BURNS:   Thank you very much.  World War II started for me December 7, 1941, at Clemson College.  Mother and daddy were visiting me at school that Sunday and we got the news on the radio that the Japs had attacked Pearl Harbor.  It was the only time in my life that I ever saw my father cry.  Daddy was there and having served in World War I in combat in France, he was very much aware of what we were going to have to go through and what the young men of America were facing.

This was a trying time for him and for us.  But Clemson was emptied in 1943 of all the students that were of combat physically able to go.  I went in to Fort Jackson and stayed there for just a few days when we were shipped to Camp Barkley, Texas.  Camp Barkley was a pretty rough part of Texas.  They couldn’t use it for anything else, so they put troops out there.  We had some real tough fellows in our outfit.

Some of them were out of office jobs and they had just gotten in training and two weeks after going in service, after going in basic training, we had a 25 mile hike with only one can of water to drink.  Two of the men died in this basic training.  The ambulances worked all night picking up the people who had heat stroke, dehydration and just fell out.  We didn't have formations for three days.  If that had happened now, probably the training officer might have gotten court-martialed for such an action.

Camp Barkley was the only place I’ve ever seen in my life where it could pour down rain in big raindrops and the red dust would blow in your eyes at the same time.  After going through basic, I was given the choice of going in the paratroopers or medics.  Paratroopers didn't particularly appeal.  It was too high up and so I took the medics.

I went to Denver, Colorado, which was heaven on earth.  They had green grass.  They had green trees and trees that were over three or four feet high.

INTERVIEWER:   What year was that, Dr.?

BURNS:   That was in 1943.  We were very happy to be able to go to a place where the people were friendly.  Denver was a wonderful town. We had a wonderful USO and the people in town brought cakes and pies.  We had a place to go at night other than barrooms.  It was such a wonderful experience to be there in that Fitzsimmons General Hospital and take basic training for laboratory technician work.

After graduating from lab tech school, they gave me my first and only stripes in the Army, one on each arm.  I made PFC (laughter).  It was a great thrill for me to be promoted.  But from Denver on to San Francisco to the port of embarkation for the Pacific, which really thrilled me because I figured I’d freeze to death in the European theater, and that just almost terrified me to know how cold I would get over there.

My cousin, Thomas Blann, had come back to the States with his feet almost frozen off and this was not something that I looked forward to.  We shipped out in a brand new troop ship that was so fast, they said the Jap’s submarines couldn’t even catch up with it.  The troop ship was beautiful, brand new and one of the worst things that happened on the trip was I went under the Golden Gate Bridge.  There was land on both sides and the ship rolled three times and I got seasick.

Well I didn't eat or drink anything for seven days and finally I passed out in the latrine one day and they drove me to the hospital.  I woke up and I was getting filled up with glucose.  I must have gotten a pretty good dose of it because the next time we moved to another island, we got in a typhoon.  The sailors on the ship, more than half of them were so sick they couldn’t perform.  I volunteered to take some of their jobs.  They said I didn't know what I was doing which was the truth, but I felt so bad for those fellows it was just unbelievable.

I got over that seasickness and it never did bother me anymore.  We landed at a little island called New Caledonia, which is just off Australia.  It was a replacement depot for the units in the Pacific that had been taking a lot of casualties.  From there, I went to the 77th division and it was the 307th infantry division, the company G medical detachment.

The 77th was known as the Liberty Division and went into many islands in the Pacific.  They had just joined the Marines in liberating Guam and I joined them as a replacement in the medics. They had lost many, many medics in the operation.  One of the interesting things was when I got off of the ship to go on Guam, somebody shoved a carbine in my hand and I said, “what’s this?”

Well, the medics had never received any arms training, and they said I should take it with me.  So I did.  As soon as I could get out of sight, I threw it away.  The Japanese didn't respect the Geneva rules of war.  We didn't wear armbands with red crosses on them.  If they could shoot a medic, then they knew they could shoot litter bearers and the process just continued.

So the Japs were really, well, not playing kosher at that time.  Guam was secured in October and we got on another transport ship and went to a rest area.  It turned out that the rest area was the island of Leyte in the Philippines.  That was far from restful because we got into the worst fighting that I had experienced up to that time.  I did increase my education.

I was working on a wounded rifleman one day and I needed a bandage.  I just rolled over just enough to reach behind my back and as I did, the grass between me and him just folded over.  I turned back over and treated him and then I needed a shot of morphine to give him and I rolled over again and as I did, the grass just folded over and fell down the second time.

Well, being as naïve as I was, I didn't know that that sniper had pulled the trigger just a fraction of a second too late.  Either he was a poor shot or the Lord wanted me to come back to tell this story.  Those things were very interesting and they happened to many of the men over there.  So we went on from Leyte.  We boarded the transport for the invasion of Kerama-retto.  I don’t know whether that’s the right pronunciation or not, but they’re small volcanic islands just south of Okinawa.

Our job was to destroy these little suicide boats that the Japs had in caves and when the high tide would come, they could take the little boats out and their purpose was with the charges and explosives that they put on the boat, the driver would ram our transports and our ships.  So we went in on, the 307 went in to Ie Shima and we thought we were having it pretty tough, but looked around and there was a fellow named Ernie Pyle.

His history was he was the greatest writer as far as infantry man’s writer.  He was there with us and he was covering the operation and sending reports back to the United States.  Well Ernie Pyle was killed on Ie Shima while he was with us.  So that’s how the 77th got distinguished because Ernie Pyle was there.

INTERVIEWER:   When did you find out that Ernie Pyle was shot?

BURNS:   Oh the same afternoon that he was shot.  I was behind, they were going up a road and he and one of the lieutenants were in a jeep.  The snipers were everywhere and it was that afternoon and I can’t tell you the exact date because they all run together.  From Ie Shima, the suicides there were so bad of the Japanese civilians that that was a terrible experience. 

The children, the women and the Japanese had filled the civilian population with so many lies about how the Marines would treat them and how the American troops would do the women.  So they went down to the end of the island and there was a cliff there and they just jumped off.  Of course most of them were dead.  The ones that were alive were brought back and treated by the American troops.

From there we went on to Okinawa and we got into some pretty tough times.  The ridge was almost a vertical cliff in Okinawa and the Japanese expected the American troops to come in from the south.  Most of their armament faced the south.  But thanks to the intelligence, we came in from the north, but we had to scale this vertical cliff.  Going up that thing on one of these nets was harrowing.

INTERVIEWER:   But somebody had to get there first.

BURNS:   Somebody had to put it up and thank the Lord for those people.  One day I was watching a couple of our tanks fight some of the Japanese tanks.  It was real interesting to see them out there on the field and they were maneuvering and firing, maneuvering and firing.  It got so interesting, I got up out of the hole just a little bit too far and all of a sudden, I realized I was lying on my back.  I had been hit in the face.  The bullet that was aimed for me hit the dirt and so much of it hit me right in the face that it knocked me backwards.

I didn't wake up dead, but I woke up happy (laughter).  It took a long time to get all that dirt out.  Things went on.  Thank goodness for the Marines.  They were on our right flank when we got into some terrible battles and they gave us the best support that any American could have. 

Just to go on, we kept pushing forward and getting a lot of casualties. One day I was treating a casualty, the mortar shell hit on one side and then one hit on the other side and of course you knew what that meant.  I was just about through with my friend and a mortar shell hit and it knocked me out.  I ended up in Guam again in a general hospital.  When we got back, Admiral Nimitz had a swimming pool where we had bivouacked.

There’s been a lot of changes with the Seabees and all those good folks that had come along.  So I got a free ride back and stayed in the hospital, learned to play checkers.  At the time, my daddy had another heart attack.  He had had three or four and this one was pretty serious.  The Red Cross was so considerate, they got me out of the hospital because the war in Germany was just about over, I mean in the European theater.

So they got me back home on an emergency furlough.  I got 30 days.  I asked how I was going to get home and they said I could hitchhike.  Well it was a long way from Guam to North Carolina (laughter).  He said I should go to the airport and sit there and anytime I saw a plane going in that direction, to climb on it.  So I got in the baggage compartment of everything that was coming back home.

It took me less time to fly from Guam to Washington, D.C. than it did to get on a train in Washington, D.C. and come to North Carolina.  Well this was a real experience because at that time the trains were so considerate of everybody, if you wanted to go five miles, they’d stop and let you off.  We stopped about every five miles, but I finally got home.

One of daddy’s friends, daddy was still alive at that time and when I got there  (this sentence stops here)

(Continuing)  When I got back to the first aide station, they said I should get over in a hole and I would be safe there and tomorrow they would evacuate me back to the hospital, to the place where they would give you a little better treatment.  I said that I would probably start hurting after a little while so I thought I’d give myself a little morphine to kind of ease the pain. 

So I did and that night, it was a beautiful full moon.  I was just sitting there looking, but there was not one, but there were two of them and all night long, those two moons were shining.  So that was my last experience with drugs except for dogs and cats (laughter).  I got back to Guam at the general hospital and learned to play checkers again.

I got home on this emergency furlough, daddy’s friend said, “You won’t have to go back”.  I told him I just had 30 days and then I was going back overseas.  He said, “No, the war in Europe is ending and they won’t send you back to the Pacific theater”.  Well I got an extension of 30 days furlough and when that 30 days ran out, they gave me one more extension and I stayed home.

Daddy lived for one thing, for me to come home.  And he did and October 6, 1945, I got an honorable discharge and ended my illustrious war career.  It was great.

INTERVIEWER 2:  Clyde, did you go back on duty over here after your extended leaves or not, or you just went to get discharged?

BURNS:   I stayed at Fort Bragg during that time.  They said go home, just don’t bother us (laughter).  So I went home to the family and they said come back in 30 days.  So I was back and daddy lived just a little over a month.  As far as learning, this was a great learning experience, how tough a human being is, number one.  Animals can survive, but humans are real survivors.  The human body can take more than I’d ever dreamed of.

I also learned how inhumane humans are to each other and we have a lot to learn about peace on this earth.  It’s my prayer that you will learn this.

INTERVIEWER 2:  You don’t have to go into gruesome details, but I’m sure some of these people were pretty bad.

BURNS:   To answer your question, when a man would get wounded, they’d holler medic and we would naturally crawl up to the wounded because if you stood up, you were a casualty.  So we’d crawl out and try to determine how badly he was hit and what we could do.  Treating the wounded in World War II was pretty primitive.  We had bandages, we had sulfa powder which had recently been discovered and mass produced.

We’d treat all the open wounds with the sulfa powder because they said the quicker we got the sulfa on the wound, the better chance they had of survival.  Then we’d give them a shot of morphine and try to make them as comfortable as possible.  Then we’d crawl back and call in the litter bearers which many times weren’t able to go to the wounded because they would have been casualties themselves.

The casualties among the medics were extremely high because when a Jap sniper would shoot a lead scout, he was waiting for the next person in sight.  Many of my friends were wounded and many of them kept right on working even though they were hit.

INTERVIEWER:   How did you get to be a litter bearer?  That sounds as dangerous a job as there is.

BURNS:   Just medics that were assigned that particular dangerous duty and they were real heroes.

INTERVIEWER 2:  Were the litter bearers trained to give first aid?

BURNS:   Yes, they had taken some medical training.  At that particular time, the Japanese were not retreating, but they needed so many replacements, the casualties were so high.  In the 77th, that company that I served with, we had no officers.  Everybody was shot.  We had one buck sergeant that had had to take charge and he later got a field commission.  We had, I think, there were a couple of men…the radio man was still there.  He was very lucky.  He had a lot of narrow escapes.

His antenna would be up and they’d shoot it in two.  He’d fuss with the Japs about shooting his antenna (laughter).  It was a time that you just needed anybody that could walk and talk and serve during those real harrowing days when we were going from island to island.

As far as learning from this experience, hopefully we’ve learned that people can live in peace if they’ll try and give and take a little.  The more we serve each other, the more likely we are to be able to live in peace.  That’s a great thing for everybody to try to do.  I also learned after the war that one of the best things that came out of it was the GI Bill.

I got the privilege of going to Albany University to go to veterinarian school and graduated as a vet thanks to the service in the United States.  So it had some advantages for me as a human being.  That made life wonderful after service. 

INTERVIEWER:  Doctor, many people see combat movies, but they’re all fiction.  When you were in a combat zone and the sun was setting, I don’t suppose you went back to the rear, took a shower, put on your class A uniform and went to a movie.  I don’t think you did that.  Would you tell us in a combat zone, as a general rule, when the sun began to set what happened?

BURNS:   The first time that I joined the 77th on Guam, the first sergeant said you dig in over there.  Well dig in didn't mean a whole lot.  I had heard of foxholes, but I had never dug one especially in coral that’s as hard as bricks.  So I went over there and scraped out a little hole about 6 inches deep.  He came over and looked at it and said, “You better go a little deeper”.  I said I couldn’t go any deeper in that coral, my shovel won’t dig any deeper than that.

Well I found out the next night that it would go halfway to China because when those Japanese tanks started coming through that night and they ran over some of the foxholes, if you had a six inch foxhole, it wasn’t quite deep enough.  So we would establish a perimeter around the area that we had taken that day and dig in and one man would stay awake for an hour.  His buddy would stay awake for an hour.  After Guam, we got a lot of replacements and after Leyte, we got an awful lot of replacements.

Two of the young men who had just completed basic training came up and joined us that night.  We said you fellows dig in and dig a foxhole together and one of them would have to stay awake all night.  Well they didn't and they’d only be in the Army only a year and the next morning, we got up and they didn't come out of their hole.  We went over and they both had their throats cut.

The Japs would slip in and if they knew you were asleep, you were a goner.  So you had to learn that the Army knew a lot of good things to teach you to survive.  It was the kind of thing that as you survived, you learned as you survived.