I selected that. They rubbed it off. I didn't need but one, and I reported to the ship there in Norfolk. When we got all the men we needed, then we could ship out. The ship was already loaded for us. It was loaded with nothing but coal. It was in September when all this took place because the Japanese surrendered in August. So I came home, and then I shipped out in September. There was this cold, awful bad winter that was going to come on, and they needed it over there. Well, I got to figuring, it's going to take us about three weeks to get across the pond, it's going to take us a month or two to unload, and that long to come back. That's not too long a trip. So I decided to take it. We took off. Those Liberty ships run about ten miles an hour. Takes a while to get across. I remember going through the Rock of Gibraltar, and the captain said, 'We're going to dock here until daylight.' I said, 'I thought we were going to Marseilles.' He said, 'We are. We stopped at a little place in North Africa called Oran.' Nobody got off because we weren't going to be there that long. At daybreak, we took off. I said, 'Why are we stopping here?' He said, 'The mines that the Germans had planted in the Mediterranean, they're all breaking loose. Back then, we couldn't detect a mine like they have now. They got things now they can see in the dark. But he said, 'We want to be able to see where we're going. We got to dodge them.' That's what we did. We saw 11 mines, and we got rid of all of them. When we got by one, we'd go up in the gun turrets and turn our 20s and 40s on them, and they would explode in the water. We got rid of 11 of them. But we got to Marseilles and docked. I said, 'Who's going to unload this?' They said, 'The Frenchmen.' I said, 'We're not going to unload?' They said, 'No.' I said, 'What am I supposed to do?' He said, 'You're on vacation.' I said, 'What do you mean?' He said, 'You got nothing to do now. The oilers have to go maybe an hour every day down below to take care of different things, and the deckhands have to chip paint and paint a little bit. But nobody's going to work a long time. But you, all you do is on the wheel. So you're free to do whatever you want to do.' I got out on deck one day and saw these guys unloading. We had winches up on that Liberty ship to unload the coal. They were all Germans, talking German. I talked to one of my officers, and he said, 'Now the captain of those, those are prisoners of war, POWs. There's 12 of them. But the captain, he's in charge of those 12. He doesn't do any work, but he sees that they do the work. And the Frenchmen are on the ship with guns seeing that no one escapes or anything.' So I got to talk to this captain. He could talk real good English. I watched him eat one day. He had a potato that big, the biggest potato I ever saw. It looked like it had been bought in Clearwater. He put it in a big bowl, and he had a piece of brown bread that big, and they drank water. I looked over at the Frenchmen, and they said, 'No, we're eating their lunch.' They all had a bottle of wine with theirs. I felt sorry for those guys. They were POWs. I felt sorry for the captain too. So I'd talk to him every once in a while, and we became pretty good friends. I had nothing to do all day, so I'd watch him some days. One day I went walking over in the city of Marseille and looked around. I came back and was telling a couple of guys that were going over tomorrow. I said, 'Well, I'll go with you.' I noticed they had a sack, each one of them had a sack. I didn't have anything. I said, 'What's in your sack?' He said, 'Cigarettes.' I said, 'You want to sell them?' He said, 'That's easy done. Everybody's wanting cigarettes.' So I watched them. They'd walk down together, and these Frenchmen would come up and say, 'Cigarette?' They could say that. They'd shake their head yes, and they'd say how much. They knew to say that. I found out what they were getting for a carton of cigarettes. Well, I didn't smoke or drink, either one. They knew that. They said, 'Go ahead and get your cigarettes, and we'll bum off of you, and then we'll sell them.' I said, 'No, I got a better idea. I'll get my cigarettes, and I'll sell them.' So that's what I did. I accumulated a few cartons of cigarettes, and I knew what he was getting per carton. So I went over there, put them in a sack. I don't know, more hit the Midtown. Somebody wanted to buy. I told him what I wanted. They paid me. One time he told me he didn't have any money. He let me know that his buddy down the alley with somebody else, and he wanted me to walk down that alley. It was getting dark. You couldn't do that nowadays, no way. I did that one time. I said, 'I'll never do that again.' But they were nice. They paid me what I wanted. I took all that money that I had, all francs, and I knew where a jewelry store was over there. I went over and spent all the francs. They had some homemade clocks that the Frenchmen had made. They would fold up. They were alarm clocks and good clocks. It's expensive. I bought four. I kept one myself. I gave my girlfriend, my wife-to-be, I gave her one. I gave her family one. I gave my family one. So I got them back home all right. One time I was over there looking around, and we met some army men. They said, 'What are you guys doing over here?' We said, 'Nothing. We got nothing to do.' They said, 'Why don't you come with us?' So we went to an army base here in Marseilles. They said, 'Come over and eat with us. We'll show you around town.' So there was me and another guy. We said, 'Yeah, we'd like to do that.' We went over there on their base and ate dinner with them. They took us and showed us all around the base. They let us get down in a tank and showed us the guns and everything. It was really interesting. He said, 'Tomorrow I'll take you someplace else.' So the next day they came and got us in a jeep and took us around and showed us all places in the city of Marseille. It's a pretty good-sized city. Then he said, 'We'll go up the coastline here.' I remember the two little cities that we went through. They were about the size of Wheelersburg probably. One was called Port-de-Bouc and the other was called Martigues. They showed us both of those cities. We went all day long. We did that more than once or twice. Spent a lot of time during the months just loafing around with the army men. They didn't have anything to do either. So anyway, I came back, and we got word the ship is almost empty, which meant we'd be leaving in a couple of days. So I thought, well, I'm going to... One night I went down in the galley by myself. It was dark. No one saw me go down. I was going to make me a sandwich. I saw this ham that their cook had baked. It was about that big a ham. I sliced that ham up into 13 of the largest sandwiches you ever seen. I put them in a basket and took them up. I knocked on the door of the German captain and told him I had something for him. I said, 'Would the men be offended if I give them something?' He said, 'Oh, they'd be tickled to death.' I did that. I went back the next night. I saw this birthday cake. It was about this long, just a flat cake. Every time one of us guys had a birthday, they didn't miss a cake, you know, and put his name on it. But he had just baked it and iced it. I cut that up into 13 big pieces and put them in the basket and took it up there. He said, 'Oh, they won't know how to act.' I said, 'Just don't say anything.' He said, 'I know what you mean.' I knew I was going to get blamed for it, but I felt that they wouldn't say too much when they found out what I was going to do with it. When I got done with the ham and the cake, I took the crumbs and pieces of ham that was left and threw it overboard. There was no trace of the ham or cake anywhere. Well, I heard later that the cook was asking different ones, 'Somebody stole my ham.' Then the next day, 'Somebody stole my birthday cake. I had to do it all over again. Do you know who did it?' They said, 'No.' Nobody said a word to me, and I wasn't about to volunteer that. I wasn't wanted done. But if they'd asked me, I wouldn't want to lie to them. I was going to tell them because I knew they probably wouldn't say too much. But nobody ever did say a word to me, and I got by with that. So we were going to leave the next day. The captain knew it, and the Germans knew it. He told me, he said, 'When it gets dark, come up to my room.' I figured he had something for me. I went up there. He went through the locker and came out with this book. The front and back cover was gone. He said, 'I want you to have this. It's an interesting book.' I said, 'It's all German. I can't read German.' He said, 'When you get back home, somebody will know German. They'll read it to you.' I said, 'All right. I appreciate it.' He came back with the locker and came back. He was a pilot with the Luftwaffe, Germany. He had this real beautiful cap. He said, 'I want you to have this cap.' I said, 'I can't take that cap. That's too nice.' He said, 'I got another one.' He went to the locker and came back. I couldn't believe what I was looking at. He had those black boots that come up to your knees, the shiniest boots you ever did see. Me and him wore the same size. He said, 'I want you to have these boots.' I said, 'I can't take them boots from you.' He said, 'I got another pair. When you get to the chaplain, you can wear boots.' I said, 'Those boots look like the kind Hitler wore.' He said, 'They're identical, exactly.' Well, I wouldn't have taken any amount of money for those boots. So I took them back to my room. There were four to a room. We called it the fo'c'sle instead of a room. I was showing them those boots, and they said, 'What are you going to do? Sell them here before you leave?' I said, 'No, I'm taking them home.' He said, 'You ain't going to get home with them boots.' I said, 'Oh yes, I will.' He said, 'No, you got to go through customs.' I said, 'I know that.' He said, 'You ain't going to get home with them boots. We've been down this road before. We know how they act. When they see them boots, they're going to take them away from me. You're not allowed to take them home. They're going to keep them for themselves.' I said, 'Well, surely they won't do that.' He said, 'Oh, yes. It's happened to us before. Anything valuable, they'll keep it.' So I got to think of how in the world am I going to get them boots home. I didn't tell anybody what I was going to do, not anyone. I went out when it got dark at night. I went out on the stern and saw a lifeboat. It had a big canvas over it. We had a lot of lifeboats on those Liberties. I raised that canvas and stuck those boots and cap down in that lifeboat. I told the guy I was rooming with, I said, 'I'll give you $20 if you'll go through customs and wait, come back to the stern and wait on me, and I'll throw them boots off to you.' He said, 'Where you got them?' I said, 'I'm not going to tell you where they're at. All I want you to do is come back to the stern. I'll throw the boots off, and you put them in the sea bag, and I'll meet you.' Well, I knew that was illegal to do that. How start not do it? But I was so desperate to get them boots home, I'd do anything. So that was the plan. No one knew where the boots were, only me. So we started back. We were going to dock in Boston. We got within sight of the shoreline of Boston. Whenever you get back and you're going to dock, you have to wait. They send what they call a pilot to get you. They bring him out in a motorboat. He knows the depth of the water all around the docks where you're going to dock more so than the captain of the ship or their mates. Anyway, we told them where we were, and they said, 'Go ahead and anchor out there, and we'll come and get you in the morning.' They said, 'Why?' He said, 'We got a hurricane coming up the East Coast. It's almost here now, and the water's too rough to bring the pilot out. The hurricane will be by here by daylight. We'll come and get you.' So that was the deal. The captain says, 'Drop an anchor, and we'll head the ship into the hurricane.' It was getting pretty rough and getting dark. So that's all I did was keep the ship steered into the hurricane. It got so bad the anchor broke. He dropped the other anchor, and an hour later it broke. When you're running light like that, we were coming back from Marseilles, you know, all we had was a bit of ballast in the bottom. That's the hardest ship in the world to steer, the one that's not loaded. You're just like a pup can in the water. The bow would go up, and then the stern would go up. When the stern came up one time, we called it the screw, it was really a propeller. Before we could get it cut back down one time, it flew off. There we were, no propeller, no anchors. We put out an SOS. They said, 'Sorry, do the best you can. We'll find you tomorrow in the morning. We can't move. The hurricane's too bad.' Oh, it got so rough. I was on the wheel about that time. Our old captain was on one side with the first mate, and the second mate was on the other side of the wheelhouse. I'm pointing deck. I saw him come by me. When he's back, this we had took about a 45-degree list sideways, and then we went back this away. That's when he lost his balance. He was on his back. He went up against the bulkhead. When we had another list, he went back. They caught him over there and held on to him. That's how rough it was. We couldn't stay headed toward. We had no control of the ship at all. We just floated. It got really bad. I couldn't wait to just go back to that lifeboat. I watched. No one saw me. It was almost getting pretty close to daylight. I went back there to the lifeboat. I kept looking. Well, I know that lifeboat's supposed to be here. You know what I'm going to tell? That lifeboat had been hit. We had a lot of damage on deck. Stuff fell over and hit something that hit that lifeboat. It was gone. I lost my cap, my boots. I wouldn't have taken any amount of money for them. So that was really disheartening, just to lose all that. So we started back. I told the guys, 'Forget about the boots. It probably turned out for the best. I wasn't supposed to do that no way to start with.' So I was on the bow one time. The sea was real smooth. We were headed back toward Boston. I got to thinking what the Navy... we had the Navy furnished seven men on a Liberty ship. They manned a 3-inch gun on the bow and the 5-inch on the rear. We took care of the 20s and the 40 millimeters. I remember what they used to tell us: 'You Merchant Marines make a lot of money, a lot more a month than we do. But when you get old, it's going to cost you. The government's going to take care of us.' I said, 'You guys are going to have to put your own bill.' I said, 'Yeah, I know that.' So I knew I picked the wrong outfit. But as luck had it, later on Congress gave us the Bill of Rights same as them. So I lucked out there pretty good. Well, I came home then from that trip. I told my girlfriend, we started to get married January the 7th. I said, 'I'm going to quit the Merchant Marine.' She said, 'The old drafty.' I said, 'I know that. But somebody at the draft board was talking to me. He said, 'Now if you ever quit the Merchant Marines, I want to tell you a little secret. They're not taking anybody. They're in perfect shape. No surgery of any kind. They'll turn you down because both wars are over. You have to be in tip-top shape to get in.' Well, when I was working the freight house when I came back, I had dropped a weight on my right foot, and it damaged my big toe real bad. I wasn't limping. I'm still working, but it hurt. So I thought, 'Well, if I go up there now, if they draft me now, I got a good chance of them turning me down.' My wife-to-be, she wasn't a wife at that time. After that, they loaded me on a bus. I got my papers. I was going to be drafted, headed for Korea. They sent me to Columbus for examination. As soon as I took my shoe off, a doctor was sitting there. He said, 'What is that?' I said, 'I got hurt working.' He motioned for another doctor. 'Come over here. Look at that.' They both looked at it. He said, 'Next.' Well, that was the best news I ever heard. That was your lucky big toe. That was a lucky big toe. You got that right. And anyway, I was deferred. So that's just about the way my story of Marseilles ended. Of course, I made another trip, but I didn't talk about that. I went to Antwerp once. But that's another story. It's not as interesting as the Marseilles one. I wanted to come down here. So as we all say when we're on these walkie-talkies and phones and all, I can say is over and out.

Yeah, I went to Belgium.

Coal? No, not to Antwerp. It was tanks and things like that. They needed supplies, a lot of ammo. We had to go up the Antwerp River. You ever see a picture of that? Sunken ships all over the place. This was after the war, I know. We had to dodge all those. Some were sticking out of the water, the tops of the ships sticking out. We had to dodge them. The captain of that ship, it was a Liberty, he said, 'We got a lock to go through in this river. The Netherlands was on one side, just loaded with windmills, big ones, big as buildings. Anyway, he said, 'Do you ever go through that lock up there?' I said, 'No.' He said, 'Can you do it?' I said, 'The other guys do it, don't they?' He said, 'Yeah. We only got one foot of freeboard on each side to the lock. We don't want to touch it.' I said, 'Well, if the others do it, I can do it too.' We got through it all right. But it's not as interesting a story, except you ever go through a windmill, a real one? No, I haven't. I got to do that. The Netherlands was right across the river there. Sounds interesting. It is. You'd be surprised when you walk into one. You think you're into some kind of a stadium, it's that big. I was surprised. It was really interesting to watch. But I like the Marseille story the best.

Where'd you retire from? N&W. I was a railroad engineer. Between here and Cincinnati mostly. I spent almost 40 years running trains. From here to Cincinnati mostly. When I hired in, between here and Williamson, that's a fireman. Then I worked as an engineer between here and Columbus on the valley they call it. I didn't like that either. I like the Cincinnati run. We call that the Pea Vine. Yeah, because it was up a hill, down a hill, curvy, curvy. 35-mile curves, 60 mile an hour curves. I like to run trains, basically passenger trains. I love to run those. Some of them you can make up a lot of time on. I enjoyed running. You remember the Powhatan Arrow? I do. I run that many a time. I even run the Amtrak once. They thought they'd run Amtrak down that road. I thought I caught an Amtrak train. It had an old Pennsylvania, we called it some kind of a wagon, a covered wagon. I didn't like to run them. You'd go out a curve, you'd be over here, the rail be over here, and you'd think it was off track. I didn't enjoy running the Pennsylvania covered wagons.

After I got out of the Merchant Marine, back to the freight house. As soon as I got 21, I wanted to jump. I knew what I wanted to do. I was five years old. My dad was a machinist over at the shops, N&W. It's a roundhouse. He'd take me over every two weeks to get checked, and I'd go with him. I was five, six, seven years old. He stood me up on one of them steam engines. Never had no such thing as diesels back then. When I was six, seven years old, I used to go down in Virginia to my cousins and watch those passenger trains come in. The coaches are all lit up. I said someday I want to run one of those. I wasn't very old. That's all I ever wanted to do. So I got to do it.

I got a job. I knew where they was hard. You couldn't get a job until you're 21. My grandfather worked at the N&W. He was a welder, William Williams. He worked in the yards. I've been in the transportation department. My memory took me down there one time and lifted me up in the locomotive. That scared me to death. My dad would step on a pedal, the firebox door would open up, and I thought the thing was going to blow up. It takes a long time to learn to run a steam engine.

No, your best training is on the job. They just put you right in the cab. You start out firing. After you're firing for somebody, what's firing? Loading the coal. We had stokers. You had gauges. There's a lot of things for a fireman to do on a steam engine. Not too much on a diesel except watching signals. But every engine, whether diesel or steam, definitely needs two men, just like an airplane. They need two men. So you start out firing. After you fire, they'll let you stop and let you run a little bit, play with it a little while and get familiar with it. Pretty soon, when you're there two or three years, then the engineer runs one way or half a way, and you run the other half. Or you run one way, and they'll run back. When I was on a passenger run, I had a job. One time, he would run the Powhatan to Cincinnati, I'd run it back. We did that for two years. I enjoyed that. That was an easy job. But the steam engines had stokers, and we carried 300 pounds per square inch of steam. We had a lot of hills to climb. If you wasn't on a passenger train, you used freight or coal. All the time you got to double the hills.

Take half a train up and come back and get the other half. You had side tracks. If you're going to double the hill from Latham to... close to Winchester, they call it Mount Sign. We'd take the head cut up. The brakeman would drop off in the side track, and I'd know exactly where to stop. I know how many cars we had. Each telephone pole to the next telephone pole was three car lengths. You could count that way. He'd make their cut. I'd wait a while and whistle off. He'd make their cut, and I'll take half the train up, put it in the side track, come back down the hill, get the rear end of the train, take it up, leave it on the main, go back in the side track, get the head cut, pull out, back up, couple up, and then the head brakeman would walk over. We'd go on into Cincinnati. Go on your way.

I liked it after the war was over.

One of Marseilles. That was my favorite trip. My best was when the doctor says, 'Next.' I was glad because I just got married in January. I didn't want to go out no more.

Yep.

No, not a one. Never stayed in touch with any of them. Got out then, so that's gone.

Yeah, sure was. We still have that book, you know. I wouldn't have worn those... I wouldn't have worn the boots, but I was assured luck just showed them off. Yes, you still have that book? I don't know where it's at. It's in the cedar chest, I think. I think I'll read it. My daughter lives in Munich. We'll have to send it over to her, let her read it.

No, they wore out, I guess. They're out. I don't know where any of them are.

Not when I was 15. I did. My grandparents didn't know where. I remember the name, but I didn't know where it was. Now it is.

Twin Valley. Just as you start in Twin Valley. Still there? No, they bulldozed it down. Nothing there but an empty lot now.

Maybe others, I don't know. I've never heard of it. John Huffman, he passed away last year. He's the one I got on the train with and went to New York. I'm glad you mention that, Linda. I forgot to tell that myself. And Zeke Mullins. Everybody in Scioto County knows that Mullins. I talked to him up here at the VA of Fort Campbell. I've been up there. I've talked to him before. I even met his brother in Arkansas one day. I was out there fishing. We'd been trout fishing near my wife. We came out of the restrooms there at Bull Shoals in Arkansas. This man was standing behind me. I looked at that license tag. He said, 'Scioto County.' I said, 'You must be from Scioto County. You're the only one that pronounces it that way.' Nobody realizes that. He said, 'No, I'm not. I'm from Arkansas, but I got a brother that lives in Scioto County. You probably don't know him, but his name is Zeke Mullins.' I said, 'Yes, everybody knows that Mullins. He's got his own radio program.' So anyway, we talked. He said, 'I've been trying to get Zeke to come out here and live, but he won't do it. He won't leave the county.' Never left. But I have talked to him. Now that's the only three I know of in the Merchant Marines.

No, only the discharge. I've got papers. If I came home, I wanted to get a job running a tug up and down the rivers. I could get hired. There's your paper. I want 30 days away from home? 30-day? I didn't want that either. I just got married. So I still got my papers. I got my discharge.

San Francisco? I can't remember. It's on my discharge. I still got it. I couldn't remember which one it was. It must have been after the Antwerp trip, right? That might be Boston then, or something.

No, they didn't know I was going to be discharged. I didn't know it myself. I came home and we got married and went back to work at the freight house and got hurt. Then the draft board got a hold of me. They said, 'You haven't shipped out all right, and you're going to be drafted.' So I took my chance on Columbus.

Back then, the way we communicated was Western Union. I sent a telegram to my parents and I sent a telegram to my wife that I was coming home. I hadn't been discharged. I was coming home. I got my discharge after the draft board got a hold of me.

On a train.

Not really. I think I've went overboard here. Talked too long.

I had two uncles. One of them was injured twice, Okinawa and Iwo Jima. He must have been a Marine. He was in the 4th Division Marines. One too many of them left, but he got home. Is he still alive? No. And I had another uncle that was in the Army as a cook. He could cook. He made good vegetable soup. He's still alive? No, he passed away. I'm one of the older heads. Another uncle, Ralph, he was injured in France. He was crawling over a log fighting the Germans. When he crawled over the log with his rifle, a sniper got him in the back and paralyzed him from the waist down. I'm driving his car today. It's out there. The government gave him a brand-new Cadillac. What year? '88. You're driving the '88? I got another Cadillac at home, it's an '87. Anyway, he was wounded and he lived in Cincinnati. The government gave him a car about every four years. He went anywhere he wanted to go. He sold me that Cadillac. He didn't like it. He couldn't get in and out of it too good, a two-door. He bought him a van where he controls his wheelchair. The van in the garage, the back would drop down the ramp. He'd drive up the ramp, get up there, steer it. We already had slots. The wheelchair would drop in. He'd go to the store, go anywhere he wanted to go.

We got paid a lot. We got paid a lot more than the ordinary military. We could make $400 and some dollars a month. That was a lot of money then. Compared to today, the men aboard like $40 a month. But what we did, we wasn't working like when we were in port. We got so much. It wasn't as much as his travel, and it was broken down. When you're in Mediterranean waters, their contract called for $5 extra a day on account of mines were dangerous. We got $5 extra for dodging those mines. The company that I worked for to take the coal over was a couple of Jews, burned, Rothschild was the name of their company. That was in the coal business. He sold this coal to France. We worked for companies. When I was on the West Coast, that's Japan, I worked for Sun Oil Company, which later was Sunoco. But they paid us. That's who paid you. Sunoco and the coal company did. Burn it off now, pay me.

Oh yeah, I got ten. I got nine grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

I'll be 92 here in November.

They're working and raising families. I've got one great-grandchild. He's over two, going on seven. I'm telling you, that kid knows more at that age than I did when I got married. He can do anything. Over two years old, you got to watch him like a hawk.

There's the one right there, a picture of him. Mostly, my daughter-in-law is taking care of him. She's with him about every day. She can tell you more about him than I could. But they do come up and see me once a week.

No, I think I've talked long enough. Did it go longer than you thought? Oh yeah. I don't even know what time we started.

Yeah. I told you, 40 minutes over an hour. When I get them going, I keep them going.

Yeah, sure.