Interview of Lloyd Batten
Transcript Number 054

My name is Paul Zarbock, it's the 21st of May in the year 2001. We are at Whiteville, North Carolina in the public library. Our guest this afternoon is a Mr. Batten who lives here in Whiteville.

INTERVIEWER: Tell me about you sir. When did you go into the military, where did you do your basic training?

LLOYD: Well the war began to warm up and government began to draft people and as time went on, they kept lowering the draft age and I became 19 in September of 1942 and they lowered the draft age to 19 so I was drafted in November of 1942. I left Whiteville on a bus on Sunday morning and went to Fayetteville to Fort Bragg and there I stayed three days to get my uniforms and everything. 

On Thursday morning, we boarded a train, the first train I had ever ridden and when we stopped we were in California. We were stationed near Cambridge in Camp Beall, California. Stayed there about a year, took the basic training and some advanced training and then we were shipped out to the desert. We were stationed in Desert Center. That's in the California/Arizona Mohave Desert. 

During that time, we traveled around and hauled supplies for desert maneuvers and even had the pleasure of driving persons to liberties like Bob Hope and his show, Kay Kaiser and his show and various ones where we picked them up in Palm Springs, California and took them out to the desert to perform for the troops. That was a right enjoyable time, but living in the desert is not too pleasant except for the fact that the humidity is very low. Other than that, it's a pretty bad place to live. 

We stayed in the desert almost a year and went to Mississippi and fought with those chiggers, red bugs we called them, and mosquitoes for a couple of months and then went to New York and then shipped over to Liverpool, England, caught a train and went to Cambridge, a great university town in the southern part of England.

INTERVIEWER: And what year was that?

LLOYD: Oh that was 1944.

INTERVIEWER: And you went over on the troop ship. 

LLOYD: Yeah. We rode over on a troop ship and the ocean was full of ships, all kinds of ships. It was said that that was the largest convoy that had gone to Europe during the war. Fortunately, we got over there safely and landed in Liverpool, England and caught a train to Cambridge where we stayed about two years. During that time, the war in Africa had been won by General Patton and his boys and they did not need desert-trained people anymore so we were assigned to a supply unit. 

We hauled supplies, food and everything you need in a war. We would have these trucks, big trucks, little trucks and odd sized trucks that would go to Liverpool and up to Scotland and different areas and pick up materials and supplies to send over to France. We usually hauled them to Southampton, England where they were unloaded from the trucks and put on cargo ships to go over to France. Hauling these supplies included bombs. I never will forget one day when we had a convoy of bombs and one of the tailgates broke out of a big transfer truck and the bombs rolled out. That was sort of frightening, but the bombs weren't hooked up to explode and fortunately we got by that all right. 

We had a pretty good stay there in England without being on the front lines. In fact, I never was sent over to France. I never did get on the front lines, but we did have a problem with what we called buzz -bombs to start with and those things would come putt, putt, putting along and flamed-out the back end of them. When we saw the first one, we were terribly frightened and got under the tables and said our prayers and everything. Fortunately, when those things stopped putting and making that noise, they would drift or glide on for several miles. That's what happened first time we saw one. We never were directly hit by one of those bombs, but later on the Germans came out with a rocket. This rocket traveled so quietly that we didn't even have an air raid alarm. Those rockets would come in and explode and we didn't even have a chance of being warned at all. 

I recall one day some boys and I were in London in a hotel and we heard a bomb explode and we went down the street. There was a seafood market where people were lined up to get fish. 134 people were killed in that explosion and it was only a couple of blocks from where we were. We were lucky. But those bombs really tore England up terribly. If Hitler had known how weak they were and how they were ripped apart and torn up, I think he would have invaded and probably taken over England because they were really beaten down. They had run out of a lot of things including money. When Churchill and President Roosevelt got together and decided to work that war together, I think that was a blessing for England and for America too because Hitler was out to conquer the whole world which would have later included America. So there again the American people are very fortunate in that we didn't have a war on our soil. Wars are, as the man said, Hell and they are even more Hell when they're fought on your soil so perhaps we were very fortunate in attacking and conquering Hitler and his people over there instead of over here. 

We stayed in England nearly two years and had some very exciting times and had some sad times. I recall when victory in Europe came, what we call VE Day, May 7, 1945 and that date I was in Cambridge, England and continuing my work. I was hoping and praying that the war would soon end, and unexpectedly it ended and everyone was very happy and needless to say, we celebrated. A little bit later, not too long, about September 2, President Truman announced victory in Japan. At that time, I was in Oxford, England, another university town, so this date I tell people I had some of my education in Cambridge, England and some of it in Oxford, England; which of course, is technically not true, but you get an education wherever you are. However you operate, you're getting some education so I'm partly right in telling people that. It was a very happy day and exciting time when those two victories came about. 

Then Uncle Sam began releasing and discharging men from the service and he worked on a point system which included points for various activities, longevities overseas, battles that were fought and various things gave the boys points. But because we stayed in England and didn't actually get into combat, we didn't get many points except for time in and serving and so forth. Even the Air Force people got points because even if they were in England, they were given points when the Air Force won various battles and things and so they would get out ahead of some of us. 

We left England to come home about March or April, 1946. There were two brothers in Southampton, England who were pilots or captains of their ships. They wanted to bet on which one would reach New York first. Well, we took off for home, New York, and during the course of our trip from England, we ran into many storms. It was very, seemed like a tropical season everywhere. The wind was blowing and we had storm after storm. One time the engines stopped running and we drifted back about a day's journey, back towards England. We got home, it took about 13 days to get to New York. 

The other captain of the ship had been there and unloaded and everything was fine. Uncle Sam had saved up enough food to give us. It was the most delightful dinner I had ever seen. He had more food on the table than a Baptist homecoming. We had some of everything that you could think of like families have on Thanksgiving and Christmas. We even had fresh milk, something we hadn't had in a long time. Plenty of fresh eggs which is another thing we hadn't enjoyed. We had eaten a lot of powdered eggs and powdered milk and what we call synthetic food. Now we were getting down to the nitty gritty. We were really back home and it was an exciting and glorious time for all of us. 

Sometimes I think back about my time in the service and I want to get a little regretful about giving that much of my time when so many people stayed home and in some cases, ran black market deals and made money hand over fist, any way they could make it. Fellows like I and millions and millions of others had to go over there and help win the war and in a lot of cases, they didn't come back. Fought for freedom and so many didn't get to come back and enjoy the freedom. I think of it as losing so much time in a way and then I come to myself and realize that that was the most exciting period of my life. I learned so much that I never would have learned. 

I even had a chance to ride a train, as I said. When I got on the train at first at Fort Bragg, that was my first train ride, and I rode from say the Atlantic to the Pacific. It was a pretty good ride. I think about all those lessons I had along with the other things and I really feel proud that I could be a part of what Tom Brokaw calls The Greatest Generation. I was a part of it, I read his book and it made me even more proud to be a part of the greater generation. 

Now, the service men and women were not the only ones who played an important and active part in winning the war. Men, women everywhere became riveters, truck drivers, ship builders, you name it. They jumped on it. The United States of America mobilized like no one would ever believe unless he had been there and seen it and done it. It was hard to believe that any country could build so many ships, tank and vehicles and get them over to England and France in such a short time. 

As most of you know, Pearl Harbor just about cleared us of the Navy, but Uncle Sam, with his great men and women kicked in, went to work and we really did an unbelievable job in mobilizing and getting ready to win a war. That's what we went for then, to win a war, not to fool around like we did in Vietnam. We had the green light to fight, and kill and win which we did with all the service men and the help of all the women, the civilian men and women and moms and dads everywhere. 

We jumped in and did the war and I feel very proud to have been a part of it. I'm very thankful that I was spared and that I had a good life up until then. During that time, and even now, I'm having wonderful time. I look forward to each day and continue to live in this great country of ours and enjoy all the benefits that we have and most of all our freedom.

INTERVIEWER: Tell me, what was the attitude of the Americans towards the British soldiers and civilians and what was the attitude that you'd feel of the British soldiers and civilians towards Americans?

LLOYD: Well I think we were fairly compatible. We got along beautifully and worked together. The Royal Air Force went out and dropped bombs all night on Hitler and his properties. In the morning, the U.S. Air Force took off and dropped bombs all day. We worked together very well. Sometimes when we were out at a social night, like at a local pub for the evening, we would get a little bit carried away with each other, but we never argued or fought, I can't say that much for the Irish that were stationed around Cambridge, sometimes we actually fought with them. We Americans got along pretty good with the British soldiers and the British people. I think that they were very appreciative of the fact that we came over to help them cause the good Lord knows they needed help. It was a blessing for them and for us too in the long run. 

INTERVIEWER: Were the civilians short on food?

LLOYD: Yes. The civilians were short on food. They of course didn't eat like we did and of course they didn't have food like we had. We had breakfast many mornings in the YMCA. I was a squad leader and usually I took a squad, drivers, out on the road to go pick up supplies in Scotland or Liverpool. We stayed in the Y's most of the nights. They charged I think equal to 50 cents to spend the night and we had breakfast there. Breakfast was usually sausage, which was mostly meal, not like American sausage. They didn't have much meats and fresh eggs and fresh food to eat. A lot of it was dehydrated just like ours was. They managed to get by and we got by too. We thought it was rough at the time, but looking back on it, it was just another experience. 

INTERVIEWER: Tell us about the weather.

LLOYD: Well the weather was quite different from North Carolina and the eastern section of the country. They have a mild temperature. We never wore summer uniforms in England. We wore winter uniforms year-round and they didn't have ice and refrigeration like we do because it was cooler there. I can't forget walking by these little markets, they weren't supermarkets by any means. They were just little stores and you'd see a rabbit hanging in the window with the fur still on him. I don't know how long he hung there, but due to their mild weather, somewhere somebody bought him and ate him. The weather was very cool as compared to ours and quite foggy. 

I remember at Christmas Eve, we picked up information that the Germans were going to drop paratroopers in England and unlock the doors and let all these German prisoners free. We had thousands and thousands of German prisoners. We had a camp of German prisoners at my camp in Cambridge. On Christmas Eve night, we had to surround that camp with trucks that had a 50 caliber machine gun and we had to stand guard all night so if they carried out the rumor that they were going to break loose and capture England, we'd be ready for them. That night when I went on duty, the electrical power lines, which were ordinary power lines, but as the fog came along during the night and freezing weather, those power lines became very large because that fog began to freeze on them and before day, they were huge power lines because of accumulation of frozen fog. You can see that the temperature was quite different from ours and very much cooler than ours and a whole lot foggier than ours. It was as foggy there everyday as it is down near Riegelwood sometimes here in Columbus county. You could hardly see anything for fog.

INTERVIEWER: And that's how you spent Christmas Eve.

LLOYD: Yes sir.

INTERVIEWER: Hmmm. 

INTERVIEWER 2: Did you work mostly in the daytime Lloyd or did you have some night duty too?

LLOYD: Well, we worked anytime we needed to around the clock. We traveled right much at night when we needed to. We ran convoys at night when we were in black out periods, we couldn't even turn on the lights. I recall my first assignment from Cambridge was to go to Liverpool for some reason and all of the road signs had been removed because the English people and British really thought that Hitler would be over there. 

They took down the road signs and of course we didn't have maps either so the commanding officer would draw what we call an overlay and hand it to us. Well I left Cambridge one night at about dark and it took me all night to arrive in Liverpool which would have been three or four hours drive, but I stayed lost more than I didn't. When I asked the police, the bobbies, which road to take, they would tell me, up the hill about so many kilometers, bear right, you can't miss it and I missed it every time. Fortunately we had large gas tanks on our trucks and we made it to Liverpool all right without running out of gas. That's one of the first things when I got there was find some gas and build the tank back up. 

INTERVIEWER 2: What did you go to Liverpool to get? Was it general supplies or ammunition? Do you remember?

LLOYD: Well in that particular case, I think I took some orders, paper, for some of the upper command there in Liverpool. I know I went to London several times for that purpose. Most of the time we were hauling supplies from Liverpool to Southampton and sending them over to France. Carnation milk, any kind of food that came in from America, we had to haul it down there and ship it over to France. That was quite a job. I had an 8, what we call 18 wheelers one day, I went to Liverpool and where we were going to load up, there was no way to get those tractor trailers in there where you could load from the dock. You'd have to load it off and then reload it on the truck. I called the commander down in Liverpool and he said well bring those trucks on back and get some regular trucks without a trailer on them. That's how we solved that problem.

INTERVIEWER: Well of course, the other question is did you ever have an accident either while you were driving or someone ran into you?

LLOYD: I never had an accident. Some of the boys had accidents occasionally. I recall one boy was pulling one tank, on what we call a tank retriever and a tire went flat. He didn't know it and as he drove along, that tire caught on fire. It burned the truck, the tank, the trailer and everything. It was quite an expensive accident. We had to drive lots of times on frozen, frosted snow pavement and it was very tricky and easy to have accidents. Fortunately, we didn't have too many. 

I recall one day we were coming along the road and there was a boy as a passenger in the truck behind me had a flat bed trailer. I saw him sitting back there, driving his passenger and after a while I looked and that boy had gotten out of the truck cab, walked out off the hood and gotten on my flat bed trailer. Well those boys that were injured over in France were sent back to England to help us and our good, healthy boys were sent over there to take over their place in battle due to the fact that so many times they sent boys from our outfit that were in good health.

INTERVIEWER 2: And you did haul a lot of VIP's didn't you, what kind of a car was it Lloyd?
LLOYD: We had Plymouths, Plymouths sedans.
INTERVIEWER 2: Four door.
LLOYD: Yes, very nice and they held up good. In the desert we had a lot of dust storms and dust and grit would get into those engines and burn them up. They were pretty tough cars and I enjoyed them. Being a corporal at that time, I was assigned to drive a sedan where many of the lower ranks were driving trucks. 

Being assigned to a sedan I had the opportunity to drive for very important people from Washington and from the military and some civilians as well. They came out to the desert to sort of oversee and look and see how the troops were doing and how effective our training was. We drove them around from place to place and in the back seat of the car there was a sign posted up against the front seat that said, you will look after your driver. So whenever a general had food, the driver had food and if they slept in a hotel, they slept in a hotel. They had to look after us and I think that was good because many of them probably would have left us sitting in the driver's seat if they hadn't been told that they had to look after us. 
INTERVIEWER 2: Well, did you drive a sedan any in England or were you on the trucks all the time over there?
LLOYD: We drove trucks all the time in England. It would be just about as well to drive a truck as it would be a sedan in England, the sedans weren't very much at that time. We drove regular trucks and drove a lot of tractor trailers, especially when we had airplanes and bombs and things we had to have a trailer to haul those things on. We had some pretty big rigs and we liked to carry as much as we could on a trip.
INTERVIEWER: When you were in California, you were mostly in training, is that correct:
LLOYD: Well, I guess it was all training when I was in California. It was all preparing to fight and kill, preparing to win the war. We weren't out there to play. However, in between training and other work, we had a little time to socialize just like we do in everyday life. We trained heavily and well I thought. 
INTERVIEWER 2: Did you have any idea you were going to end up in England when you left California? Did they tell you where you were going?
LLOYD: No sir. Things were different during World War II from what they are now and what they were in Desert Storm operations. You'd sit at home and look at all these things on television during Desert Storm and in World War II, nobody told anything. If you were captured, all you were to tell is your name, rank and serial number. They could burn you with cigarette butts or put scalding water on you or whatever to make you talk. You still weren't supposed to give them anything but your name, rank and serial number. Even our letters were censored. You'd write a letter to your wife or to anybody and it was read before it was mailed out. Sometimes our folks would get a letter with sentences deleted or cut out because they didn't want to give away any information that would be important to the enemy. Nowadays, we tell the enemy everything we're going to do. I don't see how we can win a war because they know what we're going to do before we do it. But in World War II we kept everything a secret, even D Day, which was one of the greatest military operations in the world. 
That was a secret. It was planned for a certain date, like May 5th or 6th and General Eisenhower delayed it because of bad weather. It took place on the 7th and I recall that my folks and I hauled paratroopers over there, we hauled them to Southampton to go over there for the Battle of the Bulge. When we got down there it was a dry run, we hauled them back to their base and unloaded. That's the way Uncle Sam operated, he made the enemy think he's going to do something and when they got off guard they would do it. So that was a dry run, but the next time we took them out they went.
INTERVIEWER: Where were you discharged, what camp?
LLOYD: Fort Bragg, Fayetteville.
INTERVIEWER: How long did it take to process you out?
LLOYD: Oh it didn't take very long. When I came back from overseas I needed some dental work and they told me if I would stay, they would do my dental work. I decided to do that but I came home and the man with whom I worked before I went into the service wanted me to come to work. He said you go back up there and find out how long it's going to take and I went back and they told me it would take at least two weeks. I told them to give me my discharge, to go ahead, and forget about fixing the teeth. I came home and Dr. Johnson here, a local dentist, fixed my teeth for me. I paid for it.
INTERVIEWER: Speaking of pay, I remember you said when you first went in, what was your pay?
LLOYD: My brother went in a little bit ahead of me, less than a year ahead and the pay at that time was $21 a month. That was it, $21 a month. Of course they looked after you, food, clothing, shelter, health care but $21 a month was hardly enough to go on a weekend pass more than once. Then we'd stay broke the rest of the time. They finally began to raise the pay some. I think it went up to $25 and then $28 and then I got a promotion after basic training to rank of T5, which was equivalent to corporal. I think my pay got up to about $50 a month. Of course, they took out some for allotment for my wife but that's not much money in comparison to the pay in the world today. 
INTERVIEWER: What was your rank at the time of discharge?
LLOYD: When was discharged I was a staff sergeant. 
INTERVIEWER 2: When you left California you didn't know where you were going, they put you on a train?
LLOYD: No sir, they went on a ship.
INTERVIEWER: On the west coast?
LLOYD: Yes. No. They shipped us back to Mississippi where we stayed two months and then out to Camp Kilmer in New Jersey and from there we loaded on a troop ship and went to Liverpool, England.
INTERVIEWER: Do you know what month and year that was? Do you remember that Lloyd?
LLOYD: Well it was just right after D Day. I don't remember the date, it was right after D Day.
INTERVIEWER: It would be the summer, was it summertime?
LLOYD: Well, D Day came May 7th and it was just after that, it was in the summer, yeah, 1944. 
INTERVIEWER: And where did you land in Liverpool? You said you landed in Liverpool.
LLOYD: We landed in Liverpool, England. That's when we found out where we were going because we were there. We unloaded the ship and loaded onto the train and went to Cambridge, England, that's in the southern part. We stayed in Cambridge for nearly two years. 
INTERVIEWER: Were you living in barracks or where were you?
LLOYD: When we first got to Cambridge we lived in temporary tents, no bathroom facilities, take a shower, we loaded on trucks and went into camp to take a shower and to eat. We didn't stay in those temporary tents very long. They soon made arrangements in barracks that were, well sort of temporary too. They weren't like the barracks at Fort Bragg, they were barracks made out of metal and it was a round group like an igloo.
INTERVIEWER 2: I believe they called them Quonset huts. 
LLOYD: Yes, that's right.
INTERVIEWER: Have a cement floor in it?
LLOYD: Yes, Quonset huts is what they were. 
INTERVIEWER: How were they heated? Do you remember? 
LLOYD: We had little heaters in there that were a little bit larger than the American stove pipe. We heated them with coke, not coal, but coke. We thought that coke was something that's already been burned, it was coal before we got it. If we could get enough coke and put enough of it in there, it heated it pretty good. 
INTERVIEWER: Well, is there anything you'd like to add before we, I've got one last question, but is there anything you'd like to add? Any memory that you have about anything?
LLOYD: I have a lot of memories. Four years is, practically four years is a long time. I could answer questions and talk for four years I imagine, but basically, we were run over and briefly here and there. There's a lot of things that were outstanding and easy to remember and especially the lack of food in England and the shortage of milk for babies and folks and that was sort of, touched your heart, knowing that they didn't have sufficient food. They lived all right, but I'm sure that some of the people suffered from malnutrition, they made great sacrifices. Kind of sad to see them have to do on so little when we had so much. Even overseas American troops had plenty of everything. Might not have been what we wanted, but it would keep us well and healthy and able to fight and kill people, win a war. 
INTERVIEWER: The last question. What did you learn from all of that. If you were to tell me in a couple of sentences, this is what I really felt and learned, what would you tell me?
LLOYD: Well that could be a pretty long story too, but I think one of the greatest things I learned is the ability of the American people to come together in time of need and do what has to be done to protect us and this great nation of ours and help freedom-loving people all over the world. 
I learned that together we can do unbelievable things and at that time, President Roosevelt was able to call people in and get people to serve and people volunteered. Everybody felt happy to give their time and their talents and work together. Mobilize, it's unbelievable how America mobilizes. It's frightening to me when I think about whether or not we could do that same thing today. It really is frightening. I hope that we can, but sometimes when you look at experiences like Vietnam and other things that have come along, you wonder if we could. 
The other thing I feel so good about as a result of this World War II is that we are the most fortunate people in all the world. We're the only people in the world who have no place to go. Everybody else wants to leave where they are and come here. We are already here. So we have no place to go. It taught me that I was and am a member of the greatest generation, as Tom Brokaw said in his book and I feel very happy that I was able to bring peace and help defend our nation and help bring about freedom that all of us cherish and love. If I had to and was able, I'd probably do it again.