Angiolillo: Yes, Michelle

FJ: So that Michelle can get an A+ in this work, and go on to teach United States history at Naugatuck High School.

MA: [laughter] Take all the time that you need. OK, we're going to start with some general background questions. So, first of all, where and when were you born?

FJ: I was born right here in Naugatuck, October 13, 1924. And I came from a family of five and during the war, my father who was in both WWI and WWI, was in the war. My sister was an Army nurse in the Pacific, my older brother was in Europe, I met him during the war and we had a chance to meet and talk. My brother-in law, my older sister's husband, was in India during the war, at the base of the Burma road which was the supply road into China. And then later on, my younger brother went into the Navy, he's the traitor, cause all of us were in the Army except him. He went in the Navy, so he's the black sheep.

MA: Was your father a career Army man or did he re-enlist?

FJ: He was a reservist. He wanted to be a career Army man but at the end of WWI, they downsized everything, and so in order for him to stay he was put on reserve status. He used to go to camp a couple weeks a year and kept his commission up. But as soon as WWII, even before, he went to Iceland in 1941, before Pearl Harbor. There's a little interesting story there. The United States got wind that Germany, was thinking of island hopping from Europe to Iceland, taking over Iceland, then using that as a stepping stone later on to Greenland and Canada, and so on and so forth. So, in order to thwart that, Iceland asked the United States to send an expeditionary force up there so that any hostile action would be against the United States as well as Iceland. So, my dad went up there and later he was in various capacities during WWI, he ended up as a troop transport commander, ferrying troops back and forth to the Pacific.

MA: How old was he at this time?

FJ: Well, dad when he was discharged at the end of all this, he was probably in his middle fifties. But he started out like I did when he was 18 or 19.

MA: What can you tell me about your childhood interests before the war?

FJ: Well childhood interests in those days, it was very home based. Of course we had no TV, very few people even had telephones, the radio wasn't perfected too well, and you really had to strain your ear to hear things. Everything was crackly and the news broadcasts were not every half-hour like they are today. There really wasn't too much on the radio. So, childhood activities, aside from school, consisted of neighborhood games, and swimming in the swimming hole by Thurston's icehouse, and playing baseball and other games in the streets and empty lots. Everybody knew each other, it was very close, and the neighborhood was really like an extended family. Moms and dads looked out for each other and they knew each other. It was a very close thing. But ah, we managed to keep busy, and ah, you know a big think was maybe a weekly movie for 10 cents downtown, that was the big deal. Once in a while, when my father would be able to do it, he would take up to New Haven, and Savin Rock, in New Haven, a big amusement area. But it's hard for young people to comprehend the differences in growing up. They might think of it as a minus, but on the plus side, because of the closeness, there was very few drugs, and drinking, again because everyone knew each other. Even the policeman downtown knew you by your first name and, so there's plusses and minuses to growing up. The few men in our neighborhood who were in the service, when they would come home on leave, they were heroes. We would flock to their front yards and listen to their stories which I'm sure were pre-fabricated. But you know, that was the outside world to us, people who had been to various countries. Today, the whole world is at your doorstep, and it spoils you.

MA: What did your parents do for a living. Did your mother work also, or 

FJ: No. No, Mom was home all the time, which was common, a common place in those days. Women didn't seek to join the workforce until WWII was at its peak and most of the men were away, so the jobs had to be filled by women. Now, it's quite possible that that took place in WWI, but I don't have any personal recollection of that. But no, mom was home raising the five of us and half a dozen other families' kids too.

MA: So she was kind of like the neighborhood mom?

FJ: Yeah, with other moms and, you know there were a lot of backyard picnics and at the church I belonged to - the Congregational Church, we had a very active Sunday school. Our big picnic was at Lake Quassapaug at the end of the year where you'd get free rides, free tickets for rides depending upon how well you did in school and whether you knew the books of the Bible and you know the psalms and things. So those were big activities that you looked forward to. Everything it seemed to be, in those days, looking forward to something.

MA: Mm-huh

FJ: There wasn't that instantaneous gratification that there is today.

MA: So you had to earn it - ?

FJ: You want something today and boom, there it is, you know?

MA: Did you follow the events of the war before America became involved?

FJ: Now this is my dad?

MA: The events of WWII.

FJ: Yeah. That's what I had just mentioned to you about Iceland, dad was, as I said, in the reserve military right from the end of WWI so he certainly was in a position to know what was happening overseas. When Adolph Hitler, way back, over 10 years before we got involved was rattling sabers over there, I guess most of the people in the know knew that eventually we would wind up having to go over there. Young people such as myself, we looked upon the military as very adventuresome. When we would listen to these soldiers and sailors come home and tell us stories, they would leave out the bad parts, and tell you just how exciting being away from home, being on your own, and being able to do exciting things was. Today, television brings you right up close to the real nature of the military and of war. I know stories today seem to draw more on death and wounding and being paraplegic, and so I think young people have a different viewpoint on the military and war. Where as before it was positive and adventuresome and exciting, today it's more, you know, morbid and the fact that there's more money to be made elsewhere. So I think it gives young people today a different outlook on it. But, I can almost say that we were ready, we were almost willing to go into the military because we didn't know the horrors of war. No one -- you weren't able to see it on TV, you might read about it a little bit, but there was a drastic change once you got in there.

MA: So, would you say then, you supported involvement before Pearl Harbor?

FJ: Yes. I did. Probably-- you know my family was brainwashed by my dad. I knew my general orders, which are things that all soldiers have to learn when they go in, I knew them when I was 8, 10 years old. Saluting my father, you know it was a big deal, and helping him pack for camp and so forth.

MA: Do you think you would have entered the Army regardless if there had been a war or not? Was this something that-

FJ: You know, it's hard to say. In hindsight, I might have. I never expected to go to college when I was going through high school. I took a quasi-college course, but when I got out of the military, of course the GI Bill offered me the opportunity to go to college free. And I just couldn't turn that opportunity down. I had often wished I had gone to college first and come out an officer. And I think if I had been an officer, I would have made a career out of it. Because, that's what I saw from my father, the officer's viewpoint. The enlisted man's viewpoint is much different, and- but there's a good chance I might have gone into the military.

MA: Can you tell me what was the general attitude of your family and your town after Pearl Harbor, when you heard the news? What was the people's reaction?

FJ: Well, I think the town and myself was pretty much the way the whole country was. The whole country just couldn't believe that Japan would bomb Pearl Harbor. They were angry, ready to get even, the country just jumped right into this thing automatically. And when they re-instituted the draft, there was very little running away or draft-dodging. There was some of it on the college level, men who thought that they perhaps had more to offer the country as a scientist than they would as a soldier. Hollywood felt the same way, so all of these actors and actresses knew they could do more for the war effort by selling war bonds and then they ever could carrying a rifle.

MA: Did you agree with that?

FJ: I do now.

MA: You do now. But at the time?

FJ: No, I questioned it. Naugatuck had a large chemical plant and the first synthetic rubber plant in the United States was in Naugatuck. So, there were a lot of men right out of college that came to Naugatuck to get jobs and they knew that they'd be deferred. As a matter of fact, there was a nickname about the Naugatuck synthetic plant. They used to call it "The Home of the Dodgers. " You know because the Brooklyn Dodger's were a very active team then. And, I probably was among those people at the time, now I understand the value of it, there are some people better off in civilian capacity than they would be in military. I was carrying a weapon and shooting a large gun. Some of these other people were making new discoveries and adding to the war effort tenfold in those positions.

MA: How were the people treated, the people who, the "Home of the Dodgers" people?

FJ: I think they had a tough life. I think ah, you know here they were back at home enjoying the fruits of civilian life, which was mainly that they were making good money, because they were making overtime. They had to go through a lot of rationing, that was another aspect I'm sure people have told you about. Gasoline, you had ration cards, and your automobiles were in your garage more than they were on the road. A little bit later, meat and sugar and butter, these things were all rationed. But I don't think that was too much of a hardship on the family. I don't think anyone starved to death, it just meant you had to be a little more careful and there were enough things around you can substitute for. My oldest sister would write once in a while, and also my mom and tell me about these things. But families, as I say, were close and when word would get back to a family that a son was killed in action, the whole neighborhood mourned. They went over to add sympathy to the family and, it's much different than today. You can grow up now not knowing the person two houses down from you today. It's- I often wonder what it's going to be like 50 years from now. But- I won't have to worry about that, you will.
 
 

MA: My dad always talks about how great this neighborhood was.

FJ: It was.

MA: Our neighborhood is great too, we are very lucky.

FJ: It was a beautiful neighborhood to grow up in. It's close enough to the main road but far enough away so it's not dangerous. There's a hill to slide on in the winter-time, there's a brook to swim in in the summer, there were a lot of kids almost of equal age, within 5 years of each other. So it was- our kids had it real nice. But, to get back to the question, I think that just the closeness of neighborhoods was very, very important for the morale during the war. But again, Naugatuck and the country was ready for this. You know, when you read the history of Rosie the Riveter, putting out all these liberty ships, you know three a week and all this, it was just indicative of the fact that the country was behind the war effort. Not like the next two wars that came up.

MA: Were you drafted, or did you enlist?

FJ: Now that's a story in and of itself too. When I graduated from high school at 17, my mother already had 4 people in the service, she had found out that I would not be drafted because off that. I was the last male, older male in the house, I had a younger brother who was only maybe 10. I wanted to go in and many of my classmates did not even wait to graduate. They enlisted.

MA: What year did you graduate?

FJ: 1942. Pearl Harbor was my senior year and a lot of my classmates went in right them. But mom wouldn't sign for me. You couldn't go in on your own until you were 18 and you weren't drafted until you were 18. But I would have gone in I think. Mom wouldn't sign, I remember that. So when I was 18, you had an opportunity to wait for your number to be drafted but you could let certain people on the draft board know that you were ready to go. So, I turned 18 in October. And I was in in November.

MA: How did your mother react?

FJ: Oh if she ever knew what I had done she would have killed me but, she was disappointed the way that she was with the other members of her family in the war. During the war, again in hindsight, I think she had the toughest job of all of us. When you have five people in harm's way in various parts of the world, all of us were in combat, ah everyday had to be you know a nightmare for her.

MA: So, do you think it was almost as if she felt she had given enough? It wasn't that she didn't support the war?

FJ: I'm sure she felt proud. Women were tough in these days too. You young people, especially you women have to be tough in a different way. I dont know if it was patriotic tough that it was in these days but I think now you just have to be personally tough. Again, because of the temptations that are available, and more important is the acceptance people have of mediocrity of failure, you know they make excuses for going on drugs, or getting pregnant outside of marriage. Years ago you know when a young lady when that happened to her, the family almost had to move out of town. One of my responsibilities when I was teaching high school was to run the graduation programs. We have several young ladies who were being home tutored because they were pregnant but they were going to be allowed to take part in graduation. During the rehearsals they would bring their little babies down to rehearsal and that would distract me. I couldn't get anything done because they were the center of attention. I just kept saying to myself twenty years ago this couldn't happen, and again I keep thinking dear, what's going to happen fifty years from now. Will marriage as an institution just go by the wayside? I don't know. But, so much has happened in the fifty-five years since I was a soldier and now I'm a retired school teacher, that it's very hard for me to make comparisons. There just isn't any common denominator between the two periods.

MA: They are so different?

MA: How long was it between your draft notice and your physical exam? Was this a very quick process or-

FJ: It was for me.

MA: For you?

FJ: I was drafted and up at Camp Edwards, Massachusetts within two months.

MA: Wow. What was basic training like? What do you remember about it?

FJ: The first thing about basic training is -- I tell people they had to get rid of your baby fat. I don't mean that physically, I mean in your thinking and your physical conditions. If there was any mama's boy in you, that had to be taken away almost immediately. And they were tough on you, there were a lot of crazy things done for discipline. Clean the latrine with a tooth brush, you had to walk out in the sand on guard duty, I don't know what you were guarding. On the surface, they seem like punishments but they were really really positive things. You were being told to do something automatically. If the order was given to you by a higher authority not to think, just to do it. And in the process, although you didn't realize it at the time, you were being trained to kill because that's the life of a soldier, kill or be killed if you've heard that expression. The enemy was somebody you learned to hate, although now I see the German soldier as no different than I, only coming from a different orientation.

MA: What were you told about the enemy?

FJ: First of all you were told about the overall scheme of the enemy to conquer the world. And you were told of the sneakiness of the Japanese, not only at Pearl Harbor, the unbelievable treatment of prisoners and civilians; all of this generated a natural hatred. These were barbaric people who you were fighting. And you were on the side of truth and right and they were on the side of evil and again in hindsight you know although maybe the governments were more or less that way not the soldier in the trenches like I was. He was just as frightened, just as mixed up. Now once you get in combat, you don't have time to think about those thing, everything happens so fast. I don't know if you've ever played organized sports but let's say do you play volleyball?

MA: Yes, I played volleyball

FJ: When that ball is being beaten down your throat, at- I dont know what the speed, you don't have time to think about it, you just have to get yourself in the fundamental position and send it back, and that's the way in combat. When the battle was over and you walked through the field and you saw all these dead people and you didn't even think that you were responsible for that. Again, I do now and I have for years.

MA: You distanced yourself during -?

FJ: Well, it's just "Hooray, hooray." It's like winning a football game. It's not a game, it's life and death and then to see all the civilians, millions of civilians homes destroyed, their lived shattered, they were killed. When an airplane bombed a factory they also kill a thousand babies.

MA: Did you feel adequately prepared by basic training?

FJ: Did I feel prepared. Well here again it's ironic. You were so happy when basic training was over. Number one there's a feeling of success, you got through it. But then there was a feeling of anxiety, you were ready for the next step. And that carried through all during the war. Let me make another interesting analogy. This- I'm probably ahead of myself because this is about the invasion. But, the invasion was planned like clockwork, everybody was on like a conveyor. There was wave number one, wave number two, and wave number two couldn't hit the beach until wave number one accomplished their purpose. On Omaha beach it wasn't that easy. Where objectives one, two, and three were supposed to have been taken by let's say noon on D-Day, they weren't taken until the next day. Communications were mixed up. Troops didn't land exactly where they were supposed to. Ammunition didn't get there. It was a mix-up. But anyway, being artillery, we were in I dont know what wave but we were supposed to land late that afternoon in a field that had already been taken by the infantry. And they'd set up protection. We were quite vulnerable being with big guns, we could do a lot of damage and the enemy wanted to destroy those guns. So we needed periphery protection. Well, low and behold it was time for us to disembark. We were right out there in the harbor with shells dropping all around us and ships exploding. And our position wasn't even taken yet, So we had to wait over night right out there.

MA: Right out in the Channel?

FJ: So you could see- you talk about Private Ryan, there it was right in front of our eyes so we had to wait until the field was taken. Then the next day when we landed the ship called an LST, landing craft tank, was supposed to be able to pull up right to the beach. The front dropped down, and you're supposed to roll right off. We had tanks pulling our guns. Well there was so much debris in the water: sunken ships, and bodies, and planes and all kinds of stuff. This big LST couldn't get to shore. They had to float this barge up. And this barge looked like a bunch of fifty-gallon drums laced together with a little outboard motor. We had to pull out guns onto this barge, there were two guns on one barge, and head to shore. I don't know what the distance was, probably a half mile, it took us hours to get there. In the meantime, you felt very vulnerable. Right out in the open, with no protection. The point I'm trying to make, we could hardly wait to get to shore. Now isn't that a stupid thought because that's where the enemy was. But again, you had the feeling that once we got to shore, once we set up our weapons, we could start defending ourselves. Again, as you grow older and you have time to think about this, you think about, you know, all these situations and the dichotomy of it all. The fact that on the one hand you wanted this but that would lead to something else so and in reality you were better off aboard the LST. At least you had some you know armor around. But during the course of the war, that happened a thousand times.

MA: Now you say that you were in the artillery?

FJ: Yes.

MA: What company were you-

FJ: Well, the name of my battery was the 110^th Anti-aircraft artillery. We were a 90 millimeter gun outfit. And the 90 millimeter was such a versatile piece, we could pull it up and down in about seven minutes and we got it on a tank and go on to the next objective. But before too long they started to use us as field artillery and anti-tank because not too many days into the war the German Air force were pretty well shot down, depleted. And the only thing that they would do more than occasionally at night, they would send fleets of high flying bombers over and that's what our gun was very good at, hitting high flying bombers. So, in between all of these missions that we'd have they would use us to fire support for infantry troops moving up and then when we got into the open fields, the German tanks, the Panzer tanks, Tiger tank-- They had hundreds of them and thousands of them and they used those to great advantage. So they would pull us up right very close to the infantry, very close to the front lines and we would fire at these tanks. And sometimes we'd set up ahead of time and we'd camouflage our tanks. So you felt pretty secure but then after you fire the first volley all the camouflage just blows off and there you are stark naked out in the side of a hill.

MA: What was your rank by the time you were finished?

FJ: The rank?

MA: Yes.

FJ: I was a P.F.C, which is only the second promotion. You go from private to P.F.C. But again to understand that, you have to understand what is called the chain of command. On my gun crew there was sixteen men. There was one sergeant and two corporals and P.F.C is sort of an honorary promotion. All the rest were P.F.C'S and privates. Now if that war had lasted ten years you'd still be a P.F.C. Because if you were still on that gun you couldn't advance until a corporal or a sergeant got killed. So people don't realize that. Today you get a promotion after six months, after a couple of years you get another one. But during the war you're stuck in that position. I think they call it M.O.S. M.O.S. is a military occupational, there's something that the "S" stands for. Specialty. Military Occupational Specialty. So every position in the Army, Navy, Air force had an M.O.S. attached to it and mine was a 90 millimeter loader on a gun. And that calls for the highest rank, P.F.C. So I could have been in there ten years and I'd still be a P.F.C-- So it has really little or nothing to do with how good you were or anything else. Now if you were stuck in a more exotic type thing, let's say on a radar crew where you had to go to school and do all this stuff it would be different. In a radar crew almost everybody was a sergeant. Again, because of the specialties and the schooling. So, I used to have that trouble in school and when the kids would ask me "What were you in the Army?" They thought because I was a teacher I was a general or something, you know? And I tell them no, I was a P.F.C, on my gun crew of sixteen there were three guys that all during the war seeing the same thing we did, they were still privates.

MA: Right. Where were you positioned before the invasion? After basic training you were deployed? Where did you go from there?

FJ: We did our basic training at Camp Edwards, Massachusetts, which is on Cape Cod. That sounds interesting, right? But, I've only been to Cape Cod maybe three times since. Because it's sand, loaded with sand. These guns we have are seven and a half tons and you would have to jockey that gun around through the sand until the tank would hook up with it and pull it. And every place you went you get back to the barracks and your barracks would be filled with sand that had blown in. When you did marching, close order drill, you were marching in sand. And you know how it is, you can't even walk in sand. So we had sand, sand, sand, and we were happy to leave. And here again because of the type of outfit we were when we left camp Edwards we went right to the embarkation point in New York. I'm trying to think of the name of the place. But there, when we got off our trucks, there in front of us was the largest ship in the world, the Queen Mary.

MA: You went over on the Queen Mary?

FJ: We went over on the Queen Mary. There were more troops on the Queen Mary than people who lived in Naugatuck at the time.

MA: What was it like?

FJ: The only thing that saved us is it only took four and a half days. The Queen Mary because it was so fast, it was supposedly faster than a submarine. But that doesn't mean anything if a submarine's out there waiting for you, you know? But anyway, we went unescorted, an escort could not keep up with you. The first day airplanes escorted you from the United States and the last day airplanes escorted you from England. But for a couple of days in the middle . . . The ship never went the same route twice. It zig zags. We went way up to Iceland and back down again. There were two men in every bunk, not at the same time. But you had to be on your feet twelve hours and in your bunk area twelve hours.

MA: And what would you spend the other twelve hours doing?

FJ: The other part you'd spend eating and doing nothing. We had it lucky because being an anti-aircraft outfit we were back up for the crew. So we were kind of, maybe on the third deck. At least you could see the sunlight. There were some men twelve decks below sea level and they never, you know, they never saw fresh air or the light of day for the whole four and a half days. It was very, very unsanitary, there was all kinds of sea sickness and you had two meals a day, that's about all you did. In the twelve hours you were up, by the time you stood in line to get fed, wash your mess kits, and then you get back and you sit on the deck and smoke. That's it- everybody learned to smoke. If they're suing tobacco companies every one of us should be able to make a million dollars because every time you turned around you had cigarettes in your rations you know. We had these tags, colored tags on us and the ship had these same colors. If you were wearing a blue tag you had to stay in a blue area on the ship so that everybody wouldn't get on one side of the ship maybe. But again we could, when we were on our feet for the 12 hours, we could see the ocean. And you know sometimes the waves would be higher than the ship as you get down into the swell. Again looking back, it's almost hilarious some of the things. When you went into the mess hall, there were no chairs. You ate standing up. There was just these big long troughs, you take your mess kit and put it on the trough. You'd start to eat but then the ship would roll and your mess kit would slide about four guys down. You'd have to wait for the ship to right itself to get your mess kit back. In the meantime someone would upchuck down there and that would start the whole area; everybody would get sick. That was one of the many uses of your helmet. As the story goes on I could tell you many other uses for the helmet. But that was the Queen Mary. It took almost a day and a half to load and a couple of days to unload.

MA: Really.

FJ: In Scotland- the only place the Queen Mary could dock. In peacetime it could dock in the English Channel in several places. But you wouldn't want that because that's close to where the Germans were, right? So you had to dock on the opposite side and that was in Scotland.

MA: What was the morale like after this trip with all these people and not seeing the light of day. How were people coming off the ship?

FJ: Well, morale was pretty much decided by discipline. You would gripe, and the common word was bitch, when there's no officers around. But you didn't dare when they were there. I think they did their fair share of bitching when they were together.

MA: But not in front of you?

FJ: No, an officer was the closest thing to God in those days. Today I don't know if that is acceptable, but that's the only way to fight a war. So, morale was never allowed to deteriorate. You were never without a leader that long. There was always somebody around to put a stop to it. But when you and your pup tent buddy were alone! A pup tent is a two-man tent and each person carried half, that's why they call it a shelter half. I had half the tent, and my buddy had the other half. We snapped it together and put the tent poles up and we slept in there. When you were with your buddy, now that's a buddy. You're so dependent upon each other, you do a lot of griping and a lot of bitching. But morale, as long as the news was positive, as long as we knew all this was worth while, we were gaining and winning . . . Again in hindsight I look at what must it have been for the Germans. Especially when we got into Germany and they were retreating through towns that they knew and probably played in to see them destroyed and that fanatic Hitler wouldn't give up. No, I'd say morale never deteriorated to the point that it would have affected our mission.

MA: When did you first hear about the plans for the invasion?

FJ: We're on board the Queen Mary, Christmas Day, 1943. So when we landed in Scotland, we went down to a town in England, Exeter. There we were billeted in these big, big millionaires homes. The millionaires, I say they were millionaires but I don't know- they were elaborate things. These people had given up their homes to the American troops and had moved in with relatives someplace else. In some cases there would be a caretaker left to see how things were going. We immediately got busy. We got all new equipment, new guns that we had to go out on field trials with. Now the invasion was June, June 6th, so between January and June 6^th is when we were in England. They gave us time to recuperate from the voyage and being in a new land with new currency and all this other stuff. We had some frequent passes, we went to London, and did all the things. Then we started into our advanced training. Our advanced training was in England. We had to relearn some of the uses of these newer guns that we had. By the end of March or April, we knew that pretty soon we were going to get into it. Again, we had heard all kinds of rumors. We started practicing amphibious landings and loading. By the end of May we were already going on these LSTs and you didn't know if it was the real thing. You had to have everything ready and you'd cruise up and down the Atlantic for a day and then you'd land in England again.

MA: You never knew if it was the actual invasion or not?

FJ: No. It wasn't until maybe the first part of June, we were placed in what they call a marshaling area. It was almost like a stockade. Each outfit just drew chalk lines and you couldn't go over the chalk lines and talk to anybody in the next area. We had started being briefed and the guys over the next chalk line could have been from a different outfit and their briefing would have been entirely different. So there was no way you could exchange conversation. We finally got aboard our ships and we sailed for the invasion.

MA: So you knew for sure that day?

FJ: Once we got on board ship. Not until. We never knew while we were on land. This was I think probably our third time that we had been loaded on the ship. We water-proofed all our weapons and got everything ready in the right order that they were to be taken off. It was highly organized. And that's what went wrong with the invasion. That's why Eisenhower almost contemplated ending the invasion because the first waves, and there were waves even before D-Day started, you heard of the Navy frogmen and the paratroopers. Things were happening there that they hadn't anticipated. Then the sea got rough they were supposed to have three days of calm seas. The English Channel is one of the most unpredictable bodies of water in the world. Even when you read about these Channel swimmers. We have one from Naugatuck that goes back and forth. They have to look at the charts, even when the charts say everything will be OK for a swim the next day they have to change their mind. Anyway all of these things happened to cause the invasion plans just to go astray. As I mentioned to you earlier, wave after wave started to get back logged. That's the confusion because we're just being piled on top of other troops. Now if we had landed when we were supposed to with our heavy guns, there wouldn't have even been a place on the beach for us yet. We'd only be hampering the work that had to be done ahead of us. When we headed out into the Channel for the invasion, it was pitch dark. All you could hear was a lot of noise. But in the daylight hours, you looked out into the water and you couldn't see the water. All you could see was ships and you looked up in the sky and you didn't see the sky. All you saw was airplanes. The noise was deafening. Then you got closer and closer to France where all the terrible sounds of war were evident. You could see the shells blowing apart parts of the cliffs and you could-- This was our "baptism of fire" right here on board the ship.

MA: How did you react? What was running through your mind when you saw all of this?

FJ: Well, there was a lot of fear. But I'll tell you something. The fear that lasted all during the war was the fear that the guy next to you would find out that you were afraid. As we got as close to shore as we could, because there was two or three waves of troops that couldn't land right. They just had to wait their turn. On board our LST, they had set up an emergency hospital and there were wounded, dead, prisoners, everybody was being ferreted onto our ship. That was a problem which added to the confusion. We were supposed to be off before these things happened on the LST. They weren't just going to unload us and go back, they were going to stay there and take prisoners and take wounded and there were doctors that were already operating in a makeshift operating room. These things started to happen while we were still on board.

MA: So they had to take prisoners too?

FJ: Yes. So they had to find make-shift areas and a boatload of small boats of prisoners would come and we'd have to wave them off. Not we, but the captain of the LST. They would take wounded. I remember standing on board the ship and seeing a corpsman coming up from the operating room and throw a leg overboard that they had just amputated.

MA: Now when you were boarding what did your commanding officer tell you? Did he give you any type of encouragement or-?

FJ: We had been used to rah-rah speeches. "We're the best, we better be the best. Get them before they get you" and all this stuff. So, that's bull. As we started towards the French coast they went over the plans, the officers with the sergeants. The sergeants would come and brief us. Our sergeant was really the only one we spoke to, except we had a P.A. system. We had a voice recording from Eisenhower wishing us well.

MA: What did you think of what he said?

FJ: Give Em Hell! I have a copy of that. They gave us all a printed paper of it and I still have it. Then the sergeant would come and he opened up the map and showed us the field we were going to eventually get to. You know, with the fence posts and the farm houses around it. It wasn't a picture but it was a map of it. I went over and over again what we were supposed to do. I was on gun number four and where were we supposed to go in this area, hook up the lines to the radar and to the telephone lines which were just wires laid on the ground. Everybody's job, you know, [they were asking] "What's your job Johnson." My job was, after we got the gun in place and ready to fire was to find a place to put the excess ammunition. Then what happens? In your training if something happens to somebody else on the gun crew, you had to know their jobs. The lowest position of those 16 men were, they were ammunition carriers. So their job was to keep the gun fed with ammunition from the pit. You don't stack 500 rounds of ammunition next to the gun, there's a long line and you've seen maybe pictures of guys in an ammunition line passing the shells. Our shell was about 3 feet tall. They were lowest on the chain. I was a loader. I took the shell and put it in the breach for the gunner to ram it home and fire it. The sergeant gave the orders, the gunner, he was a corporal, and the other corporal was the tank driver. So if anything had happened to the gunner, that was as close as I ever got to being corporal. Nothing ever happened to this guy. It's a good thing, he was a nice guy anyway.

MA: Did you have a pretty good survival rate among your group?

FJ: Yes. We all had to know so many jobs. Even outside of the gun crew. There were only 3 or 4 sophisticated jobs out of the 16. But there was one man on the seat and he would turn the crank and that would turn the gun left and right. That was azimuth. Another guy on the other side of the gun turned the crank up and down. That's elevation. When you are firing, the sergeant is getting his orders from either the radar or from people that are far away on a look out. He's hollering the coordinates to these two guys on the guns and they are matching these. Up and down, left and right, all the time in the confusion. The rest of us were just getting the ammunition and firing.

MA: When you were on the LST watching as you say the carefully coordinated plan just falling apart, were you optimistic or pessimistic? What did you think was going to be the outcome?

FJ: Because of basic training and because of, I think, the fact that we were young and anxious and eager, it never entered our mind that we were going to lose. Never once. We just went on. A lot of times you'd see a plane explode in an area and we had no idea whether it was a German or an American. You just knew that we were ready and that there were just so many people. Thousands and thousands. And again, later on in our story when I tell you about my second trip back there for the 50^th anniversary, I'll tell you about an out of body experience I had at the cemetery. But anyway, no, morale was still high. We were just anxious to get in there and do our job, do our part. And not only did we feel vulnerable out on the ship, well we also felt a little guilty that we weren't in there doing our share. We just couldn't we were supposed to be but . . .

MA: I read in description of Omaha and I saw in Saving Private Ryan, where, because of the choppiness of the Channel, tanks were sinking and people were sinking to the bottom of the Channel. Did you see any of that?

FJ: Yeah. We would see that right from the LST. An infantryman has 80 pounds of equipment including his rifle. Now if you step into a deep hole, you don't have a chance. I've read estimates where almost one third of the infantry died before being able to fire a weapon. Many of them were killed right in the water. Some of these smaller LCIs: landing craft infantry, were just blown right out of the water, you know when they were a couple of hundred yards away from shore. So they never had a chance to fight.

MA: When it was finally your turn to unload from the LST, were you still experiencing fire from the enemy?

FJ: Yes. The enemy had pretty much been pushed off the beach but again, their weapons are capable of firing five or seven miles with heavy artillery. So we were still getting sprayed and occasionally a plane would come and straift. But all those Germans pillboxes and everything else that you saw in Saving Private Ryan, had pretty much been silenced. There might have been pockets of them, but when we landed, our biggest threat was artillery, enemy artillery coming in. And straifing. Heavy straifing. We were going up a hill to our spot, because on Omaha beach, there's a good size rise. One of the things that held the infantry up was they couldn't open up that road. That road had been blocked by the Germans. It was pretty much an individual climb by infantrymen to get up there.

MA: When it came time for you to leave the LST. What were you thinking?

FJ: Stupidly we were anxious. Again I think it's because of the vulnerability. You're out there. Easy target, and not being able to do anything about it.

MA: Once you were bringing the tanks out onto the beach, what was your job then?

FJ: OK, when we hit the beach, we had to go up this road that had been opened up. We got to the field that we were supposed to have been the day before. We immediately set up and started firing. Once that happens, I can't tell you what happened. You just get so involved in your job. It's like when you are taking your midterm exams. The building next door could catch fire and you wouldn't know it. There's such a heavy concentration on what you are supposed to be doing. That had been drilled and drilled and instilled in you to such an extent that it was an automatic process.

MA: Now this was the first time you had experienced enemy fire?

FJ: That was the first time.

MA: What did you do? Did you try to ignore it or consciously try to avoid it . . .?

FJ: You couldn't ignore it because it was there. But you couldn't do anything to stop it. So you just had to keep doing your job, knowing that eventually if everybody did their job well, it would stop. That's what happened. The invasion, the beach invasion, lasted about three, maybe four days. Then the Germans retreated to the next place where they put up a stand in St. Lo. So, no you couldn't ignore it because it was just too much happening. The ping, ping, ping of bullets and shrapnel hitting metal, or groans of guys getting hit.

MA: How did you deal with death?

FJ: Well again, in hindsight, I'm disappointed that I could be so callous. Can you almost see your tank running over the dead body of a German because there were so many of them, you couldn't avoid them? The same way with our own. If the guy was dead, he was dead. The wounded probably got your attention more.

MA: Did any of your close friends die?

FJ: Yes. That you would talk about hours later, when things subsided. The one thing that bothered us so much was if he were dead, you knew he was dead. If he were severely wounded he'd be evacuated.

Even if he was wounded, not too badly, he would be evacuated, and you never heard from him again. To this day, I don't know whether some of my buddies died or lived. If they only had minor wounds, they might come back to you a day or so later. But if they had cause to be hospitalized, for two to three weeks, and they became ready for combat again, they invariably were sent to a different unit, because we had replacements. Behind all this there were guys in readiness to be sent to where they didn't know. They wouldn't be set into our outfit into a sophisticated job, but they would be sent to us as, let's say ammunition carriers. One of our ammunition carriers would be in that new position because he had been trained to take over for that. So all this was taken into consideration. In the infantry it's the same way. The squad leaders were sergeants and if he was hit or wounded or killed or something, there was a corporal ready to take the place. The replacements coming in came in as privates, just as riflemen and ammunition carriers, and they worked their way up too.

MA: When I was reading the program of the 50th anniversary, there was a speech given by President Clinton. He had described the men of the invasion as being urged on by the desire to restore order, peace, and freedom and defend justice. Now, when you were part of the invasion, were you consciously thinking of these things?

FJ: I think on a wider scale. I think that not as clearly defined as Clinton has it. That's what happened. But, I think at the time we were only concerned with our own well being and the outfit doing what we were trained to do. We were instilled against failure so much that it was a crime to fail, it was a crime to hide behind something, to, not to be gung-ho. Not that you were foolish, but there was such a stigma about being a coward and occasionally you would read about somebody running away from the enemy, running back and you just couldn't comprehend it. They were worse than the enemy. I mean, here you were, putting your life on the line, and somebody else wouldn't do it. But again, I dont feel that way about these guys now.

MA: But at the time?

FJ: But at the time they were cowards. Earlier in our conversation, you talked about basic training. That's what it was all about. You didn't know it at the time, but that's what it was. Love of country, love of the flag. That's why I'm such a flag lover now.

MA: After you beachhead was won, where did you move to next?

FJ: Ok. I think I had mentioned that the Germans had retreated to St. Lo, its a big town. They had entrenched themselves very solidly there. That was probably a week, maybe two after the invasion that the Allies regrouped for this push into St. Lo. That was the second objective. The war in Europe has been divided into 5 major battles, and our outfit took part in all five. The first was the invasion itself, the second was St. Lo. In St. Lo they set us up just outside the city, We were there again in case the Germans sent over a lot of planes. Our first objective always was aircraft, enemy aircraft. But then if none was there, we started firing artillery rounds into the city. We did that five or six days. Then the infantry pushed in. At St. Lo there was a lot of friendly fire. They made so much of friendly fire in the Persian Gulf, when it only happened to a few people. During WWII, probably 5% to 10%of the casualties were caused by our own fire. When we fired these shells up in the air at an airplane, they exploded. Well what happens to all that shrapnel? It has to come down and it hits an awful lot of Americans, especially infantry. The guys in the infantry used to tell us "You guys in the anti-aircraft give us more Purple Hearts than the Germans."

MA: How did you feel about that?

FJ: Not so good! Especially when the plane was overhead. Because then you were firing up here (gestures) and in some cases we'd get our own shrapnel back. Plus in St. Lo, the point I'm making is the airplanes. When the airplanes would come over, maybe three or four hundred in a formation, the lead place has all the expensive scopes and photographs and all this stuff. When he gets over the objective, he drops smoke, now the other planes behind him, when they fly over the smoke, they drop bombs. So in St. Lo, the story was if the lead plane dropped the smoke too soon, then a large percentage of the bombs landed on American infantry. So there were thousands of Americans killed by American aircraft. In those days I mean I'm sure it was mentioned but today that would be all you'd read about for five days. You wouldn't read about objectives taken, cause that's the way the press is today. Very negative. They have to stir up controversy. That's the job of a reporter. If everything comes out happily ever after, they dont want that.

MA: After St. Lo, where did you move to next?

FJ: OK, then after St. Lo, there was quite a period of time. We set up outside this small American airfield where fighter planes, instead of going all the way back to England to refuel, would land and rearm. The Western half of France had become secure so we had our own airfields, small airfields not for big bombers or anything. These fighter planes would land and take off so fast that was our job, to protect those fields because to set up an airfield you have to have millions of gallons of gasoline and tons and tons of ammunition and the Germans would try to destroy that. So that was our mission and for quite a while, a couple of weeks we probably didn't even fire. There weren't any enemy troops that close and the Germans weren't attacking that area. But then again, in one night we might have three missions. You're always on the alert. Then the third major battle was the liberation of Paris. That I tell stories with my tongue in cheek because when we captured Paris, we were one of the first American units in the northern part of Paris. There were American troops in other parts but we came in from this northern direction. The Germans had a lot of their anti aircraft guns set up in this big park. We had to move in and pull their guns out and put our own in. But, in the meantime, the Parisians, who had been under German domination for almost seven years, they were so happy to see us that they were as dangerous as the enemy. I mean we had set up barbed wire around to keep people away, they knocked the barbed wire down. The young women were coming up and being so nice!!

MA: They just wanted to hug you and-?

FJ: Well for a 19 year old guy it was overwhelming. That's all I'll say.

MA: So they actually hindered you mission?

FJ: In a way dear. The officers said they hindered. I didn't call it a hindrance.

MA: After Paris was liberated, what was the scene? What was the atmosphere?

FJ: I think by Paris we knew that the end was in sight. It should have happened long before it did but Hitler was nuts, he was a fanatic. He didn't stop. It's hard for us to realize in our type of government that one man is able to exercise this much authority. But his network of spies and prison camps was so great that, you know kids were turning their parents in for griping at the supper table. So he was able to do that and he kept Germany being destroyed right up to the end. He should have given up. But anyway, after Paris, there was a longer period of quietness, at least for us. We moved around from here to there, we never had a chance to get bored. But, Paris was in August I think. Then that winter was the fifth battle, excuse me the fourth major battle. The Battle of the Bulge. The Battle of the Bulge, which started maybe a week, ten days before Christmas. I was out on artillery watch. I hadn't been feeling well for quite a while. The medic in the outfit had given me what they call a APC capsule: All Purpose Capsule. If you had a broken leg, you got one, if you had anything, that's what they- I don't know what they were. Whether they had any medicinal purposes, today you might call them placebos. But anyway, that's all they were shoving down me. Finally I broke out with full- fledged pneumonia. I had trouble breathing, so I was evacuated. Eventually I got evacuated all the way back to England. Because, in the beginning part of the illness, I also contracted hepatitis. Which is an infectious disease, it has a hundred causes. There were thousands of cases of hepatitis in the military. Life is very unsanitary, it was just the way you lived. So they never were able to figure out how I got it. I started to go through the medical process. I went from a field hospital to like a MASH hospital, what you see on TV. Eventually they flew me back to England because in those days they were treating hepatitis as a contagious thing. I was in the ward with maybe a hundred similar people. So, the latter part of the Battle of the Bulge, I missed out. I think I was lucky because the conditions there were intolerable. There were more American frostbite casualties than German casualties. I was lucky to get back to my outfit. I told you about that before. That's a story in itself too. There were Americans who were losing their feet and their fingers to frostbite, because there was a stalemate for the most part. That meant that you were living in you tent or in your foxholes for days and days at a time without the ability to move around and keep your joints limber. So when I got back to my outfit, guys were telling me about this. But I used to write letters to my buddy and say "Is it cold over there? If its cold here, the nurse just brought me another blanket," and you know. [laughter] They would have killed me. But anyway, I mentioned after about six weeks I guess, I was rehabilitated. They sent me back to France and they put me in a replacement outfit. This was a big outfit where hundreds maybe even a thousand other guys that had been wounded or sick or for some reason had been taken away from their outfit, were waiting to be sent someplace else. With little or no chance of getting back to your outfit. But while I was there, I think the place was in Rimes, Rimes is just north of Paris. I had met a buddy of mine from Hartford CT. We became close and did all the old bullcrap together about what we had done and all this stuff. So I told him I was in the 110^th. One day he came back and he said "Hey Frank, I was sitting out on the wall . . ." All the trucks had their outfit numbers on the bumpers. He said, "I saw this truck go by it had 110^th AAA on it." My eyes lit up. I said "Gee, if there's a truck in the area . . ." So I went to the chaplain. And the chaplains are good sometimes. And I told him, I said, "Hey chaplain, my buddy told me he saw one of the trucks from my outfit go by. Maybe it they are not too far away, maybe I got a chance to get back there." Well luckily he took pity on me and he went to find out where the 110^th was. And this is what I told you about Saving Private Ryan. Everybody knew where everybody's outfit was. So he came back to me and said, "Well the truck that you saw was going to a supply depot." The 110^th, I was in B battery, but this was an A battery truck. It was about 40 miles away. "Is there any chance of finding out where B battery was?" This guy went the extra mile and he found out where B battery was. I forgot how many miles, it was quite a ride. But, the chaplain had an assistant, a jeep driver who when we would have field services the jeep driver would play the organ, pump the organ, the bellows. Well, he had him take me to my outfit.

MA: You were very lucky.

FJ: Oh yes. He said "P.F.C Johnson, I'll take you back to B battery, you stay there and when my aid comes back, I'll tell them what I did and they'll erase your name." Otherwise, they might think I'd gone AWOL. Cause every night you had to check in. But he said "There's a chance they might not take you, if you have been replaced and there's no opening for you, they just can't take extra people." But as it was, I got right back to my gun crew. There wasn't any openings on the gun crew but they had moved somebody else in the ammunition line. So I got back to my outfit. Wow! That was unbelievable! The Bulge had been all over and the Bulge had killed the back of the German army. They had put all their eggs in one basket and when the skies cleared, I'm sure you've heard the story that they were semi-successful when the planes couldn't fly. Once the skies cleared, they were just bombed out of existence. Then there was along period again where we regrouped for the final push to the Rhine River. So the fifth battle of the war was the Remagen Bridge, the crossing of the Rhine River. And the story there was that the Germans had blown up all the bridges across the Rhine to thwart our advance, except the Remagen Bridge. They had it wired but for some reason or other, it didn't blow. The American troops, infantry and a couple of tanks were able to cross that bridge and keep the bridge from being blown. But now once the Germans found that that bridge was still standing, they threw everything they had at it to try to get it. So we were called, I think one of the longest moves we ever made, maybe a day and a nigh in travel. We were called to set up on this hill because the last of the German planes were trying to bomb this bridge. That's where the Germans had their first jet airplane we saw. We knocked down a few planes and helped save the bridge. So that was the fifth and final battle, so our outfit has the five battle stars. After the Americans got on the German side of the Rhine, the war was all over. Then you couldn't catch them.

MA: You knew this?

FJ: The unique thing that we would see was all the German troops, even German civilians swarming back towards us because they didn't want to be captured by the Russians. So there were hundred of thousands of Germans, civilian and military that the Russians captured and nobody to this day knows what happened. They used them as slave labor. Another thing that makes me proud of the Americans is that all this territory that we had recaptured, when everything was settled and governments restored, we relinquished, we gave all the territory back. We did not gain one inch of ground. Every piece of territory the Russians took over, they never gave up. The same way with the Chinese Communists. That's something again, that young people should know, they should be proud of it. So that basically ended the war. After the war, we did a lot of missions. We guarded prison camps, we guarded hospitals for the wounded Germans because all of the men high ranking Germans were trying to hide their identity so they wouldn't go on trial.

MA: Did you go further into Germany?

FJ: Yeah we were way deep into Germany. Not militarily, because the war was over.

MA: Did you ever see any of the concentration camps?

FJ: Yeah, I saw concentration camps that had already been freed by the Americans. We didn't help free them.

MA: Were you-

FJ: I did see boxcars loaded with bodies and as a matter of fact Eisenhower wanted as many American troops as possible to see those. So we went through I think it was Dachau, in two and a half ton trucks. They just drove us right through. At first we were allowed to take pictures, then we weren't. So that we could see. We didn't get off, we couldn't get off the trucks, but they drove us around so that we could see the furnaces, we could see the cremated ashes, we could see the piles of clothes, and all this stuff. We got the picture.

MA: Did you have any idea that there were these extermination camps?

FJ: During the war, no. It wasn't kept from us it was just something that, you know, we didn't know about. So after the war, there's a lot of funny experiences of different things, we had all the civilians that the Germans had captured from other countries. They had brought them into industrial Germany to run the factories and all this stuff. Once the war was over, they wanted to get back home. But they couldn't get back home because in a lot of cases their cities were completely destroyed. The Allies wanted to keep track of them, they were called DPs: displaced persons. On their own, they were going to walk back home. So we had to set up roadblocks, and stop them, interrogate them, because in that group could be Germans that they wanted to jail. One of the funny things is, we had these big DDT canisters, like an old fashioned fly spray. One of our jobs was to disinfect these people. They were covered with lice and all these things. Again, you know it, especially when it would be a young woman we'd have to make sure that she got the right dose of DDT.

MA: Would you have to take their clothes off?

FJ: Well, pretty much. We were told not to embarrass them, but those people didnt know how to be embarrassed after what they had gone through. There's all kinds of stories but . . . Now we lived in German houses, We were in this one hospital area, guarding this hospital, and the captain told us he'd marked out six or seven of these houses. He said, "Now go up and tell those people they got two hours to get out." I think of that often, yet. And so you'd go up and you'd say, "We're gonna live in your house for as long as we're here. You've got two hours to take what you want." Now where could they take it? Nowhere.

MA: Where did they go?

FJ: They had no Mayflower trucks. They would just take a few personal things. We would move into the house. We wouldn't destroy the house but anything that had any value became ours.

MA: Do you know where the people went, where could they go?

FJ: Down the street, with a friend, who knows.

MA: Now when did you leave Europe?

FJ: The war ended in April of '45, We did all these fancy things for a couple of months, Then by July, we moved down to Marseilles. We were told we were going to be retrained and go to the Pacific. Again, because we had a sophisticated outfit. So we started to go through physical training again, you know running, and all this stuff. We didnt have any big guns, once the war was over they disappeared, ordinance took them. So the only weapons we had were rifles. We started to go through all these advanced training things. We were told we'd wait our turn and wherever an anti-aircraft outfit would be needed, we would be sent over there and-

Mrs. Johnson: Excuse me, I'm leaving.

FJ: OK, do you want to sing a song?

Mrs. Johnson: Good-bye, I'll see you later.

FJ: Good-bye dear.

MA: Nice to meet you.

Mrs. Johnson: You too.

FJ: But then, happily Truman decided to drop the bomb.

MA: So did you support the decision to drop the bomb?

FJ: I had enough of war, honey. That ended the war right there and that ended our possibility of being sent to the Pacific. So when people ask me my opinion on that I say dont ask me, I'm very prejudice. So we hung around there in Marseilles, and finally got back home. The only time I think during my entire military service I was bored was maybe in that month in Marseilles. Because the army doesn't want you bored, If they can't find something to do, they'll find something for you to do. Most of the time it's pretty chicken. Calisthenics in the morning and reading old manuals those, antiquated manuals. We came back home and in the end of October, I was discharged.

MA: How were you received when you came home?

FJ: Great. I tell people that after going through all this, when I came home, I still couldn't vote. Because the voting age was twenty-one. I had just turned twenty-one, but I wasn't able to go through the process. There's a long process then. Today you just go down.

MA: What was the process then?

FJ: Then you had to take a little test. People voted then because it was bothersome to become enfranchised. Today, because there's nothing to it, people don't care. Anything which is easy to get is treated the same way. But, treated back home, when you compare it to Vietnam and Korea, wonderfully. But again, the situation is entirely different. When WWII ended, it ended at one time and hundreds of thousands of men came home at the same time. So in Naugatuck, let's say within a six month period, perhaps 80% of the men who had been at war were home. In Korea and Vietnam you took tours of duty so that every week three or four guys would come home, and three or four would leave. In Vietnam, that went on for twelve years. So when we came home in mass, not only Naugatuck, but other cities had big welcoming home parades because we were en mass. Naugatuck had a big welcoming home parade that spring. The other fellows who say, "Well gee, we never had any parades," there never were enough of them at one time to hold a parade. Now on top of this, you and I had talked about the morale of the citizens during WWII, how positive it was. Because Vietnam and Korea were political wars, almost kept from the public. They didn't want the public to know. The public was highly suspicious. And when you become suspicious of something, then you go against it. That's why you had all these Kent State uprisings and draft dodgers and flag burners, they were a result of the fact that there was a political war and not a military war.

MA: How did you feel about that as a WWII veteran? You see people burning the flag and draft dodging--

FJ: I was a teacher at the time. I was very happy to see so many of my former students go into the military. But it bothered me. And I was just waking up to the fact that this was the government's fault. I was very, very angry about Vietnam because I said, the government made the mistake in Korea, they knew what happened. Then they went and made the same mistake in Vietnam, only worse. I hear soldiers, and sailors, and Marines who fought in Korea and Vietnam, and said that they would take an objective, like a hill, 10 times in a month. They would take it during the day with casualties, and then retreat at night. This is what their orders were. Then in Korea, the Yalo River that separated Korea from China, they weren't allowed to go over that. MacArthur, who was still in charge of the Far East, he wanted to use the atomic bomb. Because the Chinese, in those days, they were massing half a million troops in a small area, they were ready for an attack. You dont do that anymore, not with atomic weapons. You don't mass things anymore. He could have ended that war in a week if he'd had permission to use that bomb. Just like people say it was terrible, of the hundreds of thousands of Japanese that were killed in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, they don't realize the hundred of thousands more that would have been killed if we had to invade. So, I dont know. So that's why I just hate war in general. I tell people today, don't get mad at the soldier, get mad at the politician that declared the war.

MA: The one that gives the order to go?

FJ: So how are we doing? We are going to run out of tape.

End of Tape 1

FJ: We knew the objectives of Adolph Hitler and Tojo. None of that was true in Vietnam or Korea. We went over there to help a country but we shouldn't have been there in the first place. Entirely different. But not the soldier. The soldier was just as resourceful and brave, and maybe even more so because he didn't have that morale booster with him all the time. The one thing he did have, honey, on his side was there was a tour of duty. Now when I raised my right hand and pledged to defend the country, there wasn't anything in that contract that said for one year or two years, it could have been a hundred years. It just said for the duration of hostilities. But, the soldiers that went overseas then and even now, sign for a definite period of time.

MA: Do you think that would have changed your outlook on the war if you had a tour of duty?

FJ: No, because you still knew you had a job to do and you really didn't think about it because it just wasn't there. I was very happy to get out because I mentioned to you earlier I think, well, I'll tell you a story. When I was discharged and found out that Uncle Sam would pay for my education, I went to Springfield College. When I got my diploma, there were recruiters there because Korea was starting to rear its ugly head. I could have gone to OCS school for six or eight weeks and gotten a commission because of my past experiences and because of the fact that I was now a college graduate. I wanted to do that. But you see that young lady that just came in and gave me a kiss? She didn't want any part of it. We had been engaged for five years and didn't get married until I graduated.

MA: Were you dating before you went into the war?

FJ: Well, no. I didn't know her before. I met her right after I was discharged, after the war. But I had one year of prep-school and four years of college. I wasn't sure of myself academically so I went to Cheshire Academy for a year, to see how smart I was. Then to Springfield College. So she didn't want any part of Army life, so she put the kybosh on that. We were married in August, and I had my first job in September. Nineteen fifty-one is quite a memorable year for me. Then, a couple of years after that, the government was looking for teachers to go overseas and teach in these American schools. In England, in Germany, and overseas in the Pacific. We had so many Americans over there, especially at the airbases, that they had to establish their own schools for the kids if these places. So they immediately started to send letters and fliers to those of us who would fit the bill. And again I got excited about it. But Mama Bear said no way, she's a hometown girl.

MA: Did you ever regret not going to Korea or not teaching overseas?

FJ: Well you had to sign up for three years. They made it a good deal. They paid for all of your living expenses, in certain cases you'd be provided with a billet, with a maid. You know, you were going to be a high class citizen. I don't know if they were just telling the truth or not but it never materialized. Again, in hindsight, it's probably for the best.

MA: So you say after the war, you went into teaching.

FJ: I went to college first.

MA: College first, right, and then teaching-

FJ: Then I went into teaching at Naugatuck High School.

MA: Did your experience in the war impact your decision to become a history teacher?

FJ: I'm sure it had something to do with it. Springfield College at that time was more or less a physical education school. The majority of its graduates were coaches and trainers, and since then it's broadened out, there's a lot of other things. Now, I enjoyed sports as a kid. I really wasn't that good, that isn't necessary, just the fact that you enjoy it. I enjoyed the competition, and enjoyed getting beat up once in a while and beating the other guy up-- so I just though initially that maybe I would go to school and become a coach or something. But one of the first things that happened to me at Springfield was that I went out for freshman football and I said, "This outta be a cinch" because I had played a little football in the service, too. Here I had all these experiences and was rougher and tougher and nastier, right? Maybe I was, but I was missing one thing, I didn't have that gung-ho. I missed young adulthood altogether. I went from high school to being a man. And I missed all that excitement, and when a kid graduates from Naugatuck High School and goes to college, he's got all that rah-rah stuff. At Springfield I had to wear a freshman beanie for six months- I don't even think they do that anymore. You couldn't walk on senior walk, that was all prevalent in those days. That was part of the tradition of the school, right? No smoking on the campus. Well I, I didnt have too much trouble. A couple of the guys at school that were veterans did have trouble with that.

MA: Because they were past all of this freshman stuff?

FJ: Yeah, you missed that. You were an old man going to college. The same thing happened to me in football. Plus I was engaged to my wife for five years and very soon I became president of the "Home Every Weekend Club" because Springfield's only, what 60 miles from here? I finished out freshman football, because, you know I was taught not to be a quitter but I never was one of the leaders because I just didn't have that gung-ho thing. They liked me there because the job of the freshman team was to learn the plays of the team that varsity was going to play next Saturday, and you ran those plays against the varsity and they would cream you. I was strong enough to take that but ah, I never went out for anything after that. I was home every weekend. So circumstances change a lot of things.

MA: Would you say then, that, overall, the war had a positive impact on your life?

FJ: I'll give you one of my famous quotes: "I wouldn't trade my military experiences for a million dollars, but I wouldn't give a nickel to do it over again."

MA: Could you explain why you feel that way?

FJ: Not the way I did- not having to kill people and- maybe civilians, I don't know. Because, at the time I wanted to go back, but not now. There are about fifteen of us from my outfit that are from this general area. Middletown, from Hartford, from Massachusetts, from New York City. We get together a couple of times a year. Matter of fact, what's today's date? Tomorrow and Monday, we're going to go to Ledyard with our wives and we're going to stay overnight. We have these little mini-reunions. It's great.

MA: When you get together, do you talk about your war experiences?

FJ: You know, very little. We talk about the funny things. You know, there are a hundred amusing stories that we could tell. We don't tell too many war stories because we know them all, I mean they happened to each other. I could snow you under with stories but it's like your football experiences, if they happened fifty years ago, they become greater than they were fifty years ago. I caught a touchdown pass and then I won the game, when in reality I never caught a pass in my life. But who's around to control it? The same way, when we're together, we do talk about military things, we talk about goofy guys in the outfit and officers that maybe weren't fair. But, as far as the actual war, no.

MA: What are some of the funny stories you tell?

FJ: During basic training, guys that had trouble marching, and doing all the counter marches you had. The rifle drills, a lot of coordination involved, and again, its discipline. And some of these guys, they just didn't have that, they couldn't walk from here down the street and stay in step, even with a band. It's funny because they'd get pulled out of line and get punished, disciplined is the word, not punished. I found that's true now in the classroom, punishment is positive it's not negative.

MA: Positive reinforcement?

FJ: Right. But the positive thing is it keeps the honest people honest. If you are going to reward everybody whether they do something or not, you are punishing the person who willing to work for it. I used to tell these kids in my class, I'd say, "I'm not going to give you a final exam, I'm going to give everybody in this room and 80." An 85 was honors. "I'm going to give everyone an 80." You'd be surprised at the half a dozen people that would bitch. Cause they knew they could get 95. So I would say, I'm trying to get a point across here. The same way with the term paper. After a while, there was so much plagiarism in term papers, I would say, "You know, you don't have to do a term paper unless you have aspirations of an 85 or better. I don't care if all your grades are 100, if you don't turn in a term paper, the highest mark you can get is an 80. I'm not giving you an honor grade." You'd be surprised at the number of kids that wouldn't turn in the term paper. They didn't care, they wanted the 70. That saved me hours of corrections too. There was a method to my madness.

MA: In the Naugatuck community, you are very involved. You lead the Memorial Day Parade every year-

FJ: I sometimes think I'm too involved. I'm chairman of the Naugatuck Veterans Council which is an organization made up of the five active veterans groups. We make sure that the veterans are not forgotten. The memorial parade is probably the biggest in the East. Last year we had 3,000-3,500 marchers, and 35,000 people watching. Twelve bands, all kinds of units from this country and other countries, its a big thing, its a lot of work. People in town have come to expect it, the town helps us financially. You keep working in it, and working on it and pretty soon you have tiger by the tail. You can't let go. We attend all military wakes and funerals, we just get through changing 2200 flags at the cemeteries, we change them twice a year., a week before Memorial Day, a week before Veterans Day. This Thursday, I just about have my plans ready for another parade for Veterans Day.

MA: Do you think today's generation understands and appreciates why you do this?

FJ: I don't know, that's a good question. Some of their parents do, not all of them. I can tell you one thing, the years I taught U.S. history, those kids knew. I don't know if the same is true today. Some of the things I hear today- I might have mentioned to you in passing one of the things I really don't like is that there isn't that factual history being taught. Many teachers only want to know your opinion, and that becomes like a graduate course. Now you've taken graduate courses?

MA: Seminars, yes.

FJ: You know that the professor in the graduate course leaves all the work to you. And that three out of at least five sessions the students do all the talking and they bring in most of the relative information. Well that's all right as long as everybody is in concert with that.

MA: And is informed.

FJ: Right. When I first started teaching, I got so much out of teachers conferences, not from the lectures, not from the big shot with the briefcase that would come in, but from the bull sessions that you'd have with other teachers. They'd say, "Oh that, I've tried that, it doesnt work." Somebody else would come in with something innovative and you'd go back home and wow, there it is. It's sort of the way Naugatuck is. I see the same people coming to our patriotic observances year after year. I just wonder about the kids. What I'm happy now is that the Naugatuck High School band has over one hundred members, and we also have a junior Air Force ROTC with over a hundred and thirty kids. They come, they are part of our parades and so they are part of the program. Now if they're listening and paying attention and osmosis is taking place, then they'll be ready to pass on that tradition.

MA: Did any of your children enter the military?

FJ: My oldest daughter went into the service.

MA: Do you encourage today's generation to enter?

FJ: I think I did. For her, She went in and she was gonna go in and get the free college education, take courses while she was there. But when she got in the service, she began to realize the other opportunities other than going to college. She started to travel, she went over to Germany for a couple years and I would get a postcard from Italy, from Sweden. Whenever she got time off she traveled because she could travel in military aircraft for next to nothing. I was disappointed then because, you know being a father I said well, get an education and in three years that's what her tour was, then you can get a couple years of college. She got a few courses that's about it. But when she got out she did go back to school, [she] went to California and graduated from Cal State Fullerton. At very little cost to me. She went in. But, again, my wife didn't like it. Especially during basic training when my daughter would call or write home and tell us about being propositioned by a black soldier or something worse like drugs. And for a small town girl where that probably doesn't happen, especially for my wife who was as sheltered as the Virgin Mary. She would cry and cry. But you know I get my wife mad and say, "You know it's not the fact that your propositioned, it's how you react to the proposition." I said if I were a young lady I'd feel disappointed if nobody ever propositioned me. It doesn't mean that you have to accept. Well you know what I'm saying.

MA: You're saying it's how you react to it.

FJ: Yes. What I'm getting at is because of all the negativeness here at home, it kind of shied my other kids away. My number two daughter became a nurse. She graduated from WestConn with a B.S. R.N. And again, they were after her, the military. They were gonna make her a second lieutenant right away. And she hemmed and hawed but again she had met a guy and she couldn't bear the thought of being without him. She eventually married him. I was hoping that she might go into the military again as an officer and then I could kind of re-live my life through her. As a lot of fathers do with their kids in athletics, you know.

MA: How do you feel about women being in the military? It seems like you--

FJ: Well again, when you go back a couple of generations I try to picture, a woman as being that close to me. Remember I told you about living in the pup tent?

MA: Yes.

FJ: Two people, well, I don't see myself sharing that pup tent with a female.

Maybe not in front line duty like that. I could see them in combat if they were in the Air Force or something. Flying over the enemy and coming back. But, I don't know. There's a culture lag in my thinking. Maybe you could see yourself if you had that inclination. It wouldn't bother you to be doing hand to hand combat with a guy, against a guy. We think of all the terrible intangibles. We think of being, let's say a P.O.W. Being forced through all these indignities, I dont know. I believe there's a place. I can't even say I believe there's a place for women in everything because that it's self is a prejudice thing. It's like, "Some of my best friends are blacks," or "Have you stopped beating your wife lately?"

MA: What would you like today's generation to understand and remember about World War Two? What would you like them to retain?

FJ: One of the things I already told you. That we spend billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives trying to keep the world in a peaceful frame of mind. And every piece of territory that we have liberated, that's the right word, we have turned back to the original governments. We have not gained any territorial acquisitions in the last fifty years, since World War I. Now, somebody immediately would take me to task and say "Well look what you did to the Indians." "Look what you did in the Spanish-American War." You took all these lands. But that was in vogue then. I mean that's the way countries did it. You know it's like slavery. The seven wonders of the world were all built by slave labor and nobody gave a second thought to it. That's why, the second reason you went to war was to get slaves to do your dirty work for you back home. You can't talk about that in today's context. And that's why Blacks became perfect for slavery, because of their color. They couldn't escape. All countries had slaves because that's the way things were done. We have come a long ways since then. And that's great. I believe in that progress. But when you make an open statement some people say, you know you're prejudice or that's a racist statement. And that it's a, sexist statement. So today's women should be allowed to do everything a man could do. I mean you could take it one way or another, woman will say of course they can. You know, I still feel that there might be places in the military I would not want to share with a woman.

MA: Now, we talked about Saving Private Ryan. Do you think films, books, TV shows, are they remembering World War Two in the correct way? Or is it too idealized or too--

FJ: Well I think we have to realize that the purpose of a film is to sensationalize something. Pro or con, it's a political statement. I don't think a film can be open about anything. I don't go to movies anyway. I see them on TV or something. But everything that I've seen is prejudice one way or the other. It leaves you tipped one way or another. So it forces you to go see something else that has the other point of view. Same way with politicians. If you listen to all Democrats you think that Republicans are gonna destroy the world. In reality neither party has a monopoly on brains. Young people are not being exposed enough to democracy, patriotism. The whole concept of the melting pot nation, I mean, there we go, we're going way back now, right? E Pluribus Unum. Out of many one. That's no longer politically correct today. All these different people have to keep their individuality today. Before, you could do both. Immigrants that came over here gave up more security in the country they left. Even though they didn't have a chance for advancement here. To come here because they wanted their children to do better. So they made the personal sacrifice for their kids, but they still, many or of all of them held on to their traditions. You know, your grandparents still have Christmas traditions, and, right? And so they've kept all that. But they still are Americans.

MA: Right. Yeah I feel that way.

FJ: And more and more, people today don't have that feeling of oneness. That all of us can be together at least in our desire to have peaceful, harmonious, progressive lives. And they're putting their own interests, ethnic interest ahead of our country. So I think without getting on a soapbox again that's basically the way I would answer you question. The civil liberties union has overstepped its bounds tremendously, you know. They've done a lot of good work, to me in some cases it's like unionism. The deplorable factory conditions in the 1850's and 80's were destroyed by unionism. But now unionism is just as bad as the boss. I mean, you have a union president and the president of the bank, what's the difference? Another expression of mine is "Healthy things grow." Anything that's healthy will grow, even a relationship between two people. Do you have a boyfriend?

MA: Yes, a fiancée.

FJ: You do?

MA: Uh-huh.

FJ: All right, just put that in context. If it's healthy it grows right? You become more dependent upon each other, you look forward to being with each other. Again you have to be careful today because society is very accepting. So-- I don't want to try to be a moralist but if it's healthy it grows. And when I used to deal with problems with the students, let's say truancy, I dealt with the parents. I say, "Now our problem here is not the fact that your kid didn't go to school yesterday. It's how were are gonna keep him from doing it again. We have regulations and you can take care of what he did but let's talk about the future." Because everything we do has a next step to it. And you just, well you have to think about it

MA: Now you were telling me about when you went for the 50^th Anniversary of D-Day. What was that like?

FJ: That was one of the most memorable experiences of my life. First of all, all the hoopla that the press gave to the 50^th Anniversary I think was one of the most positive things that has happened in this country. I'll use myself as an example. I was in the service, I was in the invasion. I came out, I went to college, got married, raised a family. I don't think we ever really discussed my military exploits. In any detail, even once. I used to mention it and there was a funny thing at the table. I used to say, on June 6^th every year, I'd say, "Guess where your father was 18 years ago?" "Guess where he was 30 years ago?" Every once in a while, the kids would second guess me and they'd say, "Guess where Daddy was 40 years ago?" It was almost sacrilegious the way we spoke about it and that's the way we felt. But things came into play, these things fell into the background. I was too busy earning a living, raising a family, and Veteran's Day, Memorial Day, you'd get together at the Legion and you'd talk about things, but it was not that important. Well along comes the 50^th Anniversary and you couldn't turn on the radio or TV without somebody talking about a personal experience, a movie or something. The most fortunate thing was that the country took it up positively. There was a revamping of patriotism because of this. That in itself is very positive, and that's still lasting. Private Ryan, I think has done the same thing. Tom Brokaw also.

MA: The Greatest Generation?

FJ: I see myself on every third page of that book. I don't want to boast but he was writing about me. [laughter] The government for the 50^th Anniversary was going to ask each state to get involved and I don't know what the reason was but Connecticut's pick was Naugatuck High School choir and band.

MA: I remember that.

FJ: Two hundred people: band, choir and chaperones and myself. Mr. Davis asked me, I had been out of school for a couple of years. But he said you know "Frank, if you come over, you'll be a good resource. You can talk to the kids," and I was thrilled because never, in my wildest dreams had I aspirations of going back. But I did. The kids were great, seeing some of the places- I didn't recognize them. When I was there in '44, I wasn't on a sightseeing tour. But the one thing that stood out in my mind was the day we visited the cemetery at Omaha Beach, the American cemetery. Now the curator of the cemetery was an American civilian, former military, but he was a civilian. Anytime a person came to that cemetery and identified himself as a D-Day veteran, he was supposed to give them the VIP treatment. I'll tell you he did, with me. They have a book that you can sign your name and the outfit, and then he looks up in his chart to see whether your outfit is listed. D-Day with them was three days. They don't call it D-Day, the call it the Normandy invasion. It was a three day period because everything was bottlenecked on that beach. No security until the fourth day. So anyway, he showed me around, he said there's over 18,000 Americans buried here, almost exclusively from D-Day. He said over three quarters of them are 18 years of age. 18-19 years of age. Well that was me. I was 19 at the time. All these facts started to hit home to me. When I walked down the graves I didn't recognize any names, I probably could have if they had some registry there but . . .They had an observation platform there that overlooked the English Channel and the beach, and the hill. The hill that we had to come up. As I stood there the sights and sounds of the war came back to me. I'm not saying I could visualize all the ships but there was this image, and the sounds were there, the sounds were very realistic. I was just mesmerized by it all, it just caught me. And if it was, some people say, that's what they call an out of body experience, but then all of a sudden one of the chaperones tapped me on the shoulder, he said, "Hey Frank, come on the bus is here." I dont know how long I was there, I probably still would have been there if he hadn't tapped me.

MA: Was it like time stopped?

FJ: Yeah, that's it. Time had stopped and there I was 50 years ago. I have been a little different person since then. I now think about it. I now for the first time have talked to my kids. I don't call them aside and interrupt anything but when the proper time comes, I do talk about things. I truly believe we saved the world. This is probably the most extensive interview I've done, although I have given talks in schools and to women's clubs, and Rotary. But it's funny, I was in the military for three years, and I'm now 75. Those three years probably have played the most important part of my life, it impacted my life more than any other period of time, even 38 years of teaching. I call upon those experiences more and more. I guess as you get older, there isn't much else you can do except recollect.

MA: Are you saying it impacted your philosophy of life . . .? How you lived your life?

FJ: I think quasi-religiously.

MA: Did you become a more religious person?

FJ: I always have been. I've been a deacon in the church, and but I catch myself thinking this way, and saying this even to my wife, and so I'll say it to you. There were days that I didn't think I'd see the sun go down. And now here I am 75 years old. Still going, I'm not going strong, you know I've slowed down a little bit, a little arthritis and stuff but I'm still very active. Another quote that I find myself saying is that I think I'm a better veteran than I was a soldier and I was a damn good soldier.

MA: What makes you say that?

FJ: Cause I think I'm doing more that's impacting other people. I think, like my Memorial Day Parade. The Library of Congress has what they call a "local legacies" program. They're trying to collect programs from all over the country, from small towns and cities that have impacted those cities in some regard. Through Congressman Maloney, they've asked me to do a program on the Memorial Day Parade.

MA: I've gone my whole life, it's fabulous. I've marched in it.

FJ: To see the way the whole town comes together.

MA: We live in Wolcott now, and my dad and grandmother, they have to come every year. Even people who have moved away come back for it.

FJ: And that's what the Library of Congress wants. So I'll be on their web-site. I'm reading literature they are sending me. They get a million hits a month, the Library of Congress does. From all over the world. So, when I get this package ready, I'm going to have a movie of the parade. People will be able to tap into that over in China, England, or in a US history class at Naugatuck High School. So that's one of the other things I'm working on. So I am a little nuts because I'm also working on building a Spanish-American War Monument in town. We have memorials to all the wars except for that.

MA: It is similar to the situation in Washington DC where there is no WWII Monument.

FJ: I'm active in trying to collect money for that also. People can't believe that the biggest war we've ever been involved in doesn't have a memorial, but that's all politics.

MA: Studs Terkel has christened WWII as the "Good War." How do you feel about that?

FJ: I can never agree that any war is good. The best you can get out of me is it was a bad war with good results.

MA: Thank you so much. Is there anything else you wanted to say that you feel we didn't cover?

FJ: Well, I only hope that you're successful in this endeavor and I hope a lot of young people will have a chance to hear it. Again, it shows me how the world keeps turning, because I can recall my father talking to me about WWI and lots of experiences, and here I am now, his son. He was Chairman of the Naugatuck Veterans Council, we're the only father and son chairmen. I'm very proud of that. A lot of the things I do now, he taught me. I just wish every young person had the opportunities I had to grow up with a lot of love, all around. Love of family, love of country. A lot of people say we don't have to be the world's peacekeeper. I say well that could be true but name another country you'd like in that position. China would love to be in that position. They'd keep peace. Just like they are putting down that new religious movement over there.